by Kay Hooper
PRAISE FOR THE NOVELS OF KAY HOOPER
BLOOD TIES
“Hooper’s darkly riveting Blood trilogy comes to a terrifying climax.… The chilling intensity of this novel is sure to haunt your dreams!”
—RT Book Reviews
“Series fans and newcomers alike will appreciate the appendixes, which include bios of Special Crimes Unit agents and definitions of their various paranormal abilities.”
—Publishers Weekly
BLOOD SINS
“Disturbing … Hooper pulls out all the stops.”
—Publishers Weekly
“Fans of Kay Hooper won’t be disappointed.”
—The Romance Reader
“Another solid entry.”
—Booklist
BLOOD DREAMS
“You won’t want to turn the lights out after reading this book!”
—Romantic Times
“Spectacular … With its fast pace, high-adrenaline plot, cast of well-developed characters, and fluid dialogue, Blood Dreams fills every expectation a reader could have.… I highly recommend.”
—Romance Reviews Today
SLEEPING WITH FEAR
“An entertaining book for any reader.”
—Winston-Salem Journal
“Hooper keeps the suspense dialed up.… Readers will be mesmerized by a plot that moves quickly to a chilling conclusion.”
—Publishers Weekly
CHILL OF FEAR
“Hooper’s latest may offer her fans a few shivers on a hot beach.”
—Publishers Weekly
“Kay Hooper has conjured a fine thriller with appealing young ghosts and a suitably evil presence to provide a welcome chill on a hot summer’s day.”
—Orlando Sentinel
“The author draws the reader into the story line and, once there, they can’t leave because they want to see what happens next in this thrill-a-minute, chilling, fantastic reading experience.”
—Midwest Book Review
HUNTING FEAR
“A well-told scary story.”
—Toronto Sun
“Hooper’s unerring story sense and ability to keep the pages flying can’t be denied.”
—Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine
“Hooper has created another original—Hunting Fear sets an intense pace.… Work your way through the terror to the triumph … and you’ll be looking for more Hooper tales to add to your bookshelf.”
—Wichita Falls Times Record News
“It’s vintage Hooper—a suspenseful page-turner.”
—Brazosport Facts
“Expect plenty of twists and surprises as Kay Hooper gets her series off to a crackerjack start!”
—Aptos Times
SENSE OF EVIL
“A well-written, entertaining police procedural … loaded with suspense.”
—Midwest Book Review
“Filled with page-turning suspense.”
—The Sunday Oklahoman
“Sense of Evil will knock your socks off.”
—Rendezvous
“A master storyteller.”
—TAMI HOAG
STEALING SHADOWS
“A fast-paced, suspenseful plot … The story’s complicated and intriguing twists and turns keep the reader guessing until the chilling end.”
—Publishers Weekly
“This definitely puts Ms. Hooper in a league with Tami Hoag and Iris Johansen and Sandra Brown. Gold 5-star rating.”
—Heartland Critiques
HAUNTING RACHEL
“A stirring and evocative thriller.”
—Palo Alto Daily News
“The pace flies, the suspense never lets up. It’s great reading.”
—Baton Rouge Advocate
“An intriguing book with plenty of strange twists that will please the reader.”
—Rocky Mountain News
“It passed the ‘stay up late to finish it in one night’ test.”
—The Denver Post
FINDING LAURA
“You always know you are in for an outstanding read when you pick up a Kay Hooper novel, but in Finding Laura, she has created something really special! Simply superb!”
—Romantic Times
“Hooper keeps the intrigue pleasurably complicated, with gothic touches of suspense and satisfying resolution.”
—Publishers Weekly
“A first-class reading experience.”
—Affaire de Coeur
AFTER CAROLINE
“Harrowing good fun. Readers will shiver and shudder.”
—Publishers Weekly
“Kay Hooper has crafted another solid story to keep readers enthralled until the last page is turned.”
—Booklist
“Kay Hooper comes through with thrills, chills, and plenty of romance, this time with an energetic murder mystery with a clever twist. The suspense is sustained admirably right up to the very end.”
—Kirkus Reviews
Captain’s Paradise is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
2013 Bantam Books eBook Edition
Copyright © 1988 by Kay Hooper
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Bantam Books, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
BANTAM BOOKS and the HOUSE colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
Originally published in paperback in the United States by Bantam Books, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., in 1988.
eISBN: 978-0-345-53957-1
Cover design: Carl Galian
Cover photographs: © iStockphoto
www.bantamdell.com
Bantam Books mass market edition: October 2013
v3.1
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Epilogue
Other Books by This Author
PROLOGUE
HAGEN WAS ANNOYED. He was always irritated by delays in the execution of his plans, and since this was a particularly vital plan, he was more than usually annoyed.
“Where?” he demanded, speaking flatly into the mouthpiece of his telephone, equipped with a scrambler.
“Just gone, and his men with him.” The voice that replied to Hagen’s question sounded hollow because of the scrambler, yet not even the technological device to prevent interception of telephone conversations could leach from it all indications of a strong and dynamic personality.
“You can’t even tell me where?” Hagen asked.
A rueful sigh came over the wire, and the voice replied with an underlying layer of mockery that made Hagen grit his teeth. “No, I can’t. I’ve been tracking that bunch for months, as you very well know, but this time they’ve given me the slip. Sue me. Now, if you want the women—”
“No,” Hagen said, allowing himself to grimace since he was alone in his office. “That’s the quickest way of committing suicide I know.” He muttered the comment, but his voice was clear and distinct nonetheless.
“That was my reading of the situation. In any case, the bait for your trap is momentarily out of reach. I’ll keep looking if you like, but I have to tell you the chances are slim until
he decides to surface again. I wouldn’t be surprised to find out he’d gone to ground.”
“What?” For the first time, Hagen was honestly shaken. “Impossible!”
“Chief, every soul in that whole bunch has terrific instincts. You may think your little tests these last months have been subtle, but what you left out of the plan was a culprit.”
“There was no need to—”
“No?” the voice interrupted sardonically. “You think they aren’t going to get suspicious when some unnamed enemy tests their security more than once? If I were in the place of any one of them, I’d be very busily trying to find out what the hell was going on. You’d better take it as a yes—that’s what they’re doing.”
Hagen was silent for a moment, then offered what he knew was a weak objection. “They wouldn’t leave the women unprotected.”
“Unprotected? Remember what Kipling said about the female of the species, Chief? Take that as a yes too. Those ladies need protecting about as much as a battleship does. You want my advice, you’d better back off for a while.”
Hagen ignored the advice. “Where’s the yacht?”
“Corsair? No sign of her in her usual area. They may be aboard her, but she could be in the South China Sea for all I know.”
“Have you checked with Captain Siran? He may—”
“Sorry, Chief. He’s unavailable.”
Hagen’s voice began to lose its forced patience. “Why is he unavailable?”
“Took a leave of absence for personal reasons.”
“What aren’t you telling me?”
There was a brief silence, and then the voice said, “Just that you can’t count on Siran at the moment, Chief. He has his own fish to fry.”
Hagen heard more than the words. Bluntly he asked, “Daniel, what’s going on?”
The sigh this time wasn’t wry or mocking; it was weary. “What goes around comes around. The captain has his hands full with a specter out of his past.”
“He’s alone?”
“He didn’t even give me a chance to argue with him.”
After a moment Hagen said, “If anyone can handle himself, it’s Siran. I could have used his help, however.”
“Yes. Well, your plans are on hold for the time being.”
“You’re absolutely sure you can’t locate them?”
“Afraid I can’t. You wouldn’t think a public figure of his prominence could disappear so quickly or so thoroughly, but he does seem to have the knack of it. So you have two choices, Chief. Either wait until he shows himself—however long that takes—or try to find out where he is from one of the ladies. The former being preferable to the latter, if you ask me.”
Hagen swore softly. “Agreed. If I show any interest at all, Raven will be onto it instantly.”
“You train your agents too well,” Daniel noted dryly.
“That wouldn’t bother me so much,” Hagen retorted irritably, “if only they’d remain my agents.” He sighed. “I don’t suppose you’d be interested?”
Daniel chuckled softly. “No. You and I would no doubt lock horns. No, thank you; I’ll stick to my own bailiwick.”
Unsurprised, Hagen said, “It was worth a try. Well, keep me advised. And, if you hear from Siran, let me know.”
“Yes.”
The connection was broken.
ONE
WHEN SHE WAS plucked, drenched and shivering, from the angry gray-green Atlantic, her first instinct, her only instinct, was to cling with all her remaining strength to the warm, wet arms that had saved her. And cling she did, like a desperate thing, until the man managed to break her grip and wrap her in a dry blanket.
A part of her consciousness was aware of being stripped of her wet clothing, swiftly and efficiently, of being dried briskly and dressed in something loose that was thick and warm. A cup was held to her lips and a fiery liquid flowed between her teeth, stopping their chattering. Then the softness of bedding was beneath her.
After that, only blackness, but it was blessedly warm and dry.
Her sluggish, weary mind surfaced a few times, vaguely aware of a faint light, of the lifting/falling motion of a boat on the sea. But nothing really registered, no single impression demanded that she think, and so she did not. She slept.
When she finally woke to the dim understanding that she was not where she should be but that where she was was better, the soft light still burned and the rocking motion had lessened. In an instant she identified the tiny cabin of a boat.
She was on a boat. But … she had escaped from the boat. Terror stirred in her sluggish mind, thick and suffocating. Or had it been a dream?
A dream. All a dream, of course, especially the bad parts. It was such a comforting notion that she accepted it instantly.
“Drink this.”
It was a command, uttered in a hard masculine voice. Inured to commands delivered by hard masculine voices, she obeyed. Pushing herself into a sitting position, she accepted a cup from a sun-browned hand. Sipping, she identified coffee laced with brandy. It tasted good. Only then did she raise her eyes to look hesitantly at the man.
The rest of him was sun-browned too, she saw. And since he was wearing only swim trunks and an unfastened windbreaker, she could see a great deal of his muscled body. It looked as hard as his voice and obviously possessed the kind of raw strength that could never have been earned in a gym. He had almost-black hair and sharp eyes and was, she thought, the most handsome man she had ever seen.
Still, she had been too close to danger too recently not to recognize it in this man. It was apparent not only in his tight jaw and firmly held lips and in the strange, shuttered gleam of his gray eyes; danger was an almost visible aura surrounding him, enclosing him.
Detached, she transferred the thoughts to images, and saw steel forged in a white-hot crucible, still dangerous to the touch.
“What the hell,” he asked in a quiet, rough voice, “were you doing floating in the ocean miles from shore?”
“Which shore?” she asked, feeling a flicker of interest.
He was sitting on the edge of her bunk leaning toward her. His eyebrows shot up at her question, then drew together in a frown. “Florida,” he said brusquely.
“Oh.” She considered the information, then answered his original question simply. “I don’t know.”
After a moment he said in a flat tone, “You’re covered in bruises and have a few minor cuts. There are no signs of a head injury.” He reached out suddenly, taking her right wrist and stripping back the sleeve of the heavy flannel shirt she was wearing. “Judging by these and your dilated pupils,” he said harshly, “I’d say you decided to fly without wings and jumped off somebody’s yacht.”
She looked down at the bruised injection sites on her inner arm, and her mind fought to throw off the sluggishness. But it was difficult, and trying to concentrate made her head ache sickly. He thought she was someone’s party girl, she realized, and had the dim recollection that she’d been wearing an evening gown when he had pulled her from the water.
“Did you see a yacht?” she asked, meeting his gaze.
“No.” Almost absently he pulled the sleeve down and smoothed the material before releasing her arm. “But, as I said, you were miles from shore. And right in the party crowd’s playground.”
“It might have been a yacht.” She frowned at the cup in her hand, trying to think, trying to remember. “I believe it was a yacht. A big one.”
His breath escaped shortly in an impatient sigh. “Was the party in full swing, or will someone have reported your disappearance?”
Her mind was clearing slowly. “No. No, I doubt there was any report.”
He swore, the sound angry and abrupt. “Then I’ll have to alert the Coast Guard. Is there anyone else—”
“You don’t understand.” She stared at him, wondering with a paranoia inspired by the last weeks if she could trust him. While he stared at her impatiently, she made up her mind. She needed a place to rest and gather her
thoughts, to plan. It wasn’t over yet; she couldn’t let it be over. But she needed time. If she surfaced too soon—
“What don’t I understand?” he demanded.
She took a long sip of the laced coffee. What a strange voice he had, she mused. Quiet yet hard. She drew a deep breath. “There wouldn’t have been a report, but not because there was a party. There wasn’t a party. They saw me go overboard. They … they shot at me. I was escaping,” she ended in a rush.
“What?”
Seeing the disbelief in his face, she realized dismally how it all sounded. Melodramatic. Unreal. Like something between the covers of a novel or in cinematic Technicolor.
She looked down at her flannel-covered arm and spoke softly, tonelessly. “They kept us drugged so we’d be quiet. But the drugs didn’t work on me at first. That’s why the bruises. I didn’t know what was going on most of the time, but when I came to once, there seemed to be a storm. The others were still unconscious, but I thought I could get help if I could just get off the boat. Everyone was busy because of the storm. I managed to get topside and … and jumped. I heard a yell, and then guns, but the water was rough and it was raining.… With any luck, they think I drowned.”
The man stared at her for a long moment, his gray eyes unreadable, something strangely taut in his expression. Then he stood, filling the small room, and took a step away from the bunk to reach for a bottle and glass on a nearby shelf. He splashed liquid into the glass and drank. Only then did he ask tersely, “White slavers?”
She was surprised at his quick comprehension, and wondered if he was just humoring her. But something about his hard face denied that possibility. When he turned to stare at her again, she nodded slowly.
“How many besides yourself?”
There was, she thought briefly, an element of unreality about the entire situation—conversation and all. This man was not reacting as she would have expected; he was neither disbelieving nor horrified. Nor did he seem sympathetic about what she had clearly been through. Instead, his tone was blunt and matter-of-fact, his expression remote.
