“I can’t believe you would let your people play around with that stuff, much less inject it.”
“Only into those who show up at my gates and gain entrance to my hacienda under false pretenses,” Cordell returned. “Like you and the gentleman posing as your fiancé.”
She threw Wolf a helpless glance, but tried to brazen it out. “Who says he’s posing?”
“No need to continue the pretense, my dear. From what I read about your fiancé when I researched you, the real Kevin James isn’t the type to strap a snub-nosed police special to his ankle.”
She couldn’t argue with that. Wolf didn’t bother to try.
“Let’s all cut the act, Cordell or Caulder or whatever the hell you want us to call you. Nina knows who you are. You know—or think you do—who I am. The only question left to answer is whether you’ll make it easy on yourself and surrender voluntarily.”
“And if I choose not to?” he inquired with silky menace.
The two men measured each other. Stripped of every semblance of civility, they emanated a dangerous aura that raised the hairs on the back of Nina’s neck.
“You’re going down, Cordell. One way or another.”
“If I do, I’ll take you and Dr. Grant with me.”
The threat was real—very real, considering the gun still leveled at them by the man at the bar.
Gulping, Nina tightened her grip on the marble nymph. She’d played some sports in high school and college but would never claim to have much of a throwing arm. Maybe if she got closer…
She didn’t have to feign a case of the jitters as she paced nervously. Her throat tight, she responded to Cordell’s lethal promise to take her and Wolf down with him.
“Like you did Senator DeWitt?” she asked.
“Ah, yes. Beautiful, clever Janice.” What looked like genuine regret crossed the man’s face. “So tragic, her suicide, and so completely unnecessary.”
“If it was suicide,” Wolf countered grimly.
“It was, I assure you. I certainly had no reason to dispose of her. She gave me what I wanted.”
“Let’s talk about that, Cordell. You have to know we’re not going to let you hand the disk you stole over to the Russians. Or anyone else, for that matter.”
“Aren’t you? Well, we’ll see soon enough. Are you sure I can’t pour either of you a drink? I brought the Azteca with me. We have time to indulge before Alekseev arrives.”
Wolf didn’t bat an eye, but Nina wasn’t as skilled at masking her emotions. Cordell read her dismay like an open book.
“Yes, my dear. After the incident in the plaza this afternoon, the purchaser and I decided to move up delivery of the merchandise. We’ll make the exchange tonight, not tomorrow night as planned. Then Sebastian Cordell will disappear, just as Stephen Caulder did. So, I’m afraid, will you and your companion.”
Oh, God! Did Wolf’s people know about the schedule change? Had he managed to get word to them, or to Mannie Diaz? Or the people who were supposed to have met her at the airport? They must have suspected the worst when she and Wolf didn’t show. They had to be trying to locate them. If not…
Nausea churned in her stomach again. Swallowing hard, she forced herself to take a few more paces.
“I think I’ll take that drink after all.”
“Very good, my dear. Let’s have the Azteca, shall we?”
Cordell went to the bar, taking care not to block his underling’s line of fire. With great deliberation he lifted the shell-shaped bottle from its shelf.
“Alekseev was the one who tipped me to the incident in the plaza, by the way. He didn’t have all the details. Only that a Norte Americana and her companion had tangled with two of his men.”
He ran a fond glance over the spikes of the shell-shaped bottle. Almost like a lover admiring his mistress. Or, Nina thought with a sudden kick to her pulse, a man with a fortune in his hands.
“Alekseev was unable to speak with his men, but he did obtain a description of the American woman and her companion from the sales clerk who witnessed the event. When Alekseev relayed that description to me, I knew immediately it had to be you two.”
Nina barely heard him. The medallion in the bottle’s center had her full attention. She’d thought it was bronze when Cordell had flashed his precious Azteca in the bright sunlight, but the fluorescent lighting gave it a different hue. More slate colored, and smooth. Very smooth. Much like…
“Señor Cordell?”
The sudden appearance of a crewmember jerked Nina’s attention away from the medallion. “Yes?”
“We’re approaching the rendezvous point.”
Chapter 12
The rendezvous! Dear God!
Her heart in her throat, Nina whipped her horrified gaze from the crewman to Wolf. He’d pushed to his feet, his muscles coiled and his eyes dangerous.
“If he takes a single step,” Cordell instructed the gun-toting henchman still seated at the bar, “shoot the woman.”
The threat rooted Wolf to the polished teak flooring.
“Yes, I thought that would stop you,” Cordell mused before giving Nina an appraising glance. “You’re quite a surprise, my dear. When we first met, my instincts told me you were ripe for the plucking. The research I did on you confirmed those instincts. Even after you brought your so-called fiancé for a visit, I sensed a fire in you that had yet to be tapped. Now…”
“Now?” she echoed, her jaw tight.
“Now,” he said with a knowing smile, “it appears our friend here has done some serious tapping.”
She certainly couldn’t argue with that. The stolen hour with Wolf before they’d left for the airport had rocked her world. In a blinding flash of insight, she knew that whatever happened in the next moments or hours, she’d tasted more of life and love with Rafe Blackstone during the past few days than she ever had before.
“You’re quite magnificent,” Cordell continued with mingled admiration and regret, “prepared to do battle for your man, armed only with my water naiad.”
She’d forgotten all about the damn statue still clutched in her hand. It took everything she had not to fling it at Sebastian’s head as he replaced his precious bottle of Azteca in its protective rack.
“I’m sorry, but I must ask you both to sit down and wait quietly while I greet my business associate.”
With the small, round barrel aimed at her midsection, Nina gave up all hope of getting close enough to disable the gunman. Sebastian sighed with audible relief when she retreated to the leather sectional. She eased down beside Wolf and placed the water nymph on the brass-trimmed coffee table.
“When my business is concluded,” Sebastian promised, “we’ll have our drink.”
“You know what you can do with that drink.”
Ignoring her sarcasm, he issued a final admonition to his henchman to keep a close eye on them and mounted the polished teak stairs to the upper deck. The tension he left behind was so thick that Nina jumped when Wolf covered her hand to give it a squeeze.
“That stuff Cordell’s men pumped into you?” he asked in a murmur. “It didn’t leave any residual effects?”
“Not that I can feel.”
This is so surreal, she thought wildly, as she gripped Wolf’s hand. Almost like an out-of-body experience. Here they were, ensconced on a cloud-soft leather sofa in a luxurious salon fit for a Saudi prince. With a gun pointed in their direction. After a murderous bastard calmly announced he intended to dispose of them. Yet Wolf’s primary concern at the moment appeared to be her health.
Fighting a rising panic, Nina kept her voice low and one eye on their watchdog. “What’s the plan? What’re we going to do?”
“Sit tight, for the moment.”
That wasn’t exactly what she wanted to hear.
“What about your contacts? Mannie Diaz? The people who were supposed to meet us at the airport? Were you able to signal any of them?”
“No, but we’ve had Cordell under surveillance since th
e start of this op. They know what’s happening.”
“So why…?” She stopped and took a deep breath to contain the hysteria that threatened to spiral out of control. “So why aren’t they here?”
“They will be.”
His utter confidence should have reassured her. Unfortunately it contrasted dramatically with the lethal calculation that leapt into his eyes when the deck beneath their feet gave a delicate shudder and the boat began to slow.
Wolf ignored the grinding pain from the blow to his temple, ignored the tension that had been gnawing at his insides from the moment he’d come awake, ignored everything but the woman he’d dragged into this mess.
“Listen to me, Nina.”
He’d been waiting for this moment. The crew would be absorbed with maneuvering their luxury craft into position alongside whatever boat Alekseev had chartered. Cordell was on deck, overseeing operations.
“We don’t have much time now. Here’s what I want you to do. Jump up, cross your arms over your middle and act scared, real scared.”
“Act?” she squeaked.
With another shudder, the yacht came to a dead stop. It was now or never.
“Jump up,” Wolf murmured without showing any hint of the urgency knotting his gut. “Grab your middle, then keel over in a dead faint. Got that?”
“I…”
“Now, Pumpkin.”
“Oh, God!”
The wild panic in her eyes when she lunged off the sofa was so vivid it startled even Wolf for a second. More to the point, it brought their watchdog’s gun up with a jerk.
“I can’t take this! I can’t!”
Wolf rose as well and reached out as if to soothe her.
“No! Don’t touch me! I’m—” she gripped her middle and bent over, moaning “—I’m going to be sick.”
“Christ! She needs water,” he snarled at their heavy-set guard. “Agua!”
Nina sank to her knees between the sofa and coffee table, retching with such realism that Wolf knew in that instant she wasn’t acting. He angled his body between her and the guard and shouted over his shoulder. “Agua!”
The guard hesitated for two or three agonizing seconds before sliding off his stool and moving behind the counter. As he yanked at the door of the bar fridge, his gun never wavered and his eyes didn’t leave the two of them for a second. The only opportunity that arose, the only opportunity Wolf knew he’d get, came when the guard rounded the counter again and moved just close enough to toss a plastic water bottle across the intervening space.
He shoved Nina down with one hand. The other swept the marble nymph off the table. The statue passed the water bottle in midfight. It caught the guard right between the eyes before crashing to the deck and splintering into a hundred pieces.
Wolf came right behind it. He lunged low and fast as the guard stumbled back, firing wildly. The first shot whizzed past Wolf’s ear and thudded into the bulkhead behind him. The second tore through his upper arm. He didn’t feel the hit, never noticed the pain, as he slammed his fist into the man’s face.
Bone crunched on bone. Blood spurted from the thug’s pulped nose, adding to the torrent gushing from the cut in his forehead. His eyes rolled back in his head. With a strangled grunt, he slumped to the deck.
Wolf wrenched away the man’s weapon and spun on one heel. “Let’s go!”
“Go where?” Nina gasped, scrambling up from her crouch.
“Back to the fantail.” He grabbed her arm to haul her with him. “I want you over the side and in the water before the real fireworks start.”
“In the water?” Her feet dragged. “With sharks and barracuda and stingrays?”
“I’ll put you in a launch.” He listened for the thud of feet running on the deck above them. Cordell and company had to have heard the shots, had to be on their way…
Wolf broke off as the sounds he’d been expecting exploded. Footsteps pounded on the deck above. Shouts rang out. A scuffle sounded at the top of the forward stairs.
He shoved Nina toward the salon’s aft exit. They catapulted into the narrow corridor bordered by staterooms and ran like hell. Behind them, a shrill, agonized cry rose above the general tumult. “My naiad!”
With Nina in the lead, they rounded a corner and smacked into Cordell’s white-coated steward. Enrique stumbled back, his eyes bugging, but before he could let out more than a gasp, Wolf clipped him with the gun butt. Enrique went down like a felled ox. “This way.”
Another turn, and they sprinted the last few yards to the stairs leading up to the aft lounge and deck. Nina was panting when they burst out onto the deck, with its sweeping views. As far as she could see, the Pacific undulated in shades of deep purple and the darkest green. Squinting, she made out faint lights in the distance.
Very faint lights!
In the very far distance!
“Wolf, I don’t think…”
“Quiet!”
He thrust out an arm, shielding her behind him while he skimmed a quick glance along the yacht’s starboard side. Nina peered over his shoulder and gulped when she spotted a deep-sea fishing boat tethered to Cordell’s craft by mooring lines. Two individuals with obvious Slavic features stood with Uzis at the ready in the boat’s open deck. The Russians had most definitely arrived! “Over here.”
Wolf propelled her toward the small launch hoisted on davits on the portside. She could hear men shouting below, doors slamming one after another. Cordell and his crew, checking the staterooms and galley, she guessed. Her heart in her throat, she watched while Wolf ripped off the launch’s cover and released the winch to let it splash down into the sea. It bobbed just a few feet below the rail.
“Here you go,” Wolf said urgently as he unlatched the rail gate.
She approached the opening, feeling ridiculously helpless. “I don’t know how to start the engine.”
With a muttered oath, he dropped into the launch and pumped a button a few times. When the engine kicked to life he held up a hand. “Now, Nina.”
She swallowed—hard—and stepped down. The small boat lurched under her feet.
Don’t think about the motion!
Do not think about it!
Fighting fear and incipient nausea, she let Wolf position her at the wheel. He dropped a quick, hard kiss on her lips.
“Now go.”
“Come with me,” she begged.
Too late. He’d already swung back aboard. Her last sight of his broad back was as he raced over to the port side. To show himself to the Russians, she guessed, with a sick feeling in her heart, and direct pursuit away from her.
Only this time, she couldn’t charge back to help him. She was puttering through dark, rolling swells in this friggin’ boat. She could barely steer the thing, much less use it as battering ram.
Where were his friends? What were they waiting for? Why in hell didn’t they…?
The answer to her frantic questions blazed out of the night with sudden, blinding potency. One after another, high-intensity spotlights stabbed through the darkness. Five. Eight. Ten or more! Completely surrounding the tethered yacht and fishing boat.
The spots came from rubber rafts, she saw before she threw up an arm to block the eye-searing glare. Small, silent rubber rafts that had come in under the yacht’s sophisticated radars! With machine guns mounted in their bows! Blinded but gleeful, Nina did a mental happy dance while a voice blasted through a bullhorn.
“Ahoy! Yo soy teniente Escobar, Marina de Guerra de México. Estamos veniendo a bordo.”
Her glee turned to acid in the next second. She was sure she would hear the stutter of machine gun fire, braced herself for a sea battle of epic proportions. Her knuckles went bone white where she gripped the wheel. She didn’t move, didn’t breathe until an answering shout rang out from the yacht.
“Ahoy, Lieutenant Escobar. Come aboard.”
It took three fumbling tries, but she finally figured out how to cut the engine. Then there was nothing to do but hunker down, watch bla
ck-suited, heavily armed Navy SEALS scramble aboard the yacht and wait for rescue.
Not until Nina had clambered back aboard the yacht did she discover the reason Cordell and the Russians had given up without a battle.
“Has Cordell surrendered the disk?” she asked Wolf as he helped her from the bobbing launch.
“No.” His jaw worked. “We seem to have a classic Mexican standoff.”
“Huh?”
“You’ll see.”
He escorted her back to the main salon, where she found Cordell and a tall, wiry individual she guessed was Alekseev. They faced a black-suited and black-faced Mannie, a willowy blonde in a wet suit that fit her like a second skin, and an array of heavily armed Navy personnel. The tension was so heavy it almost hit Nina in the face, but—unbelievably!—Sebastian greeted her with a smile.
“Ah, there you are, my dear. I wondered where you’d hidden yourself.” His smile grew somewhat strained. “I’m not surprised you were reluctant to face me after smashing my little nymph. How unfortunate that you injured one of my men in the process.”
“Most unfortunate,” she retorted. “I would have much preferred it had injured you.”
“But why?” Sorrowfully, he shook his silver-maned head. “I offered you nothing but the hospitality of my home and my boat, which any number of witnesses will attest you accepted.”
Incredulous, she gaped at him, at Wolf, at him again.
“You’re kidding, right?”
“Not at all.”
“This is the line you’re taking?” She couldn’t believe it! The man’s gall was incredible. “You’re suggesting we were guests aboard your little floating pleasure palace?”
“Not suggesting.”
“You’re crazy! You can’t just shrug away the bruise on Wolf’s temple or the drug you pumped into me.”
Sebastian shot his cuffs, looking coolly unperturbed. “Again, I can produce any number of witnesses who will confirm the man you introduced to me as your fiancé came aboard with that bruise. And if there are residual drugs in your system, I can only hope most sincerely that you kick whatever habit you’ve developed.”
Risky Engagement Page 12
