Chapter Twenty-One
Adam
––––––––
THE LIBéRATION CUT through the choppy waters of the channel, the rocking motion of the boat matching the knotted trepidation swilling inside of me. Sitting inside, I watched the waves, trying not to linger on the mournful look in Caroline’s eyes when I’d finally been forced to leave her side.
Permitting my gaze to fall closed briefly, I recalled her tearful goodbyes, and if I concentrated hard, I swore I could still pick up the scent of her hair. Those memories were all I would have until I was able to return to dry land.
At least she woke up before I left.
I smiled at that comfort. She’d given me the reassurance of a once-over with the doctor.
Her blood pressure, it seemed, had lowered again, and while he’d been concerned about possible dehydration, there was nothing else for him to report.
Caroline had also been there when Akari had presented me with my plea deal in writing.
With all the details confirmed, everything was in place.
“êtes-vous d'accord?” Laurent asked from the other side of the small galley. “Are you okay?”
We’d been on the water for what seemed like an age, Laurent’s scouts keeping an eye out for Ian’s ship, but so far, the grandiose vessel we expected was nowhere to be seen.
“Oui, oui,” I answered hurriedly, ignoring my churning anxiety. “I’d just like to get this all over with.”
“Understandable.” Moving toward me, he swatted me on the back as though he was my father. “But know that this, too, shall pass.”
Very poetic.
Trust a Frenchman to find philosophy in such a tumultuous moment, and I should know, being half-French, thanks to my maternal genes.
I glanced back at the gray water, imploring the image of my little girl to return to my mind’s eye. Unwilling to show either my annoyance or apprehension any more than I clearly already had, there seemed nothing else to say to the loitering Laurent.
“Monsieur Laurent!” One of the young crew raced in front of us, clearly out of breath. “Le navire approche!”
My French was good enough to understand the basis for his exhilaration. He’d come to alert us that another ship was approaching, and my knotting stomach told me what should have been obvious: Ian and his posse of sycophants had arrived.
“En position!” Laurent called, clapping his hands together. “Ready the boat that will take Mademoiselle Kasper and Monsieur Harper over to the Traditional Values.”
“Oui, Monsieur!” the crew member called out as he scuttled away, and my focus flitted back to the expanse of water outside. Somehow, we had to maneuver the smaller boat across the channel so that Kaspar and I could board Ian’s no doubt monstrous vessel and get the sordid show started.
Rising to my feet, I scanned the horizon, my gaze settling on the enormous ship my old friend was arriving on. Flashy and probably worth half of the country’s national debt, the craft said everything about Ian—ego over substance.
“Let’s get going.”
Placing the glass of water down in the nearby basin, I stretched my neck in readiness. What had to be done next would surely be my most excruciating performance to date.
“Remember the plan,” Laurent told me as we moved toward the door. “Get on board and oblige him.”
He rolled the penultimate word on his tongue as though he was speaking about a delectable pastry, rather than a swollen egotist. “We’ll set a course to drive his ship toward French waters, and as soon as it is safe, we’ll board with the French navy.
Jackson will be in detention, and you will be home and dry. ”
He grinned, presumably aware of how ridiculously easy he’d made the entire scheme sound, when we both knew it was anything but.
“Right.” I swallowed back my growing nerves. “And if you can’t drive him toward French waters?”
It wasn’t like me to second-guess strategy, but sitting on The Libération, things were different. I hadn’t been the one who’d put the hare-brained plan together. I was only the one who was expected to suck up the risks and play along.
For freedom.
I glanced back out at the unruly ocean spray, leaning into the comforting thought. That was why I was there. Not only for the ICC and the chance to put Ian behind bars, but for Caroline and the life we deserved together.
I was doing it for the love I bore for her.
“We will,” he assured me with a predictable smirk. “Leave that part to the French. You must concentrate on your part in all of this.”
Ah, yes. My part. Steeling myself, I straightened, standing more than three inches taller than Laurent. Humiliating myself for the fat narcissist who’d threatened to murder the woman I love. How marvelous.
“Mr. Harper.” Akari met me with another smile. Standing next to a rather more fretful-looking Kaspar, the head judge motioned to me. “The president’s people have messaged to say he is waiting to receive you.”
“Are you ready?” I spoke directly to Kaspar that time, feeling a little more comfortable as I started to take control. While I had agency, everything would be okay. Once I handed that power over to Laurent, however, there would be little I could do except bow to Ian.
“Of course.” She flashed the small, laminated pile of paperwork the ICC and Swiss government had sanctioned for the occasion. “I will accompany you.”
“He’ll love the irony of that,” I murmured. “Me being delivered by a woman.”
“I am not a British citizen.” Kaspar snorted. “The president has no jurisdiction over me.”
Lucky you. I bit back on the retort, knowing it wouldn’t help me. “Is the boat ready to take us across to the Traditional Values?”
Kaspar glanced at Laurent, who was in conversation with another one of the crew members.
“Yes,” Laurent confirmed, halting one conversation in French to reply. “Bonne chance. We shall see you on the other side.”
***
ADJUSTING THE LIFE jacket the French crewman had insisted I wear, I turned my head away as another large wave crashed against the side of the small vessel.
If I’d thought the swell on board The Libération had been bad, I was na?ve.
The rollercoaster of waves the smaller boat was navigating made the tiny surf I’d experienced on The Libération seem like pebbles under a car’s tire.
Worse than even the rising nausea of seasickness, though, was the looming threat of what was to come. There, blocking out the rising sun like an apocalyptic nightmare, was the hulking girth of the Traditional Values, its size easily dwarfing The Libération.
From beside me, Kaspar threw me a stare, but despite her tough exterior, the anxiety in her eyes was obvious. We’d spent so many hours together in recent days, she’d become easy to read. I wondered if my expressions were as simple to decipher.
“Okay?” I probed, hoping she could hold it together long enough to get us on board.
Ian was going to have a field day with a female official accompanying me as it was. I didn’t need her vomiting all over his shoes as soon as we arrived.
“Yes.” Her reply was curt, her brows knitting as she looked back out to sea. “Of course.”
“Good.”
It was odd that I—the man she’d arrested and whose life she’d thrown into such hideous disarray—should be the one to try to reassure her.
Kaspar didn’t have a huge part to play in the fray to come, but Ian still had to believe she was a real Swiss envoy, not just a cop from Zurich who was feeling even more out of her depth than I was.
Clinging to my seat, I mused on how Kaspar’s existence had somehow become entwined with mine.
It seemed as though we’d collided into each other’s lives and brought nothing but angst and aggravation to the other.
There was a twisted succor in knowing we were in the mire together, and that she was just as uneasy as I was.
“We will dock as close to the ship as we can.” The crew member shouted to be heard over the roaring swell. “Then you will need to embark via the ladder on the side of the ship.”
He motioned to where he meant, my attention following his finger and landing on the narrow steps that would take me right back to Ian’s sticky grasp. “Any questions?”
I had about a thousand questions. Hundreds of shards of glass just waiting to slice me open and feed me to the sharks, but I kept them to myself, pushing them down to nestle with the furling knots in my stomach.
Whatever was going to happen, my only relief was that it would all be over soon.
“D’accord.” Apparently satisfied with our silence, the crewman glanced back to the impending challenge of docking close enough to ease our transition to the ladder.
“I should go first,” Kaspar told me, though her tone conveyed little in the way of conviction. “To hand you back to Jackson’s custody.”
“Custody?” I shifted on my seat, just about able to conceive a scenario where I might have been imprisoned by the Swiss, or the Dutch, but entirely unwilling to contemplate a life at Ian’s pleasure.
“You know what I mean,” she snapped. “He must believe you are his to do with as he wishes.”
“Right.” Blowing out a breath, I tried not to dwell on the implications of that.
I’d told Caroline I expected a beating, feigning nonchalance about the chances of being ill-treated at Ian’s command, but standing on the brink of that moment, I was less cocksure.
I wasn’t as young as I used to be, not as resilient, and with Caroline in my heart, I suddenly had someone to lose if things went wrong.
Vulnerability clutched at me cruelly in a way I’d never contemplated before my path had crossed with my little girl’s, and glancing up at Ian’s monstrous ship was only heightening my dread.
As though the god I hardly dared to believe in had decided I needed another test to prove myself, the sound of rotating blades overhead alerted me to the numerous helicopters suddenly flying above, all of which seemed to be circling in the air.
“Choppers.” Irritated, I shook my head.
“Jackson’s,” Kaspar confirmed. “Not ours.”
“I had no doubt.”