When he stripped off the man’s boots, he found a good knife. He set the blade next to the flare gun and tried to get his bare feet into the man’s boots. Too small. He’d take them anyway. The boots might fit Charlotte and would be an improvement over the flimsy shoes Eaton had given her.
Thinking of Charlotte, he considered his options. He couldn’t leave the man to get up and walk back to camp for more gear. He’d be back on their trail in no time.
Mark didn’t overthink it. Tucking the stake and flare gun into one of the boots, he picked up the knife and sliced the man’s foot near his heel.
The pained screams and a smidge of guilt followed him for several minutes. When he was confident no one was tailing him, he returned to where he’d left Charlotte waiting.
This time he initiated the hug, taking all the warmth, comfort and relief she offered.
CHAPTER 10
Charlotte had been surprised Mark hadn’t been stealthy when he returned to her hiding place. She’d been downright shocked when he dropped several items to the ground and pulled her into his strong arms. His heart pounded and his breath sawed in and out of his lungs. He might as well be her personal furnace in the chill of the heavy rain.
What had happened? She decided the details were irrelevant at this point. He was here and in one piece. Stepping back, she ran her hands lightly over him to check for injuries. He didn’t seem to have a scratch, but his gaze was grim.
“I took one of Eaton’s motion-activated cameras down,” he said. “Got the spotter with the flare gun too. Any sign of trouble here?”
“Someone was close. I heard footsteps over that way,” she said, pointing.
“To the west,” Mark supplied with a quirk of his lips.
Without the sun, she had to take his word. “I was sure they’d see me, but then they turned back and hurried away.”
“West again?”
“Mostly, yes. I think.” She wrinkled her nose at her less than helpful answers. “It is raining pretty hard and I was trying not to get caught.”
“Fair enough.” He caressed her cheek, and his dimple flickered as he smiled. The expression was so tender butterflies soared through her belly. But he didn’t kiss her again. “Try on the boots.” He sat down and moved them toward her. “They’re too small for me.”
“Muscle’s boots might fit you,” she said, distracting herself from the idea of wearing a stranger’s shoes. A stranger who’d cooperated with Zettel to hunt them.
“Got a good look at his feet, did you?”
“Actually, yeah. Sizing up people is part of the job.” She routinely studied her environment as a puzzle, fitting together what she saw and how she would focus it on a canvas.
“When?”
The boots were a little too wide. “When what?” She set to work on the laces to see if she could improve the fit.
“When exactly did you size up Muscle?”
She peered up at him through the dripping rain. His jaw was set and his hands, tender a moment ago, were curled into fists now. “Are you jealous?”
“He had no right to touch you.” Mark surged to his feet and paced away from her.
A bright red dot of color caught her attention. Another camera must have gone live. “Mark,” she said.
“That one I’ll kill,” he muttered. “You’re innocent. Off-limits.”
She could see the rant brewing in the tight muscles flexing under the scrub top plastered to his skin. She didn’t want to recall those terrible moments in Eaton’s office and she certainly didn’t want a burst of misplaced rage to bring Zettel and his men straight to them.
“Mark,” she spoke through gritted teeth. “Stop. Moving.”
He halted. She wondered that the rain, growing heavier again, didn’t just steam off his shoulders. Mark’s contempt for Muscle and the others was understandable. And despite the odds against them, being under his protection made her feel treasured and adored.
That kernel of romantic optimism that they might have a future, the secret dream she’d harbored for most of her life, was ready to explode like a fireworks finale on the Fourth of July. She had to keep it under wraps long enough to get off this island.
“There’s a camera at my eleven o’clock,” she said.
He stared at her and then turned. She watched him stalk straight over to the camera and dismantle it. With luck, that view would give Eaton a long-overdue moment of terror. Mark added the stake to the first one he’d secured through a loop on the pack. The camera he dropped at her feet.
“Stomp it.”
She obliged, putting her borrowed boots to good use, and was rewarded with a hot, lingering kiss that left her speechless. He picked up the smashed camera and walked away, toward the east side of the island. At least that was her best guess.
“Are you looking for the dock?” she asked after several minutes of his broody silence.
He grunted. “Might as well. Whoever didn’t go out to help the spotter I wounded get back to camp is probably warm and dry, waiting out the weather on the boat.”
Granted, he was the experienced part of their team, but she thought that sounded like an excellent reason to avoid the area. “And we’re going to do what? Walk in and stage a mutiny?”
He stopped short and swiveled around to face her. “Boats have radios and charts. We can call for help, pinpoint our position or steal it outright.”
Hope swelled; his confidence was her own personal rainbow in the gray, miserable day.
She’d painted rain-soaked cityscapes in Paris. Lightning storms in the Midwest. Foggy valleys in the Appalachian Mountains. Weather could be both treacherous and inspiring. She hadn’t decided if she could do this weather justice. As a victim, she was too conflicted about the entire situation.
Despite Mark’s presence, fear dogged her heels, enough that she wasn’t sure she could find the beauty in all these layers of gray and green. On the flip side, with Mark right here and those kisses keeping her warm, she ran the risk of turning this hazy scene into a wondrous fantasy world. Neither portrayal was the whole truth.
“Why didn’t you and Maria get married?”
He stubbed his bare toe on a root and she winced.
“I thought we were talking about stealing a boat,” he said. “Why does it matter?”
They hadn’t been talking about anything for several minutes. “I was curious. Our mothers are best friends,” she replied. She’d tried her hardest not to hear about his dating life, but there were times, before she’d cut herself off for the show, that it was impossible to tune out. “You brought her out to Cape May and she was with you again at Labor Day the year before last.”
He slid a look her way. “You weren’t there.”
No. She’d canceled when she’d heard he wouldn’t be alone. “Mom mentioned it.” She should drop it, but as she’d said, she was curious. The first kiss had changed everything for her. The fact that he didn’t want to talk about Maria seemed important.
“We had different expectations,” he said, his voice hard and tight.
Maria had hurt him, and Charlotte was filled with an outrageous urge to track her down and make her apologize. Everyone was so sure nothing really troubled Mark, but she’d learned early on, by watching him, that his humor was often a protective measure.
She didn’t have time to ask for details. They’d reached a jagged line of wind-shaped palms leaning more than usual under the weight of the rain. On the other side of a ridge of tall grasses, a small cove welcomed the Atlantic. There was no dock in sight. Relief and disappointment warred for dominance.
“Guess we keep walking,” she said. With the ocean in sight as a reference point, she had a better sense of direction. Based on where they’d been, she assumed the dock would be farther south.
But Mark didn’t move. He pushed his toes into the sandy soil under his feet. �
��I meant to. Propose to Maria,” he clarified, his gaze on the cove. “I shopped for diamonds and settings.”
With her heart aching at the pain constricting his voice, Charlotte knew that given a canvas and time, she’d paint sorrow into the gray surrounding them. “What happened?”
He wiped the rain from his face. “Marriage isn’t right for everyone.”
“It’s right for you,” she blurted without thinking. With the right person. Of course, she wanted to believe she was that person, but even if she wasn’t, Mark was built for commitment and a forever kind of partnership. The same core values held both of them upright as surely as bone and muscle. There was something more to the story, something she probably shouldn’t poke at.
“What happened?” she asked again, despite her misgivings.
His gaze touched on her and then slid away. “We broke up.”
Mark claimed to be the extroverted twin and he embraced the assumption that he was carefree, a slave to wanderlust. She’d watched him and loved him long enough to know better. She laced her hand through his and repeated her question one more time.
He didn’t move, but his whole body seemed to slump, defeated. “She left me while I was deployed.” He didn’t turn from his study of the water. “I thought she was pregnant, but didn’t ask before I left.”
Charlotte’s heart clutched at the pain in his eyes.
“I spent that whole operation grinning like a fool. I rushed home, ready to pop the question.”
A hard shudder rippled through him and Charlotte held his hand, rode it out.
“Maria wasn’t there,” he continued. “I was so excited to go home. So damn sure she’d be showing. Eager to tell me.” He cleared his throat. “And she… She was gone. Moved out. A few hundred phone calls and texts later, she finally agreed to meet with me.”
Charlotte held her breath and prayed, for his sake, that she’d misunderstood what was coming next.
“She was pregnant when I left.” Mark’s big voice, all his normal vitality, faded on a shaky sigh. He’d had more life in the cage. “While I was gone, she got scared about being a single mom. In her mind, SEALs weren’t good daddy material.”
“She said that to you?” Charlotte couldn’t suppress the indignation.
He squeezed her hand. “The divorce rate among Special Forces is pretty high.”
Charlotte snorted. “She must’ve been pretty high if she couldn’t see how you are different from a lousy statistic.”
His lips twitched. “Ever the loyal one,” he murmured. He finally dragged his gaze away from the ocean to look at her. His rough thumb wiped the rain from her cheek.
“That’s right.”
“Thanks for that.” He seemed to pull himself together, though he still held tight to her hand. “Long story short, she ended the pregnancy. Ended the relationship. I just got the memo a few months too late.”
“She…” Charlotte couldn’t say it. It took several seconds for her to absorb what he’d said. Her heart broke for him and the child he never met. “You never told anyone?”
“Where would I start?” he asked. “Hey, Mom, you’re not having a grandkid after all.” He slid his hand free and raked his hair back from his forehead, scattering raindrops. “At the time, sympathy wasn’t what I needed.”
Sympathy was exactly what he’d needed. He should have had support and love and the reassurance from his amazing family, and hers by extension, that the woman had been heartless, cruel and all wrong for him.
“Luke must have suspected something,” she said.
“We were on opposite sides of the country at the time,” Mark said. “The Continental Divide messes with the twin telepathy thing.”
“Stop,” she snapped, startling them both.
“Stop what?”
“Belittling what you went through.” Her temper was running away from her and she couldn’t quite catch it. “When we’re out of here, I’m going to track down that woman and kick her butt for hurting you.”
“My fierce artist.” He laughed, the sound rather strangled. “You’d do it too.”
“You bet I will do it,” she said. “It’s one more thing to look forward to.” She was angry enough that if Muscle jumped out and attacked her now, she was sure she could take him down.
“I hate to disappoint you, but it’s long over,” Mark said. “I’ve moved on.”
Right. He didn’t speak about it like a man who’d moved on at all.
She was still fuming when he slipped an arm over her shoulder and kissed her temple.
“Thank you for listening,” he said. “I didn’t mean to dump that on you.”
She thought of his words to her this morning. “You’ve carried that secret long enough all by yourself. Even with your amazing shoulders, it had to be getting heavy.”
This time his soft chuckle sounded more amused and less pained. “Guess so. You won’t mention it to anyone?”
She didn’t want to keep something that big to herself, but it was his secret and therefore she would. “Not a word. It’s not the kind of gossip artists are into,” she promised.
Tears prickled in the backs of her eyes and she looked up at the sky. The breeze off the ocean kept the worst of the rain behind them. It was damp here, but they were no longer in the downpour. Out on the beach, it looked almost dry. And if they strolled out there to dry out and enjoy it, they’d be sitting ducks.
She plopped down and leaned back against a palm tree. “Do you think they’ve stopped for the day?” she asked.
“I imagine the injury I inflicted gave them something to consider. Why?”
“It’s caught up with me,” she admitted. “We can keep moving if that’s best, but I wouldn’t argue with just sitting here for a while.”
“Wherever you are, it’s a paradise,” he agreed, dropping to sit beside her.
The quiet companionship was lovely, but she could tell he was antsy, deliberating over their best next move. “You’d like to leave me here and just go handle things, wouldn’t you?”
“Yes,” he admitted.
“But you haven’t.”
“Those cameras changed the equation,” he said. “Eaton loves a show and a SEAL on a rampage without any context would ruin me, Dad and put a significant dent in the program.”
She hadn’t thought of that, but it made sense in a sick way. She didn’t know what to say, didn’t have any helpful suggestions.
“Does death really increase the value of an artist’s work?” he asked. “I hated that Eaton said that to you.”
She nodded. “It’s the law of scarcity. The painting I did for him won’t be my last,” she said. “And there are some pieces in my studio that I didn’t think were ready for the show.” She cocked her head, studied his striking profile. “Don’t tell me you have one of my paintings.”
“All right, I won’t.” She gawked and he chuckled. “Just hypothetically, how much would it be worth if you died?”
“Far more than it’s worth now.” Which painting had he bought and when? “Hey, maybe we should use the cameras and fake my death so we can all be rich.”
“I’d give you a cut,” Mark teased. “Of course, Eaton’s rich enough thanks to Zettel’s perverted hunting habit.”
“True.” She picked at the mud under her fingernails. “Even before Zettel, if you think about it. He had to have capital to set this up. Are snipers that well paid?”
Mark shook his head. “Eaton went into mercenary work after he blew up his army career. He’s made some powerful and ugly friends in the years since.”
An understatement if ever she’d heard one.
“I think,” Mark said, rolling to his feet, “with some scouting and planning, I can make this cove a safe place for tonight.”
“If you disable the cameras we find, won’t it be obvious we’re here?”
<
br /> “They’re motion sensitive. If we block the lenses, they would come on when the wind blows, but they wouldn’t show us moving.”
“That’s brilliant,” she exclaimed, jumping up. “How can I help?”
He smiled. “We’ll start with the closest camera and then I’ll scan the cove for others. Then if there’s enough light, we can see about finding the dock and a boat.”
The encouraging plan gave her the second wind she desperately needed.
* * *
“Mark and Charlotte are being hunted?” Patricia didn’t shout. She didn’t panic. There were no tears. She spoke with the quiet, contained calm that was far more dangerous than any outburst.
Ben had been dreading this conversation from the moment the video clip had hit his phone. He and Luke had managed to get the information to Hank first, but as the day wore on and the plan came together, there was no keeping Patricia out of the equation.
He’d brought his wife into the office and prayed she wouldn’t ask to see the video. It helped to know Hank, still working the investigation in Virginia, was on standby to answer any questions he wasn’t comfortable with.
“Where are they?” she demanded.
If he knew that, they’d be having this talk on the boat and underway. “Based on the information from Charlotte’s painting and the video clip Eaton sent this morning, Hank is narrowing it down. It is likely Eaton has them on a barrier island south of here.”
“And when are we joining the search?” she asked.
“We’ll leave in the morning.”
She pursed her lips. “Sue Ellen and Ron are in town. I have our gear and food packed. We’ll leave tonight.” She stalked out of the office, giving him no chance to argue.
He didn’t want to argue. Like her, he wanted to get out there and find the kids.
For the first time since Mark and Charlotte had disappeared, Ben hoped he and Patricia wouldn’t be the first to find them. His wife would happily kill Eaton with her bare hands and then Ben wouldn’t have a chance to beat the man senseless before the authorities locked him up for life.
Harlequin Romantic Suspense December 2020 Box Set Page 87
