Force of Nature

by Suzanne Brockmann

  “I have to talk to her,” Ric made himself sob. “Just one more time.”

  “What are you doing?” Jules put panic in his own voice. “What, are you going to shoot me?”

  It was then, right before Ric dragged himself out onto the main deck, that he realized exactly what it was that had been bothering him—what was wrong with that picture of Robin Chadwick falling overboard and drowning.

  “You saw the movie trailer for Riptide, right?” he quietly asked Jules, then shouted, “I wanna talk to Annie! I’ve got to…”

  The FBI agent just stared at him, uncomprehendingly, the flat nothingness back in his eyes.

  “Robin’s a kick-ass swimmer,” Ric told him, his voice low. “He told me he did his own underwater stunts. A guy like that just doesn’t drown.”

  Jules didn’t believe him. There was no change on his face. No flicker of hope. Still…“Thanks,” he said.

  “Don’t make me do it!” Ric shouted, then lifted his weapon and fired two shots into the wooden deck.

  It was showtime.

  CHAPTER

  TWENTY-FIVE

  Dripping wet and shaking with exhaustion, anger, and fear—his head still throbbing from where he’d damn near cracked it open—Robin crouched on the foredeck of Foley’s fishing boat, regaining his equilibrium.

  Climbing up the slick side of the boat was much harder to do in real life than it was when filming Riptide. For one thing, the boat he’d infiltrated on the movie set had been moored. They’d used special effects to make it look as if he were boarding a speeding vessel. This one, however, had been moving forward at a steady clip.

  Plus he’d been freaking dizzy from smacking his head when Foley had pitched him overboard. And yeah, he’d also had quite a bit to drink, which hadn’t helped.

  His first thought had been to swim to the distant shore, but the idea of leaving Annie alone with Foley was too awful.

  So Robin had clung, at first, to the anchor, way up at the bow of the boat, afraid if he slipped or was shaken free he’d be swept away. Or worse—swept underneath and into the churning propellers.

  The side was too slippery to climb without the aid of the props department and their ropes and netting, handily placed for him to grab. He’d finally managed it by creating a rope of sorts with his jeans and his shirt. He’d used the sodden clothing, tossing it up onto the boat until he knocked one of the hawsers free.

  But the rope had dangled there—just out of his reach. Again, he’d tried using his clothes to pull it closer, but it soon became clear that he’d just have to let go of the anchor and leap toward the damn thing, catching it as the boat moved past.

  Robin was athletic—as long as he wasn’t detoxing or shit-faced. This was the kind of stunt he would have enjoyed doing on a movie set.

  Problem was, real life allowed for only one take.

  He went for it, though, when he heard Annie scream. Jesus, what was Foley doing to her? She’d started shouting then, so he knew he hadn’t killed her, thank God. Robin could still hear her now, crying, from down in the stateroom.

  He wrung out his boxers as best he could and moved as silently as possible toward the stern of the boat, and those stairs leading below.

  “You are so fucked,” Foley told Annie as he got off the phone. “It could have been quick. But no. Junior wants you alive. He’s going to take a knife to you on the deck of that yacht, with your boyfriend watching. Congratulations, you stupid, stupid bitch.”

  He went out the stateroom door, closing and locking it behind him.

  It was the dead last thing Annie’d expected him to do. She was so completely stunned, she just lay there for several long seconds, her wrist clutched to her chest.

  But it wasn’t some kind of cruel joke Foley was playing on her. He didn’t jump back into the room shouting “Kidding!” before he shot her in the head.

  Annie heard him stomp his way back up to the galley, and she roused herself, dragging her damaged body over to the end of the fuse to Robin’s bomb. The lighter was in her front-left jeans pocket—she had to use her unbroken right hand to get it out, which wasn’t either easy or quick.

  It gave her ample time to consider exactly what she was about to do.

  She, who never quite forgave Pam for taking her own life, was about to do the very same.

  She had to admit that she liked the irony of Foley dying as a result of Robin’s bomb. He may have killed Robin, but with Annie’s help, Robin was going to even the score.

  And over in the not-quite-as-bloodthirsty column of reasons to light the fuse was the fact that together, she and Robin would eliminate Junior’s option of blowing up the yacht and killing Ric and Jules. This way, they’d have a chance. Maybe the massive explosion would help them in some way. Maybe it would draw the Coast Guard.

  Yes, if Robin were here, he’d definitely be urging her on.

  She finally got the lighter free.

  And lit the fuse.

  Jules silently moved into position, watching as Ric stumbled and limped up the companionway and onto the deck.

  This man, whom he’d come to respect and even love as a friend, was marching unswervingly to his all-but-certain death.

  Annie was never going to forgive Jules for letting Ric do this. And yet Ric had been right. There was no other way.

  “Don’t shoot,” Ric called to Junior.

  From where Jules lay atop the galley counter, slightly back from that window, he had a clear view of Ric.

  He held his hands up, his gun loosely in his right, in a position of surrender. He limped with each step he took—farther out onto the deck, but not too far from this window where Jules was waiting. “I’m here. Jules is no longer a threat and I…I surrender. Don’t let Foley hurt her…” He dropped to his knees, which had to have hurt his wounded leg. “Please…Don’t let him hurt her…I’ll do whatever you want.”

  The day was beautiful. The ocean air was clear and fresh, and the sky was a remarkable shade of blue.

  It wasn’t quite as beautiful a blue, though, as Robin’s eyes.

  Jules steadied the hand that held his weapon, forcing all thoughts of the past and future out of his mind. There was only now. There was only his heart beating, his eye on Ric, his steady finger on the trigger as he waited.

  And waited.

  Junior would eventually send his men out to disarm Ric. Although one of them would probably shoot him first.

  “She loves me,” Ric sobbed, the picture of a broken, desperate man. “She said she loves me—I gotta talk to her, please, just one last time…”

  Robin found a flare gun and a bottle of gin in the storage bin beneath the bench seats on the deck of the fishing boat.

  The flares were wrapped in plastic—he almost couldn’t unwrap them, but he did, and he got one loaded into the gun with hands that were once again shaking.

  Which was why he took a healthy slug of the gin.

  But nope, his hands didn’t stop shaking. He wasn’t starting to detox again—he was just scared shitless by what he was about to do.

  He put the bottle down and was in the process of taking a series of deep, calming breaths—an exercise an acting teacher had taught him years ago—when Foley came out of the stateroom and started crashing around in the galley.

  Robin quickly pulled himself back along the side of the above-deck cabin.

  After what seemed like hours, the microwave finally beeped. Then came the unmistakable smell of coffee, and the sound of a spoon against the side of a ceramic mug.

  And then Foley stomped up the stairs and onto the deck. He took out his phone and dialed, coffee mug in his other hand. “Yeah,” he said. “I got a visual—I see you—I should be alongside you in five, maybe ten minutes.”

  It was now or never. And while he would have preferred never, as Foley shut his phone, Robin stepped out onto the deck, flare gun held in his best double-handed Navy SEAL grip.

  “Hands where I can see them!” Robin said.

  Foley la
ughed at him. “You’re fucking kidding me,” he said. Dropping the mug, he reached for his gun.

  So Robin leaped forward and shot the flare, point-blank, into Foley’s ugly face.

  The flare sent Foley staggering back, and his gun clattered on the deck as he screamed, his hair on fire.

  Jesus. But Robin didn’t stand and stare. He scrambled after the real gun as Foley fell to his knees, batting at his head. But then, still smoldering, he was up again, and he roared as he came after Robin, like some horrific version of the Energizer Bunny.

  The tears always worked.

  People always underestimated a grown man who broke down and cried, the way Ric was crying now—on his knees on the main deck of the yacht.

  And as for Junior, well, here he came. More than ready to put his boot-print on the back of a man who was shattered. “Put the gun down and push it away from you,” Junior commanded, his voice coming from slightly above and behind Ric—from the deck atop the galley.

  That was good. Junior was close enough to get a full visual.

  There were a variety of potential ways to play this. Ric’s original plan was to go out onto the deck without a gun, hands empty and outstretched. When Junior approached, Ric’s intention was to open his jacket and reveal the explosives and the fuse that he’d already lit.

  He could feel the heat from the time fuse as it burned, slowly making its way around and around his waist.

  When Junior saw what he was wearing, he’d panic, calling for his men to help him throw Ric overboard. Well, Ric’s body. Because before he hit full panic, he’d surely shoot Ric in the head.

  But the handgun that Jules had taken from the man he’d killed on the lower level brought a few other options to the table.

  One or two of which had an outcome that included the possibility of Ric’s living through these next few minutes.

  “I lit the fuse,” he said, loudly enough for Junior to hear him as he unzipped the jacket. And then the time for talking was over. Ric pointed the gun at himself.

  And he pulled the trigger.

  Annie sat on the floor of the stateroom as the fuse burned, drinking from a bottle of vodka and trying to imagine the life she would have shared with Ric had things worked out differently.

  Trouble was, she couldn’t get past the sex.

  When she tried to picture them having dinner together, even though she started the fantasy with herself perched on one of his kitchen stools, just watching him cook, it soon led to hijinks atop the dining-room table.

  She could imagine them taking a flight out to California, to talk to Sam Starrett about working for Troubleshooters Incorporated—and being unable to survive the trip without slipping into the tiny airplane bathroom together.

  It didn’t matter where they were or what they were doing, all Ric would’ve had to do was look at her, and she would’ve looked back at him and…

  She wished she could have left a note. She wished she could be sure that Ric had heard her say she loved him.

  She wished—

  Boom! Something that sounded a lot like a gunshot made her smack her head on the wall behind her.

  Oh, God. Had she lit the fuse too late? Had they already reached Junior’s yacht?

  She could hear Foley talking—he was on the phone again as he unlocked the stateroom door.

  She braced herself, gripping the neck of the bottle with her right hand, ready to use it as a weapon. She was not leaving here without a fight. She had no idea how many minutes it had been since she’d lit the fuse—maybe all she had to do was stall a little bit longer.

  Foley was having trouble with the lock, which was good, but he finally got it, and with a crash, he pushed it open wide.

  Except it wasn’t Foley, it was…Robin?

  “Oh my God, you’re alive,” Annie said.

  He had a red welt on his forehead, but he was definitely breathing. He’d stripped down to his boxers, and he was holding both Foley’s handgun and his phone.

  “I’m on a boat in the middle of the Gulf, off Sarasota,” he said into that phone. “Coordinates? I have no clue. We’re out of sight of land, there’s a lot of water—it’s blue. There’s another boat out here—a big one, a yacht, where FBI agent Jules Cassidy is being held by Gordon Burns Junior. He needs backup and he needs it now.”

  “Oh my God,” Annie realized. “Robin! Shit! I lit the fuse!”

  As Jules watched from his position in the galley, Ric shot himself.

  The force pushed him onto his back, where he lay motionless and silent in the aftermath of the deafening gunshot, his jacket flapped open.

  Junior was as surprised as Jules.

  “Holy fuck,” he heard Junior say as he, too, saw the blood seeping onto the deck. And then he saw the explosives Ric was wearing.

  “Holy fuck,” Junior said again. “He said he lit the fuse! Jesus Christ, help me throw him overboard!”

  And here they came, thundering down from the deck that was directly over Jules’s head. Donny, Purple Shirt, and Suit Number Two. Even Junior came down, although he hung back as his men rushed toward Ric—as they rushed toward the window to the galley, where Jules was waiting.

  Where he finally stopped waiting, and opened fire.

  Ric rolled as Jules proved himself to be as good a shot in the field as he was at the firing range.

  The FBI agent took out Junior’s men, shooting to kill.

  Meanwhile, Ric headed for Junior. But Jules fired again, shooting Junior’s weapon out of his hand, making the son of a bitch scream with pain, clutching bloody fingers to his chest.

  Ric heard Jules kicking out the now-broken galley window, trying to get to Junior—to keep him from leaping over the side of the yacht.

  But Ric reached him first. He grabbed the bastard’s legs, knocking him down to the deck and making him scream, again, like a little girl.

  But it wasn’t because his hand was hurting him. No, it was the explosives Ric was still wearing that made him frantic to get away. Apparently he thought Ric was still going to explode in a fiery ball—taking Junior with him.

  The length of cord—time fuse—was still burning, although it had to be almost done. Sure enough, a little flash of fire jumped out of the unconnected end.

  “Bang,” Ric told Junior. He looked up at Jules, who pulled Junior away from him, grabbing the bastard’s cell phone out of his pocket before shoving him down onto the deck.

  “Hands on your head,” Jules ordered. He glanced at Ric. “You shot yourself.”

  “Yes, I did,” Ric said as he surveyed the damage he’d done to the fleshy part of his side. He was bleeding and it hurt like hell. But he’d figured if he hadn’t done it, Junior would’ve. And in shooting him, Junior wouldn’t have aimed for the exact spot where Ric had been shot just last year. The ER doctor who’d stitched him up had told him that he couldn’t have been hit by a bullet in a less invasive place if he’d tried. “How about it? Do I get the insane stunt bonus?”

  Jules actually laughed. “Yeah.” But then he stopped laughing, his face back to grim.

  Ric looked up to see what Jules had spotted, off to the ship’s starboard side.

  Foley’s fishing boat. Had to be. It was still some distance away, but the gap was closing fast.

  Annie had lit the fuse.

  Okay—that was one scenario Robin hadn’t considered.

  Jesus, she was badly hurt. She tried to push herself to her feet, but she didn’t get far.

  “How long ago did you light it?” he asked.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “Can we cut it? Or just…pull the fuse out?”

  She reached for it, but he stopped her. “Don’t. I don’t know. I just…don’t know.” He’d never defused a bomb before—he didn’t know enough about it. He did know that dousing the fuse with water in an attempt to put it out wouldn’t work. It was called underwater time fuse for a reason.

  Could he just pull it out? And if he could, why, in the movies, did people defuse bombs carefully,
with sweat dripping down their faces? Why didn’t they just grab and yank?

  No, Robin knew of only one way to be absolutely certain they would survive this—and that was to get off this boat and swim like hell.

  He swung Annie up and over his shoulder and ran for the deck.

  Jules handed Junior’s cell phone to Ric and began tying up Junior.

  “Call Foley,” he said. “Tell him I’m dead, but that you’ve got Junior. Tell him you’ll make a trade. Junior for Annie.”

  Ric was already accessing Junior’s phone book. Foley was right there, in the Fs. He pressed the talk button and…

  “It’s ringing,” he reported to Jules, who was now collecting weapons and ammunition from the men he’d killed.

  “No one else has a phone,” Jules complained. “As soon as you’re done, I need to call Yashi for backup.”

  “I’m getting bumped to Foley’s voicemail.” Ric was trying not to freak. He turned to Junior and asked, “How many men did Foley have aboard?”

  “Fuck you,” Junior said, but Ric couldn’t hear him. He saw Junior’s mouth move, but the sound of his words were obliterated by the roar of an explosion.

  He turned to see Jules staring out over the deck railing, horror on his face.

  Jules’s mouth moved, too. No…

  Ric spun to see what he was looking at, and realized that Foley’s fishing boat had exploded in a fireball.

  Water shot up into the sky, and debris rained down into the Gulf.

  The silence that fell was broken only by Junior. The son of a bitch was laughing.

  Ric drew his sidearm.

  “Don’t,” Jules said quietly.

  “I don’t give a fuck”—Ric’s voice broke—“about finding al-Hasan.”

  “Robin and Annie did,” Jules reminded him, and knocked Junior on the side of his head with the butt of his handgun. It looked almost gentle, the way that he did it, but Junior stopped laughing and immediately slumped unconscious.