Chapter 16
Good sense kicked in and he turned away from her and walked in the other direction back toward his own home.
She didn’t say a word and barely dragged her eyes from straight in front of her to acknowledge his departure.
That suited him fine. They could use a little separation.
Time to regroup. Before he got very far—not nearly far enough away from the distracting mind-boggling woman—his phone buzzed in his pocket.
He lifted it out, squinted at the face and half guessed it was Captain ‘Nice’ Lynch.
“Captain. What’s the word?”
“Let’s meet.”
“When and where and with who?”
“All parties. Your place.”
“You better be arriving as a surprise package.”
“Don’t you worry. I can be just as resourceful as the next guy—even if the next guy does happen to be—”
“Cut the crap,” Dane said. “I’ll see you in thirty minutes. Can everyone make it by then?”
“In the works.” Cap cut out without another word.
Dane kicked a rock. His foulness came from deep down. Even a session at the shooting range wouldn’t help. He thought of another kind of therapy and wished he could give it a go.
Instead of dwelling on the ridiculous depths to which his life had sunk, he hurried his steps and headed to his shack.
Then he realized he’d be entertaining, so he swung by the local liquor store to buy a bottle or two.
It would not be the Crystal champagne Jean Luc provided for Shana, but Dane would be prepared with something suitable.
Something businesslike. He sighed, acknowledging to himself that he’d be drinking sangria on his patio tonight watching the twilight blanket the ocean and listening to nothing but crickets if it weren’t for this damn mission.
Captain Lynch arrived within twenty-eight minutes. Chauncey Miller arrived at precisely thirty minutes. The screen door snapped shut behind him and Dane glanced through to see he was unaccompanied.
“She’ll be along. Said she had an enormous amount of sand and salt to rinse off after surfing all day,” Miller said.
He strolled into the kitchen, plucked a bottle of beer protruding from the bucket of ice on the counter and walked through to the table to join Lynch. He sat and said, “Didn’t you surf too?”
“What are you trying to say? I got a hose out back. Makes quick work of sand and salt.” Dane shook his head, his hair wet and tousled, uncombed except with a rake of his fingers.
He wore a fresh black T-shirt and cargo shorts.
His jungle-wear. Good as anything for nighttime in the summer when you wanted to be invisible. Which was pretty much all the time.
He stood at the counter and took a long drag of his beer. Dane told them of his encounter with Ned and the fact that Jean Luc still had not asked Shana to play the ringer in the surfing contest.
Chauncey grinned a dangerous grin and Captain Nice frowned and said, “That plays with what I found out. I’ll catch you up as soon as Shana gets here.”
They waited in silence for several beats. “Hell, I ain’t waiting for her. She can catch herself up when she gets here.” He shoved off the counter, dragged a chair from the table, turned it and sat straddling it to face the two men, like he needed the cage of the ladderback chair between them.
“We should wait,” Captain Nice said, of course. Dane scowled. Cap continued undaunted. That’s what he liked about Cap. “She’s the whole party. She’s the one taking all the risk.”
“Don’t need to tell me that. Need to tell her that.
” Dane lifted his wrist to check the slow progress of the ticking minutes.
He never heard her approach from behind but saw the gaze of the other two men rise.
Every muscle in his body tensed. He refused to turn in her direction with a force of will that overrode instinct.
“You don’t need to tell me that, but I appreciate your touching concern,” Shana said.
With quiet athletic grace, she took the fourth seat at the table.
Her hands were empty of any drink. She wore a tropical print halter top and white jeans with flat sandals, no jewelry.
Nothing special. Nonetheless, his pulse jumped and his muscles coiled a notch tighter.
“Get any calls from lover boy while you were at home lolling around?” Dane asked.
Her gaze rose to his face in studied neutrality. “Yes.” The “how did you know” remained unspoken, but he could see it there in spite of her mighty efforts. Maybe she tried too hard and that was her problem. He flicked a glance at the others. They waited for her to spill it.
“Jean Luc wants to have dinner”—she looked at her wrist—“in an hour. At nine.”
Captain Lynch tightened the grip on his beer. Chauncey muttered something unintelligible, but likely unholy. Dane nodded at her.
“Progress. Don’t come away from that dinner without an invitation to be the ringer in the competition.”
“I know the strategy.”
“Do you now? Enlighten us all. I thought that’s what we were going to discuss tonight, but if you already have it all figured out, by all means—”
“Back off, Blaise.” The nice captain’s voice had an edge on it Dane hadn’t heard before. He turned to the man.
Captain Lynch didn’t look threatening, but then he didn’t look friendly either.
Hell, if Dane had to be honest, and it was about time he was, he’d say Captain Lynch was the only one of them with professional distance right now undistracted by life.
Chauncey had his new wife back home, Shana had her giant chip with something to prove—mostly to him for some reason—and a hidden insecurity.
And he… well, Dane had too many things to bother cataloguing that were distracting him right now.
But she was number one. Maybe she was the unlucky stand-in for all that bothered him, for everything that was wrong in his universe.
So Dane nodded at Cap, allowing the others to release their breath, and backed off.
But his muscles remained tight and his knee felt stiff, so he stood and paced around the room.
And spoke in a low detached voice, concentrating on the face he’d seen in the picture of Susan Whittier.
Young, pretty, innocent. Their goal number one.
He ought to pin the picture on the wall somewhere to keep it real, but he’d never needed to do such an amateur thing before—not even when he was an amateur.
He stood still, looking out the window over his kitchen sink at the harbor, took in a bracing breath and commanded himself to hold it together.
One more week and it would be all over. Just one more week.
“Captain Lynch, we’ll need you in close to keep an eye on Shana. You’re the only one he’s not likely to recognize. Wherever she goes, you go. Miller, you’ll stay in radio contact with us and HQ to run any intel we get. I’ll be watching from afar.”
“I’m the expert in undercover—and disguises,” Chauncey said.
It wasn’t a challenge, but a salient point.
Dane realized Cap would never admit to his inexperience and never back down from doing what he needed to.
Dane flicked his gaze at Cap and saw no disagreement.
Captain Nice Lynch would leave it to him to call this one, in the interest of the mission, of course.
“You’re right, Chauncey. You go in undercover and well disguised. Cap here can be on the perimeter—that way he can maintain contact with me and his command. In case we need them.”
He turned to Shana.
“You, under no circumstances, are to go back to Jean Luc’s house with him.
And I don’t care if you have to blow the mission wide open to prevent it.
” He didn’t care that the intensity in his vibrating words betrayed his worry.
They were all worried about her. She didn’t blink.
She didn’t respond at all. It was as if she hadn’t heard him—or hadn’t paid attention to him. Maybe she’d finally become immune.
About time. He raised his beer to his lips as he stared at her. He hoped to God that no one else noticed the slight tremor in his hand. One barely perceptible twitch of the corner of the left side of her lips told him she’d noticed.
His breathing felt restricted. He turned back to the window to take in a gulp of sea air. “Chauncey, what’s the latest from the governor on the Brazilian backers for this shebang?”
“There are two brothers. Aldo and Bento Tavares. Seems they have a history of illegal operations going back to their dear grandfather. Mostly loan sharking, extortion and their biggest moneymaker, white slavery. Girls. Not women. Girls. Virgins.” Chauncey paused.
Dane’s gut began to freeze like he’d swallowed a gallon of dry ice and he felt the vibrations run through him from the chill of stark fear mingled with vengeful hatred.
He’d been staring at Chauncey while his teeth clenched against the biting cold inside him and he turned and glanced around at Cap and then, by millimeters, moved his eyes to Shana.
She looked fierce with her nostrils flaring and her fists clenched.
She nodded. They all nodded then, in silent agreement that they absolutely needed to bring these guys down.
They also realized Susan Whittier’s fate.
Dane spoke, keeping his rage bottled as best he could. “The good news is that Susan Whittier is likely still alive. The bad news is we need to find her before they take her off the island.”
“What makes you think they haven’t already?” Cap asked.
“Her cell phone and the surfing competition. I think they knew they may need insurance and I think they don’t have the manpower here to get her out. So far all Cap’s men have spotted are the two goons Ned had with him at the club. The Brazilians are bringing in the manpower.”
Cap and Chauncey nodded their agreement.
“I agree,” Shana said. “I think Jean Luc is not part of that and he’s trying to keep Ned’s focus on the competition.”
“Okay.” Dane raked a hand through his hair and waved Chauncey to continue his report.