Captain's Paradise: A Novel

by Kay Hooper

  Raven reached for the radio near the wheel and made a brief call, then cradled the handset.

  “Was that Sutton rushing by a few minutes ago?” Teddy asked, joining them and absently rubbing her hip.

  “In the flesh. With at least three of his men.” Raven looked at the broad masculine watch on her wrist. “And right on time too. I bet he has a helicopter coming to pick him up. We’ll wait just long enough to make sure he doesn’t send his men back to the yacht.”

  “Then we call the captain and Robin?”

  Raven nodded.

  Thoughtfully Kyle said, “An interesting man, the captain. Doesn’t give much away, does he?”

  “Not much, no,” Raven agreed dryly.

  Kyle smiled, remembering when Raven’s expartner, Kelsey, had directed that same accusation at herself. “People with that kind of control,” she noted neutrally, “generally spend years earning it. Do you think he’s as dangerous as he looks?”

  “I’d say he’s more dangerous than he looks,” Raven said. “Kelsey told me what he knew, and the upshot is that Captain Michael Siran is a deadly enemy … and a wary friend.”

  Teddy winced. “That doesn’t sound good for Robin. Or was I the only one who noticed how she looked at him?”

  “You weren’t,” Kyle said. “Although I got the feeling that Michael is far from indifferent.”

  “You’re perceptive,” Raven told her with a faint smile. “He hardly let it show at all.”

  Teddy continued to worry. “Oh, damn, is he another Zach? That nearly killed me.”

  Raven leaned back against an instrument panel, her gaze turning absently to study the Maze as they cruised around it. “The situation’s a bit different,” she said, referring to the battle Teddy had gone through to convince her own lone-wolf warrior that she belonged at his side. “Robin knows cops if she knows anything at all, and from what Kelsey told me, Michael walks alone more by habit than choice.”

  “She can take care of herself,” Teddy offered hopefully. “I’ve never seen anyone better at it than Robin.”

  “Mmm.” Raven sighed. “We’ll have to wait and see. Things are moving awfully fast, and there’s rough water ahead. If they make it through—well, who knows?”

  “I’ll cross my fingers,” Teddy said, sighing as well.

  Raven smiled at her, then looked at their skipper. “Kyle, on our next pass, stop by Dane’s boat.”

  “Right,” Kyle answered.

  “Now, he definitely bothers me,” Teddy offered, frowning a little. “Raven, didn’t you call him an information broker? That’s hardly the part he’s playing now.”

  Raven shrugged. “I guess he wears two hats. We certainly can’t complain so far.”

  “Yes, but how will he be when the pressure’s really on? I mean, the way we’ve set this up, he and Michael will be the ones going aboard Sutton’s yacht. Even if we manage to draw some of the guards away, that still leaves several on the yacht.”

  Raven smiled a little. “Don’t worry about Dane. I’ve seen him in a few tough spots. He can handle himself.”

  Teddy nodded, accepting Raven’s judgment. “Has the radio station made the announcement yet?”

  “Should be any time now,” Raven answered. “I called our guy at the fishing equipment company, and he’s on his way.”

  “Lucky that Long Enterprises is into fishing gear,” Kyle said.

  “I wonder why,” Raven said musingly. “Josh doesn’t even like to fish.”

  “Here we go,” Kyle said, cutting back on the speed as they neared the island closest to the Maze.

  Teddy and Raven both headed for the deck, and both enjoyed the sight of Dane sitting alone in his small boat with fishing paraphernalia piled all around him.

  He was playing his part to the hilt, as Raven had told Michael, completely, with a fly-covered hat and a bottle in a brown bag. Anyone getting close enough might have noticed that the bottle contained fruit juice, but it certainly seemed like a pint of whiskey. Dane hadn’t shaved in preparation for his role, and the blue shadowing partially hid the classic bone structure that made his jaw rather memorable. With his hat pulled low, rumpled clothing, and the bottle, he certainly passed muster as a fisherman out for a rousing good time.

  He bellowed out a ribald greeting as the big cruiser floated near, but the instant the engines were cut, his voice dropped to its normal deep and almost melodic tones.

  “Tell me why people actually do this for recreation?” he requested of Raven in a pained voice.

  She leaned over the side and grinned down at him. “Beats me. I’ve always considered it a rather unequal contest. Unless, of course, you catch something bigger than you are.”

  He glanced around with mock uneasiness. “Don’t say that. I saw a shark movie years ago and haven’t put a toe in the ocean since.”

  “I saw the same movie. But we’ve got more to worry about today than killer sharks.”

  “Agreed.” He took a drink from his disguised juice bottle, and looked steadily at her, his expression serious now. “I saw Sutton and company go roaring by. When do we move?”

  “We’ll wait about an hour to make sure he doesn’t send his men back to the yacht, and to give him time to get well on his way to Miami. Then we’ll call Michael and Robin and have them start moving this way.”

  Dane glanced at his watch, a complicated-looking sportsman’s watch that was far different from what he usually wore. “A little after two now. That means we’ll probably all be in position by four.”

  Raven nodded. “Michael’s boat will circle around to the little inlet on the other side of the Maze, and meet you there. Robin will stay with the boat—”

  “Will she?” Dane interrupted.

  Raven and Teddy exchanged glances, and Raven looked back at him intently. “What’s on your mind?”

  “Call it a hunch.” Dane frowned a little. “I got the feeling the lady has a lot to prove to herself.”

  “She wouldn’t endanger Michael’s sister and the other girls,” Teddy objected.

  “No, I agree with you there. But she won’t like Michael boarding a yacht full of guards either.” He shrugged. “Like I said, it’s just a hunch.”

  Raven nodded. “And it’s Michael’s call. We’ve taken care of all the details we could; the rest’ll be luck and timing.”

  “Speaking of which”—Dane looked at them steadily—“sure you ladies want to entice those guards off the yacht? That’s a dangerous game.”

  “We can handle it,” Teddy told him cheerfully. “Once we get them below, they won’t know what hit them.”

  He nodded, not so much doubtful as uneasy. “If you say so. Watch yourselves, though. I don’t relish the idea of having to explain to your husbands if something goes wrong.”

  “Our husbands,” Raven told him lightly, “would be the first to understand.”

  As they straightened away from the side, Dane prepared to return to his fishing. But they both heard his muttered comment before Kyle started the engines again.

  “Sure,” he told his fishing rod dryly.

  Robin hadn’t intended to cling to Michael as he headed the boat toward their target island, but he took the decision out of her hands. Once they were under way, he simply pulled her against his side and held her there, keeping one hand on the wheel.

  She wasn’t reluctant, and slipped both arms around his lean waist. “Thanks,” she said unsteadily. “I was feeling a little shaky.”

  “So am I,” he said, kissing her forehead gently.

  “It’ll be all right,” she told him fiercely, rubbing her cheek against his chest. “Lisa and the other girls will be fine.”

  “I know.”

  Robin braced herself inwardly. “When you and Dane slip aboard the yacht, I—I’m going with you.”

  Michael had been expecting that. He could have argued all the drawbacks, and argued convincingly. Robin was inexperienced at this kind of situation. She strongly mistrusted her own abilities and was convinc
ed her fear would paralyze her. Still, he knew, she had unresolved feelings of guilt over having escaped when the other girls hadn’t, and she was furiously angry at the men responsible.

  In a very real sense she was a ticking bomb that would either be safely defused … or blow up.

  And that was why Michael couldn’t ignore her determination. If he refused to allow her to come with him and Dane for the sake of her own safety, her feelings of inadequacy would prompt her to hear the words: I don’t have any faith in you either. I think you’ll freeze.

  He couldn’t do such a thing to her. Even though the stakes were agonizingly high, the simple fact was he could no more do anything to hurt Robin than he could Lisa. And it was tearing him apart.

  “Michael?”

  He tightened his arm around her, drawing her closer. “I know that too,” he said finally, calmly.

  “You didn’t report in again last night,” Daniel Stuart told his agent. “For God’s sake, Skye, what’s wrong with you?”

  The man at the other end of the line cleared his throat. “Sorry, but there were a few—er, complications, and I had to move pretty fast.”

  “What kind of complications?” Daniel asked with deceptive mildness to his tone.

  Remembering his mental rehearsals of this information, Skye realized that the practice had done no good at all; he still didn’t know how to tell Daniel the whole story.

  “Skye?”

  “Yes, I’m still here.”

  “Then talk to me, dammit. What’s going on?”

  Skye drew an audible breath. “First, Michael has backup on this personal mission of his. The ladies I’ve been watching are now firmly in his corner, and they’re pulling strings right and left. Things are happening even as we speak.”

  “What? Why would they—”

  “Wait. I’ll get to that later. They’ve set up a dandy diversion to draw Edward Sutton away from the yacht where he’s holding Lisa along with several other girls.”

  There was a long silence, and then Daniel asked, “Is Sutton a slaver?”

  “You caught that quicker than I did. Apparently he is. Seems he had several girls taken from a number of clubs a few days ago. He probably meant to ship them south before Michael came after Lisa, but there’s a hell of a flap going on down here because of an alert for a drug shipment. The waters as well as the airways are hot. Sutton had to hole up and wait it out. Then one of the girls took her fate in her own hands and jumped ship. Michael fished her out of the water. She was able to tie Sutton to the club where she was snatched. And Michael, given the knowledge that Sutton could be on a yacht, lost no time in finding out—via Dane—the name and location of the yacht.”

  “My God,” Daniel muttered.

  “Yeah. My thoughts exactly. At any rate, the ladies I’ve been watching teamed up with Dane and headed for the Ten Thousand Islands very late last night.”

  “With Dane? What’ve you been doing?”

  “Setting up the diversion at this end.”

  “You—”

  “What else could I do, Daniel? I’m a trusted friend of Dane’s, and somebody had to do the legwork.”

  Finally Daniel asked, “Do they know who you are?”

  “Of course not.”

  There was another long silence, and then Daniel said, “I don’t understand how your ladies got into this. The only one of the three who’s even met Michael is Raven Long. What brought them tearing down there?”

  “The connection wasn’t with Michael, Daniel. They just went looking for him—and for Dane—because they needed information. A friend of one of them had turned up missing, and they were trying to find her.”

  Daniel Stuart stared blindly across his office, the instincts and intuition of a lifetime going off like a bell. “Skye, a friend of which one?”

  “Teddy Steele.”

  “Not Robin,” Daniel said hollowly.

  “She’s all right,” Skye said. “At least … Oh, hell, Daniel, she’s with Michael. She was the one he pulled out of the water. And, apparently, she’s determined to help him get his sister and the other girls off that yacht.”

  “Why didn’t you contact me? I could have—”

  “What? Flown down here? Things were moving so fast then, you wouldn’t have had a hope in hell of stopping them. Between them, Raven and Dane had come up with a plan to cut the odds, and they put that plan into motion. I helped, because it seemed the best thing to do. Now Sutton’s on his way to Miami, and Michael and Robin have a very talented group as backup.”

  “I’m coming down there,” Daniel said.

  “Yeah,” Skye said. “I thought you would.”

  SIX

  KNEELING BETWEEN MICHAEL and Dane in the tangled undergrowth of the Maze, Robin stared across more than twenty feet of placid water at the Dragon Lady. The yacht was a peaceful sight, a couple of lights glowing dimly in starboard portholes, and a radio played quietly. Though it was only half past four, the cove was heavily shaded, and the yacht drifted in the shadows of twilight.

  “How long?” Michael asked softly, tension evident in his voice.

  Dane looked at his watch; in his free hand he held a small radio transmitter much more compact than a conventional walkie-talkie, and set to a frequency that would not interfere with normal radio transmissions. “Fifteen minutes,” he answered, his voice equally low.

  Robin, most of her mental energy involved in a determined battle against the cold fear crawling inside her, tried to keep her thoughts clear. The big cruiser, with Raven, Teddy, and Kyle—and three of Sutton’s guards—aboard was anchored just outside the cove, and all around the islands small and large fishing boats had swarmed in to try to win the unexpected prize money.

  More than twenty minutes before, Raven and Teddy had hung over the side of the cruiser, dressed in scandalously brief swimsuits, and called out a laughing, pseudo-drunken invitation to the men on the yacht to join them for a party. After a brief, heated argument among Sutton’s guards, three of them had launched an inflatable rubber dinghy and rowed over to the cruiser to accept the invitation. Robin, Michael, and Dane were waiting tensely for Raven to notify them that those party-inclined guards had been put out of commission.

  Their best estimate was that there were four guards left on the yacht, at least two of whom, Raven had radioed, had dropped lines off the port side in a clear attempt to resemble fishermen.

  “She should have radioed by now,” Michael said.

  “She will.” Dane appeared unperturbed but kept one eye on his watch.

  They could have moved against the yacht then, but neither Michael nor Dane had even considered doing so. They needed to know those guards would not be returning to the yacht, and they wanted to make certain Raven and her friends had no problems in subduing the men who had taken their bait.

  Quietly, and still dividing his attention between his watch and the yacht, Dane said, “We should touch as little as possible on the yacht. Experts should be able to get a few of Sutton’s fingerprints.”

  Michael gave him a sharp look. “You think this case will ever make it to court?”

  “I think so,” Dane replied calmly. “One of those thugs will be more than willing to talk if it means saving his own skin. The other ladies and I can testify to the fact that Sutton’s been aboard the yacht. My credibility may be a little shaky,” he added in a wry tone, “but those ladies are above reproach. And to top it all, you feds have been trying to get your hands on Sutton for some time now. This ought to do it.”

  Robin looked up at Michael. “Will it be enough for you?” she asked. “If Sutton goes to prison?”

  After a moment Michael replied, “We’ll see.”

  She knew what that meant. Once they found out how Lisa and the others had fared, Michael would decide whether to leave justice to the courts.

  Dane’s radio transmitter whispered softly, and they all heard Raven’s muted but cheerful voice.

  “Our guests are trussed up nicely. In five minutes all th
e guards left on the yacht should be on the port side, with their attention focused on us. Good luck, guys.”

  Some of the tension eased from Michael’s face. Almost to himself, he murmured admiringly, “No wonder Hagen kept drafting those people.”

  “Hagen?” Robin asked, and it was Dane who replied.

  “A federal honcho.”

  Michael gave him a look. “How do you know about him?”

  Dane grinned. “I know a lot of things—and people—I’m not supposed to know.”

  “I’ll bet,” Michael remarked.

  During the brief conversation they had been getting ready for the short, cautious swim to the yacht. The men were in swim trunks, with a number of waterproof equipment pouches belted around their waists; several items had come from Michael’s boat, the remainder Dane and Raven had anticipated and brought along from Miami. They each carried an automatic pistol equipped with silencer, a long hunting knife, several short lengths of nylon rope, several pairs of the plastic handcuffs some federal authorities had begun using instead of metal ones, and compact tool kits—all just in case. In addition, Michael carried a coil of rope, knotted at intervals, with a rubber-tipped grappling hook on one end.

  Robin wore a swimsuit borrowed from Teddy, with a similar belt containing a silenced automatic, several pairs of the handcuffs, and a Swiss Army knife. All of them carried an extra clip of bullets as a precaution, and each hoped not a single shot would be fired.

  They were ready to execute their plan.

  For Robin this situation was out of her worst nightmares. For almost half her life she had dreaded being put to this sort of test. She was an equal partner here, with her own role to play, her own set duties to perform, and if she failed in those duties, people could die.

  She was a part of this by her own choice, but it was only Michael’s matter-of-fact confidence in her that had allowed her to come this far. Dane’s easy acceptance had helped, but it was Michael who knew only too well just how afraid she was. And with his own sister’s life at stake …