White Hot (16 page)

Amazingly, his luck was holding.

Of course, this had been the easy part.

He lay very still and gave himself a minute of rest as he peeled off his mask and snorkel. His ankles were thawing so his feet throbbed like twin bastards. Pain shot up his legs all the way to his squashed, smarting crotch.

He ground his teeth and tugged in irritation at the wetsuit. This was
so
not how he’d fantasized that
particular
bit of anatomy would be feeling tonight.

Damn.
He closed his eyes as a hot jumble of emotions and sweet memories of the afternoon tangled up inside him. Unbidden thoughts of Samantha coursed through his blood. Of how good they’d been together. And how brave she’d turned out to be. Brave and determined to do the right thing, no matter how scared she was. The woman was one in a million.

His raw emotions turned to steely resolve to get her out of this, come hell or high water. And to see that the Chinese memory card with its vital information made it safely into the hands of the navy. The
U.S.
Navy.

There was only one way to accomplish either of those things. He had to get moving and reach the bridge to send that distress signal.

Ignoring the pain in his body and the heaviness in his heart, he rose to a crouch and skimmed his gaze over the deck around him, looking for a place to stash his fins and mask. Somewhere they’d be handy if he had to make an emergency exit. He decided to tie them on the end of a line and suspend them over the side. Another dangling line would never be noticed, and the gear would be at water level should he not have time to do more than jump in. He left his hood on but pulled it down around his neck, and stashed his gloves inside the zippered jacket.

He made a quick foray to the rail, lowered the gear line
into the water, then scurried back to the shelter of the capstan.

Looking around, he took in every detail of the trawler visible to him, then glanced over to
Île de Cœur
—noting that the three tangos were still arguing—then back again.

Tango One remained out of Clint’s line of vision on the trawler’s forward deck in front of the pilothouse. Still no sign of Tango Two. For now, his path to the bridge was clear.

He started across the afterdeck in a crouching lope, heading for the side door to the wheelhouse, and cast one last glance across to
Île de Cœur
just to be sure he wasn’t spotted.

What he saw nearly made him trip and fall flat on his face. He jerked to a halt, letting out a string of mental curses, then realized his vulnerable position and leapt to the back wall of the wheelhouse, cramming his body against it, directly under a rectangular window.

He whipped his gaze back to the cargo ship, praying what he’d seen had been an optical illusion. No such luck. As he watched with growing vexation, sure enough, the scuttle atop the forward ventilation shaft slowly inched up.

Samantha!

Sonofabitch!
He’d
ordered
her to stay put below! And she’d
promised
…

Anger at the infuriating woman twisted his gut in equal measure with a wrenching fear.

The scuttle rose another inch.

He had to physically stop from launching himself after her. What the hell was she
doing
?

He wanted to jump up and shout at her. Wave his arms and scream at her to get her goddamn butt back down to the hideaway. He wanted to swim back over there at breakneck speed and shake her until her goddamn teeth rattled. Until she learned to do as she was goddamn
told
!

He hissed out a breath between clenched teeth. Just
wait
until he got his hands on her.

The scuttle stopped moving and, thank God, didn’t rise any higher. He shot a quick glance at the three hijackers standing not forty feet away from her. The argument had devolved, and the head honcho, Xing Guan, was now haranguing the other two men, striding back and forth, and—
God
. Right in the direction of the partially open scuttle!

Urgency caught Clint by the throat with claws of fear. What if they saw her? What if they caught her?
What if they
—

God
damn
it. He had to get back there.
Now!

He shot up, and almost took a running step before he again stopped himself with a curse.

No.
He
couldn’t
go yet. Not until he’d hit that DSC button.

A surge of helpless frustration iced through his veins. Never before had he been so torn, forced to choose between his head and his heart.

Except there
was
no choice.

And
this
, he told himself angrily, was why it was
always
a mistake to let yourself get distracted while on a mission. A monumental error not to maintain that laser focus, regardless of the tempting diversions thrown in your path. And the worst mistake of all was to become emotionally involved with that distraction, so you couldn’t think straight and do what needed doing, without a second’s hesitation.

Ruthlessly, he shoved away his present distraction and ripped his gaze from the hatch. Samantha was a big girl, captain of her own ship, for fuck sake, and responsible for her own foolish decisions. This one included. She would just have to deal with the consequences on her own, too.

At least until he’d done his job over here. When he got back he intended to kill her himself.

Nevertheless his stomach clenched, and the quintessentially male part of him that desperately needed to protect her, with or without her permission, gave a low growl as he turned his back on her. Determinedly, he emptied his mind of thoughts of her and forced himself back on task.

After taking a calming moment, he straightened up just enough to peer over the bottom sill of the pilothouse window he’d been crouched under. As he’d hoped, the window looked into the rear of the bridge, positioned just above the map table.

The bridge was empty.

He scanned the pilot’s station, and his jaw tightened. There was a dark red, irregular stain on the captain’s chair, with matching dark streaks on the floor beneath. On the navigational console below the windshield, a few of the instruments had been destroyed, their screens smashed.

Including the compass and GPS.

A rough expletive almost made it through his clenched teeth. Both at the implications of the blood and because a distress call sent without the ship’s position was as good as useless. Even giving his best estimate of where they were, locating them in the vast Bering Sea would be like finding a bomb somewhere in the Sahara.

He spotted a pair of headphones hanging within reach of the stained chair. The radio was bracketed above it. He nearly groaned. The aging metal housing and huge dials spoke eloquently of a bygone era. Not quite vacuum tubes, but almost. Which meant the DSC had to be an external add-on, not built-in. He looked around but didn’t see the unit. Surely, the trawler hadn’t put out to sea without a DSC transmitter. That would be crazy, not to mention illegal.

He examined the radio again. And noticed several stripped wires sticking out from the back panel like bad spiked hair—as though something had been violently ripped from them. He let out another string of mental curses. One guess what that was.

God
damn
it.

He briefly closed his eyes.
Okay.
Could be worse, he told himself. The bastards could have smashed the radio, too. As long as the radio worked, he still had a chance.

Knowing this was likely the last chance he’d get, he pushed aside his physical pain and let instinct take over. His
pounding pulse slowed, his senses opened, and his body became a vortex of concentration.

Calm and steady now, he melted around the wheelhouse corner and slipped through the door, easing it closed behind him. Turning, he went to reach for the earphones.

And came face-to-face with the barrel of a gun.

Sam’s heart stopped in her chest, then hurtled into double time as she watched Clint go through the wheelhouse door.
No! Oh, God, no!

From her perch on the ledge atop
Île de Cœur’
s access chute, Sam had seen exactly when Clint’s searching gaze had stumbled onto her peeking out from under the scuttle. Seen his immediate, furious reaction—and how he’d had to crouch under the pilothouse window to calm down, shooting her dagger looks she could feel all the way across the water.

Moments later, she’d watched in consternation as one of the hijackers, with hideously bad timing, suddenly appeared in the narrow companionway leading from the lower deck to inside the bridge—just as Clint came sneaking in through the side door.

And then she saw the guard’s gun.

She gasped in shock, nearly tumbling backward down the chute. She grabbed hold of the ledge, a scream of warning leaping to her lips. She slapped a hand over her mouth and bit back the sound, helplessly watching the terrifying drama unfold across the water.

Clint stuck his hands in the air.

Oh, sweet Jesus. No!
A mewl of dismay slipped past Sam’s fingers.
Please, God, don’t let him be
—

All at once the gun jerked, and there was a blur of clashing bodies. Both men vanished below the window.

Sam froze in sheer panic, pressing her hand to her mouth so hard she tasted blood. Holding an agonized breath, she prayed for Clint to reappear.

He didn’t.

Desperation blossomed in her heart. Had he been shot?

Paralyzed with fear for him, she replayed the scene in her mind. The telltale jerk of the gun was unmistakable.

Ohgod, ohgod.
He
had
been shot!

The world swam out of focus as tears sprang to her eyes.
No!

She swiped at them, determined not to lose it…or hope.
Okay. Okay. People survived gunshots every day, right?
He couldn’t be dead! He
couldn’t
.

But the memory of Shandy’s bloody death ravaged through her, sending a ragged shudder of pain straight to her heart.

Her arms turned to jelly, and she had to let the scuttle drop, slumping down to hug herself in the all-encompassing darkness. She didn’t
want
to believe it. She fought like hell against the awful truth…but there was no use denying what she’d seen.

She’d lost him.

She’d lost him before she ever really had him.

Hunched over beneath the heavy metal scuttle hatch, she rocked herself back and forth on the narrow ledge, oblivious to the three-story drop to the bottom of the pitch-black shaft.

An emptiness filled her, so vast it nearly swallowed her whole. An emptiness tinged with profound regret.

Just this morning Clint had been so…alive. So vibrant, and intense. So tender and thoughtful. A stranger, and yet so easily able to read her every nuance. A man of honor, willing to make the ultimate sacrifice without a thought for himself.

How could such goodness be snuffed out in an instant?

She thought about the last words she’d said to him. That inane nonsense about smelling like chum. How stupid was that?

Sure, she’d had her doubts about him, at first. What sane person wouldn’t, under the circumstances? But any doubts about what side he was playing for were long gone, quickly replaced by a growing respect for the man and his selfless deeds…along with a combustible chemistry that had ignited between them like firecrackers whenever their eyes met, or their bodies touched.

And now he was dead, or bleeding and about to be dead, and would never, could never—

She swallowed, tasting bitter regret. If only she’d told him how she felt! Told him how hard she was falling for him…and asked for a chance to explore those dazzling, unexpected feelings that bubbled up whenever she was with him. To see if there might, against all odds, have been something real and lasting between them. Something that would rekindle her trust in men and her ability to read them.

And possibly even…make her believe in love again.

But no, she hadn’t told him. Instead, fear had congealed the scary words in her throat. And stupidity had emerged in their place.

Not that her blossoming feelings would have made any difference to his fate today. But she would have liked him to know, to have seen the look in his dark, expressive eyes as she told him, just once, before he…

A tear trickled down her cheek. Now she would never get the chance.

If only she hadn’t been such a damn coward.

She touched the bear claw totem pressed to her heart. “Oh, Clint Wolf Walker,” she whispered, her voice cracking in sorrow. “I’m so very sorry.”

The body of his enemy went easily over the side, feetfirst, sliding into the slate gray sea with a tiny splash. It sank
beneath the waves, disappearing in seconds courtesy of a metal winch handle lashed to its ankles.

Clint let go of the line he’d used to lower the corpse, tossed it in after, followed by the bound and weighted knot of bloody rags he’d found to mop up the bridge floor with. Of course, there was already so much blood on the bridge that a little more hardly showed.

As soon as the bundle went under, he returned to the obscuring shadow of the wheelhouse wall and stood very still, listening intently.