by Nina Bruhns
For a nanosecond, Rebel debated turning off the thing. But she was working, and her SAC needed to be able to get ahold of her at all times. He insisted on it. Especially this morning. This op was high profile and he wanted constant updates.
The phone vibrated again.
On the other hand, Captain Montgomery, the USCG operation commander, and ensigns Chet and Sampson, the two other über-macho Coast Guard mopes who rounded out today’s detail, were already disgusted enough that the FBI had sent a girl to do what they considered a man’s job. Best not to lower herself even further in their estimation by taking a personal call while on duty. She let it go to voice mail.
“Stand ready, people,” Captain Montgomery ordered over the comm.
The RB-M slowed. Overhead, the boat’s loudspeaker crackled. “This is the United States Coast Guard. Please prepare to be boarded for inspection,” Montgomery’s voice called.
Her cell vibrated again. Bother. Helena Middleton had the tenacity of a junkyard dog.
Seriously. No sane person would pick up right now. On the other hand, Rebel figured she had a good forty-five seconds until the real action started. If she answered now, at least she’d have a great excuse to hang up quickly and stop it from ringing at an even worse time.
With an impatient sigh, she muted her comm headset, made sure no one was looking, and tapped her discreet Bluetooth earpiece. “I’m in the middle of something, Helena.”
“Good lord, sweetie, about time you answered!” Helena’s sweet-as-honey South Carolina accent held just the slightest hint of rebuke. She and Rebel had been friends—well, their parents had been, anyway—growing up among the old-money, South-of-Broad Charleston aristocrats, then coincidentally both of them had moved to Manhattan four years ago, resulting in their being roommates for the first couple of years in New York. Their ultra-conservative Southern parents had been pleased neither girl had been subjected to the corrupting influence of a Yankee roommate. It was mortifying enough Rebel had joined the FBI instead of marrying a good old Southern boy from a good old Southern family. That had nearly killed them. As for Helena’s parents, well, God help her if they ever found out she’d quit that Cordon Bleu cooking school long ago.
The Coast Guard RB-M eased about to approach the yacht. Ensigns Chet and Sampson tossed lines across, securing the two vessels together for boarding.
Rebel tried to cut her phone call short. “I’m sorry, Helena, but I really have to—”
“Why, Rebel Haywood,” Helena scolded cheerfully. A perfect Southern belle, Helena did everything cheerfully. Rebel could take lessons. “Do you have any earthly idea how many times I’ve tried calling you lately?”
Actually, she did. Fourteen. Fifteen, if you counted the last voice mail. Her relationship with Helena was . . . complicated. Which was why she’d been routinely ducking the other woman’s calls for the past month. Okay. Maybe two.
Montgomery strode past Rebel to the railing and yelled across the gap to the swarthy, bearded captain of Allah’s Paradise. “Captain Brett Montgomery, here. Permission to come aboard, sir?”
“Yes, sure. Come ahead,” the man answered in heavily accented English.
“Seriously, I can’t talk now,” Rebel told Helena under her breath, reaching up for the off button behind her ear.
“Keep weapons secured unless provoked, people.” Montgomery’s quiet order sounded over her comm headset. “On my order.”
“Oh, this’ll just take a second,” Helena’s drawl insisted stubbornly in the other ear. “I promise.”
Sweet goodnight. “Talk fast. There may be gunplay,” Rebel warned dryly, giving up. Not that she really expected any, but one could always hope. It wasn’t Helena’s fault she was clueless and obstinate as the day was long. She’d been brought up that way. Her parents were even more myopic than Rebel’s. A difficult feat.
“Bless your heart,” her friend said with a perfectly modulated laugh. Everything Helena did was always perfect. “Keeping the country safe as usual, I presume?”
At Montgomery’s signal, Chet and Sampson vaulted easily over the rail onto the other vessel and came to attention, followed by the captain, who flicked a withering look back at Rebel. Well, more precisely at her outfit.
She returned his smile through her teeth.
She’d drawn this assignment after arriving at NFO—the FBI’s Norfolk Field Office—for work this morning, and therefore had of necessity reported to the USCG dock located in the neighboring harbor of Portsmouth wearing a sea-foam green skirted linen suit and strappy heels.
Yeah. That had gone over well.
Montgomery had issued a long-suffering sigh, thrust a pair of chum-riddled puke-yellow sneaks two sizes too large at her, snorted at her inappropriate pencil skirt, and wordlessly led her onto the waiting Coast Guard RB-M response boat.
She now unhooked the latch of the gangway gate and swung it open, hiked her skirt up and jumped inelegantly across onto the rolling deck of the yacht. “What do you need, Helena?” she asked, fixing to hang up.
“Oh, it’s not me who needs you,” Helena said blithely. “It’s Alex.”
At the smug pronouncement, Rebel almost tripped over one too-big sneaker. She grabbed the rail for balance, missed, and nearly went down again as the gate smacked closed on her behind. “What?”
Until six weeks ago, Alex Zane had been Helena’s fiancé. He had also been Rebel’s best friend. Operative phrase: had been. Talk about complicated. She’d been ducking his calls even longer than two months. Including twice just last night. Seriously. Like she was going to talk to him before bedtime? So she could dream of him all night? Again? She might have it bad, but she wasn’t that nuts.
And oh, yeah. For the record? Her avoidance had nothing to do with that steamy almost-kiss she and Alex had shared in a very weak moment last December. Nor had her hasty move to Norfolk within days of that weak moment. Because of that weak moment.
She slammed her eyes shut. Okay, what. Ever. So maybe it had.
“What’s wrong with Alex?” she asked Helena, those two phone calls yesterday suddenly changing character. “Is he okay?”
All at once, the air was rent by machine-gun fire.
Whoa! Two men burst out from the bridge of the yacht, yelling in guttural Arabic as bullets sprayed the deck wildly. Instantly, Chet and Sampson returned fire. The swarthy yacht captain went down with a bloodcurdling scream.
“Take them, people!” Captain Montgomery yelled.
“Gotta go,” Rebel told Helena as she rolled for cover and whipped out her Glock 23. Bullets splintered the wooden deck where she’d stood just seconds before.
Another burst of gunfire had Ensign Sampson staggering backward, his pristine white uniform blossoming red. He fell with a crash. Rebel quickly ducked out from her cover, returning fire as she grabbed Sampson’s collar and dragged him behind a tubalike vent.
Pock-pock-pock came Chet’s covering fire. Followed by a howl from one of the assailants. With an ugly sneer and an uglier curse, the third Arab shooter spun and ran straight toward Rebel.
“I don’t think so,” she muttered and took aim. But before she could pull the trigger, he screamed and grabbed his side. His gun skittered across the deck, along with streamers of blood. For a second, all was silent.
Montgomery ran and turned him onto his back. He appeared dead. Ensign Chet tackled the first man with a set of handcuffs. Rebel checked Sampson’s pulse. It was weak but steady, thank God.
After gingerly scooping up and pocketing the dead man’s gun in case he wasn’t as dead as he looked, she cautiously crept forward and glanced around. Something moved, a flash of black in her peripheral vision. She whirled. Nothing there. Was that a splash? Or just the slap of the waves trapped between the two vessels . . . ?
She crouch-ran to the yacht’s main salon door, which stood wide open, waving back and forth with the rise and fall of the ocean swells. Hmm. Maybe she had seen someone running past. She peeked into the salon. Clear. She ducked down an
d crept through the salon door, halting to listen carefully.
“Rebel?” Helena’s hesitant voice sounded in her ear.
She jumped, startled. Sweet goodnight. She had totally forgotten about the phone call. Heart pounding, she reached for her earpiece. “Not now, Helena.”
“Alex needs to speak with you,” the other woman said before she could hit the off button. “Right away.”
“He’s got my number,” Rebel bit out, hating that she couldn’t make herself just hang up on her friend. She squinted and peered deeper into the salon. Not that she and Helena had ever been genuinely close friends. Especially after she and Alex had become engaged. That had killed any chance of a real friendship.
“I have your number, too,” Helena returned with an edge of accusation. “You never answer either of our calls.”
A small thread of guilt tightened around Rebel’s heart, then twanged painfully. She had been close with Alex. But he was the one who’d ended their friendship when she’d attempted to move on by finding herself another man. Admittedly, she had not chosen wisely—the man being Wade Montana, her boss. Former boss. But that really wasn’t Alex’s concern. Or relevant at the moment.
She eased out a measured breath. “Fine. Tell Alex I’ll answer next time.”
“Tell him yourself,” Helena said. “He’s not really speaking to me.”
“Leaving a man at the altar will do that,” Rebel muttered, tilting her head at a strange sound.
But other than a huff on the phone, all she heard was the tick tick ticking of the door waving back and forth.
She frowned. Or was the ticking noise on her phone? It sounded more electronic than—It was coming from her phone. But—
“Rebel, there’s really something you should know about Alex and me—”
With a sudden start she recognized the sound.
Oh, no. No, no, no.
She hit the off button for real this time, and sprinted out of the salon.
“Abandon ship!” she yelled, rushing toward Chet and Montgomery as they led the shooter who was still alive toward the Coast Guard vessel. “Bomb!”
The two ensigns halted for a nanosecond, then sprang into action. They shoved the injured prisoner through the gate onto the RB-M, and Montgomery secured him to the rail with a Flexicuff. Rebel did a sliding dive to grab Sampson’s collar again, hauling him furiously toward the gangway opening.
Chet rushed to untie the lines while Montgomery made a dash for the RB-M’s bridge. Sampson groaned as the engines roared to life. Chet grabbed his torso, helping her hoist him over the final barrier.
“Everyone onboard?” Captain Montgomery yelled from behind the wheel.
“We’re good!” Chet yelled back. There was no time to go back for the two dead men. “Go!”
She and Chet both landed on their butts and collided hard with the injured Sampson as the boat shot forward with a jerk and a spinning turn to run full out. Water sprayed in a rooster tail, drenching everyone in the frigid wake. But they’d gotten away.
Not a moment too soon.
With a deep rumble, Allah’s Paradise lit up in a ball of flame and a deafening ka-boom.
Rebel covered her ears and threw herself over Sampson just as Chet did the same. She ended up sandwiched between the two men. A second explosion ripped through the air. Flaming debris rained down around them.
Then just as quickly, the early morning air went deathly still.
“Jesus on a freakin’ fork,” Chet swore after a few tense heartbeats.
“Language, ensign.”
He deftly lifted himself off her and Sampson. “Sorry, ma’am. You hurt?”
At least she was pretty sure that’s what he said. Her ears were ringing and her hearing was muffled like when she used to wear those fluffy earmuffs on ski trips to Switzerland as a kid. She gave him a wobbly smile. “Just my dignity,” she answered, then turned to Sampson to check on his injury. She peeled off her jacket and pressed it to his bleeding gunshot wound as Chet reeled off to check on the prisoner. “And my suit,” she added resignedly, meeting Ensign Sampson’s grateful eyes. “Donna Karan,” she told him philosophically. “My favorite.” Now covered in blood, guts, and black ash. At least it matched the rest of her. But Sampson was alive, and that’s all that really mattered.
“I’ll buy you . . . another damn suit,” the ensign wheezed out with a cough. Then he grinned painfully. “But with . . . a shorter skirt.”
She laughed and made a face at him. “In your dreams, sailor.”
“Oh . . . yeah.” His eyes fluttered closed.
She glanced back at the burning remains of the rapidly sinking yacht. They were lucky to be having any more dreams at all. If her Bluetooth hadn’t picked up the static from that bomb’s timing mechanism, they’d all be dead now. Blown to little, tiny bits.
A long shiver traced down her spine.
That’s when she noticed the whop-whop-whop of an approaching Coast Guard helicopter.
“Hang in there,” she told Sampson, who was barely clinging to consciousness. “Help is already here. You Coastie boys are fast.”
“Always ready,” he croaked proudly, which turned into a groan.
The helo roared overhead, circled once, then spit out four guys in black wet suits from the open side doors. Within seconds they’d splashed down in a perfect formation alongside the RB-M, which Montgomery had pulled up just out of range of the sinking yacht, and swiftly climbed on board.
The helo circled again and another guy dropped out of its door, this time on a line, along with a stretcher basket for Sampson. They both zoomed down at breakneck speed toward the RB-M’s rolling deck. Rebel cringed, hoping they didn’t hit a bad swell so the guy went splat.
Just then her cell phone rang again.
“You have got to be kidding me,” she muttered, and mashed the Bluetooth’s on button. “I really can’t talk right now,” she yelled over the deafening whop-whop of the rotors.
“Goddamn it, Rebel!” a man yelled back over the phone, shocking her senseless with the familiar sound of his voice. “Where the hell are you? Are you hurt?”
She froze, her reflexive language admonition sticking in her throat. Impossible. It couldn’t be. How could he possibly know—
“Fucking hell, answer me, goddamn it! Is this stretcher for you?” he bellowed.
She peered closer at the man descending on the line from the helo. He hit the deck, spotted her standing there, scowled ferociously at her blood-covered clothes, then took off running toward her at full tilt.
Broad, tall, golden, and beautiful as an avenging Viking warrior-god.
“Angel! Talk to me!”
Lord help her.
It was Alex Zane.
Before she knew what was happening, he swept her off her feet, cradling her body to his chest as he did a running U-turn and sprinted back toward the stretcher.
She finally found her tongue. “Alex, I’m fine! Put me down!”
He skidded and swept a glance at her clothes with a doubtful frown. “You’re soaked in blood.”
“Ensign Sampson’s.” She flung a hand back at the wounded man. “The stretcher is for him. You need to—”
Alex came to a halt, blinked down at her, and finally seemed to realize what he was doing. For a split second he hesitated. Then in a single motion, he cursed and dropped her feet to the deck. But instead of releasing her, he cursed again, pulled her into a bruising embrace, and crushed his lips to hers.
Rebel’s world stopped dead in its tracks.
Her breath stalled in her lungs. Her heart ceased to beat. Instantly her mind emptied of all thought.
There was only Alex. Alex kissing her. Finally, finally, finally kissing her!
How long had she waited for this exact moment? A lifetime . . .
Her soul leapt for joy, her legs turned to liquid. She gasped, and for a heartbeat he paused to look down at her, his shocked expression that of a man who hadn’t expected this reaction from her. Or himself.<
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“Oh, Alex,” she breathed.
That was all it took. His mouth swooped down to cover hers again. His tongue pushed demandingly between her lips and the taste of him burst through her senses. Senses that had wondered a thousand, no, a million, times what Alex Zane’s kiss would taste like. What Alex Zane would taste like.
She surrendered completely to the wonderful, amazing moment. She couldn’t begin to process the myriad emotions and sensations exploding through her as he murmured, “Thank God, you’re okay,” whispering it over and over into her mouth as he kissed her greedily.
She was dimly aware that she should stop this. Stop him. But there wasn’t a prayer that she would. That she could. After waiting for so long, for so many lonely, frustrated, wishful years for this very moment to happen, nothing short of death could make her pull away. And probably not even that.
So she let him kiss her, and let the incredible kiss go on and on and on. Nothing else mattered. Nothing was more important than this stunning turn of—
Someone cleared his throat loudly behind her.
Very loudly.
Which was at least enough to make Alex come to his senses. His lips jerked away from hers and his gaze skittered over her shoulder.
A wry smile then creased his beautiful mouth, a mouth reddened and wet from kisses. Her kisses. “Sorry, sir. We’re, um”—an indulgently masculine expression crossed his face—“friends.”
Friends?
Okay . . .
She followed his gaze to the last vestiges of the burning Allah’s Paradise as it sank below the surface of the bay, then moved back to Captain Montgomery, who must be standing right behind her. She attempted to ease away from Alex, but he wouldn’t loosen his grip on her. It was like trying to pry herself away from the Terminator.
“Glad to see everyone made it,” Alex said. He continued glancing at the crew but held on to her like he’d never let her go. Her heart did a funny little dance. She was so confused! Last time they talked—and she used the term loosely—he’d made it clear he didn’t even want to be friends anymore. And now this . . .
