Hidden Agemda (Kate Diamond Adventure) (18 page)

Smash!

Kate’s words were cut short as the glass window beside her shattered. She whipped her head around in time to see a canister spewing colored gas clatter onto the floor.
 

“Get down!” she yelled across to Carlotta who was already down, the glass window beside her also shattered.
 

Kate’s eyes watered as she choked on the acrid air. Her heart pounded against her ribs.
 

What was going on?

She could hear Gideon frantically calling her name through the computer as she tried to crawl over to Carlotta to see if she as okay but the air inside the boat was filling with the colored gas making it impossible for her to see … or breathe.
 

She heard the power systems on the boat shut down, including the computer. Gideon’s frantic voice was silenced. As she gasped in a few final breaths, she thought she heard heavy footsteps but couldn’t be sure.

And then everything went dark.

“Kate! Open up!” Ace banged his fist on the hotel door, his stomach sinking lower with each passing second.
 

She wasn’t in there.
 

He should have known when it got to be noon that Kate had given him the slip. He’d been up since one o’clock in the morning, staring at the little green light that represented the tracking device in her purse and it hadn’t moved an inch. He thought she was in her hotel room the whole time, but clearly, she must have snuck out and left her purse behind.
 

“Get the manager to open this door.” Ace barked the order at no one in particular and one of the newer members of his team, Jim, took off toward the manager’s office.

“She gave you the slip, eh?” Mick raised a brow and Ace had all he could do not to punch him in the face.

“Yeah, looks that way.” Ace rubbed his hand through his hair. “I
knew
she wouldn’t just sit in her room all morning … we should have come sooner.”

“Aww, don’t be so hard on yourself,” Mick said as the manager appeared with the keys and a concerned look on his face.

“Is something wrong in there?” the manager asked.

“No, we just want to make sure she’s okay,” Ace said. It wasn’t really a lie … he did want to make sure she was okay, or at least not hiding in there. And search the room for clues to where she might have gone.

The manager used the key to open the door. Ace pushed his way inside, checking the living room, bedroom and bath quickly. Kate wasn’t there but her empty purse was. She’d discovered the tracking device.
 

“She’s not here. Look around to see if there’s any clue as to where she might have gone,” Ace said as he paced around the living room while Mick and the other two members of his team searched the room.

“Do you think she knows where Darkstone is?” Mick asked.

Ace sighed. “That’s the thing. I don’t even think she knows
about
Darkstone. She just wants to get the ruby for the museum.”

Mick lifted a shaggy brow. “Ahh, so she could be heading straight for danger and not even know it. Why didn’t you tell her?”

“Come on, Mick. You know that information was on a strictly ‘need to know’ basis.” Ace’s heart squeezed. He
should
have told her anyway. Sure, he’d done his best to try to get her to back off, but she’d thought that had been about the ruby.
 

If he’d told her Darkstone was somehow involved would she have listened to him? Probably not. But at least she’d have been prepared. As it was he felt like he’d sent her off like a lamb to the slaughter … and if anything happened to her, he’d never be able to forgive himself.

The others came back into the room. “There’s nothing here,” Jim said.

“We need to figure out where she went,” Ace replied. “We know she was down here tracking Benedetti, so we have to assume she got some kind of lead and took off to follow it.”

“We didn’t see anyone matching her description leave,” Jim said, looking at the other man, Bobby O’Brien, for confirmation. “The only people that left here this morning were an old man and a redhead.”

“She must have slipped out the back.” Mick had crossed to the sliding glass door and was looking out. “She could have climbed down from here.”

“Dammit!” Ace pounded his fist into his thigh. Kate was heading straight into danger and if anything happened to her, it was going to be
his
fault. He couldn’t have that on his conscience. Which meant he’d have to figure out where she had gone. Ace could think of only one person that might know exactly where Kate was headed. Could he swallow his pride long enough to call him and find out?

***

“We’re just on time to meet Carlotta, Sal and Kate.” Vic Diamond peered at his watch as they tromped through the jungle toward the beach where they’d left the raft.

“Good, because I’m hungry,” Frankie said.

“Yeah, I hate to say it Vic, but I think this might be a wild goose chase.” Gertie looked up as a crow flew over. “Or maybe crow chase would be more appropriate.”

Gertie elbowed Frankie in the ribs and they both laughed at her joke. But Vic wasn’t laughing. He’d emerged from the bushes onto the sandy beach only to find the inflatable raft was gone.

“What the heck?” The three of them glanced over toward the yacht.

“Will you look at those damn crows?” Gertie waved her arms. “Shoo! Shoo!”

“Wait a minute.” Vic stared at the boat, his gut churning. “Something isn’t right there.”

“Yeah, I’ll say, those crows are gonna have it full of poo—”

“The windows,” Vic said. “You guys stay here.”

Vic heard Gertie suck in a breath before he sprang into action, throwing down his gun, shedding his vest and kicking off his shoes as he ran toward the water.
 

Even though he was nearing seventy, Vic kept himself in shape. It was nothing for him to swim the thirty feet out to the
High Jinx.
He was running on pure adrenalin—his family could be in there, hurt.

He reached the boat in record speed and hauled himself up into the back deck. A foul smell hung in the air. Vic recognized it right away. Knockout gas. He ran into the salon and, sure enough, the canisters were lying on the ground. The windows had been smashed from the outside.
 

“Katie! Carlie!” Vic yelled as he ran through the boat searching the two staterooms, the bathroom and the bridge. They were all empty. His family was gone—taken by someone. But who? And why?

Vic’s shoulders slumped as he walked back to the raft. It looked like Carlotta had been right—hiding the ruby here didn’t make much sense. There had been another motive for bringing the ruby here all along.
 

Vic wasn’t sure exactly what that motive was, but he was sure of one thing … someone else was on this island and he had to find them. The life of his wife and daughter depended on it.

***

Rushing back to the raft, Vic could see Gertie and Frankie shuffling nervously on the beach.

“They’re not here!” he yelled at them. “I’ll come get you in the raft.”

He jumped into the raft and took off toward the beach. Gertie and Frankie waded out to meet him, and then they headed back to the yacht.

“What happened?” Frankie asked.

“I don’t know,” Vic said. “It looks like Kate, Carlotta and Sal must have gotten back early. I guess they took the inflatable to the yacht and someone broke in, using some sort of gas, which, I assume, rendered them all helpless and then they took them.”

“Took them?” Gertie screwed her face up. “Why?”

“Your guess is as good as mine,” Vic said as he swung the raft alongside the back of the boat and tied it off.

“Well, what does it matter?” Frankie shrugged as he climbed onto the yacht. “The way I see it, we got no choice but to just go and take them back.”

“Right,” Gertie said. “Let’s make our plan.”

She stormed into the salon and lifted the seat from one side of the dinette to reveal a selection of automatic and semi-automatic weapons.
 

“This is where I keep the good stuff,” she said. “Take your pick.”

Vic raised a brow at Frankie as the two men stared into the storage space, which was piled full of various guns. He reached in and picked out a Sig Saur P522 Swat pistol, Frankie grabbed a Glock 18, and Gertie pulled out a semi-automatic pistol and a rifle.

They loaded up with ammunition and Vic slid the satellite map of the island into the center of the dining table.
 

“I didn’t see any place to bring captives while we were out on the island before. I think the best plan is to skirt the north side of the island and look for any caves or houses.” Vic traced his finger along the north side of the island. “Then we’ll climb up the hill to the top of the volcano and see what we can see.”

“We should stick together,” Frankie said. “It could be dangerous.”

Gertie nodded. “We always worked good in a team this way anyway.”

“Right. Let’s go.” Vic headed toward the back of the boat.

“It might help if we had an idea of who we were looking for or how many of them there are,” Gertie said as she loaded the rifle into the raft then jumped in after it.

“Unfortunately, I have no idea who or how many.” Vic looked over at Gertie, then noticed something in the ocean just past her shoulder. He squinted, craning his neck at the small speck that seemed to be getting larger.
 

Gertie turned to see what he was looking at. “Is that a boat?”

“I think it is,” Frankie said.

The three of them stared for a few seconds as the speck got large enough to reveal that it
was
a boat.

“Get your guns ready,” Vic said. “It looks like it’s headed our way.”

***

“Can’t this thing go any faster?” Ace leaned on the bow of the small Boston Whaler V hull boat as if his weight pressing forward could add to its speed.

“I’m pushing it as fast as I can. This isn’t exactly a speed boat.” Jim gave Ace a wry look as he aimed the boat toward the black dot that was starting to take shape as a small island.
 

Ace’s gut churned. The cold spray of the saltwater stung his face. He’d been surprised when Gideon eagerly returned his call, reciting a firsthand account of Kate’s attack. Given the circumstances, Gideon had been more than happy to give Ace the exact coordinates of the island. He just hoped it wouldn’t be too late by the time he got there.

Ace pressed the binoculars he held to his eyes.
 

“I think I see the boat.” Ace squinted into the lenses. He could barely make out a white dot, which he assumed was the boat Kate had taken. The
High Jinx
Gideon had said the name of it was. A boat owned by one of Kate’s parents. Ace pressed his lips together in disapproval—he didn’t like the fact Kate often used the ex-thieves and con men on her cases. Even though they all claimed to be retired, he still felt that they operated outside the law and he couldn’t condone that.
 

Adrenalin shot through him as he detected movement on the boat. Was it Kate? Her abductors? He could see three people in the back of the boat. It looked like they were getting into an inflatable raft, but he was still too far away to make out who it was.
 

Moving the binoculars upwards, he could see the damage to the boat. The windows were broken just as Gideon had said. And what was with all those crows?
 

Looking back at the raft, he could see the three people were armed with semi-automatic rifle and handguns. But they weren’t the people who had taken Kate—he recognized one of them as Kate’s father. The others must be two of the retired law-avoiding citizens of
Golden Capers
.
 

They must be gearing up to find Kate and her mother
, he thought.
 

A hot stab of irritation pierced his gut. He was going to have to work hand in hand with Vic Diamond to get Kate back safely. The thought of it made his fists clench, but there was no other way. Vic was already armed and they could certainly use the help since he had no idea how many people they would be up against.

If Ace wanted to ensure Kate’s safety, he’d have to put aside his personal feelings and form an alliance with Vic Diamond.

Someone had jabbed a red-hot poker into Kate’s head … or at least it felt that way, Kate thought, as she surfaced from the depths of unconsciousness. Her pounding head seemed like it weighed a ton, too. Which was problematic, since it seemed to be lolling forward, stretching her neck at an uncomfortable angle.
 

She winced as she made the effort to lift her head, pushing down a wave of nausea.
 

Where was she?

Kate struggled to remember what had happened, but her memory was fuzzy. Her eyes burned and itched and her sight was blurry. Looking around, she could barely make out that she was in a darkened area with walls made of … rock? Was she in a cave?
 

Kate’s senses were coming awake now, she felt cold steel biting into her wrists—restraining her. She looked down, her ankles were chained to the legs of a metal chair, her arms twisted and chained behind her. In contrast to the cold steel shackles, the air was warm and tinged with an acrid smell reminiscent of sulfur.
 

An ear-piercing caw followed by a spurt of maniacal laughter broke the silence. Kate jerked her head toward the sounds. Her sight was still fuzzy, but good enough to make out the form of a man … with the flapping wings of a crow on his arm.

The man walked closer and Kate blinked to clear her eyes, her heart crashing in her chest when she recognized him—Damien Darkstone.

Darkstone laughed at the stricken look on Kate’s face. “So you
do
remember me.”

Kate stared at him. On the surface, he looked like an ordinary man. Dark, straight hair that was worn a little long. Olive skin with a hint of five o’clock shadow on his chin. Black, beady eyes. But Kate knew he was no
ordinary
man—he was a monster who thought nothing of killing anyone who got in his way … including her.