Vortex (Cutter Cay) (3 page)

He fingered aside a strand of wet hair where it had fallen over her eye. “Something bad happened to you there?”

“Yes.” She touched the headache pulsing in time with her erratic heartbeat. “No. Maybe. I don’t remember.” The sick feeling in her stomach intensified. This not remembering would only work if Logan Cutter bought into it. But the intelligence in his eyes made mincemeat out of
that
idea. Not to mention Daniela was pretty sure amnesia didn’t last forever. Still, it would certainly work for tonight. Tomorrow was another day.

He applied antiseptic sharp enough to sting her nose. “How did you manage to fall overboard, Annie?”

A hot, annoying tear rolled down her cheek as she forced herself to meet his incredible, piercing azure eyes. He was far too damn close. The heat of his coffee-scented breath tickled her cheek. “I don’t remember.”

Gentle fingers adhered a couple of butterfly bandages across the cut. It almost didn’t hurt like hell. She gritted her teeth.

“All right. Let’s not worry about it tonight. It’s late, and clearly you’re traumatized as well as exhausted. The cut and bump are taken care of for now. Have a good night’s sleep. Nothing bad is going to happen to you on board the
Sea Wolf,
I promise.”

Daniela prayed he was right.

Two

“How’s she doing?” Wes whispered, as Logan partially closed the cabin door and stepped into the companionway. His two best divers, Wes and Jed, and his captain, Piet Vandyke, were waiting for him. Dog wagged his tail violently as Logan emerged from the cabin. The animal, a salt-and-pepper wolf/Alsatian mix, was reasonably civilized, but he was leery of strangers. Logan figured the woman had had enough trauma for one night. She could meet Dog tomorrow.

“Annie doesn’t remember much more than her name right now,” he said quietly as Jed let go of the dog’s ruff and the beast padded over to butt his head against Logan’s hip. “Either from the trauma, or from that knock on the head. I patched her up, but she refuses to go to the hospital. Thank Dog for seeing her. I sure as hell didn’t.”

He’d been doing tai chi on the aft deck before turning in when the dog had barked manically and refused to stop until Logan went to the rail to see what the hell he was going on about.

“You wanna fly her in, or you want me to do it?” Jed asked. Logan noticed the two unopened beer bottles in his hand. “Chopper’s ready to go.”

Dog’s tail beat a fast rhythm as he looked at the partially open door. Logan absently slid his fingers into the animal’s thick pelt, massaging Dog’s muscled neck. Dog groaned his appreciation, leaning against his legs. “Leave it out, but I don’t think we’ll need it tonight.” The helicopter was folded neatly, and had to be brought up to the helipad by elevator to the deck.

“She polished off the tea, then conked out, exhausted.” And she’d fought sleep as if the hounds of hell were after her. It was only after he insisted she lie down, and at least close her eyes and rest, that she’d reluctantly done so. Her breathing had changed almost instantly, indicating her exhaustion. He’d covered her with a light blanket and left the cabin to come out and talk with the guys.

Logan braced his feet against Dog’s considerable weight. “We’ll let her sleep. See how she’s doing in the morning. Even with the memory loss, whatever she experienced was powerful enough to scare the crap out of her. She begged me not to return her to port.”

“Drop anchor again?” Vandyke, a slight, sandy-haired Dutchman in his mid-forties, had been with Logan for twenty years.

Logan felt the deep-throated throb of the engines beneath his feet, rumbling in preparation for a move to a new dive location. Hopefully
the
new dive location. “Yeah. For now.”

They’d be going in the morning, because this location had yielded zip—a big, fat, fucking zero—and the crew and divers were bored. The
Nuestra Señora de Graza
was exactly where Logan had calculated she’d gone down, but they’d found none of the treasure that had been listed on the manifest. Not a single doubloon, gold bar, or emerald. It was as if the galleon had made her return trip from Lima to Spain—empty.

They’d done as much as they wanted to do with the wreck and debris field; time to move on. Logan had reached that conclusion just before he’d pulled Annie from the water.

“Will do.” Piet left to return to the bridge.

“Well,” Jed said considering. “Fishing a beautiful woman out of the drink will relieve the boredom some.”

Boredom wasn’t good on a ship, even one the size of
Sea Wolf
. Frustration had frayed tempers, even though they were used to the challenge of painstakingly searching for treasure ships. Yet Logan had been so sure his quarry was right where no one else had thought to look. Damn, he hated being wrong. But wrong he was.

“Regrouping and finding our treasure will do that,” he told his friend shortly. “When Annie remembers what happened, one of us can fly her into Lima.”

“Sure.”

Wes wore a worried frown. “Think she fell from one of the cruise ships? Or possibly one of the sports fishing boats?”

“Catch and release as if she were a black marlin?” Logan didn’t think anyone in their right mind would see this woman and throw her away. “No idea. She might be a tourist, but I suspect she might be local.”

“She doesn’t
sound
local, but, yeah. Maybe. I checked the labels in her clothes. Nothing distinctive,” Wes told him, then added, “Wherever she came from, she should be watched. Concussion or whatever.” He shot a worried frown at the partially open door. His white T-shirt stretched over his wide chest and bulging biceps. “I don’t mind staying with her tonight. She should be woken up every half hour or so.”

Logan shook his head. “Go ahead and turn in. I’ll let you know how she’s doing in the morning.”

“You su—Yeah. Okay. Night.”

“That was pretty decisive,” Jed murmured, amused when Wes’s cabin door shut further down the corridor. The two men were close in height, but where Logan’s hair was dark, and a bit too long, Jed’s was a streaky surfer blond and fell to his shoulders. “Your mermaid has a powerful allure, everyone including Dog wants to protect her.”

“There’s nothing here she needs protecting from,” Logan pointed out testily.

“She doesn’t know that.”

Logan slid his fingers in the front pockets of his jeans. “She’s skittish all right.”
More than.
“I’m not sure I believed her about the memory loss. But that knob on her head says she
might
be telling the truth. And honestly, even though most people do, I couldn’t think why she’d lie. If I hadn’t seen her out there in the dark, the questions and answers would be moot. She’d be dead right now.”

“Not prepared to take her at face value?”

Jed knew Logan’s stance on liars well. The two men had been friends for more years than Logan cared to count. The rest of the guys on board were all friends as well as employees. Most had been with him since he bought his first dive boat after he made his first major find and became a multimillionaire at seventeen.

He trusted all of them, but Jed more so than the others. Logan kept offering his friend his own ship, and Jed kept refusing. He liked to dive, but didn’t want the responsibility and all the rest of the shit that was involved in running his own dive team, ship, and crew. The arrangement suited them both.

“Let’s just say I reserve judgment.”

Jed handed a beer over, since neither would be flying tonight. “Fair enough. Pirates?” he asked, his voice low as he leaned against the polished teak wall opposite Logan.

Logan popped the cap. “Christ, anything’s possible out here.” He took a pull of the cold brew. Like an apple, he had one a day, if that. His father had been many things; a drunk was just one of them.

“There wasn’t any indication of another ship nearby, though,” he pointed out. “Just that fishing trawler while we ate dinner, and that was four to five hours ago. The mysterious Annie doesn’t look like the kind of woman who’d enjoy an excursion on a working fishing boat to me.”

“Vandyke’s looking into that, right?” Jed drank his beer, then indicated the open door with the bottle. “Shouldn’t be too hard to track down a fishing boat.”

“Unless it was up to no good,” Logan said grimly. “Could be a kidnapping attempt gone wrong—God only knows there’s plenty of bad shit for people to do way the hell and gone out here if they have a mind for it. Drugs. Pirates. Piet will track down the registry of the trawler, ask some discreet questions of the cruise line. Could be she fell from a pleasure craft day-tripping. Drifted on the tides…”

“Someone is sure to have reported her missing,” Jed speculated, drinking. “We have no idea how long she was in the water.”

“She had the life vest, but as you saw, it wasn’t fastened properly, and could easily have slipped off her in the swells. It’s a fucking miracle she survived.”

Realizing they weren’t going to move to Logan’s comfortable cabin next door, Dog sighed and lay down at his feet. “Hell of a long shot finding anything, but Piet’s checking the chatter on the radio and the news to see if that’s the case. I don’t want to send up any red flags and alert the wrong people to her location if her fear is founded.”

Jed’s expression was thoughtful. “Any chance this is something cooked up by Case?”

“That’s what I’m thinking.” Rydell Case was Logan’s nemesis, and while setting some sort of trap was a very un-Case-like thing to do, it wasn’t out of the realm of possibility that he’d use an attractive woman as the bait. The man was devious and dangerous, but usually chillingly direct. Still, Logan didn’t trust him farther than he could throw him. “I don’t put anything past that son of a bitch. But he’s never given the impression that he’s stupid, just the opposite. If he put her in the water for me to find—and God only knows for what purpose—it was damned risky. If Dog hadn’t seen her, she would’ve died out there.”

The fear in her eyes hadn’t been fake, Logan was sure of it. Her amber-brown eyes had looked at him with very real emotion. Whatever had happened to her was probably even more frightening for her because she couldn’t remember.
If
she couldn’t remember.

“Hell, for all we know she’s a damned good actress, and she has an agenda worth almost dying for.”

Jed smiled. “If you truly believed that, I’d be flying her to Lima right now.”

Every protective instinct Logan had had leapt to the fore when her cold fingers curled around his wrist to hold him at bay.

Jed pushed away from the wall. “Maybe she’ll remember more in the morning.”

“Yeah, maybe. We’ll stay put for tonight. But after I talk to her again tomorrow, we’ll have to head to port to make some discreet inquiries. Someone must be looking for her.”

“Could be the someone who tossed her overboard,” Jed pointed out.

Logan agreed. “Based on the way she freaked out when I mentioned heading into Lima, it’s something to take into consideration.” A crime, not an accident? Had she been pushed, not fallen?

“I’m beat.” Jed stretched and yawned. “Let me know if there’s anything you need me to do.”

“Let’s all get some sleep, and see where we are in the morning.”

“We’re going to have to go to Plan B,” Jed pointed out with a rueful shake of his head.

“That, too.” Logan slipped inside the small cabin, Dog as his shadow, and closed the door. He’d left the light in the head on, and that door almost shut, so that just a sliver of light fell in a golden pinstripe on the carpet between the two bunks.

He leaned over to check on her. She shot straight up, letting out a bloodcurdling scream, and punched him in the eye. At the same time, Dog scrambled onto the bunk beside her, barking madly, ruff raised, yellow eyes narrowed at his owner as he protected the woman.

“Hey hey hey. It’s just me. Logan,” he told her quietly, backing away to give her room. As he did so, he made a “down” hand gesture to the protective dog. Dog stopped barking, but still stood defensively beside her, watching Logan with the same suspicious eyes as the woman. Well, hell.

Her eyes glinted wildly in the semidarkness as she splayed her hand to her throat, breathing as if she’d just been running. Half damp dark hair curled around her shoulders, and her large, expressive dark eyes were stark with fear. A sheen of perspiration made her pale olive skin glow in the dim light.

Christ. No woman had ever been scared of him in his life. He didn’t like the feeling one damned bit. Especially since it wasn’t warranted.

“What are you doing here?” she demanded, eyes flickering nervously from Logan to Dog standing on the bunk beside her.

He didn’t point out the obvious. His ship, he could be anywhere he damn well pleased. “You have a concussion. Have to check you to see how severe.”

“Back up, please. You’re too close.” She sat up, cautiously and slowly, holding the cotton blanket to her throat with both hands. Her lifted chin and defiant eyes were undermined by the way she wobbled even though she was sitting. “I’m neither dizzy, nor nauseous, and I can see you quite clearly.”

Feisty must mean she was doing better. “Can you tell me your last name?”

“No. Does your wolf bite?”

“He’s protecting you. Your bodyguard, if you will. He feels responsible for saving your life.” Logan touched a finger to his abused eye. Not buffered by water, this punch was solid. He was probably going to have a shiner for his trouble. “Do you know where you are, Annie?”

She gave him an are-you-kidding-me look. “A boat.”

“How’d you get here?”

She shrugged and lay down again, pulling the blanket up to her chin like a Victorian maiden. “I’m tired.” Dog lay down beside her, flopping his head across her belly with a put-upon sigh. The crafty animal was positioned between Annie and his master. The man who’d saved his scrawny, malnourished hide when he’d been left, tied up, outside a wharf-side eatery in Tokyo three years ago. The man who’d stood between the dog and three dockyard thugs and had the crap beat out of him for his trouble. The man whose bed he shared every night. So much for gratitude.