Victoria grinned. “Where?”
The boy stretched his arm to the south. “We passed it about a half-hour ago.” His eyes were fixed on the money in her hand. “Looked like it was anchored.”
A bolt of victorious exultation shot through her, and she tossed him the money.
Quick as a monkey, he snatched it from the air. He had such a lean and newly muscled body, so wonderful and young, and so many things she could do with it. The dark hungers she’d inherited from her violent father coiled within her like some obscene dragon.
“You’ve been very helpful,” she said, her voice friendly. “You should come and work for me.”
His innocent eyes widened. “Doing what?”
“Keeping me entertained,” she replied. “I’m sure a strong kid like you could do that, hmm?”
The boy hesitated.
“Unless you’re happy working out at sea for the rest of your life.”
That got him moving. With a furtive glance over his shoulder, he scrambled over the rail and jumped into the water, Victoria gesturing to the rakshasa to pull the boat around and pick him up. Dripping with water but clearly excited, the young man with his unmarred skin climbed aboard with Victoria’s aid.
“Thank you.” He pressed his hands together and bowed deeply. “I promise I won’t let you down.”
Victoria laid a hand on his shoulder, her seasickness quickly lifting. “Don’t worry. I’m sure I’m going to just love you to pieces.”
Darae cursed as the bow of The Pink Pussycat lurched, almost throwing her off her feet as she hurried down the narrow hallway, klaxons blaring in her ear. The normally whisper-quiet engines were roaring at full throttle, bouncing the yacht off the waves with enough force to make the whole ship vibrate, spray coating the windows as it raced across the dark waters. Arriving on the bridge at a run, she burst in on the captain and first mate.
“What’s happening?” she demanded in Thai.
The captain was a Bangkok native who’d been working for Vincenzo ever since he’d purchased the ship ten years ago, a sailor with twenty years experience in the Thai navy. For all that, her face was grim. “Radar picked up a half-dozen small craft approaching from the north, making straight for us at high speed.”
Darae’s eyes widened at the six dots on the screen the first mate was monitoring. “Can we outrun them?”
“As soon as I noticed them, we weighed anchor and made for open ocean,” replied the first mate, the captain’s daughter. “We’ve got her up to forty-eight knots. They’re at roughly fifty-five. I estimate they’ll reach us in five minutes.”
“What are we looking at?”
The captain’s answer was staccato sharp. “The three of us, two engineers, the bosun, three deckhands and four stewardesses. Thirteen in total. I say we’re outnumbered two to one.”
Fuck. The boat lurched again, and this one Darae felt in her stomach. “Ready yourself for boarding,” Darae ordered, “and buy us as much time as you can. If they catch us, you know what to do.”
The captain and the first mate, mother and daughter, looked at each other and then at her. Together, they nodded.
She made for the ship’s armory. There was no time to tell Vinny what was happening. He probably knew already. Last thing he’d said as she tore from their bed was, “Keep Gina out of this.” A promise she could keep, because there was no time to get her into it.
The cabinet was being emptied of handguns and gas masks by all hands, and gripping two of the stewardesses by their shoulders, Darae nodded in the direction of the cabins. “One of you on Vincenzo. The other with Tasanee. Take gas masks for them and lock yourselves in the cabins. Don’t open for anyone but me, you got it?”
The two women grabbed what they needed and hurried off.
“The rest of you, I want the ship locked down and everyone at their assigned stations,” Darae said. “These bastards get on board and being killed will be the least of your worries. We got less than five minutes. Move!”
Darae took to the top deck, the wind whipping at her hair as she peered into the darkness. Through the goggles of her gas mask, she could detect the dark shapes of the speedboats closing in fast, cutting through the water like hunting sharks. All at once, the sharp chatter of automatic weapons filled the air, illuminating their pursuers in flashes of deadly gunfire.
The boats were bigger than she expected, each with a half-dozen men on board. Looked like the fight was going to be closer to three to one, with their enemies more heavily armed.
Steadying herself against the rail, Darae aimed her pistol at the nearest speed boat and emptied the clip at her enemies. She doubted a single bullet found its mark, but hoped it make the fuckers reconsider.
The boat fell back. Then, she realized their true intent. There was a bright flash from the lead speedboat, a brief shrill whine, and the back of The Pink Pussycat exploded into a blinding fireball. The engines shredded, the yacht decelerated hard, knocking Darae to the deck.
She ejected the magazine and slapped in a fresh one, then jumped to the railing. The powerboats had already surrounded them, the rakshasas tossing grappling hooks up onto the rails, their men boarding from every direction.
Vinny. Tasanee. She couldn’t keep them safe.
She fired at them, one of her bullets finding the throat of the first boarder, but was forced to scramble backwards by a hail of gunfire. Chaos broke around her as the crew were driven off the deck, gun smoke clouding the air as the whizz of bullets ended in ricochets, shattering glass and screams of pain.
In moments, the rakshasas would swarm the deck. Darae and her crew had one last chance.
There was a sudden metallic ping as dozens of small nozzles extended from the ship’s walls, hissing their contents into the air. Within seconds the closest of the rakshasas were feeling the invisible gas. Howls of agony echoed from all sides, and risking a peek at the deck below, Darae watched as several of her enemies clutched at their eyes, wheezing and cursing as they staggered back.
The men behind them hesitated as one fell to his knees, letting out a retching gurgle as bloody froth appeared at the corners of his mouth. Dropping his gun he grasped at his chest, his face turning dark blue.
They didn’t know it yet, but they were already dead. The cyanogen chloride they’d inhaled was already plummeting their blood pressure, even as it filled their lungs with fluid. Within a couple of minutes their hearts would either stop pumping, or they’d drown in their own bile.
The reprieve was temporary. The poison would only kill those who got a good breath of it, and the gas would stop spraying in a couple more minutes. Once stopped, the wind would quickly dissipate it, leaving The Pink Pussycat all but defenseless. This was their one and only chance to turn the tables on their enemies, and standing, Darae and her crew fired into the rakshasas, as if they had everything—and nothing—to lose.
Kannon was used to tense situations, where life and death were a split second apart. Still, he had never experienced what existed in the back of the van as it approached the Maharaja Xecutive.
Delta and Brian sat on one side, he and Ryota on the other. Gina was at the wheel. Except for Brian they were all dressed in black. Delta was in a cat suit, her hands sheathed in custom gloves of rough, waterproof stingray skin, her feet in boots with divided toes for better grip. Black paint coated her normally pale face. She even had oversized black contact lenses that changed the entirety of her eyes into eerie pits. She wore a headset to communicate with them, and a backpack containing a large spool of braided fishing line and a few other useful odds and ends. She sat among them like a watchful alien.
She wasn’t the source of the stress, and neither was the danger-fraught mission. It was Brian. His worry was a throbbing presence, worsened by his attempt to contain it. It had leapt out once when Delta had earlier suggested that he wait at the hotel room. That, everyone soon learned, was not going to happen.
He never thought he would, but Kannon sympathized with Brian. Ever
since she refused to shoot him when she could’ve, he’d secretly admired the little thief with her quiet pluck. More to the point, he knew how he would feel if it were Gina geared up across from him. He’d be wired, too, every fiber of his being strung as tight as Brian’s was right now.
The van slowed. “One minute to drop off,” Gina said from the front. Her voice betrayed her anxiety, too. Selfishly, he wondered if any of it was for him.
Delta turned his way. “Thirty minutes for me to get to the top and drop the line.”
Kannon checked his watch. 2:02 a.m. “Got it.”
Delta slid a look at Brian, who was bent forward elbow on his knees, one hand gripping a radio.
“I won’t use the channel unless I have to,” she said.
He didn’t move, except for a short, quick nod. The van crawled to a near stop, and Delta hesitated, her eyes on Brian. Finally, she shifted toward the back doors. Brian caught her up, snagged her around the waist and suctioned her to him, her back to his front. “Hey. You two come back. Hear?”
In the dark, Kannon could see Delta relax. “We will. We’ve got a plane to catch.”
One last squeeze and he let her go. She slid to the back door as Gina brought the van to a full stop and, in an instant, Delta was gone.
Kannon started the timer, then picked up a sturdy climbing harness from the floor of the van, pulled it over his broad shoulders and locked it closed. He next slung a heavy coil of black nylon rope over his shoulder. Brian returned to his elbows on his knees, his eyes bent to the radio as if it could relay messages from God. Four minutes in, Kannon saw Ryota sneak his hand into his pocket and pull out his phone.
“Make sure that thing’s off before we go.”
“Yes, boss. I was just checking messages.”
Kannon studied his junior’s face. “What’s the problem?”
Ryota shrugged it off. “Tasanee usually texts me before she goes to sleep.”
Kannon thought back to the plane ride over when Tasanee slept through Gina and him. “She fell asleep is all. If there was a problem, Darae would call Gina. She hasn’t, so there isn’t. Now, turn it off. Time to move.”
At the front, Gina was nearly hidden from view. From the light on the street coming through the front of the van, he could see the edge of her shoulder, arm and head facing away. Any other time he would’ve been relieved that her mind was on the job, but a part of him wanted a part of her.
Her eyes met his in the rearview mirror. One of her light brown eyes closed in a wink. It felt like a kiss. It made slipping out the back door with Ryota almost easy.
Delta had jumped from the van and hit the ground, running. She sprinted ahead a ways, then leapt upwards, catching the top of the wall, swinging herself over it in one graceful movement, and landing on the other side in a catlike crouch.
She surveyed the garden, and finding it empty, made for the edge of the building, granting herself three breaths when she reached it. The surface was concrete, moist from the humid tropical air, inset with a decorative swirling pattern that repeated upwards, floor after floor. Testing her weight upon it a few different ways, she quickly worked out a sequence of holds for her hands and feet to make the ascent. The moves wouldn’t be easy, but the real challenge would come at the upper floors when her strength was ebbing, the wind was its strongest—and the drop was the highest.
“Hope you’re good with heights,” she whispered to her unborn child, then gripping the first handhold, she started.
In a slow and steady crawl, she scaled her way up. She’d ever attempted this height before, a little fact she’d kept from Brian. The farthest she’d ever free climbed was eight stories, a little more than half this distance. Soon enough the wind was tugging at her, threatening to pull her off the wall. Flattening herself to its face she clung tight, keeping her focus as she inched ever higher. Her feet and hands began to ache as the ground got farther and farther away. She was slick with sweat as her fingertips hooked against the shallow fissures, the edges of her feet seeking purchase on the slightest of support.
Then, suddenly, she was there—her hand gripping the small ledge that ran around the perimeter of the penthouse, a couple of feet beneath the safety rail. She rolled onto the ledge and dropped to her side as she undid her pack and eased out the high tensile line. On the end of it was attached a steel ring, muffled in cloth, and dropping it over the edge, she let the spool unwind till it reached a point marked with a dab of Gina’s hot pink nail polish.
She checked her watch. Twenty-eight minutes, fifty-seven seconds. Her mentor, Mr. Hadrian, would be proud.
It wasn’t long before there were two distinct tugs on the line, and she began to reel up the spool. It took a while to retrieve the two hundred feet, especially as the weight increased, but at last she received what she’d been fishing for—the end of Kannon’s rope.
She pulled up a couple more feet of it before tying it around the base of one of the safety rails in a strong hitch knot. Tug, tug. The double jump of the rope signaled that it was secure. Now she could lie back and relax while Kannon roped up his climbing harness and made his way to her.
Despite the danger she risked a peek at the tiny rectangle of the van far below. She hated to put Brian through the strain but she didn’t feel she had a choice. Without a twist of fate in New Mexico, she’d have been long since dead, and by the very hand of the assassin she was now risking her life to help. When she’d had Kannon’s gun trained on him, she’d been tempted to pull the trigger. Had been a hairsbreadth away from doing just that when something inside her had begged her to spare him—the very killer Gina looked like she was falling for, and who seemed to be falling for her.
With Delta safe on the top floor, Brian fell back against the passenger seat beside Gina, his grip on the radio easing. He’d moved up there, immediately after Kannon and Ryota had left and together, they’d watched the little shadow scale the wall. Now that she was safe he seemed totally unconcerned.
She whacked his shoulder. “Hey, there’s still two more to go up, you know.”
“They’ve got lines, thanks to my wife,” Brian clarified. “Ursula could do it.”
Gina peered into the darkness. Looked as if Ryota was going up first. That was good because if the line was faulty then at least it wouldn’t be Kannon plummeting to his death. She immediately crossed herself for her selfish, callous, bitchy sentiment.
“You know, when I first saw Delta climbing,” Brian said, “I thought she was amazing. Thought she would make a terrific stuntwoman.”
“And now?”
“And now she’s carrying our baby.”
“Two incompatible occupations, huh?”
“She doesn’t see it that way. You know,” he said, “nobody changes, so you better know who you’re dealing with going in.”
“I see. You’re in favor of the long courtship.”
At this point, Ryota was high enough that Brian and Gina had to lower their heads to see him advance. “I’m not talking about the other person, I’m talking about yourself. You don’t change either, so you got to know if you can live with the situation. Which, in my case, is living with a little ninja daredevil.”
“Whereas Delta has to live with a big ninja daredevil.”
“Point taken,” Brian said. “Now, you and Delta can talk about life with your dangerous men.”
“Kannon’s not my man,” Gina said. Where was he, anyway? She couldn’t see him at the bottom. Probably flat against the wall or in a bush.
“What? He hasn’t succumbed to your charms, yet?”
“It isn’t like that between us,” Gina said. Holy. Exactly what Ryota had said about him and Tasanee. And Jarun about him and Wakai. Was she implying that there was more to their relationship?
She could feel Brian’s steady gaze on her. “You going to spill?”
“Kannon and I are working together to recover Montri, though we both recognize that there is a chemistry between us.”
Brian snorted. “Gina, y
our PR sounds like BS. No kidding about the chemistry. Delta had a bet going about whether or not you’d make him part of the mile high club on the flight over.”
Gina squirmed at the memory of that disaster. “Yeah, well, you’re going to have to pay up. I couldn’t persuade him.”
Brian shot her a quick grin before returning to watch Ryota who was more than halfway up already, aided by the rope. “Isn’t me that lost the bet.”
Gina chose to be offended. “What? You thought that I couldn’t do it? I mean, turns out you were right but thought you’d have a little more faith in me.”
“I know how men think.”
“I thought men just want to get it on.”
“Not with the ones they’ve got bigger plans for. Then, it’s a slow seduction.”
“Uh-huh. Like a long con.”
Brian shot her another grin. “Now, who’s showing little faith?”
Ryota reached the top. Kannon’s turn. She could see him ascend in quick pounces. Crap. He was so exposed. Don’t fall, don’t be seen, don’t fall, don’t be seen.
She swallowed. “Thing is, Brian, I’ve got faith. In him, not me. I don’t have what it takes to be with him. It—it’s too scary. You know that with Delta.”
“Yeah. I do. Except look where we are. Sitting here, dealing. And where would we be if they weren’t in our lives? Sitting and dealing with other stuff.”
Gina focused on the climbing black spot.
“I’m going to have to tell Ursula to hire a new office manager, aren’t I?” Brian said softly.
“I—I don’t know yet.” She couldn’t concentrate on the conversation. She was occupied with Kannon. Don’t fall, don’t be seen, don’t fall, don’t be seen. Her silent mantra worked. He reached the top. She leaned her head back against the seat and, for the first time since Kannon’s feet left the ground, took a real breath.
Now, for the second stage. Getting to Montri.
Brian reached over and took her hand, squeezed it. “I think you do, Gina.”
Gina Takes Bangkok (The Femme Vendettas) Page 19
