Going Overboard (39 page)

“Enjoy the soup. We'll rendezvous a half mile out and get you ladies into something warm and dry as soon as possible. Then you can tell me how you managed to escape from that yacht.”

Despite his casual expression, Carly saw his gaze rake the distant beach and the red tile roofs of the Brandon estate. She wondered if he was worried about the mission, but there was no way to tell. Like McKay, his face revealed nothing.

After a last glance at the island, he brought the Zodiac around sharply and set a choppy course due south, out to sea.

Wind whipped at Carly's face as she paced the deck of the liaison ship, waiting for news from the estate. Daphne had finally gone below to rest, but only after making Carly promise to call her at the first hint of news about her father.

As Carly studied the estate with high-powered binoculars, Izzy slipped a jacket around her shoulders. “The wind's picking up. It will be colder now that the sun is down.”

Carly shrugged on the jacket, dwarfed in its folds but glad for the warmth. “Any news yet?”

“We know that Brandon is being held in the storeroom beneath the main house. So far, there's no sign of unusual activity there.”

“Vronski?”

“He's expected from Bridgetown within the hour,” Izzy said grimly. “If there weren't hostages involved, the team would hit his car en route, but now that's not an option.”

Carly forced down a knot of fear as she remembered the flicker of madness in Vronski's eyes before he killed his son. “He kept talking about money and all the things it could do. He seemed obsessed by the idea.”

“That he is,” Izzy said, watching the harbor. “Money and power.” With the darkness complete, he exchanged his binoculars for a low-light scope.

Suddenly, his heads tightened. “There's movement at the front gate. Looks like a truck and two sedans. Could be Vronski.”

Across the water, the lights at the house flickered, then died.

“That would be McKay. Their first objective was to cut all the inside power.” Izzy frowned as static burst from his headset. “Team one is inside. They're going after Brandon,” he said tensely. “Team two will target Vronski. Let's hope he's in one of those sedans that just arrived.”

“You mean they might only be a decoy?”

“It's been done before.”

Automatic-weapon fire erupted and shouts drifted over the water.

Carly opened and closed her trembling hands. “When will we know?”

Light filled the sky, followed by the crack of explosives. “They have Brandon out safely. Team one is pulling back with Daphne's father, but they're taking heavy fire,” Izzy murmured one hand on his headset. “McKay and his men should be hitting Vronski any second now.”

Carly could barely hear over the thunder of her heart. As she continued to watch the compound another explosion rocked the night, followed by more gunfire.

Izzy's headset crackled with a torrent of voices. His eyes hardened.

“What's happened?” Carly demanded.

More muffled shouting drifted from the headset. A helicopter thundered over their heads, moving low and fast toward the island. Izzy's gaze fixed on the helicopter as if willing it to move faster.

Why?
Carly thought. The explosions were fading, and the gunfire had slowed to scattered bursts.

Surely they had spirited Nigel Brandon out safely. Otherwise Izzy would have heard. She thought she should go below and tell Daphne, but Izzy's expression, rigidly intent on the path of the helicopter, held her still.

She caught her breath, willing him to explain, yet afraid to hear the rest. “Tell me.”

“They took out Vronski and most of his men. Unfortunately, he'd already booby-trapped the house with C-4.”

“I don't understand.”

“Plastic explosive. He remote detonated just as the team was closing in on him.” As he spoke, the helicopter descended vanishing in the darkness above the estate.

Carly felt a dizzying burst of intuition. “He's hurt?” she whispered as the wind burned, making her eyes tear.

Izzy made a sharp, frustrated gesture with one hand. “He was caught in the blast when the last of the C-4 blew. His team called in the chopper to fly him out.”

“How bad?” she demanded, steeling herself to hear the worst. She knew how dangerous Vronski was. She'd twice witnessed his cruelty, indiscriminate and almost inhuman.

“Pretty bad,” Izzy said. “They don't know if…”

Carly clutched at the rail. Her cheeks were stinging with tears as lights flashed overhead. In a burst of noise the helicopter roared above them, then banked and thundered away into the night.

S
he waited and prayed and hoped. She paced and worked and cursed. But no letter came and no calls were put through.

All Carly knew was that Ford was alive and mending.

Days passed slipping into weeks, then months. Carly finished her cruise project, sublet her apartment in New York, and moved to Santa Marina to be with Daphne.

Her friend's face was paler than it had been. There were new lines at her mouth, and a new hardness snapped in her eyes. But four months had passed since the kidnapping in Santa Marina and life went on.

Daphne's stomach was a lovely curve of growing life beneath her neat white linen sundress. With the efficiency born of loyalty, workers had restored the house to all its beauty after the explosive destruction of one wing. Now hibiscus petals dotted the flagstone patio and floated in the large, free-form swimming pool. Fortunately, the blast had been on the opposite side of the house from the garden, and Archer's roses had been nursed back to their full glory.

Santa Marina would survive, and so would they, Carly thought. But with each day of waiting for word from Ford each day of silence as no message came, her hope began to fade.

She shoved away Archer's artful fruit salad untouched, and studied the shimmering water in the pool instead absently
noting the hibiscus blossoms with a photographer's sharp eye. It might make an interesting project to capture the play of light and shadow over iridescent blue water and drifting red petals.

But the water made her think of sunlight on a man's strong shoulders and shadows playing across a chiseled face, and her heart broke again, just as it had every day for the last four months.

No commitments, she had insisted. Stubborn and blind, she hadn't seen that she was not the cold perfectionist her mother had been. She had learned the value of close friendships and camaraderie.

Now she also knew the bittersweet desperation of love.

Apparently, McKay didn't.

“Hell.” She pushed away the photographs, trying to block out the rest of her memories.

Three of Vronski's men had been recovered alive from the maelstrom at the Brandon estate, and under intense questioning they had revealed the full scope of Vronski's international counterfeiting plan. Aimee Fiorento had run afoul of that plan when she demanded more money for the information she was providing Vronski's contact. As a result, she had been drowned in the ship's pool.

A chair creaked. “Did you say something, Carly?”

“No.”

“Finished with your work?”

As finished as she'd ever be. “Just about.”

“Then take a break and come over here. I need some help.”

Carly turned, instantly worried. “Is something wrong?”

Daphne's face was composed, but she looked tired, and Carly doubted that she had slept well. David's betrayal and his death had taken their toll. His attempt to protect Daphne before his death had only left her feeling more miserable and somehow responsible. Carly had been up enough nights pacing until dawn to notice that the light was usually on beneath Daphne's door.

Damn men, anyway.

She stood beside Daphne's comfortable lounge chair. “Is it the baby? Are you having early contractions?”

“Heavens, I've got a full three months yet. No, I want your opinion on this maternity dress.” She tapped the page of a glossy magazine. “Will it make me look like an emerging nation or simply a very rounded mother-to-be?”

“A stunning mother-to-be,” Carly corrected dying a little more as she looked at the radiant model and harbored her own anxious thoughts about the child she carried inside her, a miracle she had never expected.

Daphne's fingers slid into hers and tightened. “You're going to have to tell him,” she said. “He needs to know.”

Carly frowned and pulled away. “I've tried to reach him. I've asked every contact I know, along with most of Uncle Nigel's.” She took an angry breath. “He's alive, we know that much. If he doesn't answer my messages, it must mean he doesn't want to be found. Not by
me
, at least.”

“You don't know that for certain.”

“I don't know anything for certain,” Carly shot back. Then her face softened. “Correction. I know that I want this baby. Absolutely and without reservations.”

“Then eating would be a good idea,” Daphne said sternly as Archer appeared with two plates of exquisite seafood salad. “Starting right now.”

“I'll have something later.” Carly brushed the slightly convex curve of her stomach. “Things are still churning inside, I'm afraid.”

“It will pass.” Daphne spoke with the solid conviction of someone who had just been through the same ordeal. “Drink some juice and sit in the rocker and relax for once.”

Archer frowned down at Carly's untouched plate.

“Miss Daphne's right. You sit and finish this orange juice.”

Carly smiled, unable to withstand the gentle tyranny of people so dear to her.

Archer nodded in satisfaction when she was finished. “Now then, I've brought the small television out to the table. There's to be a news story on the Tradewind Foundation.”

After a short introduction, Daphne's beautiful, composed face appeared on the screen as she detailed new plans for a shipboard medical center that would cruise around Santa Marina and its neighboring islands.

“Lord, I do look like a blimp,” Daphne muttered, rolling her eyes.

“Nonsense, you look happy and vital and very lovely,” Archer said briskly, well used to her complaints. “Hush, so we can listen.”

After a round of questions about the foundation, the reporter asked Daphne about her father, who was working on corporate support for upgrading elementary-schools on Santa Marina. The interview ended with a beautifully executed shot of Santa Marina's busy harbor area.

Before anyone could move, a different image filled the screen.

Carly watched, frozen, as a man's face appeared silhouetted against a tropical sunset as he raised a crystal champagne glass. His dark hair was ruffled by the wind and his muscular shoulders were guaranteed to stir a woman's dreams.

Just as she had been dreaming for four long months.

Archer sprang forward and changed the channel, but tears were already burning in Carly's eyes. She rose to her feet as a low, overdubbed voice whispered “We have your dream.”

She swallowed a knot of pain and brushed past the

table, sending a stack of photos to the flagstones as she walked blindly to her room.

Knowing that even there she would see his face.

“There must be something we can do,” Archer said watching Carly walk away.

“You're damned right there is.” Without a qualm at invading her friend's privacy, Daphne dug angrily through Carly's briefcase and pulled out a folded sheet of paper, her expression determined as she picked up the phone.

“I need to speak to McKay,” she snapped as Izzy answered the private number he'd given Carly months before. “That's right, McKay,” she continued ruthlessly. “Commander McKay, U.S. Navy SEAL, and don't give me any more of your lame excuses.”

“I already told you he's alive and well,” Izzy said guardedly.

“And not a damned thing beyond. Where is he?”

“I can't answer that.”

“Then tell me why he hasn't phoned Carly yet.”

Izzy drew an audible breath but said nothing.

“She needs him,” Daphne said. “She's too proud to tell you that, but I'm not. Tell him to call her.”

“I'm afraid I can't do that. It's his choice, not mine.”

“Tell that to the woman who loves him. And tell that to his
child
.” Daphne slammed down the phone, only to hear it ring a moment later. “Yeah, that's exactly what I said. A child. Ford's child. Carly is pregnant.”

“What could possibly be taking so long?” Carly paced restlessly, her hands in the pockets of the loose linen tunic she wore over black leggings. Daphne had been experiencing some unusual pains and her doctor in Santa Marina had referred her to a specialist in Florida for a

full array of tests, just to be certain nothing was overlooked.

Carly and Nigel Brandon had been waiting in the crowded hospital for two hours when a door swung open and Daphne appeared, smiling and radiant.

“What did they say?” Carly demanded.

“It will be a few hours yet.” Daphne exchanged a quick glance with her father. “While we're waiting for the results, let's go for a walk.” She took Carly's arm. “I could do with something to drink.”

“There's no need for you to go,” Carly said immediately. “I'll get it.”

“The doctor said moderate exercise was the best thing for me, so stop trying to turn me into some kind of pathetic invalid.” She started down the corridor. “See you in a few minutes,” she called to her father, who smiled broadly as soon as they turned a corner.