Hot Intent (Hqn) (19 page)

No sooner had she hung up than remorse for bailing out on Alex slammed into her. Not that he deserved an ounce of sympathy from her. Her remorse had more to do with the rightness or wrongness of her actions. As for Alex, he could go straight to hell and rot.

A tiny part of her brain recognized her anger as self-defense against the pain of being abandoned. But it was the only thing holding her together right now, the only thing letting her function. She drew the anger close around her, hanging on to it tightly.

She ducked out of the storeroom and handed the phone back to the woman with a word of thanks and the rest of her cash. She was grateful for the woman’s patience. Katie took her plastic grocery bag of food and water and walked out of the store. She asked a random woman where the docks were and took off walking in the direction the lady had pointed.

It took nearly an hour to walk down to the pier. A half dozen freighters were in port, and it wasn’t difficult to spot the
Caelum.
The ship was broad and long, sitting low in the water. A grain ship, maybe? She headed for the gangplank leading to a small door in the ship’s hull close to the waterline.

A darkly tanned, rough-looking man lounged in front of the walkway. She’d ditched the military ID out of the woman’s wallet but had kept the driver’s license. She pulled that out now.

“I’m Marianne Kleck,” she said expectantly. The guy threw her an I-don’t-give-a-damn look and didn’t bother to answer.

“The new nurse,” she tried. Then, “I’ve been hired on to the
Caelum.
”

“No shit?” He had a heavy accent. Maybe South African. At least he spoke English.

“Are you going to let me board or do I have to call the captain?”

“You got identification?”

She handed over the driver’s license.

“Your hair’s the wrong color.”

“I heard blondes have more fun. Thought I’d see if it’s true.”

He grinned in a distinctively wolfish way that made her skin crawl as his gaze roamed boldly up and down her body. “Yeah, sure. Welcome aboard.”

She paused in the hatch. “Can you direct me to the infirmary?”

“Amidship, deck three, just aft of the beam.”

Whatever the heck all that meant. She ducked into a narrow, all-steel stairwell and climbed until a door with a large number three painted on it came into sight. The passageway beyond was dim and claustrophobic with exposed metal pipes crowding down from above. Randomly, she wandered down it and spotted a Red Cross painted on a door. Thank God. She opened it and slipped inside. She fumbled around on the wall until she found a light switch.

Oh, God, it was tiny. The room had a bunk bed on one wall, about two feet of floor space and a tall cabinet on the opposite wall with at least twenty drawers in it. A sink stood beside the cabinet, and a tiny desk was tucked behind the open door. Someone strode by outside and she closed the door quickly. Curious, she opened all the drawers and was alarmed to see an array of medical supplies, some of whose purposes she had only the vaguest notion of.

Beside the sink, she discovered a tiny closet with a life jacket hanging from a hook up high and a tiny refrigerator taking up the bottom half of the space. Inside the refrigerator were a half dozen glass medical bottles of serums. Crud. What were those? She read the labels and only recognized the morphine and penicillin. She had no idea what the others were. Fake it, huh? Nobody had better get hurt before she got off this boat.

Memory of the gigantic suture needles in the drawer behind her made her shudder to even think of. No way could she sew human flesh together. Yick.

The door opened. “I ’ear there’s a hot sheila aboard,” a big, blond man boomed in a thick Aussie drawl.

She took an instinctive step back from the burly sailor as the guy whistled under his breath. “No lie. You’ll dine with me tonoight. And I’m thinkin’ I’ll be bunkin’ in with you.”

“There will be no bunking in with anyone, thank you very much,” she retorted sharply.

He shrugged. “Well, if ye want the crew to gang-rape ye, that’s your call.”

“Gang—what?” What the hell had André gotten her into?

“I can crack the noggins of every bloke in the crew with my bare ’ands, lass. You’d be woise to let me bunk in ’ere until I can dump ye overboard.”

“Dump me overboard?” she exclaimed.

“Well, yes. That’s what our friend André said ye wanted. As for me, if ye’ve a yen to cozy up with me for the entire cruise, I wouldn’t be sayin’ no to it.”

She sagged in relief. “No, no. That’s fine. He said you’d have the egress plan when I got here.”

“Shame. That’s quite a noice pair o’ knockers ye’re sportin’ there.”

“Uh, thanks. When exactly do you anticipate being able to drop me off?”

“If we get under way on toime, then tonoight, late. ’Ard to tell with these Cubanos, though. They do things in their own sweet toime. Sit toight in ’ere until I come fer ye.”

“Will do.”

The big Aussie backed out of the infirmary with a grin. He’d better not literally dump her overboard. But the casual way he’d mentioned it made her fear that was exactly what he had in mind.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

A
S
THE
DRUG
-
INDUCED
drowsiness wore off, sharp awareness replaced it, turning Alex’s paranoia into action. As dusk fell, he stole a car and headed out. Havana was where he had knowledge that could get him out of Cuba. He had to make a quick trip to Washington, D.C., to take care of a few loose ends, and then he was going off the grid for good. He’d had it with double-crosses and backstabbing. He wasn’t about to stick around and let them kill him. Or worse.

He paced the confines of the ruined house, working feeling and blood flow back into his legs. Christ, what had they shot him up with? He felt like death warmed over. His fingers were numb, and his emotions were similarly anesthetized, which was the one decent side effect of being drugged.

Now that his mind was clear, he could be properly furious that Katie had betrayed him and gone over to the enemy like that. Although, she’d never made any secret of being a dyed-in-the-wool American patriot. Logic dictated that he should feel anger toward her. Rage, even. But instead, he felt an almost robotic calm. That, and a certainty that he would kill her before he let her betray him again.

And then there were his supposed employers. He rolled his eyes. He knew better than just about anyone how dirty major governments really got their hands. Screw them all. He was done.

*

K
ATIE
ATE
HER
snacks and hid in the infirmary for the evening. Whether the crew would actually gang-rape her or not, she had no idea. She suspected the Aussie had said it just to get into her pants. But she wasn’t a hundred percent certain, hence the hibernation act.

A ship’s mate of some kind had come in to meet her and ask if she was properly provisioned to sail. She’d managed to maintain a pleasant expression and meet the man’s eyes when she said she was. She lied and said that a crew member had already given her a tour of the ship, too. He checked off a box on a clipboard and left quickly after that.

She napped on the bottom bunk until it was time to sail. The
Caelum
started to rumble and shake as the mighty diesel engines came to life. The sound was shockingly loud. She couldn’t imagine weeks and weeks of living with that roar around her. It was maybe an hour until the ship shuddered into motion and began to rock ever so slightly. They were under way.

It was disorienting and more than a little nauseating to be tucked into this tiny, windowless cabin that rolled very faintly but continuously. She barfed into the sink and then downed a packet of antiseasickness pills she’d spotted in a drawer earlier. Too miserable to sleep, she browsed through some sort of medical reference book she found in the desk drawer. Lord, how did Alex learn all this stuff? It was dry as dust and half in Latin.

She had no idea how late it was when a quiet knock sounded on her door. She cracked it open to reveal the big Aussie. “It’s toime, lassie. Oi’ve got the conn for the next hour.”

“Um, okay.”

“Grab yer loife jacket and c’mon.”

Donning the bulky orange flotation device, she followed him down the passageway, which was lit only at long intervals by single lightbulbs. It was creepy as heck. He led her into the stairwell and headed up. She jogged after him and emerged onto the open deck of the ship with a gasp of surprise. It was raining. Ribbons of gray streaked downward in the glow of the ship’s running lights.

“Are we meeting up with someone out here?” she asked doubtfully. It was pitch-black beyond the ship’s rails. She couldn’t even see where the ocean ended and the sky began. It was just blackness and more blackness stretching beyond the rusty metal deck. How on earth was another vessel going to find them and rendezvous with them in this mess?

“A ship’ll be along to scoop ye up afore long. ’Ere’s yer dinghy.” He shoved a bulky, heavy pack into her arms.

Her
dinghy?
“What am I supposed to do with this?”

“Pull the orange tab and climb aboard. She’s got a transponder. Salt water activated. Yer roide’ll pick up the signal and come along.”

Stunned, she let him take her by the upper arm and lead her over to the railing at the edge of the ship. Holy crap, it was a long way down. No way was she jumping off that. There’d better be a ladder around here somewhere for her to climb down. Although even that was a daunting prospect.

“Be sure to jump well clear of the ship. ’Twould be a shame if ye got sucked into the
Caelum
’s propellers and minced to bits.”

“Has anyone ever told you you’ve got quite a way with words?” she asked dryly.

He tied some sort of line coming from the dinghy around her waist as he replied, “Sheilas call me a silver-tongued devil all the toime.”

Emphasis on
devil.

“Ship’s watch’ll be makin’ rounds soon. Off ye go, then.” The Aussie grabbed her around the waist and had the gall to actually grin as he bodily hauled her to the rail.

“No! You can’t do this!” She fought with all her might but was no match for the burly sailor. He picked her up off her feet and threw her out into space.

*

A
LEX
PAWNED
THE
solid gold bracelet operatives like him wore for emergencies just like this one. He got a fraction of its value but he wasn’t concerned. A casino was open just down the street.

He walked down the Havana beachfront to the hotel and its attached casino, keeping careful watch for tails. He knew he’d been clean when he entered the city, but that didn’t mean someone hadn’t picked him up in the past hour. Watchers were everywhere in this town.

The all-consuming panic from before had settled down enough for him to function with caution and discretion. A lifetime’s worth of training came down to this moment. He was a spy, fully in his element and at the peak of his abilities.

At the casino, he traded his meager stack of cash for chips and headed for the blackjack tables. It was the easiest game to cheat at and the fastest to accumulate winnings at. Of course, the blackjack tables were closely watched for card counting and other illegal behaviors. But he had at least an hour to play before anyone got suspicious enough to detain him. He glanced at the dealer’s watch and got to work.

*

A
HORRIBLE
,
GASPING
scream escaped Katie on the heart-stopping fall thirty or more feet down to the water. What breath she had left was ripped out of her by the fricking freezing temperature of the water as she slammed into it.

Panic clawed at her as the black water closed over her head. Bubbles tickled her face as the life jacket did its work and carried her back up to the surface. She popped up like one of the little red-and-white plastic float balls her dad attached to her fishing line as a kid.

She heard the roar before she felt the pull of the
Caelum.
Turning in the water, she recoiled, backpedaling hard with hands and feet as the massive hull of the ship loomed shockingly close. A terrible, churning turbulence tried to suck her forward. She kicked with all her might, scared out of her mind, certain that she was about to be minced to bits, after all.

As quickly as the awful suction started, it stopped. The ocean settled into blackness around her once more, and she bobbed, tiny and helpless on the not-inconsiderable swells as the
Caelum
quickly retreated into the night. The dinghy. Where was it? Had she lost it in that damned fall?

She felt at her waist and found the line. She reeled it in and spotted the black bundle floating in the water beside her. She fumbled around on its slick surface and found what felt like a T-handle. She gave it a tug, and the damned thing practically exploded in her face. If she ever saw that Aussie again, she was going to have to hurt him.

The dinghy turned out to be a tiny little circle of black rubber tubing with a membrane suspended in the middle. And it was a pain in the butt to climb aboard. She tipped it over twice before she managed to heave herself across it far enough to grab the far side and scramble into the middle. She flopped on her face and got a mouthful of foul seawater, but managed to right herself, cursing. She didn’t know whether she was more eager to kill Alex or the Aussie for getting her into this predicament.

She scouted out the tiny vessel and found a small cone made out of heavy plastic. She used it to scoop most of the water out of the bottom of the boat. Attached to a nylon cord, she found the emergency locator beacon. An orange light flashed on one end of it, so she presumed it was activated and calling in her supposed ride. The beacon turned out to have a flashlight built into it, not that the thing did her a lick of good. All it showed her was rain falling from above and scary big swells below. She turned the light off. Ignorance was bliss right about now.

She was delighted to discover some sort of waterproof cover rolled up and tied to one side of the raft. She unfurled it over herself. Wet, cold and miserable, she huddled beneath it and listened to the rain pattering off her meager protection. The thin rubber floor of the raft did little to insulate her from the heat-leeching chill of the sea beneath her, and she curled into a ball of misery on her knees in a failed effort to conserve body warmth.

She held the cone outside the tarp and caught a few ounces of rainwater at a time in it, which she drank. Up and down, up and down, the dinghy went. She barfed over the edge of the raft enough times that her stomach finally was completely empty and she only dry heaved now and then.

Once her clothes dried out, she warmed up a little. Just enough to make the mistake of peeking out from under the tarp. She was a tiny speck in the middle of a giant, yawning blackness. There was no way anyone would ever find her out here.

This was so not how she’d imagined dying. Her thoughts turned to Dawn and she grieved for the little girl who’d lost one mother at birth and now was going to lose another one to sheer stupidity. What had she been thinking to follow Alex to Cuba? Had she been so besotted with the man that she’d been willing to throw away everything, even her responsibility as a parent, for him?

She argued with herself that the purpose in going to Cuba had been to make sure Dawn had two parents to raise her. But now she saw it for the insanity it had been. Funny how, now that she was dying, so much became clear to her.

One fact stood clear of all the rest. She’d been a damned fool to love Alex Peters.

*

I
N
FORTY
-
FIVE
MINUTES
,
Alex had enough chips to buy his way off the island even if he had to take less than legal means of transportation. He tossed a hefty chip to the dealer and took the rest of his stack to the cashier’s window. No sense getting greedy and attracting too much attention to himself.

The hour was late, but he still caught a taxi downtown to the establishment of a jeweler who ran a lucrative side business forging international travel documents. The man was grumpy when Alex pounded on the back door at this hour, but let him in when he saw the wad of cash in Alex’s fist.

It would take the forger overnight to work up a throwaway passport and fake visa, so Alex headed back to the beach to hit up a couple more casinos for the funds to pay for the documents. Prices had gone up since the last time he’d been down here.

He made drive-by hits on three casinos before he figured he had better not press his luck any further. He took his winnings and retreated to a hotel room to clean up and sleep off the past two days.

K
ATIE
JOLTED
AWAKE
when something bumped the side of her dinghy. Crap. Was that a shark? She’d heard they rammed stuff they were curious about.

“Anyone home?” a voice called.

“Yes! I’m here!” She tore back the tarp and reeled back at the sight of a fat rubber bulge right in her face. A man peered over the edge of it. “Who are you?” she asked cautiously.

“The United States Navy at your service, ma’am.”

“Omigod, am I glad to see you.”

“Folks usually are, ma’am. If you’d give me your hand, I’ll help you into our vessel.”

She clambered over the edge of the bigger inflatable boat and envied the guy his wetsuit. A second man was seated in the back of the craft at the controls of an outboard motor. This fellow tossed her a wool blanket, which she eagerly wrapped around herself.

“You wanna save your dinghy?” the first guy asked.

“Not particularly.” She flinched at the speed with which he whipped out a huge knife and slashed her little lifeboat to ribbons. God. Had her life depended on something so fragile? After-the-fact terror rattled through her.

As her raft disappeared into the murky depths, the rescue craft made a sharp turn and accelerated toward another vessel. A honking huge gray ship. She recognized the lines of a destroyer. Wow. André had sent the U.S. Navy after her, huh? Cool.

Not surprisingly, the crew aboard the destroyer gave her plenty of curious looks as they opened a waterline hatch and helped her aboard. She was hustled up to an infirmary not unlike the one on the
Caelum,
but many times larger. The corpsman who examined her declared her unharmed by her adventure. She was given a dark blue hoodie sweatshirt and matching sweatpants and led to a small cabin somewhere in the belly of the ship.

The sailor who escorted her to her room informed her that a helicopter would airlift her to Miami in the morning. Thank God. She was ready to be done with boats and water for a good long time. A sailor she was
not.

*

A
LEX
GAVE
A
mental sigh of relief as the customs agent handed his passport and visa back to him. Normally, he would never travel on such hasty documents, but he was in a hurry to eliminate the last obstacles to a clean break with his past life.

He’d lost two days to travel: one to waiting for the passport to be made, and then another one flying south to Caracas. There were no direct flights between Cuba and the United States, which had necessitated the intermediate stop. He’d had to spend the night in Venezuela before he caught a morning flight to Miami. He would go on to Washington in a few hours.