Protector

by Catherine Mann

  And in order to prove that, to keep her safe, he would have to return to civilization and take down her father, once and for all.

  * * *

  Building a dirty nuke wasn’t simple, but it was lucrative. And the Fortuna offered the perfect setup to transfer the bomb’s blueprint into the appropriate hands.

  Hands behind his back, he wandered through the casino’s main floor. The roulette wheel spun and clicked like a clock counting down the time until he pulled everything together. Chimes and bells, shouts and groans filled the air as thickly as the perfume from the overscented, overprivileged women littering this place. Cleavage spilled out of low-cut designer dresses that probably cost as much as the high-roller chips they wagered and lost without a thought. Diamonds and other precious stones flashed in the lights that stayed on round the clock to keep bettors from realizing just how long they’d been throwing money away.

  Smiling, nodding politely at the customers, he didn’t give a damn that they saw only his uniform, his position as an employee hired to serve. That anonymity would work in his favor in the end.

  No one needed to know his role. His ego didn’t require stroking. He just needed cash. His parents may have been idiots enough to gamble away every euro they ever made, but he was smarter than that. Better yet, he would use their vice to his advantage.

  Those slot machines were gold mines. Not because of the winnings they churned out— chump change in comparison to what he would rake in with this job. No, the true value was in the data linking, all the equipment intertwined into one system, so much information flowing through the transmission cables. It was easy to hide tidbits of his own here and there, nobody the wiser.

  A familiar voice— Lucy’ s— drifted over the regular chaos that came with a casino in full swing.

  Lucy perched on a high bar stool at a tiny round acrylic table, leaning toward Livia Cicero. “I can hardly believe your contract with us will be finished after this cruise. Are you sure we can’t persuade you to stay on for another month?”

  The Italian diva stirred her lemon water with the little straw, her red sequined dress glittering under the multiple chandeliers. “After my accident, my voice, my energy, just isn’t what it used to be.”

  “I’m so sorry to hear that. It’s a loss to your fans everywhere.” And clearly Lucy was one. She’d about popped the eardrums of everyone around her squealing once she heard they’d landed Cicero for a six-month contract. “I realize we were lucky to get you this long.”

  “My pleasure. The Fortuna had treated me well,” she answered diplomatically, and neatly dodging the not too subtle hint for her to stick around longer.

  It was no secret Cicero’s voice had never fully returned to normal after her accident. The huskiness itself was sexy as far as he was concerned. But then he wasn’t big into music. He slowed his perusal of the casino floor to catch more of their conversation. Up until a couple of weeks ago, the singer had intended to stick around. Something had changed that.

  Lucy spun a drink napkin round and round on the table nervously. “I would like to send you an invitation to my wedding. I know you probably can’t come, but…”

  “You have my address. It is always an honor to be invited to share in someone’s special day.” Livia smiled politely, her lips full and red, the kind that would look perfect going down on a guy.

  Wedding… it was always about the wedding. At least that kept Lucy distracted. Just the way he wanted her. He stopped beside her table. “Hey, baby.”

  Predictably, Lucy squealed, jumping up from her seat and throwing her arms around his neck. “Adolpho, what perfect timing. You’ll never believe who may be able to come to our wedding…”

  While Lucy rambled on, he stared over her shoulder at Livia Cicero’s plump red lips. Too bad she would be leaving so soon, because he really couldn’t afford the time right now to indulge in that little fantasy piece of ass.

  His eyes skated to the slot machine closest to the roulette wheel. Right on schedule, his courier slid in the card, looking to the rest of the room like an ordinary gambler.

  Adolpho could almost see the information uplinking off that card picked up in Greece. Another little piece of the puzzle went in place, bringing him that much closer to the end of the cruise and the start of a major international terrorist incident.

  * * *

  The damn car wouldn’t start and the sun was setting fast.

  And her nerves were ramping up just as quickly. Jolynn studied the Fiat’s engine for at least the third time, still unable to figure out why the thing wouldn’t crank. They’d charged and recharged the battery, only to have it drain in a second, almost like the thing was draining juice.

  Chuck grew edgier by the minute, and after their day of already intense sharing, she needed a return to lighter territory before her nerves snapped. She wanted a chance to enjoy the passion they’d just begun to explore.

  “Pass me the wrench, will you?” Jolynn called from under the open hood. She tweaked the fuel line, her wrist bumping— oil spurted upward, damn it— just grazing the side of her face as she jerked away.

  Chuck slid from underneath the vehicle, oil splattered on the middle of the I Love Italy T-shirt he’d bought from a vendor on their way here. “What did you do to my car, Red?”

  “I didn’t break anything.” She tilted her head to the side. “I thought this was supposed to be top of the line.”

  “What can I say? Government budget cutbacks are a bitch.” His eyes sparkled in the dim light they’d rigged to hang outside once they realized they wouldn’t finish before dark.

  Their time here away from the world was coming to an end. In her head, she acknowledged it. Her heart screamed for more time.

  He wiped the tip of her nose, then rubbed the grease between two fingers. “My God, you’re beautiful.”

  Her ribs went tight and she fought the urge to get sappy, overly emotional, to throw herself in his arms and be a drama queen selfishly demanding more time. “Well, apparently judging by the way you’ve checked out this engine, you could have fixed my car that night in the garage.”

  His smile dimmed. “I won’t apologize for that one. I thought there was someone stalking you that night.”

  She shivered at the threat she hadn’t even known existed then. How many more hidden dangers lurked there when they returned?

  They would have to face all of that soon enough. For now, for their last minutes here, she wanted his smile back.

  “When was your first time, Chuck?”

  His eyebrows shot up toward his hairline. “Excuse me?”

  “When was your first time?” Did he have some James Bond list of conquests, Jolynn the latest in a long line of brainless bimbos? She squelched the thought. While she may not completely understand Chuck, she knew him better than that.

  “Uh, well,” he began, rolling a kink out of one shoulder, “what exactly do you want to know?”

  “Well, you could start with when.”

  He scratched his head.

  “Where?”

  He cleared his throat.

  “Who taught you?”

  He blushed.

  “Oh yeah, and the make and model.”

  Chuck frowned. “Make and model?”

  “Sure.” She grinned wickedly. “The level of difficulty with that first engine is important.”

  “Engine?” He leaned closer, crowding her under the hood.

  “Uh-huh.” She toyed with the neck of his T-shirt, leaving a tiny grease stain along the collar. “When did you first start working on cars?”

  “You want to know when I started working on cars?”

  She blinked fast with overplayed innocence. “What did you think I meant, Chuck?”

  His eyes turned lazy again. “I can see I’ll have to watch myself around you.”

  He inched closer, pressing a lingering, open kiss to her mouth, before slinging an arm around her shoulders. “An old Buick sedan, twenty-one years ago. The nuns’ car broke d
own and they were short of money from taking care of us. They’d gotten desperate and tried to fix the car themselves. They’d spread the engine in pieces on a blanket on the lawn, and I wandered over.” His eyes roved the engine they’d been poring over all afternoon. “I sat on the ground beside them and looked through the repair book, looked at the parts scattered across the blanket, and I just knew. The pieces fit together in my mind.”

  His face cleared and he bent back over the engine, apparently on the trail of something…

  Watching him now, she could envision that little boy, too, and God, she embraced that picture as it made him more human to her. She needed this to be about more than just rescuing her, taking down her dad.

  She stared up at the night sky, blinking back the watery sting. Or at least trying to. It seemed the stars blurred and turned colors seen through the prism of tears. The colors turned brighter, exploding into an umbrella of sparks like the best fireworks ever, and she realized—

  “Shit.” Chuck straightened from under the hood. “We’ve got company. Somebody’s tripped one of the warning flares I rigged at the top of the road.”

  FIFTEEN

  Flare splitting the darkening sky, Chuck reached for his gun in his waistband and shoved Jolynn behind him. “Go back to the cottage.”

  “No. I want to help.” She picked up a wrench— his own personal warrior goddess in blue jeans and a tourist T-shirt.

  Fear churned in the pit of his stomach. Didn’t she know better than to risk her life with cold-blooded killers hunting her down? “You’re wasting time. And if I have to use a nerve pinch on your neck to make you pass out, that will waste even more time. But I’ll do it, because you are not coming with me.”

  Still, she hesitated, the sparks overhead illuminating the indecision on her face.

  “Damn it, Jolynn, you’re a hindrance if I have to watch out for you. Go. Inside.”

  Her mouth went tight but she stopped arguing. He hauled her close to his side, shielding her as they raced to the front of the cottage, scanning the grounds, searching every olive tree and not finding a thing out of the ordinary.

  At the base of the stone steps, he growled low in her ear, “Look in the piano bench. There’s an extra gun stashed there.” He’d been planning to give it to her when they left, and now regretted he hadn’t done it sooner to make sure she knew how to use it. “A Glock. Do you know how to shoot?”

  “Are you kidding?” She kissed his cheek hard and fast. “I’m from Texas. It’s a matter of pride.”

  “Fair enough. Don’t be afraid to use it.”

  There wasn’t time for anything more. Even though he wanted to give her a dozen other reminders to stay away from windows and to lock doors. Hell, he’d like her hidden in a bunker. But his best bet was intercepting the threat before it got anywhere near her.

  The second he heard the door close behind her, he narrowed his focus to the trees, the drive. A soft breeze ruffled the leaves on the trees, showering a handful of olives to the ground as the flare whistled back to earth. Damn it, if he’d gotten the car running sooner, he would have had her out of here. Why hadn’t he realized sooner that when he’d rerouted the GPS tracker to send off incorrect coordinates, he’d created a power surge that wrecked the battery?

  The battery, for God’s sake. So damn simple. Once he disconnected the GPS altogether, he’d already drained the emergency charger. But a few hours with the battery attached to the generator, and they would be out of here.

  He prayed he wasn’t too late.

  As he ducked under branches and wove around gnarled old trunks, his feet smashed unripened fruit that had fallen prematurely to the ground. His weapon drawn and ready, he neared the top of the road where he’d set a trip wire to the flare. A rustle sounded in the leaves ahead of him. His heart drummed in his ears, his muscles tensed for action. He eased around the fat tree.

  The trip wire snared a spindly leg, a wild goat thrashing.

  Chuck sagged back against the trunk. Relief seared his brain. The worst hadn’t happened. They hadn’t been found. Jolynn wouldn’t be stuck in that cabin with a Glock he hoped she could fire as well as she claimed.

  Adrenaline buzzed through his veins as he carefully approached the goat and slashed the wire free. Standing, he eyed the cabin, a sanctuary that was safe for a little longer. He had one night left here. One night left with the woman who’d turned his world upside down, the woman he’d come to care about far more than he should have. Because judging by the way his heart pounded with more than fear for her safety, Chuck knew it was going to hurt a helluva lot more than rehab to walk away from her when this op was over.

  * * *

  In the belly of the Fortuna, Colonel Rex Scanlon leaned over Berg’s shoulder, staring at the computer readouts spitting from the row of computers. “That can’t be right.”

  Berg shook his head, dark circles under his eyes from working twenty-four/ seven for days in the windowless cabin on a section of the deck most passengers avoided like the plague. The noise of the engine room chugged on one side of them while the roll of the ship was more obvious. “I’ve checked and double-checked. That GPS tracker was dead-on in Sicily for days. Then it blipped for a second today, just after sunset, showing up on the Italian mainland before shutting off altogether. So Chuck is either in Sicily or roaming around somewhere on the Italian boot.”

  In the corner, Nuñez propped his feet on the bottom bunk, cradling his arm still in the sling from the bullet he’d taken back at the safe house. “I think he’s screwing with us. I would have bet good money he ditched the car. Now I’m guessing he is just making us think the car was somewhere else. He could have headed to the mainland to evade the threat, then tucked the GPS on a random vehicle in case someone else was trying to track him.”

  Rex propped a shoulder against the top bunk. “So he could use the better-equipped vehicle and didn’t have to risk stealing a car. If anyone could make that happen, it would be Chuck.”

  Nuñez flexed his hand poking from his sling. “I’m just glad it looks like our guy’s alive after all. Things were hairy back there at the safe house. I never saw the ambush coming…”

  Heavy silence settled in the room, interrupted only by the thumping of the engine next door. The thought of Chuck out there… Rex bit back the doubts. He had to trust his instincts, and his gut had told him Chuck was ready for this.

  Berg cleared his throat. “Well, we’re not any closer to finding him since we don’t know which coordinates, if any of them, are correct.”

  “The guy’s good.” Nuñez swung his feet to the limited floor space. “Hey, do you think with all that gear there, you could safely rig up an untraceable phone call home to my wife?”

  Berg adjusted his headset. “I’ll see what I can do for you, my friend.”

  Nuñez’s wedded bliss was no secret— and neither was David Berg’s messy divorce. All the same, Dave didn’t snap back with a jaded response like he would have a year ago. Maybe things were better for the guy?

  He was certainly holding up his end here on the job.

  In the last week, they’d gained physical access to the data cables streaming information from the four slot machines they’d tagged from Chuck’s insights on those repeated codes. When surveillance footage showed the repeat travelers Livia noted using those machines again, finally they knew where to narrow their search. Given cell phone chatter picked up from known terrorist cells about moving the plans for the dirty nuke through the Med, this felt like the time and the place.

  The means.

  Unless someone was yanking their chain with a diversionary tactic.

  Biting back a curse, he decided to take his crummy mood outside. “I need to air out my brain. I’ll be back when I have something of worth to offer here.”

  Rex slipped out the door and into the narrow corridor that echoed with the thump, thump, thump of the engine room. Pretty much the same sound as his raging headache. He rounded a corner and damn near plowed over a woman
in red.

  Livia, leaning against the wall, obviously waiting for him.

  His headache increased.

  He kept his trips to check in with Berg to a minimum, not wanting to draw undue attention to the room. So how had she found him? “What the hell are you doing here?”

  Livia arched away from the wall, scarlet sequined dress stretching over her breasts. “I watch you more than you would think, Colonel.” She tapped his chest, her little black silk bag dangling from her wrist. “We’re supposed to be an item, remember?”

  “I’m not likely to forget.” Especially with her supple body an inch away from his fingers, which were just aching to snap open the halter top of her gown, a surefire cure for his headache and anything else plaguing him. “But we’re not in front of an audience now.”

  Although they were in a hall too damn public for what he wanted to do with her. They’d settled into a friendship of sorts again during their time together on the boat, but he couldn’t forget how badly things had ended between them before. She’d insisted she couldn’t be in a relationship with him because of his feelings for Heather, even years after she’d died. Just thinking about how damn unfair and random life could be made him edgy.

  “What’s this about?”

  Bravado seeped from her along with her smile as she dropped back. “I’m here looking for you because it’s been a depressing afternoon. I wanted to see you, which is selfish, I know. You have bigger worries.”

  She started to turn away, reminding him he was being a selfish ass. No surprise there. But she deserved better, and he would damn well scavenge it up for her sake.

  He caught her hand, turning her back to face him, her fingers impossibly soft and cool. “Upsetting because…”

  She stroked her throat, her silk bag trailing between her breasts. “My contract singing for the Fortuna is up. I knew this was a short-term deal, even more so once I contacted you about…” She glanced around the hall, cutting herself short. The corridor was deserted but she seemed to realize it was still best to guard their words. “And after you’re through, it’s not like they will want to keep me on, even if I did sign another contract, which I won’t. My voice just won’t hold up to another round. Performing again was… magnificent… but it is over. A lot of things will be over once we dock.”