by Cindy Dees
“That’s my woman,” a voice snarled from behind her.
The first attacker had regained his balance and straightened. He took one look at Jeff advancing on him, spun on his good leg and took off down the alley in a limping run. Scrambling noises behind her indicated that the assailants behind them were bugging out, as well.
“Are you okay?” Jeff bit out.
“Yes. You?”
“Fine. Want to go after them?”
She shook her head. “I doubt they’re alone. They’ll lead us to their reinforcements, who will likely be armed and more dangerous than those scouts. Best to get out of here before they come back.”
Jeff grinned. “They’d have to bring a lot of reinforcements to take the two of us. You handled yourself like a pro.”
“I am a pro.”
His gaze roamed briefly down her body and back up. If her cheeks weren’t already hot from exertion, they lit up like a torch now. “Am I correct that those were El Mari’s guys?” she mumbled.
“That was most certainly Amharic the guy gave his buddies instruction in. Although it’s possible they’re not El Mari’s goons, I don’t see how it could plausibly be anyone else.”
“How on earth did they find you?” she asked. “We’ve given the FBI, CIA and H.O.T. Watch the slip. So how did these guys pull it off? Could they have some sort of tracking device on you?”
Jeff frowned. “I’m not wearing any of the same clothes I did in prison. I had no jewelry, no personal possessions to put a tracker on.”
“What about you?”
“Come again?” He looked confused.
“Were you ever knocked unconscious in jail? Drugged, maybe? Sleep an unusually long time after a meal?”
“What are you getting at?”
“Did you get any small cuts in prison? Maybe somewhere hard to see or feel, like between your shoulder blades or the back of an upper arm or thigh?”
“You think they put a tracker inside me?” he demanded incredulously.
“I think it’s worth getting you naked and checking it out. But first, we have to leave this place. Get some distance from these jokers. My suggestion is we hustle down to the pier, get ourselves a boat and get out of here as fast as we can.”
“Agreed. But first…” He stepped forward and wrapped his arms around her, drawing her close against him. He kissed her gently, but oddly enough, she didn’t want gentle. She wanted wild and woolly. She wanted to know she was really alive and well. Or maybe it was just the adrenaline of the attack coursing through her. But either way, she backed him up against a brick wall and kissed him like she planned to inhale him right then and there.
Jeff tore away with a half laughing groan. “Boat. Leave. Check. And then we’ll continue this…discussion.” He grabbed her by the hand and all but ran out of the alley toward the docks. But who ended up dragging who was open to debate.
Thankfully, it didn’t take long for them to find and rent a nicely outfitted, forty-two-foot cabin cruiser that would be perfect for their purposes. Jeff paid with a Swiss credit card that she expected would trace back to a nameless, numbered bank account, and he plunked down various sailing and radio licenses that seemed to make the boat’s owner comfortable letting them take out the vessel by themselves. She was proficient with small sailboats, but this cruiser was beyond her experience.
As Jeff expertly backed the Island Princess out of her slip and into the channel headed toward open water, she asked, “Where’d you learn how to drive a boat like this?”
“My grandfather owns a yacht. I’ve spent some time on her.”
“Let me guess. Leland’s yacht makes this one look like a laundry tub?”
Jeff ducked his head a little. “You might say that. But a boat’s a boat at the end of the day. You push the throttles, the boat goes forward. You pull them back, the boat slows down. You drop the anchor, the boat stops. It’s not rocket science.”
She eyed the sonar, depth finder and various radios askance. “Right. Let’s just unanimously nominate you Captain and call it good.”
“You do understand that the crew—that would be you—has to do exactly as the captain—that would be me—orders at all times.”
“Or else what?” she replied playfully. “Will you make me walk the plank?”
“I’m sure I can come up with a more creative punishment than that,” he threatened, grinning.
They sailed into the setting sun, and Jennifer had to admit that as escapes from bad guys went, this one was pretty darned pleasant.
Once they were well clear of Kingston and certain that no boats had followed them away from Jamaica, Jennifer turned to Jeff. “Off with your shirt, mister.”
He grinned widely. “I like the way you think.”
“I’m not getting frisky. I need to look for evidence that a tracking device was planted under your skin.”
“Party pooper.”
It took her about two seconds flat to spot the scar. It was less than a quarter inch long, high between his shoulder blades where he couldn’t possibly reach it. When she rubbed the pad of her thumb hard across the spot, she thought she felt something small, flattish and hard under his skin.
“Ouch!” he yelped.
“You can withstand the fires of Hell, but a little poke like that makes you yell?” she asked wryly.
He grinned sheepishly.
She handed him his shirt thoughtfully. “Since when is a local warlord in the Horn of Africa equipped with subcutaneous tracking burrs?”
“You think El Mari got it from someone like the Chinese?” Jeff asked grimly.
“I think it’s highly likely. But I also think it’s a problem for another day. Right now we need to figure out how to deactivate the thing.” She tapped a tooth with a fingernail. “Or at least disrupt the signal.”
“Mind if I engage in a little outside-the-box thinking?” he queried.
“By all means.”
“Why deactivate it? Let’s lead these guys straight to H.O.T. Watch. In a best case scenario, they’ll get mowed down by the special forces guys stationed there. Worst case, they compromise the facility and only add fuel to the fire of shutting the place down and relocating it.”
She grimaced. His suggestion flew in the face of everything she was trained to do. But he did make a certain sense. It was a practical approach that solved two problems at once.
Jeff pulled out a navigation chart and spread it on the captain’s worktable. “Okay. Where’s H.O.T. Watch?” he asked.
She gulped. This was it. Once she told him where the facility was, there would be no turning back for her. She would have committed a felony by divulging classified information. She poked at a spot on the map where only an uninhabited island called Timbalo was charted. “It’s here.”
And just like that, it was done.
A look of satisfaction flitted through Jeff’s gaze. Oh, God. Had she just told a killer where to find his next victim? Had this all been an elaborate ruse, after all, to trick her into revealing H.O.T. Watch’s location? Had she just played right into his hands?
She watched in appalled silence as Jeff plotted a course and set the boat’s autopilot to steer along it. She felt like a yo-yo bouncing up and down on a string. Wielded by one Jefferson Winston. Of course, she was using him, too. Using his wealth and resources to accomplish her mission. Using his physical strength as a shield.
He glanced up, did a double take in mild alarm. “You okay?”
“Yes. No.”
He straightened up from the table to look at her searchingly. “What’s up?”
“I’m worried about what we’re going to find when we get to the island,” she hedged.
“We won’t get there until tomorrow depending on what the currents are like. No sense worrying about it before then.”
Easy for him to say. He hadn’t just ended his career. Being a CIA agent was all she knew. All she was. And she’d just given it all away. To him.
Anger flared in her gut before sh
e reminded herself it had been her decision. She knew full well she was trading her career for the safety of the people whose lives depended on H.O.T. Watch. It was a noble sacrifice, darn it. Worth one lousy career. But still, it hurt.
“You might as well go below and get some rest,” Jeff said quietly. “The next few days could get pretty busy. I’ll take first watch. If you’re not comfortable keeping an eye on the autopilot while I sleep, we can lay anchor while I catch a few hours’ rest.”
She was abjectly relieved to crawl into the big bed below by herself. It wasn’t that she didn’t enjoy making love with Jeff. In fact, she missed his big, warm body more than she cared to admit to herself. But her head was in such turmoil she could hardly stay in bed and not pace the tiny stateroom.
Jeff eased open the door sometime after midnight. He must have sensed her disquiet for he merely gathered her close in a silent hug. She clung to him until she worried she might not ever be able to let him go. But fear of depending on him like that made her turn him loose long before she wanted to.
She assured him that she and autopilot would get along together just fine and exhorted him to sleep. And, indeed, she dutifully wrote down their GPS position every hour and plotted it on the chart through the night. The autopilot was keeping them perfectly on course.
Between readings, she stared at the stars overhead and the fathomless blackness of the ocean below. She cast back in her memory to the very first moment she’d laid eyes on Jeff bursting out of that wooden crate in Africa. She analyzed and reanalyzed every minute with him, every conversation, every time they’d made love. In the most objective opinion she could muster, she concluded that she had not been brainwashed. She’d acted of her own free will and she was not unduly influenced by him.
Although she was also forced to conclude that it was entirely possible she and her logic were addled by her infatuation with the man. He was larger than life, figuratively and literally. How could she not fall for him?
As the sky grew rosy in the east, Jeff came up to the bridge, rubbing his eyes and his hair sticking up endearingly. Boy, she really did have it bad for the guy if his bedhead even turned her on.
“You were supposed to wake me up hours ago so I could relieve you,” he complained.
“I wasn’t tired. I decided to let you sleep.”
“Why the insomnia? Worried about getting into H.O.T. Watch?”
“Actually, that’s the least of my concerns.”
He stepped close behind her and held her quietly as they watched the first sliver of the sun peek above the horizon. “It’ll all work out, Jenn.”
“If only I shared your optimism.”
His optimism held when, in early afternoon, the island that housed H.O.T. Watch came into view as a low, dark hump on the horizon about five miles away.
“We should sail for the east side of Timbalo. All the people are clustered on the west side.”
“Out of the direct path of hurricanes?”
“Exactly. But there’s a house on the east slope. And that’s where we’re headed.”
“The geologist and her husband’s house?”
“Exactly.”
He didn’t ask for details. If only she had the same absolute assurance in herself that he did. Then maybe she would have a little more confidence in this mission to succeed and for the sacrifice of her entire life not to have been in vain.
Chapter 14
Jennifer watched in minor disbelief as Jeff used a small, motorized pump to inflate two gigantic beach balls. They were clear and nearly ten feet tall with small tunnels leading to hollow interiors a man could stand up in easily.
“Take your shoes off but leave your socks on,” he instructed as she slid her backpack—its frame not aluminum but rather some high-tech polycarbonate, compliments of Winston Plastics—into the ball. He steadied the ball for her beside the boat while she crawled inside, and then he closed the flap over the tunnel, encasing her a clear, spherical chamber. They’d waited until night to do this both because it would be cooler inside the enclosed balls, and because the ocean would be at its calmest.
Wobbling on the squishy floor, she donned her backpack and stood up. She took a shaky step forward on the gently upsloping floor in front of her. The ball rolled forward a few feet on the surface of the water. She stepped again. Before long, she found the balance of the thing and walked steadily forward, propelling the ball across the ocean toward shore. He wasn’t kidding when he’d promised they would walk on water. Jeff’s ball rolled along easily beside hers.
It took nearly two hours to walk the four miles from their boat to shore, but finally, she walked her ball up the sandy beach. Gratefully, she crawled out of the stuffy space and helped Jeff deflate and hide the balls in the bushes.
She took her bearings. She hadn’t spent much time on this half of the island, which was privately owned by Carson Gray. He was the first person to scout this island as a possible location for the H.O.T. Watch facility. His wife, Lucy McFadden Gray, was a geologist and had done the initial site surveys of the underground cave complex that had ultimately become H.O.T. Watch’s home.
The couple had a home a mile or so down the beach, and Jennifer hoped it was where they had stored the original geological maps of the island. “This way,” she whispered.
They slogged down the beach, and it was slow going. Her heavy pack weighed her down and the sand was deep and soft. After walking in that squishy ball for two hours, and now this, her legs felt like noodles. But she wasn’t about to complain in front of Jeff.
“Give me your pack,” he ordered without warning.
“Excuse me?”
“We’ll make better time if I carry both packs.”
“But that would be well over a hundred pounds of gear!”
“Give me four or five hundred pounds to haul and you might slow me down. Hand me your pack. You’ve proven that you can pull your weight. But I’ve had enough of watching you suffer.”
“But Jeff—”
“Let me do this for you. What’s the point of taking all those medications and risking my life if we don’t use the advantage it gives me?”
“But—”
“It’s for the good of the mission. There’s no reason to wear yourself out before we even get to the hard part.”
That argument won her over. She passed Jeff her backpack and was stunned to see him casually fling the thing over one shoulder like nothing more than a gym bag.
As she rolled her eyes, he commented, “Let me know if you get too tired to go on. I’ll piggyback you for a while.”
“Show off.”
“Aww, c’mon. Let the guy impress the girl a little with his cool superabilities.”
“Okay, fine. I’m impressed.”
“Honey, you haven’t even seen the good stuff yet.”
“I don’t know. When you ripped that lock off the door back at Paradise Island, I was pretty impressed.”
He laughed. “I knew I shouldn’t have done that the moment I did it. But you were so sexy pointing that shotgun at me I couldn’t resist flirting with you.”
“That’s your idea of flirting?”
“You have a lot to learn about men, Agent Blackfoot.”
She snorted. “I know men plenty well, thank you.”
“Mmm. I’ll say.”
She swatted his arm, and they trudged on in companionable silence.
When they neared the perimeter of the Gray estate, she touched Jeff’s arm and signaled him to let her take the lead. There was no sense trying to sneak through the jungle to the house. The external security system was either armed or it wasn’t. Jungle or path made no difference if the thing was turned on.
She turned off the beach and followed the boardwalk snaking up the hillside toward a sprawling Georgian mansion sitting graciously under a canopy of trees. No lights were on in the house.
Her stomach jumping nervously, she walked around the fountain in the circular drive and boldly approached the front door to ring
the bell.
“Seriously?” Jeff muttered. “This is your big plan to break in?”
“This is the ‘in case they’re home, it’s the only way we’ll get inside’ approach,” she replied.
They rang again and waited nearly two minutes before she was convinced no one was home. Now for the actual big plan to break in. She reviewed it quickly. “I’m going to pick the lock. Once I open the door, we’ll need to find a landline telephone, not a regular phone but a direct line to H.O.T. Watch. I should be able to use it to access Big Bertha and disable the house’s internal security system. But we’ll have about sixty seconds to find the phone, get me logged on and get the correct access codes entered.”
“And if we don’t, the cavalry comes, right?”
She nodded grimly. The contingency plan in that case was to run like hell and hope the two of them could get off the island faster than the gang at H.O.T. Watch could find them using helicopters, tracking dogs, the latest in heat-seeking technology and dozens of special forces soldiers who knew this island like the back of their hands.
Jeff would search the library and office inside and to the left, and she would head for the kitchen and staff office in the back of the house. The door lock was original to the home and took her only seconds to click open with a pair of lock picks.
“Ready?” she asked Jeff.
He put a hand in the middle of her back by way of an answer. She took an instant’s comfort in the warmth and strength flowing into her from him and then opened the door. As she’d expected, no audible alarm gave away their intrusion. But without a shadow of a doubt, an alarm had been tripped.
The interior was elegant and airy, a masterful blend of antique and modern furnishings. She raced through the grand foyer and down a hallway toward the kitchen, where she turned on the lights and did a fast visual search. No sign of anything resembling a phone.
Vividly aware of the seconds ticking away, she headed for the office. A phone sat on the desk. She picked up the receiver and listened to the dial tone. Dang. A regular signal. The phone to H.O.T. Watch would have a slightly deeper tone. She looked at her watch. Twenty-nine seconds elapsed.
