Code Name: Blondie
Code Name: Blondie
Christina Skye
Miki is living every woman's fantasy–stranded on a desert island with a rugged navy SEAL. But little does Miki know she's a suspect in an international high-tech robbery, and her steely-eyed companion is ready, willing and able to do anything to make her talk….Navy SEAL Max Preston doesn't buy one word of his gorgeous captive's rambling story as he carries her up the beach. Yeah, she's got curves in all the right places, but Max has a nose for a con–and there's no way he'll let his iron control waver.Now a hurricane's headed their way, and for Max and Miki time is running out fast. Can they team up as friendly forces–and use Max's amazing canine companion to escape before a deadly villain takes his twisted revenge?
Code Name: Blondie
Christina Skye
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
CONTENTS
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
CHAPTER THIRTY
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
CHAPTER ONE
17°30’ south latitude
18°52’ west longitude
WHY DID SEX SOUND so noisy when it wasn’t happening to you?
Miki Fortune steadied her digital camera and tried to ignore the grunts and groans from the nearby tent where her two models were doing the nasty again in full audio. There was no mistaking the sharply heaving canvas where her gorgeous six-foot-one Scandinavian model was getting screwed up, down and sideways by an equally gorgeous male model from Montana.
Satisfied with two shots of the pristine cove, Miki shouldered her camera gear and headed back up the beach. White sand crunched beneath her feet and a warm wind ruffled her hair, but all Miki saw was camera angles and F-stops. Paradise meant nothing when you were trying not to screw up the biggest opportunity of your life, a full-color calendar called Best Beaches of the World.
Behind Miki the tent walls shook harder. Panting voices carried on the wind. “Oh, Looogan. That way. Harder—harder!” The canvas snapped and the sound effect grew more obvious.
Miki scowled. If people wanted to have sex, they should do it in another state.
Logan Brooks, Miki’s tanned male model, ground out an urgent curse. Something crashed to the ground beyond the canvas wall.
Disgusted, Miki stowed her camera and lenses, then glanced at her watch. After all the time zones she’d crossed between her home in New Mexico and this beach southwest of Bora Bora, her body clock felt permanently out of synch. But tired or not, she had finished the day’s shots without a hitch. Now that her new digital cameras were stowed and their precious memory cards transferred to a portable hard drive, Miki couldn’t wait to get back in the air.
Paradise was fine when you were eighteen and crazy in love, enjoying a clothing-optional vacation. When you were working, paradise felt like salt in an old wound, reminding you of all that was wrong with your life.
Which, in Miki’s case, could have filled most of Montana.
One of the pilots leaned against a palm tree and peeled an apple, clearly enjoying the models’ escapade. An older pilot napped in the shade, hat over his head. Her boss sat in a leather campaign chair scanning the photos she’d transferred to his laptop.
Vance Merchant didn’t look pleased. She’d given him her best work, shots that shimmered with dawn light and burned with sunset crimson. There was no possible reason for his frown other than the simple fact that he could. The man knew he held all the power and he enjoyed wielding it mercilessly. He was a tyrant, just the way Miki had heard. Being around him was about as much fun as sharing a cardboard box with a scorpion.
But the job was important, her first chance at national commercial exposure. If the calendar was a success, Miki knew she’d receive dozens of travel assignments, a fiercely competitive category of photographic work. So she dug her toe slowly through the warm sand, fighting uneasiness as she waited for Vance’s verdict.
Her balding boss looked up as the tent shook one last time. Moments later Miss Finland 2002 emerged, stunning in a black string bikini that hugged her body like butter. When her partner appeared, he was rumpled and languid, his shirt buttoned wrong and his zipper still open.
Someone snickered. The men looked up as Miss Finland stretched languidly. Vance smiled and started to make a comment.
Miki cut him off. “Can we go now?”
The model, who currently worked under the name of Jasmyn, stretched slowly while she toyed with her tiny bikini top, aware that she had all the men’s attention. “Me, I am hungry with appetite. I can eat very big horse right now.” She frowned beautifully. “Anyone have very big horse to give?”
Miki’s boss muttered something to the older pilot. Miki ignored them.
Sometimes men had all the subtlety of boa constrictors. And now three new bruises darkened Miss Finland’s elegant neck. They’d have to be digitally removed, the same way Miki had removed the other bites and scratches incurred from St. Thomas to Tahiti. Luckily, Miki was very skilled at both cosmetics and Photoshop.
Vance Merchant looked up and waved his hand at the younger pilot, who climbed aboard one of the two amphibious Cessnas rocking in the water. As the models waited, the pilot revved the engine and gestured from the small cockpit.
About time, Miki thought, heading toward the plane. This place was getting creepy. Besides, the wind was picking up.
Vance caught her arm. “Not you. I need a dozen more shots of the reef before we leave, babe.”
“You’ve got to be kidding. I filled a flash card this morning.”
Her boss’s eyes narrowed. “I’m the one who decides when we’re done, honey. Remember that.” He tossed her his big Nikon, careless of the $10,000 piece of equipment. “Get moving.”
Vance Merchant could afford to buy a camera a day for the rest of his nasty life. His silver spoon came from his father’s success in coffee commodities—and his mother’s good fortune in being an oil heiress. The man’s trust fund was obscene.
As Miki checked the camera, the balding businessman slid an arm around her shoulders. “I can see that taking orders is a problem for you. We’ll have to do something about that.”
She pushed his hand away smoothly and thought about decking him. One solid chop to the collarbone and he would be moaning. On the other hand, physical assault didn’t get credits on a job resume.
Excellent lighting skills. Inventive with neutral density filters. Crushed the supervisor’s collarbone. May be unstable and probably dangerous.
Not the best path to career advancement. Miki sighed. She needed to stop drifting and start being serious. Photography was in her blood, a passion since she was ten. Day and night images haunted her thoughts, burned into her head. The problem was getting someone’s attention so that she’d have the backing to shoot for a living. She had finally grown up and started to take her work seriously, which meant no decking the boss.
The Cessna’s motor turned over. The models were aboard with all their gear, and the pilot was checking his equipment.
“What’s he doing?”
The Cessna began to pick up speed. Miki felt a sudden sharp uneasiness at how isolated they were on this speck of an island. “They’re leaving ahead of us? I thought we were flying out together for safety.”
“If you do your job, we’ll be flying out in a few minutes.” Vance glanced at the older pilot, and a silent signal seemed to pass between the two men.
“What do you mean, do my job?” Miki frowned at Vance. “I think we’ve got enough background shots for ten calendars.”
“You think? Who’s paying you to think, babe?” Sunlight burned on Vance’s yellow silk shirt as he traced Miki’s neck. “The sooner you stop whining and start shooting, the sooner we take off.”
“You can’t let them go ahead of us, Vance.”
“I just did, babe. Move it because your stalling is costing me money.”
No point trying to change his mind. After three weeks of travel in close quarters, Miki had figured out that the man was impossible. She stalked over the sand and leveled Vance’s Nikon, trying to ignore the roar of the other Cessna as it prepared for take off. Palm trees waved, the ocean glittered—and clouds piled up to the south.
Miki couldn’t shake a sense of unease. When she finished two dozen new shots from different angles, she gritted her teeth and turned back to her boss. “I’m done here. Why don’t you take a look so we can go?”
“Cool your jets, babe.”
Babe? If Miki never heard that word again, she would die a happy woman. Was it stupidity or arrogance that made men think women actually liked that name? Of course, Babe was better than Blondie. For the last five years, Miki had dyed her natural blond hair to a streaky brown in order to shield herself against the wrong kind of male attention. From bitter experience she knew that being blonde automatically took off five years and ten pounds. The only problem was that being blonde also knocked fifty points off your I.Q. in the eyes of most men. Some women seemed happy with the tradeoff, but Miki wasn’t one of them. So why the hell was she back to bubblehead blond now?
When she’d heard about the team shooting an exotic calendar called Best Beaches of the World, Miki had instructed her photo agent in Santa Fe to accept the offer with no negotiation. At first her agent had been discouraging. “Waste of time, Fortune. Vance Merchant only hires blondes because he thinks they’re good luck.” The agent had rolled his eyes. “That means all blondes, all the time. Besides, Merchant is a little hard to work with.”
Miki was too enthusiastic to let the offer slip away. That same day she had dyed her hair to its original streaky gold, angry but determined to snag the job.
Unfortunately, her agent had neglected to mention several details. For example, Vance Merchant’s interest in blondes usually took on touchy-feely overtones by the second day of a shoot, and Miki soon tired of dodging the producer’s fast hands. Between the constant travel and the isolated location shooting, she could never seem to escape him.
Not that she would whine. She could handle a weasel like Vance Merchant. The trick was finding a way to rebuff him without costing her the job.
All her irritation snapped into sharp focus as she waited for the balding California millionaire to amble across the beach in his $800 handmade Panama hat. When she held out the camera, he moved in close, pressing against her shoulder while he looked into the LED screen.
Miki controlled her irritation by imagining a few more zeroes in her bank balance. “So what do you think?”
“Nice cloud detail. But I keep telling you, we’re here for the sex and the skin. That’s what sells, not your artsy nature shots.”
Miki bit back a hot answer, reaching for the camera, but Vance moved out of reach. “You screwed up Jasmyn’s close-ups today. Where’s the mineral oil I told you to use on Jasmyn? There’s no shine, no sizzle. Are you a total idiot?”
I’ll give you shine, Miki thought. “Vance, you didn’t tell me—”
“Can it, babe. I need a dozen more windward shots across that slope. Then I can crop and insert some shots of Jasmyn later in post-production. Get to it.”
“Now?” Miki started at him in disbelief. The other Cessna had taken off five minutes ago and the dark clouds were getting closer. Was the man crazy?
“Are you coming or not?”
She ached to tell Vance where he could put this job and his expensive Nikon, but somehow she swallowed her pride and nodded. Why did all the good jobs come with jerks in charge? Was there something wrong with her?
“Fortune, are you listening to me?”
“Yeah, sure.”
Vance muttered as he vanished behind the low sand dunes. As soon as Miki crossed the slope, she saw a shirt spread out on the ground. Vance was standing beside it, tugging at his belt.
She went absolutely still. “What are you doing?”
“Don’t be so damned uptight. It’s just sex, something to loosen you up and get your creative juices flowing. I saw you staring at Miss Finland and the hunk. All that noise got you excited, didn’t it? You want it.”
“Excuse me?”
Vance’s belt hit the sand. “You’re wasting time. Get naked.”
“You’re nuts as well as a creep. The only thing I’m doing is boarding that plane. You handle the sex by yourself. I figure you usually do that anyway,” she added grimly.
“In that case, you’re fired.” Vance made the little Donald Trump hand gesture, his voice icy. “Take your choice.”
Did he always get away with this, Miki wondered? Didn’t people file lawsuits for this kind of behavior? As the tropical wind ruffled her hair, she saw her career going up in smoke and was too angry to be diplomatic. Enough was enough. What she did next was for her and all the other women Vance had suckered over the years.
She kicked sand toward him, pleased when he yelped with surprise. While he was distracted, she followed with a roundhouse kick from one of her many hours of classes. She wasn’t coordinated, but her blow to his ribs got the job done, making Vance gulp, caught in midcurse. He lurched sideways and landed face down in the sand.
A noise drew Miki’s gaze. She saw the first Cessna circle high, dipping its trim wing once before heading east. The plane’s receding outline left her with the cold feeling that she was cut off from civilization, stranded forever.
And this wasn’t a reality show. This was her life.
Grabbing her camera bag, she sprinted for the remaining plane, ignoring Vance’s threats. Get in line, she thought. She had car payments due, credit card bills to pay and now she’d blown her best job in months.
Sand hissed behind her. The millionaire producer huffed over the sloping crest of the beach, red-faced. There was a fresh bruise on his flabby right shoulder.
“You’re through, Fortune. There’s no city small enough for you to hide. Forget about taking pictures for a living. Forget about portraits or calendars or greeting cards. You’re over, honey. I’m going to see to it personally as soon as I get back to L.A.”
Miki resisted an urge to hit him again, instead dredging up a cloyingly sweet smile. “If I’m over, then it won’t hurt me to file a nice sexual harassment suit against you, will it? Won’t that look lovely when it hits the papers? You sell a lot of calendars in college bookstores, don’t you? I’d say your sales are going to tank when the female students hear about your problem keeping your pants zipped.”
Vance’s face turned an even deeper shade of red. “You little bitch. You are dead as far as new photographic work is concerned.”
Miki returned his cold stare. “Try it, Vance. If you do, my agent will enjoy contacting every female photographer in America so they hear about your little scam,” she blustered.
Meanwhile, her teeth were chattering. Fired and now blacklisted. Could her life get any worse?
At least she had new photos for her portfolio, taken on her free time during this trip. Several freelance sales should help make up a month’s lost salary and the cost of her new camera equipment.
Vance puffed past her, smiling. “You didn’t read the last page of our contract, did you?”
“What do you mean?”
“Stupid move, babe. I mean you can forget having anything for your portfolio. It’s all mine—every print and digital image. Your film agent wanted to reject the clause, but it was nonnegotiable if you wanted the assignment. That means you get no use of anything without my approval—and trust me, you won’t ever be getting that.” His lips curved. “Unless you want to reconsider my offer.”
“You mean the quickie in the sand?” Miki squeezed her hands together to keep them from lunging at him. She’d purchased a new camera and lenses, slaved for three weeks, and now the weasel had cut her out of rights to her own work.
Stupid move.
Vance was right about that. She should have listened to her photo agent and negotiated harder, but she had been too afraid of losing the job. She had decided to stop coasting or being casual about her life plans. That meant no more whining.
And look where that had gotten her.
She knocked Vance’s sweaty fingers from her shoulder. “I’d rather suck glass chips through a straw.” She stalked to the Cessna and climbed abroad. The pilot barely noticed her, too busy staring at the dark line of clouds covering the horizon.
Miki turned, following his gaze. “Is something wrong?”
“Not really. We’ve got a little weather moving in, that’s all. Where’s Vance?”
“Back up the beach. Probably grabbing his gear.”
“He’d better hurry up.” The pilot rubbed his neck. “Once we’re up in the air, you should check that your cameras are stowed. That storm is moving in faster than I thought.”
16°58’ south latitude
152°12’ west longitude
MIKI COULDN’T DRAG HER eyes away from the wall of gray clouds. Slouched beside her, Vance muttered crossly, avoiding eye contact. Dutch, the pilot, hadn’t spoken since they’d lifted off, but he’d consulted his watch twice and his fingers were tight on the controls.
A pilot with white knuckles was never a good sign.
“What the hell’s going on out there?” Vance snapped. “You said that tropical depression was moving to the south. You said—”
“I was wrong.” The pilot didn’t glance up. “And if you’re asking why I didn’t know sooner, it’s because you insisted on renting the oldest plane you could find. I told you the nav and comm equipment was out of date.”
Miki squirmed uneasily. Old equipment and a cheap-skate boss. How could her fantasy job get any worse?
She peered at a dark wedge of clouds to the south. “Shouldn’t we be halfway to Bora Bora already? We can outrun the storm.”
“A Category Five storm can pack crosswinds above 160 miles per hour. If we’d left when I wanted to, instead of waiting for you two to do the dirty in the dunes, this storm wouldn’t be a problem.”
“That wasn’t my idea,” Miki said angrily.
“You wanted it,” Vance snapped. “Don’t give me that bullshit.”
The engine sputtered, cutting off Miki’s angry response. Dutch pumped a control beside his knee, his mouth a flat line.
“What’s wrong?” Vance swung around. “What was that noise?’
The grizzled pilot didn’t answer, fiddling with a row of controls.
“Damn it, I asked you a question, Dutch.”
“Trust me, you don’t want to hear the answer.” The pilot leveled a cold look at his employer. Miki realized that Dutch wasn’t looking bored and lazy any longer. “Get your seatbelt hooked, the way I told you.”
“Why should I—”
“Because I told you, damn it, and I’m in command here.”
Vance looked startled, then angry, but he did as he was told. He wiped sweat off his forehead as he stared out at the gunmetal sea below them, alive with boiling waves. “What are we going to do now?” His voice was petulant.
“Praying wouldn’t hurt.” Dutch fingered the radio and waited, but all that came back was static.
The engine coughed again.
They were in real trouble, Miki realized. Trouble as in mayday and life jackets and forced sea landings. Her fingers dug into the sides of the seat as she fought back terrified questions.
Dutch looked back at her. “You strapped in, Blondie?”
She nodded mutely, cheered by his thumbs-up gesture. They were in a seaplane, she told herself. Dutch was an experienced pilot. He could bring the plane down, land at sea and radio for help. Someone was bound to find them. There had to be major shipping lanes nearby.
But she wasn’t thinking about pontoons or shipping lanes when the engine sputtered and died completely. The plane nosed forward and shuddered. Cold with fear, she squeezed her hands against her lap as they plummeted toward the angry water.
Dutch gripped the radio microphone. “This is Cessna ID number three—niner—four—zero—niner broadcasting on Mayday frequency. I repeat, this is a Mayday call…”
MAX PRESTON HAD NOTHING good to say about airplanes. The ground was better than the air, but water was where he felt most at home, thanks to both instinct and long training.
Right now he was thirty thousand feet above the Pacific, the sun brushing scattered clouds as he secured his jumpsuit. In approximately six minutes he’d hit the plane’s jump door and drop into a two-minute free fall.
He still couldn’t get over the Labrador retriever nearby, strapped into a vest and parachute of his own. “Is Truman prepped?” he asked.
His commanding officer nodded briefly. “The dog is A-okay, Preston. He’ll be on oxygen via mask, just like you. Are you clear on those codes we went over? 92 for visual on Cruz or any hostile forces in the area. 705 for sighting of the missing weapon.”
Max shifted his parachute slightly, straightening the line of his oxygen mask. “Good to go on the codes, sir. Two short burst signals, 606, for probability on the weapon device and 797 in the event emergency extraction is called for. But I won’t need extraction.” The Navy SEAL’s face was calm as he slipped on the thin but highly tensile gloves that had become a staple during his long covert training. From now on his skin contact would be limited. His senses were too special to risk sensory overload.
Wolfe Houston, team leader of the government’s secret Foxfire program, crouched down and patted the big Lab beside Max. “Hustle my man right in and right out, Truman. You okay with that?”
The dog barked once, tail wagging. He jumped up, licking Wolfe’s face without the slightest tension.
“Good dog. You can give us the top ten list when you get back.”
Though the Lab had plenty of jump experience, Max still felt odd jumping with an animal—even a veteran like Truman. But that was the new Navy for you. Always innovating. And in Truman’s case, there were more surprises. The program’s medical team told Max to expect unusual strength and intelligence, along with other abilities that hadn’t been confirmed yet.
Max checked the watertight container holding his GPS system and secure satellite phone. After that came a final survey of his oxygen hose and mask. When Houston gave the thumbs-up, Max slid on his helmet, which would provide oxygen and protection in the frigid temperatures at heights above 30,000 feet, where vulnerable skin and eyes risked freezing.
A tall man bearing a marked resemblance to Denzel Washington sprinted down the plane’s main deck. “Gentlemen, I just got a weather update.” He held up a high-tech laptop and pointed to swirling images on the screen. “We’ve got a new depression west of Bora Bora that may drive in Category Five winds inside seventy-two hours. In the meantime, I’m tracking convective and boundary layers with real-time analysis from the Naval Research Lab Tropical Storm Center.”
“Give it to us in English, Teague.” Wolfe Houston crossed his arms. “Is this going to impede Preston’s jump capabilities?”
“That’s a command decision, sir. All I can tell you is that there’s a storm out there and it’s one big sucker. Currently we’re looking at a forty-eight-hour safety window. If you want to wait—”
“We can’t afford to wait,” Wolfe snapped.
Izzy Teague tapped impatiently on the keyboard. “In that case, I’d say get the hell in and get the hell out.”
That was the kind of English Max understood. He gave a nod to Houston. “I’m ready to jump, sir.”
Houston stared out at the faint shimmer of the sea below the commercial cargo plane. “All of you know the score. Cruz could be down there already, setting up the deal for his buyers. We can’t afford to lose that new weapon guidance system, and we definitely can’t afford to let Cruz escape again.” When he looked at Max, his face was set. “It’s a go. Like Izzy says, get in and get the hell out. Try not to get yourself fried in the process.”
“Aye-aye, sir.”
Max got the message. Enrique Cruz had once been the leader of the government’s select Foxfire team of genetically and biologically enhanced soldiers. Then something had gone wrong. Cruz’s skills had shot off the charts and he had acquired the ability to project false images to his targets with complete accuracy, allowing him to disappear at will. But with the new skills had come mental lapses and growing paranoia. He had managed to escape from government control weeks earlier, setting off an extensive but unsuccessful manhunt. As the Foxfire program continued to work out the kinks, it quickly expanded to include service dogs on the team, although details of their use were being kept secret.
Izzy saw Max put a soothing hand on Truman’s head. “Don’t worry about this big guy. He’s already made over ninety successful jumps. Last month he got an honorary medal from the guys at the Army’s Yuma Jump School. He’ll be fine.”
Max gave a crooked grin. “Hell, I thought he was Navy.”
“He’s whatever you need him to be.”
A uniformed crewmember in headphones hurried toward them. “Drop Zone in five minutes, sir. We’re keeping radio silence as ordered.”
Max tightened his gloves and stared out at the sunny sky. No one spoke.
“Do not engage with Cruz unless prior clearance is received. Remember that, Preston.” Wolfe Houston’s eyes were hard. “This man is unstable, unpredictable and he’s getting more powerful every day. We can’t be sure what new skills he’s taken on since his desertion. Hell, his adaptability was always part of his success. He used to be one of us, but now he’s an out-of-control killer. Remember that.” The officer took an angry breath. “I should have taken him out last time when we were in that mine shaft with the dogs.”
Houston shot a glance at Izzy. Both had been badly hurt during a nasty encounter with Cruz three months earlier. “Cruz could be capable of much stronger retaliation than we know.”
Max felt the silent undercurrents that came with bad memories. “Understood, sir.”
“Assume that Cruz is faster, stronger and meaner than you expect and then double that,” Izzy said. His fingers idly traced his elbow as he spoke, and Max remembered that both of his arms had been broken in the violent confrontation with Cruz.
“We’ll take him out this time.” Max moved awkwardly to the rear exit doors, where the crew helped secure his fifty-pound parachute pack in place. As the jumpmaster counted down the final seconds, Max briefly touched the silver scar at his collarbone, one of many he’d received months before during a bungled mission in Malaysia. Though he’d nearly died, those wounds had led to his selection for the ultra-select Foxfire team, so he held no regrets. This team made up of specially trained and genetically enhanced Navy SEALS was the finest group of warriors on the continent—probably on the whole planet—but they were never photographed, never congratulated and never mentioned in any press article or standard government briefing.
Max looked down at the Lab waiting alertly near the exit door. He checked that the dog’s parachute line was clear, properly positioned beside an altimeter that would trigger an automatic chute opening at 300 feet. The oxygen line was already attached to the dog’s headgear.
“One minute to drop zone, sir.”
Max felt the drum of the plane’s engines and the howl of the wind beyond the jump doors. The world seemed to slow down, every atom of his body focused on the here and now as he prepared to jump. He felt his pulse spike. His breath tightened to compensate for the adrenaline surge.
Show time.
When the jump light went on, he moved to meet the air’s fury, his body hammered as he followed the Lab out into the void.
CHAPTER TWO
MIKI OPENED HER EYES and gasped as water spilled into her mouth. She was choking.
When her terror cleared, she realized the water was coming from a broken plastic sports bottle shoved above her seat. She was dry everywhere except for her face.
Outside the plane was a different story. Angry waves slapped against the Cessna’s body, spilling froth over the window.
Vance was slumped forward against the pilot’s seat. Blood trailed down both cheeks.
“Vance, are you okay? Can you hear me?”
When he didn’t answer, Miki tapped his shoulder to get his attention. Her hand came away slick with blood.
His body slumped sideways, stiff and lifeless, and she caught a breath in horror, gagging.
“Dutch, what should I do?”
The big man coughed and Miki saw him wipe away blood with his left hand. His right arm was out of sight on the seat as he fiddled with the Cessna’s controls.
“I’ve been broadcasting a Mayday on our last contact frequency. They’ll have our ID and present position. The radio transponder is set for continuous transmission in case of—” His voice shook as waves buffeted the plane. “How’s Vance?”
“He’s gone.” Miki’s voice shook. “Something hit his head, I think.” She fought to think clearly. “What are we going to do?”
“Stay calm, that’s what. We stay smart and we’ll stay alive until we get picked up. I never should have agreed to use this old plane.” He closed his eyes for a minute and seemed to struggle to breathe. “Get out of your seat harness. Do it now.” His voice was grim. “Head to the cargo door.”
“What about you?”
“I’m staying. I’ll keep the radio alert squawking as long as I can.”
“I can’t leave you.”
“Listen, I got us down in one piece, but Vance is gone and my arm’s pretty well crushed by this broken seat. If you stick around, you’ve got no odds, which is just plain stupid. So I’m ordering you to unharness and ditch. You’ve got your flotation vest. Pull the cord once you’re outside. Someone will come eventually. You can tell them to come back for me.” His voice tightened. “Now get going.”
“But I—”
Water hammered high and the windshield gave way. The plane pitched hard, driving Miki back. Suddenly she was fighting to breathe as seawater covered her face, and raw instinct took hold. She clawed free of her safety restraint, kicked past Vance’s lifeless body and managed to find the rear cargo doors. An eternity passed as she searched blindly for the door latch. Water slashed her face, blinding her as she forced open the hatch. She turned back to search for Dutch and felt the plane shake. Engulfed, she lost all sense of direction, unable to see Vance or Dutch. Desperate for air, she kicked in the direction of a dim patch of light, fighting through cold, churning water.
Her face broke the surface. Her first gasping breath was torn away by the howling wind. Then Miki began to sink and realized that she’d forgotten to open her flotation vest.
After her third try, the vest inflated and she bobbed to the surface. Dragging in air, her thoughts flashed to Vance, lifeless and cold somewhere in the water while Dutch bled in the cockpit, maybe dead already.
Another wave crashed into her face. Everything slid away but survival.
Stay smart and you’ll stay alive.
Miki clung to the words as she was yanked up over the lip of a towering wave and dropped mercilessly into a trough.
Someone would come, she told herself. They would. All she had to do was stay alive.
THERE WAS A STIFFER current than Max had expected from the prejump briefing. Even Truman was tired from their long swim. Unfortunately, the drop had left them slightly off course and they hadn’t been able to make up the distance in their glide before chute opening. As a result, their swim to the island had taken twice the estimated time. But they’d made the beach with no more than a few bumps and bruises. The big yellow Lab had come through like a pro in the air and in the water.
Max’s target was a neighboring island separated by half a mile of open sea. This was the spot where recent intel had indicated Cruz was building a covert base. So far Max had found no movement or signs of life, but that meant nothing. Any plan by Cruz would involve elaborate security precautions.
Max put down his binoculars and scratched his canine backup behind the ears. Otherwise, neither moved. The wind was already picking up and gray-green clouds dotted the horizon. The Lab raised his head, ears alert. It was still too early to say if Izzy’s storm predictions would be on target.
Max was about to scan the far side of the nearby island when he heard the muffled cough of a motor. Instantly he swung his binoculars up, but saw nothing in the fading twilight. When he swept the ocean, he saw a dark shape hurtle down, hitting the water too fast. A smaller outline separated, bobbing on the gunmetal waves. Focusing his powerful binoculars, Max made out a figure near what looked like the body of a wrecked seaplane.
An accident here, within earshot of Cruz’s island? Unlucky tourists? Max didn’t buy it. That kind of coincidence only happened in movies.
But if innocent civilians had been forced to ditch at sea, they could be fighting for their lives. He couldn’t let them die without a chance.
Max felt his senses narrow, focused and alert as he grabbed his scuba gear. He wouldn’t go in too close, in case this was a trap, but he had to check out the scene carefully. Cruz himself might be out there.
On the other hand, he might run into twenty drunken tourists. The SEAL bit back a curse at the thought of the possible complications. Civilians would whine and make noise, asking questions and demanding to be taken back to Tahiti or Bora Bora.
FUBAR.
After a silent touch command to his dog, Max waded into the restless water, flipped on his mask and headed west into the night toward the coordinates where he had last seen the downed plane.
CHAPTER THREE
SURROUNDED BY SLASHING WAVES, Miki tried to stay calm just the way Dutch had ordered. She kicked her feet for a few minutes and then floated, stretching out her reserves as she was yanked up and down in the choppy water. At each crest she searched in vain for lights or landmarks, and every time panic threatened, she looked up at the sky, where specks of silver glinted between rushing clouds. Taking steady, deep breaths, she forced her mind away from Vance and the wounded pilot she’d left behind.
In and out. Don’t panic.
Stay calm and stay alive.
As the sky darkened, her hands turned cold. Her body tightened, shuddering violently. Was this shock or some kind of delayed reaction to the cold? She had no inkling of how long she had been floating and kicking, watching the sky and trying to stay calm.
She cast about wildly for a distraction to hold back her panic. Music fragments slid through her mind like broken time capsules.
ABBA. Dancing Queen. Summer of ’92. Her first big romance. Her first devastating split one week later.
Eric Clapton. Change the World. Christmas 1997. Mesquite smoke drifting in the clear Santa Fe air like incense. Adobe walls along Canyon Road glinting with luminarias and laughter spilling through the cold.
Would she see Canyon Road again? Would she ever get back home to Santa Fe’s beauty?
Cold water sprayed her face. She plunged back into fear and exhaustion. How far had she drifted from Dutch and the plane—and how would rescuers find her out here in the ocean, even if they managed to track the distress call?
Something bumped Miki’s foot and she screamed in mind-jolting terror. Please God, no sharks, she repeated over and over.
Reining in her nerves, she forced her mind to a place of safety. Battling panic, she began to sing hoarsely—ABBA, Radiohead, Eric Clapton. Sheryl Crow and Frou Frou. Over and over until her throat was raw and there was no more energy, no more strength left.
Again something touched her leg. Water slapped and a weight settled over her shoulder, dragging her under. Miki screamed, fighting the dark thing in the water until the world blurred.
THE DAMNED WOMAN WAS singing, if you could call that ridiculous noise singing. And she was surprisingly strong.
Max ducked back underwater, away from the kicking legs and slapping arms. When she started singing, he’d made up his mind to risk contact. It could still be a clever trick by Cruz, but her terror was real and Max couldn’t leave a civilian to drown. He’d thought he was dealing with a man until he’d felt the kicking legs and heard the unsteady, exhausted voice singing an out-ofkey pop song he didn’t recognize.
A woman.
Hell.
He stayed out of range until she stopped screaming and her body relaxed. He could have subdued her, but out here a mile from land with no raft, struggling would have been a risk he didn’t need. So he waited, knowing she was tired and disoriented. It wouldn’t be long before her strength gave out.
He saw her head loll, bobbing as she was carried along a dark curl of water. The only sound was the slap of the sea and the shrill cry of the wind as he caught her arm. When she didn’t move or fight him again, Max checked the backlit compass on his watch, noting time and location for his next report.
They were over a mile from the island now, but on the way back he’d have the current in his favor. Carrying her would be no problem as long as she didn’t wake up and start fighting him again. Then he’d have to knock her out for sure.
Meanwhile his questions remained. Who in the hell was she? Most important, was she connected with Cruz?
Spinning her over onto her side so she could breathe, he cut smoothly through the water, heading back through the darkness. He couldn’t see any details of her face. There was no way to tell her age or background or hair color, but her body was impossible to ignore with her hips brushing against him every few moments as he swam. She was tall for a woman—maybe five foot ten. Her arms were firm and toned. Her waist felt slim and her breasts—
Max did an unconscious inventory as he swam. She was soft and full where their bodies met, but he couldn’t let himself think about that or anything else. If Cruz sent her, she would be ruthless and experienced, alert to any weakness. But Max would have the truth out of her in moments, whether she wanted it or not—because he was a veteran, too.
When he touched her, skin to skin, she wouldn’t lie. Couldn’t lie. His special Foxfire skill would guarantee that.
Beneath his scuba mask his lips curved. He cut through the water with smooth, practiced strokes. Her body would tell him everything he needed to know. For her sake, Max hoped that Cruz wouldn’t figure anywhere in those secrets.
The Navy didn’t hand out medals for being nice.
SHE WAS GOING TO THROW up any second. She was cold, suffocating, disoriented.
A sharp movement jerked Miki awake, out of her dreams of nausea and into something far worse. Wind cut into her face out of an endless darkness as an arm locked around her shoulders. By instinct she screamed and terror made her fight with desperate strength, but the grip at her shoulders was implacable.
Where was she?
She tried to see, but there was water in her face, in her eyes. “Let me go,” she tried to gasp. “Dutch is back there. I have to go—” The words were only guttural sounds, blocked by a powerful body she couldn’t see. Then her stomach clenched hard and she broke into painful spasms.
Hard hands flipped her over sharply and for a terrible moment Miki thought the man was pushing her under, set to drown her. Instead he lifted her, one hand across her mouth.
His dark arm was barely visible against the night. The man was wearing a wet suit. Miki could hear the squeak of rubber as he carried her forward. Suddenly her bare feet hit sand. Glorious, wonderful sand.
She tottered, falling to her knees, but he dragged her back to her feet, every motion made in silence. They were moving up a beach, she realized, the stormy surf behind them now.
She shivered in the wind, waterlogged and exhausted. “Who are you?” she tried to ask, but his hand tightened, and something slid around her mouth.
He’d gagged her. The damned man had gagged her.
Grunting angrily, she fought free and toppled onto wet sand, her cropped angora sweater tearing off. The man didn’t say a word, efficiently cuffing her hands in front of her, then tossing a blanket around her shivering shoulders.
She muttered her anger at him and tried to stand, but he turned, striding back toward the water. He hadn’t removed his dark swim mask.
He stopped abruptly. “No noise,” he whispered. “I’m going back for the other one.”
She heard a hiss, like something sliding into place. She stared around her at the darkness. Even the stars were hidden beneath racing clouds, and there was no moon to be seen. Miki had no idea where she was or how she could wiggle free of his restraints. He’d saved her life, but she didn’t trust anyone who slapped cuffs on her without a word.
She stumbled forward and a furry body shoved at her leg. A low canine growl rose from the darkness, freezing her in place.
“Good boy.” The man’s voice was almost too low for Miki to hear. “Guard.”
Miki swayed, dazed and exhausted, but determined to escape. She didn’t move, listening to footsteps crunch over the sand. Something brushed her feet again.
The dog. Big one. Lots of hair.
She was almost too tired to think straight. Who were they and why where they here—wherever here was?
She sank to one knee, too tired to move.
“You won’t get past the dog,” the man said roughly. “Don’t waste your time trying.”
Cool air brushed her face. Miki sensed more than saw movements nearby.
And then her rescuer—or her captor—vanished into the water.
Huddled in the blanket, shoeless, cold and miserable, Miki felt her thoughts blur. The world had turned into an endless nightmare. Nothing made any sense. She stared into the darkness, trying to stay awake, but her thoughts kept looping and tangling like cotton candy.
Trees hissed. A bird cried. Then Miki heard a loud splash somewhere to her left. She was certain she’d heard the man call softly to his dog. Then there were faint movements near the beach and more splashes.
She reacted by pure instinct, running in the opposite direction. She had to hide until she understood what was going on and whom she could trust. She tried to move quietly, barely able to see inches in front of her as she crossed the sand, her feet cut by stones and shells.
Must have lost my shoes during the crash. Blast it, she’d loved those bright red sneakers that matched her favorite Hawaiian shirt. Leaning against a tree to catch her breath for a moment, Miki discovered that she’d lost her favorite angora shrug, too. She had designed and knitted the fluffy little sweater with ruffles, during downtime while Vance bickered with the models and Dutch tinkered with the two Cessnas’ engines.
Vance.
Dead.
Dutch.
Lost at sea. Probably dead.
Somehow the sweater didn’t seem so important after that. She bit back a sob and kept moving, forcing her way through bushes and tall grass that shredded her feet further. She staggered through a patch of mud, hit water and then stopped to listen for sounds of pursuit.
All she heard was the hiss of the wind.
Her hands hurt where the Jerk had cuffed them in front of her. Wincing, she shoved and twisted against the heavy restraints.
No luck.
And there was no time to waste. Miki remembered seeing the glint of a stream when the creep in the wetsuit carried her up the beach, so she followed the dark curve of water rather than pushing farther inland. Five minutes of steady climbing later she was breathless, standing at a small pool surrounded by tall grass. From the sound of it, the stream fell sharply, spilling into a space somewhere to her left. In the dark she had no idea how far down the waterfall went, and she couldn’t distinguish the roar of the water from the rustle of the trees. A bird shot from the right, and Miki guessed that her captor was close.
Exhausted, she sank down on a rock. She couldn’t go back and she couldn’t go forward. One wrong step would send her out into space, wherever the waterfall went.
She shivered, fiercely cold and badly frightened. Then she closed her eyes, relying on her photographer’s memory to reconstruct everything she knew about this place.
Water glinting to her left. Rocks straight in front of her, a dark mass that was probably a cliff. Bushes and grass to her right.
As she stood in the restless night, putting together the pieces from memory, she caught a musty smell. It reminded her of the dust mixed with mold of an old basement. She had gone caving once with Kit O’Halloran, her best friend back in Santa Fe. The experience had been fascinating, and Miki was sure the smell was a current of air carried from underground. Could she find the source by smell alone?
She had to find it. She also had to avoid breaking her neck in the attempt.
She slitted her eyes and looked from side to side, using her peripheral vision, which was more effective in darkness. Working slowly from bush to bush, she came to a wall of rock where the musty smell grew more intense. She followed it until cool air gusted directly onto her face. Kneeling in the mud beside the pool, she searched carefully.
The opening, when she found it, was tiny. Whispering a prayer that she wouldn’t meet any snakes, Miki squeezed through and didn’t look back.
WHERE THE HELL HAD she gone?
Max stood on the beach, staring at the empty place on the sand where he’d left the woman from the plane. He’d called Truman away briefly when the strap on his tactical vest had broken, and before he had been able to give the dog the defective piece to hide, the woman had bolted.
Truman bumped his leg tensely. Well trained to make no noise, the dog was clearly excited. Max hefted the pilot off his shoulders, set him on the beach, then leaned down to pet the golden Lab.
Bump, turn, sit.
Bump, turn, sit.
The dog was giving Max a message to follow, indicating the direction by the way he sat. The interior of the island.
Max scratched Truman’s head and gave the two-tap signal to go. Instantly the dog shot across the sand, silent despite his size. Speed and keen intelligence were his specialties, and Max was glad to have him along as backup. Things were quickly growing messy in ways that no one had planned.
Not that Max had expected this mission to be easy.
The dog slowed, sniffing the ground. When he trotted back, he carried a soggy mass that might once have been white, but now was the color of day-old vomit.
Max studied the wad of fabric in Truman’s teeth. He remembered the white thing that had been tied around her shoulders when he’d lugged her out of the water onto the beach. When Truman bumped his leg again, eager to continue the chase, Max gave him the two-tap freeing command. Go.
Given the woman’s resourcefulness, he had no more doubts.
She had to be working with Cruz. Rescuing the other passenger he’d seen would have to wait.
MIKI HUDDLED IN THE DARKNESS, shivering. What in the heck was she doing?
Her knees were bleeding and her cheek was bruised where she’d hit a rock during her blind flight. She was a photographer, not a secret agent, and she was way out of her comfort zone.
She heard a noise behind her, at the mouth of the cave. Pebbles skittered, echoing hollowly. With unsteady hands, she followed the narrow tunnel deeper underground, splashing through an icy pool.
More pebbles rattled. Terror drove her forward, stumbling over fallen earth and boulders, her feet bleeding. Abruptly the cave widened. She pressed on, leaning against the stone wall, following the sound of water. In her panic, she stumbled. Her ankle twisted and her head struck a ragged piece of limestone. Even then she tried to crawl forward, but the ground had begun to whirl.
Something splashed through the water behind her, and she lost her balance, going down hard. She was angry that she wasn’t faster, angry that she’d lost her favorite shrug.
Angry that she’d screwed up yet again.
A sharp pain throbbed in her forehead. She kept crawling right up until everything went black.
CHAPTER FOUR
MIKI AWOKE WITH SAND in her mouth.
She was flat on the ground, her clothing still damp. Her hands were behind her back now, aching in plastic wrist restraints. How much time had passed since her fall?
She tried to free her hands, and instantly felt hot canine breath on her face, a silent warning. Miki tried to clear her fuzzy thoughts, remembering her escape and the pursuit. Her wrists hurt, but by wriggling slightly she could relieve the pressure. Tilting her head back, she looked up, searching vainly for familiar constellations. With the clouds gone, the darkness was alive now, filled with glittering white specks that dotted a sky untouched by any other light. None of them meant a thing to Miki. She barely recognized the constellations back home in New Mexico.
She was on a beach somewhere. That much she knew, but nothing else. Wincing, she glanced carefully around and froze at the sight of the pale shape stretched out nearby.
A really huge dog. Some kind of retriever.
Now you’ve stepped into it, Miki thought. Fired, wrecked, ditched, then lost and half drowned. A hysterical laugh bubbled up inside her, but she cut off the sound, remembering Dutch’s final order.
Stay smart and stay alive.
The dog gave her no choice. She shuddered at the thought of sharp teeth lunging at her throat. Guard dogs were taught things like that. They could kill in seconds, according to Miki’s best friend, who trained service dogs for police and military units. Now Miki wished she’d paid better attention all those times Kit described how she trained her dogs.
If she ever got back.
Blocking a wave of hopelessness, she watched a dark shape feather across the moon. She recognized the leaves of a palm tree, and that meant she was still in the tropics. Given the silence, it had to be someplace remote. Since she’d come awake there had been no lights, either at sea or from passing planes.
Very remote, she thought grimly.
Her head began to ache, and she remembered bumping it back in the cave. Now her whole body throbbed along with her head, but pain or not, she had to do something before the creep in the wetsuit came back, even if one escape effort had failed.
But that left the dog. If she moved very slowly, she could try to make her way back to the water, since dogs couldn’t carry a scent over running water. She remembered hearing Kit say that.
Carefully, Miki eased onto her side. The wind rushed over her face, but she was certain the dog couldn’t hear her anyway. Her confidence growing, she moved another few inches.
Still no warning growl.
Her pulse hammered as she moved again, her face against the wind. She heard a sucking noise and sand skittered over her feet. The sound came again, and the blackness materialized into a column. Miki realized the man was back, her worst nightmare in the flesh. Over the slam of her heart she heard a soft groan that seemed familiar. The noise came from what appeared to be a large object.
Dutch?
Recognition made her try to stand. Had he actually found Dutch out in the dark water? She could barely believe it.
Her urgent questions were cut off by cold gloved hands at her mouth. “No noise,” he whispered. Kit felt him bend down, checking that her restraints were in place.
Then sand squished and he drove her across the beach. She felt sand give way to dirt, the waves sounding muted behind her.
A light flickered and disappeared and his low voice came at her ear. “Four steps down.”
The first drop took her by surprise and she stumbled, her ankle twisting. Gloved hands caught her and she slammed against a hard chest.
A door hinge whispered. Light flared, blinding her. She could see the creep for the first time, his body covered by a black wetsuit and black gloves. He was carrying a pair of heavy night-vision goggles, and in the light his eyes snapped with command, somewhere between blue and gray. Miki couldn’t seem to focus, but when he undid her restraints and set her down, Dutch was at her feet, sickly white. A long gash ran down his right cheek.
“You got him,” she whispered, kneeling beside the pilot. She didn’t look up, gripping Dutch’s cold fingers. “Thank you. I didn’t think anyone could do that.”
“Don’t thank me yet.” He tossed a silver thermal blanket over Dutch and tucked the foil around the man’s motionless body. As he moved his light, Miki saw that they were underground in some kind of small room. Near her feet were a large metal case and half a dozen tins that looked like MREs. The dog sat beside the case, ears erect, body alert. Spotting her sodden camera bag on the floor near Dutch, Miki reached out, but the dog seized the handle in its teeth and tugged it out of reach.
“Hey! What do you mean by—”
“No noise.” The man looked at his dog. “Sit.”
Instantly the powerful body dropped, Miki’s camera bag still between his front paws. The dog nosed the bag and suddenly flattened on the ground, his hackles rising.
The man spun around. “Target?” he said softly. “Alert.”
Target? All Miki had in the bag were clothes, a few sundries and her camera equipment. Everything was likely to be ruined from the seawater.
The dog sniffed the ground, sniffed Miki’s satchel, then laid one paw across the leather bag and didn’t move.
“Confirm.”
The dog sniffed her bag again, and the motion made something shift inside an inner pocket. There was a small pop and fragrance blossomed, filling the cramped space. Miki realized it was her best French perfume, the same fragrance she’d worn since she was seventeen, taken everywhere as a good luck talisman. Unfortunately, she’d been in a rush that morning and had shoved the bottle into an empty lens pouch rather than wrap it carefully the way she usually did.
Judging by the sharp odor, the bottle had just broken.
The dog sneezed loudly. For some reason this made the man angry. He flipped off his penlight, then opened the trap door, letting the dog race up the small wooden steps.
Miki started to blurt another question but one cold look stopped her. Her captor looked furious. Silent and controlled, he pulled a plastic bag from a black tactical vest near the metal case. His mouth set in a thin line as he opened the camera case, saw the overturned and now lidless perfume bottle. Quickly he closed the lens pouch and then zipped the bottle inside.
“What are you doing with my stuff?” she hissed. Since when was it a hostile act to wear nice perfume? Miki’s irritation swelled when he dropped her lens case and camera inside a larger plastic bag, then locked everything inside the metal case.
“Hey, you can’t—”
“No noise. No perfume or scent of any sort. You understand that?”
Miki stared at him, cold, tired and furious. The man was unhinged. Sure, he’d saved her and then gone back for Dutch at considerable risk to himself, but he’d also cuffed her. Now he was the perfume police? Maybe he was one of those neatness freaks she saw newspaper stories about, people who wash their hands fifty times a day and don’t let anyone touch their personal belongings.
The sudden sound of Dutch’s labored breathing made Miki forget about her expensive perfume. The pilot didn’t open his eyes as his lungs moved in strained bursts. Even to her untrained eyes it was clear that he was in bad shape.
“He needs a doctor,” Miki whispered.
Her rescuer raised two gloved fingers, tapped her mouth and shook his head.
Clearly, noise was another one of his problem areas.
She decided it would be best to play along. Right now he was her only contact with civilization, even if he appeared to be two tortillas short of a combo meal.
But he looked competent as he knelt to check out Dutch, cleaning the gash at the man’s stubbled cheek and unbuttoning his shirt to check for other trauma. Miki thought the pilot’s chest looked odd, slightly concave, and the deep bruises streaking his ribs made her breath catch.
Deftly the man checked Dutch’s pulse, eye reflexes and temperature, then put away his black case and medical supplies. Oddly, he never removed his black gloves.
Too weird, Miki thought. At least Dutch appeared to be stable now. She retreated to the far wall, waiting tensely. Though her nursing skills rated a negative ten on a scale of one to five, at least she could provide some kind of moral support to the pilot.
Over her head paws scraped against the trap door, and Miki heard a dog’s muffled sneeze. Was the dog bothered by perfume, too?
Hit by a sharp wave of dizziness, she closed her eyes and prayed she wouldn’t throw up, wincing as her stomach continued to gurgle and churn. She’d swallowed seawater nonstop after the crash and now her feet and ribs ached. Exhausted, she leaned back against the underground wall, her eyes closed despite her efforts to keep them open.
It felt as if a week had passed since they’d left the beachside hotel in Bora Bora, with Vance muttering and complaining about every delay and expense. Now he was dead, his body lost somewhere at sea. Miki shivered, aware of how close she and Dutch had come to dying with him.
A scraping sound brought her around with a start. The small room was quiet, both candles out. “Hello?” she whispered into the darkness.
There was no answer.
She rose and felt her way along the wall past Dutch’s cot. Fumbling, she found the four steps beneath the sloping entrance. With shaky fingers she searched for the metal door, pushing upward until the hatch squeaked, rising slowly to reveal a gray bar of predawn sky above angry clouds.
But before she could savor her little taste of freedom, a dog’s face appeared at the door’s edge. He sniffed intently, and his mouth curled, baring his teeth.
Miki shut the door quickly. The creep was gone, but he’d left the dog as a guard. Probably he kept the poor Lab underfed to make it hostile. She hated people who were vicious to animals. If he hurt the dog in any way, she was going to make him very sorry.
Assuming she was still alive by then.
CHAPTER FIVE
ENGINE TROUBLE.
A plane crashes at sea. Two survivors in the wrong place at the wrong time. Coincidence?
“FUBAR.” Max spoke softly, scratching Truman where he liked it best, behind both ears. The Lab had been edgy from the first moment Max had carried the woman out of the water. But then had come her escape and now the perfume accident. The woman could have slept with Cruz in the last five hours, but Truman wouldn’t be able to pick up a trace due to the perfume’s mix of volatile oils, sterols and alcohol overwhelming his keen sense of smell.
Max had found the woman slumped over beneath the ridge after she fell and hit her head during her escape.
Once she was secured, he’d thoroughly searched the plane wreckage and floating debris, but found nothing useful beyond camera equipment in a watertight bag and some clothes. He’d checked the identification he’d found on Dutch, and the passport and U.S. driver’s license looked genuine, though good forgeries could be deceiving. The woman’s ID had eluded him in the limited time he’d had to search at sea. He couldn’t risk using a light after full dark. It would have shone like a neon sign against the water. Why couldn’t women just carry their IDs in their back pockets the way men did?
Shaking his head, he moved behind a line of trees and fingered his satellite phone. He couldn’t chance a real transmission this close to Cruz’s island, but three short bursts would let Foxfire HQ know that he was safe and his reconnaissance was proceeding as planned. Longer communications would wait until he accessed secure equipment at sea. He’d have to deal with his two new arrivals according to his own judgment for now. Since both were possible hostiles, Truman would keep them contained underground where they couldn’t do any harm.
Neither one carried weapons or communication devices—Max had checked carefully before bringing them back to shore. The pilot was in poor condition, his lung compromised, but Max’s mission was clear. He had to stay quiet, stay out of sight and track the stolen weapon guidance system. Cruz wasn’t going to escape a second time—not on Max’s watch.
At least Truman had recovered from the initial shock of the perfume cloud on his hypersensitive nose. Max opened a zipper on his vest and pulled out a bag. Immediately, the Lab pushed closer, sniffing the plastic eagerly until Max gave him the beef treat inside. The dog was superbly trained, his medical enhancements as sophisticated as those that Max had been given, but a dog was still a dog. Beef treats were special.
When his own stomach growled, Max dug into a different pocket and pulled out a fat gray bar that looked like chalk. Tasted like chalk, too, Max thought wryly. The components were carefully selected by the Foxfire medical team to provide minimum bulk and maximum nourishment for high-energy work. Max didn’t particularly mind that the bar would be his major food source until he finished up his work here.
He wasn’t used to fine living or creature comforts. He’d never had a normal life as a child since he’d spent most of his boyhood in institutions. Not until he was adopted at the age of ten did he find out how it felt to have a normal family—if you could call his spit-shine admiral father “normal.” He smiled at the thought of the bossy, demanding man who’d taken him in, taught him discipline and given him pride in his successes. Work was his life now, just like the Admiral’s.
He still called his adoptive father “Admiral” and he knew the grizzled old veteran was probably worrying about him right now, though he’d never admit it.
A faint line of pink marked the horizon to the east. Max figured he had thirty minutes until full light, which would give him time to swim out to the derelict Japanese gunboat that rode atop a nearby reef. The support people at Foxfire had managed to slip in a radio transmitter and emergency water, along with food stores and ammunition. If necessary, Max could hole up there indefinitely, keeping Cruz’s island under covert surveillance.
No one had counted on two civilians plummeting out of the sky in the middle of the op zone. But as a SEAL, Max was trained to expect the unexpected, so the show would go on. He wouldn’t worry about the woman with the expressive eyes or the body that was tempting in all the right places, even buried beneath soggy jean shorts and a baggy Hawaiian print shirt.
Come to think of it, why was she dressed like a college student on spring break? How could a college student afford the expensive camera and lenses that he’d seen in her leather bag? He’d have to search for her ID again later while she slept.
First he had to swim to the reef and complete a secure transmission back to HQ. After that, he’d stockpile more medical supplies, transferring them from the beached gunboat to the underground bunker. If the pilot took a turn for the worse, Max wanted to be ready. He was no surgeon, but he’d had training in field medicine and Izzy Teague would brief him on what to expect from lung complications.
After a final scratch and a touch command to his new best friend, Max slipped on his breathing gear and headed back to the water.
“YOU’VE GOT WHAT?” Lloyd Ryker, the head of the Foxfire research program, sounded worried.
“Two civilians from a ditched Cessna, sir. Vehicle ID number Alpha seven—one—niner—four—two—zero. The pilot’s passport reads Jase Van Horn, and the woman called him Dutch. He’s in bad shape, sir.”
Ryker muttered a few choice words. “I’ll put our tech man on when we’re done. He’ll handle the medical end. What about the woman?”
“Not much to tell. Blonde hair, maybe five foot ten. Speaks English like an American and seemed pretty strong for a woman.”
“No ID?”
“None that I could find, sir.”
“And there’s been no sign of your target?”
“Not yet.” Max sensed Ryker’s growing tension that Cruz hadn’t been sighted.
“Did your friend show any scent alerts for these two?”
He meant Truman. “Nothing that was clear. He was edgy, and he checked out the woman briefly, along with her bag. Before he got very far, a bottle of perfume broke inside her case. That pretty much blew any hope of a clean scent.”
“Accident?” Ryker snapped.
“Unclear.”
“No weapons on either of them?”
“No, and no communication devices,” Max said tightly.
Ryker drummed his fingers loud enough for Max to hear over the static. “They could be civilians, but you are to treat them as hostiles until we have confirmation of their aircraft number and passports. We’ll have an answer by your next check-in. What happened to their Cessna?”
“I drilled the pontoons and sank it, sir. Figured we didn’t need any floating debris to trigger alarms.”
“Good. Keep focused out there. Here’s your tech contact. You’ve got ninety seconds. I won’t risk detection.”
“Copy, sir.”
Static crackled. “You’ve got a possible lung compression there? Give me the vitals,” Izzy Teague said briskly.
When Max finished his report, Izzy was silent. Paper rustled, then Foxfire’s techno wizard cleared his throat. “There’s good news and there’s bad news. Your man there is in bad shape, but he appears stable. That could change fast, of course. For now, just keep him warm and hydrated, and watch for signs of infection. Keep me updated, if possible.”
“Will do.” Max watched the sweep hand on his luminous watch. “Time’s up.”
“Give ’em hell. Oh—give your friend a nice scratch from me.” Izzy was careful not to mention Truman by name in case the message was picked up. He was chuckling when he cut the connection.
Quickly, Max stripped down the phone and hid it in a false compartment inside the ship. Then he sealed extra medicine inside his watertight kit for the swim back. His watch vibrated, signaling that it was time to leave, and Max knew he was cutting things close if he hoped to miss first light.
With his swim fins over one arm, he climbed the rusted companionway of the old gunboat, wondering what tales the walls could tell of Japanese sailors sent out to this remote island to watch for enemy activity. The ship’s log indicated that a storm had run the ship onto this reef and put it out of operation. The captain had committed suicide, shamed by his carelessness.
Shadows moved along the companionway as Max made his way to the middeck. He understood the weight of duty and self-sacrifice. There were worse ways to go out than falling on your sword.
But Max wasn’t about to let his own mission run aground.
As he slipped on his mask and breathing gear, he focused on the woman. Maybe she was the pilot’s daughter. The age difference was about right, and she seemed genuinely concerned—assuming this wasn’t one more part of an elaborate act.
He smiled as he went backward into the water. If she was lying, he’d know soon enough.
There weren’t many ways to keep secrets from him.
WHEN MAX REACHED THE beach, Truman was waiting. The dog looked up, wagging his tail but holding his down position above the well-hidden bunker.
There were no signs of footprints or boat draglines along the sand, and Truman would have signaled any visitors. With the perimeter secure and full light due any second, Max opened the trap door and headed underground.
The pilot was breathing fitfully, and the woman was curled up on Max’s cot, her Hawaiian shirt tugged around her shoulders and her arm propped against the wall of the little room. Every time the pilot made a noise, she gave a jump, then sank back into deep sleep.
Max checked the pilot’s vitals as Izzy had specified, frowning at his low temperature. Silently, he covered the man with another blanket. Pulse and heart rate were in acceptable limits, which was good news.
Time for work. The kind of work that the Foxfire team did best. He studied the sleeping woman, considering his best avenue of approach.
Not the hands. After too long in the water the skin usually became risky to read due to contamination. Not the legs or chest, since he didn’t want to risk waking her yet, and moving her clothes would almost certainly wake her. That left the face and neck. Swimmers always tried to keep both above water, which would help him pull a better impression.
Silently he pulled the soft leather glove from his right hand. Breathing deeply, he rested his fingers at the nape of her neck. He made a preliminary scan, checking for the most reliable scent and steroid markers.
With each biochemical marker, his senses tightened, drawing him deeper. His eyes narrowed and his breathing slowed as he focused. The tactile scan wasn’t magic and it wasn’t superhuman, but it might have appeared that way to an uninitiated observer. What he did was the result of medical enhancements and a third-generation sensory biochip, courtesy of the crew of eggheads that Lloyd Ryker kept on tap at the Foxfire lab. Max had trained hard to master a huge range of human steroids, hormones and man-made chemicals. When carefully recorded, they presented a picture of the subject’s recent activities, where they took place and the emotions that were present at the time.
To a civilian it would look like witchcraft, images pulled from thin air. But every scan had its price, demanding absolute focus as well as psychological risk. Like Truman, Max’s amped-up senses were vulnerable to every stray chemical, whether human-based or manufactured. For his own protection, gloves were required gear, keeping his senses clear for mission work. At the beginning he had missed casual skin contact; now it was his normal mode.
He felt the hairs stiffen at the back of his neck as cool air brushed his palm. It felt odd to have his hands free. It also felt damnably sensual.
Frowning, Max shoved that thought from his mind. Skin was skin and a woman was a woman. There was no big deal about either.
Through his sensitized fingers he picked up the faint sweetness of her spilled perfume and the tang of sweat, some of it his own. Even without touching her, he knew he’d find a welter of female hormones layering her skin. If somewhere in those tangled scent layers he found Cruz’s markers, something Max had been keenly trained for weeks to pick out…
In that case, he was under orders to extract all possible information via any means necessary. No questions would be asked later, as long as he succeeded in his mission. Ryker had made that clear.
And Max was committed to success. This was his first mission since the incident in Malaysia that had taken his jump partner’s life and left Max in a surgical ward for eighteen hours. This time, failure was not an option. He had too many debts to repay—and too many demons to silence after the harrowing, predawn raid that had taken seven lives.
In the darkness the pilot shifted as if he was in pain. When his blanket fell, Max straightened it, careful to use his covered hand. In the narrow space every movement seemed loud, each rustle of fabric sharp. Even breathing seemed intimate.
It was strange how often you came to feel a physical connection with your subject, Max thought. When the hormones came into focus, you picked up fragments of over-the-counter sleeping pills or antihistamines, hair dye and sunscreen. In a wave that seemed to come out of nowhere, you knew your subject better than you knew your own friends or family. People thought your smile was just a sign of polite interest or concealed boredom. They didn’t suspect that you were picking up their medical history, reading their whole life in a simple handshake.
In the Middle Ages this sort of thing would have gotten you burned at the stake. In the Navy, it earned you a medal—even if it happened to be a medal that no one saw, because the whole program was code-restricted to a handful of outsiders.
Frowning, Max focused on the woman’s face. Even in sleep she was in motion, her eyes fluttering, her hands moving back and forth across the wrinkled shirt with the outrageous red flowers and pink parrots. When her hands curved, he had the feeling she was dreaming about holding something. A camera? She’d had enough equipment in that big leather bag he’d found drifting in the water.
She muttered a name—Vance or Lance? Her mouth thinned and she shoved at the wall, banging her elbow. Max saw his moment and took it, curving his palm over the skin just behind her ear and under her hair.
Information washed over him, swift details of disparate chemical nuances. Hair spray. Wax, probably from an expensive candle, judging by the high amount of distilled perfume oil. She’d touched coconut oil recently, the food-grade kind, thick and unhydrogenated, without perfume additives. Below that was a layer of some kind of silicone.
Max frowned. Expensive mascara. Also some kind of high-quality hair dye. He didn’t move, settling down into a spiral of hexones and fragrance oils as he picked up the threads of her life. There was some kind of personal-use lubricant, scented and very thick.
His lips twitched as he searched his memorized catalogue of ingredients. Was it regular moisturizer or the kind of lubricant you bought for a rough and wild Saturday night with your latest lover? His hand tightened and he forced his gaze away almost instantly. You never second guessed the layers. You kept the sensory flow straight and clear, chemicals and hormones only, no counting on outside cues from clothes, complexion, age or anything else.
Clean and simple. That was rule number one.
Max figured that the rule applied to a whole lot more than his Foxfire observations. In life, clean and simple was the only thing that made sense. It was too bad more people didn’t seem to know that.
But there was more to feel and he needed to work fast before she awoke. He moved his hand inside the curve of her ear, gentle as a whisper of air, searching for any chemical signature that would connect her with Cruz. The rogue Foxfire operative hadn’t known that one of his last chips was a scent marker designed to convey information unnoticed by the human nose but registered clearly by a trained government animal like Truman.
Or by a special forces agent trained and enhanced the way Max was.
He traced her ear gently, finding the small curves where wax clung, the places most likely to hold other scent clues. He found a hint of cigar smoke, the coconut oil again, more of that damned expensive perfume she seemed to love. Sunscreen. A little bit of very dry champagne, as if someone had sprayed her recently.
A wild midnight party?
But there was nothing else. Not a hint of Cruz’s marker. Nothing that suggested the special lubricants used in the stolen inertial guidance system. Nothing even remotely close to what Ryker was looking for.
Max wasn’t sure whether to be irritated or relieved as he knelt beside her on the ground, watching her hair fan across her cheek and the faint trace of veins beneath her eyes.
Feeling her skin, feeling her pulse. 98.4—she was probably in deep theta, given her heart rate. She’d had dental surgery within the last month. One or two fillings, since he could pick up the faint but acrid hint of mercury on her skin. That was one of the first ingredients he’d been taught to identify.
She sighed and turned onto her side. Her hair spilled over his wrist, warm and soft, the sudden contact like a fist slammed into his chest. He picked up the hormone array of a vital woman in childbearing years. He read estrogen and cortisol, from stress and physical exertion, but he figured she was also a coffee drinker because he picked up kona notes, too.
What would it be like to drink in those layers, to feed her chocolate and a fine roast coffee, letting the taste hum right down through her senses into his? Through her, lifted from her mouth and skin—
He cut through the image, disturbed at his primal male reaction to her. When had his thinking turned personal? His Foxfire training had eliminated the concept of personal from his physical contacts.
Or so he’d thought.
Something pricked at the back of his neck. He was trying to figure out the source of that sharp sensation when she turned and flung up her arm, hitting him in the shoulder. The breath whooshed out of his lungs as he was caught in blurred impressions. Sea water and sunscreen. More of that damned Chanel No. 5, but still nothing that connected her to Cruz.
He stood up quickly, catching his breath, distinctly disoriented.
She reached out, this time her arm slamming against the cool earth wall. The impact made her breath catch and Max heard her gasp. Her eyes fluttered.
He leaned down to check the man she’d called Dutch so she wouldn’t realize that he’d been touching her neck.
She came fully awake and frowned at him. Anger blazed over her face. “What are you doing to him?”
“Be quiet,” he said tightly.
“Why do you keep saying—”
“Do it.” Cold. Leaving her no doubt that he was deadly serious.
She glared at him, then lifted her shoulders in an irritated shrug. Even this she did expressively.
And bravely. She had no clue to his identity, no certainty of the risks before her, yet she faced him squarely and demanded answers. She’d make a damned good solider, Max thought. She prioritized in an emergency, handling what she could control rather than spinning her wheels over what was unchangeable.
He realized that in the faint light of his Mini-mag with its narrow blue field she was striking. Not beautiful, but unusual. Probably a lot of men had told her that. Probably hearing it had gone to her head. With wild blonde hair and cheekbones like that, he figured she knew all about manipulating men with a single glance, a teasing smile and the lure of that rich body.
Not that it mattered to him.
She crouched beside him. Bending closer, she whispered in his ear. “How is he doing?”
“Stable.”
“Then why do we have to whisper?”
“I don’t want to take chances.”
“Chances on what?”
“Keep quiet.”
She moved back to the nearby cot, looking irritated. “He needs a doctor. A real doctor,” she snapped.
“He’s going to be fine.”
She continued to stare at Dutch. “What happens if he gets worse?” Her voice had turned uncertain.
Max didn’t answer. He knew she wouldn’t want the truth, and tactically it was best not to lie any more than you had to.
She looked down suddenly, rubbing her arm. “What did you do to me?”
“Nothing.” His voice was a whisper. “You were lurching around in your sleep and you hit the wall.”
Her eyes said yeah, right.
Max figured it was time to ask his own questions. “I don’t know your name.”
She stared at him. “That’s right, you don’t. Yours first.”
“Max.”
“Max what?”
“Massey.” He lied without hesitation.
A frown worked down her forehead. Probably she was surprised by the quick answer and after that she was trying to figure out if he was telling her the truth.
“My name’s Jones. Ella…Jones.”
“Sure it is. I’ll just call you Blondie.”
That seemed to irritate her. “No blonde jokes or it won’t be pretty.”
Max shrugged. He wasn’t up on current entertainment due to months of medical recuperation, followed by round-the-clock training at the Foxfire facility. “So where are you from, Blondie?”
“Detroit.” She sat up slowly and rubbed her elbow. “Dad was a cop. Mom was a school nurse. Dinner conversation got pretty raw sometimes, what with sucking chest wounds and infectious impetigo.” She pulled the shirt around her shoulders, her eyes locked on his face. “What are you doing here?”
The question was casual, Max thought. Like she had no particular interest. If she was working for Cruz, she was damned good.
Of course Cruz would insist upon that skill in an operative.
“I do chemical work.” Max used his arranged cover, every detail well rehearsed. “Microscope and chemical assay for hire, world wide.”
“What kind of chemical work?”
“Oil fields, that kind of thing.”
“I guess that’s important.” Her eyes moved over the room and its small crates of stored equipment, and Max could see her putting the pieces together. “Why did you tie me up at first?”
“Lady, you came down in a plane right at the epicenter of my exploration zone. I’m taking no chances. I’ve been alerted that two other oil companies may be sending in unlicensed investigators, and that could cost my employer millions. Money aside, freelancers don’t always have scruples about how they get the job done. It’s the Wild West every day, everywhere when you’re talking about oil. We have a closed contract for exploration here for another two months, and no one is getting in here before that.”
“People do that kind of thing? I mean, they steal corporate information in a deserted place like this?”
Max thought she sounded surprised. Either she was very naïve about how business worked, or she was one very smart woman putting on a great act.
He shrugged. “Where money’s at stake, people will do anything.”
“You’re probably right.” She studied his Mini-mag. “So you’re here doing x-rays, things like that?”
“More or less. Since it’s proprietary, I can’t really discuss it.” Max pulled his canteen out of his vest and held it out for her to drink. “You should rehydrate.”
She took the canteen eagerly, then gave the opening a quick scrub with the hem of her shirt. “Nothing personal, but I don’t know you from Adam.”
“Always smart to be cautious.” He watched her drink. There was something fascinating about the way her muscles rippled. Her hair was wild, a dozen different shades of blonde. Beads of water trailed from her mouth, over her chin.
What would they taste like, mixed with her unique scent blend?
Enough. You know she’s probably connected to Cruz. There are damned few coincidences in this line of work.
When she stopped drinking, Max took the canteen, then raised Dutch’s head and poured a small amount into his mouth.
“How is he doing?”
“He seems stable. Heart rate in the normal zone.”
Her eyes narrowed. “You know about stuff like that? Hardly standard procedure for engineers.”
“I go into some pretty desolate areas, so I have to know basic bush medicine.”
She appeared to think this over and then nodded. “What’s wrong with him?”
“I’d say it’s his lungs. His chest looks like it took some trauma, and he may have compression in the right side.”
“How soon can we catch a plane back?” Her voice tightened. “You must have some way to communicate with your headquarters, right? They can send a plane for you.”
“Not yet, they can’t.”
“Why not?” She shot to her feet, banging her head on the earth ceiling. The woman was tall, Max thought, and she looked more than a little klutzy. Probably that was part of the act, too. “I want to leave now.”
“Open your eyes. Did you happen to see any planes in the area?”
“So call someone. Use a radio. You must have something.”
“There’s a storm heading into this area. I doubt that any planes are flying right now.”
“So when?” She winced, rubbing her head. “Dutch looks bad. I don’t think we should wait.”
“I’ll try calling again soon. The weather situation could clear by then.” Like hell he would, Max thought grimly. He held up a cardboard-covered tray with a pre-packaged meal. “Are you hungry?”
“I guess I should be, but I’m not. I had breakfast back in Tahiti and some coffee and a protein bar at the beach where we were shooting—”
“Shooting what?”
“Swimsuit stills and tropical backgrounds for a calendar.”
“You’re a photographer?”
“For ten years. I can’t think of any work I’d like to do more—and I’ve done most of it, believe me.” Something haunted filled her eyes. “I guess that’s all off, now that Vance is…gone.”
“Vance was the other passenger? Big guy, balding?”
“That’s him. He wasn’t breathing when I woke up. There was a lot of blood on the seat. You found his…body?”
Max nodded. The sight hadn’t been pretty, the body swollen and pale.
She cleared her throat and looked at him uncertainly. “Could I have more water, or is that something we need to ration?”
“We should have enough, but don’t overdo it.”
She took the canteen and splashed a little on her hand, then rubbed her face. “I’m sticky from seawater. What I wouldn’t give to clean up.”
“Afraid I don’t have bath facilities.”
She squirmed uneasily. “But you must have—I mean, what about the necessities?”
Max pointed over his shoulder. “When you need to go, you find a quiet spot and do what you have to do. But be sure to bury everything. This is a fragile ecosystem,” he added, pretty sure that this would register.
“Of course.” She turned and stared pointedly up the steps. “At least I can go back to the waterfall and wash my face. Unless you’re going to lock in me again.”
“One, I didn’t lock you in. The door was always un-secured. Two, I left the dog so you wouldn’t wander out in the dark and hurt yourself. When I called him off, you went straight out and did just that.”
For the second time, her eyes said yeah, right. “Well, it’s not dark now, so how about opening that door? I want to get some fresh air and clean up.”
There was an answer to her question. Max just couldn’t think of it right that second. He could strong-arm her into staying. He could probably frighten her badly. On the other hand, what if she really was an innocent bystander having one nightmare day? Hell, she didn’t look or act like a trained professional. Her blond hair was matted from seawater, she had mascara clotted under her eyes and her legs were scratched up. Max had dumped her sweater outside, some kind of short, clingy thing that barely covered her arms, much less her chest. Now he noticed that stray white hairs covered her Hawaiian shirt.
He plucked off one of the strands and held it up. “You’re shedding.”
“It’s from my shrug.”
“Beg your pardon?”
“Shrug. A short sweater…the new, new thing.” Her voice was ironic. “Actually, it was my own design. I knitted it between shoots back in Tahiti. Or was it the Marianas? After a while, all beaches start to look alike. Did you find it?”
“Back on the beach.”
She seemed relieved, smiling suddenly. The curve of her mouth fascinated him so much he almost didn’t hear her next question.
“Why the leather gloves?”
“Chemical sensitivities.”
Miki frowned, then broke into a hacking cough. “Great. Seawater in the lungs. I think I swallowed some really nasty algae, too.”
He thumped her hard on the back. “Dulse and sea plants are an excellent source of nutrients. The iodine and mineral salts are invaluable.”
She stared at him. “Don’t tell me you’re a nutritionist along with knowing field medicine. That’s pretty impressive.”
Max noticed that she didn’t bat her eyes when she said it. No simpering, either. He needed to decide if she was very innocent—or very clever, carefully trained by Cruz. He had a feeling that either way this woman was going to be big trouble.
Since he couldn’t give her a good reason to stay underground and out of sight, he decided stalling was the best tactic. Fingering the white piece of thread, he sat down on the steps leading outside. “What do you call this stuff?”
“Angora. As in rabbits and goats.”
“And you used it for that…sweater thing you were wearing. How?”
She stared at him, looking impatient. “I knitted it. Two sticks, one string. You may have heard of it,” she said dryly.
“I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone actually do it.” Max rubbed the back of his neck. “How long does something like that take?”
“Three or four days, more or less. It depends on how complicated the stitch is and what needle size you’re using.” She put her hands on her hips. “You don’t have the slightest interest in knitting. You’re just trying to keep me in here. Why?” she demanded flatly.
Max didn’t move. “Actually, I am interested. How does it work?”
She stalked across the small space, angry and determined like a storm that couldn’t be contained. “Enough of the inquisition, buster. Let me out of here now or I’ll do something you don’t like. And trust me, whatever it is, it will be really loud.”
CHAPTER SIX
“HOW ABOUT YOU RELAX?”
“I can’t relax. I’ve been in a plane wreck, nearly drowned, and now I’m incarcerated with a crazy person. Also, I’ve got to tell you that glove thing of yours is too weird. I don’t buy that sensitivity story, either. You know what I think?”
Max watched her, fascinated by the color pulsing through her cheeks and the anger in her eyes. Was she always so intense? “No, I can’t even imagine.”
“I think you’re a criminal who came here to hide out. Probably you’re the kind who uses his brains more than brawn. Maybe you’re a high-tech thief, someone who masterminds money laundering. Not the chump change kind either, but a business that’s huge and far-flung and multinational. Out here you think no one can catch you.”
“You’ve got quite an imagination.” Max watched, fascinated by her energy as she ran into a crate, stubbed her toe and hopped around awkwardly. “You may want to cool down before you hurt yourself.”
“That’s very funny. You couldn’t care less about me. First you lock me up here in this…this awful cavelike place while you—”
She stopped as Max stood up and calmly pushed open the small metal door, revealing a perfect turquoise sky.
“Go on.”
She stayed where she was, her face uncertain. “Right now?”
“Right now.”
Wind ruffled her hair. “Up there? You won’t stop me, or send that big dog of yours after me?”
Max reined in his impatience. It was a calculated risk to let her out, but risky moves could yield the best results. He figured she would need to find temporary bathroom facilities soon anyway. “You’ve got four minutes. There’s a place inland with some hibiscus plants to give you privacy. When you’re done, you can scrub your face with sand and a little water from the stream there. Don’t dawdle.”
She looked at the canteen he was holding out. “You want me to wash with sand?” She caught a shaky breath. “I guess I shouldn’t be complaining. I could be dead right now, half-eaten by fish. What’s a little sand in comparison to that?” She took his canteen of water. “So I have four minutes?”
Max nodded. Following her moods was like trying to catch minnows in turbid water. One minute she complained, the next she was logical and full of apologies. He moved aside, slanting her a warning look. “Remember the time. It’s important.”
“So you keep saying.” She raised the canteen against her chest, climbing past him up the stairs, but her bare foot hit an uneven plank and she fell sideways.
Max caught her quickly, his gloved hand circling her waist. Her hair brushed his face and her body slammed against him, surprising them both by the contact. Beneath the damp clothes her skin radiated a subtle but distinct heat, which he felt through the leather of his gloves. He put her down as soon as he could, dropping his arm and trying not to remember how warm she had felt.
A sudden wind filled the small space, ruffling her hair. She cleared her throat and pulled away. “That was clumsy of me.”
“No problem.” Max put more space between them. “No more perfume because it bothers my dog. And no noise.” When Max followed her outside, little flecks of white yarn drifted back from her shoulders. She swung her arms wide, trying to balance in the narrow doorway, and in the process nearly knocked him in the face.
He ducked by reflex, wondering if she was always this clumsy. If it was an act, it was very well rehearsed. Something tickled his nose, squeezing his throat and he sneezed hard, which sent more angora fluff up into his face and nose. Max brushed it away, frowning. The noise discipline rules applied to him as much as her. Cruz could be on the other island waiting and watching right now.
One mistake could get them all killed.
Cruz didn’t believe in giving second chances.
MIKI STILL COULDN’T FIGURE out if he was a recluse or some kind of white-collar criminal. He might even have been a mercenary, she thought. He had the cold eyes to be all of those things. His story about oil field exploration made sense, but she still didn’t buy it. She had been a photographer too long not to have a sharp eye for details and faces, and Max Massey was no pencil-pushing engineer. She was equally certain that his big, intelligent dog wasn’t along as a passive companion. The lab had the same intense focus she’d seen in her friend Kit’s animals. Frankly, both of them gave her the creeps, and the sooner she got away from them, the better.
She looked around, committing the terrain to memory. Since she might be stuck here, she needed to stockpile as much information as possible. Meanwhile the clock was ticking and she had no doubt that Mr. Hard-as-nails would enforce his four-minute warning.
The hibiscus bushes were right where he had said, providing a nice wall of privacy. When she’d finished the more pressing necessities, she grabbed his canteen and a handful of sand and went to work on her face and hands. The sand stung her arms, but she managed to remove most of the stickiness left over from the seawater. Closing her eyes and scrubbing her neck and chest, she fantasized about a bar of French milled soap and a loofah sponge. As she tilted her head, a cool wind brushed her face and she almost forgot that she was stranded and she had blisters on her feet. There was no point trying to do anything about her hair. There was no way for a decent shampoo with only a little water and a handful of sand.
Her time was up, so she tugged her shirt back in place, picking up the canteen from the ground. But a flash of color caught her eye and she leaned down to study a small pink flower. Miki felt a wave of excitement as she recognized a rare orchid, its bright petals soft and fragile. The scene would have made an award-winning photo, if only she had her camera. Maybe if she groveled, the Jerk would return her camera bag and equipment for a few minutes.
A hand gripped her arm and closed, pulling her to her feet. How did the man manage to be so quiet? “What’s wrong?” she hissed.
He didn’t speak, pointing at his watch.
“That’s a very rare orchid,” she whispered excitedly. “I could win a prize with this. You have to let me—”
He cut her off with a gloved hand to her mouth. Miki felt the soft leather against her mouth as he turned her slowly, looking down the beach. He seemed to be scanning the water, and she realized there was a larger island glinting in the sunlight, its central mountain ridge wreathed in clouds. Though Max’s breathing was low and steady, she felt his tension clearly.
When she tried to talk, his gloved fingers cut off the sound. His body was absolutely still.
Why was he looking at the beautiful coves? Did he expect trouble from there? She didn’t struggle when he tugged her back toward the hidden door and the big dog waiting beside it. She took a last deep breath of clean air and then went back down the steps she was already beginning to hate. As soon as the door was in place, she rounded on him.
“That was a very rare flower back there. I could have gotten a thousand dollars for one shot. You want to tell me again why I can’t have my camera bag and why I can’t make any noise?”
“I already explained. You should have listened then.” He pushed her back toward the one spare cot. “Sit down.”
“You think I’ll do whatever you ask? Forget that. I’m tired of taking your orders.”
“I said to sit down.”
“Go eat sand.” Miki crossed her arms, furious.
When she didn’t move, he caught her shoulders, and she tried to push him away, but the man wouldn’t budge. For someone lean, he was incredibly strong.
Furious, she watched his fingers open, then brush her hair. If he thought this would be some kind of kinky prelude to sex, he had a major surprise coming.
His thumb combed through her hair, and Miki was amazed at how gentle the movement was. Her confusion grew as he leaned closer, sliding his arm around her shoulder.
She felt his muscles tighten and his breath play over her cheek.
“Don’t move.”
Like hell, she wouldn’t move. He’d saved her life, but that didn’t entitle him to grope her. Enough was enough. When she tried to move, his hand twisted in a blur of motion.
“Stand still,” he whispered. “Completely still.”
Her breath caught as something appeared in his hand. Miki saw that it was long and small and frantically alive, wriggling against his glove.
“Centipede.” He frowned, holding up the restless mass of legs. “Poisonous variety.”
She gulped air, feeling faint. She hated bugs. Really, really hated bugs. “On me? In my hair?” She swallowed. “How poisonous?”
“Let’s just say that you wouldn’t have felt your fingers in a few seconds.”
She fought a shudder as he carried the centipede up the stairs. “Aren’t you going to kill it…or something?”
“Why? This is its home. We’re the intruders here. I’ll put it where it won’t bother us.”
Miki stared at him. It was poisonous and he wasn’t going to kill it? That was either religious or downright weird. Just when she thought she had a handle on the guy, he threw her a curve ball. On the other hand, he could be faking. She’d noticed that men did that a lot.
He turned around, disappearing up the steps, the centipede in his gloved hand. Suddenly escape was all she could think about. She couldn’t stand the thought of the dark, cramped space or the poisonous bugs hidden in the dirt or waiting on the walls. She began to sweat, panicking. She needed open sky and fresh air around her. She needed time to think, away from constant observation.
Even though she was surrounded by water and there had been no sign of passing boats anywhere, she had to try. The sooner she got away, the sooner she could find help for Dutch.
She waited until there was no sound from the open door, then crept up the steps. Sunlight spilled over the long curve of the beach, and she saw the glint of the open sea. The Jerk was standing about twenty feet away, giving something to the dog.
Miki ran for the line of boulders at the top of the beach.
CHAPTER SEVEN
IT WAS GOING TO BE CLOSE.
Panting, Miki dug her feet into the sand, throwing all her strength forward as she ran. She was only eight feet from the first of the rocks, and once she was out of sight, she would sprint for the dense trees at the top of the hill.
Her heart pounded, and sand flew in her face. She squinted, afraid to take her eyes off the tree line as she ran.
Something cut across her path—the big gold Lab.
She turned sharply, sprinting for a different opening in the rocks, its shadows three feet closer. There was no noise except the thunder of her heart and the slap of her feet.
But then a low whine filled her ears as her pulse hammered and sweat trickled down her back. Dimly she realized the sound came from the sky overhead.
Silver wings glinted, breaking through a wall of clouds. Miki looked up and screamed, jumping wildly and waving her arms at the plane.
A moment later she was tackled from behind, driven facedown into the sand. She wheezed as a powerful body dropped flat on top of her and a hand gripped her mouth.
“Stop moving,” Max hissed, his mouth to her ear.
Like hell she would.
Her fists flashed, pummeling his shoulders while she kicked wildly. But there was no way to shift his powerful body. As the drum of the engine grew louder, she fought to break free, but he kept her pinned beneath him while she sputtered curses beneath his gloved hand. The thunder of her heart was so loud that she barely heard the airplane drone off into the distance.
Tears burned. There was no way anyone would see her now. There was no hope of escape.
Caught between fury and crushing disappointment, she jammed her elbow upward, aiming for his neck, pleased to hear him give a tiny grunt, but she might as well have tried to dislodge a Sherman tank with a flyswatter.
His thighs opened. He wrapped one foot around her ankles and their bodies ground together intimately. He was stronger than she’d realized, stronger than any man she knew, and she was his captive with no way to escape and nowhere to go even if she succeeded.
Miki’s face flamed at the pressure of his thigh wedged against hers. She jammed her other elbow upward, fighting blindly. This time he didn’t grunt or show any sign of contact. What kind of man was he? A direct blow like that should have hurt him somewhere.
As she struggled, she had a glimpse of his face, cold and determined above her. The smooth surface of his leather glove traced her flushed skin.
His fingers opened at her jaw, tightened.
He was going to choke her. She twisted as she felt his hands tighten on her neck. He seemed to search her skin carefully, pressing a spot at her ear.
White lights burst behind her eyes and Miki felt the world drain away to black around her.
THE FREAKING WOMAN HAD done it now, Max thought. If Cruz had spotters in that plane they’d be down on this beach in minutes.
He’d had no choice but to knock her out while he tackled damage control. His eyes narrowed as he swept both sides of the beach. There was no sign of a response yet. No energy signatures that matched Cruz’s.
Max swept her limp body over one shoulder and sprinted for the bunker. After dumping her on a cot, he grabbed a wide palm leaf and worked his way back along the sand, methodically wiping away all their footprints.
He tapped his leg, summoned Truman and swept away the dog’s prints, too. With the beach clean, Max studied the sky to the west. There was no further sign of air traffic, nor any movement at sea, and he hoped it would stay that way. He would have to face Cruz soon, but first he needed more information about the fortifications on the nearby island.
Max brushed the sand around the door, and as a final precaution, scattered twigs and torn palm leaves randomly throughout the area. When he finished, untrained eyes would have sworn they were standing on pristine beach.
But Cruz didn’t have untrained eyes. He had been the first and very best at reading energy trails, and his skills had grown stronger since his escape from Foxfire custody.
Max had to assume they had been spotted by the plane, their hiding place blown. Once he was back underground he slung Blondie over his shoulder, grabbed a pack with extra supplies, pressed a spot in the wall and watched the cement slowly part to reveal a hidden tunnel.
TWENTY MINUTES LATER, Max scrambled up the hillside beneath a cover of trees. He’d left Blondie unconscious and secured out of sight in a nearby cave, then retrieved his gear and set up an alternate camp at a spot overlooking the beach. Now he was in the process of carrying Dutch to safety, with Truman walking point. The Lab stopped every few moments, head raised to sniff the air, his eyes on the horizon, but so far there had been no alerts to indicate danger.
Max’s shoulder felt the first hint of strain from five trips up and down to the beach, but beyond that he’d barely broken a sweat. Good genes, as Wolfe Houston liked to say with a wry smile.
As he climbed the rim of a rocky slope, Max heard a low vibration behind him. Truman had already stopped, his ears raised, studying the clouds to the south. Racing back, the dog bumped Max’s leg.
Danger alert.
A small seaplane appeared, no more than a smudge against the racing clouds. Truman looked up at Max, as if asking for orders.
“Out of sight ASAP, buddy. Double-time it.” Max sprinted up the steep slope, careful to stay under cover of scattered trees. As the motors droned closer, he calculated the distance to the cave.
He wasn’t going to make it. Carefully, he lowered Dutch to the ground, hidden beneath an overhanging bush.
“What’s—wrong?” The pilot roused, his voice cracking. “Have to land. Strict…orders. No time.”
“It’s okay, pal. Take it easy.”
But the pilot had already slipped back into unconsciousness. Max made certain he was out of sight, then turned to gauge the distance to the hidden cave.
Something prickled at his neck. A weight seemed to fall without warning, pinning him to the ground.
Cruz. Foxfire’s ex-leader could distort and project any kind of energy until Miami Beach looked like Nome, Alaska. If he didn’t know better, Max would have sworn he was being crushed by a chunk of that plane overhead. With focused concentration, Max cut through his sudden immobility and sprinted up the hill, Truman inches behind him. Even at top speed it was going to be damned close.
The prickling at his neck grew into a sharp stabbing, and Max had no more doubts: it had to be Cruz carrying out an energy scan from the approaching plane.
A cloud covered the sea, casting a shadow over the slope. Truman brushed past Max’s leg and turned, very still, face to the sky as the wind riffled his hair. The dog’s tail flattened to a rigid line.
“Take cover, Truman.” Max snapped the order, aware that precious seconds were passing. He brushed his collarbone, pressing an implant in the bone to set off a localized energy disturbance, but he knew the field wouldn’t last long—or possibly not at all, if Cruz’s skills had grown sharp enough to see through this recent Foxfire innovation.
He glanced back at his training partner. “Tru, heel.”
But the Lab didn’t move, body stiff, face toward the sky.
Something drifted out of the air. Light and cold, it danced over Max’s cheek and then vanished. Another speck swirled through the air, and suddenly Max was surrounded by white flakes drifting out of a sunny sky.
Snow? Impossible.
As the engine whine grew closer, the delicate flakes seemed to blur, whirling above Truman’s head. Darkening, they gained substance and rippled into a wall of fog, dense and moist, shrouding Max and the dog in an impenetrable curtain.
The airplane shot past, engines throbbing. Max felt the hairs stand up along his neck as a bar of energy probed the spot where he had been standing moments before. As the fog pressed at his face, he heard the plane bank and circle, dropping lower.
The energy signature retreated, and still Truman hadn’t moved, his head raised alertly to the sky. The possibilities left Max stunned. This was the new skill that Ryker had hinted at, glimpsed only once before in the training facility. Whether it could be controlled and harnessed, Max didn’t know, or even how long the dog could maintain the effect. Max knew how draining a small image distortion could be, and an intense weather disturbance like this had to have cost Truman dearly.
The plane circled again, and Max breathed in relief as it droned away into the distance. Seconds later the prickling at his shoulders vanished.
Over his head the fog began to fade. Max picked out the outline of nearby trees as a gust of wind swept up the slope, scattering the unstable gray veil. In a surreal moment, mist gave way to sunlight that beat hot on Max’s neck. If he had not stood here in the middle of the phenomenon and experienced it, he would never have accepted any of it.
He rubbed a hand over his eyes, but the sunshine remained. He looked over at Truman, shaking his head. Wait until Ryker heard about this.
“Pretty smart, aren’t you?” Max knelt and raised one hand. “How about a high five for a fellow SEAL?”
Truman turned around in a circle, tail wagging happily as it banged Max in the face. Then the dog sat, raised one paw and waited.
High five.
Damned if he didn’t know that, too. Filled with a wave of pride, Max laughed as the big dog licked his face. “Is there anything you can’t do, champ?”
Truman’s head cocked. He panted hard, tongue lolling. Then he shuddered.
“What’s wrong, Tru?”
The dog whimpered softly. Then he collapsed.
Truman felt cold as Max picked him up and sprinted uphill. Because this was new behavior, Max had no idea of how to treat the dog or even the nature of the problem. The Foxfire science team had given him a medical kit with nutrients, so Max figured he’d start there.
“What’s wrong with your dog?” Blondie was sitting against the cave wall, her hands on her forehead as if it hurt. “While you’re at it, why do I have the mother of all headaches and how did I get here?”
Her questions didn’t surprise him. She wouldn’t remember the last minutes before he had put her out. No one ever did. “I knocked you out,” he said curtly. “The men flying in that plane could have been dangerous.”
“You think everyone is dangerous.” She started to say something more, but instead she frowned and crossed to sit beside Truman. “He doesn’t look right. Did he fall during that fog?”
“Not exactly. Hell, what’s your real name? We both know it’s not Ella.”
She chewed at her lip and stared back at him, then shrugged. “Miki—like the mouse.”
Max filed the name away for future reference. He had a hunch that she was telling the truth this time.
“What’s wrong with Truman?”
“Something happened after that fog came in off the sea.” Max chose his words carefully. “You saw that, did you?”
Miki nodded. “At first I thought I was imagining it.” She ran a hand slowly along Truman’s head. “He feels cold. Can’t you do something for him?”
Max found a package of green gel nutrients and squeezed a tiny amount into Truman’s mouth.
The dog didn’t respond, barely breathing now. Max lifted him gently onto his lap and stroked his head.
“What happened?” Miki asked anxiously.
Max shook his head. “One minute he was fine. Then the fog came and he just collapsed. Maybe it’s some kind of canine virus.”
Miki pushed closer, rubbing Truman’s stomach. “Poor baby,” she crooned. “Move over,” she ordered. “Then go get me a blanket.”
“Why?”
“Because he’s cold, stupid.” Miki nudged him away as she scooped Truman closer, smoothing the fur across his back. She lifted one of the Lab’s eyelids carefully and frowned. “No pupil response. That’s a bad sign.”
Max stiffened. “You know about dogs?”
“I told you before that my friend is a trainer and one of her dogs had a habit of getting sick. He’s a real handful, but he likes me, so I help take care of him.” Miki felt Truman’s chest. “Where’s that blanket?”
Max didn’t have a blanket in his pack, so he pulled off his T-shirt and draped it over the Lab’s motionless body. He realized Blondie was staring at his chest. “Something wrong?”
Her eyes were wide. She took a little gulping breath. “You—Your chest. It’s…strong,” she said hoarsely. “But the scars…”
It had been so many months that Max had actually forgotten the silver network that laced his ribs and shoulder, relic of a mission gone bad in Indonesia. “I had a car accident,” he said tightly.
Her hand rose involuntarily, almost as if to soothe and comfort. The sight made Max’s stomach clench. When had a woman last touched him to comfort rather than in the heat of sex?
He cleared his throat, annoyed at the sharp image of her fingers tracing all his scars while her soft mouth offered whispers of praise and desire.
“Shit.”
“What’s wrong?” Her brow wrinkled. “Do they hurt—your scars, I mean?”
“No, they don’t hurt. They haven’t hurt for months.” He was angrier than he should have been. “Forget about it.”
“I can see how you’d be sensitive about them. I’m sorry.”
“Look, I’m not—hell, forget it.” Max jammed a hand through his hair. “They’re ancient history.”
He saw her eyes linger on his stomach and he realized there was appreciation, not distaste in her glance. Instantly his body hardened in an erection.
Talk about rotten timing, he thought irritably. Silent and controlled, he pulled a syringe from a sealed packet of the medical kit. Ryker had told him the high potency stimulant was strictly for emergencies. Max figured this fit the definition.
Kneeling beside Miki, he brushed aside the fur at Truman’s chest and broke the seal off the packet.
“Is that adrenaline? Do you think it’s his heart?” Miki’s voice was tight with concern. The name suited her, Max thought. Restless and quirky. Unusual.
Not that any of that mattered to him.
“Try to hold him. He can be very strong, I warn you.”
“Just do it,” she said tensely. “We’ll be fine, won’t we, honey?” She stroked the dog’s silky head.
Truman lay limp and cold. Max could no longer feel a pulse. He found the carotid artery and injected the stimulant. If this didn’t work, he could do CPR—even a cardiac thump, part of his advanced field training. But beyond that…
He forced away the thought. He’d never left a man behind in battle and he damned well wasn’t going to lose Truman. The injection done, he smoothed the Lab’s fur, checking for a pulse.
Nothing.
Miki watched his face, her fingers smoothing the Lab’s soft hair. Their shared worry tightened, a thread of emotion that built until it stretched between them, deep and tangible. Max could almost feel her anxious breath, the brush of her thigh, even though they weren’t touching.
Suddenly Truman wheezed. His tail banged Max’s leg weakly. With a sharp surge of relief, Max saw the dog’s eyes open. The Lab twitched hard, looked up at Miki, then lapped her face with his wet tongue.
Most women would have gasped and squirmed away. But this woman laughed in pure exuberance, brushing Truman’s nose with hers and ruffling the dog’s fur. “About time you came around, big guy. Come on, give Aunt Miki a kiss.”
Limp but eager, Truman burrowed closer against her chest, his nose shoved under her shirt directly atop her breast.
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Christina Skye
Miki is living every woman's fantasy–stranded on a desert island with a rugged navy SEAL. But little does Miki know she's a suspect in an international high-tech robbery, and her steely-eyed companion is ready, willing and able to do anything to make her talk….Navy SEAL Max Preston doesn't buy one word of his gorgeous captive's rambling story as he carries her up the beach. Yeah, she's got curves in all the right places, but Max has a nose for a con–and there's no way he'll let his iron control waver.Now a hurricane's headed their way, and for Max and Miki time is running out fast. Can they team up as friendly forces–and use Max's amazing canine companion to escape before a deadly villain takes his twisted revenge?
Code Name: Blondie
Christina Skye
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
CONTENTS
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
CHAPTER THIRTY
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
CHAPTER ONE
17°30’ south latitude
18°52’ west longitude
WHY DID SEX SOUND so noisy when it wasn’t happening to you?
Miki Fortune steadied her digital camera and tried to ignore the grunts and groans from the nearby tent where her two models were doing the nasty again in full audio. There was no mistaking the sharply heaving canvas where her gorgeous six-foot-one Scandinavian model was getting screwed up, down and sideways by an equally gorgeous male model from Montana.
Satisfied with two shots of the pristine cove, Miki shouldered her camera gear and headed back up the beach. White sand crunched beneath her feet and a warm wind ruffled her hair, but all Miki saw was camera angles and F-stops. Paradise meant nothing when you were trying not to screw up the biggest opportunity of your life, a full-color calendar called Best Beaches of the World.
Behind Miki the tent walls shook harder. Panting voices carried on the wind. “Oh, Looogan. That way. Harder—harder!” The canvas snapped and the sound effect grew more obvious.
Miki scowled. If people wanted to have sex, they should do it in another state.
Logan Brooks, Miki’s tanned male model, ground out an urgent curse. Something crashed to the ground beyond the canvas wall.
Disgusted, Miki stowed her camera and lenses, then glanced at her watch. After all the time zones she’d crossed between her home in New Mexico and this beach southwest of Bora Bora, her body clock felt permanently out of synch. But tired or not, she had finished the day’s shots without a hitch. Now that her new digital cameras were stowed and their precious memory cards transferred to a portable hard drive, Miki couldn’t wait to get back in the air.
Paradise was fine when you were eighteen and crazy in love, enjoying a clothing-optional vacation. When you were working, paradise felt like salt in an old wound, reminding you of all that was wrong with your life.
Which, in Miki’s case, could have filled most of Montana.
One of the pilots leaned against a palm tree and peeled an apple, clearly enjoying the models’ escapade. An older pilot napped in the shade, hat over his head. Her boss sat in a leather campaign chair scanning the photos she’d transferred to his laptop.
Vance Merchant didn’t look pleased. She’d given him her best work, shots that shimmered with dawn light and burned with sunset crimson. There was no possible reason for his frown other than the simple fact that he could. The man knew he held all the power and he enjoyed wielding it mercilessly. He was a tyrant, just the way Miki had heard. Being around him was about as much fun as sharing a cardboard box with a scorpion.
But the job was important, her first chance at national commercial exposure. If the calendar was a success, Miki knew she’d receive dozens of travel assignments, a fiercely competitive category of photographic work. So she dug her toe slowly through the warm sand, fighting uneasiness as she waited for Vance’s verdict.
Her balding boss looked up as the tent shook one last time. Moments later Miss Finland 2002 emerged, stunning in a black string bikini that hugged her body like butter. When her partner appeared, he was rumpled and languid, his shirt buttoned wrong and his zipper still open.
Someone snickered. The men looked up as Miss Finland stretched languidly. Vance smiled and started to make a comment.
Miki cut him off. “Can we go now?”
The model, who currently worked under the name of Jasmyn, stretched slowly while she toyed with her tiny bikini top, aware that she had all the men’s attention. “Me, I am hungry with appetite. I can eat very big horse right now.” She frowned beautifully. “Anyone have very big horse to give?”
Miki’s boss muttered something to the older pilot. Miki ignored them.
Sometimes men had all the subtlety of boa constrictors. And now three new bruises darkened Miss Finland’s elegant neck. They’d have to be digitally removed, the same way Miki had removed the other bites and scratches incurred from St. Thomas to Tahiti. Luckily, Miki was very skilled at both cosmetics and Photoshop.
Vance Merchant looked up and waved his hand at the younger pilot, who climbed aboard one of the two amphibious Cessnas rocking in the water. As the models waited, the pilot revved the engine and gestured from the small cockpit.
About time, Miki thought, heading toward the plane. This place was getting creepy. Besides, the wind was picking up.
Vance caught her arm. “Not you. I need a dozen more shots of the reef before we leave, babe.”
“You’ve got to be kidding. I filled a flash card this morning.”
Her boss’s eyes narrowed. “I’m the one who decides when we’re done, honey. Remember that.” He tossed her his big Nikon, careless of the $10,000 piece of equipment. “Get moving.”
Vance Merchant could afford to buy a camera a day for the rest of his nasty life. His silver spoon came from his father’s success in coffee commodities—and his mother’s good fortune in being an oil heiress. The man’s trust fund was obscene.
As Miki checked the camera, the balding businessman slid an arm around her shoulders. “I can see that taking orders is a problem for you. We’ll have to do something about that.”
She pushed his hand away smoothly and thought about decking him. One solid chop to the collarbone and he would be moaning. On the other hand, physical assault didn’t get credits on a job resume.
Excellent lighting skills. Inventive with neutral density filters. Crushed the supervisor’s collarbone. May be unstable and probably dangerous.
Not the best path to career advancement. Miki sighed. She needed to stop drifting and start being serious. Photography was in her blood, a passion since she was ten. Day and night images haunted her thoughts, burned into her head. The problem was getting someone’s attention so that she’d have the backing to shoot for a living. She had finally grown up and started to take her work seriously, which meant no decking the boss.
The Cessna’s motor turned over. The models were aboard with all their gear, and the pilot was checking his equipment.
“What’s he doing?”
The Cessna began to pick up speed. Miki felt a sudden sharp uneasiness at how isolated they were on this speck of an island. “They’re leaving ahead of us? I thought we were flying out together for safety.”
“If you do your job, we’ll be flying out in a few minutes.” Vance glanced at the older pilot, and a silent signal seemed to pass between the two men.
“What do you mean, do my job?” Miki frowned at Vance. “I think we’ve got enough background shots for ten calendars.”
“You think? Who’s paying you to think, babe?” Sunlight burned on Vance’s yellow silk shirt as he traced Miki’s neck. “The sooner you stop whining and start shooting, the sooner we take off.”
“You can’t let them go ahead of us, Vance.”
“I just did, babe. Move it because your stalling is costing me money.”
No point trying to change his mind. After three weeks of travel in close quarters, Miki had figured out that the man was impossible. She stalked over the sand and leveled Vance’s Nikon, trying to ignore the roar of the other Cessna as it prepared for take off. Palm trees waved, the ocean glittered—and clouds piled up to the south.
Miki couldn’t shake a sense of unease. When she finished two dozen new shots from different angles, she gritted her teeth and turned back to her boss. “I’m done here. Why don’t you take a look so we can go?”
“Cool your jets, babe.”
Babe? If Miki never heard that word again, she would die a happy woman. Was it stupidity or arrogance that made men think women actually liked that name? Of course, Babe was better than Blondie. For the last five years, Miki had dyed her natural blond hair to a streaky brown in order to shield herself against the wrong kind of male attention. From bitter experience she knew that being blonde automatically took off five years and ten pounds. The only problem was that being blonde also knocked fifty points off your I.Q. in the eyes of most men. Some women seemed happy with the tradeoff, but Miki wasn’t one of them. So why the hell was she back to bubblehead blond now?
When she’d heard about the team shooting an exotic calendar called Best Beaches of the World, Miki had instructed her photo agent in Santa Fe to accept the offer with no negotiation. At first her agent had been discouraging. “Waste of time, Fortune. Vance Merchant only hires blondes because he thinks they’re good luck.” The agent had rolled his eyes. “That means all blondes, all the time. Besides, Merchant is a little hard to work with.”
Miki was too enthusiastic to let the offer slip away. That same day she had dyed her hair to its original streaky gold, angry but determined to snag the job.
Unfortunately, her agent had neglected to mention several details. For example, Vance Merchant’s interest in blondes usually took on touchy-feely overtones by the second day of a shoot, and Miki soon tired of dodging the producer’s fast hands. Between the constant travel and the isolated location shooting, she could never seem to escape him.
Not that she would whine. She could handle a weasel like Vance Merchant. The trick was finding a way to rebuff him without costing her the job.
All her irritation snapped into sharp focus as she waited for the balding California millionaire to amble across the beach in his $800 handmade Panama hat. When she held out the camera, he moved in close, pressing against her shoulder while he looked into the LED screen.
Miki controlled her irritation by imagining a few more zeroes in her bank balance. “So what do you think?”
“Nice cloud detail. But I keep telling you, we’re here for the sex and the skin. That’s what sells, not your artsy nature shots.”
Miki bit back a hot answer, reaching for the camera, but Vance moved out of reach. “You screwed up Jasmyn’s close-ups today. Where’s the mineral oil I told you to use on Jasmyn? There’s no shine, no sizzle. Are you a total idiot?”
I’ll give you shine, Miki thought. “Vance, you didn’t tell me—”
“Can it, babe. I need a dozen more windward shots across that slope. Then I can crop and insert some shots of Jasmyn later in post-production. Get to it.”
“Now?” Miki started at him in disbelief. The other Cessna had taken off five minutes ago and the dark clouds were getting closer. Was the man crazy?
“Are you coming or not?”
She ached to tell Vance where he could put this job and his expensive Nikon, but somehow she swallowed her pride and nodded. Why did all the good jobs come with jerks in charge? Was there something wrong with her?
“Fortune, are you listening to me?”
“Yeah, sure.”
Vance muttered as he vanished behind the low sand dunes. As soon as Miki crossed the slope, she saw a shirt spread out on the ground. Vance was standing beside it, tugging at his belt.
She went absolutely still. “What are you doing?”
“Don’t be so damned uptight. It’s just sex, something to loosen you up and get your creative juices flowing. I saw you staring at Miss Finland and the hunk. All that noise got you excited, didn’t it? You want it.”
“Excuse me?”
Vance’s belt hit the sand. “You’re wasting time. Get naked.”
“You’re nuts as well as a creep. The only thing I’m doing is boarding that plane. You handle the sex by yourself. I figure you usually do that anyway,” she added grimly.
“In that case, you’re fired.” Vance made the little Donald Trump hand gesture, his voice icy. “Take your choice.”
Did he always get away with this, Miki wondered? Didn’t people file lawsuits for this kind of behavior? As the tropical wind ruffled her hair, she saw her career going up in smoke and was too angry to be diplomatic. Enough was enough. What she did next was for her and all the other women Vance had suckered over the years.
She kicked sand toward him, pleased when he yelped with surprise. While he was distracted, she followed with a roundhouse kick from one of her many hours of classes. She wasn’t coordinated, but her blow to his ribs got the job done, making Vance gulp, caught in midcurse. He lurched sideways and landed face down in the sand.
A noise drew Miki’s gaze. She saw the first Cessna circle high, dipping its trim wing once before heading east. The plane’s receding outline left her with the cold feeling that she was cut off from civilization, stranded forever.
And this wasn’t a reality show. This was her life.
Grabbing her camera bag, she sprinted for the remaining plane, ignoring Vance’s threats. Get in line, she thought. She had car payments due, credit card bills to pay and now she’d blown her best job in months.
Sand hissed behind her. The millionaire producer huffed over the sloping crest of the beach, red-faced. There was a fresh bruise on his flabby right shoulder.
“You’re through, Fortune. There’s no city small enough for you to hide. Forget about taking pictures for a living. Forget about portraits or calendars or greeting cards. You’re over, honey. I’m going to see to it personally as soon as I get back to L.A.”
Miki resisted an urge to hit him again, instead dredging up a cloyingly sweet smile. “If I’m over, then it won’t hurt me to file a nice sexual harassment suit against you, will it? Won’t that look lovely when it hits the papers? You sell a lot of calendars in college bookstores, don’t you? I’d say your sales are going to tank when the female students hear about your problem keeping your pants zipped.”
Vance’s face turned an even deeper shade of red. “You little bitch. You are dead as far as new photographic work is concerned.”
Miki returned his cold stare. “Try it, Vance. If you do, my agent will enjoy contacting every female photographer in America so they hear about your little scam,” she blustered.
Meanwhile, her teeth were chattering. Fired and now blacklisted. Could her life get any worse?
At least she had new photos for her portfolio, taken on her free time during this trip. Several freelance sales should help make up a month’s lost salary and the cost of her new camera equipment.
Vance puffed past her, smiling. “You didn’t read the last page of our contract, did you?”
“What do you mean?”
“Stupid move, babe. I mean you can forget having anything for your portfolio. It’s all mine—every print and digital image. Your film agent wanted to reject the clause, but it was nonnegotiable if you wanted the assignment. That means you get no use of anything without my approval—and trust me, you won’t ever be getting that.” His lips curved. “Unless you want to reconsider my offer.”
“You mean the quickie in the sand?” Miki squeezed her hands together to keep them from lunging at him. She’d purchased a new camera and lenses, slaved for three weeks, and now the weasel had cut her out of rights to her own work.
Stupid move.
Vance was right about that. She should have listened to her photo agent and negotiated harder, but she had been too afraid of losing the job. She had decided to stop coasting or being casual about her life plans. That meant no more whining.
And look where that had gotten her.
She knocked Vance’s sweaty fingers from her shoulder. “I’d rather suck glass chips through a straw.” She stalked to the Cessna and climbed abroad. The pilot barely noticed her, too busy staring at the dark line of clouds covering the horizon.
Miki turned, following his gaze. “Is something wrong?”
“Not really. We’ve got a little weather moving in, that’s all. Where’s Vance?”
“Back up the beach. Probably grabbing his gear.”
“He’d better hurry up.” The pilot rubbed his neck. “Once we’re up in the air, you should check that your cameras are stowed. That storm is moving in faster than I thought.”
16°58’ south latitude
152°12’ west longitude
MIKI COULDN’T DRAG HER eyes away from the wall of gray clouds. Slouched beside her, Vance muttered crossly, avoiding eye contact. Dutch, the pilot, hadn’t spoken since they’d lifted off, but he’d consulted his watch twice and his fingers were tight on the controls.
A pilot with white knuckles was never a good sign.
“What the hell’s going on out there?” Vance snapped. “You said that tropical depression was moving to the south. You said—”
“I was wrong.” The pilot didn’t glance up. “And if you’re asking why I didn’t know sooner, it’s because you insisted on renting the oldest plane you could find. I told you the nav and comm equipment was out of date.”
Miki squirmed uneasily. Old equipment and a cheap-skate boss. How could her fantasy job get any worse?
She peered at a dark wedge of clouds to the south. “Shouldn’t we be halfway to Bora Bora already? We can outrun the storm.”
“A Category Five storm can pack crosswinds above 160 miles per hour. If we’d left when I wanted to, instead of waiting for you two to do the dirty in the dunes, this storm wouldn’t be a problem.”
“That wasn’t my idea,” Miki said angrily.
“You wanted it,” Vance snapped. “Don’t give me that bullshit.”
The engine sputtered, cutting off Miki’s angry response. Dutch pumped a control beside his knee, his mouth a flat line.
“What’s wrong?” Vance swung around. “What was that noise?’
The grizzled pilot didn’t answer, fiddling with a row of controls.
“Damn it, I asked you a question, Dutch.”
“Trust me, you don’t want to hear the answer.” The pilot leveled a cold look at his employer. Miki realized that Dutch wasn’t looking bored and lazy any longer. “Get your seatbelt hooked, the way I told you.”
“Why should I—”
“Because I told you, damn it, and I’m in command here.”
Vance looked startled, then angry, but he did as he was told. He wiped sweat off his forehead as he stared out at the gunmetal sea below them, alive with boiling waves. “What are we going to do now?” His voice was petulant.
“Praying wouldn’t hurt.” Dutch fingered the radio and waited, but all that came back was static.
The engine coughed again.
They were in real trouble, Miki realized. Trouble as in mayday and life jackets and forced sea landings. Her fingers dug into the sides of the seat as she fought back terrified questions.
Dutch looked back at her. “You strapped in, Blondie?”
She nodded mutely, cheered by his thumbs-up gesture. They were in a seaplane, she told herself. Dutch was an experienced pilot. He could bring the plane down, land at sea and radio for help. Someone was bound to find them. There had to be major shipping lanes nearby.
But she wasn’t thinking about pontoons or shipping lanes when the engine sputtered and died completely. The plane nosed forward and shuddered. Cold with fear, she squeezed her hands against her lap as they plummeted toward the angry water.
Dutch gripped the radio microphone. “This is Cessna ID number three—niner—four—zero—niner broadcasting on Mayday frequency. I repeat, this is a Mayday call…”
MAX PRESTON HAD NOTHING good to say about airplanes. The ground was better than the air, but water was where he felt most at home, thanks to both instinct and long training.
Right now he was thirty thousand feet above the Pacific, the sun brushing scattered clouds as he secured his jumpsuit. In approximately six minutes he’d hit the plane’s jump door and drop into a two-minute free fall.
He still couldn’t get over the Labrador retriever nearby, strapped into a vest and parachute of his own. “Is Truman prepped?” he asked.
His commanding officer nodded briefly. “The dog is A-okay, Preston. He’ll be on oxygen via mask, just like you. Are you clear on those codes we went over? 92 for visual on Cruz or any hostile forces in the area. 705 for sighting of the missing weapon.”
Max shifted his parachute slightly, straightening the line of his oxygen mask. “Good to go on the codes, sir. Two short burst signals, 606, for probability on the weapon device and 797 in the event emergency extraction is called for. But I won’t need extraction.” The Navy SEAL’s face was calm as he slipped on the thin but highly tensile gloves that had become a staple during his long covert training. From now on his skin contact would be limited. His senses were too special to risk sensory overload.
Wolfe Houston, team leader of the government’s secret Foxfire program, crouched down and patted the big Lab beside Max. “Hustle my man right in and right out, Truman. You okay with that?”
The dog barked once, tail wagging. He jumped up, licking Wolfe’s face without the slightest tension.
“Good dog. You can give us the top ten list when you get back.”
Though the Lab had plenty of jump experience, Max still felt odd jumping with an animal—even a veteran like Truman. But that was the new Navy for you. Always innovating. And in Truman’s case, there were more surprises. The program’s medical team told Max to expect unusual strength and intelligence, along with other abilities that hadn’t been confirmed yet.
Max checked the watertight container holding his GPS system and secure satellite phone. After that came a final survey of his oxygen hose and mask. When Houston gave the thumbs-up, Max slid on his helmet, which would provide oxygen and protection in the frigid temperatures at heights above 30,000 feet, where vulnerable skin and eyes risked freezing.
A tall man bearing a marked resemblance to Denzel Washington sprinted down the plane’s main deck. “Gentlemen, I just got a weather update.” He held up a high-tech laptop and pointed to swirling images on the screen. “We’ve got a new depression west of Bora Bora that may drive in Category Five winds inside seventy-two hours. In the meantime, I’m tracking convective and boundary layers with real-time analysis from the Naval Research Lab Tropical Storm Center.”
“Give it to us in English, Teague.” Wolfe Houston crossed his arms. “Is this going to impede Preston’s jump capabilities?”
“That’s a command decision, sir. All I can tell you is that there’s a storm out there and it’s one big sucker. Currently we’re looking at a forty-eight-hour safety window. If you want to wait—”
“We can’t afford to wait,” Wolfe snapped.
Izzy Teague tapped impatiently on the keyboard. “In that case, I’d say get the hell in and get the hell out.”
That was the kind of English Max understood. He gave a nod to Houston. “I’m ready to jump, sir.”
Houston stared out at the faint shimmer of the sea below the commercial cargo plane. “All of you know the score. Cruz could be down there already, setting up the deal for his buyers. We can’t afford to lose that new weapon guidance system, and we definitely can’t afford to let Cruz escape again.” When he looked at Max, his face was set. “It’s a go. Like Izzy says, get in and get the hell out. Try not to get yourself fried in the process.”
“Aye-aye, sir.”
Max got the message. Enrique Cruz had once been the leader of the government’s select Foxfire team of genetically and biologically enhanced soldiers. Then something had gone wrong. Cruz’s skills had shot off the charts and he had acquired the ability to project false images to his targets with complete accuracy, allowing him to disappear at will. But with the new skills had come mental lapses and growing paranoia. He had managed to escape from government control weeks earlier, setting off an extensive but unsuccessful manhunt. As the Foxfire program continued to work out the kinks, it quickly expanded to include service dogs on the team, although details of their use were being kept secret.
Izzy saw Max put a soothing hand on Truman’s head. “Don’t worry about this big guy. He’s already made over ninety successful jumps. Last month he got an honorary medal from the guys at the Army’s Yuma Jump School. He’ll be fine.”
Max gave a crooked grin. “Hell, I thought he was Navy.”
“He’s whatever you need him to be.”
A uniformed crewmember in headphones hurried toward them. “Drop Zone in five minutes, sir. We’re keeping radio silence as ordered.”
Max tightened his gloves and stared out at the sunny sky. No one spoke.
“Do not engage with Cruz unless prior clearance is received. Remember that, Preston.” Wolfe Houston’s eyes were hard. “This man is unstable, unpredictable and he’s getting more powerful every day. We can’t be sure what new skills he’s taken on since his desertion. Hell, his adaptability was always part of his success. He used to be one of us, but now he’s an out-of-control killer. Remember that.” The officer took an angry breath. “I should have taken him out last time when we were in that mine shaft with the dogs.”
Houston shot a glance at Izzy. Both had been badly hurt during a nasty encounter with Cruz three months earlier. “Cruz could be capable of much stronger retaliation than we know.”
Max felt the silent undercurrents that came with bad memories. “Understood, sir.”
“Assume that Cruz is faster, stronger and meaner than you expect and then double that,” Izzy said. His fingers idly traced his elbow as he spoke, and Max remembered that both of his arms had been broken in the violent confrontation with Cruz.
“We’ll take him out this time.” Max moved awkwardly to the rear exit doors, where the crew helped secure his fifty-pound parachute pack in place. As the jumpmaster counted down the final seconds, Max briefly touched the silver scar at his collarbone, one of many he’d received months before during a bungled mission in Malaysia. Though he’d nearly died, those wounds had led to his selection for the ultra-select Foxfire team, so he held no regrets. This team made up of specially trained and genetically enhanced Navy SEALS was the finest group of warriors on the continent—probably on the whole planet—but they were never photographed, never congratulated and never mentioned in any press article or standard government briefing.
Max looked down at the Lab waiting alertly near the exit door. He checked that the dog’s parachute line was clear, properly positioned beside an altimeter that would trigger an automatic chute opening at 300 feet. The oxygen line was already attached to the dog’s headgear.
“One minute to drop zone, sir.”
Max felt the drum of the plane’s engines and the howl of the wind beyond the jump doors. The world seemed to slow down, every atom of his body focused on the here and now as he prepared to jump. He felt his pulse spike. His breath tightened to compensate for the adrenaline surge.
Show time.
When the jump light went on, he moved to meet the air’s fury, his body hammered as he followed the Lab out into the void.
CHAPTER TWO
MIKI OPENED HER EYES and gasped as water spilled into her mouth. She was choking.
When her terror cleared, she realized the water was coming from a broken plastic sports bottle shoved above her seat. She was dry everywhere except for her face.
Outside the plane was a different story. Angry waves slapped against the Cessna’s body, spilling froth over the window.
Vance was slumped forward against the pilot’s seat. Blood trailed down both cheeks.
“Vance, are you okay? Can you hear me?”
When he didn’t answer, Miki tapped his shoulder to get his attention. Her hand came away slick with blood.
His body slumped sideways, stiff and lifeless, and she caught a breath in horror, gagging.
“Dutch, what should I do?”
The big man coughed and Miki saw him wipe away blood with his left hand. His right arm was out of sight on the seat as he fiddled with the Cessna’s controls.
“I’ve been broadcasting a Mayday on our last contact frequency. They’ll have our ID and present position. The radio transponder is set for continuous transmission in case of—” His voice shook as waves buffeted the plane. “How’s Vance?”
“He’s gone.” Miki’s voice shook. “Something hit his head, I think.” She fought to think clearly. “What are we going to do?”
“Stay calm, that’s what. We stay smart and we’ll stay alive until we get picked up. I never should have agreed to use this old plane.” He closed his eyes for a minute and seemed to struggle to breathe. “Get out of your seat harness. Do it now.” His voice was grim. “Head to the cargo door.”
“What about you?”
“I’m staying. I’ll keep the radio alert squawking as long as I can.”
“I can’t leave you.”
“Listen, I got us down in one piece, but Vance is gone and my arm’s pretty well crushed by this broken seat. If you stick around, you’ve got no odds, which is just plain stupid. So I’m ordering you to unharness and ditch. You’ve got your flotation vest. Pull the cord once you’re outside. Someone will come eventually. You can tell them to come back for me.” His voice tightened. “Now get going.”
“But I—”
Water hammered high and the windshield gave way. The plane pitched hard, driving Miki back. Suddenly she was fighting to breathe as seawater covered her face, and raw instinct took hold. She clawed free of her safety restraint, kicked past Vance’s lifeless body and managed to find the rear cargo doors. An eternity passed as she searched blindly for the door latch. Water slashed her face, blinding her as she forced open the hatch. She turned back to search for Dutch and felt the plane shake. Engulfed, she lost all sense of direction, unable to see Vance or Dutch. Desperate for air, she kicked in the direction of a dim patch of light, fighting through cold, churning water.
Her face broke the surface. Her first gasping breath was torn away by the howling wind. Then Miki began to sink and realized that she’d forgotten to open her flotation vest.
After her third try, the vest inflated and she bobbed to the surface. Dragging in air, her thoughts flashed to Vance, lifeless and cold somewhere in the water while Dutch bled in the cockpit, maybe dead already.
Another wave crashed into her face. Everything slid away but survival.
Stay smart and you’ll stay alive.
Miki clung to the words as she was yanked up over the lip of a towering wave and dropped mercilessly into a trough.
Someone would come, she told herself. They would. All she had to do was stay alive.
THERE WAS A STIFFER current than Max had expected from the prejump briefing. Even Truman was tired from their long swim. Unfortunately, the drop had left them slightly off course and they hadn’t been able to make up the distance in their glide before chute opening. As a result, their swim to the island had taken twice the estimated time. But they’d made the beach with no more than a few bumps and bruises. The big yellow Lab had come through like a pro in the air and in the water.
Max’s target was a neighboring island separated by half a mile of open sea. This was the spot where recent intel had indicated Cruz was building a covert base. So far Max had found no movement or signs of life, but that meant nothing. Any plan by Cruz would involve elaborate security precautions.
Max put down his binoculars and scratched his canine backup behind the ears. Otherwise, neither moved. The wind was already picking up and gray-green clouds dotted the horizon. The Lab raised his head, ears alert. It was still too early to say if Izzy’s storm predictions would be on target.
Max was about to scan the far side of the nearby island when he heard the muffled cough of a motor. Instantly he swung his binoculars up, but saw nothing in the fading twilight. When he swept the ocean, he saw a dark shape hurtle down, hitting the water too fast. A smaller outline separated, bobbing on the gunmetal waves. Focusing his powerful binoculars, Max made out a figure near what looked like the body of a wrecked seaplane.
An accident here, within earshot of Cruz’s island? Unlucky tourists? Max didn’t buy it. That kind of coincidence only happened in movies.
But if innocent civilians had been forced to ditch at sea, they could be fighting for their lives. He couldn’t let them die without a chance.
Max felt his senses narrow, focused and alert as he grabbed his scuba gear. He wouldn’t go in too close, in case this was a trap, but he had to check out the scene carefully. Cruz himself might be out there.
On the other hand, he might run into twenty drunken tourists. The SEAL bit back a curse at the thought of the possible complications. Civilians would whine and make noise, asking questions and demanding to be taken back to Tahiti or Bora Bora.
FUBAR.
After a silent touch command to his dog, Max waded into the restless water, flipped on his mask and headed west into the night toward the coordinates where he had last seen the downed plane.
CHAPTER THREE
SURROUNDED BY SLASHING WAVES, Miki tried to stay calm just the way Dutch had ordered. She kicked her feet for a few minutes and then floated, stretching out her reserves as she was yanked up and down in the choppy water. At each crest she searched in vain for lights or landmarks, and every time panic threatened, she looked up at the sky, where specks of silver glinted between rushing clouds. Taking steady, deep breaths, she forced her mind away from Vance and the wounded pilot she’d left behind.
In and out. Don’t panic.
Stay calm and stay alive.
As the sky darkened, her hands turned cold. Her body tightened, shuddering violently. Was this shock or some kind of delayed reaction to the cold? She had no inkling of how long she had been floating and kicking, watching the sky and trying to stay calm.
She cast about wildly for a distraction to hold back her panic. Music fragments slid through her mind like broken time capsules.
ABBA. Dancing Queen. Summer of ’92. Her first big romance. Her first devastating split one week later.
Eric Clapton. Change the World. Christmas 1997. Mesquite smoke drifting in the clear Santa Fe air like incense. Adobe walls along Canyon Road glinting with luminarias and laughter spilling through the cold.
Would she see Canyon Road again? Would she ever get back home to Santa Fe’s beauty?
Cold water sprayed her face. She plunged back into fear and exhaustion. How far had she drifted from Dutch and the plane—and how would rescuers find her out here in the ocean, even if they managed to track the distress call?
Something bumped Miki’s foot and she screamed in mind-jolting terror. Please God, no sharks, she repeated over and over.
Reining in her nerves, she forced her mind to a place of safety. Battling panic, she began to sing hoarsely—ABBA, Radiohead, Eric Clapton. Sheryl Crow and Frou Frou. Over and over until her throat was raw and there was no more energy, no more strength left.
Again something touched her leg. Water slapped and a weight settled over her shoulder, dragging her under. Miki screamed, fighting the dark thing in the water until the world blurred.
THE DAMNED WOMAN WAS singing, if you could call that ridiculous noise singing. And she was surprisingly strong.
Max ducked back underwater, away from the kicking legs and slapping arms. When she started singing, he’d made up his mind to risk contact. It could still be a clever trick by Cruz, but her terror was real and Max couldn’t leave a civilian to drown. He’d thought he was dealing with a man until he’d felt the kicking legs and heard the unsteady, exhausted voice singing an out-ofkey pop song he didn’t recognize.
A woman.
Hell.
He stayed out of range until she stopped screaming and her body relaxed. He could have subdued her, but out here a mile from land with no raft, struggling would have been a risk he didn’t need. So he waited, knowing she was tired and disoriented. It wouldn’t be long before her strength gave out.
He saw her head loll, bobbing as she was carried along a dark curl of water. The only sound was the slap of the sea and the shrill cry of the wind as he caught her arm. When she didn’t move or fight him again, Max checked the backlit compass on his watch, noting time and location for his next report.
They were over a mile from the island now, but on the way back he’d have the current in his favor. Carrying her would be no problem as long as she didn’t wake up and start fighting him again. Then he’d have to knock her out for sure.
Meanwhile his questions remained. Who in the hell was she? Most important, was she connected with Cruz?
Spinning her over onto her side so she could breathe, he cut smoothly through the water, heading back through the darkness. He couldn’t see any details of her face. There was no way to tell her age or background or hair color, but her body was impossible to ignore with her hips brushing against him every few moments as he swam. She was tall for a woman—maybe five foot ten. Her arms were firm and toned. Her waist felt slim and her breasts—
Max did an unconscious inventory as he swam. She was soft and full where their bodies met, but he couldn’t let himself think about that or anything else. If Cruz sent her, she would be ruthless and experienced, alert to any weakness. But Max would have the truth out of her in moments, whether she wanted it or not—because he was a veteran, too.
When he touched her, skin to skin, she wouldn’t lie. Couldn’t lie. His special Foxfire skill would guarantee that.
Beneath his scuba mask his lips curved. He cut through the water with smooth, practiced strokes. Her body would tell him everything he needed to know. For her sake, Max hoped that Cruz wouldn’t figure anywhere in those secrets.
The Navy didn’t hand out medals for being nice.
SHE WAS GOING TO THROW up any second. She was cold, suffocating, disoriented.
A sharp movement jerked Miki awake, out of her dreams of nausea and into something far worse. Wind cut into her face out of an endless darkness as an arm locked around her shoulders. By instinct she screamed and terror made her fight with desperate strength, but the grip at her shoulders was implacable.
Where was she?
She tried to see, but there was water in her face, in her eyes. “Let me go,” she tried to gasp. “Dutch is back there. I have to go—” The words were only guttural sounds, blocked by a powerful body she couldn’t see. Then her stomach clenched hard and she broke into painful spasms.
Hard hands flipped her over sharply and for a terrible moment Miki thought the man was pushing her under, set to drown her. Instead he lifted her, one hand across her mouth.
His dark arm was barely visible against the night. The man was wearing a wet suit. Miki could hear the squeak of rubber as he carried her forward. Suddenly her bare feet hit sand. Glorious, wonderful sand.
She tottered, falling to her knees, but he dragged her back to her feet, every motion made in silence. They were moving up a beach, she realized, the stormy surf behind them now.
She shivered in the wind, waterlogged and exhausted. “Who are you?” she tried to ask, but his hand tightened, and something slid around her mouth.
He’d gagged her. The damned man had gagged her.
Grunting angrily, she fought free and toppled onto wet sand, her cropped angora sweater tearing off. The man didn’t say a word, efficiently cuffing her hands in front of her, then tossing a blanket around her shivering shoulders.
She muttered her anger at him and tried to stand, but he turned, striding back toward the water. He hadn’t removed his dark swim mask.
He stopped abruptly. “No noise,” he whispered. “I’m going back for the other one.”
She heard a hiss, like something sliding into place. She stared around her at the darkness. Even the stars were hidden beneath racing clouds, and there was no moon to be seen. Miki had no idea where she was or how she could wiggle free of his restraints. He’d saved her life, but she didn’t trust anyone who slapped cuffs on her without a word.
She stumbled forward and a furry body shoved at her leg. A low canine growl rose from the darkness, freezing her in place.
“Good boy.” The man’s voice was almost too low for Miki to hear. “Guard.”
Miki swayed, dazed and exhausted, but determined to escape. She didn’t move, listening to footsteps crunch over the sand. Something brushed her feet again.
The dog. Big one. Lots of hair.
She was almost too tired to think straight. Who were they and why where they here—wherever here was?
She sank to one knee, too tired to move.
“You won’t get past the dog,” the man said roughly. “Don’t waste your time trying.”
Cool air brushed her face. Miki sensed more than saw movements nearby.
And then her rescuer—or her captor—vanished into the water.
Huddled in the blanket, shoeless, cold and miserable, Miki felt her thoughts blur. The world had turned into an endless nightmare. Nothing made any sense. She stared into the darkness, trying to stay awake, but her thoughts kept looping and tangling like cotton candy.
Trees hissed. A bird cried. Then Miki heard a loud splash somewhere to her left. She was certain she’d heard the man call softly to his dog. Then there were faint movements near the beach and more splashes.
She reacted by pure instinct, running in the opposite direction. She had to hide until she understood what was going on and whom she could trust. She tried to move quietly, barely able to see inches in front of her as she crossed the sand, her feet cut by stones and shells.
Must have lost my shoes during the crash. Blast it, she’d loved those bright red sneakers that matched her favorite Hawaiian shirt. Leaning against a tree to catch her breath for a moment, Miki discovered that she’d lost her favorite angora shrug, too. She had designed and knitted the fluffy little sweater with ruffles, during downtime while Vance bickered with the models and Dutch tinkered with the two Cessnas’ engines.
Vance.
Dead.
Dutch.
Lost at sea. Probably dead.
Somehow the sweater didn’t seem so important after that. She bit back a sob and kept moving, forcing her way through bushes and tall grass that shredded her feet further. She staggered through a patch of mud, hit water and then stopped to listen for sounds of pursuit.
All she heard was the hiss of the wind.
Her hands hurt where the Jerk had cuffed them in front of her. Wincing, she shoved and twisted against the heavy restraints.
No luck.
And there was no time to waste. Miki remembered seeing the glint of a stream when the creep in the wetsuit carried her up the beach, so she followed the dark curve of water rather than pushing farther inland. Five minutes of steady climbing later she was breathless, standing at a small pool surrounded by tall grass. From the sound of it, the stream fell sharply, spilling into a space somewhere to her left. In the dark she had no idea how far down the waterfall went, and she couldn’t distinguish the roar of the water from the rustle of the trees. A bird shot from the right, and Miki guessed that her captor was close.
Exhausted, she sank down on a rock. She couldn’t go back and she couldn’t go forward. One wrong step would send her out into space, wherever the waterfall went.
She shivered, fiercely cold and badly frightened. Then she closed her eyes, relying on her photographer’s memory to reconstruct everything she knew about this place.
Water glinting to her left. Rocks straight in front of her, a dark mass that was probably a cliff. Bushes and grass to her right.
As she stood in the restless night, putting together the pieces from memory, she caught a musty smell. It reminded her of the dust mixed with mold of an old basement. She had gone caving once with Kit O’Halloran, her best friend back in Santa Fe. The experience had been fascinating, and Miki was sure the smell was a current of air carried from underground. Could she find the source by smell alone?
She had to find it. She also had to avoid breaking her neck in the attempt.
She slitted her eyes and looked from side to side, using her peripheral vision, which was more effective in darkness. Working slowly from bush to bush, she came to a wall of rock where the musty smell grew more intense. She followed it until cool air gusted directly onto her face. Kneeling in the mud beside the pool, she searched carefully.
The opening, when she found it, was tiny. Whispering a prayer that she wouldn’t meet any snakes, Miki squeezed through and didn’t look back.
WHERE THE HELL HAD she gone?
Max stood on the beach, staring at the empty place on the sand where he’d left the woman from the plane. He’d called Truman away briefly when the strap on his tactical vest had broken, and before he had been able to give the dog the defective piece to hide, the woman had bolted.
Truman bumped his leg tensely. Well trained to make no noise, the dog was clearly excited. Max hefted the pilot off his shoulders, set him on the beach, then leaned down to pet the golden Lab.
Bump, turn, sit.
Bump, turn, sit.
The dog was giving Max a message to follow, indicating the direction by the way he sat. The interior of the island.
Max scratched Truman’s head and gave the two-tap signal to go. Instantly the dog shot across the sand, silent despite his size. Speed and keen intelligence were his specialties, and Max was glad to have him along as backup. Things were quickly growing messy in ways that no one had planned.
Not that Max had expected this mission to be easy.
The dog slowed, sniffing the ground. When he trotted back, he carried a soggy mass that might once have been white, but now was the color of day-old vomit.
Max studied the wad of fabric in Truman’s teeth. He remembered the white thing that had been tied around her shoulders when he’d lugged her out of the water onto the beach. When Truman bumped his leg again, eager to continue the chase, Max gave him the two-tap freeing command. Go.
Given the woman’s resourcefulness, he had no more doubts.
She had to be working with Cruz. Rescuing the other passenger he’d seen would have to wait.
MIKI HUDDLED IN THE DARKNESS, shivering. What in the heck was she doing?
Her knees were bleeding and her cheek was bruised where she’d hit a rock during her blind flight. She was a photographer, not a secret agent, and she was way out of her comfort zone.
She heard a noise behind her, at the mouth of the cave. Pebbles skittered, echoing hollowly. With unsteady hands, she followed the narrow tunnel deeper underground, splashing through an icy pool.
More pebbles rattled. Terror drove her forward, stumbling over fallen earth and boulders, her feet bleeding. Abruptly the cave widened. She pressed on, leaning against the stone wall, following the sound of water. In her panic, she stumbled. Her ankle twisted and her head struck a ragged piece of limestone. Even then she tried to crawl forward, but the ground had begun to whirl.
Something splashed through the water behind her, and she lost her balance, going down hard. She was angry that she wasn’t faster, angry that she’d lost her favorite shrug.
Angry that she’d screwed up yet again.
A sharp pain throbbed in her forehead. She kept crawling right up until everything went black.
CHAPTER FOUR
MIKI AWOKE WITH SAND in her mouth.
She was flat on the ground, her clothing still damp. Her hands were behind her back now, aching in plastic wrist restraints. How much time had passed since her fall?
She tried to free her hands, and instantly felt hot canine breath on her face, a silent warning. Miki tried to clear her fuzzy thoughts, remembering her escape and the pursuit. Her wrists hurt, but by wriggling slightly she could relieve the pressure. Tilting her head back, she looked up, searching vainly for familiar constellations. With the clouds gone, the darkness was alive now, filled with glittering white specks that dotted a sky untouched by any other light. None of them meant a thing to Miki. She barely recognized the constellations back home in New Mexico.
She was on a beach somewhere. That much she knew, but nothing else. Wincing, she glanced carefully around and froze at the sight of the pale shape stretched out nearby.
A really huge dog. Some kind of retriever.
Now you’ve stepped into it, Miki thought. Fired, wrecked, ditched, then lost and half drowned. A hysterical laugh bubbled up inside her, but she cut off the sound, remembering Dutch’s final order.
Stay smart and stay alive.
The dog gave her no choice. She shuddered at the thought of sharp teeth lunging at her throat. Guard dogs were taught things like that. They could kill in seconds, according to Miki’s best friend, who trained service dogs for police and military units. Now Miki wished she’d paid better attention all those times Kit described how she trained her dogs.
If she ever got back.
Blocking a wave of hopelessness, she watched a dark shape feather across the moon. She recognized the leaves of a palm tree, and that meant she was still in the tropics. Given the silence, it had to be someplace remote. Since she’d come awake there had been no lights, either at sea or from passing planes.
Very remote, she thought grimly.
Her head began to ache, and she remembered bumping it back in the cave. Now her whole body throbbed along with her head, but pain or not, she had to do something before the creep in the wetsuit came back, even if one escape effort had failed.
But that left the dog. If she moved very slowly, she could try to make her way back to the water, since dogs couldn’t carry a scent over running water. She remembered hearing Kit say that.
Carefully, Miki eased onto her side. The wind rushed over her face, but she was certain the dog couldn’t hear her anyway. Her confidence growing, she moved another few inches.
Still no warning growl.
Her pulse hammered as she moved again, her face against the wind. She heard a sucking noise and sand skittered over her feet. The sound came again, and the blackness materialized into a column. Miki realized the man was back, her worst nightmare in the flesh. Over the slam of her heart she heard a soft groan that seemed familiar. The noise came from what appeared to be a large object.
Dutch?
Recognition made her try to stand. Had he actually found Dutch out in the dark water? She could barely believe it.
Her urgent questions were cut off by cold gloved hands at her mouth. “No noise,” he whispered. Kit felt him bend down, checking that her restraints were in place.
Then sand squished and he drove her across the beach. She felt sand give way to dirt, the waves sounding muted behind her.
A light flickered and disappeared and his low voice came at her ear. “Four steps down.”
The first drop took her by surprise and she stumbled, her ankle twisting. Gloved hands caught her and she slammed against a hard chest.
A door hinge whispered. Light flared, blinding her. She could see the creep for the first time, his body covered by a black wetsuit and black gloves. He was carrying a pair of heavy night-vision goggles, and in the light his eyes snapped with command, somewhere between blue and gray. Miki couldn’t seem to focus, but when he undid her restraints and set her down, Dutch was at her feet, sickly white. A long gash ran down his right cheek.
“You got him,” she whispered, kneeling beside the pilot. She didn’t look up, gripping Dutch’s cold fingers. “Thank you. I didn’t think anyone could do that.”
“Don’t thank me yet.” He tossed a silver thermal blanket over Dutch and tucked the foil around the man’s motionless body. As he moved his light, Miki saw that they were underground in some kind of small room. Near her feet were a large metal case and half a dozen tins that looked like MREs. The dog sat beside the case, ears erect, body alert. Spotting her sodden camera bag on the floor near Dutch, Miki reached out, but the dog seized the handle in its teeth and tugged it out of reach.
“Hey! What do you mean by—”
“No noise.” The man looked at his dog. “Sit.”
Instantly the powerful body dropped, Miki’s camera bag still between his front paws. The dog nosed the bag and suddenly flattened on the ground, his hackles rising.
The man spun around. “Target?” he said softly. “Alert.”
Target? All Miki had in the bag were clothes, a few sundries and her camera equipment. Everything was likely to be ruined from the seawater.
The dog sniffed the ground, sniffed Miki’s satchel, then laid one paw across the leather bag and didn’t move.
“Confirm.”
The dog sniffed her bag again, and the motion made something shift inside an inner pocket. There was a small pop and fragrance blossomed, filling the cramped space. Miki realized it was her best French perfume, the same fragrance she’d worn since she was seventeen, taken everywhere as a good luck talisman. Unfortunately, she’d been in a rush that morning and had shoved the bottle into an empty lens pouch rather than wrap it carefully the way she usually did.
Judging by the sharp odor, the bottle had just broken.
The dog sneezed loudly. For some reason this made the man angry. He flipped off his penlight, then opened the trap door, letting the dog race up the small wooden steps.
Miki started to blurt another question but one cold look stopped her. Her captor looked furious. Silent and controlled, he pulled a plastic bag from a black tactical vest near the metal case. His mouth set in a thin line as he opened the camera case, saw the overturned and now lidless perfume bottle. Quickly he closed the lens pouch and then zipped the bottle inside.
“What are you doing with my stuff?” she hissed. Since when was it a hostile act to wear nice perfume? Miki’s irritation swelled when he dropped her lens case and camera inside a larger plastic bag, then locked everything inside the metal case.
“Hey, you can’t—”
“No noise. No perfume or scent of any sort. You understand that?”
Miki stared at him, cold, tired and furious. The man was unhinged. Sure, he’d saved her and then gone back for Dutch at considerable risk to himself, but he’d also cuffed her. Now he was the perfume police? Maybe he was one of those neatness freaks she saw newspaper stories about, people who wash their hands fifty times a day and don’t let anyone touch their personal belongings.
The sudden sound of Dutch’s labored breathing made Miki forget about her expensive perfume. The pilot didn’t open his eyes as his lungs moved in strained bursts. Even to her untrained eyes it was clear that he was in bad shape.
“He needs a doctor,” Miki whispered.
Her rescuer raised two gloved fingers, tapped her mouth and shook his head.
Clearly, noise was another one of his problem areas.
She decided it would be best to play along. Right now he was her only contact with civilization, even if he appeared to be two tortillas short of a combo meal.
But he looked competent as he knelt to check out Dutch, cleaning the gash at the man’s stubbled cheek and unbuttoning his shirt to check for other trauma. Miki thought the pilot’s chest looked odd, slightly concave, and the deep bruises streaking his ribs made her breath catch.
Deftly the man checked Dutch’s pulse, eye reflexes and temperature, then put away his black case and medical supplies. Oddly, he never removed his black gloves.
Too weird, Miki thought. At least Dutch appeared to be stable now. She retreated to the far wall, waiting tensely. Though her nursing skills rated a negative ten on a scale of one to five, at least she could provide some kind of moral support to the pilot.
Over her head paws scraped against the trap door, and Miki heard a dog’s muffled sneeze. Was the dog bothered by perfume, too?
Hit by a sharp wave of dizziness, she closed her eyes and prayed she wouldn’t throw up, wincing as her stomach continued to gurgle and churn. She’d swallowed seawater nonstop after the crash and now her feet and ribs ached. Exhausted, she leaned back against the underground wall, her eyes closed despite her efforts to keep them open.
It felt as if a week had passed since they’d left the beachside hotel in Bora Bora, with Vance muttering and complaining about every delay and expense. Now he was dead, his body lost somewhere at sea. Miki shivered, aware of how close she and Dutch had come to dying with him.
A scraping sound brought her around with a start. The small room was quiet, both candles out. “Hello?” she whispered into the darkness.
There was no answer.
She rose and felt her way along the wall past Dutch’s cot. Fumbling, she found the four steps beneath the sloping entrance. With shaky fingers she searched for the metal door, pushing upward until the hatch squeaked, rising slowly to reveal a gray bar of predawn sky above angry clouds.
But before she could savor her little taste of freedom, a dog’s face appeared at the door’s edge. He sniffed intently, and his mouth curled, baring his teeth.
Miki shut the door quickly. The creep was gone, but he’d left the dog as a guard. Probably he kept the poor Lab underfed to make it hostile. She hated people who were vicious to animals. If he hurt the dog in any way, she was going to make him very sorry.
Assuming she was still alive by then.
CHAPTER FIVE
ENGINE TROUBLE.
A plane crashes at sea. Two survivors in the wrong place at the wrong time. Coincidence?
“FUBAR.” Max spoke softly, scratching Truman where he liked it best, behind both ears. The Lab had been edgy from the first moment Max had carried the woman out of the water. But then had come her escape and now the perfume accident. The woman could have slept with Cruz in the last five hours, but Truman wouldn’t be able to pick up a trace due to the perfume’s mix of volatile oils, sterols and alcohol overwhelming his keen sense of smell.
Max had found the woman slumped over beneath the ridge after she fell and hit her head during her escape.
Once she was secured, he’d thoroughly searched the plane wreckage and floating debris, but found nothing useful beyond camera equipment in a watertight bag and some clothes. He’d checked the identification he’d found on Dutch, and the passport and U.S. driver’s license looked genuine, though good forgeries could be deceiving. The woman’s ID had eluded him in the limited time he’d had to search at sea. He couldn’t risk using a light after full dark. It would have shone like a neon sign against the water. Why couldn’t women just carry their IDs in their back pockets the way men did?
Shaking his head, he moved behind a line of trees and fingered his satellite phone. He couldn’t chance a real transmission this close to Cruz’s island, but three short bursts would let Foxfire HQ know that he was safe and his reconnaissance was proceeding as planned. Longer communications would wait until he accessed secure equipment at sea. He’d have to deal with his two new arrivals according to his own judgment for now. Since both were possible hostiles, Truman would keep them contained underground where they couldn’t do any harm.
Neither one carried weapons or communication devices—Max had checked carefully before bringing them back to shore. The pilot was in poor condition, his lung compromised, but Max’s mission was clear. He had to stay quiet, stay out of sight and track the stolen weapon guidance system. Cruz wasn’t going to escape a second time—not on Max’s watch.
At least Truman had recovered from the initial shock of the perfume cloud on his hypersensitive nose. Max opened a zipper on his vest and pulled out a bag. Immediately, the Lab pushed closer, sniffing the plastic eagerly until Max gave him the beef treat inside. The dog was superbly trained, his medical enhancements as sophisticated as those that Max had been given, but a dog was still a dog. Beef treats were special.
When his own stomach growled, Max dug into a different pocket and pulled out a fat gray bar that looked like chalk. Tasted like chalk, too, Max thought wryly. The components were carefully selected by the Foxfire medical team to provide minimum bulk and maximum nourishment for high-energy work. Max didn’t particularly mind that the bar would be his major food source until he finished up his work here.
He wasn’t used to fine living or creature comforts. He’d never had a normal life as a child since he’d spent most of his boyhood in institutions. Not until he was adopted at the age of ten did he find out how it felt to have a normal family—if you could call his spit-shine admiral father “normal.” He smiled at the thought of the bossy, demanding man who’d taken him in, taught him discipline and given him pride in his successes. Work was his life now, just like the Admiral’s.
He still called his adoptive father “Admiral” and he knew the grizzled old veteran was probably worrying about him right now, though he’d never admit it.
A faint line of pink marked the horizon to the east. Max figured he had thirty minutes until full light, which would give him time to swim out to the derelict Japanese gunboat that rode atop a nearby reef. The support people at Foxfire had managed to slip in a radio transmitter and emergency water, along with food stores and ammunition. If necessary, Max could hole up there indefinitely, keeping Cruz’s island under covert surveillance.
No one had counted on two civilians plummeting out of the sky in the middle of the op zone. But as a SEAL, Max was trained to expect the unexpected, so the show would go on. He wouldn’t worry about the woman with the expressive eyes or the body that was tempting in all the right places, even buried beneath soggy jean shorts and a baggy Hawaiian print shirt.
Come to think of it, why was she dressed like a college student on spring break? How could a college student afford the expensive camera and lenses that he’d seen in her leather bag? He’d have to search for her ID again later while she slept.
First he had to swim to the reef and complete a secure transmission back to HQ. After that, he’d stockpile more medical supplies, transferring them from the beached gunboat to the underground bunker. If the pilot took a turn for the worse, Max wanted to be ready. He was no surgeon, but he’d had training in field medicine and Izzy Teague would brief him on what to expect from lung complications.
After a final scratch and a touch command to his new best friend, Max slipped on his breathing gear and headed back to the water.
“YOU’VE GOT WHAT?” Lloyd Ryker, the head of the Foxfire research program, sounded worried.
“Two civilians from a ditched Cessna, sir. Vehicle ID number Alpha seven—one—niner—four—two—zero. The pilot’s passport reads Jase Van Horn, and the woman called him Dutch. He’s in bad shape, sir.”
Ryker muttered a few choice words. “I’ll put our tech man on when we’re done. He’ll handle the medical end. What about the woman?”
“Not much to tell. Blonde hair, maybe five foot ten. Speaks English like an American and seemed pretty strong for a woman.”
“No ID?”
“None that I could find, sir.”
“And there’s been no sign of your target?”
“Not yet.” Max sensed Ryker’s growing tension that Cruz hadn’t been sighted.
“Did your friend show any scent alerts for these two?”
He meant Truman. “Nothing that was clear. He was edgy, and he checked out the woman briefly, along with her bag. Before he got very far, a bottle of perfume broke inside her case. That pretty much blew any hope of a clean scent.”
“Accident?” Ryker snapped.
“Unclear.”
“No weapons on either of them?”
“No, and no communication devices,” Max said tightly.
Ryker drummed his fingers loud enough for Max to hear over the static. “They could be civilians, but you are to treat them as hostiles until we have confirmation of their aircraft number and passports. We’ll have an answer by your next check-in. What happened to their Cessna?”
“I drilled the pontoons and sank it, sir. Figured we didn’t need any floating debris to trigger alarms.”
“Good. Keep focused out there. Here’s your tech contact. You’ve got ninety seconds. I won’t risk detection.”
“Copy, sir.”
Static crackled. “You’ve got a possible lung compression there? Give me the vitals,” Izzy Teague said briskly.
When Max finished his report, Izzy was silent. Paper rustled, then Foxfire’s techno wizard cleared his throat. “There’s good news and there’s bad news. Your man there is in bad shape, but he appears stable. That could change fast, of course. For now, just keep him warm and hydrated, and watch for signs of infection. Keep me updated, if possible.”
“Will do.” Max watched the sweep hand on his luminous watch. “Time’s up.”
“Give ’em hell. Oh—give your friend a nice scratch from me.” Izzy was careful not to mention Truman by name in case the message was picked up. He was chuckling when he cut the connection.
Quickly, Max stripped down the phone and hid it in a false compartment inside the ship. Then he sealed extra medicine inside his watertight kit for the swim back. His watch vibrated, signaling that it was time to leave, and Max knew he was cutting things close if he hoped to miss first light.
With his swim fins over one arm, he climbed the rusted companionway of the old gunboat, wondering what tales the walls could tell of Japanese sailors sent out to this remote island to watch for enemy activity. The ship’s log indicated that a storm had run the ship onto this reef and put it out of operation. The captain had committed suicide, shamed by his carelessness.
Shadows moved along the companionway as Max made his way to the middeck. He understood the weight of duty and self-sacrifice. There were worse ways to go out than falling on your sword.
But Max wasn’t about to let his own mission run aground.
As he slipped on his mask and breathing gear, he focused on the woman. Maybe she was the pilot’s daughter. The age difference was about right, and she seemed genuinely concerned—assuming this wasn’t one more part of an elaborate act.
He smiled as he went backward into the water. If she was lying, he’d know soon enough.
There weren’t many ways to keep secrets from him.
WHEN MAX REACHED THE beach, Truman was waiting. The dog looked up, wagging his tail but holding his down position above the well-hidden bunker.
There were no signs of footprints or boat draglines along the sand, and Truman would have signaled any visitors. With the perimeter secure and full light due any second, Max opened the trap door and headed underground.
The pilot was breathing fitfully, and the woman was curled up on Max’s cot, her Hawaiian shirt tugged around her shoulders and her arm propped against the wall of the little room. Every time the pilot made a noise, she gave a jump, then sank back into deep sleep.
Max checked the pilot’s vitals as Izzy had specified, frowning at his low temperature. Silently, he covered the man with another blanket. Pulse and heart rate were in acceptable limits, which was good news.
Time for work. The kind of work that the Foxfire team did best. He studied the sleeping woman, considering his best avenue of approach.
Not the hands. After too long in the water the skin usually became risky to read due to contamination. Not the legs or chest, since he didn’t want to risk waking her yet, and moving her clothes would almost certainly wake her. That left the face and neck. Swimmers always tried to keep both above water, which would help him pull a better impression.
Silently he pulled the soft leather glove from his right hand. Breathing deeply, he rested his fingers at the nape of her neck. He made a preliminary scan, checking for the most reliable scent and steroid markers.
With each biochemical marker, his senses tightened, drawing him deeper. His eyes narrowed and his breathing slowed as he focused. The tactile scan wasn’t magic and it wasn’t superhuman, but it might have appeared that way to an uninitiated observer. What he did was the result of medical enhancements and a third-generation sensory biochip, courtesy of the crew of eggheads that Lloyd Ryker kept on tap at the Foxfire lab. Max had trained hard to master a huge range of human steroids, hormones and man-made chemicals. When carefully recorded, they presented a picture of the subject’s recent activities, where they took place and the emotions that were present at the time.
To a civilian it would look like witchcraft, images pulled from thin air. But every scan had its price, demanding absolute focus as well as psychological risk. Like Truman, Max’s amped-up senses were vulnerable to every stray chemical, whether human-based or manufactured. For his own protection, gloves were required gear, keeping his senses clear for mission work. At the beginning he had missed casual skin contact; now it was his normal mode.
He felt the hairs stiffen at the back of his neck as cool air brushed his palm. It felt odd to have his hands free. It also felt damnably sensual.
Frowning, Max shoved that thought from his mind. Skin was skin and a woman was a woman. There was no big deal about either.
Through his sensitized fingers he picked up the faint sweetness of her spilled perfume and the tang of sweat, some of it his own. Even without touching her, he knew he’d find a welter of female hormones layering her skin. If somewhere in those tangled scent layers he found Cruz’s markers, something Max had been keenly trained for weeks to pick out…
In that case, he was under orders to extract all possible information via any means necessary. No questions would be asked later, as long as he succeeded in his mission. Ryker had made that clear.
And Max was committed to success. This was his first mission since the incident in Malaysia that had taken his jump partner’s life and left Max in a surgical ward for eighteen hours. This time, failure was not an option. He had too many debts to repay—and too many demons to silence after the harrowing, predawn raid that had taken seven lives.
In the darkness the pilot shifted as if he was in pain. When his blanket fell, Max straightened it, careful to use his covered hand. In the narrow space every movement seemed loud, each rustle of fabric sharp. Even breathing seemed intimate.
It was strange how often you came to feel a physical connection with your subject, Max thought. When the hormones came into focus, you picked up fragments of over-the-counter sleeping pills or antihistamines, hair dye and sunscreen. In a wave that seemed to come out of nowhere, you knew your subject better than you knew your own friends or family. People thought your smile was just a sign of polite interest or concealed boredom. They didn’t suspect that you were picking up their medical history, reading their whole life in a simple handshake.
In the Middle Ages this sort of thing would have gotten you burned at the stake. In the Navy, it earned you a medal—even if it happened to be a medal that no one saw, because the whole program was code-restricted to a handful of outsiders.
Frowning, Max focused on the woman’s face. Even in sleep she was in motion, her eyes fluttering, her hands moving back and forth across the wrinkled shirt with the outrageous red flowers and pink parrots. When her hands curved, he had the feeling she was dreaming about holding something. A camera? She’d had enough equipment in that big leather bag he’d found drifting in the water.
She muttered a name—Vance or Lance? Her mouth thinned and she shoved at the wall, banging her elbow. Max saw his moment and took it, curving his palm over the skin just behind her ear and under her hair.
Information washed over him, swift details of disparate chemical nuances. Hair spray. Wax, probably from an expensive candle, judging by the high amount of distilled perfume oil. She’d touched coconut oil recently, the food-grade kind, thick and unhydrogenated, without perfume additives. Below that was a layer of some kind of silicone.
Max frowned. Expensive mascara. Also some kind of high-quality hair dye. He didn’t move, settling down into a spiral of hexones and fragrance oils as he picked up the threads of her life. There was some kind of personal-use lubricant, scented and very thick.
His lips twitched as he searched his memorized catalogue of ingredients. Was it regular moisturizer or the kind of lubricant you bought for a rough and wild Saturday night with your latest lover? His hand tightened and he forced his gaze away almost instantly. You never second guessed the layers. You kept the sensory flow straight and clear, chemicals and hormones only, no counting on outside cues from clothes, complexion, age or anything else.
Clean and simple. That was rule number one.
Max figured that the rule applied to a whole lot more than his Foxfire observations. In life, clean and simple was the only thing that made sense. It was too bad more people didn’t seem to know that.
But there was more to feel and he needed to work fast before she awoke. He moved his hand inside the curve of her ear, gentle as a whisper of air, searching for any chemical signature that would connect her with Cruz. The rogue Foxfire operative hadn’t known that one of his last chips was a scent marker designed to convey information unnoticed by the human nose but registered clearly by a trained government animal like Truman.
Or by a special forces agent trained and enhanced the way Max was.
He traced her ear gently, finding the small curves where wax clung, the places most likely to hold other scent clues. He found a hint of cigar smoke, the coconut oil again, more of that damned expensive perfume she seemed to love. Sunscreen. A little bit of very dry champagne, as if someone had sprayed her recently.
A wild midnight party?
But there was nothing else. Not a hint of Cruz’s marker. Nothing that suggested the special lubricants used in the stolen inertial guidance system. Nothing even remotely close to what Ryker was looking for.
Max wasn’t sure whether to be irritated or relieved as he knelt beside her on the ground, watching her hair fan across her cheek and the faint trace of veins beneath her eyes.
Feeling her skin, feeling her pulse. 98.4—she was probably in deep theta, given her heart rate. She’d had dental surgery within the last month. One or two fillings, since he could pick up the faint but acrid hint of mercury on her skin. That was one of the first ingredients he’d been taught to identify.
She sighed and turned onto her side. Her hair spilled over his wrist, warm and soft, the sudden contact like a fist slammed into his chest. He picked up the hormone array of a vital woman in childbearing years. He read estrogen and cortisol, from stress and physical exertion, but he figured she was also a coffee drinker because he picked up kona notes, too.
What would it be like to drink in those layers, to feed her chocolate and a fine roast coffee, letting the taste hum right down through her senses into his? Through her, lifted from her mouth and skin—
He cut through the image, disturbed at his primal male reaction to her. When had his thinking turned personal? His Foxfire training had eliminated the concept of personal from his physical contacts.
Or so he’d thought.
Something pricked at the back of his neck. He was trying to figure out the source of that sharp sensation when she turned and flung up her arm, hitting him in the shoulder. The breath whooshed out of his lungs as he was caught in blurred impressions. Sea water and sunscreen. More of that damned Chanel No. 5, but still nothing that connected her to Cruz.
He stood up quickly, catching his breath, distinctly disoriented.
She reached out, this time her arm slamming against the cool earth wall. The impact made her breath catch and Max heard her gasp. Her eyes fluttered.
He leaned down to check the man she’d called Dutch so she wouldn’t realize that he’d been touching her neck.
She came fully awake and frowned at him. Anger blazed over her face. “What are you doing to him?”
“Be quiet,” he said tightly.
“Why do you keep saying—”
“Do it.” Cold. Leaving her no doubt that he was deadly serious.
She glared at him, then lifted her shoulders in an irritated shrug. Even this she did expressively.
And bravely. She had no clue to his identity, no certainty of the risks before her, yet she faced him squarely and demanded answers. She’d make a damned good solider, Max thought. She prioritized in an emergency, handling what she could control rather than spinning her wheels over what was unchangeable.
He realized that in the faint light of his Mini-mag with its narrow blue field she was striking. Not beautiful, but unusual. Probably a lot of men had told her that. Probably hearing it had gone to her head. With wild blonde hair and cheekbones like that, he figured she knew all about manipulating men with a single glance, a teasing smile and the lure of that rich body.
Not that it mattered to him.
She crouched beside him. Bending closer, she whispered in his ear. “How is he doing?”
“Stable.”
“Then why do we have to whisper?”
“I don’t want to take chances.”
“Chances on what?”
“Keep quiet.”
She moved back to the nearby cot, looking irritated. “He needs a doctor. A real doctor,” she snapped.
“He’s going to be fine.”
She continued to stare at Dutch. “What happens if he gets worse?” Her voice had turned uncertain.
Max didn’t answer. He knew she wouldn’t want the truth, and tactically it was best not to lie any more than you had to.
She looked down suddenly, rubbing her arm. “What did you do to me?”
“Nothing.” His voice was a whisper. “You were lurching around in your sleep and you hit the wall.”
Her eyes said yeah, right.
Max figured it was time to ask his own questions. “I don’t know your name.”
She stared at him. “That’s right, you don’t. Yours first.”
“Max.”
“Max what?”
“Massey.” He lied without hesitation.
A frown worked down her forehead. Probably she was surprised by the quick answer and after that she was trying to figure out if he was telling her the truth.
“My name’s Jones. Ella…Jones.”
“Sure it is. I’ll just call you Blondie.”
That seemed to irritate her. “No blonde jokes or it won’t be pretty.”
Max shrugged. He wasn’t up on current entertainment due to months of medical recuperation, followed by round-the-clock training at the Foxfire facility. “So where are you from, Blondie?”
“Detroit.” She sat up slowly and rubbed her elbow. “Dad was a cop. Mom was a school nurse. Dinner conversation got pretty raw sometimes, what with sucking chest wounds and infectious impetigo.” She pulled the shirt around her shoulders, her eyes locked on his face. “What are you doing here?”
The question was casual, Max thought. Like she had no particular interest. If she was working for Cruz, she was damned good.
Of course Cruz would insist upon that skill in an operative.
“I do chemical work.” Max used his arranged cover, every detail well rehearsed. “Microscope and chemical assay for hire, world wide.”
“What kind of chemical work?”
“Oil fields, that kind of thing.”
“I guess that’s important.” Her eyes moved over the room and its small crates of stored equipment, and Max could see her putting the pieces together. “Why did you tie me up at first?”
“Lady, you came down in a plane right at the epicenter of my exploration zone. I’m taking no chances. I’ve been alerted that two other oil companies may be sending in unlicensed investigators, and that could cost my employer millions. Money aside, freelancers don’t always have scruples about how they get the job done. It’s the Wild West every day, everywhere when you’re talking about oil. We have a closed contract for exploration here for another two months, and no one is getting in here before that.”
“People do that kind of thing? I mean, they steal corporate information in a deserted place like this?”
Max thought she sounded surprised. Either she was very naïve about how business worked, or she was one very smart woman putting on a great act.
He shrugged. “Where money’s at stake, people will do anything.”
“You’re probably right.” She studied his Mini-mag. “So you’re here doing x-rays, things like that?”
“More or less. Since it’s proprietary, I can’t really discuss it.” Max pulled his canteen out of his vest and held it out for her to drink. “You should rehydrate.”
She took the canteen eagerly, then gave the opening a quick scrub with the hem of her shirt. “Nothing personal, but I don’t know you from Adam.”
“Always smart to be cautious.” He watched her drink. There was something fascinating about the way her muscles rippled. Her hair was wild, a dozen different shades of blonde. Beads of water trailed from her mouth, over her chin.
What would they taste like, mixed with her unique scent blend?
Enough. You know she’s probably connected to Cruz. There are damned few coincidences in this line of work.
When she stopped drinking, Max took the canteen, then raised Dutch’s head and poured a small amount into his mouth.
“How is he doing?”
“He seems stable. Heart rate in the normal zone.”
Her eyes narrowed. “You know about stuff like that? Hardly standard procedure for engineers.”
“I go into some pretty desolate areas, so I have to know basic bush medicine.”
She appeared to think this over and then nodded. “What’s wrong with him?”
“I’d say it’s his lungs. His chest looks like it took some trauma, and he may have compression in the right side.”
“How soon can we catch a plane back?” Her voice tightened. “You must have some way to communicate with your headquarters, right? They can send a plane for you.”
“Not yet, they can’t.”
“Why not?” She shot to her feet, banging her head on the earth ceiling. The woman was tall, Max thought, and she looked more than a little klutzy. Probably that was part of the act, too. “I want to leave now.”
“Open your eyes. Did you happen to see any planes in the area?”
“So call someone. Use a radio. You must have something.”
“There’s a storm heading into this area. I doubt that any planes are flying right now.”
“So when?” She winced, rubbing her head. “Dutch looks bad. I don’t think we should wait.”
“I’ll try calling again soon. The weather situation could clear by then.” Like hell he would, Max thought grimly. He held up a cardboard-covered tray with a pre-packaged meal. “Are you hungry?”
“I guess I should be, but I’m not. I had breakfast back in Tahiti and some coffee and a protein bar at the beach where we were shooting—”
“Shooting what?”
“Swimsuit stills and tropical backgrounds for a calendar.”
“You’re a photographer?”
“For ten years. I can’t think of any work I’d like to do more—and I’ve done most of it, believe me.” Something haunted filled her eyes. “I guess that’s all off, now that Vance is…gone.”
“Vance was the other passenger? Big guy, balding?”
“That’s him. He wasn’t breathing when I woke up. There was a lot of blood on the seat. You found his…body?”
Max nodded. The sight hadn’t been pretty, the body swollen and pale.
She cleared her throat and looked at him uncertainly. “Could I have more water, or is that something we need to ration?”
“We should have enough, but don’t overdo it.”
She took the canteen and splashed a little on her hand, then rubbed her face. “I’m sticky from seawater. What I wouldn’t give to clean up.”
“Afraid I don’t have bath facilities.”
She squirmed uneasily. “But you must have—I mean, what about the necessities?”
Max pointed over his shoulder. “When you need to go, you find a quiet spot and do what you have to do. But be sure to bury everything. This is a fragile ecosystem,” he added, pretty sure that this would register.
“Of course.” She turned and stared pointedly up the steps. “At least I can go back to the waterfall and wash my face. Unless you’re going to lock in me again.”
“One, I didn’t lock you in. The door was always un-secured. Two, I left the dog so you wouldn’t wander out in the dark and hurt yourself. When I called him off, you went straight out and did just that.”
For the second time, her eyes said yeah, right. “Well, it’s not dark now, so how about opening that door? I want to get some fresh air and clean up.”
There was an answer to her question. Max just couldn’t think of it right that second. He could strong-arm her into staying. He could probably frighten her badly. On the other hand, what if she really was an innocent bystander having one nightmare day? Hell, she didn’t look or act like a trained professional. Her blond hair was matted from seawater, she had mascara clotted under her eyes and her legs were scratched up. Max had dumped her sweater outside, some kind of short, clingy thing that barely covered her arms, much less her chest. Now he noticed that stray white hairs covered her Hawaiian shirt.
He plucked off one of the strands and held it up. “You’re shedding.”
“It’s from my shrug.”
“Beg your pardon?”
“Shrug. A short sweater…the new, new thing.” Her voice was ironic. “Actually, it was my own design. I knitted it between shoots back in Tahiti. Or was it the Marianas? After a while, all beaches start to look alike. Did you find it?”
“Back on the beach.”
She seemed relieved, smiling suddenly. The curve of her mouth fascinated him so much he almost didn’t hear her next question.
“Why the leather gloves?”
“Chemical sensitivities.”
Miki frowned, then broke into a hacking cough. “Great. Seawater in the lungs. I think I swallowed some really nasty algae, too.”
He thumped her hard on the back. “Dulse and sea plants are an excellent source of nutrients. The iodine and mineral salts are invaluable.”
She stared at him. “Don’t tell me you’re a nutritionist along with knowing field medicine. That’s pretty impressive.”
Max noticed that she didn’t bat her eyes when she said it. No simpering, either. He needed to decide if she was very innocent—or very clever, carefully trained by Cruz. He had a feeling that either way this woman was going to be big trouble.
Since he couldn’t give her a good reason to stay underground and out of sight, he decided stalling was the best tactic. Fingering the white piece of thread, he sat down on the steps leading outside. “What do you call this stuff?”
“Angora. As in rabbits and goats.”
“And you used it for that…sweater thing you were wearing. How?”
She stared at him, looking impatient. “I knitted it. Two sticks, one string. You may have heard of it,” she said dryly.
“I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone actually do it.” Max rubbed the back of his neck. “How long does something like that take?”
“Three or four days, more or less. It depends on how complicated the stitch is and what needle size you’re using.” She put her hands on her hips. “You don’t have the slightest interest in knitting. You’re just trying to keep me in here. Why?” she demanded flatly.
Max didn’t move. “Actually, I am interested. How does it work?”
She stalked across the small space, angry and determined like a storm that couldn’t be contained. “Enough of the inquisition, buster. Let me out of here now or I’ll do something you don’t like. And trust me, whatever it is, it will be really loud.”
CHAPTER SIX
“HOW ABOUT YOU RELAX?”
“I can’t relax. I’ve been in a plane wreck, nearly drowned, and now I’m incarcerated with a crazy person. Also, I’ve got to tell you that glove thing of yours is too weird. I don’t buy that sensitivity story, either. You know what I think?”
Max watched her, fascinated by the color pulsing through her cheeks and the anger in her eyes. Was she always so intense? “No, I can’t even imagine.”
“I think you’re a criminal who came here to hide out. Probably you’re the kind who uses his brains more than brawn. Maybe you’re a high-tech thief, someone who masterminds money laundering. Not the chump change kind either, but a business that’s huge and far-flung and multinational. Out here you think no one can catch you.”
“You’ve got quite an imagination.” Max watched, fascinated by her energy as she ran into a crate, stubbed her toe and hopped around awkwardly. “You may want to cool down before you hurt yourself.”
“That’s very funny. You couldn’t care less about me. First you lock me up here in this…this awful cavelike place while you—”
She stopped as Max stood up and calmly pushed open the small metal door, revealing a perfect turquoise sky.
“Go on.”
She stayed where she was, her face uncertain. “Right now?”
“Right now.”
Wind ruffled her hair. “Up there? You won’t stop me, or send that big dog of yours after me?”
Max reined in his impatience. It was a calculated risk to let her out, but risky moves could yield the best results. He figured she would need to find temporary bathroom facilities soon anyway. “You’ve got four minutes. There’s a place inland with some hibiscus plants to give you privacy. When you’re done, you can scrub your face with sand and a little water from the stream there. Don’t dawdle.”
She looked at the canteen he was holding out. “You want me to wash with sand?” She caught a shaky breath. “I guess I shouldn’t be complaining. I could be dead right now, half-eaten by fish. What’s a little sand in comparison to that?” She took his canteen of water. “So I have four minutes?”
Max nodded. Following her moods was like trying to catch minnows in turbid water. One minute she complained, the next she was logical and full of apologies. He moved aside, slanting her a warning look. “Remember the time. It’s important.”
“So you keep saying.” She raised the canteen against her chest, climbing past him up the stairs, but her bare foot hit an uneven plank and she fell sideways.
Max caught her quickly, his gloved hand circling her waist. Her hair brushed his face and her body slammed against him, surprising them both by the contact. Beneath the damp clothes her skin radiated a subtle but distinct heat, which he felt through the leather of his gloves. He put her down as soon as he could, dropping his arm and trying not to remember how warm she had felt.
A sudden wind filled the small space, ruffling her hair. She cleared her throat and pulled away. “That was clumsy of me.”
“No problem.” Max put more space between them. “No more perfume because it bothers my dog. And no noise.” When Max followed her outside, little flecks of white yarn drifted back from her shoulders. She swung her arms wide, trying to balance in the narrow doorway, and in the process nearly knocked him in the face.
He ducked by reflex, wondering if she was always this clumsy. If it was an act, it was very well rehearsed. Something tickled his nose, squeezing his throat and he sneezed hard, which sent more angora fluff up into his face and nose. Max brushed it away, frowning. The noise discipline rules applied to him as much as her. Cruz could be on the other island waiting and watching right now.
One mistake could get them all killed.
Cruz didn’t believe in giving second chances.
MIKI STILL COULDN’T FIGURE out if he was a recluse or some kind of white-collar criminal. He might even have been a mercenary, she thought. He had the cold eyes to be all of those things. His story about oil field exploration made sense, but she still didn’t buy it. She had been a photographer too long not to have a sharp eye for details and faces, and Max Massey was no pencil-pushing engineer. She was equally certain that his big, intelligent dog wasn’t along as a passive companion. The lab had the same intense focus she’d seen in her friend Kit’s animals. Frankly, both of them gave her the creeps, and the sooner she got away from them, the better.
She looked around, committing the terrain to memory. Since she might be stuck here, she needed to stockpile as much information as possible. Meanwhile the clock was ticking and she had no doubt that Mr. Hard-as-nails would enforce his four-minute warning.
The hibiscus bushes were right where he had said, providing a nice wall of privacy. When she’d finished the more pressing necessities, she grabbed his canteen and a handful of sand and went to work on her face and hands. The sand stung her arms, but she managed to remove most of the stickiness left over from the seawater. Closing her eyes and scrubbing her neck and chest, she fantasized about a bar of French milled soap and a loofah sponge. As she tilted her head, a cool wind brushed her face and she almost forgot that she was stranded and she had blisters on her feet. There was no point trying to do anything about her hair. There was no way for a decent shampoo with only a little water and a handful of sand.
Her time was up, so she tugged her shirt back in place, picking up the canteen from the ground. But a flash of color caught her eye and she leaned down to study a small pink flower. Miki felt a wave of excitement as she recognized a rare orchid, its bright petals soft and fragile. The scene would have made an award-winning photo, if only she had her camera. Maybe if she groveled, the Jerk would return her camera bag and equipment for a few minutes.
A hand gripped her arm and closed, pulling her to her feet. How did the man manage to be so quiet? “What’s wrong?” she hissed.
He didn’t speak, pointing at his watch.
“That’s a very rare orchid,” she whispered excitedly. “I could win a prize with this. You have to let me—”
He cut her off with a gloved hand to her mouth. Miki felt the soft leather against her mouth as he turned her slowly, looking down the beach. He seemed to be scanning the water, and she realized there was a larger island glinting in the sunlight, its central mountain ridge wreathed in clouds. Though Max’s breathing was low and steady, she felt his tension clearly.
When she tried to talk, his gloved fingers cut off the sound. His body was absolutely still.
Why was he looking at the beautiful coves? Did he expect trouble from there? She didn’t struggle when he tugged her back toward the hidden door and the big dog waiting beside it. She took a last deep breath of clean air and then went back down the steps she was already beginning to hate. As soon as the door was in place, she rounded on him.
“That was a very rare flower back there. I could have gotten a thousand dollars for one shot. You want to tell me again why I can’t have my camera bag and why I can’t make any noise?”
“I already explained. You should have listened then.” He pushed her back toward the one spare cot. “Sit down.”
“You think I’ll do whatever you ask? Forget that. I’m tired of taking your orders.”
“I said to sit down.”
“Go eat sand.” Miki crossed her arms, furious.
When she didn’t move, he caught her shoulders, and she tried to push him away, but the man wouldn’t budge. For someone lean, he was incredibly strong.
Furious, she watched his fingers open, then brush her hair. If he thought this would be some kind of kinky prelude to sex, he had a major surprise coming.
His thumb combed through her hair, and Miki was amazed at how gentle the movement was. Her confusion grew as he leaned closer, sliding his arm around her shoulder.
She felt his muscles tighten and his breath play over her cheek.
“Don’t move.”
Like hell, she wouldn’t move. He’d saved her life, but that didn’t entitle him to grope her. Enough was enough. When she tried to move, his hand twisted in a blur of motion.
“Stand still,” he whispered. “Completely still.”
Her breath caught as something appeared in his hand. Miki saw that it was long and small and frantically alive, wriggling against his glove.
“Centipede.” He frowned, holding up the restless mass of legs. “Poisonous variety.”
She gulped air, feeling faint. She hated bugs. Really, really hated bugs. “On me? In my hair?” She swallowed. “How poisonous?”
“Let’s just say that you wouldn’t have felt your fingers in a few seconds.”
She fought a shudder as he carried the centipede up the stairs. “Aren’t you going to kill it…or something?”
“Why? This is its home. We’re the intruders here. I’ll put it where it won’t bother us.”
Miki stared at him. It was poisonous and he wasn’t going to kill it? That was either religious or downright weird. Just when she thought she had a handle on the guy, he threw her a curve ball. On the other hand, he could be faking. She’d noticed that men did that a lot.
He turned around, disappearing up the steps, the centipede in his gloved hand. Suddenly escape was all she could think about. She couldn’t stand the thought of the dark, cramped space or the poisonous bugs hidden in the dirt or waiting on the walls. She began to sweat, panicking. She needed open sky and fresh air around her. She needed time to think, away from constant observation.
Even though she was surrounded by water and there had been no sign of passing boats anywhere, she had to try. The sooner she got away, the sooner she could find help for Dutch.
She waited until there was no sound from the open door, then crept up the steps. Sunlight spilled over the long curve of the beach, and she saw the glint of the open sea. The Jerk was standing about twenty feet away, giving something to the dog.
Miki ran for the line of boulders at the top of the beach.
CHAPTER SEVEN
IT WAS GOING TO BE CLOSE.
Panting, Miki dug her feet into the sand, throwing all her strength forward as she ran. She was only eight feet from the first of the rocks, and once she was out of sight, she would sprint for the dense trees at the top of the hill.
Her heart pounded, and sand flew in her face. She squinted, afraid to take her eyes off the tree line as she ran.
Something cut across her path—the big gold Lab.
She turned sharply, sprinting for a different opening in the rocks, its shadows three feet closer. There was no noise except the thunder of her heart and the slap of her feet.
But then a low whine filled her ears as her pulse hammered and sweat trickled down her back. Dimly she realized the sound came from the sky overhead.
Silver wings glinted, breaking through a wall of clouds. Miki looked up and screamed, jumping wildly and waving her arms at the plane.
A moment later she was tackled from behind, driven facedown into the sand. She wheezed as a powerful body dropped flat on top of her and a hand gripped her mouth.
“Stop moving,” Max hissed, his mouth to her ear.
Like hell she would.
Her fists flashed, pummeling his shoulders while she kicked wildly. But there was no way to shift his powerful body. As the drum of the engine grew louder, she fought to break free, but he kept her pinned beneath him while she sputtered curses beneath his gloved hand. The thunder of her heart was so loud that she barely heard the airplane drone off into the distance.
Tears burned. There was no way anyone would see her now. There was no hope of escape.
Caught between fury and crushing disappointment, she jammed her elbow upward, aiming for his neck, pleased to hear him give a tiny grunt, but she might as well have tried to dislodge a Sherman tank with a flyswatter.
His thighs opened. He wrapped one foot around her ankles and their bodies ground together intimately. He was stronger than she’d realized, stronger than any man she knew, and she was his captive with no way to escape and nowhere to go even if she succeeded.
Miki’s face flamed at the pressure of his thigh wedged against hers. She jammed her other elbow upward, fighting blindly. This time he didn’t grunt or show any sign of contact. What kind of man was he? A direct blow like that should have hurt him somewhere.
As she struggled, she had a glimpse of his face, cold and determined above her. The smooth surface of his leather glove traced her flushed skin.
His fingers opened at her jaw, tightened.
He was going to choke her. She twisted as she felt his hands tighten on her neck. He seemed to search her skin carefully, pressing a spot at her ear.
White lights burst behind her eyes and Miki felt the world drain away to black around her.
THE FREAKING WOMAN HAD done it now, Max thought. If Cruz had spotters in that plane they’d be down on this beach in minutes.
He’d had no choice but to knock her out while he tackled damage control. His eyes narrowed as he swept both sides of the beach. There was no sign of a response yet. No energy signatures that matched Cruz’s.
Max swept her limp body over one shoulder and sprinted for the bunker. After dumping her on a cot, he grabbed a wide palm leaf and worked his way back along the sand, methodically wiping away all their footprints.
He tapped his leg, summoned Truman and swept away the dog’s prints, too. With the beach clean, Max studied the sky to the west. There was no further sign of air traffic, nor any movement at sea, and he hoped it would stay that way. He would have to face Cruz soon, but first he needed more information about the fortifications on the nearby island.
Max brushed the sand around the door, and as a final precaution, scattered twigs and torn palm leaves randomly throughout the area. When he finished, untrained eyes would have sworn they were standing on pristine beach.
But Cruz didn’t have untrained eyes. He had been the first and very best at reading energy trails, and his skills had grown stronger since his escape from Foxfire custody.
Max had to assume they had been spotted by the plane, their hiding place blown. Once he was back underground he slung Blondie over his shoulder, grabbed a pack with extra supplies, pressed a spot in the wall and watched the cement slowly part to reveal a hidden tunnel.
TWENTY MINUTES LATER, Max scrambled up the hillside beneath a cover of trees. He’d left Blondie unconscious and secured out of sight in a nearby cave, then retrieved his gear and set up an alternate camp at a spot overlooking the beach. Now he was in the process of carrying Dutch to safety, with Truman walking point. The Lab stopped every few moments, head raised to sniff the air, his eyes on the horizon, but so far there had been no alerts to indicate danger.
Max’s shoulder felt the first hint of strain from five trips up and down to the beach, but beyond that he’d barely broken a sweat. Good genes, as Wolfe Houston liked to say with a wry smile.
As he climbed the rim of a rocky slope, Max heard a low vibration behind him. Truman had already stopped, his ears raised, studying the clouds to the south. Racing back, the dog bumped Max’s leg.
Danger alert.
A small seaplane appeared, no more than a smudge against the racing clouds. Truman looked up at Max, as if asking for orders.
“Out of sight ASAP, buddy. Double-time it.” Max sprinted up the steep slope, careful to stay under cover of scattered trees. As the motors droned closer, he calculated the distance to the cave.
He wasn’t going to make it. Carefully, he lowered Dutch to the ground, hidden beneath an overhanging bush.
“What’s—wrong?” The pilot roused, his voice cracking. “Have to land. Strict…orders. No time.”
“It’s okay, pal. Take it easy.”
But the pilot had already slipped back into unconsciousness. Max made certain he was out of sight, then turned to gauge the distance to the hidden cave.
Something prickled at his neck. A weight seemed to fall without warning, pinning him to the ground.
Cruz. Foxfire’s ex-leader could distort and project any kind of energy until Miami Beach looked like Nome, Alaska. If he didn’t know better, Max would have sworn he was being crushed by a chunk of that plane overhead. With focused concentration, Max cut through his sudden immobility and sprinted up the hill, Truman inches behind him. Even at top speed it was going to be damned close.
The prickling at his neck grew into a sharp stabbing, and Max had no more doubts: it had to be Cruz carrying out an energy scan from the approaching plane.
A cloud covered the sea, casting a shadow over the slope. Truman brushed past Max’s leg and turned, very still, face to the sky as the wind riffled his hair. The dog’s tail flattened to a rigid line.
“Take cover, Truman.” Max snapped the order, aware that precious seconds were passing. He brushed his collarbone, pressing an implant in the bone to set off a localized energy disturbance, but he knew the field wouldn’t last long—or possibly not at all, if Cruz’s skills had grown sharp enough to see through this recent Foxfire innovation.
He glanced back at his training partner. “Tru, heel.”
But the Lab didn’t move, body stiff, face toward the sky.
Something drifted out of the air. Light and cold, it danced over Max’s cheek and then vanished. Another speck swirled through the air, and suddenly Max was surrounded by white flakes drifting out of a sunny sky.
Snow? Impossible.
As the engine whine grew closer, the delicate flakes seemed to blur, whirling above Truman’s head. Darkening, they gained substance and rippled into a wall of fog, dense and moist, shrouding Max and the dog in an impenetrable curtain.
The airplane shot past, engines throbbing. Max felt the hairs stand up along his neck as a bar of energy probed the spot where he had been standing moments before. As the fog pressed at his face, he heard the plane bank and circle, dropping lower.
The energy signature retreated, and still Truman hadn’t moved, his head raised alertly to the sky. The possibilities left Max stunned. This was the new skill that Ryker had hinted at, glimpsed only once before in the training facility. Whether it could be controlled and harnessed, Max didn’t know, or even how long the dog could maintain the effect. Max knew how draining a small image distortion could be, and an intense weather disturbance like this had to have cost Truman dearly.
The plane circled again, and Max breathed in relief as it droned away into the distance. Seconds later the prickling at his shoulders vanished.
Over his head the fog began to fade. Max picked out the outline of nearby trees as a gust of wind swept up the slope, scattering the unstable gray veil. In a surreal moment, mist gave way to sunlight that beat hot on Max’s neck. If he had not stood here in the middle of the phenomenon and experienced it, he would never have accepted any of it.
He rubbed a hand over his eyes, but the sunshine remained. He looked over at Truman, shaking his head. Wait until Ryker heard about this.
“Pretty smart, aren’t you?” Max knelt and raised one hand. “How about a high five for a fellow SEAL?”
Truman turned around in a circle, tail wagging happily as it banged Max in the face. Then the dog sat, raised one paw and waited.
High five.
Damned if he didn’t know that, too. Filled with a wave of pride, Max laughed as the big dog licked his face. “Is there anything you can’t do, champ?”
Truman’s head cocked. He panted hard, tongue lolling. Then he shuddered.
“What’s wrong, Tru?”
The dog whimpered softly. Then he collapsed.
Truman felt cold as Max picked him up and sprinted uphill. Because this was new behavior, Max had no idea of how to treat the dog or even the nature of the problem. The Foxfire science team had given him a medical kit with nutrients, so Max figured he’d start there.
“What’s wrong with your dog?” Blondie was sitting against the cave wall, her hands on her forehead as if it hurt. “While you’re at it, why do I have the mother of all headaches and how did I get here?”
Her questions didn’t surprise him. She wouldn’t remember the last minutes before he had put her out. No one ever did. “I knocked you out,” he said curtly. “The men flying in that plane could have been dangerous.”
“You think everyone is dangerous.” She started to say something more, but instead she frowned and crossed to sit beside Truman. “He doesn’t look right. Did he fall during that fog?”
“Not exactly. Hell, what’s your real name? We both know it’s not Ella.”
She chewed at her lip and stared back at him, then shrugged. “Miki—like the mouse.”
Max filed the name away for future reference. He had a hunch that she was telling the truth this time.
“What’s wrong with Truman?”
“Something happened after that fog came in off the sea.” Max chose his words carefully. “You saw that, did you?”
Miki nodded. “At first I thought I was imagining it.” She ran a hand slowly along Truman’s head. “He feels cold. Can’t you do something for him?”
Max found a package of green gel nutrients and squeezed a tiny amount into Truman’s mouth.
The dog didn’t respond, barely breathing now. Max lifted him gently onto his lap and stroked his head.
“What happened?” Miki asked anxiously.
Max shook his head. “One minute he was fine. Then the fog came and he just collapsed. Maybe it’s some kind of canine virus.”
Miki pushed closer, rubbing Truman’s stomach. “Poor baby,” she crooned. “Move over,” she ordered. “Then go get me a blanket.”
“Why?”
“Because he’s cold, stupid.” Miki nudged him away as she scooped Truman closer, smoothing the fur across his back. She lifted one of the Lab’s eyelids carefully and frowned. “No pupil response. That’s a bad sign.”
Max stiffened. “You know about dogs?”
“I told you before that my friend is a trainer and one of her dogs had a habit of getting sick. He’s a real handful, but he likes me, so I help take care of him.” Miki felt Truman’s chest. “Where’s that blanket?”
Max didn’t have a blanket in his pack, so he pulled off his T-shirt and draped it over the Lab’s motionless body. He realized Blondie was staring at his chest. “Something wrong?”
Her eyes were wide. She took a little gulping breath. “You—Your chest. It’s…strong,” she said hoarsely. “But the scars…”
It had been so many months that Max had actually forgotten the silver network that laced his ribs and shoulder, relic of a mission gone bad in Indonesia. “I had a car accident,” he said tightly.
Her hand rose involuntarily, almost as if to soothe and comfort. The sight made Max’s stomach clench. When had a woman last touched him to comfort rather than in the heat of sex?
He cleared his throat, annoyed at the sharp image of her fingers tracing all his scars while her soft mouth offered whispers of praise and desire.
“Shit.”
“What’s wrong?” Her brow wrinkled. “Do they hurt—your scars, I mean?”
“No, they don’t hurt. They haven’t hurt for months.” He was angrier than he should have been. “Forget about it.”
“I can see how you’d be sensitive about them. I’m sorry.”
“Look, I’m not—hell, forget it.” Max jammed a hand through his hair. “They’re ancient history.”
He saw her eyes linger on his stomach and he realized there was appreciation, not distaste in her glance. Instantly his body hardened in an erection.
Talk about rotten timing, he thought irritably. Silent and controlled, he pulled a syringe from a sealed packet of the medical kit. Ryker had told him the high potency stimulant was strictly for emergencies. Max figured this fit the definition.
Kneeling beside Miki, he brushed aside the fur at Truman’s chest and broke the seal off the packet.
“Is that adrenaline? Do you think it’s his heart?” Miki’s voice was tight with concern. The name suited her, Max thought. Restless and quirky. Unusual.
Not that any of that mattered to him.
“Try to hold him. He can be very strong, I warn you.”
“Just do it,” she said tensely. “We’ll be fine, won’t we, honey?” She stroked the dog’s silky head.
Truman lay limp and cold. Max could no longer feel a pulse. He found the carotid artery and injected the stimulant. If this didn’t work, he could do CPR—even a cardiac thump, part of his advanced field training. But beyond that…
He forced away the thought. He’d never left a man behind in battle and he damned well wasn’t going to lose Truman. The injection done, he smoothed the Lab’s fur, checking for a pulse.
Nothing.
Miki watched his face, her fingers smoothing the Lab’s soft hair. Their shared worry tightened, a thread of emotion that built until it stretched between them, deep and tangible. Max could almost feel her anxious breath, the brush of her thigh, even though they weren’t touching.
Suddenly Truman wheezed. His tail banged Max’s leg weakly. With a sharp surge of relief, Max saw the dog’s eyes open. The Lab twitched hard, looked up at Miki, then lapped her face with his wet tongue.
Most women would have gasped and squirmed away. But this woman laughed in pure exuberance, brushing Truman’s nose with hers and ruffling the dog’s fur. “About time you came around, big guy. Come on, give Aunt Miki a kiss.”
Limp but eager, Truman burrowed closer against her chest, his nose shoved under her shirt directly atop her breast.
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Christina Skye
Тип: электронная книга
Жанр: Современные любовные романы
Язык: на английском языке
Издательство: HarperCollins
Дата публикации: 16.04.2024
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О книге: Miki is living every woman′s fantasy–stranded on a desert island with a rugged navy SEAL. But little does Miki know she′s a suspect in an international high-tech robbery, and her steely-eyed companion is ready, willing and able to do anything to make her talk….Navy SEAL Max Preston doesn′t buy one word of his gorgeous captive′s rambling story as he carries her up the beach. Yeah, she′s got curves in all the right places, but Max has a nose for a con–and there′s no way he′ll let his iron control waver.Now a hurricane′s headed their way, and for Max and Miki time is running out fast. Can they team up as friendly forces–and use Max′s amazing canine companion to escape before a deadly villain takes his twisted revenge?