Pilot Error (35 page)

"I know, I'm sorry. I just—"

"I'm a survivor."

"I know that, too. I just meant... you're stressed out and not thinking clearly. Rest for a bit and then—"

"What I don't need is you telling me what to do!" She rested her hands on the cave wall in front of her and leaned on it with a heavy sigh.

"Okay," Luke answered softly. "It's your call."

Unable to look at him, Micki stayed where she was for a long moment. The wall before her was gritty and damp, with a maze of tube-like surfaces protruding from the craggy limestone. Here, the roots of a topside tree searched for pockets of soil in the rock, and ran all over the cave wall like pipes installed by a crazed plumber. As Micki's hands instinctively closed around them, a just-as-crazed idea formed.

Head back, she studied the hole in the ceiling, almost directly overhead. No one was getting in or out that without rappelling gear, but the tree roots ran up the
side
of the cave wall. In the dim light she couldn't tell if they went all the way up to the top, or snaked off underground. But if they did, if they ran up to the roof, then maybe she could tear strips off her dress hem, or Luke's t-shirt, and fashion some sort of makeshift rope to help her reach the hole...

Or break her neck trying, if that's what it took. And Micki Jacinto always had what it took, didn't she?

She turned to regard the man behind her and the stark reality of his body language hit her like a physical blow. He must have thought she was too far away to notice, because he had finally let his defenses down. Luke had folded himself around the pain of his obviously battered body. His knees were drawn up to his chest, where one arm cradled bruised ribs, and his shoulders were hunched as if to ease the agony of the torture in the wine cellar. Still, his face was turned toward her as he waited for her to answer him—waiting for her to 'make her call.'

At the sight, a sob bubbled up from deep within her, crumbling the last few bricks in her defensive wall. She fought it down, but was fast losing the battle with her fear of the elements, death, and with her heart. One by one those bricks continued to fall, splattering like the raindrops on the debris at her bare feet.

"Micki?" Luke shifted awkwardly, moving slowly as he tried to force his exhausted body to its feet. "Are you okay?"

In the flash of lightning above them, she could see his face clearly—too clearly—and she felt pain spasm within her own chest. He needed her touch every bit as much as she needed his. Stripped of all emotions but one, Micki answered the impulse without further thought and moved swiftly to fall to her knees at his side.

"I'm sorry, Luke." Of their own accord, her hands lifted to his bruised face as she spoke from her heart. "I am so sorry."

Bewildered, he tentatively reached for her hands, covering them with his own. "For what?"

"For getting us lost in this tomb, for losing my pack of food and water. For what Dirk did to you." Her fingers brushed his temples, careful not to touch the injured skin about his eyes. Unshed tears threatened to choke her and she gathered him into her arms, letting her touch say what her voice could not. "For... everything."

"Hey," he said softly, hearing past the words to the admission of defeat. His arms slipped about her in a reflection of her own actions. "We're going to get out of this. Do you hear me? Remember our agreement. We're going to survive this for Ray, and get the guys responsible for what happened to him."

'We're going to get out of this.' Not 'I'm going to get you out of this' as Dirk would have said. Not 'I'm going to survive this' as she had used as her mantra against the world for so long. But 'we.'

With that realization, searing as any lightning strike, Micki lost her battle with the convulsive sobs welling from deep inside. Tightening her arms about Luke, she felt him again mirror the action, drawing them close together in an embrace. Sobbing, she buried her face against him.

For an instant there was warmth, strength, and comfort that felt undeniably right, and then it seemed the entire world exploded about them.

There was an almighty flash and a boom that sounded as if the sky had split open. Stunned by the sound, Micki found herself flung to the sand beneath Luke. The air smelled sharply of burnt ozone, and rock shrapnel flew around their limestone cell like a detonated grenade.

It took what seemed an eternity for the world to settle back into place. As the dust drifted downward, Micki looked past Luke's shoulder toward the hole in the cave ceiling. Instead of the night sky strewn with clouds and lit by the storm, there was a flickering orange hue and the crackle of burning timber. That topside tree had just been struck by the lightning and set ablaze... just like the tree outside her bedroom window when she was a kid.

And yet... she wasn't afraid anymore. Not here, not in Luke's arms. Not together.

"You okay?" he asked. When she didn't immediately answer, he shook her a little, his voice rising in concern. "Micki?"

"I'm all right." Pushing them both to sitting, she assured him again as he ran an anxious hand over her hair. "I'm not hurt."

"That was too close."

"Yes, I think... lightning struck a tree just above us. The current must've traveled down the roots and blew out here in the cave. Right where I was standing a minute ago."

"You sure you're okay?"

"I'm fine."

She looked over to the smoldering wall and the dust cloud settling over the rubble. Then she looked back at Luke, realizing she had survived only because of her choice.

For once, she had followed her heart instead of her head. She was out of her element and completely unprepared for the situation... and still, she had survived.

***

Bleary-eyed, Dirk watched the horizon change from an endless black that matched the darkness in his heart, to a soft purple that reminded him of a bruise on an otherwise perfect sunrise. Perhaps a bruise was exactly what it was, because each day from now until his death would be likewise marred and painful to endure.

Life without Micki.

His eyes narrowed as he took a slow drag on the stunted cigarette that threatened to burn his fingers within the next few moments. Earlier that evening, in the midst of a raging thunderstorm, he had positioned the soft chair in front of the open French windows leading to the bedroom balcony. Standing on the seat, with his white shirt and trousers plastered against his skin by the wind-driven rain, he'd yelled into the face of the storm, daring then begging God to strike him dead. The answering lightning bolt that sizzled to the ground on the other side of the island was enough to make him sit back down. Then, with Micki's rejected white satin negligee to wipe the rain from his face, he stared silently, but a tad less suicidal, out to sea.

He slowly smoked his way through the rest of his cigarettes, spending long hours lamenting his lost love and plotting his revenge. Heart aching and consumed by vengeance, Dirk conspired a dozen ways of bringing down the Van Allen empire, all extremely satisfying, even if they did conflict with his sense of self-preservation. Incriminating Van Allen meant incriminating himself. Even with a plea bargain in exchange for information and his testimony, Dirk knew he'd still be looking at extensive jail time.

Not that his future in the Van Allen 'family' was much brighter. He'd been locked in that damn bedroom all night; no one was coming to pat him on the back and tell him all was forgiven. He'd completely lost face. He was an embarrassment and a liability, which probably meant someone was, even now, arranging for him to have 'an accident.'

Movement down on the dock caught his attention. Moving shadows became a cluster of men assembling under the light at the far end. Dirk took an interest in the group, as they received orders and dispersed in crews of two into half a dozen of the speedboats. Maybe his one-way cruise was closer than he thought.

More alert now, Dirk sat up a little straighter, one ear listening for the sound of the bedroom door opening to confirm his suspicions. He was relieved, however, when the boats weighed anchor and started to troll along the shoreline with spotlights, just far enough out to avoid the heavy breakers stirred up by the weather. What they were trolling for in those wet and miserable pre-dawn
hours, Dirk didn't know, but he found himself studying their red and green running lights... until their track began to look familiar. He'd seen them navigate these same precise patterns yesterday, when they'd first been searching for—

"Micki!"

Heart leaping in his chest, he was up out of the soft wing-backed chair like he'd been stuck with a pin. It was the only explanation—Van Allen's men were searching for Micki! If she'd escaped from that damn cave, then of course she'd come back to the marina to steal a boat and get the hell off that island!

It was the only thing that made sense; Dirk refused to consider the possibility that the boats were searching for her body, or for Hardigan.

Flicking his cigarette butt over the rain washed balcony, he hurried back inside the luxurious bedroom that had earlier been turned into a disaster zone by Hurricane Micki. Instead of resentful anger, this time the chaos made him grin like a madman. She was alive!

With extreme clarity, Dirk realized what he needed to do to assure she stayed that way. The question was, did he have the guts to put his revenge plan into action? Was he man enough to risk his neck to save her, forfeit his future so she could have one without him? Self-sacrifice wasn't his style, but hell, wasn't that what real love was all about?

Micki may hate his guts for a lot of things, but damned if he didn't still love her.

The decision made, he crossed to the cherry armoire he had claimed as his own, punched a 4-digit pin into the combination lock pad, and flung open both doors. On the shelf beneath his tailored trousers and silk shirts was the soft-sided attaché case—one of the few personal belongings he'd brought from the Keys. It no longer held his laptop or detachable storage drive. His laptop was, unless one of the staff had rescued it before the storm, out by the pool, where he had been using it for entertainment while waiting for Micki to wake up. And since the data on the portable USB hard drive pertained solely to Van Allen's counterfeit business in the Florida Keys, it had been relinquished to his boss upon arrival in Bermuda and was now locked in a safe in the downstairs study.

That was unfortunate, because it would have been sublimely simple to turn the hard drive over to Micki so she could give it to the police. But there was another way to get the incriminating data, and that was to go straight to the source.

He took his attaché over to the bed and sat with a smug smile. He pulled Micki's laptop from the soft-sided case, identical to his but never used, and set it open on the mattress. The battery was completely flat, so he fished in his bag for the charger belonging to his own computer, then drummed impatient fingers on the wrist rest while it booted up.

The desktop image that greeted him gave him pause. He'd forgotten about that. It was a photo of him and Micki in happier times, taken on the beach at
The Sandpiper's
tiki bar by one of the Coast Guard flyboys she called friends. Micki had her arms around him, smiling. She looked incredibly happy; she looked like a woman in love. A pang of regret hit Dirk. The photo, carefully picked by him to be a constant reminder of what they'd once shared, was now just one more slap in the face.

Refocusing, Dirk got to work, his fingers nimbly tapping over the keys. It was with great satisfaction that he found Van Allen had been too preoccupied with the preceding night's events to have thought about revoking access privileges or changing the Wi-Fi password. Moments later, he was logged on to his boss's private network.

After that, it took very little time to find what he needed. Dirk had been in the room when Van Allen synced the data on the portable hard drive with his master files. Of course, all that sensitive data on the desktop computer was encrypted and password protected, but until last night, Dirk had been one of Van Allen's most valued and trusted employees. As such, access was just a few key clicks away.

It was all there; a couple of gigabytes of transaction history that translated into pages and pages of incriminating dates, times, inventory, buyers for and sellers of the entire spectrum of counterfeit goods smuggled through the Florida Keys over the past decade. It was more than enough evidence to put Van Allen, Reynolds, and a whole bunch of people away for a very long time.

Including himself. Yet somehow, looking at the desktop photo of him and Micki, prison life seemed a whole lot less intolerable than it had just hours ago. Not when it meant Micki went free. More importantly, not when it meant he could keep her alive.

Hitting the 'Enter' key initiated the download, and a box with a progress bar started its slow crawl from left to right.

Dirk hurried back to the armoire and peeled off his rain-damp shirt. Better to maintain the image of Van Allen's second-in-command than that of a bedraggled prisoner. Maybe he'd get lucky, like with his unrevoked network privileges. If news of his stripped rank wasn't yet common knowledge, then maybe he could simply bluff his way out of the compound... once he was free of the locked bedroom. No way was he going out the door—the guard in the hall definitely knew the score.

That left the window.

He dragged on a clean black shirt, fastening three buttons in the middle as he hurried back to the balcony. His gaze traveled inward from the orange hue of sunrise, to the speedboats still methodically trolling just offshore, to the high security wall that was patrolled day and night by an armed guard, to the courtyard with its half-built gazebo.