SeductiveIntent (16 page)

God, they were so screwed.

* * * * *

Sam looked at the empty bed in the main cabin. “They’re not
here.”

“They’re not on board anywhere,” Captain Michaels confirmed.

“Do you have any idea where they could have been taken?” he
asked Arthur.

“There is a small island.”

“Cayman Brac?”

“No. Smaller than that. It’s not even named. I think Vinita
might have taken them there.”

“Why?”

Arthur shrugged. “Why is she doing any of this? She must be
desperate to get the puzzle box and is wasting no further time and going right
to the source.”

“No, I mean, why do you think they might have gone there, to
that island?”

“Oh. There’s some property on it owned by some of her, ah,
friends. Maybe she thought it was the safest place to take them to…whatever.”

“Interrogate them?” Mindy asked, her face ashen.

Shit. Sam had forgotten about her. “Yeah,” he said quickly
before Arthur could answer. From the story he had been told, if the
interrogation didn’t end well—and maybe even if it did—it was Beckett’s death
sentence. If this Vinita allowed herself to be seen, she was undoubtedly going
to kill Beckett and his girlfriend. Maybe even just for spite, from what Arthur
had said of her connection to the girl.

“So can you take us to this island?” Sam asked Arthur.

“Yes. I think so.”

“Well, let’s go then,” Mindy said.

Christ. Why him?

* * * * *

The woman frowning at them was chillingly well dressed in a
light-weight tailored suit. She was very familiar looking too. Before Sophia
could piece it together, Brendan said, “You’re Michelle Sheldon, Senator
Sheldon’s wife. You were at the wedding.”

No, that wasn’t it. But the woman nodded. “Yes, we met
briefly. How unfortunate we couldn’t meet under better circumstances now, Mr.
Beckett.”

The two armed gunmen who had entered behind her suggested
just how bad these circumstances were looking to be for them.

“You’re such a delicious looking boy and a reputedly
extremely talented cocks-man. I’m only sorry I never got to sample you. Of
course there’s time now, but that never works with men. Anatomy is just not
suited to it. Whereas this entire squadron of goons I have with me can
certainly sample Sophia here to their hearts’, or should I say cocks’,
content.”

Brendan stiffened beside her.

“So unless you want to witness that, perhaps you could just
tell me where the puzzle box is. I’m tiring of this game.”

Brendan shrugged. “I don’t know, you’re not giving me a lot
of incentive here, Mrs. Sheldon. So far, all you’ve offered is foregoing to
have my girlfriend gang-raped. And although I appreciate that—”

“Yeah, me too,” Sophia mumbled.

“I’d like to know what the rest of the deal you’re offering
might be.”

“I’m foregoing torturing you, of course.”

“Well, gee, thanks.”

“Don’t mistake me for my façade, young man. I grew up in the
worst slums in the world and I will not hesitate to show what I learned there.”

“No need to demonstrate. The armed hoodlums kind of say it
all. I believe you. But if you’re going to kill us anyway, I don’t see why I
should tell you anything. In fact, I kind of see that as a reason for not going
along with your game plan.”

“I can torture it out of you.”

Brendan looked relaxed, but Sophia could see he was
evaluating the situation. “Well, you could. But whatever’s in that box, I’m
sure you could get more out of ransoming me and Sophia. My family would pay a
fortune to see us safe. Of course, you’d have to drop out of public life—it’s
not like the Becketts would be contributing to the Senator’s campaign anymore
or anything—but I’m sure whatever slum you crawled out of probably doesn’t have
an extradition treaty with the US so you could go set up house there with a
tidy bundle. In a nicer neighborhood of course.”

Only then did it click with Sophia. “I know who you are.
When I was little, I was with you.”

“How very astute of you to recall, my dear.”

The hatred blazing at her from the other woman took Sophia
aback. Not that having automatic weapons trained on her was in itself nice or
anything. But the vitriol emanating from just the expression on this woman’s
face was even more chilling.

Brendan looked at Sophia searchingly. “Who is she to you?”

She couldn’t have answered. But Mrs. Sheldon did. “I suppose
technically, if you looked at our DNA, you might say she’s my daughter.”

Sophia’s mouth dropped open. Brendan put an arm around her,
as if to hold her up. And in fact, it was just as well he did. She might have
collapsed at that information. She really might have.

Sophia’s head was pounding. She had to get away. She would
get away, God damn it. Her mother was a murderous maniac who apparently hated
her? That was the truth of her identity after all this time?

Talk about opening a Pandora’s Box. Or maybe in this
instance she should say a puzzle box.

She started laughing, loudly, uproariously, in a way that
made all four of the other people in the room stare at her, even Brendan. Maybe
she had lost her mind. Maybe that was why she did what she did, when she
wouldn’t have ever dared it if she’d been thinking straight. Maybe her mother
had done her a favor after all with that news.

Unless she got herself and Brendan killed in the process.
But of course they’d be dead one way or the other anyway, wouldn’t they.

“Sophia,” Brendan said softly and she spun away from him,
startling him and—she was counting on this—the others as well.

In a leap she had executed only in practice with Arthur, she
aimed a martial arts kick toward the gunmen that, in their surprise, managed to
topple both of them the first with her kick and the second as he knocked into
the first—and while they were down, she took the heels of her hands and shoved
as hard as she could up the bridges of each of their noses. A torrent of blood
accompanied the sickening crack she heard and both men grabbed their faces with
shrieks.

Brendan in the meantime scooped up their guns and held one
on Mrs. Sheldon, handing the other to Sophia.

“Hey, it worked,” she observed softly, looking at the men
now on their knees in pain.

Mrs. Sheldon shook her head. “I’m surrounded by
incompetency. No matter,” she said, looking at the guns trained on her now.
“There’s twenty more just like them downstairs. You’re not going anywhere.”

Brendan grabbed the woman’s arm and jammed the gun in her
back. “Well, maybe we are, unless they’ll risk shooting you.”

“You fool! You march me down there and all three of us will
probably get mowed down before we set foot outside this house.”

Someone shouted through the door a question in German as to
what was going on and, prodded by the gun Brendan held to her back—or maybe
something else—Mrs. Sheldon answered smoothly that everything was fine and the
prisoners were just being “encouraged” to talk.

“I’m not running this anymore,” she said urgently, in a low
voice when they’d gone. “You don’t understand.”

One of the bloodied goons started to get up, though it
looked as if the other one may have fainted. Or at least Sophia hoped he
fainted. You didn’t die from a broken nose, did you?

Brendan conked the one getting up with the butt of the gun
and he was out cold like his cohort.

“Whose incompetency are you worried about, Mrs. Sheldon?
Maybe it’s yours in the view of whoever is really behind all this. Is it your
husband?”

“You must be joking. Like all American politicians, he’s a
blithering idiot.”

Brendan shoved her toward the door, and she held back,
pleading, “Please just listen to me for a minute. If I don’t send a message
very soon, in no more than an hour, as to the location of that puzzle box,
we’re all, all three of us, dead anyway. My time has run out. They’re not
taking any excuses anymore.”

Brendan looked at Sophia.

“Let’s just think about this for a minute,” Sophia said and
Brendan pushed the woman away, farther back into the room.

“Did Arthur teach you that?” she asked Sophia.

“Who is Arthur to me?”

“Not your father, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

“So talk,” Brendan demanded. “What’s in the puzzle box? How
do we get out of here in one piece?”

“The only way you’re going to get out of here in one piece
is to tell me where it is.”

“Pardon me for mentioning this,” he said, “but you don’t
seem too trustworthy.”

“If you give me the information, I can promise you safe passage
out of here.”

“I don’t believe her,” Sophia volunteered.

“Yeah, me neither. Maybe you could knock her out too,
Sophia.”

“It’d be my pleasure, but I’m not exactly sure how that
would help us.”

“It couldn’t hurt. That was pretty cool, by the way,” he
said with a smile. “They must have taught martial arts in con-woman school
along with dancing.”

The teasing tone, the fact that he had remembered their
banter despite the drink, was all-out-of-proportion pleasing to her. She smiled
back at him. “My mentor was obsessed with the idea some mark might try to
overpower me.” Then she added, ruefully, “Damage the merchandise, I suppose.”

“It sounds like Arthur cared about you more than he let on,”
Brendan observed to Mrs. Sheldon’s scoff in the background.

Brendan looked out the glassless window to the ground two
stories below, shaking his head. “It’s too far a drop.”

Sophia went to look over his shoulder, but noticed Mrs.
Sheldon, or her mother, or whoever she was, edging toward the door. Brendan was
on her right away, pushing her onto a chair. “We are getting out of here, one
way or the other.” He whipped his tee shirt over his head. “And you’re not.”
Ripping the shirt into thirds, he used one piece to bind her arms behind her to
the chair, another to bind her legs and the last to gag her.

“There, that’s better.”

“I can make this,” Sophia said, looking down.

He joined her at the window. “No way. You’re crazy.”

“I can. Hanging from the window, leveraging that vine or
plant or whatever it is over there and the roughness of the side of the house
in certain places. I can.”

Brendan shook his head. “Then what? There are probably
guards all around here.” He looked back to their prisoner. “I’d ask her, but I
wouldn’t trust a word out of her mouth.”

“And you trust me?” Sophia asked.

Brendan looked back at her. “Yes. God help me, I do.”

“I’ll get away, Brendan. I swear I will and I’ll bring
help.”

Brendan nodded. “Just worry about yourself. Try to get back
to the boat, but if that’s not safe or you lose your way, just hide until it
gets dark again. Then maybe follow the beach around. There’s got to be some
civilization around here somewhere.” He swung the arm strap of the gun around
her neck. “And don’t hesitate to use that in the meantime if you need to.”

“What if they come back in here before I get back?”

“Then I won’t hesitate to use mine either.” He kissed her
swiftly. “Now go.”

* * * * *

Sophia climbed her way down the side of the house fairly
smoothly, without any obvious audible slip-ups that would have alerted any
guards within hearing distance. The cat-burglarizing of her youth was finally
coming to some good use. There didn’t appear to be any guards right outside
where she could see them, but she heard a murmur of German from the house.

Who the hell were these people?

Traveling as quietly as she could, she began to trace her
way back to the beach and the motor boat. But when she got there, hiding behind
some scrub bushes, she saw there was more than the one boat they’d left there.

And there were a hell of a lot more people.

Great. What now?

* * * * *

Brendan watched Sophia disappear into the brush with a
tremendous sense of relief. Whatever waited for her out there, it was
undoubtedly better than having her prisoner in here. At least out there she had
a chance.

Here, they were just waiting for the inevitable. Whoever
Mrs. Sheldon worked for, he doubted that unseen person had planned to let them
live. His only chance now was to blast whoever came through that door.

Training the weapon on the door, he figured the best he could
do was to wait. He felt Mrs. Sheldon’s eyes on him, undoubtedly trying to
communicate her intense hatred despite the gag hampering any verbal
communication. One of the guards did start to struggle up again at one point
and he had to hit him again, since he had no more restraints. He wasn’t going
to sacrifice his pants.

He wished he could do the same to Mrs. Sheldon, just to stop
her from glaring at him. But he just wasn’t that cold-blooded. Though clearly
she was. How the hell could a woman like that—who could desert her own flesh
and blood, not to mention hold a gun on her—be related to the warm, beautiful
girl he was only just beginning to know? Really know.

But it was probably too late for that. He swore. If they got
out of this, he sure as hell wasn’t going to let some Interpol file stand in
the way of a relationship with the most fascinating, sexy, sweet woman he had
ever met.

Shit, was something about impending death making him more
maudlin? He hoped not. Not only about the quality of the sentiment—he hoped
that was real—but also about the impending death part.

After a time—it might have been a half hour or three hours,
for all he knew—a low voice came through the door, muffled, in German.

Brendan had never shot anyone. Had never even wanted to. And
part of him didn’t want to now. But he had to give Sophia more time. Whoever
came through that door was going to be sacrificed to that effort.

He heard the lock turn, the door open and then…he hesitated.

One second. No more. But it was enough.