Chapter 19 #3
“Okay, okay,” Chris hesitantly conceded. “Just don’t touch her.”
Chris bit down on his back teeth, his heart slowing beat by beat as he processed the reality of their situation.
The four of them were in a room full of crates below deck on the fishing trawler.
The crates probably carried items the Trott brothers planned to smuggle, or products they’d recently received.
Who knew, and Chris didn’t care. They just had to find a way off the vessel.
“I’m so sorry.” Rory sat on the cool floor next to Chris. The situation was all too familiar with the one yesterday. Hands bound to the wall behind their backs. This time, their feet were cuffed and anchored to the floor in front of them.
Motherfuckers.
Two overhead bulbs filled the room with enough light so they could see each other. Harper and Roman were on the other side of the space, about four feet away.
“It’s not your fault,” Roman said with a shake of the head.
Blood stained his shirt, but he’d been stitched up and covered with a bandage beneath his dress shirt.
The captain’s wife, who also happened to be the crew’s nurse, had taken care of him.
Roman said she did a clean job and had given him antibiotics.
Apparently, he was worth more alive than dead.
“We shouldn’t have let someone get the drop on us. We let our guards down, thinking we were alone because of the storm,” Harper said in agreement with Roman. “And Roman shouldn’t have gone all caveman on the asshole who hit me.” She nudged Roman in his good side with her elbow.
A bruise was already forming beneath Harper’s eye, and Chris knew Roman would have torn apart the man who hit her if he hadn’t been outnumbered.
Ten armed men against the four of them, and normally Chris would choose his people as the winners regardless of the numbers, but with two women they cared about potentially caught in the crossfire . . .
“I was distracting you with my story, and we wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for me. Please, let me feel shitty for a few minutes, and then I promise you can attempt to throw more kind words my way after,” Rory said with a plea to her voice.
“Then let us feel shitty, too,” Harper challenged.
Rory’s story. Yeah, that was more than a story—it was a book of revelations. And her scars. He’d need to ask A.J. about the pirates who’d whipped her. But first, they had to find a way off that damn ship before whoever had put a bounty on their heads arrived.
Rory had racked up a lot of enemies, but he had to assume The Italian was behind their abduction.
“You shouldn’t have attacked that guy for hitting me,” Harper said again, but this time, her soft words were meant only for Roman.
Chris peered at Rory, trying to give them as much privacy as possible.
Rory had her eyes positioned on the stack of crates off to their left. “Probably guns or drugs in there.”
“And who has a connection to the Trott brothers?” he asked her.
“That’s the thing, no one I know. I doubt Andrew knows them. And I don’t know of any connection between them and The Italian, either. And as for Santiago”—she shrugged—“well, your guess is as good as mine.”
“They were speaking Portuguese with each other.” Roman joined the conversation, his tone eerily dark. The man was out for blood.
“We’re in the middle of a melting pot of who-done-it for bad guys,” Rory said, and Chris could tell she was trying to make a joke to ease the gravity of the situation. It was one reason he and the guys also cracked jokes. It helped. Somehow, it just helped.
“And how do you know of the Trott brothers?” Chris was thankful they hadn’t known of her, but well, hell, now they did.
“They’re a middleman distributor for bad guys looking to sell on the black market.
Although, I’ve heard these guys take more pleasure in pitting buyers against each other in order to walk away with as much money as possible.
But middlemen are a dime a dozen, which was why I used to go after the buyers instead.
But that was before I focused on wildlife smuggling.
I should have done more. Taken them out. ” She was beating herself up again.
“You’re one woman,” he reminded her. “What you’ve done is beyond me. I can’t wrap my head around it, to be honest.” And he really couldn’t. She was basically a superhero.
“You know how many bad guys out there we wish we could have stopped, but they weren’t our mission?” Harper made a valid point. “We do what we can.”
Rory set her head on his shoulder, and from his vantage point, it appeared she closed her eyes. He lifted his chin and watched as Harper mimicked her move. Head to Roman’s shoulder, eyes closing.
They were all physically and emotionally spent.
After walking all day, then having to make their way down to the fishing trawler, they were out of energy. Plus, Roman had been stabbed. Mostly a superficial wound from what Roman said, but Chris wasn’t sure if he was just trying to make the women feel better.
What day is it? Chris thought as he closed his eyes, feeling like he might doze off, too.
Sunday. Right. A week ago, Rory had started training Bear.
How is Bear? He missed the boy already. He missed the life he and Rory had shared, even if only for a week, before chaos had cut in.
He knew Bear would be in good hands, though. Most likely with Emily and Elaina.
“Chris,” Rory said softly a few minutes later.
“Yeah?” He opened his eyes to see her looking up at him.
“Did I make a mistake? Should I have never left Alabama ten years ago?” The indecision and worry in her tone were heartbreaking.
“This guy I was dating in college broke up with me near the end of our senior year because I wouldn’t move to California with him after we graduated.
He said I would never amount to anything other than a simple, small-town girl.
I’d never leave Bama. And I think, well, I think part of me ran off to Italy because of him.
To prove something. I couldn’t get his words out of my head.
” A tear trickled down her cheek, and he hated that his wrists were bound, unable to comfort her.
She sniffled and closed her eyes, another tear escaping.
“But there’s nothing wrong with being from a small town, and it took me a decade to realize that. ”
“You did a lot of good in those ten years.” Even though it was risky. Could have gotten yourself killed. “Living in a small town, loving that kind of life doesn’t mean you can’t spread your wings and explore the world. You can do both. Just like you can have a family as well as a career.”
“Not sure if what I was doing was a career since my actions were sort of illegal, and I wasn’t getting paid.” Her lids parted, her eyes glossy.
“A family and a mission, then,” he corrected.
“And it took me twenty years and meeting you,” he began, emotion catching in his throat, “to realize I want both.” He lowered his mouth closer to hers, nervous that his admission might scare her away.
He was putting his heart on the line, but she was worth it.
And he didn’t doubt they would find a way to break free, but she needed to know how he felt. He needed to say the words.
“Chris?” she whispered, eyes on his. “Make me fly?”
His chest tightened, and he dipped down for the only touch they could manage right now.
She kissed him back, soft sweeps of her tongue twining with his, a few of her tears landing on his cheeks as their lips locked together.
He wasn’t sure if anyone or anything could have pulled them apart at the moment.
Until someone physically separated them.
He’d heard them coming. Boots on the ground. He’d ignored them. Because fuck them.
It took the guy shoving at Chris’s chest to get him to move his lips from Rory’s.
“It’s my lucky day,” the leader, who Rory said was Johnny Trott, announced. “Someone just offered me more money for you fools.” He snickered, revealing a gold tooth. “Told you, sweetheart, you’re worth a fortune.”