by Dale Mayer
“Sure,” she said. “I was shocked at first. But it doesn’t take very long for the initial shock to become relief when you realize what the pirates would have done to me if they had caught me.”
He nodded. “Now let’s get these men out of sight.” He dragged them out of view, quickly stripped them of all their weapons, and he needed a place to hide them. He checked the staterooms, and it took a while to find ones that he could get into. With that, he quickly dragged in the first man and dumped him in the closet. The second one, he put in the bathroom and then shut and locked the door behind him. Armed with their weapons, he turned to find her with one over her shoulder and a handgun tucked into her belt and another one in her hand. He looked at her and froze.
She lowered the handgun, smiled, and said, “I’m not one of the bad guys.”
“Good thing,” he said, “because I’d break your jaw too.”
She winced. “That was meant as a jest,” she said quietly. “And, of course, you’re right. There’s nothing funny about this.”
“But humor does make it easier to deal with,” he said. He picked up the other weapons and quickly placed them on his person. “I still want you down and off this ship.”
“No,” she said, more certain of what she needed to do. Even though the idea terrified her. But, with Jax here, he might be enough to change the balance of this numbers game. She shook her head. “I don’t want everybody here to pay the price for the pirates not finding me.”
“So what do you want me to do?” he asked, his voice harsh. “Use you as a bargaining chip?”
She gave him a one-arm shrug and nodded. “Obviously you can take care of yourself,” she said with a motion toward the room where he’d stashed the dead man. “And that changes things.”
“It changes nothing,” he said. “Absolutely nothing.” Just then he stopped and tilted his head, as if listening to something.
Nervous, she glanced around and said, “What? Is somebody coming?”
He flashed a bright smile, an oddly charming look, considering the blood still on his face. “Yeah. Somebody is. We’ll wait here.”
“Somebody on your team or on the bad guys’ team?” she asked, insistent for information. She hated to be caught unaware again. It had been such a shock, and her adrenaline still rushed through her. She knew that, as soon as it slowed down, she would crash, and she couldn’t afford for that to happen.
“Do you have your phone with you?”
She nodded.
“Let me key in my number.”
She frowned, didn’t move.
“In case we get separated.”
Only then she forked over her phone, which he returned to her soon thereafter.
“I added Beau’s too. He’s my partner.”
She whispered, “How can you live like this all the time?”
“Well, when you’re used to it, the adrenaline is there more to help you stay in control because you learn to harness that. For someone like you, this is new and shocking, so the adrenaline is a fight-or-flight instinct. It’s not the same thing for me.”
“Can’t be good for your heart,” she announced.
“Well, it’s not like most of us live very long anyway,” he said, his tone cryptic.
She stopped, stared at him, in shock once again. “Oh, my gosh. I guess that’s right, isn’t it?”
He nodded. “It is right. It’s one of the reasons I decided I was done with my old life.”
His words and his tone made her curious. “So you’re not doing this anymore?”
“No, it’s got nothing to do with this job.”
“Except for the fact that it’s really important that you survive it,” she said softly. “If you’ve done this work before, and you’ve saved other people, then you need your day in the sun. You need a chance to rest.”
“Resting is often a euphemism for boredom,” he said. “I don’t have future plans yet, but I don’t plan on being bored.”
“Sounds good to me. I doubt I’ll ever quit working. I’ll always have something research-wise going on.”
“Well, that’s not necessarily a bad thing.”
“You obviously like weapons,” she said, watching as he shifted the handgun from hand to hand.
“I do,” he said. “I always figured I could design something better.”
“Well, there’s a hobby for you.”
He nodded. “I’ve been working on it at home in my spare time, but jobs like this don’t really give you much spare time.”
She snorted. “We’d make a great pair. You’d be creating machines that kill, and I’d be creating systems that save.”
“Hey, that’s the way the world works,” he said. “And that makes us two halves of the whole.” Even at that, he snorted.
“Hey, it’s not that funny,” she said. “I’m sure you’re probably not as much of a loner as I am. But I’d like to think, at some point in time, there’s a partner out there for me, in the relationship sense.”
He shot her a sideways look.
She shrugged. “What did I say?”
“Well, I’m definitely a loner,” he said. “Hard to be involved in anything but my work. But odd to bring up relationship-type partners here.”
“All partnerships are relationships too. But I guess I was thinking more about my lack of a relationship.” She gave him a bright smile. “Sorry. Just a little bleed through there.”
“I’m hardly a good candidate for a relationship—just so we’re clear. I’m gone a lot and often in very dangerous scenarios.”
She thought about that and then nodded. “I guess it would be hard to watch you leave and do things like this all the time. But it depends on the woman and where her passion lies.” She glanced around and said, “So, where’s this person we’re meeting?”
Just then the doors opened. She let out a small shriek and jumped closer to Jax. He grinned and said, “Abby, meet Beau. Beau, meet Abby.”
In walked one of the biggest men she had ever seen.
His eyes were glacial hard, until his gaze landed on her. He smiled, shook his head, and said, “I thought you were a doctor. You don’t look like you should be out of high school.”
She snorted and said, “I’m Dr. Abigail Eleanor, and I’m almost thirty years old.” She reached out her hand and, in a more formal voice, said, “I’m pleased to meet you.”
He took her hand gently in his, almost engulfing her small hand. “Well, thirty’s never looked so good,” he said.
Beau’s lips tilted, but his gaze was already fixed on Jax.
“If you like children, you mean,” she said with a grin.
“Are you ready to go?”
Jax nodded. “I’ve got seven down. You?”
“Damn,” Beau said. “I’m only five down. I left one alive.”
“Well, I think one was still alive, but he won’t be for long,” Jax said.
“Exactly,” Beau said. “Now that we got her, we need to get her off.”
“One problem with that,” Jax said.
“What’s that?” Beau’s gaze went from one to the other.
Abby spoke up. “I don’t want to leave and be safe and have all these people here in danger, possibly killed or injured because the pirates can’t find me.”
Beau leaned back on his heels, rocked a few times, and said, “Well, I don’t really see any way around that.”
Her eyebrows shot up. “Surely you can do something. Use me as a bargaining chip or something to get all these people off the ship.”
“Too many people. Nobody’s able to pick them up.”
“I guess that’s the problem with cruise ships. Megaships, megapeople.” She frowned, not having thought about that. “Well, how about all the pirates leave with me?”
“That’s not a good idea either,” Beau said. He stepped back, then tapped the comm on his ear several times. She watched as he had a conversation with something that wasn’t even there. He looked at Jax. “Orders are to take her off the
ship. Unless you’ve got another idea?”
She stared at Jax hopefully.
“I can see her point,” he said gently. “The pirates need to know that she’s not here, if that’s the case though. We can’t have anybody else being punished.”
Just then sounds crackled in their intercom. Beau turned a little bit away and swore. He then faced Jax and said, “They’re shooting passengers.”
“That’s it,” she said, and she bolted for the double doors. Only she didn’t get far. Beau grabbed one arm, and Jax grabbed the other, pulling her back. She almost got slingshotted back into their arms. She struggled hard. “You can’t let them kill other people because of me. It’s one life versus twenty-five hundred. That’s not fair.”
“And what would you like to do?” Jax asked.
“Let me go to them. Let them take me. If you want, come with me. You can be my boyfriend or my brother or something,” she snapped. “And you can protect me while we find a way to get away then. But not at the cost of the deaths of the other passengers.”
Jax stilled. He glanced at Beau. Beau’s eyebrows shot up as he studied the two of them. “Don’t do it,” he said. “It’s suicide.”
“But she’s right,” Jax said. “Twenty-five hundred lives for one.”
Beau nodded. “I know it sucks, but orders are orders.”
Jax snorted. “No, we have no orders in this case. Remember? We’re on our own. We do what we do because we’re the ones who do it best.” He nodded to her and said, “But, other than our names, we’re married. Got it? We’re not to be separated. You make no side deals. I’ll escort you up and tell them who we are.”
“But your name won’t be on the manifest.”
“Did you come with anybody?”
“No, I was supposed to. Benny was to come with me,” she said.
“And who’s that?”
“My cousin.”
“Last name?”
Her eyebrows slowly rose as she nodded. “Eleanor. Benny Eleanor.”
“Could be a guy,” Beau said.
“Exactly.”
“But if they check you for ID and find you have something else?”
He gave her a wolfish smile. “They won’t find anything.” He looked at Beau and said, “Track us.”
Beau immediately dug into the bag that he carried and pulled out two syringes. He quickly set them up, and, exposing Jax’s arm, he slammed the plunger home. He set the second one and turned to her. “Pull out your arm, Doc.”
“What is that?” she asked nervously. But it was too late. The sting already happened. She swore and looked down at the slightly reddened area. “What did you just do?”
“Put homing devices in both of you so I can track you. I won’t be far behind.”
And this became way too real. She stared down at her arm, then at Jax. “Dear God, this is really shitty. But there’s nothing else we can do though, is there?”
“Yes, there is,” Jax said calmly. “I can take you off. The pirates could search the ship, and they won’t find you.”
“They’ll blame everybody else then, won’t they?”
“It’s possible,” he said. “They already are.”
“Fine,” she said. “Let’s go. But we can hardly go up fully armed.”
He nodded, slowly handed off as many of his weapons to Beau as he could. Fully divested of everything extra, Jax turned toward Beau and said, “I need to switch out of these clothes.”
“Right,” Beau said. “You don’t look very holidayish.”
They quickly found a stateroom where a man had been staying. Jax rummaged around and found a T-shirt that was a little too tight for comfort, but, hey, it would do. With his clothes changed to looking like he was a civilian on vacation, he grabbed her arm and said, “I still think this is a shitty idea.”
And obviously, she’d had a moment to think about it because she nodded and said, “So do I.”
He froze, turned to look at her, and said, “You’ve got one chance to change your mind, and we can get you safely out to the military ships surrounding the area.”
“No,” she said. “I won’t have any more of these deaths on my conscience. I might die doing this, but I do what I think is right.”
He admired that, but it was still foolish. He looked at Beau, who shrugged and said, “Your call. She’s pretty easy to carry. We can knock her out and take her with us, put an oxygen mask on her, and drag her all the way back to the ships.”
Oxygen mask? At that, she panicked.
Jax sighed, closed his eyes, thought about it, and then nodded. “Twenty-five hundred to one,” he said slowly. “Tell the others that I’ll see them on the other side.”
Chapter 5
Abby wasn’t sure what he meant by that see you on the other side reference, but it seemed so final. And she realized that what she had decided to do also put his life in danger. “No,” she said. “You stay here.”
“You don’t get to call those shots,” Jax said. “You’re the one who’s refusing to obey orders.”
“So are you,” she said.
He gripped her arm tightly and said, “Sure I am, but I’m allowed to.”
“Well, your orders don’t apply to me,” she said.
“Maybe,” he said. “We’ll see how you feel when you’ve been in captivity for a long time. And remember. Just because I’m with you doesn’t mean I’ll be allowed to leave the ship with you. It doesn’t mean that I’ll be allowed to go with you in any way, shape, or form. And it doesn’t mean I can protect you, even if the pirates say that you’ll be safe.”
She could feel the chills running through her soul, realizing what a gamble she had taken. At the same time, how could she not? Everyone else aboard this ship could die if she didn’t show up. She took a deep breath, squeezed her fingers tight, and said, “It’s either die trying to do what’s right or die a little every day knowing what I did was cowardly and wrong.”
He looked at her for a long moment, then nodded. “Let’s go.” And he gripped her hand in his. “And don’t let go of me.”
She nodded, and he snagged a jacket from the same closet and said, “This might cover one of the weapons,” as he put a handgun in his back pocket. And, on that note, he nodded to Beau.
She hated to see the concern in the other man’s eyes, knowing this could be a death trip but still making the choice to do it anyway.
“Let the others know,” Jax said.
“Will do,” Beau said, and then he swore long and loud. It didn’t matter because Jax was already in hell.
She stared at Beau and said, “I don’t want you to die too. Please do what you can to save us but save yourself first.”
He glared at her. “That goes against what all of us always do,” he said. “No one will like this decision.”
She smiled, nodded, opened up the double doors, and headed through. As soon as they were on their own, she asked Jax, “What’s the best way?”
“I suggest we get ourselves captured,” he said. “Let somebody lead us to the pirates. If we walk into a crowd of them, it’s hard to say what their reaction will be.”
“You have your communication device. So you’ll tell your people how many pirates we see and anything else that might help, so that we get out of this alive?”
“Don’t worry. I’ll be tracking and giving my unit a running commentary as much as I can,” he said. “What I can’t do is blow Beau’s cover.”
She pondered that, trying to figure out what he meant.
And then he clarified. “If they find my comm unit, we’re out of luck, and I’ll be separated and potentially killed right off the bat.”
She sucked in her breath, realizing now what was involved, and nodded. “So we’ll give Beau exactly what we can and hope for the best.”
“Exactly,” he murmured.
They moved toward the upper levels. As they walked along one of the decks, there was a shout, and then a man ran toward Jax. The pirate held a rifle on them, snap
ping orders constantly in Jax’s face. Finally he switched to English. “Who are you?”
“I’m Dr. Abigail Eleanor,” she said. “And Mr. Benny Eleanor, my husband.” She was proud of the fact that she didn’t even trip over the name. She looked at the pirate. “I believe you guys are looking for us.” The gunman’s face lit with joy, and he quickly spoke into his handset. She listened but didn’t understand the language at all. They were quickly shepherded to the upper deck, where they were led to a group of men standing off to one side.
As they walked closer, she could tell Jax was sending information, but his lips never moved. She didn’t get it, but whatever he did seemed to be working. And just before they were quickly grabbed and searched, she realized that the headpiece around his ear was no longer there. She cried out as he was pulled off to one side. He reached out a hand. She grabbed it and yelled, “Stop.”
The pirates froze. The leader stepped forward and said, “You are not to tell us to stop.”
“Maybe not,” she said, “but, if you want my assistance, you will stop. And you will leave my husband alone.”
The man studied her face for a long moment; then he looked at the others and nodded. They let Jax go.
Jax immediately stepped out, wrapped an arm around her, and tucked her up close. “What is going on?” he asked.
“What’s going on,” the gunman said, “is the doctor’s services are needed.”
They were thrust into the center of the group of pirates again and shepherded off to one side. Instructions were sent back and forth. But Jax could feel a sense of unrest between the pirates. The men were happy to have found what they came for, but they wanted more out of this. Did they know how badly reduced their team’s numbers were? Jax had already sent the count on the number of pirates here to Beau. Eight men surrounded them, plus the one man who had brought them up.
Jax could have taken him out at any time, and it really chafed not being able to. If he had a chance to take them out right now, he would. But him against them wasn’t great odds, especially with Abby right beside him. She could be taken down by stray bullets. He had been pretty damn sure that Beau still picked off the other pirates on this ship. It was the best avenue for them all.
