by Brynn Kelly
She scoffed. Laws didn’t do a lot to protect poor kids from abusive parents. Everyone was too busy just surviving to get involved in other people’s business, and those who were paid to care didn’t have enough time or money to get around to everyone. Half the time kids were given straight back to their abusers—she’d seen it a dozen times.
But she’d survived. That day, she’d walked out for good, sick to the stomach about how exhilarating it’d felt to be the person dishing out the violence. Not long after she’d started living on the streets, her boxing coach had become concerned at the anger she was pouring into her training, and suspicious of her dirty appearance at school, and had taken her down to his sister’s sailing club to learn a less-confrontational way to let off steam. For three years she’d lived in an attic above the club rooms, earning her keep by maintaining boats after school, waiting tables and, eventually, teaching kids to sail. She got a sailing scholarship to college.
And then she met Jasper, and was so shocked to get so much apparent affection from another human being that she dropped out. He’d figured out from the beginning she’d do anything to earn the crumbs he threw. He’d recognized her straight away for the damaged, cowering child she’d been, just like Jack had up there on the cliff, and had spent four years exploiting it. Jack wouldn’t do that.
Right. Because she knew him so well.
“Laura?”
“Huh?” She blinked the moisture from her eyes. “Did you say something?”
“How is it you can go campaigning for him, now? Why would you wish a man like that on a whole country?”
Her mind whirred. Good point. She’d gone too far. Shut up about yourself and channel Laura. This is all an act, remember? “I think he regrets it. I think in the end the experience made him a better man, more aware of his weaknesses, more empathetic. That moment I turned on him, it changed him. He repented and apologized, and has spent the last decade or more making up for it. People can change.” Like hell. She’d seen her parents once since she’d left home, in the street, and they’d called her the kind of names she bet Laura’s privileged ears had only heard in an R-rated movie. “And he’s terrified of me turning against him, going public with the truth. He never says no to me anymore. What I want, I get—like this trip.”
In fact, as far as Holly could tell, the real Laura had practically blackmailed her father to indulge her whim to sail around the world, when her only experience of sailing was on a mechanized luxury yacht with a skipper—and probably a cocktail waiter. After he’d forbidden her, she’d announced her plans publicly, in a joint press conference with the grateful environmental charity she’d chosen to patronize. Hamstrung—and aware she was bringing good publicity to his planned presidential run—he’d folded, on the condition they find someone to secretly sail the dangerous parts.
And imagine his relief, now. He could cut Holly loose, knowing he’d left no paper trail, and the story was too far-fetched for the media or authorities to believe, should she approach them.
Still, he had an awkward problem on his hands, with his daughter’s kidnapping broadcast live on the internet. Maybe the truth had already come out and Jack was the only one who didn’t know it yet.
He leaned back, supporting himself with one hand on the grass, cradling her foot with the other. Turned out she liked the contact, dammit, and not just because it fit her plans. It felt good to have someone touch her in a way that suggested he cared—even if only because he needed to keep her alive for his own reasons. Her body was happy to take what it could get. Didn’t mean her mind had to buy into it.
“It’s not something you can escape that easily,” he said to her foot, so gently it made something ping inside her chest. No one spoke to her like that. “It’s still inside you, still eating at you. As tough as you get, inside you’re still that beaten puppy.”
How the hell could he read her that clearly? Unless... She tilted her head. “We’re not just talking about me here, are we?”
His eyes flicked back to find hers, fine brown lines bunching at his temples. For the first time he looked less than impenetrable. That was encouraging.
“I showed you mine,” she ventured, softly. “Did your parents give you hell, too?”
He frowned, his gaze barreling into hers for a full minute. A pair of dragonflies shimmered and shot through the air between them. She stayed quiet, setting her expression to neutral.
He broke eye contact, and gazed at the jungle bordering the clearing, slowly shaking his head. She guessed it wasn’t the trees he was seeing. She didn’t dare even breathe aloud.
“I don’t remember my parents, don’t know if I had brothers or sisters,” he said, finally.
She silently filled her lungs. Breakthrough.
“We fled a civil war when I was a child and got separated, or so I was told. I figure they were killed. I got to a refugee camp, and became prey for whoever could find a use for me. I got involved in bad things.”
Her heart twisted. Jesus. He’d been as vulnerable as she was when Jasper came into her life—so starved of love and company she didn’t recognize when it came with a hidden agenda. And she’d been an adult, a nineteen-year-old who’d already seen too much. Jack had been just a boy. “What kind of things?”
“A good girl like you wouldn’t want to know.”
“But you became a good man. How?”
“Why would you think I’m a good man?” Bitterness darkened his voice. “I kidnapped you. I’m holding you for ransom.”
“You’re putting a dressing on my foot. It’s kind of ruining the whole Captain Hook image.”
He flinched and looked down at her foot, as if he’d forgotten. He let it go, and shuffled away.
She leaned back, her elbows on the table. “Or maybe you’re just waiting for me to drop my guard and then you’ll break out the nasty juice.” Not far off what Jasper did. Right there was a good reminder to keep alert, no matter how gentle Jack had been just now.
“I’ll do what?”
“You’ll get mean.”
“You’d better watch out, then.” He jumped to his feet. The sun had moved around and she squinted up at his towering frame. “It’s shower time, princess.”
“What?” Heat struck her cheeks.
“For you.” A smile played at his lips. “Alone. I’m not that kind of pirate, remember?”
“Of course not. I didn’t think you were... I wasn’t meaning...” For a split second there she’d totally imagined him naked and wet—and pressed against her. Good grief.
He laughed. “You need to wash off any remaining toxins.”
Damn. He knew just what had been going through her mind. This seduction really was flowing the wrong way. “You need me out of the way for five minutes. Would this have anything to do with your secret hiding place for a certain sat phone and laptop?”
“Like you said, trust is an issue between us. I want to see the media chatter about your disappearance.”
Crap.
“You’ve been looking for the comms, haven’t you? Believe me, you won’t find them. Bathroom.” He pointed. “I’ll clean this up. We’d be crétins to let this food spoil, and we don’t want to attract vermin. A slow loris would literally kill for a leaf of spinach.”
She hoisted and retucked her towel, stacked a bunch of plates in her arms and headed to the cabin, going easy on her foot. “There’s something making you do this. Someone.”
“Making me tidy up?”
“You know what I mean.” She glanced over her shoulder. “You’re not denying it.”
“Let’s just say it’s in everybody’s interests if everything goes to plan this week.”
Which it wouldn’t. No way was that ransom going to be paid. But surely a search would be launched, assuming the senator wouldn’t just come clean and risk the political fallout.
>
Meanwhile, here they were, swimming in the lagoon, picnicking on the lawn, about to do the washing up and then some googling. Oh, God, what if the internet revealed that the real Laura was safe? She stumbled on the steps. He caught her elbow, as she steadied her load. Her towel gave. With no hands to spare, she could only let it slip to the ground.
“Don’t worry, princess. I won’t look.” She stood to the side as he passed her on the narrow step, his chest brushing the damp lace covering one of her nipples. It immediately tightened, the traitor. She caught her breath.
“I don’t know if I can handle it,” she said, quickly. “Watching the coverage on the net, I mean.”
At the screen door, he turned, an eyebrow raised. “I thought we’d established you’re not the sensitive type.”
She maneuvered her elbows to hide her body’s absurd reaction. “I thought we established you weren’t going to look.”
He quickly turned, bending slightly as he battled to keep his own armload in control. Interesting. So maybe he did feel the chemistry between them. She’d feel better if it wasn’t just her long-neglected hormones spinning out of control.
“Seriously,” she said. “Can we not google?”
“Shower,” he ordered huskily. “I’ll tell you the highlights.”
He disappeared into the cabin. She stood there, paralyzed. Damn. Could she distract him, invite him into the shower? No—too soon, too obvious, and it would just delay the inevitable, not prevent it. Surely, if the truth had been revealed on the internet, someone would have turned up to tell Jack by now—and possibly to kill her. She had to take a gamble that her cover was still intact, that the senator was still trying to figure out a course of action, that she still had time to drag Jack over to her side.
She’d know soon enough.
Chapter 9
Seated at the picnic table, Rafe connected the laptop and sat phone. He brushed a thread of spider silk from the phone battery and clipped it in. Laura would never think to look in rocks directly behind a web guarded by a hairy palm-sized spider. Even now, the creature would be recreating the broken strands. It’d do the same after he put the gear back shortly. Nature covering human tracks.
No response from Flynn. Not what he’d hoped for, but just as he’d expected.
He typed in Laura Hyland and Jasper. A few fan sites brought up random hits, but nothing that would indicate a boyfriend by that name. The woman had vulnerabilities from her childhood, so it would make sense for her to come under the spell of the wrong man. But she’d grown up in the public eye, and somehow the media had missed a boyfriend she was so obsessed with that she’d tattooed his name on her back and left it there the entire ten years she’d been with Logan? And somehow everyone had missed the fact her father had abused her? He tried Laura Hyland and tattoo. It brought up a hit on a fan who’d tattooed her face onto his shoulder. But nothing about Laura having a tattoo. She had to have been photographed in a bikini. How could no one have noticed?
He got up to the b of Laura Hyland and bikini when she emerged from the villa, dressed again in the too-short shorts and the blue tank that echoed her eyes. He hurriedly closed the page and opened a fresh one.
“Find anything?” There was a skip in her voice. Perhaps she was choked up at the thought of reading about her kidnapping. She was good at hiding her fear, but she had fear, all right.
“Just about to search.”
The bench squeaked as she sat beside him. If he relaxed his knee a fraction it would touch her smooth thigh. He made a show of moving, as if getting comfortable, and settled farther from her. She shuffled closer. Damn. Her hair smelled of coconut.
“You’re lead story on CNN,” he said.
“So are you.”
The top photo was a split frame—Laura on one side kneeing Uriel’s face, in a fuzzy still from the yacht’s above-deck webcam, and Rafe on the other, snapped as he sprinted across the deck in a blur of black clothing. His shoulders relaxed. They couldn’t identify him from that.
“That was a nice move,” he said.
She rubbed her knee. “I’m out of practice. Still feeling that one.” Her posture had deflated a little, as if the coverage brought her relief, too. Was she flattered that her kidnapping was such a big deal? Twenty-four hours ago he’d have believed that of Laura Hyland, the vain publicity seeker. But he didn’t believe it of the woman sitting far too close to him right now. That woman had her head on straight. You can’t believe everything you read, she’d said. No kidding.
He scrolled through the story. The false trails Gabriel’s men had laid were working—the official search was centered in the wrong place, assuming they’d escaped by boat alone. There’d been sightings of Laura in places he’d never heard of. No one was looking for a couple of newlyweds at a honeymoon resort a hundred kilometers from the kidnap site.
“You’re quite the sensation,” he said. “Candlelight vigils all over America.”
Further down was the photo Gabriel’s soldier had taken of Laura after the kidnap, blown out badly by the flash, and a picture of her at a glamorous function, her eyes ringed in her trademark dark makeup and her skin pale as paper.
“You look very different without makeup.” He had an urge to touch the freckles scattered over her face. They didn’t deserve to be hidden.
“Do I?” She touched her cheek, her forehead screwing up. She didn’t know how beautiful she was? Had her father made her feel that worthless? Rafe couldn’t abide any injustice, but an adult who tormented a child...
“I mean that in a good way.”
“Oh.”
“Your eyes look bluer without it. You look healthier. I’ll never understand why beautiful women wear so much makeup.” Simone would never leave the house without lipstick on, even when they were going windsurfing.
Her eyelashes flickered down. “It’s a mask,” she said, so quickly he could barely pick out the words. “You’d wear makeup, too, if photographers were outside your door 24/7.”
“Would I?” he said, a smile pricking at the corner of his mouth.
“Well, maybe not you, but...” She grinned, the flirt returning. A cover for the hurt? “Plenty of men wear makeup.”
“Another thing I don’t get. Ready to scroll down?”
She nodded. A second later she stiffened. He read quickly, catching up. Her father had called a press conference and announced he wouldn’t pay. “America does not negotiate with terrorists. My baby girl will come home, alive, I promise you that. But these evildoers will not get their way. They will feel the full force of American justice.”
Great. So Rafe was a terrorist now, as well as a kidnapper and pirate. A day earlier he might have felt a pang of pity for the senator—after all, Rafe was doing to him what Gabriel was doing to Rafe. But not now, not after Laura’s confession.
“He’s bluffing,” Rafe said. “Governments will always deny they pay ransoms, to be seen to discourage other kidnappers. He’ll be negotiating privately.” He’d better be.
“You think?”
“Believe me, a father would do everything he could to get his son back.”
“Son?”
Merde. “Daughter.”
A beat of silence. “Holy shit, Jack. How old is he?”
“Who?” His chest tightened.
“Your son. They’ve got a hold over you, something big. I’ve been wondering what it is. Not your wife—she’s out of your life—and you said you don’t have other family. They’ve got your son.”
“Enough.” He shut down the laptop and switched off the phone. How could he make such a basic mistake? She was getting under his skin. He’d never let anyone in, not even Simone, to her endless frustration. So why did he feel as if he could spill his secrets to Laura, of all women?
He wasn’t used to people showing an interest in
him beyond what he could do with a gun. Maybe he’d spent too much time around legionnaires since Simone had died. In the Legion no one asked questions, no one gave a damn about where you were from or what you’d done in the past. Everyone had something to hide. When you joined, your history was wiped. That’s why he fitted in, when he couldn’t fit in to normal life.
“You’ve been blackmailed to do this—to kidnap me—haven’t you? To get your son back.”
“Get back in the bathroom,” he said, shoving the equipment in a thick plastic bag, his back to her.
“What does it matter if I know this? In fact, isn’t it better that I know this? It explains a lot.”
“The less you know about me, the better. I can’t afford to have my identity revealed.”
“You’re safe there. All I know is that your name is not Jack, you’re not a pirate, you speak French and English and another language I can’t identify, you’re a captain in some military organization and you have a son.”
Imbécile! He needed to shut his mouth. “Bathroom, now.”
“Jack, maybe I can help, maybe we can work together. We don’t have to be enemies.”
He spun. “We are enemies, whether we want to be or not. The only way you can help is to do what I tell you.” Big blue eyes blinked. He’d roared the words, lost control of himself. She held her stance strong, her gaze steady and glittering with defiance. If he stepped half a foot closer he could capture her pink lips, press her body against his once more, feel alive again, human again, wash away his fear for Theo and his anger for Gabriel and escape into this woman who played him and stood up to him and intrigued him and made him feel things he hadn’t felt in a long time. “Bathroom, now,” he repeated, his voice as dark and loaded as he felt.
She cocked her head, then silently turned and strolled to the villa, her spine straight as a legionnaire on parade. He exhaled. Wise woman.
* * *
Holly’s heart thrummed as she closed the bathroom door and leaned on it. So that explained the haunted expression that occasionally flickered over Jack’s face—his son had been dragged into this mess, and Jack was being forced to keep Holly captive. His silence was as good as written confirmation. What would happen to the boy when the senator didn’t pay? What would happen to her, and to Jack?
