Deception Island (13 page)

“This kind of heat can do that to you. I'll find some food.” He shut the laptop, reeled in the phone, and removed and pocketed the sat phone battery.

“Still don't trust me?”

“I trust you as much as you trust me.”

“That little, huh?” Stupid thing was, she
did
trust him. She felt it in her heart, even if her mind flashed neon warnings. Was that a natural response after someone saved your life? Or a textbook progression toward Helsinki Syndrome? Whatever—she sure as hell shouldn't trust him. His love for his son would trump any protectiveness he felt for her.

He stood. “What do you want to eat?”

“I'll come in and have a look.”

She followed him into the cabin, limping slightly, the floorboards smooth and cool under her feet. Her gaze fell on the bed. Had they really come so close to sex? God, he'd fired her up, with those sure hands sliding down her belly and up her back, and gripping her butt. A few more minutes of that and—

“Laura?”

“Sorry?” She caught his eye, heat rising up her neck.

He scratched his buzz cut. “I asked if you wanted smoked salmon and capers on a baguette. There's enough food in here for a royal banquet.”

Her stomach growled. Good to see hunger for food trumping her other cravings. Her survival instinct still worked, at least. “Guess they figure honeymooners need to keep up their energy.”

He laid the ingredients on the bench. He must have been on a honeymoon himself, once.

She pulled up a bar stool. “What happened to your wife, Jack?”

His eyes met hers, shot with danger. He broke a baguette in two and split each half. “Don't you get it? The less you know about me, the better your chances of survival.”

“I take it she was the mother of your son.” Her stomach flitted.

“Laura, drop it.”

“Sometimes you're not very good company, you know that?”

“I'm never good company.”

She quirked an eyebrow. “You were pretty good company last night.”

He stuffed shaved salmon into one baguette, then the other. Her mouth watered. “Last night was a mistake. We both know that.”

“I don't regret it, for the record.” That, at least, was true. She just regretted that right now she had an urge to slide her hands up his T-shirt and feel the ridges of his muscles shudder at her touch again.

“You should.”

“Do you?”

He added capers and a chunk of white cheese and handed it to her. “It was unprofessional.”

“You make it sound like we're operating under a set of rules. I'm guessing you don't have a job contract that specifically forbids contact with me.”

“I don't need a piece of paper to tell me what's wrong and what's right.”

“So it's right to kidnap a woman off a yacht and hold her against her will, but it's wrong to give in to your feelings?”

“It's all wrong, everything about this situation. But there are lines I'm forced to cross, and lines I can choose not to.”

“You were pretty close to the line last night.”

“Too close.” He spat out the words, as he shoved the ingredients back in the fridge and slammed the door.

“It's not all on you, Jack. The attraction's mutual, as you may have noticed. I can make my own decisions.”

“You're not in a position to give consent, no matter what you might feel—or pretend to feel.”

Ouch.

He took another bite and marched to the broken door, still lying across the entrance. He heaved the wood aside as if it were cardboard and disappeared into the light.

She chewed her lip. She was sure hitting some nerves—but were they the right ones?

“Stay inside until I say you can come out,” he called, back to being the
capitaine
barking orders.

She crept to a window. Was he hiding the laptop and phone? She had no sight line out to him. She peeped through another window, then the doorway. Nothing. He could be stashing it anywhere. She wiped her forehead with the back of her hand. The heat was creeping up already. She probably stank after a sweaty night of troubled dreams. She stripped off her T-shirt and shorts, and pulled on Laura's bikini. Her gaze rested on the tube of sunscreen, a smile catching her mouth.

* * *

Sweat trailed down Rafe's spine as he returned from stashing the comms. The air was as still outdoors as it was inside. There'd be no respite from the heat today, in any sense. He needed a swim. Christ, he needed to spend the whole day in the water.

Laura stood by the picnic table, wearing the damn bikini again. She smoothed sunscreen down one shapely leg, then moved her hand back up, massaging it in. He stopped, still, in the shade of a banyan tree. He shouldn't watch. Her hand circled up the back of her calf and knee, and along her quad, before sliding around to her inner thigh. He stifled a groan. The skin would feel like satin, like her stomach and back had last night. He cleared his throat. He needed water.

She looked up, and he hurriedly resumed walking. “I told you to stay inside.”

She squeezed cream into her hand and rubbed it into her neck. “I wasn't looking... Ow!” She lowered her arm and rubbed her shoulder.

“Something wrong?”

“I must have strained something. I can't reach around to put sunscreen on my back. Would you mind?”

Rafe marched to the washing line, yanked his T-shirt off it, and threw it at her feet. “Try covering up, instead.” For both of their personal safety.

She sat on the table and swiveled to face him, her breasts barely contained by the bikini, nipples outlined in the thin fabric. Where did he leave his damn water bottle?

“You're really not in a good mood, are you?” she said.

“Give me one reason to be.”

“Am I right in thinking that at this moment there's nothing either of us can do to resolve this situation?”

He tightened his jaw. That was the damn problem. He wasn't used to being powerless. He was used to being in the center of the action, controlling it—or at the very least actively responding. With no word from Flynn and no one else he could trust, he couldn't do a damn thing. He wanted to go for a punishing run, but she wouldn't be able to keep up, with her injured knee. And God knew what she could get up to left alone for too long. Build a raft and drown in the swirling currents? He needed to get away from her, before he got too close. But the job entailed staying close.

She used her toes to pick up his T-shirt, pulled it over her head and knotted it at her stomach, leaving a sliver of skin visible above her bikini bottoms. The neckline slipped over one toned shoulder. How did she manage to make a black T-shirt six sizes too big look just as sexy as a bikini?

“So come out for a snorkel with me,” she said. “Clear your head. Cool off. Try to relax. It'll be good for both of us.”

“Are you always like this?”

“Like what?”

“You've been kidnapped. You're being held for ransom. You should at least be afraid.”

Her flirty expression dropped. “Jack, I'm terrified. I'm very well aware that these could be my last days alive. And I could panic and scream and fight. But what for? How will that change anything? Or I can go out there and seek oblivion in beauty and innocence and goddamn fish. And do something that's not sitting still and worrying about a situation I have precisely zero influence over. It's either that or raid the alcohol cupboard and get stupidly drunk. Which would you recommend?”

Every minute that passed, she got more intriguing—less like the high-maintenance girl he had thought he'd be stuck with, and more like some alluring fantasy woman.

“Was that what last night was about?” he said. “Oblivion?”

Her forehead creased. This was no longer an act, like the sunscreen had obviously been. “Possibly. My mind wasn't really doing the thinking.”

“Mine neither.”

She eased off the table and walked toward him, hips swaying. “So.” She stopped inches away, and squinted up at his face, releasing a waft of citrus, sunscreen and woman. Jesus. “I'm thinking there are a few options here. Option one—we could sit around and drive ourselves crazy wondering what the hell is going on somewhere out there in the world.” She waved aimlessly at the ocean. “Two—you could strip me naked and screw me senseless, right here on this picnic table, right now. Which, for the record, I wouldn't mind in the slightest because, oh my God, last night...”

His mouth dropped open. There wasn't a hint of teasing in her voice, just a calm invitation, as if she was suggesting a game of basketball. He could close the gap between them in a millionth of a second, plant his hands on her hips, pull her against him, taste her, strip her naked. If last night was any indication, the result would indeed blow his mind.

“Or, three, we could do the sensible thing and go snorkeling.”

“Three.” His voice caught. He swallowed. “Three,” he said, louder, clearer. She only needed to look at his shorts to see that his body had stopped listening at option two.

She laughed, the sound husky and hearty. “Don't know about you, but I need to get into that cold water soon.”

She turned her back on him, mercifully, and sashayed to the edge of the veranda, where she'd left her snorkeling gear the previous day. “See you in there.”

An hour later, Rafe kicked past the point where the coral gave way to the sand rising up to the beach, and stood, facing backward in his flippers. He pulled off the snorkel and mask. Laura had been wrong. The swim had done nothing to ease his state of mind, and had barely made a dent on the traitorous state of his body. He'd spent too much time in his head, thinking about how shameful it was to swim around looking at fish when Theo was being held captive. And too much time noticing how the water washed around her legs as they powered and twisted through it.

She stroked lazily up to him and pushed her mask onto her forehead, letting the snorkel hang from it. She treaded water, too short to reach the sand. “Nice, huh?”

He fought the urge to smooth his fingers over the mark the mask had left around her eyes.

“Your shoulder seems better now,” he said.

“Must have loosened up in the water.” She smiled.

Was she playing him, or was he reading a genuine attraction? He was wrong about a lot of things to do with humans, but could usually tell when a woman was paying him undue attention. But he'd never before met a woman like this one. He was drawn to her, body and mind, whether he liked it or not. The possibility she was faking made his gut tighten. Why? Why did it matter that she should want him that way? He hadn't sought that from any other woman. Whenever a woman took an interest, he wanted to shout:
Can't you see what I am? How can you want this?

In fact, he had said that to Simone once. She'd answered truthfully, bitterly:
I don't know
. As if he was some evil addiction she wanted to shake but couldn't. Like cigarettes.

Something buzzed in the distance. A plane. Chest constricting, he looked up to the east. He sensed Laura following his gaze to the dot of an aircraft, low in the sky, on approach. He grabbed her from behind, trapping her elbows so she couldn't signal.

“Just a precaution, princess.”

She thrashed, trying to kick him away, but he had all the balance. Her flippers and the force field of water around them stopped her doing any damage. Beating up on him wouldn't help her, anyway. He knew this plane, and what it meant.

He squinted into the brilliant sky, willing his instinct to be wrong, willing it to be just some tourist plane. Or could it be a search plane, looking for her?
Merde
. Time for evasive action, just in case. As it neared, he spun her, pinned her torso and arms with one arm and steadied her head with the other. He crushed his lips to hers, too forceful for her to free her teeth and bite him again. It wasn't supposed to be for pleasure, this time, but that instruction didn't make it to his shorts. What a
psycho, getting turned on while restraining a woman. Thankfully the tide pushed her hips away from his.

The engine's roar drilled into his head, growing louder every second. He sensed it heading for the lagoon, dropping altitude. A single-engine Cessna flew into his peripheral vision.
No. Goddammit
. The noise rose into a whine as the aircraft gained altitude, its nose sweeping upwards. The signal. He released Laura's lips, his arms dropping to her waist to hold her up. She could fight all she wanted now. The plane shot straight up in the air. Gabriel's damn show-off pilot. What was his name—Chamuel? They could have just dropped a note.

“Is that the same plane tha—?”

“Yes.”

“What are they doing—a loop-de-loop?”

The plane leveled out, upside-down, then dived again, before righting, banking and returning from where it came.

“What's it doing? Checking up on us?”

If only. He tightened his arms around her waist. He had his orders.

Chapter 13

In the thick, black moment when Rafe discovered Theo was gone, he'd wanted to throttle Gabriel and his entire militia, neck by neck. Right now, he ached to seek release from the darkness by carrying his captive up to the villa, laying her on the bed, stripping the wet clothes from her and finishing what they'd started last night.

Instead, he pulled her away, a little too roughly, and released her. She flipped onto her back, the black T-shirt outlining her breasts, her arms and legs stroking as her eyes strained to make sense of his expression.

The choice was simple—kill her, or throw Theo into a lifetime of pain. Twenty-five years ago he would have slaughtered her without blinking. But now? How could he bring himself to do that? He'd have to overthrow the years of therapy and dehumanize her, like he'd been trained to do with his victims when he was a child. How could he live with himself afterward? But how would he live with himself if he didn't do everything in his power to get Theo back?

Innocent people suffered every day, all over the world. He turned and strode out of the water, unable to look at her.

* * *

“Jack? What is it?” Holly kicked until she touched sand, and yanked off her flippers. “Jack?”

Her lungs tightened. The water felt like ice. For an hour he'd relaxed, even smiled and laughed, as they'd explored the lagoon. He'd seemed almost boyish, and she'd felt both their straitjackets loosening. Then came the plane.

She splashed through the shallows and caught up to him. “Stop. What is it? Was that a message? Did something happen to your son?” She grabbed his arm, but he shrugged it off and continued marching up the sand. She dropped the flippers and mask, charged around him with a desperate, hopping limp, and planted both hands on his chest, pushing with all her strength. “Jack.”

He wouldn't meet her eye. “That's not my name.” His voice cracked.

“What did that mean—the plane? Tell me.”

He closed his hands around her waist and lifted her aside. As he set her down, the sand tipped. Damn sea legs were back. She gulped back a surge of nausea.

“Talk to me, Jack. Please.”

He strode ahead. “My name is not
Jack
. This is not a game anymore.”

“It never was.” She pressed together her lips, bruised from his kiss. Not that it met anyone's definition of kissing. “Something's happened. What?”

“I'm going to find out.”

He strode into the clearing and disappeared down the track on the far side, just as she reached the grass. Getting the laptop and sat phone? She froze. Was the game up? Should she hide? He'd find her, as surely as if she had a GPS tracker nail-gunned to her forehead. Could she arm up? He'd hidden the kitchen knives, the gun, the pirate's knife... Last she'd seen her pocketknife, it'd gone into his shorts.

Too late. He was back, with the gear. He laid it on the picnic table beside her and hooked it all up, without bothering to sit. Seconds ticked into minutes. Goose bumps pricked her wet skin. He leaned over the computer, drumming his hand on the table, muttering in another language. She closed her eyes, impatience curling her stomach, the world swaying. The rhythmic crash of surf drifted from the other side of the island. In the clearing even the birds had quieted. The computer trilled. She flicked her eyes open.

“Technology's a bitch, huh?” she said.

His black eyebrows dived together. He'd gotten serious, all right. Why? He clicked open the internet and flicked to a news website. The headline screamed in bold: HEIRESS RESCUED. Fuck. A photo below began to load, then jammed. She swallowed.

Jack stabbed at the mouse, unleashing words that would've got her expelled from high school French. The cursor froze. He staggered backward, shoving his hands in his hair. The laptop screen blinked, then the photo trickled down the page—a close-up of Laura hugging a man in dark combat gear, his face blackened, a dozen cameras surrounding them. The senator, playing the soldier he'd once been. A choked gurgle escaped Holly's throat. He'd staged a rescue?

Jack swung around, breathing fire. He caught her upper arms, fingers digging into her flesh. “Who the hell are you?”

She gaped. Time to come clean. There was no other way out of this. Hell, there was probably no way out at all. “Holly,” she squeaked. “My name's Holly Ryan.”

“Holly.” He spat her name like it was a curse. His skin flushed red, veins cording in his neck. “Are you in on this? Talk!”

“Let me go. I'll tell you everything I know—which isn't much, I swear.”

He didn't move. His fingertips dug into her arms.

“Jack, please. You're hurting me.”

He looked at his hands. His eyes widened, as if he hadn't noticed he was holding her. He released her with a jerk and stepped away. She clawed her toes into the grass, shooting her arms out to stabilize. The ground was rocking like an earthquake.

“I was—I was paid to pretend to be Laura, to do some of the sailing for her. I'm the hired help here, just like you.”

His eyes were popping, his jaw so tight it looked ready to explode. Fisting his hands, he stalked toward her, muttering some kind of chant. She backed away, hit the picnic table and stopped, trapped. Icy fear flooded her stomach. He raised his hands robotically and closed them around her neck. Spittle slipped out of a corner of his mouth.

She clawed his wrists, but his grip held, cutting off her air supply. He stared at his hands, white showing all around his dark pupils, like he'd morphed into someone else—something else. She pummeled his face with her fists. He closed his eyes and took it until her hands weakened, like they'd turned into noodles. Pinpricks of light swam in her vision.
Oh, God, was this it? The end?
She tried to scratch him, but her nails swiped air. She felt like she was slipping underwater. The world blackened and swayed.

When all else fails, play dead
. Her fight club teacher's words filtered into the darkness. Yes. She closed her eyes, let go of effort, dissolved into jelly.

His grip eased, his hands forced to abandon her neck and catch her waist before she fell. She let her head loll, let him take her whole weight. He froze, then swung her limp body into his arms and slumped on the ground, tangling his fingers in her hair and pulling her into his chest, cradling and rocking her like a baby. “
Non, non, non
. What have I done? Dear God, what have I done?”

He laid her gently on the ground and pressed his fingers into her throat. It wouldn't take long to find her hammering pulse. She sensed his face leaning into hers, his warm breath trickling over her cheek, her own breath ricocheting off his skin. A drop of liquid landed on her nose, then another.

“
Mon Dieu
. Laura, please.” Another splash. Holy shit, he was crying? Something soft and warm pressed lightly on her temple. A kiss. He cradled her cheek, touched his nose to hers, then his forehead. “Laura... Holly. Please be okay. I'm sorry, I'm sorry. That...that wasn't me. Holly!”

Her belly flipped. Her real name. He'd said her real name. His touch was achingly gentle. A twisted part of her wanted to reach for him, pull his body onto hers. That had to be a good sign the immediate danger had passed. She allowed herself a groan. Pain thumped behind her eyes.

He flinched. “Lau—Holly! Holly!” He threaded an arm under her legs and the other around her shoulders and sat her up, gently urging her head between her knees. He rubbed her shoulders and smoothed his hand down her back. The sensation of safety washed through her like warm honey. She let herself drink in clean, beautiful oxygen.

Once her breathing had evened out, he drew her onto his lap, wrapped his arms around her and pressed his lips to her forehead. He smelled salty. Her eyes stung and watered, and she had to hold back from throwing her arms around his waist and holding on, tight. Black clouds whirled in her brain, heavy with memories of another man who used to hurt her, then be racked with guilt.

But that just then...that was worse than anything her father had dished out, far worse than Jasper's manipulation. Jack very nearly squashed her like a bug. She'd thought he was so controlled and calm, but maybe she was just seeing the mammoth effort to contain that rage.

“Honestly, Jack, I don't know what's going on here.” She couldn't speak above a whisper. “All I know is that I was supposed to be paid to sail around the world.”

“I kidnapped the wrong woman.” His voice was flat.

Tentatively, she rested a palm on his chest, as if it would imprison the demons inside, and bring back the Jack she'd thought she knew. His heart pounded. “Yes,” she said.

Would she would snap, too, if her child had been plunged into danger—into even more danger? People always broke along the same fault line, and she'd just located his.

“That footage?” he said.

“I'm guessing they've staged some kind of rescue with the real Laura.” And cut Holly adrift.

His pecs bunched up, under her hand. “This is fucked up.”

“So what happens now? That plane—it spooked you. Was it a message?”

“An order.”

She swallowed. “To do what?”

His arms tightened around her.

“To...kill me.”

“Yes.”

“And will you?”

He buried his face in her hair. The water rushed over the sand below, in and out, in and out, like the world was just spinning on as normal.

“Wow. You have to think about it?”

“I didn't think it would come to this. I thought I could keep you safe. Killing innocent people in cold blood is not what I do. Not who I am.” His voice wavered. It wasn't a no. It sure seemed like he'd been ready to kill her a few minutes ago.

“That's reassuring.” She should wriggle out of his embrace, but her nerves craved his touch, her body ached with the comfort of being tucked between his chest and arms and bent head. “Your friends obviously think you're capable of it.”

“They don't know me so well anymore.”

Anymore
? “If you kill me, will your son be okay?”

“There are no guarantees.”

“But that's the deal, right?”

“I'm not sure anymore. The game has changed.”

No kidding. It didn't feel much like a game at all. Reluctantly, she unfolded herself and sat cross-legged, facing him. His eyes were shot with tiny red veins. He was evidently fighting some internal battle. Without thinking, she rested a hand just above his knee—not to manipulate him this time but because...because the thought of him hurting drove daggers into her chest. Oh shit. She cared. She cared about a guy who'd just come one squeeze away from killing her. Would she never learn?

She had to think, to reassess. If the whole of America now knew Laura was okay, no one would be looking for her. Her chances of rescue had plummeted from slight to zip. Her gaze rested on the laptop. Maybe she could get out a message. But who to? No one on Earth gave a damn about her. She'd never felt so alone.

But then, there was Jack. They were alone in this together.

“You've been playing games with me from the start.” His tone was dead calm.

“I've been trying to preserve my life.”

“So all that stuff about your father hurting you, and learning to fight so you could defeat him, that was a lie designed to make me feel sorry for you?”

“That was true. But my father is not a senator—not even close. And I don't need anyone feeling sorry for me.”

“Seducing me—was that all part of your plan? To get inside my head, force me to feel something for you?”

“Yes.”

He made a scoffing noise. She stared at her legs, feeling like the fraud she'd been for too many years. But this...this had been different. She couldn't let Jack think—

“Initially,” she added weakly, raising her head.

He narrowed his eyes. “Initially.”

No—what was she doing even admitting that? This was complicated enough. She should have stopped at “yes.” Whatever irrational feelings she'd been developing for him should have dissolved the second his hands closed around her in anger. Her fingers floated up to her neck. It felt tender, bruised. He closed his eyes and shook his head briefly, as if it was he who was feeling the pain.

“So it's all been a lie.” He said it as a statement of fact, slowly, like he was still processing it.

Anger rose in her throat. Hang on, why was
she
getting the third degree? “Too right, it has,
Jack
.” She stood, shakily, needing to regain control of herself. “No! You do
not
get to play that card. You kidnapped me, remember? You don't get to be angry with me that you got the wrong woman, and you don't get to be angry about what I did to try to survive.
I
get to be angry that you've screwed up my life.” Her voice trembled. She didn't bother settling it. “For the last three months I've been floating around on that yacht fantasizing about beginning a new life, a normal life, with the money I was supposed to get paid for this. No way will I get that now.”

“So this is all about money to you.” His voice was flat.

“It's about freedom. It's about walking away from my shitty past and starting over. And, yes, that means money. I'm not naive enough to believe you can start a new life at almost thirty years old with nothing.”

“You don't know what nothing is.”

“I've spent most of my life around people who've had nothing. Maybe a different kind of nothing from what you knew, but I'm a stray mongrel, just like you.”

Jack pulled himself up as far as the bench, and sat, slumped, as if his energy had been sapped by the effort of shutting down whatever violent beast lurked under his facade of control.

Adrenaline buzzed down to her toes and out to her fingers. “You can be angry, sure. But you're not allowed to be angry with me. Be angry with the jerk who's threatening your son. There's only one innocent victim here, and that's your son. But don't you dare hang that on me.”