by Lily Harlem
“You do not know what I’m hoping for,” Jose said, his accent thickening and a redness rising on is cheeks. He was mad as hell. “Just tell me what you were doing in that restaurant and whether you know that man you recorded acting like a goddamn murderous creep around India.”
“Listen, I’m a reporter, all right?” Baldy relaxed against the wall, as though admitting who he was had removed a burden.
Dillon wanted to believe him, but he’d been duped by suspects before and he was fucked if he’d let this one get away with it. He snapped his lips together to stop himself butting in. Jose was getting somewhere, and Dillon jumping in with his give-me-some-damn-answers-you-bastard technique would undoubtedly screw things up.
“So, you have been following Miss Moore,” Jose stated.
“No, only last night.” Baldy sighed. “I was out, okay? Just out. Yeah, I knew she was in town, I won’t deny it, but I didn’t know where. I’d been out fishing all day and went for a beer in the bar. As I walked through the restaurant I saw her.” He shifted his gaze to India.
Dillon pulled her closer.
“And yeah, I took a video of her. Didn’t know what I was going to do with it, I just did it, all right? What can I say, I’m a fan, Then I saw that guy—you saw him, yeah?—and I couldn’t let it go. He was acting weird, and when he went outside I followed. He was in the bushes, kind of talking to himself—not normal, right? So I waited a bit then went back in, so did he, to use the bathroom. India went in the ladies restroom then and I saw him slip past her dozy bodyguard, who was chucking bits of bread into the carp pond. A few minutes went by before I went to check it out. Obviously I guessed he was up to no good.”
“A few minutes?” Dillon snarled.
“Well yeah, but of course, when I alerted the bodyguard that something was amiss it was too late. We went in and neither of them were there, just the window in the end cubicle wide open.”
“That still doesn’t explain how you knew she was on this boat?” Jose said.
“I got myself outside pretty sharpish. I went quicker than the bodyguard, fat lump that he is, and just caught sight of her running round the corner, toward the pier. I shouted, but she ignored me, so I followed. Just about killed me, it did. I lost her for a while but then saw her jumping onto your boat.”
“And why didn’t you go and get her, tell her you meant her no harm, if you really didn’t?” Jose asked.
“Because then I saw you guys, ambling along the pier, stopping to point into the distance, taking your damn time. I figured I would wait until you’d gone on your boat and then make my move. Except it turned out your boat was the one India-bloody-Moore was hiding on.”
“So you were the one chasing me?” India asked. “I heard you call my name.”
“Yeah, probably, ‘cause I was one of the guys after you. Fuck knows what happened to that other freaky mustached bastard. I just meant to warn you, but you jumped on this boat, and then I saw you two fuckers getting on and I thought I’d better leave it. Didn’t fancy my chances at explaining why I’d chased her through the alley seeing how you’d probably had enough beer to get yourselves riled up for a scrap but not enough to make you pass straight out.”
“So why are you here now?” Jose asked.
“To warn you,” Baldy said.
Dillon couldn’t keep his mouth shut any longer. “Warn us? What, by making out you were selling drugs? You expect us to believe this shit?”
Baldy shrugged. “Hey, you learn different ways of getting what you want in my job, you know? I had to get on this boat. Had to see if she was still on here. That she was safe.” He shrugged again.
Jose cocked his head. “What are you not telling us?”
Baldy took a deep breath then released it. He made concrete eye contact with India. “It hit the news during the night that India Moore is dead.”
“What?” India screeched.
Dillon hugged her tighter, the goosebumps on her arms hard against his hand.
“Yes.” Baldy nodded. “I’m just here to get the scoop that she isn’t.”
Chapter Thirteen
The world thought I was dead!
What would Tommy be thinking and my family and my fans and…? Oh, God, it hadn’t seemed so bad when I was just missing—but dead? They’d have mental images of me battered and bruised in an alley somewhere or mangled and mauled by my weirdo stalker.
Dillon hugged me tighter and rubbed my arm. His touch was soothing as was the sound of his heartbeat. I closed my eyes and pretended it was a bad dream. Lost myself in the scent of his sun-hot skin and the feel of his body hair on my cheek.
“I’m just here to get the scoop that she isn’t,” our prisoner had said.
“Well of course she isn’t dead,” Dillon said, smoothing my hair, his gentle caress a stark contrast to the steely tone of his voice. “And that is exactly how it’s going to stay.”
“Why don’t you untie me now you know the truth. We can talk about it man to man. I think I might be able to help you all.”
There was a moment of silence and I lifted my head. Dillon and Jose were looking at each other. It was a crazy thought but it seemed they were communicating with their eyes. Like they both knew what the other was thinking without needing words.
“We could do, I guess,” Jose said with a shrug.
“What, and have him pull a fast one?” Dillon huffed then rolled his eyes.
“He’s just a reporter, man.” Jose dug into the pocket of his shorts and produced a small silver key. “He’s not going to hurt India. I say we take the cuffs off.”
“No. I’m not going to take that risk. He could be anyone. He could be in cahoots with that fucking asshole on the video.”
“I’m not,” Baldy said, shaking his head. “I’ve told you the truth; I was trying to help India get back into the restaurant, to safety.” His gaze caught mine. “Honestly, sweetie, think about it. I alerted your bodyguard that someone else had gone into the restroom and then I was the only one quick-thinking enough to get outside when we realized you’d gone.” He paused and tried to rub his forehead on his shoulder. Fat beads of sweat had formed and glistened on his glassy scalp. “When you were running away all I could think of was keeping up with you because I knew if that bastard did jump out of the shadows I was the only one around to hear you scream.”
I swallowed down the nasty taste of fear as I remembered my panic-fuelled run through the grimy alleyways. To think there had been not one but two people chasing me—one had been intent on murder, of that there was no doubt, not now I’d seen that gun.
“I was trying to help you,” he said in a softer tone, “and I still might be able to.”
“As if,” Dillon scoffed.
“Let me go and I’ll tell you what I’m talking about.”
“We don’t need you,” Dillon said, then glared at Jose. “Don’t undo him, he’s low life. Next chance we get we’ll drop him off with the coastguard and tell them he’s been up to no good.”
“I haven’t done anything you can do me for.” Baldy gave a confident sneer.
“Only lying your way onto our boat.”
“I might have said I had drugs but it’s a bit different to actually possessing. Besides…” He shrugged. “How was I to know you were cops? If I had then it would have been a different story. I would have told you from the outset what I knew and how I could help. I needed to suss you out. For all I knew you could have been holding her hostage.”
I studied his face. Yes, he was as rough as they came and I could just imagine him hiding out in shadowy corners trying to get stories. But what he was saying did add up. Plus, he was the only one, despite all the thousands of dollars I’d thrown at security over the last few months, who’d seen the man hellbent on bringing about my death. Not only that, it did settle a modicum of the remembered terror of escaping the restaurant to think that someone like him was looking out for me. If creepy mustache guy had caught up with me, I reckon Baldy would have been up for
a pretty good fight.
“How can you help?” I asked quietly. “Please tell me.”
Dillon and Jose stared at me wide-eyed.
“I can’t see that we have much option but to hear him out.” I rested my palm on Dillon’s cheek and looked into Jose’s eyes. “Please, let’s think about all of our options. Find out what he has to say.”
Beneath my palm Dillon’s jaw tensed. “I don’t like they guy,” he growled.
“That’s fine,” I said, looking up at him. “But, Dillon, what about your hunch feeling? Maybe you just don’t like him because he’s on your boat and you don’t want him to be, and not because you think he’s a problem or a threat to our situation.”
“Yeah, that’s right, think of me as the solution,” Baldy said, yanking at the cuffs. “Come on, get these fuckers off, they hurt.”
“We might as well,” Jose said, shifting from the wall he’d leaned back on. He brushed his hand over the bulge in his shorts where his gun sat. “He’s not going to get away with anything.”
“Fine,” Dillon snapped, “let him go, but Jose, you’re responsible for him. He pisses about you just shoot him, okay?”
“It won’t come to that,” Jose said and turned to the bed. “Will it, asshole?”
A drip of sweat slid into Baldy’s eye and he blinked it away. “Jesus, just get these damn things off my wrists.”
“Well, if he pisses me off and you don’t shoot him quickly and get it over with,” Dillon said, his voice quiet but weighted with menace, “I’ll chop off his toes, tie him to the back of the boat and let the sharks snack on him for the afternoon.” He squeezed me a little closer, as though protecting me from the mental picture he knew his words would conjure. “Not enough to kill him, not to start with anyway, just enough to make him wish he was dead.”
“Why am I going to piss around?” Baldy asked. He didn’t appear bothered by the threat, although Dillon caught Jose’s gaze again and I wondered if they’d sensed something I didn’t.
“Come on, chuck us your set,” Jose said, holding up his key.
“Go and sit on deck,” Dillon said, releasing me and delving into his pocket. “We’ll be there in a minute.”
It felt as though snakes were coiling in my belly and the wind was gusting through my veins. I was scared witless but also hopeful. It was a strange combination of fight and flight swirling together. Because now there was a sense of being in control. I knew what my would-be-murderer looked like and that would mean I’d see him coming. No wonder he’d given me the heebie jeebies outside the restroom. I should have trusted my instincts, said something to my so-called bodyguard, Dimitri.
Dimitri.
I sat in the shade of the bimini and looked at the hazy horizon. Fat lot of good he’d been. He was supposed to be looking out for me and instead he’d fed the fish and allowed my stalker to slip into the same damn room I was in.
Sighing, I scooped my hair up and let the refreshing breeze skim over my nape. There was another reason for the renewed lightness in my chest. Having seen the evidence I now knew with confidence that the writer of the notes wasn’t anyone on my team. Dillon and Jose had been keen to check all their backgrounds, make them key suspects, but they didn’t need to anymore. A sudden pang of guilt hit me. I’d been willing to go along with the checks. Treat each colleague as guilty until proven otherwise. How could I? That was so untrusting of me. The people at the table that night had been my friends.
Footsteps on the deck caught my attention. Dillon, Jose and Baldy came and sat in the shade. Jose held his gun down by his side. Baldy was rubbing his red-ringed wrists.
They matched mine.
“Hey,” Jose said, sitting close and touching my cheek. “Why the worried face? We’re getting somewhere with this.” He let the gun sit so casually in his hand, half rested on his knee, the firing end pointing at the deck.
I sighed and tore my gaze from the shiny black barrel. “I was just feeling wretched for allowing myself to put my friends under suspicion, when all along it was a complete stranger after me.”
“You weren’t to know that.”
“I know, but still, I feel like a bad friend.”
“You’re not a bad friend at all. You were scared. We needed answers. It was the logical place to start.”
I looked into his eyes. The depths were flashing with sincerity.
“Don’t beat yourself up over it, it’s not worth it,” he said.
“Yeah, we have more pressing matters to deal with,” Dillon said, sitting on my other side and pulling his knife from its case. He set about slicing a shiny red apple, the super-sharp edge of the curved blade melting through the flesh. “Like catching this son of a bitch who thinks he can get away with bullying and intimidating an innocent woman.” He paused. “Go on then, give us what you’ve got.”
Baldy looked from Dillon to Jose and then to me. He crossed his arms and rested them on his belly. “I figure if rumor is you’re dead, India, then your stalker won’t be happy until he knows for sure. Obsessive minds are like that. Also he’ll be doubly pissed that he wasn’t the one to do it.”
Despite the heat a cold shudder traveled up my spine. Jose must have noticed because he rested his arm around my waist and tugged me nearer to his warm body.
Baldy cocked his head. “What is it with you three?”
“Nothing,” Dillon and Jose said together.
Baldy hesitated then nodded at my neck. “So who is responsible for the hickey, then?”
“None of your fucking business,” Dillon said, pointing the tip of his knife at Baldy.
“Well, she didn’t give it to herself, did she?”
Instinctively I pressed my hand over the purple bruise. A flash of the incredible feelings that whirlwinded through my body as Dillon had sucked my skin besieged me. I glanced at him. He kept his expression stern, though I noticed his Adam’s apple bob and wondered if he was remembering that moment too. I’d got the distinct impression that he’d given my neck attention to distract himself, hold off his orgasm while I had mine. It was as sexy as fuck to think I’d taken him to the edge of his self-control.
“Like I said,” Dillon repeated, “its none of your fucking business.”
“Carry on,” Jose said, stroking his thumb over my waist. “We want to get to the bit where you reckon you can help.”
Badly shrugged. “Yeah, well, if I go back to Fort Lauderdale, start spreading the word on the street that India isn’t dead, it’s bound to get to him.”
“And, how is that going to help?” I asked.
“You ever gone fishing?” Baldy asked me.
“No.”
“What’s that got to do with it?” Dillon growled.
“Well, when you fish you need bait, something to tempt the thing to take a bite and then, once it does you have it hooked. Caught, trapped, you can do whatever the fuck you want with it.”
“I get the process.” Dillon chucked his apple core into the sea but kept the knife in his hand, rocking it slightly, as though testing its weight.
“Don’t you see, you have the bait.” Baldy stood. “You have India. All you have to do is lure him in and then you’ve got the bastard.”
“Fuck, we’re not going to risk her like that,” Jose said, also standing and gesturing to me with the gun.
My heart was thumping, my mind spinning. I turned to Dillon. He was staring at me with an unfathomable expression.
“It’s ridiculous,” Jose was saying. “We can’t, we just can’t. We’re sitting ducks out here. We can be seen for miles.”
“Hey, chill out,” Dillon said, tearing his gaze from me, “and stop waving that damn gun about.”
Jose frowned. “Yeah, well, sit back down,” he huffed at Baldy and pointed to the bench with his weapon.
Baldy sat.
Jose resumed his position next to me.
“And is that as far as your plan goes?” Dillon asked with a sneer. “Lure him in? Jesus, we would never have come up with that
ourselves. Thank goodness you arrived and—”
“If you would just listen to me,” Baldy interrupted. “What I was going to say is here on the boat you’re too vulnerable, but I have somewhere I can arrange for you to stay. Somewhere safer—isolated.” He raised his eyebrows, looking smug as he rested back and crossed his ankles.
“Go on,” Dillon said, running his finger along the curved, blunt edge of the knife.
“Dillon, you can’t seriously be thinking that we—” Jose leaned around me.
“Run with it, Jose, it might not be what you’re thinking.”
Jose rubbed his palm over his cheek, around his chin then down the back of his neck. His eyes darted from Dillon, to me to Baldy. He shifted backward but there was nothing at ease about his body language. He sped up the fractious rubbing of his thumb on my waist.
“This place,” Baldy said, “you’re not far from it, actually. There’s a cluster of small islands about two hours from here if you go full throttle. I have a contact who owns a house there and—”
“What kind of contact?” Dillon sounded disbelieving.
“Someone who happens to owe me one hell of a favor, and since I’m passing the benefit of that on to you I would appreciate some acknowledgment.”
“We haven’t said we want it yet,” Jose muttered.
“But we might,” I said.
Suddenly the idea of getting off the boat, as long as I was with Jose and Dillon, was very appealing. The terror of falling in the sea earlier and nearly drowning was still with me, plus the thought of a proper shower or even a bath was heavenly. Oh, how lovely it would be to stretch out my limbs in hot, soapy water, maybe with a glass of champagne and some strawberries to nibble.
Dillon and Jose both glanced at me.
“Yeah,” Dillon said, “we might.”
“You should,” Baldy said. “Take her there. You’ll have some time to check the lay of the land, relax a while. I think it will appeal to you. It’s big but fenced off with security cameras at the gate. There’s a small pier to moor probably two, three boats at the most. You’ll have good warning of anyone coming and be able to prepare.” He nodded at Jose’s gun. “If you know what I mean.”
