Captain's Paradise: A Novel

by Kay Hooper

  He smiled. “I run a charter service.”

  Robin silently weighed his tone, which was flippant, and studied the quick, somewhat menacing smile. Oddly enough, she wasn’t afraid of him, but she thought a great many people would be. “Are you a smuggler?”

  Michael didn’t seem surprised by the question. “No.”

  “Gun runner?”

  He shook his head slightly, and seemed amused. “I notice you’ve placed me squarely among the bad guys,” he commented.

  “Am I wrong in that?”

  His look of amusement faded. “No. No, that’s where I generally tend to be. Among the bad guys.”

  On impulse she said, “But you wear a white hat?”

  He glanced at her, and his face hardened. “Dirty gray, maybe. White hats don’t stay clean very long, Robin. Filth rubs off.”

  It was a disturbing comment, but because of her own background Robin was less unsettled than many would have been; she came from a long line of police officers, and knew what Michael meant. It was a dirty business, policing your own people, especially when the minority of those people, the lawbreakers, were often in the filthy business of using their own kind as a means for profit.

  But it nonetheless bothered her that this man could well be the kind of man prevalent in her own family: the tough, fearless, confident kind of man who was a born police officer. In the last few years she had learned to resent some aspects of that kind of man, particularly the trait of fearlessness. They made it look so easy, those men, and at times she had hated them for it.

  Because what came so easily to them was something Robin would have given anything to possess: courage.

  She looked at his big, powerful hands on the wheel, and felt her throat tighten, her mouth go dry. Damn … Oh, damn … She dragged the traitorous thoughts back into hiding, refusing to give in to this mad attraction. Fiercely, she concentrated.

  “Are you a cop?” she asked, almost hoping for a negative response.

  Michael seemed to consider for a moment, then shrugged. “Something like that.”

  “DEA?” she asked, remembering his knowledge of the “rumored” shipment of drugs in these waters. If he was one of those men, she thought painfully, then he certainly had courage in spades. The people who worked in drug enforcement had the dirtiest, most dangerous jobs of all.

  “I’ve done work for them from time to time. Miami has been known to be a center for drug trafficking, and this boat gives me a certain amount of mobility.”

  “Are you working for them now?”

  “You’re a very inquisitive lady.”

  Robin refused to be put off. “On a need-to-know basis, I think I need to know. Is that why you suddenly decided to help me find that yacht? Because those animals could be running drugs as well as being slavers?”

  “I’m not working for anyone at the moment,” he answered finally. He was gazing forward, frowning.

  “But you aren’t a captain.”

  “Of course I am. I even accept charters occasionally.” His voice was dry again.

  Robin’s journalistic talents were at the forefront now, and she probed with careful concentration. “So it’s just a cover?”

  “What were you doing in Miami?” he parried.

  “Vacation. Are you based here?”

  “If anywhere. Where are you from?”

  “San Francisco. And you?”

  “The East.”

  “The Far East?” she asked gently.

  He smiled a little. “No. East Coast.”

  Robin reflected that he was adept at not answering questions, but that only increased her curiosity. “About your work,” she began determinedly, but was cut off.

  “Miami is a long way to come for a vacation,” he said smoothly, “when you’re from the West Coast. Why here?”

  She gritted her teeth, but her voice remained calm. “You know what they say about summers in San Francisco; I wanted to bask in the heat down here.”

  “L.A. would have been closer.”

  “Smog,” she dismissed promptly.

  “There are other cities on the West Coast.”

  “I wanted to visit Miami,” she said irritably, even more annoyed that she was losing her calm. “Look—”

  “Robin.” His voice was quiet, but it still possessed the peculiar trait she had noticed before, like something hard and dangerous covered with deceptive softness.

  “Yes?” She felt oddly uncomfortable.

  “If you want the truth from someone else, you’d better not offer lies yourself.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Don’t you?” He half turned to face her, expressionless. “You aren’t down here on vacation. You have some kind of background in police work, otherwise you wouldn’t have asked the questions you did with such calm. Most people don’t have the faintest idea what the DEA is. And if an average vacationing young woman got herself shanghaied, managed to escape, and was pulled from the ocean by a stranger, she wouldn’t calmly ask him if he was a smuggler or a gun runner. And it isn’t likely she’d decide to take on her kidnappers with or without his help. The most likely reaction to what you’ve gone through, Robin, would be to file a report with the police and then bolt for home as fast as you could.”

  She stared at him mutely.

  Michael turned to face the front again, adding, “So before you go on questioning me, why don’t you explain just who and what you are.”

  Robin was shaken, angry—and defensive. But she could hardly defend herself, because he was right. Stiffly she said, “I’m a freelance reporter. I usually work the police beat. And I came down here after a story.”

  He nodded, seeming unsurprised. “I see. A story on white slavery, I suppose.”

  “Yes. It all started when a friend of mine introduced me to a girl who’d been kidnapped and had managed to get away.” Reluctantly Robin added, “And she’d done pretty much what you said, except that she didn’t report it to the police. She was too scared; she just ran for home. But she talked to me. She told me about the club she’d gone to—it’s the Serendipity, by the way. I thought there was a story, so I came looking.”

  “Alone?”

  Robin hesitated, then replied, “I sent the information to a friend and told her to take it to the police if she didn’t hear from me in three days.”

  “How long ago was that?”

  “She would have received the packet three days ago.”

  Michael half closed his eyes. “Great.”

  Robin felt defensive again. “Look, I wanted some insurance. If I hadn’t managed to get away—”

  “I know, I know.” He sighed. “It was a smart move. As far as it went.”

  “I can call Teddy,” Robin said, “and let her know I’m fine. Then we can—” She broke off suddenly, realizing something. “You don’t want the police involved in this, do you?”

  “Not if I have a choice, no,” he admitted, frowning.

  She stared at his admittedly handsome profile and frowned herself, beginning to put certain things together as her mind began functioning with something like its normal clarity. “You’re looking for someone, aren’t you? A woman. That’s why you suddenly agreed to help me.”

  After a moment he said lightly, “Either I’m slipping, or else you’re too perceptive for your own good.”

  Robin was still grappling with her thoughts. “You didn’t show any interest in helping me until I mentioned the other girl on the yacht. The young girl who was crying. Who is she, Michael?”

  “How could I know?”

  “You think you know. Who is she?” When he didn’t answer immediately, Robin said, “I’ve been honest with you. The least you can do is tell me what you know.”

  There was a moment of silence, and then Michael said tightly, “All right. There’s a chance I know who she is.”

  “And who might she be?”

  “My sister.”

  TWO

  ON THE FIFTEENTH floor o
f a gleaming high rise in New York City on a fine Saturday morning, a security officer sat at his desk and looked up expectantly as the elevator bell dinged. The first to disembark from the elevator was an extremely large and shaggy Irish wolfhound who ambled over to the desk and displayed an impressive set of canine fangs in an amiable grin.

  The security guard kept his poker face, and dutifully wrote in his log the visitor’s name and identification badge number, attached to his collar. “Hello, Wizard,” the guard murmured.

  “Hi, Phil.” Fortunately for Phil’s sanity, the salutation didn’t come from the dog but from his petite, redheaded mistress, who was second out of the elevator.

  “Morning, Mrs. Steele,” Phil said in greeting, while the wife of Long Enterprises’ security chief signed the log herself.

  “Teddy, Phil. I’ve told you and told you to call me Teddy.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  They both knew he’d go on addressing her formally.

  “Are Raven and Kyle here?” Teddy Steele asked the guard.

  “Yes, ma’am. In the computer room.”

  “Thanks, Phil.”

  He sat watching her and her canine buddy move down the hall, smiling. As far as Phil was concerned, this had always been an enjoyable company to work for, but the fairly recent addition of several wives to the executive floors made it even more so. Not only were they beautiful women, but they had brought a dash of the unexpected into Long Enterprises. To Phil’s mind, they didn’t seem to typify executive wives, but since their husbands weren’t typical executives, that just made things all the more interesting.

  You just never knew, Phil reflected happily, what these interesting people were going to be up to next.…

  Teddy went into the huge computer room with its massive central brain and database, which was currently deserted except for two other women at a worktable near the floor-to-ceiling windows. The woman nearest Teddy was tall and lovely with sable hair and vivid blue-green eyes; the wife of Lucas, Long Enterprises’ chief investigator, Kyle Kendrick possessed the aristocratic features and background of a society deb and the courage and daring of a stuntwoman. She was also enormously intelligent.

  The second woman, also tall, had blue-black hair and merry violet eyes, was striking rather than beautiful, and was perfectly capable, in her husband’s absence, of running the worldwide financial empire that was Long Enterprises. She was also nerveless, daring, smart, and quite experienced in walking the dark side of the streets. She was Raven Long, wife of Josh Long, and currently in charge of her husband’s empire.

  “Hi,” Teddy offered, signaling with her hand for her canine pal Wizard to lie down.

  “Hi, yourself,” Kyle responded, smiling. “What’s up?”

  “I’ve got a problem,” Teddy told them.

  Raven grinned at her. “Don’t tell me. Zach heard—somehow—that you went with us to that diplomatic bash last night and is having a long-distance fit.”

  “I wouldn’t be surprised if he heard. The man has built-in radar that never fails to tell him when I’m being ‘stubborn’ by sticking my head out a window without a bulletproof shield. Honestly! Besides, if he does find out, I can argue there were more guards in that place than you could find in Fort Knox.”

  “Well,” Raven said reasonably, “with the guys all out of the country, they’re bound to worry. Somebody had to stay and mind the castle, and they could hardly expect us to pull up the drawbridge and flood that moat while they’re gone.”

  “I just wish they’d find out something,” Kyle said, frowning a little. “No enemy would go to all the trouble of testing the company’s security without following through.” She shook her head and, since there was nothing any of them could do about the fact that all three of their husbands were busy searching for a faceless enemy hiding in shadows, she tried to stop thinking about it.

  “They’ll be all right,” Raven said, and if the words were calm and certain, her voice might have wavered just a bit. Of them all, Raven had the most experience of the darker side of life—and of the darker side of human nature; in addition, she had the added burden of knowing it was Josh their faceless enemy had targeted.

  “Of course they will,” Teddy said, having implicit faith in all their men.

  Raven smiled quickly. “With the office pretty much closed for the weekend and no business crises in the offing, we have too much time to brood. We need something to occupy our minds. So …” She looked at Teddy. “What’s your problem?”

  From her huge and rather overstuffed shoulder bag, Teddy unearthed a large manila envelope. “A friend of mine from San Francisco sent me this three days ago,” she told them, and began spreading papers out on the worktable.

  Raven’s merry eyes went grim as she studied the papers, and after she’d read the handwritten note attached, she looked at Teddy with a sober expression. “You haven’t heard from her, I take it?”

  “No. Not a word.”

  “Background,” Raven requested, and Kyle looked up from the papers attentively.

  Teddy put her shoulder bag aside and lifted herself up to sit on the worktable. “Robin and I grew up in the same neighborhood,” she told them. “She comes from a long line of cops; her father’s been the head of some kind of domestic intelligence organization for about ten years now. It’s very hush-hush; I wasn’t supposed to know about it, but girls talk.”

  Raven smiled suddenly. “Ah. Now I see where those ‘connections’ of yours come from.”

  Kyle, remembering also, said, “Right. When Kelsey was in trouble in Pinnacle, Teddy got the floor plan of that plant.”

  Teddy nodded. “I called Daniel Stuart, Robin’s father, and he got the floor plan for me.”

  “A nice friend to have,” Raven noted. “Go on about Robin.”

  “Robin always wanted to be a cop,” Teddy said. “From the time we were kids, that was her one and only ambition. And she’s always had the nerve of a burglar. I mean, she’d do anything on a dare, and she wasn’t afraid of anything that walked, talked, or dug holes.”

  Raven and Kyle laughed.

  “Some pretty mean beasts dig holes,” Teddy assured them solemnly.

  “You’d know,” Kyle murmured, referring to Teddy’s affinity with animals of all shapes and sizes.

  Teddy grinned. “Anyway, we all expected Robin to join her father, brothers, uncles, and God knows how many other relatives in becoming some kind of cop. She was the only girl in the family with that ambition, by the way. She was taught from infancy to handle guns, and she knew the police handbook verbatim. So … she was accepted into the police academy.”

  “And?” Raven prompted.

  “She failed the written exam. Twice. Nobody who knew her could believe it. Not only is she as smart as a whip, but she knew that stuff.”

  Slowly Raven said, “Maybe she didn’t want to become a cop. I mean inside, where it counts.”

  Teddy shrugged helplessly. “I don’t know; she wouldn’t say a word about it to me. The next thing I knew, she’d cut all ties with her family, moved to the other side of the city, and become a freelance reporter—covering, of all things, the police beat. I know a homicide detective in that area, and when I called him last night, he said Robin has the reputation of being not only fearless, but reckless. He says she’ll go anywhere to get a story, and that she has the nose of a cop.”

  “Have you called her father?” Kyle asked.

  Teddy shook her head. “As a last resort, I will. I don’t think Robin’s even seen him in several years. Daniel isn’t the kind of father to push; when she made it clear she was on her own, he gave her the space. But I know he’s been worried about her. He seems to think that Robin feels she’s failed him somehow.”

  “By not becoming a cop?” Raven asked.

  “I guess. The point is, though, that she’s wrong about that. Daniel doesn’t care what career she picks as long as she’s happy. And she always adored him; he raised her after her mother died fifteen years ago. To cut
herself off from him so completely had to be like cutting off an arm.”

  Kyle, who was still virtually estranged from her own parents, spoke slowly. “Generally we see only the outward trappings of a relationship; it’s hard to know what really goes on. No matter how he feels, if Robin’s certain she disappointed him by twice failing a test she should have passed, it could have hit her awfully hard. That kind of failure can mark you for life.”

  Teddy sighed. “All I know for sure is that she’s in trouble, and I’m the one she trusted. I have to do something.”

  Raven picked up several of the papers on the worktable and leafed through them slowly. “She did her homework,” she noted thoughtfully. “Even before she went to Miami, she’d gotten plenty of information on the Serendipity, the owner, and most of the staff.” She looked up suddenly. “Is she attractive, Teddy?”

  “Beautiful,” Teddy answered. “And she has the kind of coloring those white slavers reputedly love: auburn hair and green eyes. You think she’s learning about slavery from inside it?”

  “I think I wouldn’t bet against the possibility,” Raven said soberly.

  Kyle said, “Let me have the names connected with that nightclub. It doesn’t look as if Robin ran them through NCIC; maybe the Crime Information Center will have something.”

  Raven handed over the papers and they watched Kyle move to a computer console and begin working. All of them knew how to operate the computers and how to access an almost unlimited variety of databases; their men had insisted on their having access to as much information as possible in the event of need. And all of them had accepted that need as a definite possibility at any time. Theirs was a dangerous world sometimes.

  As they watched their friend work at the computer, Raven said quietly, “After our jaunt down to Kadeira last time, I got Kelsey to tell me all about Captain Siran; he seemed like a good person to know. He’s generally in the Miami area, and he works for Hagen only occasionally; officially he’s on the payroll of another organization. Maybe he could be our ace. And I have another source down there.”