by Hazel Parker
I retreated to a bunker underneath the compound that already had an up-to-the-minute report. Snake had Kaylie on a boat about fifty miles offshore as the crow flies northeast. I would have a military boat waiting for me, the inflatable kind that Navy SEALs used to approach missions without creating much noise. There was just one thing wrong with the report.
It stated that Snake was expected to be there upon my arrival, but I knew better. Snake and I had a sixth sense for when the other was near, and we never crossed paths whenever we could avoid it. There was a sort of odd respect for each other that we didn’t want to end.
Well, better said that he didn’t want to end. He was like the fucking Joker; he got off as much from playing with me as he did actually “winning.”
But right now, I had a bratty girl I needed to rescue. Snake could wait. And I needed to teach her some lessons when I got to her.
~~~
Night had settled over the skies of the Grand Caymans. Up above, the stars glittered with nary any light pollution. Distant revelers could be heard, but they were so far out from me they probably wouldn’t even see me if I turned on a flashlight.
It was just another day in the Grand Caymans for most.
For me? I had on my black camo gear, my boat inflated, and a mission that I needed to execute.
I pushed the boat out about fifteen feet into the ocean, hopped on board, revved the engine, and began the slow—and I mean slow—drive out to where I suspected Snake was.
Missions like these, as much as technology had advanced, always tested my intuitive skills. No amount of tracking devices or GPS could help me find a boat in the middle of the fucking Atlantic Ocean that did not want to be found. I’d shot off from the exact spot I needed to and knew I was heading in the right direction, but being even just half a degree off from my initial launch could put me miles away.
But if I wanted shit to be easy, I would have played the lottery and prayed for victory. If I wanted this shit to be earned, this was the shit that I had to go through.
The waves splashed against my boat. The water churned with creatures beneath me that could have devoured me in a matter of seconds. Luck guided me as much as my intuition.
And all the same, I never broke a fucking sweat. It’s not what DOM agents did, and it’s certainly not what I ever considered.
Because sure enough, after a little over an hour of rough sea venturing, I could see the lights of the yacht in the distance.
It was one of Snake’s follies. He obviously could not act alone and thus had to recruit men, but the men that he recruited to his aide tended not to be the best and the brightest. When someone went for the easier option of kidnapping instead of rescuing, surprise, the quality of hired help went downhill very rapidly.
I lowered the engine to a low roar, as low as it could go, as I approached from the darkest angle possible. There were plenty of lights on the yacht, and as I got closer, I could see what looked like some sort of party going on. It wasn’t anything like the spring break party Kaylie shot video of, but even from my vantage point, men drunkenly staggered around, laughed, and clasped each other on the shoulder.
It was almost too easy. I’d have to keep my senses alert for a trap or sober men.
I pulled up to the rear of the yacht as closely as I could, grateful that Snake or whoever was overseeing the boat had killed the engines. I got within about twenty feet before I stopped, flopped over the edge, and swam to the ladder. This was probably the most difficult part, because getting out of the water and onto a boat was never something that could be done quietly. But it would be a lot stealthier than hearing an engine slowly pull up and being in a compromised position.
I broached the surface carefully. The lone guard had his back turned and was looking up at the party above, almost as if he was envious of not getting to join the others in celebration. Don’t worry—you’ll be lights out soon enough.
The man turned at the last second, but I already had my arms wrapped around his neck. It took a little bit of maneuvering, but I managed to choke him out. I hurriedly took him to the nearest pole, roped him up and gagged him, tied my boat to the yacht, and took stock. I’d probably have about five minutes before he woke up, and even if he couldn’t speak, he could make a lot of noise.
But fortunately, I was a DOM, and I had arrived at my target.
Chapter 4: Kaylie
What I wouldn’t give to have some champagne right now!
Snake had been nice enough to let me have a shower—and shockingly, true to his word, he let me do it alone—but I was still so damn bored on this boat. Aside from being let out that one time by Snake to come to the dock, it felt like I had not seen the sun in two weeks, and the only reason I knew it was night was because I could hear my captors laughing and sharing drinks.
Actually, that probably didn’t even guarantee that it was dark outside, but it sure seemed like a relatively safe bet.
I hadn’t heard from Snake in the days since, and the fact that I had not gotten so much as touched by anyone else, let alone beaten or raped, made me wonder if they’d let me out on the deck. What was I going to do, swim away?
Really, though…
It felt fucked up to say, but I almost kind of wished they had inflicted some sort of harm on me. At least then I would feel more like a victim and less like…like a forgotten toy stuffed in the way back of a closet. I would have more attention on me.
And at the risk of sounding like an attention whore, not having anyone come to me except twice a day for food sucked. I never appreciated how much of an extrovert I was until right about now.
I stood up from my bed, still in those same pajamas from who knew how long ago, and went to the door. I knocked.
No one answered.
I could still hear people laughing and giggling, a couple burping, someone even throwing up over the railing, but no one answered the door.
“Hello?” I said.
I knocked again.
“Hey! Are you assholes really going to keep me trapped in here all fucking day?”
When I got no response again, I tried to open the door. But as I expected, they had it locked so well it felt like I was trying to open a wall. There was no give, not even half an inch, let alone an opening that would let me out.
I returned back to my bed, thinking about my friends back in the Cayman Islands. I thought about Cameron, though I found myself surprised to realize I hadn’t thought about him as much as I would have expected. Maybe my feelings for him just weren’t as strong as I’d thought. He’d always been nice, but never the kind of take-charge, grab-me-by-the-ass type of guy.
Maybe that’s why I’d dreamed about him doing what he did. Because in real life, he was too courteous and too polite to just take me and take charge.
But my friends?
Oh hell, yes, I missed my friends. I missed day drinking on the beach without a worry around. I missed partying all through the night, eating the finest food possible. I missed—
The lights went out.
And when I say out, I mean out, out. I could not see anything. I was blind.
And then I heard a loud thud right above me as if someone had just literally dropped dead.
“The hell is going on?” one of the guards shouted outside. “Who killed the fucking power?”
I heard gunshots ring out. More men hit the deck. Chaos erupted outside.
I had a terrifying feeling that I was about to be killed, even if by accident. The gunfire outside was not someone drunkenly shooting rounds off. They were bullets that were meant to kill.
Fear overwhelmed me. My heartbeat elevated. My skin went cold. I crawled under the covers of my bed, feeling like a little girl that had the monsters of the night coming for her. Sure, maybe this could be a rescue mission, but it could have just as easily been someone more violent and less tolerant looking for me.
I bit my lip as the footsteps became louder, like someone was running through the ship looking for me. It wouldn’t t
ake long before someone showed up at my door.
But then something eerie happened.
Silence.
Just as quickly as the gunfire had erupted, it had ceased.
And now, only one set of footsteps were heard.
One set of footsteps that was probably coming to take me, to rape me, maybe even to murder me.
The footsteps drew closer to my door, stopping at the hallway just outside my room. It was so quiet, I swore I could hear fish or dolphins breaching the surface of the ocean outside the walls. I probably imagined most of it.
The footsteps resumed.
I still couldn’t see anything, but all the same, I felt like I could “see” the person on the other side of the wall, coming to my door, slowly realizing that this would be where I was held captive. He would open the door…he was opening the door…
A light flashed in my eyes, blinding me. Now I understood why a hard light in a building raid knocked people to the ground—all I could see were spots blotching my vision.
“We need to go.”
I heard the man—he wasn’t anyone that I’d heard on this boat yet—but I was still blinded by the light. And for that matter, I didn’t like my odds of going with someone I didn’t know when I hadn’t suffered anything worse than some loneliness in here so far.
“Where?”
“Now.”
His voice had a strong air to it. It wasn’t nasty, and it wasn’t brutal, but it wasn’t asking me to come, either. It was ordering me.
“What are you going to do to me?” I said. “What you did to the other guards?”
“Knocked them unconscious so that we could make our escape, you mean? No, I am not going to do that.”
Our escape?
“We are wasting time. You have three seconds to stand up before I take you myself.”
I was being kidnapped. But maybe it was benevolent?
I stood up, raising my arms to deflect the blinding light from hurting my eyes more.
“Can you turn that down some?” I said. “I feel like I’m staring right into a stage light.”
The man did not respond.
“The quiet type, huh? I suppose I can stand—”
“Your mother hired me to rescue you. Start moving faster, or I will carry you to where we need to go.”
I bit my lip. So he knew that my mother wanted to rescue me. About damn time my mother got someone out here.
Wherever “out here” was.
“I can’t see for shit,” I said, though I kept moving closer to the sound of the voice. The light from outside barely outlined the broad-shouldered man, as I could not even see his face.
“You won’t for some time,” he said.
“What does—”
But before I could say a word, he had spun me around and wrapped something tight around my eyes, somehow making the world even darker than it had been before.
“What the hell, man?”
“I can’t have you knowing where we are, nor can I have you seeing my face,” he said. “The only reason I’m talking to you is because you wouldn’t come with me in the first place.”
That gave me a bit of an idea.
“So if I refuse to come, you’ll let me—”
The man answered not with words but with a firm, calloused hand pulling on my arm, moving me as if I were a stuffed teddy bear. Another hand moved to my waist, guiding me, and, quite frankly, arousing me pretty well. The hand felt strong, firm, and sexy. Not to mention the fact that he smelled strongly like…well, first, like sea salt, but also something masculine.
I couldn’t quite put my finger on it, but it smelled like some sort of familiar cologne. An expensive type, that was for sure. Whoever this guy was, he wasn’t some lowlife security guard working for Snake.
And he definitely wasn’t Snake. He seemed more poised and in control than Snake did.
Walking under the man’s spell felt like being on a roller coaster in the middle of the night, for I had no idea where I was stepping, what the elevation was, and when I’d have to go down and feel the Earth fall out from under my feet. It felt like we were moving to the back of the boat, but I couldn’t quite say for sure.
A couple of times, I felt my feet kick what felt like legs dangling to the side, but by this point, I knew better than to ask any questions. I’d wait until I was on a new boat, or preferably with the ability to see what this rescuer—or new captor—looked like.
“We’re about to go down a ladder,” he said.
His voice sounds so deep and sexy. I’m scared.
But fear has a funny way of making things exhilarating.
“I’ll go down first. Don’t you dare try and run for it.”
“I’m blindfolded. Do you really think that I’m going to run anywhere? Besides, I’m not exactly in a hurry to fall off the boat and get eaten by sharks.”
“Sharks are the least of your concern right now.”
A certain Snake probably is.
I heard him go down the ladder. I crouched forward and reached out until I felt like I had grabbed the edges of the ladder. Very carefully, almost more cautiously than anything I had done in my life, I stepped down the ladder, waiting until my feet had established contact on each rung.
“Hurry up, would you?”
“This would be a hell of a lot easier if I wasn’t blindfolded.”
A few moments of silence came. Finally, the man grabbed me by the hips and pulled me off the ladder, dropping me down on the floor. I still couldn’t see the man, but I could not lie; the way he just grabbed and carried me with the ease of a burly man hoisting a keg on his shoulder felt so exciting.
What could I say? I had a thrill for the dangerous and the risky.
“You’re blindfolded for your own safety.”
“My own safety?” I said, literally laughing out loud at that. “I’m probably inches away from falling off the boat, and this is for my safety? Show me a safety manual that says it’s for my safety to be blindfolded on a boat in the middle of the ocean!”
The man groaned. I was starting to suspect I was getting under his skin a bit.
Good. I liked being a little feisty, showing he couldn’t control me like he thought he could.
“If you see me, I’d have to kill you.”
Oh.
Well, that is for my safety then.
The man picked me up once more.
“Tuck your chin.”
“Why?”
But I did so without waiting for an answer, and when I felt his hands release me, I let out a scream—that stopped when I felt myself land a split-second later on something wet, something soft, something rubbery. It felt like I had landed on an inflatable tube someone might have in a swimming pool, except I’d managed to avoid falling into the middle.
A second later, I felt the part in front of me sink forward. The man had gotten onto the boat with me. I heard him doing some work. He then reached forward, dragged me to what I presumed was the front of the boat, and got behind me. A couple of seconds later, the boat revved to life, and we were flying in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean on what I hoped was a safe vessel.
I hoped.
The good news was I was finally out in the open. I was out of solitary confinement. I was no longer in the hands of Snake. I had something resembling freedom back, and if this man was to be believed, I’d just been rescued and would be back home with my mother in a matter of days.
The bad news was I had no idea if this man was to be believed. All I knew about him was that he was skilled enough to take out an entire yacht’s worth of men with guns in order to procure me, all by himself.
And if that didn’t scream “dangerous and deadly,” then not a damn thing did.
Chapter 5: Scott
That was much easier than I expected.
Much easier than it should have been, really. This isn’t right.
Snake didn’t exactly have Israeli or Russian special forces who took steroids in his back pocket, but his men w
eren’t stupid. They didn’t go down like a bunch of teenagers trying to pretend they were tough in the face of actual gangsters. They certainly didn’t go down as easily as they had right there. The whole thing stank of a setup—either to trap me later or so Snake could play some games with me.
Sure, it helped that all of them had had at least three or four drinks and had the awareness of a Tuesday afternoon drunk, but even then, I would have figured at least some of them would have remained sober “just in case.” Snake did not allow his captives to ever be without “just in case” watch.
There was no level of “just in case” on that boat. They had all gotten drunk—without Snake, unsurprisingly—as if there was no unlikely case.
Which led me to believe, knowing Snake, that he had more up his sleeve. And I had to be prepared.
The way Snake and I operated, we weren’t enemies, not in the sense that people usually thought of good versus bad. Snake saw me as a rival in a game, with the pieces of the game being politicians, family of famous people, and even inanimate objects of immense worth, like artwork or statues. He rarely killed, only extorted or held people for ransom.
But the minute I got involved, however much I had escalated, it was the level Snake was willing to go to. That was why I hadn’t killed any of his men; the last thing I needed was for him to come after Kaylie and me with a literal army of men hellbent on murdering me. No one better exemplified eye for an eye quite like Snake.
And besides, he’d know with one hundred percent certainty I’d been the one to rescue Kaylie. And he’d be one hundred percent pissed that I was the one who was getting the eight-figure check and not him.
I had to get her home safe. I had to win the game.
But how?
“How much longer are we going to be out here on the ocean? I’m fucking cold!”
And this brat yelling at me like this isn’t doing me any favors. I’m going to teach her a goddamn lesson, and it’s not going to be a verbal one.
“We’re out here as long as we need to be until I can get you to safety.”
I had two options, as far as I could see. I could lay low for a few days, wait for Snake to move on, and then fly her home. The risk with that, of course, was that Snake would catch us, and then I’d be back to square one.
