The Love Shack

by Christie Ridgway

  Her gaze roamed the space. Everything appeared as they’d left it that afternoon. The patio furniture had been removed to the garage and there were stacks of white folding chairs ready to be put in place for the ceremony. Then she noticed that the interior of the house was dark, too. Pitch-dark.

  “Oh, damn,” she muttered. The electricity must be out.

  Wasn’t that always the way? The garbage disposal dying on Thanksgiving, the toilet overflowing on Easter. She started to turn back to the beach, already thinking of the file of emergency repair contractors in the property management office. But then she looked down at the shoe in her hand.

  Where was Gage?

  Probably trying to locate the electric panel, she thought. Aware it was on the outside north wall, she began to cross the deck, then halted when she saw a flashlight beam roam the living room. “Gage!” she called out. “If you’re looking for...”

  Her words petered out. It wasn’t Gage’s figure stepping from the living room onto the deck. It was a different man.

  In a ball cap and bandanna.

  She screamed as adrenaline flooded her system, fueling her instant reaction: flight.

  But her bare soles slipped on the damp surface of the painted-wood deck and instead of racing back to the beach, she found herself on her butt. The jolt of the fall barely registered before she was up on her feet once more.

  “Well, well, well,” the man said. “I promised we’d see each other again.”

  His voice paralyzed her. A flash of memory layered over the present and she was naked again, made immobile by the bungee cords he’d used to tie her to the chair. His stale-sweat smell was in her nose, and she could feel the scrape of a knife blade tracing her belly. We’re going to have so much fun.

  “Stay right there,” he said now, approaching her slowly. “And nobody else will get hurt.”

  Nobody else. Who was hurt? Gage? “You stay away from me, you son of a bitch,” Skye said, backing toward the steps. “Where’s Gage? What did you do with Gage?”

  Another man emerged from the sliding glass doors, this one in a ski mask. “Oh, shit,” he said, upon seeing Skye.

  She didn’t stop her backward movement. “Tell me where Gage is, right this minute.”

  “Go get her,” the man in the bandanna said to his partner, gesturing with his flashlight. “If you cooperate, sweet thing, we’ll tell you what we did with your friend.”

  “Oh, shit,” the second man said again.

  “‘Oh, shit,’ is not going to get us those jewels you promised me, cuz.”

  The man in the ball cap’s voice hardened. “And it’s not going to get me my consolation prize, either. Now grab the girl.”

  Ski Mask moved and Skye knew she must also. Ready to fly down the steps, she whirled. She had one foot in the air when a hand clamped on her arm, yanking her back.

  She screamed again.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  GAGE HEARD NOISE IN THE distance, voices. One of his captors, he thought, coming to check on him. Jahandar or a brother of his showed up every couple of days, with a new container of water and to exchange his slops bucket. Yeah, first-class service at this joint.

  He wasn’t going to bother waking up for the visit. Reasoning with the fucking wankers had gotten him nowhere and he wasn’t up to small talk. He’d taken a course in hostile environment training a few years back. In regards to kidnapping, the instructor had informed the students that you bettered your chance of survival if the people holding you prisoner saw you as a fellow human. A few months later, one of the other class members, a reporter friend of Gage’s, had been mistaken for a spy and held for twelve hours by a tribal warlord. Remembering the hostage lecture, he’d gone weepy, showing off his wedding ring, wailing about his kids. Trying so hard to be human.

  Come to find out, that tribe found tears shameful, and a sure sign of guilt. His buddy was lucky he wasn’t shot on the spot.

  So Gage hadn’t attempted any waterworks. Instead, he’d chatted about his childhood in California. He’d made up a devoted girlfriend and called her Skye. But when Jahandar’s younger brother had pressed for salacious details about Gage’s American lady, he’d regretted bringing his pen pal’s name into the ugliness of his captivity.

  So he wasn’t going to even open his eyes.

  He wasn’t sure he could anyhow, because his head was pounding like a bitch and there seemed to be some sort of crust gluing his eyelashes together. God, he just got filthier by the day, and the beckoning sleep was at least one way to escape it.

  But the throbbing in his head wouldn’t let him rest. Despite himself, he roused a little. Maybe he should try to talk to the assholes again. Maybe get a fresh car battery. His lightbulb had been working okay—

  No, no, it wasn’t working, he thought, panic setting in as he registered the darkness behind his closed eyelids. Fuck. Fuck!

  He rolled to his back, hands patting his chest, desperate to hear the crackle of paper—the packet of letters that he stashed next to his heart. They weren’t there. Fuck!

  Sitting up, he felt the earth around him. It was hard-packed, orangish stuff—

  But this wasn’t hard-packed. This was soft. This was...sand.

  Recent events came to him in a rush. Crescent Cove. Wedding. Skye. Dinner. His decision to go to No. 9.

  A flashlight to the head.

  A scream.

  He’d screamed? No. Shit. That scream was in real time. A real, feminine scream.

  Gage jackknifed up, and the drums in his head redoubled their beat. Ignoring them, he swiped at his eyes, rubbing his sleeve against them. Then he blinked, blinked again and saw...

  Nothing.

  Like the hole at the ransom farm, he was in pitch-darkness. Smothering.

  Helpless.

  Another scream.

  Skye.

  The helplessness burned off in a fire that left only rage behind. Someone was hurting her—those two men, he remembered, who had terrorized her before. On hands and knees, he moved about the dark space, seeking a way out. But the deck’s concrete footings made the area into a maze and he was clammy with sweat by the time he realized he’d probably crawled away from the exit instead of toward it. Calm down, he ordered himself. Use your head.

  He took in a long breath, let it out, then tried honing his senses. He couldn’t see, but he could hear. Orienting his body so that the sound of the surf was ahead of him, he turned right, recalling the location of that small door.

  He bumped his head on one cement pier, his knee on a second, but then he found the outer wall. Sweeping along it with his hands, he discovered the door handle and gave it a mighty shove.

  Cool, damp air blew across his face. He blinked, the moonlight almost bright to him now, and crawled out. Then he pushed to his feet, and stumbled toward the stairs leading to the deck. “Skye!” he yelled, letting her know he was coming. That she wasn’t alone. “Where are you?”

  “Gage!”

  “Here, honey. Here!” He slogged as quickly as he could through the soft sand in the direction of her voice. “Are you all right?”

  As he made his way to the bottom step, he saw her at the top. She leaped, and he jumped back to avoid a collision. She rolled but came back up and as he reached for her, she whirled around to face the deck again.

  A man, in ball cap and bandanna, was scrambling down the steps.

  “Stay away from us!” Skye shrieked at the intruder. Her shoulder blades hit Gage’s chest and he tripped backward, barely staying on his feet.

  Bandanna didn’t heed her warning, and that’s when she cranked back her arm, something clutched in her hand. She threw it with all her might at the man coming toward them.

  He howled, his hands going to his nose. Then he growled, another animalistic noise, and staggered forward, hands outstretched.

  Skye was still between Gage and her attacker, her arms wide, as if to protect him. His brave mermaid.

  Curling his hands about her waist, he plucked her as
ide and slammed his fist into Bandanna’s oncoming jaw. The guy grunted, but kept on his feet, his fingers closing over Gage’s shirt.

  Remembering another lesson from hostile environment school, Gage jerked up a bent leg, sending a vicious knee into the other man’s balls, nothing held back. The man dropped. Forget the Queensberry rules, his instructor had said. When you can, fight like a woman.

  Breathing hard, Gage stood over the moaning assailant. With his right foot—the only one with a shoe, he realized now—he nudged the brim of the guy’s hat, revealing a shaved head. Then he leaned down to yank the bandanna away from his face.

  Blood poured from the guy’s nose.

  Gage glanced back at Skye. She was staring at the man, her face pale in the moonlight. “You know him?” he asked.

  “Not his name, but...but he’s one of the pair who invaded my house.” She stepped closer, and he felt her hand clutch at the back of his shirt. “He’s—” she pointed to the top of the stairs “—the other.”

  It was the bartender from Captain Crow’s, the guy who’d removed the ski mask before shoving Gage below the deck. “You stay out of the way,” he told Skye.

  With Bandanna harmless for the moment, Gage grimly started for the second assailant, his fingers already curling into fists. “I’m coming for you.”

  “Don’t bother,” the man said, holding up his cell phone. “I already called the police.”

  * * *

  THE BRIDE AND MATRON of honor were getting wedding-ready at No. 9, while Gage and Griffin had been assigned to Rex Monroe’s. They each had a whiskey in hand and were sitting on the porch, waiting for the signal from their mother. Gage felt remarkably content, and was determined to hold on to that feeling with everything he had.

  It had taken him and his brother little time to dress. They both wore linen slacks and pin-tucked Mexican wedding shirts. Since the bride was going shoeless, so were they. “If a guy’s got to get married, this is the way to do it,” Gage remarked. “No monkey suits.”

  “Yeah,” Griffin said. “And thank God we talked the women out of dressing us exactly alike. That would have been like first grade.”

  Gage slid his brother a sidelong look. They both wore turquoise-blue shirts, one a slight shade lighter than the other. “Hey, I have an idea. We could pull the ol’ twin switcheroo. See if Jane notices I’m not the real groom.”

  “Not a chance she wouldn’t notice, not even for a second,” Griffin said. “You forget your stitches?”

  “Oh, yeah.” Gage put his hand to his hairline and touched the bandage. “Thanks to those assholes I’m going to look battered in your wedding photos.”

  “Jane likes that. She says it will help us all remember the night before even better.”

  Gage didn’t think he’d ever forget. Not his panic, not his fear for Skye, not the sight of her placing herself between him and the bad guys. “She broke that guy’s nose with my shoe,” he murmured. “You shoulda seen it, Griff.”

  “I saw what you looked like. Blood all over your face and soaked into your shirt. No wonder she thought she had to save you from further harm.”

  “Head wounds bleed like a bitch. My skull still aches, too, but I bet our friend Bandanna will be talking to his lawyer in falsetto for a few more days.” There was satisfaction in that. Thanks to Ski Mask—Steve—they knew the whole story now. Yes, he and his cousin had been the duo who invaded Skye’s home months back. A film lit major, Steve had fixated on rumors of the Collar. His cousin had fixated on the money they could make upon finding it. So they’d searched Skye’s place.

  “My cousin Doug is not a good person,” Steve had said, not meeting Gage’s gaze and conveniently forgetting his own larceny as they waited for the police to arrive. “I’m sorry for what happened to her.”

  “You should have reported him to the cops the first time,” Gage had answered, barely suppressing the urge to strangle the moron. “And why’d you call him back tonight for another search?”

  “I heard your party talking during dinner—how the Collar might be at No. 9. I thought there was a narrow window of opportunity—and Doug was nearby and available.”

  Because Doug was an unemployed petty criminal who appeared to be on his way to bigger, nastier things. But with Steve’s confession, the police hoped they could put the brutish thug away for some time.

  With the cove mysteries solved—Steve had also been the man in the ski mask who’d ransacked the Sunrise Studios archives the month before, again looking for the Collar or information leading to acquiring it—Skye was once more secure in her special corner of the world.

  On a relaxed sigh, Gage stretched out his legs, crossing them at the ankle. There was probably forty minutes until sunset, and the sky was just beginning to take on tangerine and scarlet tones.

  He leaned over to tap his glass against his twin’s. “A monkey that amuses me is better than a deer astray.”

  Griffin raised a brow. “I guess I’ll drink to that, whatever the hell it means.”

  It meant life was good at this moment, Gage thought. There was the beautiful cove now cleared of crime. The imminent nuptials, which would join together his brother and the woman he adored. “Do you need me to give you any wedding night advice?” he teased Griffin. “Shall we have the Talk?”

  His brother knocked back the remainder of his whiskey. “Yeah. There’s a talk we need to have. Something I need to tell you.”

  Frowning, Gage turned his head. “What?”

  “You’re a fucking idiot!”

  “Huh? What—”

  “Cut the bullshit,” Griffin said, his eyes going hard. “I know all about your little adventure, your next assignment, the stupid way you’ve been going about your business.”

  Shit. “Skye shouldn’t have—”

  “Skye didn’t.” A speculative look entered his brother’s gaze. “I’m surprised you told her.”

  “She’s impossible to lie to,” Gage muttered, looking down at his feet.

  “Maybe you’ll think about why that’s the case, after I kick your ass.”

  Gage took in a breath. “How’d you find out?”

  “You’re not the only one with friends on the other side of the world. I put out feelers. It took a while for the intel to reach me, but it did.”

  “Don’t tell Mom and Dad,” Gage said quickly, feeling as if he were ten again and hiding a bad test paper. “Or Tess, either.”

  “Only if you promise to start being responsible about—”

  “I have been responsible! This way no one but me is accountable.”

  “Yeah, I get that’s what you tell yourself. Don’t forget I know well how your mind works. But it’s no good, Gage. Think about it, think about if it had been me no one could find, me who just disappeared off the face of the earth without a trace.”

  The whiskey sloshed in Gage’s belly like stormy seas. “It’s not the same.”

  “It’s exactly the same.”

  “All right. Fine. But think about Charlie.”

  “Mara had a tough decision to make, I agree, and I also agree that the outcome was damn rough. But in your scenario, she’d never have had a chance to help him and maybe never even know what became of him. Is that any better?”

  “I hate when you lecture,” Gage said.

  “You hate when I’m right.” Griffin looked over. “So...I need a wedding present.”

  “I went in with Tess and David on something already. I hope it’s lace doilies or some ugly chip and dip bowl.”

  His brother ignored that. “You put me on your list. I’m the contact name. I’m the decision-maker, if it comes to any decisions needing to be made.”

  Gage closed his eyes. “You’re totally fucking up my day.”

  “You’ll make mine if you agree,” his brother said. “I need this from you.”

  “Shit. You’ve never played fair.”

  “It’s the elder brother thing.”

  “By eleven stinking minutes!”

  Gri
ffin shrugged. “Eleven minutes is eleven minutes.” Then he hesitated. “Trust me to do right by you.”

  “Of course I trust you.” Gage knew he sounded surly. “It’s just...I’m going to be all right. I’m not going to get into any more tight places.”

  “Yes, you are. You’re planning to go straight back to that ransom farm. I’m worried that it’s stress that’s driving you there.”

  “It’s not. It’s...” God, he wasn’t the word guy. “Griff, you’ve got to trust me, too.”

  A long moment passed; then his brother nodded. “Okay. You’re right, and I do.” His cell phone rang, and he pulled it out to check the screen, a smile breaking over his face and dispatching the tension between them.

  “Showtime?” Gage asked.

  “Showtime,” Griffin confirmed.

  They stood as one, then looked at each other. “Are you going to get sappy again?” Gage asked.

  “Briefly.”

  The man hug was hard...and heartfelt. “I’m happy for you, Griff.”

  His twin pushed away and slapped his hands together. “Let’s go get me a wife.”

  Gage could only smile at his brother’s enthusiasm, feeling his own mood rise again. “Let’s.”

  As his brother made to move off, Gage caught his arm. Griffin turned, eyebrows rising.

  “About...”

  “About Skye?”

  “Yeah.” This was when the twin thing came in handy. It made articulation often unnecessary.

  “Jane and I will look out for her.”

  “I’m still going to be writing her letters,” Gage promised. “I’m not walking out of her life.”

  Griffin smiled. “There’s not a doubt in my mind.”

  * * *

  GAGE DIDN’T HAVE ANY doubts about his brother’s future marital happiness, either. The wedding ceremony went off without a hitch. The sunset arrived as predicted by the weather service, and the group of seventy guests were in place as the music began. Jane looked beautiful in a shoulder-baring white dress, its hem skimming the sand aisle that her techie father and brothers had mapped out and then executed with the help of no fewer than three laptops running five separate programs.