Books By Diana Palmer

by Palmer, Diana

  Lopez stared at Micah for a minute and then recognition flashed in his dark eyes. "Micah Steele, I presume," he drawled in accented English. He put his hands behind him and walked around Micah like an emperor inspecting a new slave. "You lack proficiency, don't you? Were you planning to use this on me while I slept?" he added, jerking the big bowie knife out of its sheath. "A nasty weapon. Very nasty." He put the point against Micah's wet suit just below the nipple. "A hard thrust, and you cease

  to exist. You were careless. Now you will pay the price for it." His face hardened. "Where are my two men that I sent to reclaim your stepsister?"

  Micah smiled calmly. "The police have them by now. I expect they'll spill their guts trying to save themselves."

  "They would not dare," Lopez said easily. "They fear me."

  "They won't fear you if you're in prison," he replied easily. "Or dead."

  Lopez laughed. It amused him that this mercenary wasn't begging for his life. He was used to men who did.

  "Your attempt at diversion serves no purpose. We both know that my men are on the way back with their captive even now. In fact," he added with a deliberate smile, "I had a phone call just before you were discovered, telling me that she was safely bound and gagged. Your men are too numerous for them to fight, so they are hiding her some distance from your house until the coast is clear and they can get here with the boat." He chuckled maliciously.

  Micah surmised that a cell phone had been discovered on one of the men, and Rodrigo had used it to reassure Lopez. A stroke of genius, and it might have worked, if Micah hadn't been careless and let himself get captured like a raw recruit.

  "I am fond of knives," Lopez murmured, and ran his fingers over the carved bone handle almost like a caress. He looked at Micah as he traced the pattern in it. "This time, I will not give your stepsister to my men. I will use the knife on her myself." His eyes were cold, hard, unfeeling. "I will skin her alive," he said softly. "And with every strip that comes off, I will remind her that you were careless enough to let her be apprehended a second time." His eyes blazed. "You invaded my home to take her from me. No one humiliates me in such a manner and lives to gloat about it. You will die and your sister will die, and in such a way that it will frighten anyone who sees it."

  Micah studied the little man with contempt, seeing the years of death and torture that had benefited Lopez. The drug lord could buy people, yachts, countries. He had enormous power. But it was power built on a foundation of greed, floored with blood and tears. If ever a man deserved to go down, it was Lopez.

  "You are very quiet, Micah Steele," Lopez said suddenly, and his eyes narrowed suspiciously.

  "I was thinking that I've never encountered anyone as evil as you, Lopez," he said quietly. "You have no conscience at all."

  Lopez shrugged. "I am what I am," he said simply. "In order to accumulate great wealth, one has to be willing to take great risks. I have been poor. I never want to be poor again."

  "Plenty of people prefer it to murder."

  Lopez only laughed. "You are, how is it said, stalling for time," he said abruptly. "Are you hoping to be rescued? Or are you hoping that perhaps one of your men has checked on your stepsister and found her missing from her room? That is not likely. My men are quite expert. Playing for time will avail you nothing."

  Micah could have told him that he was using the time to rest from his exhaustive swim, marshaling his strength for an all-out assault. If they took him down, he vowed, he was at least going to take Lopez with him, even if he died with the drug lord's neck in his hands.

  "Or you might think it possible to overpower all of us and escape." He laughed again. "I think that I will wait to begin your interrogation until your stepsister is on board with us. Carlos!" he called to a henchman. "Tell the captain to start the engines and move us a little closer to the island."

  Micah's heart stopped dead, but not a trace of fear or apprehension showed on his face. Lopez was watching him very closely, as if he suspected something. Micah simply smiled, considering that it was the fortunes of war that sometimes you didn't win. At least Callie was safe. He hadn't lost completely as long as she survived. He took a relaxing breath and waited for the explosion.

  Lopez's henchman was almost up the steps to the pilothouse when Lopez wheeled suddenly.

  "Wait!" Lopez called his man back suddenly and Micah fought to keep from showing his relief. "I do not trust you, Steele," Lopez added. "I think perhaps you want me to go closer to your island, to give your men a shot at us, here on the deck. If so, you are going to be disappointed." He turned to the man, Carlos. "Take him below and tie him up. Then I want you and Juan to take one of the boats and follow in the steps of Ramon and Jorge. They must be somewhere near the house waiting for the mercenaries to give up the search or locate it elsewhere. You can help them bring the girl back."

  "Si, senor," Carlos said at once, and stuck the automatic weapon in Micah's back. "You will go ahead of me, senor," he told Micah. "And remember, there will be an armed man at the foot of the steps. Escape is not possible. Vaya!"

  Micah gave Lopez one last contemptuous look before he went down the steps into the bowels of the ship. So far, so good. They were convinced that their men on shore were safe and had Callie. They weren't going to start the ship just yet, thank God. He had one last chance to absolve himself. He was going to take it, regardless of the price.

  The henchman tied him up in a chair with nylon cord at his wrists and ankles. The cord was tight enough to cut off the circulation. Micah felt his hands and feet going numb, but he wasn't going to protest. "What a nice fish we caught," Lopez's man chuckled. "And soon, big fish, we will fillet you and your stepsister together." His eyes narrowed and he smiled coldly. "You have embarrassed my boss. No one is allowed to do that. You must be made an example of. I would not wish to be in your shoes." He looked pointedly at Micah's bare feet. "Hypo-thetically speaking," he added. "Enjoy your last minutes of life, senor"

  The small man left Micah in the stateroom, which was obviously some sort of guest room. There was a bed and a dresser and this chair in it, and it was very small. One of the officers of the ship might sleep here, he reasoned.

  Now that he was alone-and he wouldn't be for long-he might have just enough time to free himself. Micah touched the button on his watch that extended the small but very sharp little knife blade concealed in the watch face. He cut himself free with very little effort. But the most dangerous part was yet to come. There were men everywhere, all armed. The one thing he had going for him was that it was dark and Lopez had very few lights on deck at the moment, hoping not to be noticed by Micah's men.

  He eased out into the corridor and listened. He heard a man's voice humming a Mexican drinking song off-key nearby. Watching up and down the hall with every step, he eased into the galley. A man just a little smaller than he was stirring something in a very big stainless-steel pot. He was wearing black slacks and a black sweater with an apron over them. Micah smiled.

  He caught the man from behind and stunned him. Carefully he eased the cook back behind the stove and began to strip him. He pulled off his scuba gear and donned the cook's outerwear, taking time to dress the cook in his own diving suit. The cook had dark hair, but it wouldn't matter. All he had to do was look like Micah at a distance.

  He got the cook over his shoulder and made his way carefully to the ladder that led up onto the deck. Lopez was talking to two other men, and not looking in Micah's direction. What supreme self-confidence, Micah thought. Pity to spoil it.

  He slapped the cook and brought him around. In the next instant, he threw the man overboard on the side that faced away from Micah's island.

  "jSteele ha escapado!" Micah yelled in Spanish. "jSefue alia, a la izquierda, en el Mar!" Steele has escaped, he went there, to the left, in the sea!

  There was a cry of fury from Lopez, followed by harsh orders, and the sound of running feet. Micah followed the other men, managing to blend in, veering suddenly to the other sid
e of the ship.

  Just as he got there, he was faced with a henchman who hadn't followed the others. The man had an automatic weapon in his hands and he was hesitating, his eyes trying to see Micah, who was half in shadow so that his blond hair didn't give the game away. If the man pulled that trigger...

  "Es que usted esta esperando una cerveza?" he shot at the man angrily. "jVaya! jSteele esta alia!'1 What are you waiting for, a beer? Get going, Steele's over there!

  He hesitated with his heart in his throat, waiting, waiting...

  All at once, there was a shout from the other side of the ship. The man who was holding Micah at bay still hesitated, but the noise got louder.

  "iVaya!" he repeated. He waved the man on urgently with a mumbled Spanish imprecation about Steele and his useless escape attempt. In that space of seconds before they discovered the man in the water was not Micah, their escaping captive got over the rail and into the ocean and struck out back toward the shore. He kept his strokes even and quick, and he zigzagged. Even if Lopez's men spotted him, they were going to have to work at hitting him from that distance. Every few yards, he submerged and swam underwater. Any minute now, he told himself, and thanked God he'd had just enough rest to allow him a chance of making it to shore before he was discovered and killed.

  He heard loud voices and a searchlight began sweeping the water. Micah dived under again and held his breath. With a little bit of luck, they might pass right over him, in his black clothing. He blended in very well with the ocean.

  There was gunfire. He ground his teeth together and prayed they'd miss him. Probably they were shooting blind, hoping to hit him with a lucky shot.

  Odd, though, the gunfire sounded closer than that...

  He came up for air, to snatch a breath, and almost collided with his own swift motorboat, with Bojo driving it and firing an automatic rifle toward Lopez and his men at the same time.

  "Climb in, boss!" Bojo called, and kept shooting.

  "Remind me to give you a raise," Micah panted as he dragged himself over the side and into the rocking boat. "Good work. Good work! Now get the hell out of here before they blow us out of the water!"

  Bojo swung the boat around masterfully and imitated the same zigzag pattern that Micah had used when he swam.

  "Lopez is mad now," Micah said with a glittery smile. "If there's any justice left in the world, he'll try to move in closer to get a better shot at us."

  "We hope," Bojo said solemnly, still dodging bullets.

  Micah looked back toward the ship, now clearly visible against the horizon. He thought of all Lopez's helpless victims, of whole families in tiny little Mexican towns who had been mowed down with automatic weapons for daring to help the authorities catch the local pushers. He thought of the hard fight to shut down Lopez's distribution network slated for operation in Jacobsville, Texas. He thought of Callie in that murderous assassin's hands, of the knife cut on her pretty little breast where the point had gone in. He thought of Callie dead, tortured, an anguished expression locked forever into those gentle features. He thought of his father, who would have been Lopez's next target. He thought of Lisa Monroe Parks's young husband in the DEA who'd been killed on Lopez's orders. He thought of all the law enforcement people who'd risked their lives and the lives of their families to stop Lopez.

  "It's retribution time, Lopez," Micah said absently, watching the big ship with somber eyes. "Life calls in the bets for us all, sooner or later. But you're overdue, you drug-dealing son of a...!"

  Before the last word left his lips, there was a huge fireburst where the ship had been sitting in the water. Flames rolled up and up and up, billowing black smoke into the atmosphere. The sound rocked the boat, and pieces of the yacht began falling from the sky in a wide circumference. Micah and Bojo ducked down in the boat and covered their heads as Bojo increased their speed and changed direction, hoping to miss the heavier metal parts that were raining down with wood and fabric.

  They made it to the boat dock and jumped out as the last pieces of what had been Lopez's yacht fell into the water.

  Mercenaries came rushing down from the house, all armed, to see what had happened.

  "Say goodbye to Lopez," Micah told them, eyes narrowed with cold scrutiny.

  They all watched the hull of the ship, still partially intact, start to sink. To their credit, none of them cheered or laughed or made a joke. Human lives had been lost. It was no cause for celebration, not even when the ringleader was as bad as Lopez. It had been necessary to eliminate him. He was crazed with vengeance and dangerous to the world at large.

  Rodrigo came up beside them. "Glad to see you still alive, boss," he said.

  Micah nodded. "It was close. I was too tired to swim back. He caught me at the ladder like a raw recruit."

  There was a faint sound from Peter, the newest of the group. "I thought slips were my signature," he told Micah.

  "Even veterans can step the wrong way and die for it," Micah told him gently. "That's why you always do it by the book and make sure you've got backup. I broke all the rules, but I didn't want to put anyone else at risk. I got lucky. Sometimes you don't." He watched the last of Lopez's yacht sink. "What about our two guests?"

  "They're still in the shed."

  "Load them up and take them in to Nassau and say we'll file charges for trespassing," Micah told Rodrigo.

  "I'm on my way."

  "We'll have federal agents combing the island by dawn, I guess," one of the other mercenaries groaned.

  Micah shook his head. "I was sanctioned. And that's all I intend to say about this, ever," he added when the man seemed set to protest. "Let's see if we can get a little more sleep before dawn."

  Mumbled agreement met the suggestion. He walked back into the house and down the hall to his bedroom. Callie's door was still closed. He felt a horrible pang of guilt when he remembered what had happened before he went after Lopez. He was never going to get over what he'd done.

  He took a shower and changed into a pair of white striped shorts and a white-and-red patterned silk shirt. He padded down the hall to the kitchen and started to get a beer out of the refrigerator. But it hadn't been a beer sort of night. He turned on his heel and went to the liquor cabinet in his study. He poured himself two fingers of Kentucky bourbon with a little ice and took it back down the hall with him.

  At the door of Callie's room, he paused. He opened the door gently and moved in to stand by the bed and look down at her. She was sound asleep, her cheek pillowed on a pretty hand devoid of jewelry. She'd kicked off the sheet and bedspread and her long legs were visible where the gown had fallen away from them. She looked innocent, untouched. He remembered the feel of that soft mouth under his lips, the exquisite loving that had driven every sane thought out of his mind. His body went rigid just from the memory.

  She stirred, as if she sensed his presence, but she didn't wake up. The sedative had really kicked in now. She wouldn't wake until dawn, if then.

  He reached down a gentle hand and brushed the hair away from the corner of her mouth and her cheek. She wasn't conventionally pretty, but she had an inner beauty that made him feel as if he'd just found spring after a hard winter. He liked to hear her laugh. He liked the way she dressed, so casually and indifferently. She didn't take hours to put on makeup, hours to dress. She didn't complain about the heat or the cold or the food. She was as honest as any woman he'd ever known. She had wonderful qualities. But he was afraid of her.

  He'd been a loner most of his life. His mother's death when he was ten had hit him hard. He'd adored his mother. After that, it had been Jack and himself, and they'd grown very close. But when Callie and her mother moved in, everything had changed. Suddenly he was an outsider in his own family. He despised Callie's mother and made no secret of his resentment for both women. That had caused a huge rift between his father and himself, one that had inevitably grown wide enough to divide them altogether.

  He'd blamed Callie for the final blow, because he'd convinced hims
elf that she'd found Jack and sent him to the hall to find Micah and Anna kissing. Callie had always denied it, and finally he believed her. It hadn't been pique because he'd rejected her.

  He took a sip of the whiskey and stared down at her broodingly. She was part of his life, part of him. He hated knowing that. He hated the memory of her body moving sensuously under his while he seduced her.

  And she thought she was dreaming. What if she woke up still believing that? They'd not only had sex, but thanks to him they'd had unprotected sex. His dark eyes slid down her body to her flat belly. Life might already be growing in her womb.

  His breath caught. Callie might have his baby. His lips parted as he thought about a baby. He'd never wanted one before. He could see Callie with an infant in her arms, in her heart, in her life. Callie would want his baby.

  He felt an alien passion gripping him for the first time. And just as quickly, he considered the difficulty it would engender. Callie might be pregnant. She wouldn't remember how she got that way, either.

  He pursed his lips, feeling oddly whimsical for a man who was facing the loss of freedom and perhaps even the loss of his lifestyle and his job. Wouldn't it be something if Callie was pregnant and he was the only one who knew?

  Chapter Eleven

  Callie felt the sun on her face. She'd been dreaming. She'd been in Micah's warm, powerful arms, held tight against every inch of him, and he'd been making ardent love to her. He'd looked down into her wide eyes at the very instant he'd possessed her. He'd watched her become a woman. It seemed so real...

  Her eyes opened. Sure it was real. And any minute now, the tooth fairy was going to fly in through the open patio windows and leave her a shiny quarter!

  She sat up. Odd, that uncomfortable feeling low in her belly. She shifted and she felt sore. Talk about dreams that seemed real!