Seduction Under Fire

by Melissa Cutler

  “A hundred grand, which would be steep for a legitimate sale of a yacht this size, but on the black market, it seemed a reasonable price, especially since the guy selling it didn’t care who I was and why I had so much cash. He got the boat as a gift for his wife last year and now she’s hinting about a bigger one. Must be nice.”

  “This is perfect. Really great thinking.” She tried to smile, but the action brought too much pain to her swollen cheek. “I didn’t know you had experience with boats.”

  He shrugged. “Yeah. I’ve done my share of water-skiing and speedboating over the years. Never captained a yacht, but I’m getting the hang of it.”

  “How far offshore are we?”

  He emptied a can of soup into a coffee mug. “Twenty miles. About an hour’s drive.”

  “Great. I’ll heat up the soup. You fire up the boat. We can start with surveillance. Make a few passes by the Gigante Market, see if any other cartel operators are lurking nearby who might lead us to Rosalia.”

  He set the mug in the microwave. “We’re going to shore this afternoon, but only to meet Ana at the marina. She called last night while you were showering to check on you and offered to drop off some groceries. I asked her to pick up the package from Jacob and some materials one of my coworkers overnighted to me, too. You’ll be staying in the cabin, out of sight. You’re not getting off this boat for a few more days.”

  Anger tightened her throat. “Who the hell are you to issue a command like that? If I say I’m all right—” She pushed to standing, swallowing a gasp as waves of pain radiated from her leg.

  Aaron was in her face before she could recover enough to speak, stabbing the air between them with his finger. His eyes were wild, furious. “Sit down. Right now. Never once in my life have I forced a woman to do anything she didn’t want to, but so help me, Camille, you’re going to stay off that leg if I have to tie you to the bed.”

  Camille bit back the challenge hanging on the tip of her tongue. I’d like to see you try. Because what if he seized on her words? What if he touched her again?

  Still, she was far too stubborn to capitulate. Balancing on her good leg, she held her ground. “How dare you, you chauvinistic jackass. You’d never talk to one of your ICE unit members like that. If I say I’m all right, then I am. The fact that I’m a woman is immaterial.”

  Yet how could she ignore that truth when he stood so close? When she could smell soap on his skin and watch the throb of a vein in his forehead? She’d never been more aware that she was a woman than when she was near Aaron Montgomery. And for that alone, she wished she could hate him.

  “You’re a terrible patient.”

  “And you’re an insufferable pig.”

  She jumped a little when she felt his hand on her hip. Trapped between his broad, solid body and the sofa, her only move was to scramble onto the cushions, but she was too confused to move. She sought out an answer in his eyes and found them narrowed with resolve.

  “You’re right. Your gender doesn’t matter to me one bit. Never has, never will.” His voice had turned a soothing, patronizing tone. His hand, rough and sure, slid along her thigh and she caught herself pressing into his touch as her body stirred to life. “In fact, I barely notice you’re a woman at all.” His other hand closed around her waist as his fingers skimmed her knee.

  Her breathing grew shallow. She stared at his chest, unwilling to meet his gaze.

  “But if we got in a jam while doing surveillance, you couldn’t run fast enough to escape.” He dug his fingertips into the sensitive hollow behind her knee and her standing leg buckled. Her arms flailed as she dropped to the sofa. “And if you were caught, what good would you be to Rosalia?”

  He was right, damn him.

  She stared out the window at the rolling gray swells, her hands fisted to keep herself from rubbing the skin he’d seared with his touch. She could think of nothing to say, no clever retort or convincing threat. No argument to match his foolproof logic. She had to let him win this one. For Rosalia. For their families.

  He banged the mug of soup down on the side table. She lifted it to her lips and drank deeply. Through her silence, she conceded defeat.

  * * *

  For the rest of the day, the yacht bobbed in the Sea of Cortez, so far from the mainland it looked like a layer of brown smog across the western horizon. Outside of using the bathroom, Aaron let Camille do nothing for herself—not walk, get a drink of water or brush her hair. He hovered, like the world’s most handsome private nurse, over her every waking moment.

  At four o’clock, the yacht rumbled to life and they made their way through the long, narrow Bay of La Paz. When they reached their slip in the marina, Aaron ducked his head into the cabin with a warning for Camille to stay out of sight. She responded with a huff of protest. After resting her knee for a full night and day, she was anxious to measure her recovery.

  She waited for the sound of Aaron’s heavy footfalls on the dock, listening to men calling out to each other in Spanish, car horns honking in the distance and the cries of seagulls, then eased onto her feet.

  “Ugh, that smarts,” she muttered under her breath as her every nerve ending protested the move. Using the cabin wall as a crutch, she limped toward the door and into the sunlight.

  Ana was waiting for them outside the locked security gate at the top of the ramp with four grocery bags, watching Aaron with a seductive grin as he approached. When she noticed Camille, she waved and her smile turned cheerful. Aaron glanced over his shoulder, then unlocked the gate for Ana. After grabbing the grocery bags, he stalked back down the ramp.

  “What do you think you’re doing?”

  Camille clamored over the boat railing and onto the dock, schooling a grimace of discomfort away from her features. Standing on one leg as she was, she looked like a flamingo, but she refused to play into Aaron’s argument by leaning on the boat for support. “Saying hello to Ana. You got a problem with that?”

  “It’s not safe out here. What if someone recognizes you?”

  “What if someone recognizes you?”

  His face reddened with fury. “I’m not the one—”

  “Camille, I’ve been so worried!” Ana skirted Aaron to kiss Camille’s cheek and pet her head. “Your hair looks beautiful in this shade. How are you?”

  Camille leveled a defiant glare on Aaron before turning her attention to Ana.

  “I’m fine. All I needed was a bit of rest.”

  Aaron scoffed.

  Ana squeezed Camille’s hand. “The rumor has always been that the cartel’s control was limited to the commercial port near the ferry landing. If I had any idea the grocery store would be dangerous, I never would have suggested you shop there.”

  Aaron moved next to Camille and took her elbow in his hand. She tugged out of his grip. He draped an arm around her rib cage and pulled her tightly against his side. “Hopefully, with the intelligence Camille and I gather, we can help end the cartel’s stronghold on your city. Getting back to something you mentioned—the rumor is that the cartel controls the commercial port?”

  “That’s what I’ve heard.”

  Aaron rubbed his jaw. “That might be useful.”

  “Whatever I can do to help.”

  “You’ve already helped,” Camille said. “Thank you for bringing us food. I’ve never been so hungry in my life.”

  Aaron released her to rummage through the bags. He handed her a banana, the peel already started. As if she couldn’t have done that herself. The man needed to chill out before she strangled him.

  “Sorry for the brief visit, but we need to shove off. Too risky to linger.” He stowed the grocery bags on deck, then took Ana’s arm and speared a finger in Camille’s direction. “I’m walking Ana up the dock. You don’t move. I’ll help you in the boat when I get back. No argument.”

  Yeah, right.

  She hobbled along the side of the boat and took her first good look at it. It appeared smaller from the outside and practically brand-
new. The metal shone, the windows were clean, the white hull was free of blemishes.

  Then she noticed the boat’s name. Raising her eyebrows, she stared in disbelief at the hot pink lettering. She read the words silently, then aloud, then silently again. Her laughter erupted first as a chortle deep in her lungs and rapidly devolved into waves of giggles with a touch of crazy thrown in—the kind of laughter she rarely, if ever, indulged in.

  She couldn’t help it.

  Tears pooled in the corners of her eyes and her nose started to run. She laughed so hard that it soon made no sound, taking the form of silent full-body shudders that made her stomach muscles ache. She doubled over, bracing a hand on her good leg. She laughed so hard, she nearly forgot about her pain.

  Aaron jogged into view. “What’s wrong?”

  He sounded worried, so she waved dismissively at him. He set his hands on her shoulders. “Camille, are you laughing or crying?”

  The concern in his voice made her laugh harder. She pointed a shaky finger at the boat.

  “Oh, that.” Aaron was smiling now, too. “Perfect name, isn’t it? Kind of sums up our whole experience.”

  It took a few throat clearings before Camille could speak. “I have never, ever seen something so inappropriately named...and in hot pink to boot. It’s like a floating joke. Who names their boat that?”

  “An optimist?”

  Well, that was about the funniest thing Aaron could have said. Camille’s face contorted as she fell into another onslaught of unfettered giggles. Aaron pulled her into an easy embrace and she was too distracted by her giddiness to push him away. They rested their foreheads on each other’s shoulders and let laughter overtake them.

  When they were all laughed out, they broke apart and mopped their faces. Camille watched Aaron untie the boat from the dock. Then he lifted her into his arms and carried her on board the Happily Ever After.

  * * *

  Aaron pulled the boat away from the private marina slip that the previous owner had prepaid a year’s rent for. It was a load off his mind to have a secure place to dock. Now he only had to worry about the minor detail of Camille’s safety, he thought with halfhearted sarcasm, knowing how oppressively it weighed on his conscience.

  As he rounded the jetty separating the marina from the rest of the bay, an expensive-looking powerboat cut in front of the yacht. The four men on board didn’t fit. They neither looked wealthy, nor out for a pleasure cruise of the bay. As he considered them, all men on board except the captain drew guns.

  Cursing, he wrenched the steering wheel to the left and maxed the throttle. With a great rumbling, the yacht accelerated, but it was not a craft built for speed or tight maneuverability. Though he pushed their lumbering floating house to its max speed in the glassy water, the powerboat easily caught up.

  “What’re you doing?” Camille called behind him.

  “They found us. Get your gun.”

  Side by side, the boats flew toward the mouth of the bay, dodging sailboats and fishing boats, buoys and kayaks.

  Camille appeared again, armed with a rifle. She held up a grenade. “Get us in a position to use it.”

  While Aaron negotiated the bay, she crouched along the side wall of the bridge and shot a dozen or so rounds at the powerboat. She ducked as their weapons fired in response, then peered back over the edge.

  “They’re trying to board our boat,” she yelled, squeezing off another volley of rounds. Bits of fiberglass rained on Aaron as the men returned fire.

  Outrunning the powerboat was impossible. If they were going to survive, Aaron had to be smarter than the men trying to overtake them. In the distance, a beastly freighter laden with huge red-and-yellow shipping containers surged through the water.

  “Keep them off our boat,” he called to Camille. “I have a plan.”

  “Got it.” She tipped her rifle over the railing and fired.

  Aaron angled the yacht straight at the freighter’s bow in a deadly game of chicken. As he knew it would, the powerboat corrected its angle to match the yacht. Neck and neck, they careened toward the freighter with alarming speed.

  When they were within a few hundred yards of the container ship, he shouted, “Get ready to throw that grenade.”

  One at a time, Aaron wiped his sweaty palms on his jeans. He was an inexperienced boat captain and this next move would be a feat of boating expertise if he pulled it off. If he didn’t, he and Camille were about to smash headfirst into a shipping barge.

  “Ready, Cam?”

  “Ready.”

  Fifty feet to impact. Forty. The barge’s horn blasted a warning.

  Thirty feet. Fifteen.

  “Now! Now!”

  He couldn’t look to see if Camille threw the grenade, or if it reached its target. The powerboat peeled off to the left side of the freighter as Aaron wrenched the wheel to the right, close enough to the ship to see the gray-green barnacles on its hull.

  The yacht lurched and bucked in the wake of the freighter as a loud explosion boomed all around them. Black smoke curled into the sky from the other side of the ship. Camille hit her mark. As he raced for the open ocean, Aaron glanced over his shoulder at the skeleton of the speedboat, spewing fire and sinking into the bay.

  Fury uncoiled in his gut. Every move they made, someone got the jump on them. Well, no more. Aaron’s tolerance for playing defense had reached its threshold. How could they rescue a child when they could barely survive a grocery run to shore? How would they ever be free with a faceless enemy anticipating their every move and making the first strike?

  Camille flopped into the cocaptain’s chair. “It’s like they were waiting for me at the Gigante Market. And now this. It can’t be a coincidence.” She sat a little straighter. “Ana...”

  “Maybe. For all we know, the guy who sold me the boat tipped off the cartel about his slip in the marina. Or there’s a rat on the task force leaking information. Anything’s possible. From now on, we don’t trust anyone—not ICE, not the SDPD, not Ana. We’ve got each other, Cam, and that’s it.”

  After anchoring the yacht in the lee of one of the numerous uninhabited islands offshore, Aaron opened the package from Nicholas Wells. At the dining table, he and Camille leafed through a gray binder outlining the top operatives of the Cortez Cartel’s weapon-smuggling unit, complete with names, aliases and photos.

  Now that they’d decided not to trust Ana, Aaron was prepared to disregard her tip about the cartel’s operations in La Paz’s commercial port, but Wells seconded the intel in a handwritten note he’d included in the package. He and Camille would need to watch their backs and go in heavily armed, but the lead was too significant to ignore.

  He watched Camille study the folder, her sharp gaze taking in the data with the practiced eye of a cop and a keen intelligence that never ceased to awe him, her slender fingers skimming the photographs. Her thick, brown hair fell like a curtain between them. It would be so easy to rake his fingers through it and tip her head back to expose the delicate length of her throat. He would taste her. He would drink his fill. And maybe those fingers would wrap around his shoulders and cling to him.

  He wanted her to cling to him. And not just with those perfect fingers, but with her whole self. Someday soon, he vowed. He would have her in his arms, in their bed, for as long as he wanted, without the pressure of survival hanging over them. He shook his head, floored by the direction of his thoughts. Never in a million years would he have imagined he’d wish for more time with Camille Fisher, of all people.

  All he knew was that sometime since they’d been taken to Mexico, his feelings for her had shifted in a catastrophic way. What he planned to do about it, he had no idea. For now, his only plan was keeping them alive and finding Rosalia Perez. He’d worry about the rest later.

  “This guy, Eduardo Vasillo,” she said, tapping a photograph. “He’s one of the men who attacked me in the market.”

  He forced his mind to stay focused on the photograph—not Camille’s finger
s or hair.

  “Sal de Largo,” she went on, pointing to another picture on the page. “He was one of my attackers, too.”

  Aaron slipped the photographs from their pockets and crumpled them up. “We don’t have to worry about them anymore. Let’s see if anyone else looks familiar.”

  She turned the page. With how fast everything had happened in the past few days, the details of their captors’ appearances were fuzzy in their memories. Every face, that was, except El Ocho, Rodrigo Perez, whose image Aaron recognized from the photograph Dreyer shared at his last task-force meeting. Perez wasn’t the cartel boss, that was Alejandro Milán, but trapping Milán was virtually impossible, as the man was a ghost. If it could have been done, then either the Mexican government would have arrested him or a rival cartel would have killed him already.

  The wheels were turning in Aaron’s head. Sick of playing defense, he was hungry for battle. He was going to personally rescue Rosalia and take down Rodrigo Perez. And once Perez’s minions were good and confused, they would scatter, and Aaron and Camille would be free.

  Chapter 10

  Three days later, Aaron woke before dawn. His erection was painful this time, throbbing with awareness of the woman sleeping mere inches away. He palmed it. It was hard as steel beneath his fingers. He could slip away to the bathroom for some temporary relief, but any cure he administered would be fleeting at best. After all, when he was done, he’d return to bed and it would start all over again. He let go and propped his hands behind his head.

  Time to embrace the pain.

  He wanted her badly. Every day, every night. It wasn’t only her strength or her mouthwatering body that drew him to her, but every single damn thing about her, good and bad, pleasant and unpleasant. Everything.

  The prosaic hours of her recovery had left Aaron with nothing to do but concentrate on her. Even his dreams wouldn’t grant him a reprieve. Tonight’s dream had been achingly vivid. Truth was, he was starting to hate the bed they shared. Because every night, she was there—close enough to touch, yet with such a wall of ice around her heart that breaching it seemed impossible.