Dangerous Embrace

by Nora Roberts

  “We don’t need no team.” Manchez started to rise.

  “You need us.” Jonas took his beer as it was served. “We already know a good bit about your operation. Jerry wasn’t good at keeping secrets.” Jonas took a swig from the bottle. “Liz and I are more discreet. Five thousand a drop?”

  Scott waited a beat, then held a hand up, signaling Manchez. “Five. If you want to work as a team, it’s your business how you split it.”

  “Fifty-fifty.” Liz spread her fingers around Jonas’s beer. “One of us goes down, one stays in the dive boat.”

  “Tomorrow night. Eleven o’clock. You come to the shop. Go inside. You’ll find a waterproof case. It’ll be locked.”

  “So will the shop,” Liz put in. “How does the case get inside?”

  Manchez blew smoke between his teeth. “I got no problem getting in.”

  “Just take the case,” Scott interrupted. “The coordinates will be attached to the handle. Take the boat out, take the case down, leave it. Then come back up and wait exactly an hour. That’s when you dive again. All you have to do is take the case that’s waiting for you back to the shop and leave it.”

  “Sounds smooth,” Jonas decided. “When do we get paid?”

  “After you do the job.”

  “Half up front.” Liz took a long swallow of beer and hoped her heart would settle. “Leave twenty-five hundred with the case or I don’t dive.”

  Scott smiled. “Not as trusting as Jerry.”

  She gave him a cold, bitter look. “And I intend to stay alive.”

  “Just follow the rules.”

  “Who makes them?” Jonas took the beer back from Liz. Her hand slipped down to his leg and stayed steady.

  “You don’t want to worry about that,” Manchez advised. The cigarette was clamped between his teeth as he smiled. “He knows who you are.”

  “Just follow the coordinates and keep an eye on your watch.” Scott dropped bills on the table as he rose. “The rest is gravy.”

  “Stay smart, Jerry’s brother.” Manchez gave them both a slow smile. “Adios, señorita.”

  Jonas calmly finished his beer as the two men walked away.

  “You weren’t supposed to interfere during the meeting,” Liz began in a furious undertone. “Moralas said—”

  “The hell with Moralas.” He crushed out his cigarette, watching as the smoke plumed up. “Is that the man who put the bruises on your neck?”

  Her hand moved up before she could stop it. Halfway to her throat, Liz curled her fingers into a ball and set her hand on the table. “I told you I didn’t see him.”

  Jonas turned his head. His eyes, as they had before, reminded her of frozen smoke. “Was it the man?”

  He didn’t need to be told. Liz leaned closer and spoke softly. “I want it over, Jonas. And I don’t need revenge. You were supposed to let me meet with Scott and set things up by myself.”

  In an idle move, he tilted the candle on the table toward him and lit it. “I changed my mind.”

  “Damn you, you could’ve messed everything up. I don’t want to be involved but I am. The only way to get uninvolved is to finish it. How do we know they won’t just back off now that you’ve come into it?”

  “Because you’re right in the middle, and you always have been.” Before she could speak, he took her arm. His face was close, his voice cool and steady. “I was going to use you. From the minute I walked into your house, I was going to use you to get to Jerry’s killer. If I had to walk all over you, if I had to knock you out of the way or drag you along with me, I was going to use you. Just the way Moralas is going to use you. Just the way the others are going to use you.” The heat of the candle flickered between them as he drew her closer. “The way Jerry used you.”

  She swallowed the tremor and fought against the pain. “And now?”

  He didn’t speak. They were so close that he could see himself reflected in her eyes. In them, surrounding his own reflection, he saw the doubts and the defiance. His hand came to the back of her neck, held there until he could feel the rhythm of her pulse. With a simmering violence, he pulled her against him and covered her mouth with his. A flare that was passion, a glimmer that was hope—he didn’t know which to reach for. So he let her go.

  “No one’s going to hurt you again,” he murmured. “Especially not me.”

  * * *

  It was the longest day of her life. Liz worked and waited as the hours crawled by. Moralas’s men mixed with the vacationers on the beach. So obviously, it seemed to Liz, that she wondered everyone else didn’t notice them as though they wore badges around their necks. Her boats went out, returned and went out again. Tanks and equipment were checked and rented. She filled out invoices and accepted credit cards as if there were some importance to daily routine. She wished for the day to end. She hoped the night would never come.

  A thousand times she thought of telling Moralas she couldn’t go through with it. A thousand times she called herself a coward. But as the sun went down and the beach began to clear, she realized courage wasn’t something that could be willed into place. She would run, if she had the choice. But as long as she was in danger, Faith was in danger. When the sun went down, she locked the shop as if it were the end of any ordinary day. Before she’d pocketed her keys, Jonas was beside her.

  “There’s still time to change your mind.”

  “And do what? Hide?” She looked out at the beach, at the sea, at the island that was her home. And her prison. Why had she never seen it as a prison until Jonas had come to it? “You’ve already told me how good I am at hiding.”

  “Liz—”

  She shook her head to stop him. “I can’t talk about it. I just have to do it.”

  They drove home in silence. In her mind, Liz went over her instructions, every point, every word Moralas had pushed at her. She was to follow the routine, make the exchange, then turn the case with the money over to the police who’d be waiting near the dock. She’d wait for the next move. And while she waited, she’d never be more than ten feet away from a cop. It sounded foolproof. It made her stomach churn.

  There was a man walking a dog along the street in front of her house. One of Moralas’s men. The man whittling on her neighbor’s porch had a gun under his denim vest. Liz tried to look at neither of them.

  “You’re going to have a drink, some food and a nap,” Jonas ordered as he steered her inside.

  “Just the nap.”

  “The nap first then.” After securing the lock, Jonas followed her into the bedroom. He lowered the shades. “Do you want anything?”

  It was still so hard to ask. “Would you lie down with me?”

  He came to her. She was already curled on her side, so he drew her back against him and wrapped her close. “Will you sleep?”

  “I think so.” In sleep she could find escape, if only temporarily. But she didn’t close her eyes. “Jonas?”

  “Hmm?”

  “After tonight—after we’ve finished, will you hold me like this again?”

  He pressed his lips to her hair. He didn’t think he could love her any more. He was nearly certain if he told her she’d pull away. “As long as you want. Just sleep.”

  Liz let her eyes close and her mind empty.

  * * *

  The case was small, the size of an executive briefcase. It seemed too inconspicuous to be the catalyst for so much danger. Beside it, on the counter of Liz’s shop, was an envelope. Inside was a slip of paper with longitude and latitude printed. With the slip of paper were twenty-five one-hundred-dollar bills.

  “They kept their part of the bargain,” Jonas commented.

  Liz merely shoved the envelope into a drawer. “I’ll get my equipment.”

  Jonas watched her. She’d rather do this on her own, he reflected. She’d rather not think she had someone to lean on, to turn to. He took her tanks before she could heft them. She was going to learn, he reminded himself, that she had a great deal more than that. “The coordina
tes?”

  “The same that were in Jerry’s book.” She found herself amazingly calm as she waited to lock the door behind him. They were being watched. She was aware that Moralas had staked men in the hotel. She was just as certain Manchez was somewhere close. She and Jonas didn’t speak again until they were on the dive boat and had cast off. “This could end it.” She glanced at him as she set her course.

  “This could end it.”

  She was silent for a moment. All during the evening hours she’d thought about what she would say to him, how she would say it. “Jonas, what will you do?”

  The flame of his lighter hissed, flared, then was quiet. “What I have to do.”

  The fear tasted like copper in her mouth, but it had nothing to do with herself and everything to do with Jonas. “If we make the exchange tonight, turn the second case over to Moralas. They’ll have to come out in the open. Manchez, and the man who gives the orders.”

  “What are you getting at, Liz?”

  “Manchez killed your brother.”

  Jonas looked beyond her. The sea was black. The sky was black. Only the hum of the motor broke the silence. “He was the trigger.”

  “Are you going to kill him?”

  Slowly, he turned back to her. The question had been quiet, but her eyes weren’t. They sent messages, posed argument, issued pleas. “It doesn’t involve you.”

  That hurt deeply, sharply. With a nod, she followed the shimmer of light on the water. “Maybe not. But if you let hate rule what you do, how you think, you’ll never be free of it. Manchez will be dead, Jerry will still be dead and you…” She turned to look at him again. “You’ll never really be alive again.”

  “I didn’t come all this way, spend all this time, to let Manchez walk away. He kills for money and because he enjoys it. He enjoys it,” Jonas repeated viciously. “You can see it in his eyes.”

  And she had. But she didn’t give a damn about Manchez. “Do you remember telling me once that everyone was entitled to representation?”

  He remembered. He remembered everything he’d once believed in. He remembered how Jerry had looked in the cold white light of the morgue. “It didn’t have anything to do with this.”

  “I suppose you change the rules when it’s personal.”

  “He was my brother.”

  “And he’s dead.” With a sigh she lifted her face so that the wind could cool her skin. “I’m sorry, Jonas. Jerry’s dead and if you go through with what you’ve planned, you’re going to kill something in yourself.” And, though she couldn’t tell him, something in her. “Don’t you trust the law?”

  He tossed his cigarette into the water, then leaned on the rail. “I’ve been playing with it for years. It’s the last thing I’d trust.”

  She wanted to go to him but didn’t know how. Still, no matter what he did, she was beside him. “Then you’ll have to trust yourself. And so will I.”

  Slowly, he crossed to her. Taking her face in his hands, he tried to understand what she was telling him, what she was still holding back. “Will you?”

  “Yes.”

  He leaned to press a kiss to her forehead. Inside there was a need, a fierce desire to tell her to head the boat out to sea and keep going. But that would never work, not for either of them. They stood on the boat together, and stood at the crossroads. “Then start now.” He kissed her again before he turned and lifted one of the compartment seats. Liz frowned as she saw the wet suit.

  “What are you doing?”

  “I arranged to have Luis leave this here for me.”

  “Why? We can’t both go down.”

  Jonas stripped down to his trunks. “That’s right. I’m diving, you’re staying with the boat.”

  Liz stood very straight. It wouldn’t do any good to lose her temper. “The arrangements were made on all sides, Jonas. I’m diving.”

  “I’m changing the arrangements.” He tugged the wet suit up to his waist before he looked at her. “I’m not taking any more chances with you.”

  “You’re not taking chances with me. I am. Jonas, you don’t know these waters. I do. You’ve never gone down here at night. I have.”

  “I’m about to.”

  “The last thing we need right now is for you to start behaving like an overprotective man.”

  He nearly laughed as he snapped the suit over his shoulders. “That’s too bad, then, because that’s just what we’ve got.”

  “I told Manchez and Trydent I was going down.”

  “I guess your reputation’s shot when you lie to murderers and drug smugglers.”

  “Jonas, I’m not in the mood for jokes.”

  He strapped on his diver’s knife, adjusted his weight belt, then reached for his mask. “Maybe not. And maybe you’re not in the mood to hear this. I care about you. Too damn much.” He reached out, gripping her chin. “My brother dragged you into this because he never wasted two thoughts about anyone else in his life. I pulled you in deeper because all I was thinking about was payback. Now I’m thinking about you, about us. You’re not going down. If I have to tie you to the wheel, you’re not going down.”

  “I don’t want you to go.” She balled her fists against his chest. “If I was down, all I’d think about was what I was doing. If I stay up here, I won’t be able to stop thinking about what could happen to you.”

  “Time me.” He lifted the tanks and held them out to her. “Help me get them on.”

  Hadn’t she told herself weeks before that he wasn’t a man who’d lose an argument? Her hands trembled a bit as she slipped the straps over his shoulders. “I don’t know how to handle being protected.”

  He hooked the tanks as he turned back to her. “Practice.”

  She closed her eyes. It was too late for talk, too late for arguments. “Bear northeast as you dive. The cave’s at eighty feet.” She hesitated only a moment, then picked up a spear gun. “Watch out for sharks.”

  When he was over the side, she lowered the case to him. In seconds, he was gone and the sea was black and still. In her mind, Liz followed him fathom by fathom. The water would be dark so that he would be dependent on his gauges and the thin beam of light. Night creatures would be feeding. Squid, the moray, barracuda. Sharks. Liz closed her mind to it.

  She should have forced him to let her go. How? Pacing the deck, she pushed the hair back from her face. He’d gone to protect her. He’d gone because he cared about her. Shivering, she sat down to rub her arms warm again. Was this what it was like to be cared for by a man? Did it mean you had to sit and wait? She was up again and pacing. She’d lived too much of her life doing to suddenly become passive. And yet… To hear him say he cared. Liz sat again and waited.

  She’d checked her watch four times before she heard him at the ladder. On a shudder of relief, she dashed over to the side to help him. “I’m going down the next time,” she began.

  Jonas pulled off his light, then his tanks. “Forget it.” Before she could protest, he dragged her against him. “We’ve got an hour,” he murmured against her ear. “You want to spend it arguing?”

  He was wet and cold. Liz wrapped herself around him. “I don’t like being bossed around.”

  “Next time you can boss me around.” He dropped onto a bench and pulled her with him. “I’d forgotten what it was like down there at night. Fabulous.” And it was nearly over, he told himself. The first step had been taken, the second one had to follow. “I saw a giant squid. Scared the hell out of him with the light. I swear he was thirty feet long.”

  “They get bigger.” She rested her head on his shoulder and tried to relax. They had an hour. “I was diving with my father once. We saw one that was nearly sixty.”

  “Made you nervous?”

  “No. I was fascinated. I remember I swam close enough to touch the tentacles. My father gave me a twenty-minute lecture when we surfaced.”

  “I imagine you’d do the same thing with Faith.”

  “I’d be proud of her,” Liz began, then laughed. “
Then I’d give her a twenty-minute lecture.”

  For the first time that night he noticed the stars. The sky was alive with them. It made him think of his mother’s porch swing and long summer nights. “Tell me about her.”

  “You don’t want to get me started.”

  “Yes, I do.” He slipped an arm around her shoulder. “Tell me about her.”

  With a half smile, Liz closed her eyes. It was good to think of Faith, to talk of Faith. A picture began to emerge for Jonas of a young girl who liked school because there was plenty to do and lots of people. He heard the love and the pride, and the wistfulness. He saw the dark, sunny-faced girl in the photo and learned she spoke two languages, liked basketball and hated vegetables.

  “She’s always been sweet,” Liz reflected. “But she’s no angel. She’s very stubborn, and when she’s crossed, her temper isn’t pretty. Faith wants to do things herself. When she was two she’d get very annoyed if I wanted to help her down the stairs.”

  “Independence seems to run in the family.”

  Liz moved her shoulders. “We’ve needed it.”

  “Ever thought about sharing?”

  Her nerves began to hum. Though she shifted only a bit, it was away from him. “When you share, you have to give something up. I’ve never been able to afford to give up anything.”

  It was an answer he’d expected. It was an answer he intended to change. “It’s time to go back down.”

  Liz helped him back on with his tanks. “Take the spear gun. Jonas…” He was already at the rail before she ran to him. “Hurry back,” she murmured. “I want to go home. I want to make love with you.”

  “Hell of a time to bring that up.” He sent her a grin, curled and fell back into the water.

  Within five minutes Liz was pacing again. Why hadn’t she thought to bring any coffee? She’d concentrate on that. In little more than an hour they could be huddled in her kitchen with a pot brewing. It wouldn’t matter that there would be police surrounding the house. She and Jonas would be inside. Together. Perhaps she was wrong about sharing. Perhaps… When she heard the splash at the side of the boat, she was at the rail like a shot.