Chapter 11
Eyes down, Tessa ran.
With each block she cleared, the tournament crowd thinned, leaving her alone for a merciful few minutes until a shadow crossed her path. She veered to avoid whoever cast it without looking up.
“Ms. McVie.”
She stopped short at the snap of her name. A man in black blocked her direct path down the boardwalk. She backed up a step, tensed to flee. “Who are you?”
He flashed an ID. “I’m an agent with a private security company. Your father hired us to take you to him. You’re in danger. Come with me.”
She didn’t try to run. Men who looked like that, with hard eyes and shady stories, used to show up with baseball bats looking for Frank. If he was home, they made sure he paid up. “My father is in Belize.”
“Not any longer. He’s at a nearby marina.” He pulled a photo from his pocket and held it up. “We have a boat waiting to take the two of you to a secure location.”
Tessa eyed the picture. “That’s a fake.”
He shoved the photo in his pants pocket without a flicker of reaction and stepped toward her. “My instructions are to bring you to your father by whatever means necessary.” He shifted his leather vest. A pistol peeked from his waistband. “Let’s go.”
“Pulling out that gun in the middle of the boardwalk would be stupid, don’t you think?”
The fake agent latched onto her wrist. She twisted and stepped past his shoulder, spinning toward the pier. As she whirled to run, her toe caught on a warped board.
He wrenched her arm and spun her back. “Shut up and come with me.”
Ignoring the flare of pain, her heart racing, she pressed closer to him. “I like your voice. Where are you from?”
Surprise loosened his hold for half a second. She jerked her arm, but he tightened his grip and tugged her toward the street. “If you don’t come with me nice and quiet, you and your father will die."
She planted her feet and screamed for help. Crashing waves drowned out her desperate plea. Panic rising, she spotted a lone figure racing toward them.
Hudson. He’s here.
Relief and adrenaline sharpened her instincts and resolve.
And made her devious.
Spinning to the fake agent, she rose onto her toes. “That guy running towards us is my ex.”
She slid her fingers inside his vest and skimmed his waistband.
“Help me put on a show for him and I’ll come easy with you.
” As she hooked her finger around the pistol, she grazed her thumb lower against a spot she hoped would distract him.
He inhaled and relaxed his grip. Ripping her arm free, she spun.
Hudson ran to her side. Catching her around the waist, he yanked her against him as the bastard fled.
Hudson’s heart thrummed as violently as Tessa shook. “Are you okay?”
She nodded against his shoulder. “He tried to force me to go with him.”
He set her back. “Stay here.”
Breathing in another painful gulp of air, he ran in the direction of the scumbag who’d grabbed Tessa. He caught sight of him a quarter of the way down the side street.
“Shit.”
A dark sedan with tinted windows tore out of a parking spot. The guy jumped in the passenger side. As the car turned the corner, he dialed 9-1-1. “This is Dr. Hudson Langley. “He spat out the information. “Send someone to Tessa’s house to take our statements. We’ll meet you there.”
He hung up, certain his family’s name was enough to do his bidding without question.
Out of breath, he bent over and placed one hand on his knee and wrapped the other around his ribs.
“Fuck.” He shouldn’t feel so broken. His lungs burned like he’d run for miles, but they were only a few blocks from the duplex.
A shadow lengthened next to him. Tessa’s heavy breathing scraped his ears as she placed her hand on his back. “You okay?”
He grimaced as he straightened. “I haven’t even known you for twenty-four hours and we keep asking each other that?”
“Yeah. It’s gotta stop. You should sit.”
He shook his head, holding out his hand. “You should give me the gun under your jacket.”
“Oh crap.” She looked down at the tip of the barrel peeking from the hem of her windbreaker.“I thought I hid it.” Stepping close to him, she pulled the gun from its hiding place and pressed it into his stomach.
His fingers grazed her bare skin where her jacket rode up. Gripping her hip, he wrapped his fingers around the weapon and tugged her closer to hide the exchange. Her breath caught. Something sparked inside him, like the charge he felt before a challenging surgery.
He tucked the gun into his waistband. As he covered it with his hoodie, he tracked her attention to the end of the street where the sedan had disappeared.
“Hey.” He ran his hand up her arm and settled it on her shoulder. “He’s gone.”
“He came out of nowhere. One second I’m running, and then he was just…”
Her breath snagged. Hudson felt the fractured hitch down to his toes.
“He was just…there.” She rubbed her arms. “How did you know where I was?”
“Malcolm and I went to your house. Lia said you were up here.” He tapped the weapon under his shirt. “Mind telling me how you lifted a gun from an assailant?”
Tessa’s shoulders quaked as she shrugged. “If he didn’t want it taken, he shouldn’t have threatened me.”
He placed his finger under her chin. As he tipped up her face, her lips tilted into a smile. “You’re not just a pretty little thief. You’re a talented one too. Did you get your skills from your father?”
Her smile drooped. “He’s not my father. He’s Frank.” She recapped the events as she pulled something from her pocket. The breeze lifted the edges of a photo.
He smoothed it with his thumb, not bothering to ask how she’d procured it. She wouldn’t answer anyway. He’d let her get away with avoiding his questions—for now. “This is Frank?”
“Yes, but something’s off. He never goes near the water. Either someone superimposed him onto a boat, or he’s on it unwillingly. Either way, I think he’s in Belmarva. See the plane behind him pulling the banner about the tournament? I saw it flying yesterday morning.”
“We need to go. The police are meeting us at your house.”
She nodded, her breathing leveling out to a steady cadence. Her focus on him was steady too, not darting around for an escape route.
Good.
Grabbing her hand, he led her toward the boardwalk. “Nice work back there getting away from him. Whatever you said must have been quite the distraction.”
“I told him you were my ex and asked him to help make you jealous. Then I touched his crotch when I lifted the gun.”
“Shit. Tessa.” The snark she’d injected into the story didn’t hide how desperate she’d been. “I’m sorry I didn’t get there sooner to stop that scumbag.”
“But you did. I appreciate that more than you know.”
The sincerity in her voice carried over the shriek of the seagulls. Swiveling his head, he searched for threats. He didn’t detect any on the empty boardwalk, but that didn’t mean whoever wanted Tessa wasn’t watching. “Did the scumbag look familiar? Maybe an old friend of Frank’s?”
“No. He wasn’t anyone Frank knew. He was shady, like all of Frank’s associates, but this guy’s look was too…clean. And he didn’t smell like alcohol or cigarettes. He smelled like—”
She pressed her palm to her forehead. A tight exhale slipped out. “I can’t believe I forgot to mention this earlier. Lia and I went to that new bakery by the jetty. The owner is from Belize. His accent reminded me of the fake agent. And he smelled a little like the fry jacks I had from there.”
The Belize link between Frank and Tessa’s almost abductor kicked up Hudson’s pulse. “Anything else you remember about the scumbag?”
“Not that I can think of, but we’re calling him Fry Jack from now on since the fried pastry that tasted like heaven is ruined forever.”
Hudson snapped a photo of Frank’s picture and sent it to the General.
Tessa peered at his phone. “Did you send that to the police?”
“Someone better. When we meet with the cops, what should we tell them to do with the bass Pop caught yesterday?”
“I think we should give it to his buddies for bait. Kind of like ashes to ashes, but fish to fish, if that makes sense. I think Sam would like that.”
“Me too.” He waited for the flicker of jealousy to hit—the kind that flared when she knew intimate things about Pop—but it didn’t.
Placing his hand on the small of her back, he guided her around a nail sticking up from a board. Tripping would be a minor nuisance considering she was almost abducted, but he’d been trained to identify problems and deal with them.
And Tessa McVie was a sweet-smelling, smart, and talented problem he couldn’t help touching, even if her questionable skills unearthed a mountain of questions.
They walked a half block in silence, Hudson keeping her close enough to shield her if any other threats emerged.
She kicked at a seashell. “Hudson, why do you think Sam didn’t tell you everything about me?”
The uncertainty in her voice grated like sand against skin. “Malcolm and I were talking about that on the way here.” He held out his palm. “See that scar? It’s the booby prize from a date Pop set me up on. She lied about liking fishing. About liking boats. Lied about everything.”
“What happened?”
“I caught a cobia. It swallowed the hook. As I was prying it out, my date stood up to whine about how ugly the fish was just as a wave hit. She toppled into me and I lost my balance. We didn’t go overboard but the fish did, and I wound up with pliers stuck in my hand.”
“Cobias are not ugly. Do they really fight as hard as sharks?”
“Yes.” He extended his hands well beyond shoulder length. “It was this big. Thick and gorgeous.”
But not as gorgeous as Tessa’s wide eyes cresting with excitement.
“Too bad your date didn’t go overboard instead.” Tessa took his hand and traced the scar on his palm with her fingertip. “Did you tell Sam never to set you up again?”
He guided her to the edge of a lawn to let a woman and her dog pass by. “Yes, and he didn’t try it again. At least I didn’t think he did until—"
A deep boom swallowed their conversation.