Navy SEAL Seduction (20 page)

CHAPTER 18

H
er head hurt and her throat was dry. Lacey struggled to open her gluey eyelids and remember what happened. And then everything rushed back.

She had arrived back at the compound, and Rose had looked at her, apologizing.

“I had no choice, Miss Lacey. They were going to kill my folks.”

And then pain exploded in her head, leaving only darkness.

The gentle sway of the ground beneath her warned she was no longer on land. Lacey raised her hands and realized they were secured with zip ties. Her head felt like a watermelon. Beneath her was a teakwood floor. Lacey heard a motor churning and voices. With caution, she raised her head.

She lay in a lounge with a long sectional sofa. Lamps glowed on tables next to the sofas. Large glass windows were covered with white shades. A set of stairs was off to her right.

Two men sat at a nearby table, assault rifles hanging from their shoulders. They were playing cards. One wore a dark business suit with a red checked tie and had a visible scar on his chin. He fit the description of the man who’d hung around outside Fleur’s school, asking about her.

Judging from the hum of the engines and the slap of water, she was on an oceanbound yacht.

She watched the men, engrossed in their game. After trying to move her feet, and realizing they were bound by zip ties, she tested the plastic ties around her wrists. Lacey lay still and tried to stay calm.

The men were arguing in Spanish about killing her and dumping her body into the ocean. They said the timing had to be right, but
El Jefe
, their boss, wanted it to be perfect.

Terror clogged her throat, but she tried to keep her wits about her. Trussed like a chicken, her arms and legs bound with zip ties. She had a little secret these thugs didn’t know.

Jarrett had taught her how to escape zip ties. He’d done it for “fun” one day after she’d bet him she could tie him up and incapacitate him.

Footsteps sounded on the stairs. She looked up and her heart sank.

Mr. Augustin.

The man went to the thugs playing cards. “You fools. She’s awake. Stop talking. Don’t you realize this woman can hear everything?”

The dark-haired man laughed. “It doesn’t matter.
El Jefe
says she will sleep soon in the ocean.”

More footsteps on the stairs. Lacey closed her eyes, trying to keep her body from shaking.

And then she heard Augustin say in a quiet voice, “Yes,
El Jefe
.”

She opened her eyes to see the arms dealer give the newcomer a respectful nod before he ran up the stairs again.

Lacey stared helplessly as her captor sat on the sofa with a smug smile.

“Hello, Lacey. I suppose this means I’m no longer officially in your employment.”

Her captor laughed. Collette. The manager of Marlee’s Mangoes.

The woman who was going to kill her.

* * *

She’s alive. She has to be alive
.

On board the
Tornado
, radar had picked up a blip about ten miles out from the southeast coast of St. Marc. It had to be the yacht Gene had mentioned. The yacht was now stationary.

Now he and his team of four other SEALs were going follow the blip and board the yacht.

Gene was on board the
Comfort
in surgery. It wasn’t known if the man would make it. He had a collapsed lung, where the bullet had pierced it, and internal injuries. But the guy was tough and chances were good.

A half-moon hung in the sky like a lemon wedge, scattered clouds blocking the light. He’d prefer complete darkness, but no choice. With gloved hands, he clutched his HK MP5SD as the Zodiac sped toward the yacht.

Wind whipped at his face as he kept his eyes on the target. He pulled his AN/PVS-7 device and put it on his head, and then flipped on the NVD goggles, turning everything putrid green. Now he could clearly see the outline of the sleek yacht, bobbing in the choppy waters.

She had to still be alive. Had to be.

Focus. Do your job.

On his left, Ace used the GPS and studied the dial. He rapped Jarrett’s hand, gave the thumbs-up. Jarrett nodded.

Let’s do this.

Jarrett took a deep breath, trying to ease the worry from his mind. Always in the past, he’d pushed aside the fear, replacing it with focus and drive. But now fear had crept along the edges of his mind like little gray blobs, because this was Lace.

His woman.

His love.

All those years without her had proved one thing. He didn’t want to give her up, not to divorce and now, not to death.

“We’ll get her, Iceman,” Coop promised. “We’ll find her and bring her home. No worries.”

He centered his breathing and mentally went over a checklist for all his equipment. The worry became a grinding little thing in his mind, but he pushed it aside.
I’ll worry later
.

She has to be alive
.

* * *

Lacey knew she was going to die. She saw it in Collette’s eyes amid the same smugness always present with her former manager. Once she had interpreted the smugness as confidence Collette could teach other women.

Now she saw it for its true nature—an arrogance and sociopathic indifference to all other concerns but Collette’s own.

Her manager sat on the sofa with a smug smile. “You nearly cost me a large sum, Lacey Stewart. But soon, all that will be resolved.”

She managed to speak through her cracked, dry lips. “Why are you doing this? Money? Don’t I pay you enough?”

The woman laughed. “You might say. Your puny salary could never buy everything I have earned on my own. You know me as Collette. My associates refer to me by my real name—Corine. Or C.A. Batista, matriarch of the Mendoza drug cartel in Guatemala.”

Lacey’s stomach churned. What the hell had she done? And why was this woman intent on killing her?

“You were the one who tried to kill my daughter?”

Her throat was parched and her lips cracked. It was hard to speak. Harder still to keep the terror at bay and keep from panicking.

“I wanted you out of the country. It almost worked.” Collette scoffed. “And then everything seemed to fall into place, except that fool Montana resigned and left the country. Had he remained, and you had left for the States, I would have assumed control of your charity. That’s no longer an option.’

“Why do you want my charity?”
Keep her talking, stall for time. Get answers, be aware of your surroundings.
It was what Jarrett would have done.

“I don’t care about your stupid charity. I care about your land. I had a very sweet deal worked out with the former owner. I paid him a healthy amount each month for using his land. He asked no questions and never came onto the property. But he died and before I could purchase it outright, his son sold it to you. The do-gooder from America who wished to form a charity.”

“Were you the one who killed Caroline?” Lacey demanded.

Collette’s gaze flicked away. “Paul warned me to be subtle. But his foolish, feeble attempts to scare you away weren’t working. The dead chickens, the painted threats done by that imbecile you hired as a gardener. The dead body on the mango tree seemed a perfect way to cast suspicion on you and make you leave. And still, you remained. Paul was a fool. He grew too fond of my product, and I had to do something.”

Her father’s friend, her business partner, was in on this, as well. Was there anyone surrounding her she could have trusted?

Jarrett. She prayed he knew she was missing.

“What did you do with Rose?”

“You don’t have to worry about her any longer. She was terrified I would follow through on my threat to execute her parents. Rose was quite an asset in helping me smuggle Caroline Beaufort’s body onto the compound and hanging it from the tree and giving access to my men when they started the fire. All of that should have chased you away. But it didn’t.”

Poor Rose. The housekeeper had betrayed her, as well, but she paid with her life.

“With you missing, I will take charge and no one will question my authority.” Collette smiled. “I will convince your father that you would want Marlee’s Mangoes to continue. It will be your legacy. The houses you wished to be built on the land will never be built. It is impossible. That land where you wanted to build houses hides my lab and the cocaine I hid there for the past four years.”

The woman was insane. She could see it now, in her eyes, and the light she’d mistaken for zeal. It was power Collette craved. In an odd way, she found herself respecting Collette. To work for nearly a year in a low-level management position for a charity, all to conceal her true objective, took enormous cunning and patience.

Then she looked right at Collette and felt a slow-burning rage.

The woman headed one of the largest drug cartels outside Colombia. And all this time she had hidden cocaine right underneath Lacey’s nose.

Collette wasn’t patient or clever. She was greedy and power-hungry. Maybe it gave her a thrill to pretend to be managing the mango operation while she plotted on how to take down Lacey’s charity and ruin everything. Collette didn’t care about the women’s lives, her own country. She only cared about herself and her drug empire.

“You present a little problem. If we kill you and dump you into the ocean for the sharks, with the ocean currents you might never be found, and I need your father to claim your body so you can officially be declared dead. But we can’t keep you here for long. I have a business to run.”

A cruel smile touched her mouth. “I need a way for them to find you...after you’re dead. Bow rider won’t fully sink. They’ll find the wreckage with your body.”

She beckoned to one of the men. Shouldering his assault weapon, he came over. Collette took a pistol from the holster attached to his waist.

Jarrett had a pistol like that, she thought in rising terror.

“Bring her outside. I don’t want to stain the floor.”

The man picked up Lacey and flung her none too gently over one shoulder. He climbed down to a bow rider boat bobbing in the ocean.

The boat was taking on water, fast. The man dumped her onto the starboard aft bench as Collette followed.

She recognized the elegant keychain dangling from the starter with the initials PL.

She wasn’t alone. In the faint glow of the yacht’s running lights she saw a man sitting near the helm. Dressed in a pair of dark knit slacks and a white shirt, he stared sightlessly at the sky, a round hole neatly piercing his skull. The dead man was her business partner. Paul.

From the yacht’s deck, Collette laughed.

“Paul was so worried about you,” Collette called out. “He wanted out and was no longer an asset and begged me to spare you. Now when they find your body and the note we left at your house, they’ll blame him. The both of you went on a little night ride and it was a murder-suicide.”

As Collette raised the pistol, Lacey jerked her body around, praying the woman would miss her heart. The gun fired. Pain exploded like a firecracker. She slumped downward, knowing if Collette saw she’d failed to hit vital organs she’d finish the job.

Playing dead in the darkness offered her only chance. If Collette thought she was dead, the woman might leave, buying her time to make her escape. Lacey did not move, trying to keep her breathing as quiet as possible. The white-hot burning in her body and fear made her want to scream, but she did not move.

You’ve got a chance. You can make it.

“Stupid spoiled American girl. Why couldn’t you have stayed in your own damn country?”

Through the red fog of pain burning in her shoulder, she watched her former business manager climb the ladder back onto the yacht. And then the yacht sped off, the giant wake crashing into the bow rider.

Blood streamed down her arm and over her chest. She couldn’t focus. Lacey labored to breathe.

And then she envisioned Jarrett’s stern face, his scowl, as he yelled at her. “Don’t give up. I’m a SEAL. I never give up the fight.”

You can do this
, she heard his deep voice in her head.
Save yourself
.

With every last ounce of strength, she raised her hands above her head and slammed them downward. Pain exploded in her chest like a hammer. Lacey screamed, but the zip ties broke. She hobbled to the helm. The engine did not start. She fiddled with the radio, before realizing the housing was destroyed.

Hopping to the bow, she tossed off the seat cushions from the benches, and lifted the lid of the hidden storage compartment. She’d been on this boat before. Paul was anal as hell about his boat and always made sure the life vests were stored here, along the EPIRB, the Emergency Position Indicating Radio Beacon.

Collette had planned this too well, but perhaps in her enormous arrogance, the woman forgot. And she didn’t know Paul and his anal-retentive streak.

A sob rose in her throat.

No life vests. The EPIRB was dead. She found Paul’s rusty fishing knife and sawed at the zip ties on her ankles. After freeing her legs, she kept searching through the compartment. Her fingers scraped over something silky. She pulled it out and found three flags. The flag of St. Marc, a US flag and a pirate flag. No first aid kit. Only a small fishing cooler, empty and stinking of bait fish.

But hidden by all of them, tucked into the corner... She nearly wept. A flare gun. Lacey picked it up and checked the chamber. Empty.

But she knew something Collette did not. Lacey wrapped her wounded shoulder with the US flag and cinched it tight to slow the bleeding. She went aft, passing Paul’s body, trying to keep her mind clear, her breathing centered. Jarrett had been in worse scrapes. He wouldn’t fall to pieces like a wussy girl and break down.

Paul had this bow rider specially designed. There was additional storage under the starboard cushion. Lacey tore off the cushion and lifted the lid.

“Thank you, thank you,” she whispered.

Nestled among two towels and a colorful bathing suit was a small box. She opened it and saw two flare cartridges. Water had already poured into the aft section, and the boat listed starboard. The towels were soaked. Water had seeped into the plastic packaging. It might not fire.