by Elle James
Tristan felt the pressure of the gun barrel ease. Had he done it? Had he convinced the man that he was harmless?
“Get off the boat, now!”
“But I need to—” Tristan didn’t have to come up with what he needed to do because the man grabbed his arm and turned him around, right into a big right fist.
Tristan went down like a rock. He was barely conscious and he tasted blood, but the man wasn’t done with him. He picked him up bodily by the neck of his shirt and the back belt loop of his jeans and tossed him off the boat. Tristan’s shoulder hit the deck hard. He rolled a couple of times, coming to an abrupt stop against the coil of rope where he’d hidden his weapon. His cheek scraped against the rough wood of the deck.
While he lay there, trying to gather enough sense back into his head to figure out which way was up, he heard Murray, about forty feet away, probably at Slip 43, saying he had a SIM card with a photo of Tristan DuChaud on it.
Tristan tried to clear his vision. He blinked and rubbed his eyes, but it didn’t help. Meanwhile his tongue was exploring the bloody cut on his lip. He blinked again and this time, he saw something.
He was lying on the pier directly across from the houseboat, and although he was inclined to doubt what he saw, he decided to believe it, because if what he saw was real, then he and Boudreau and Murray might make it away from here alive.
As he watched, Boudreau silently paddled a dinghy up beside the houseboat and reached up to catch one of the tie lines and haul himself up onto the deck, his shotgun slung over his shoulder.
When he saw Tristan he made a face and shook his head. Then he held up the shotgun and pointed to Tristan, looking a question.
Tristan nodded and pulled the vest from behind the rope. Boudreau nodded, then gestured toward Murray. Tristan lifted his head enough to take a look at the odds. Murray was, at best, half the size of the two men who were towering over him. One of them had to be the man who had coldcocked Tristan.
He looked back at Boudreau and read the Cajun’s gestures as clearly as if he were talking. I’ll go first and get the drop on them. You follow. Tell Murray to run, and you and me can tune those two giants up a bit.
Tristan frowned, pointed in the direction of his leg and shrugged, hoping Boudreau could read his answer in impromptu hand signals. Maybe you. Probably not me.
Boudreau stepped onto the pier and cocked his double-barreled shotgun. The two big, strapping blond men froze, then slowly turned and eyed the weapon. One of them held a pistol in his hand.
“Drop it or I’ll make a sieve outta you,” Boudreau said.
The man looked at the shotgun, then at his handgun.
“Throw the guns in the water,” Boudreau added, lifting his weapon.
“What?”
“I don’t like killing,” Boudreau said. “But when I got to, I make a good job of it. I’ll start with your legs, yeah.” He pointed the gun at the man’s legs and slid his finger across both triggers.
“Okay,” the man said quickly. “We don’t want no trouble. We got business with Mr. Cho.”
Tristan pushed himself to his feet with all the strength he could muster. Just as he pulled the handgun from the vest, he heard something from inside the houseboat. It sounded like a muffled voice crying out. But he didn’t have time to check it out because Boudreau needed him.
“Business about a photo?” Tristan said, finding it a little hard to speak around his swelling lip.
The man looked at him. “I knew you weren’t quite as dumb as you sounded.”
“And I knew you were,” Tristan responded. “Murray, take your phone out and hit the video record button. And don’t screw up.”
Murray frowned, but he did as he was told. He held up the phone and started recording.
But Tristan wasn’t nearly as interested in showing off for Lee as he had been. He’d taken an awful chance, following Boudreau and Murray out here, and he knew he’d hear about it from Boudreau later. So he just walked around until he could put his face in the middle of the phone’s screen with the two kidnappers in the frame behind him.
“Hello, Mr. Lee. I’m Tristan DuChaud. I’m giving you plenty of footage here, so you have time to get a match for my face. Sorry about the cut on my lip. That shouldn’t hinder the face-matching software much. I want you to know that I’m alive and mostly well, and that I’m looking forward to meeting you. I’d like to have the opportunity to shake the hand of the man who tried to kill me.”
He smiled. “I won’t do it. I wouldn’t touch you with a ten-or even a hundred-foot pole. But I do want to stand in the same room with you and choose not to shake your hand. You are the lowest piece of scum on the planet, and another thing I’d love to do is shoot you in cold blood, but I won’t do that, either. I’m going to let the international court deal with you, you traitor, you subhuman, you piece of slime under my boot.”
He wiped a drop of blood that he could feel trickling down his chin. Then he smiled again. “By the way, if you even think about sending anyone near my wife again, I might just have to change my mind about touching you. I won’t be shaking your hand, though. Have a nice day, Mr. Lee.” He made a throat-slicing motion at Murray, who looked down to find the stop-recording key.
“Give it to me,” Tristan said, and Murray complied again. Tristan held up the phone. “Here you go, boys. Take that to your boss and tell him Tristan DuChaud says he hopes he enjoys the show.” He looked behind them at Boudreau. “You going to shoot them?”
“No!” Murray cried. “They know where my son is. Please!”
Boudreau shook his head. “Shells are pretty expensive these days. Reckon I might opt for a cheaper alternative. Say—” Instead of finishing his sentence, Boudreau took one step forward and shoved one of the men hard into the other one.
Both of them teetered for a second, then tumbled from the pier into the water.
Tristan grinned at him, then looked down to where the two men were splashing about. “Hey, boys, I’m going to put the phone right here. Mr. Lee will be looking for this. You’d better get dried off and get it to him. Once he sees that I’m alive and well, tell him to come and see me. My wife and I are getting reacquainted, so please call first.” Tristan made a show of getting ready to walk away, then he remembered the noise he’d heard in the houseboat. He stopped and looked at Murray.
“Murray, I think your son’s in the houseboat. Boudreau, you want to keep an eye on these guys while Murray and I check it out?
“Sure,” Boudreau said.
“Come on, Murray,” Tristan said. “Let’s go make sure there are no more muscle heads around and get Patrick out of there.”
They made short work of searching the houseboat for another thug. Inside, they found Patrick tied up and strapped to a chair. His face was bruised, but he looked healthy otherwise and he started crying when he saw his dad.
Murray untied his son and got him to his feet, then pulled him close for a long hug. Patrick hugged his father back.
“Patrick, my boy. Are you all right?”
Patrick nodded. “They hit me and kept me tied up,” he said brokenly, still crying. “But I’m okay. Oh, Dad, I’m sorry. I forgot to lock the door. I’m sorry.”
“Shh,” Murray said. “None of this is your fault, son. They’d have broken the door in. I’m just glad they didn’t hurt you any...any more than they did.” He hugged his son close again.
“Think you can walk?” Tristan asked.
Patrick nodded.
“Let’s go. It’ll be dark before long and I’d like to get out of here before those guys manage to pull their thousand-dollar suits out of the water.”
Tristan led the way back down the dock. The two thugs were wading toward shore, glancing back at Boudreau with every step.
“By the way, guys,” Tristan called to them, “tell yo
ur boss my number’s in the book. Have a nice day.” He tipped an imaginary hat.
“Don’t get too cocky, son,” Boudreau muttered, looking around. “They could have friends.”
Tristan smiled at Boudreau. “Not as good a friend as I have.”
Chapter Ten
Vernon Lee watched the recording his computer expert had just received and uploaded to the plasma screen. He didn’t take his eyes off the screen for the entire one and a half minutes. When it ended with Tristan DuChaud saying, Have a nice day, Mr. Lee, Lee growled, “Play it again!”
On the screen, his voice amplified by the state-of-the-art speakers in Lee’s media room, Tristan DuChaud said, Have a nice day, Mr. Lee.
A shiver of disgust slid through Lee. He didn’t like smart-asses, and based on what he’d just seen, DuChaud was definitely a smart-ass. Lee watched the recording a third time.
So this was the man who had overheard him talking to that moron Poirier. The man who, in all likelihood, had copies of those conversations somewhere.
“Back it up to where he says have a nice day,” Lee ordered his computer expert. “And freeze it there.”
He studied DuChaud. Yep. A smart-ass. “You probably hid it in your house, didn’t you?” Lee muttered. “You look like the type to hide it in plain sight.” Without taking his eyes off the frozen picture of the man who could bring him crashing down, Lee picked up his phone and dialed a number.
“I’ll get rid of that recording and you, smart-ass, with a perfect match.” Lee chuckled. “A match. That’s a good one.”
After giving orders to his employee on the other end of the phone, Lee hung up and watched faces flash by on the screen, too fast to recognize what they were, much less who.
Bored, he stood. “Gartner,” he said to his computer expert, “I’ll be back in an hour. I’m having dinner with my daughter. Print out the facial matches and have them ready for me to look at.”
Charles Gartner turned in his chair.
“Mr. Lee, it will probably take all night for the computer to find every facial match. Your database now contains more than a billion people.”
“Did I ask you how long it would take?”
The American blinked, but his gaze didn’t waver. “No, sir,” he said, his face completely blank of expression.
Lee lifted his chin slightly. “What did I ask you to do?”
“To print out the facial matches for you.”
“Do you know why I want that, even though DuChaud told me who he is?”
Gartner swallowed. “Yes, sir. You don’t like mistakes or loose ends.”
“That’s very good, Mr. Gartner. What else don’t I like?”
“Smart-asses, sir.”
Lee thought he saw, just for an instant, a look of annoyance, maybe even anger, on Gartner’s face, but it was gone before he could react to it. “Very good, Mr. Gartner. Very good. Print them in color, if that’s not too much trouble.”
“No trouble at all, sir.” Gartner turned back to the monitor. He picked up a pen and jotted a note onto his desk calendar.
Lee pushed the door to the penthouse open and went inside, looking forward to having dinner with his daughter.
* * *
SANDY WAS TIRED of reading, tired of napping, even tired of eating. She’d heated soup and made herself a grilled cheese sandwich earlier. She glanced at the portable stove and thought about firing it up again and making a cup of tea, but she didn’t really want tea that badly.
Pouring a glass of water, she walked over to the French doors, thinking about where Tristan had been going in such a hurry earlier.
She’d heard the Jeep’s motor, but by the time she’d gotten to the doors and opened them, he was taking off up the road. It occurred to her that in the past, she’d almost always known exactly where he was and what he was doing. He’d seldom stayed out late with buddies or stopped at the local watering hole for a drink or six.
But today, it had been hours since he’d taken off in the Jeep. He’d promised her he’d be home before dark. Apparently his word wasn’t worth squat these days.
The sun was sinking low and the sky was turning pink. It looked as though it was going to be a clear night.
Her restlessness returned. She knew what she wanted to do. She wanted to go for a walk, maybe down to the dock, where she and Tristan had sat on so many evenings like this and watched the sun’s reflection in the water until they could no longer see it. But it wasn’t the same without him. Nothing was.
Besides, he’d told her to stay inside. Dejected and feeling a little sorry for herself, she watched the sky turn from pink to magenta, then to purple.
It was gloaming, that few minutes right before dark that she disliked so much.
Then, out of the dull palette of dark hues, a bright set of headlights caught her attention. Her stomach flipped, but immediately she recognized the Jeep’s headlights and her heart soared like a teenager in the throes of her first crush. She reached for the doorknob to throw the door open and run to him, but as the door swung open, she stopped herself. She actually felt timid about going to him.
Because if he didn’t gather her up in his arms, she wasn’t sure if she could bear it.
So she waited, her pulse pounding in her ears. She tried to calm her breathing and her heartbeat, but it was no use. She knew she was on the verge of hyperventilating, but she couldn’t help it. As he stepped onto the patio the light from the kitchen played on his face and emphasized the deep lines around his mouth and between his brows as he stepped inside.
He looked exhausted and in pain. His face was drawn and pale and his clothes looked two sizes too big. But he was here.
“Tristan,” she said softly, the longing inside her reflected in her voice. Then she saw his swollen lip. “What happened?”
His nostrils flared as if he were taking in a deep breath. “Nothing,” he muttered, looking down at the floor.
Suddenly, she wanted him so badly her entire body quivered. A desire so deep, so primal that it nearly doubled her over spread through her, and she wanted to grab him and kiss him and mold her body to his and damn the consequences.
But just as she began to lift her arms, his steady, solemn gaze filled with fire and he pulled her to him, so quickly that she lost her footing.
He caught her, wrapping his lean, muscled arms around her and burying his nose in her hair. She could hear and feel his unsteady breaths. He said nothing, just held her, squeezing a little too tightly, which was the perfect amount. She slid her arms around him and hugged him back.
After a long, long time, he lifted his head and kissed her. It was barely a kiss, just a brushing of lips against lips, but it ignited a sweet flame so deep and strong that it disturbed the little bean.
“Oh,” she said.
“What?” Tristan whispered hoarsely, his lips still against hers.
“He kicked me. He’s getting really good at that.”
“Yeah?” His mouth flattened and he glanced down between them.
She took his hand. “Come with me,” she said.
“San, I’m tired. This has been a long, long day. I just need to go to bed.”
“Lucky for you,” she said, “that’s where we’re going.” She tugged on his hand until, with a sigh, he followed her.
In the bedroom, she turned back the covers. “Take off your shirt and sit down. I’ll untie your shoes.” She crouched down, settling her baby bump onto her lap, untied his sneakers and slid them off, then slid off his socks.
“I ought to take a shower,” he said, his voice muffled as he pulled off his shirt.
She looked up at him. “You look clean.”
“I bathed at Boudreau’s, but still...”
She started to rise and Tristan stood and caught her arms, helping her up.
“I’m not that bad off yet,” she said. “I can get up by myself.”
He didn’t comment as he unbuckled his belt and let his pants drop to the floor.
Sandy went to the other side of the bed and quickly shed her clothes.
“I’ve got something to show you,” she said, climbing under the covers beside him. She lay back against the pillows. “Look.” She pushed the covers down to expose her breasts and belly.
Tristan took a swift breath. “Wow,” he said.
“I know. I’m huge. The little bean’s kicking around in there and making things pretty uncomfortable for me.”
Tristan put his hand out, then drew it back.
“It’s okay.” She caught his hand and placed it, palm down, on her tummy. “Rub right here.” She moved his hand to the right side. “The bean likes that.”
Tristan’s fingers tentatively spread over her skin and she closed her eyes.
The desire was still there, throbbing within her, but her heart was filled with something more now. This was all she’d ever wanted. She and Tristan, together, with their baby. A family, bonded together with such strength of love that nothing could ever tear them apart.
She pressed Tristan’s hand against her skin, guiding it back and forth, back and forth, in the spot where the little bean’s feet usually were. After a few seconds, she felt a tiny kick from the inside.
“Did you feel that?” she asked.
Tristan turned onto his side. He looked up at her. “That was a kick?”
“Hey, he’s not very big yet,” she said indignantly.
“How big?”
She held her hands up, about ten inches apart. “And he probably weighs around twelve ounces or so.”
“Our little bean,” Tristan whispered. “Have you named him already?” He looked up at her.
She shook her head. “I’d wanted us to do that together, and then you— Then I kind of figured that I’d probably name him after you.”
Tristan stared at her for a long time, then he pushed up on his elbow and leaned over and kissed her belly. “Hi, little bean,” he said softly.
