UndercoverSurrender (16 page)

“Maybe you could start debriefing your daughter by asking
her if she’s okay instead of making snap judgments about what she went through.
Christ, she could have been gang-raped for all you know.”

Her father’s face drained of blood in that second and he
looked at her.

“I wasn’t,” she said quietly.

“But she could have been. She almost was. Not to mention
almost killed more times than I can count.”

For once, her father looked contrite. “I’m sorry, Samantha.
I’ve just been so worried. I don’t think I’ve slept an hour since those, those
pirates showed up. I’m not thinking straight.”

“That’s okay, Daddy.”

Her father looked from her to Vik and then back again. “But
you
were
in his bed. I guess I just don’t understand that.”

“Haven’t you ever heard of Stockholm Syndrome?” Vik demanded
testily.

“Yes, I have. So my question would be what’s your excuse?”

“Stop it. Both of you,” Samantha snapped. “All you need to
know, Daddy, is that Vik protected me. He kept me safe. He
killed
for
me. And what happened between us
is
none of your business. And that’s
all I’m going to say about it.”

Vik shook his head. “This a royal screwup. This whole thing.
A year’s worth of work just lost. And the only good thing that’s come out of it
was that Samantha wasn’t hurt. You should be kissing the ground in thanks for
that instead of grilling her about who she was in bed with. She was brave and
resourceful and she—”

He stopped, dead, looking at her and then, with a shake of
his head, left the room.

“It’s just possible,” her father commented, “your taste in
men is improving.”

Chapter Seven

J.D. was at the railing, smoking a cigarette.

“I thought you gave those up.”

He shrugged. “Nice little girl you got there, Vik. Fine
catch.”

Vik laughed. “
As if
. Now she’s back with her daddy,
I’m sure she’ll be jet setting and whatever else it is she does.”

“Not on a yacht, though, if I had my guess.”

“No. Probably not. She is a nice girl, though.”

“Nice? I heard a little of that back there. Sounds like you
got a crush on her.”

“Yeah. Maybe. Her old man’s an asshole.”

“No argument from me. I just go where they tell me.”

“How’d you end up on this though? Don’t you usually work
Mexico and South America?”

“When we thought we were going to storm the yacht, they
wanted somebody participating in the raid who’d recognize you. Better chance
you wouldn’t get your head blown off.”

“Gee. Thanks.”

“So you really think somebody attached to this rescue
mission warned Visto in time for them to send those assassins?”

“I’m positive of it. The only question is whether that
person is on board or not.”

J.D. took a drag on his cigarette. “Got any ideas how to
tell?”

“I’m fresh out of ideas.”

Samantha’s father had gone off to see the pilot about
getting off the ship. “Not to our yacht, though?” she asked anxiously.

“No chance. I’m going to sell that cursed scrap of metal
first thing I do.” Then he added, “Assuming I get the proper price for it.”

Good old Daddy. Back to business as usual it looked.

“No, I’d like the pilot to take us to Bangkok if it’s within
range. I don’t know. He seems awfully conservative. I couldn’t get him to even
take off in a little rain. If he would have, we might have spotted you when you
were still adrift in the motorboat.”

Instead of in bed with that man
, he as much as added.
Then he left.

She curled up on a cushion and gazed out the porthole. Maybe
she should go find the puppy.

Some clean-cut man approached her, hand outstretched.

“I’m Avery Windom, from the State Department. I just want to
shake the hand of a very brave little girl.”

She knew this guy was just trying to be nice, but his
comment grated on her nerves. She’d like to see
him
driving the boat
away while being shot at by assassins. He’d probably be livid he got his shoes
scuffed up.

“Oh well, yes, thank you.” She reluctantly took his hand,
noting his fingers were unpleasantly clammy. “I’m still just, er…” Her voice
tapered off.

“Certainly. That’s more than understandable. I just wanted
to introduce myself and say that if there’s anything you need, please don’t
hesitate to let me know.”

“Do you know where Vik went off to?”

“The Interpol agent?”

“Yes, I mean, is that his real name?”

“I really don’t know, Miss Reynolds. And I’m afraid I
haven’t seen him.”

“He’s up on deck,” a familiar voice said. “Father pointed
him out to me just before he stormed off to yell at the pilot.”

Samantha looked up with surprise, but tamped down on it. Of
course Michael would be at command central. This was important to her
father—getting her back—and so it was important to Michael. The perfect CEO, he
acted on his Chairman’s every wish and followed through.

Her brother stood in the doorway to the salon, hands in the
pockets of his perfectly pressed chinos, the starched collar of his white shirt
pristine. He was looking at her with one of those unreadable looks, which could
spell anything from a long lecture to a dismissive comment. She honestly didn’t
know what was worse.

To hold it off, she said, “Vik was yelling at the pilot of
the helicopter? Why?”

“No, Father was yelling at the pilot, something to do with
taking us to Bangkok I think. Vik, if that’s his name, I keep forgetting, was
standing at the railing talking to one of the SEALs.”

“Oh, that’s right. One of them was a friend of his. Anyway…”

She glanced toward the porthole, as if maybe she could spot
him, and so did not see the hug coming until it was upon her. Fierce, tight.
Her brother hugged her as if he had thought he’d never see her again, as
perhaps he had. She tried to recapture some of her revelations from the other
night—namely, that she did love her brothers, even this most controlling,
aggravating one—but old habits die hard. She was stiffer than she meant to be,
although when he let her go she tried a tremulous smile at him.

“I really got myself into one this time, didn’t I, Michael?”

“Hey, kiddo, you had nothing to do with getting yourself
into this. The boat was in the wrong place at the wrong time and I just thank
God that Interpol agent was on board.” He held her face as he said it, staring down
at her intently. “You are in no way to blame for anything that happened to you,
during this whole ordeal. You’re a survivor, like all Reynolds, and I’m damn
proud of you for getting through this.”

She wondered if he had heard she had been found in Vik’s bed
and was trying to make her feel better. Again, she felt oddly defensive of Vik,
as she had when she was talking to Father. “I couldn’t have gotten through it
without Vik, the Interpol agent, I mean.” She glanced warily at the secretary
of state guy, who was listening in on the conversation as if he was still part
of it.

“Can you give us a minute of privacy?” Michael asked him,
reading her mind.

“Certainly. Certainly.”

When the guy wandered off, Michael crouched in front of her
and took her hands, which she was unsettled to see were shaking for some
reason. “As tough as you are, Samantha, you’re still a very young woman and you
have just gone through a harrowing experience.”

“Nobody raped me,” she blurted out.

“Thank God,” he muttered. “But if they had, it wouldn’t have
been your fault. You see that, don’t you, Samantha?”

She nodded.

“So whatever you did, or felt you had to do, with this
Interpol agent—”

“He never told me he was an agent.”

“It doesn’t matter. I would have done it myself.”

She smiled slightly. “I’m not sure you would have been asked
to.”

He smiled as well.

“But Vik didn’t seduce me or anything like that. It was the
other way around.”

“It doesn’t matter.” He said it again, but there was an edge
to his voice this time.

“I practically—well no, I actually threw myself at him.”

Michael stood up and sat next to her, straightening the
pleat of his slacks, as if giving himself time to think. “As I said, Samantha,
I would have used any weapon I had in my arsenal to win over an ally in this
situation,
especially
if you didn’t know he was an agent. There’s no
blame attached to that. It was smart.”

“No, it wasn’t like that. He was protecting me already.”

A long silence. Then, “And so he just thought it was okay to
help himself to a reward.”

She knew it. They were blaming Vik. Of course. They always
thought whatever man she was with was taking advantage of her, usually for her
money, but they seemed to easily transition that over to sex as well. “No! It
wasn’t like that.”

“I’m sure you think you’re in love now,” he said
dismissively.

“No. Of course not.” It sounded kind of hollow when she said
it, though. “I’m just saying Vik didn’t help himself to me. I helped myself to
him. It made me feel powerful, better. Sex can do that.”

This time, it looked as if she’d startled a smile out of her
big brother. “Yes, I’ve heard that,” he murmured. Then he dropped a kiss on her
forehead. “Anyway, you’re safe now. That’s all that matters.”

“Vik was up on deck, you said?”

“Yeah.”

Samantha took a deep breath and stood up.

“While you’re up there,” he called out as she exited, “find
out if Father has browbeaten the pilot into taking off.”

She nodded. When she went up on deck, though, her father
wasn’t anywhere in sight. The pilot was, but he didn’t look as if he was doing
a preflight check. She wondered if the pilot wasn’t so easy to browbeat after
all.

If they weren’t leaving right now, she presumably had more
time to hash out what she wanted to hash out with Vik, although maybe he would
leave first and go back to whatever Interpol spy stuff he had on his plate. He
was still there at the railing talking to his friend, though.

“Yeah, tough break your undercover work going down the drain
like that,” J.D. said, flicking his cigarette butt into the ocean and grinning
at Vik as he did so.

J.D. was a good guy, but not what anybody would call P.C.

“Yeah, I was so close too. That’s the killer part. But I was
talking to Chaps. If your force is game, we could go back on the island—”

“No can do, Vik. You know that call gets made much higher up
than me. We came to get the girl. We got the girl.”

Vik nodded. He hadn’t really expected anything different.

“Besides, buddy, you don’t even know if that island’s
connected to this whole thing or not.”

“It is. Some of the radio transmission I overheard when I
first got there mentioned Samantha’s name.”

J.D. looked at him doubtfully. “I could take it up with
headquarters if you really think it’s worth it.”

“Worth what?”

Samantha was suddenly behind him. She had changed into a
skirt and a loose blouse and her hair was tied up. He missed the scanty
pajamas.

J.D. nodded at her. “Miss.” Then he turned to Vik. “Let me
go talk to my boys and then maybe we can see what we can do.”

“Thanks.” When he was gone, Vik stared out to sea and
Samantha took her place beside him.

“You didn’t let all that crap from your father get to you,
did you?”

“He was worried for me.”

“Maybe, but he had no right to judge.”

“It’s never stopped him before. My brother was pretty nice
about everything, though.”

“I should hope so,” Vik muttered under his breath.

“I can really never thank you enough, Vik.”

He pushed off the railing. “Spare me the Dear John speech,
okay? I got bigger things on my mind and now that I don’t have to worry about
you, maybe I can finally take care of them.”

Behind him as he descended the stairs, he heard her grumble,
“Jerk.”

And God knew he was a jerk—for ever thinking that a girl
like her could feel something for a guy like him.

Outside of when she was being held hostage of course.

Samantha watched Vik storm down the steps.

“Was that man bothering you?”

She turned sharply at the voice. The State Department guy
was hovering behind one of the lockers on deck and came into sight. She got the
creepy feeling it was almost as if he’d been hiding.

“No. No of course he wasn’t bothering me.”

“I only ask because he seems such a rough fellow. Is he one
of the seamen?”

How was she ever to resolve anything with Vik with all these
busybodies around?

“As a matter of fact, that was the agent who saved my life.”

“I’d say rather our SEALs did that. He had you cornered in
some remote island two-by-four, waiting like a sitting duck up in some rickety
old tower in the air.”

A “you have got some nerve” was right on the tip of her
tongue, but she held it off. Why bother? Even the mixed metaphor observation
wasn’t worth it. Then something occurred to her. “How did you know we were in
the air?”

“What?”

She had been lectured by Vik and by Vik’s friend not to
share any of the concrete details of the island until the authorities could
debrief her. And she hadn’t. Not even with her father or brother. She assumed
all the others on the mission had followed the same credo. So how did this guy
know about the tower?

“How did you know we were in the air?” she repeated.

“I was briefed on it.
Obviously.
I practically
engineered this whole rescue mission, you know.”

“No, I didn’t.” It still stuck her as odd that they would
brief this, this functionary, so soon.

He made to move past her and she accidentally, purposefully,
got in his way, bumping into him.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” she stammered. “I’m all off-kilter I
guess.”

“Perfectly understandable.” He walked away quickly and she
saw his hand going to his jacket pocket. Then he stopped. A search of the pants
pocket came next, then the jacket pocket again.

“Did you lose something?” she called out.

“No,” he mumbled. “I just can’t seem to find my phone.” He
strode back to where he had been standing, scouring the deck, although not
deigning to get on his hands and knees to do so.

“Maybe you left it down in the salon,” she suggested.

With a curt nod, he left, presumably to look.

When he was gone, her hand went to her own skirt pocket and
she extracted the device. “Phone” was being rather modest about it. She hadn’t
ever seen something like this. It was no bigger than a cell, but when she
popped off the back, she saw it was more like a miniature wireless computer.

Our tax dollars at work or something more sinister?

She slipped it back into her pocket and hurried to get down
to the stateroom she had changed in for some privacy.

She had a powerful hunch. And since her time with Vik, her
instincts were kind of spot on. She had felt as if he was a good guy and in
fact he was.

If there was one thing she was going to make sure she did
after she peeked into the “phone”—and thanked her old prep school pal Mandy for
teaching her how to pick pockets with the best of them, just for fun of
course—it was to trust her gut more.

Why the hell hadn’t Samantha and her whole damn family
helicoptered off here by now? He’d heard her father arguing with the pilot
about it.

Vik sighed. “Are you going to follow me around now? Is this
some displaced post-traumatic stress or something?”