Bullseye_SEAL

by Carol Ericson

  He had a suspicion that a different fate awaited Gina once the phony tourist did away with him, but a bullet wound to her shoulder or arm would incapacitate her enough for the guy to scoop her up.

  Josh snapped his legs hard in a breaststroke to reach Gina. He wrapped his arms around her legs and dragged her down.

  With her eyes wide and bubbles spewing from her mouth, Gina joined him below and powered her arms through the water.

  The man in the boat wouldn’t be able to get his craft around the reef before Josh and Gina made it to shore, but he could climb onto the reef with his weapon to improve his aim. Somehow, Josh didn’t think the man shooting at them would be bothered by the fact that disturbing sea life was a crime in Isla Perdida.

  With his lungs ready to explode, Josh continued toward the beach, his arms and legs burning with the effort, Gina right beside him, matching him stroke for stroke, kick for kick.

  She tugged on his board shorts and pointed toward the surface with her thumb.

  He’d probably surprised her by dragging her under and she hadn’t had time to take a deep breath. He wasn’t going to allow her to surface on her own. Positioning himself between Gina and the man with the gun, Josh took her by the arms and rose through the water with her.

  They broke the surface together and as he filled his lungs with air, Josh cranked his head over his shoulder. The boat that had feigned trouble had disappeared, and the small sailboat from earlier was now swaying behind the reef in its place. Had the sailboat scared off the shooter?

  Josh wasn’t taking any chances. He tapped Gina on the shoulder and she gave him a quick nod and ducked below again.

  When the water became too shallow to completely cover them, Josh stopped swimming and stood up, planting his feet in the silky sand.

  On her knees beside him, Gina coughed and sputtered.

  “Are you okay?”

  “I am now.”

  Josh swiveled his head from side to side, looking out for the motorboat, allowing Gina to gulp in some air and get her bearings. The few people in the shade of their cabana tents didn’t even look up when he and Gina had staggered to the shore. Nobody had noticed the action in the water.

  He swallowed as he glanced down at Gina, kneeling in the surf, her chest heaving, the water glistening on her skin. No wonder he hadn’t been able to resist her out there in the sea. Couldn’t stop himself from touching her, from kissing her, from wanting her.

  And he’d put them both in danger because of it.

  He crouched beside her and brushed a strand of wet hair from her cheek. “Do you need me to help you up?”

  “I’m good.” She coughed and allowed one more swell from the ocean to wash over her before pushing up to her feet with one hand, tugging at her bathing suit bottoms with the other.

  The honeymoon couple strolled past them hand in hand, and the woman waved. “How’s the water?”

  “Lovely.” Gina smiled and murmured under her breath, “If you like bullets with your salt water.”

  Steps away in their cabana, Josh collapsed in his chaise longue. “I’m sorry. We should’ve never gone near that boat.”

  “Why are you apologizing?” Gina clutched her towel to her chest and dabbed her face with one corner. “I’m the one who insisted the guy was a hapless tourist who needed our help. I should’ve listened to you.”

  “I shouldn’t be letting you insist anything. I’m supposed to be protecting you, and I never should’ve allowed you anywhere near that boat.” He smacked his hand on the table between them, and knocked the bottle of sunscreen to the ground. “I was letting my other head rule.”

  Red flares claimed both of her cheeks. “What does that mean?”

  “You know damned well what it means, Gina. I allowed my...lust for you to overrule my common sense.”

  She dropped to her chaise longue, wrapping the towel tightly around her body. “That’s ridiculous. Even if we hadn’t been...uh...kissing, that boat would’ve come at us anyway.”

  “Not if I’d been paying attention to our surroundings instead of how damned hot you looked in that little bikini.”

  “Should I have worn a one-piece suit up to my chin and down to my knees?” She tilted her head and squeezed water out of her ponytail.

  “You shouldn’t have been wearing anything at all.”

  “Really?” She raised one eyebrow. “I think that would’ve made things worse...or better depending on your perspective.”

  “You know what I meant. You should’ve never changed into a swimsuit, and we should’ve stayed in the room.” He shook his head. “We were just tracked into the ocean somehow and someone’s taking potshots at me and you’re cracking jokes.”

  “Technically, that wasn’t a joke and he was taking potshots at both of us.”

  “I wouldn’t be too sure of that.” Josh toweled off his head and when he emerged, Gina was staring at him. He asked, “What?”

  “He was just shooting at you?”

  “You tell me. I approached the reef, he turned a gun on me and I ducked. I saw the bullet plunge through the water. Did he shoot again? Did he shoot at you?”

  “No.” She nibbled on the end of one of her fingers. “He took another shot at you in the water, and then he stood there with his weapon raised waiting for you to surface.”

  “He wanted to take me out to get to you. Who knows? He may have had another weapon for you—one that shoots tranquilizer darts instead of bullets.”

  “You think so?” She hugged the towel more tightly around her body.

  “They don’t want you dead. They want to march you into that bank and have you give them access to your father’s safe-deposit box, or whatever it is they think you’re after on this island.”

  A waiter ducked his head beneath their awning. “Drinks, senor?”

  “Sure, I’ll have a cerveza, the island brand.”

  “Tequila sunrise for me—heavy on the tequila.”

  When the waiter left, Josh raised his brows. “Still need to take the edge off, huh?”

  “Look at this.” She held out one trembling hand. “I can’t believe how stupid I was to trust a stranger like that.”

  “I can’t believe how distracted I was to let you.” He put on his sunglasses and reclined his lounger. “That can’t happen again, Gina, and I apologize.”

  She smacked his calf. “You have nothing to apologize for. Sun, surf, skin—we just got carried away. This island could put a spell on you if you let it, and we’ve been under a lot of pressure.”

  “Back to business then. The bank opens at nine o’clock tomorrow morning. Make sure you bring everything you need to prove your identity and leave the fake ID at the hotel.”

  “I’ve been through the routine before with my father. I know what to do.”

  “Can I ask you a question?” He crossed his right index finger over his left in a protective gesture because every time he asked her anything about her father or his business, she got defensive.

  “Yes.”

  “What were you doing here with your father, and why did he take you to the bank?”

  She blew out a breath and shoved her sunglasses up to her head. “He wanted to prove a point to me.”

  “Which was?”

  “You have to promise me you won’t relay this information to anyone you work for—not the CIA, not the DEA.”

  “Is it going to get anyone killed?”

  “No.”

  He held up two fingers. “Scout’s honor, even though I was never a Boy Scout.”

  “Didn’t think so.” She chugged some water from one of the bottles the waiter had placed on the table while taking their order. “He wanted to show me where my mother’s money was coming from.”

  “Why? You didn’t know?”

 
“No. My father’s family in Colombia had money. Mom had always told me that the settlement she received from my father for the separation had come from his family’s money.”

  “That didn’t turn out to be true.” Josh had scooted forward on the chaise longue, digging his feet into the sand on either side of it.

  When the waiter appeared with their drinks, Josh almost tossed him out for interrupting the flow of Gina’s thoughts. She’d never told him this much before. Maybe kissing her in the ocean hadn’t been such a mistake—his body hadn’t thought so at all.

  He thanked the waiter and scribbled the room number and his signature on the check. Wrapping his fingers around the beer bottle, Josh turned to Gina and waited.

  She put her lips to the straw stuck in her glass and took a sip of the orange concoction inside. Then she bit off the point of the pineapple slice that was balanced precariously on the edge of her glass.

  Josh held his breath.

  She licked her fingers and then wiped them off on the towel still encasing her body like armor. “My father’s family shunned him and disinherited him when they learned he was a drug dealer. He and my mother didn’t get a dime from them.”

  “Why did your father want to show you where your mom was getting the money?”

  “To control me.”

  Josh finally took a sip of his own drink. “Why did he need to control you?”

  She pinned him with her dark eyes, flashing fire. “Why do you think? By this time, I’d figured out what he did for a living, and I wanted nothing to do with him. I wanted to walk away from it all, from him...from my marriage.”

  Josh’s pulse jumped. Her marriage. Had she wanted to leave Ricky? It’s what he’d wanted to hear from her all along. “Did your father think you’d rat him out?”

  “I don’t think so.” She shrugged. “I probably wouldn’t have gone that far. I didn’t know anything the DEA hadn’t already figured out.”

  “Your father didn’t realize that?”

  “My father was a man who took very few chances...even with his daughter.”

  “So, he showed you the money, and maybe how it was laundered for your mother, to prove your mother’s complicity in his crimes. If you ever told anyone about the money or any of his business deals—” Josh drew a finger across his throat “—he’d either cut off your mother or she’d go down with him—at least for the financial crimes.”

  “That’s it. My father knew I’d never do anything to disrupt my mother’s life.”

  “Why didn’t he let you walk away after that? He’d just assured your silence. Why were you still visiting him at his compound at the end?”

  She sighed and sucked down half of her drink. “It’s so complicated—familia.”

  Josh’s heart sank. “You mean no matter what your father, your mother or your...husband did, you could forgive and forget to keep it in the family?”

  Gina snorted and tossed back the rest of her drink. “No. It was my father who had a warped sense of family loyalty and what that means.

  “I wasn’t at his compound that day or any other day to find comfort in the bosom of my family.”

  “What then?” Josh pressed his cold, sweating bottle against his forehead.

  “My father wanted—no, demanded—to see RJ.”

  “That’s what he wanted from you? That’s why he wanted to keep you close?”

  “RJ is his only grandchild. He was afraid I’d take him away and he’d never see him again.”

  “Would you have done that?”

  She blinked. “In a second.”

  “Your father threatened to take your mother’s money away from her or turn her in if you didn’t bring RJ around?”

  “It was worse than that, Josh.” She dropped her chin to her chest and shook her glass so that the ice tinkled.

  “Worse?” Josh licked his dry lips and switched his beer for a bottle of water. Since Gina had turned toward a confessional mood, he wanted to find out the truth behind her marriage to Ricky Rojas.

  He had to know how Gina felt about the man he’d killed.

  “What was your husband’s take on all this? He was okay with your son being in the company of a drug kingpin?”

  She flicked her wet ponytail over her shoulder. “Ricky did whatever my father told him to do. In fact, he married me to get in with my father.”

  Josh could think of a million reasons why a man would want to marry Gina, but getting in good with her father wasn’t one of them.

  “Ricky knew all about Hector De Santos and Los Santos when you two started dating?”

  “Ricky knew about my father before we started dating. He knew about my father before I did.” She rolled the slender glass between her palms. “Ricky targeted me. He managed to get a job in the same restaurant where I worked and then really laid it on thick. I was such an idiot.”

  “Why would you even suspect Ricky’s motives?” Josh shifted forward, walking his feet in the sand, and grabbed one of her hands, chilly and wet from the glass. “I’m sure a smooth SOB like Ricky knew just what the ladies wanted to hear.”

  “He knew what this lady wanted to hear.” She jabbed a thumb at the towel still covering her chest. “I remember my father from when I was a child—the fights with Mom, the violence, the swaggering machismo. I wanted none of it, and Ricky played into that. He was a poet, a musician...an aspiring crook.”

  “How long into your marriage before he made the move toward your father?”

  “Long enough for me to be pregnant with RJ. Ricky knew that would be the glue, the true way into my father’s heart—and his cartel.”

  “So, that’s what you meant by worse. You were all tied up with your father, your husband, your child. I’m sure you had your reasons to stay.” Josh released her hand and skimmed a palm across the top of his head.

  He understood her apprehension about taking RJ and leaving, but the words from her mouth still sounded like excuses to him—just like the excuses his mother used to make.

  “That is not what I meant.” Gina put her glass down on the table with a click. “You think I stayed with my husband and brought my precious son to visit my murdering, psychotic father because of family ties and some money of my mother’s?”

  She sloughed off her towel and straddled the chaise longue, her shoulders back and her spine straight. “I brought my son around because my father threatened to take RJ and keep him away from me forever, bringing him into the business.”

  Chapter Eleven

  Through the shade of her sunglasses, Gina watched the emotions play across Josh’s face. Did she see relief in there somewhere?

  Would her story finally convince him that she’d wanted no part of her father’s drug empire and no part of her marriage with Ricky?

  When Josh spoke, his words came out in measured, dull syllables as if he were suppressing a great rage. “How did your father intend to keep your son from you?”

  “Really?” She shook her glass of rapidly melting ice. “My father had money and power in Colombia—politicians, judges, law enforcement officials—all in the palm of his hand. He gave me a taste of that power once, took RJ right away from me for a week.”

  “Your husband was okay with it?”

  “My husband aided and abetted my father, and was handsomely rewarded for doing so. Even if I had initiated divorce proceedings against Ricky, my father would’ve seen to it that Ricky would win sole custody of RJ and I would’ve been shut out completely.” Gina shivered in the heat.

  A muscle ticked in Josh’s tight jaw. “Is that why you were so anxious to find out if Ricky was alive?”

  “Did you think I was anxious to reunite with my dead husband to rekindle our great romance?” Her lip curled. Ricky the poet and musician had completely morphed into something unrecognizable once
he’d wormed his way into her father’s organization. She never let him touch her again.

  “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have made any assumptions.”

  The waiter showed up at their cabana again and while Josh waved him off, Gina held up her glass. “Uno más, por favor.”

  Josh wasn’t finished with her yet. “Did you tell the DEA about your father’s threats?”

  “Yeah, but I don’t think they believed me, and of course I didn’t say anything about my mother’s money or this bank account.”

  “Maybe that’s why the agents didn’t believe your story. They sensed you were lying about something.”

  “They were right.” She collapsed back in the chaise longue, a great weight sloughing off her shoulders. “Do you trust me now?”

  “Trust you? It was never about trust, Gina.”

  “Oh, yeah, it was. Sometimes you looked at me like...” She scrunched up her nose. “Like I was a bug to be squashed, and that was even before you found out about your mother.”

  His eyebrows jumped to his hairline. “I never thought of you as a bug—to be squashed or otherwise.”

  She waved her hands. “Okay, well, maybe we can just put that behind us. I wasn’t in league with my father or my husband or any of Los Santos. I was just trying to protect my mother, my son. Now I’m trying to help you.”

  “I’m supposed to be helping you.”

  “Can’t we help each other? You seem like a guy who needs help.”

  The waiter ducked beneath their awning with another tequila sunrise on a tray. Josh signed for the drink.

  Toying with the swizzle stick loaded with fruit, Gina took a sip of the sweet drink but had lost her desire for it once her confession had ended.

  “This—” Josh spread his hands “—isn’t personal for me, you know. I was sent here on assignment by my superiors, and I obey orders.”

  “Hmm.” She dragged her sunglasses to the tip of her nose with one finger and studied him over the top of the frame. “Not personal, huh?”

  “You mean what happened in the water between us? That was... What did you say? Sun, surf and skin? You’re a damned attractive woman, Gina, sexy as hell. I’m a red-blooded, American male, and I made a mistake.”