Devil and the Deep (The Deep Six) (27 page)

Bang! Bang!

“Nooooo!” Maddy shrieked, jumping to her feet.

“Damnit!” Bran cursed, taking his eye away from his target just long enough to yank her back down.

They watched breathlessly as Gene kicked away Tony’s body and staggered to a stand. Blood stained the front of his pearl-snap shirt, but it wasn’t his. It was Tony’s. Gene raised his face to the bridge house’s windows again, his expression still one of regret and determination. Ripping off the duct tape, he flung it aside, and his throat sounded like it’d been scoured by steel wool when he yelled, “I’m so sorry, Maddy!”

“It’s not your fault, Uncle Gene!” she called back.

“It’s like they say,” Gene said, his voice dropping to a more conversational level, making them strain to hear him. “When you choose the lesser of two evils, you’re still choosin’ evil. But I swear to you…” He raised his voice, pain and regret flowing like twin rivers through his words. “I swear it, Maddy! No one was supposed to get hurt!”

Maddy sucked in a wheezy breath, one that was filled with the horror of dawning understanding. “Are…are you tellin’ me you—” she began, but Gene cut her off.

“Tony’s guys were supposed to grab you and the girls and call in a ransom to Gerry!” Bran knew they were talking about Maddy’s father, Gerald R. Powers. “Once the money was paid, they’d have set you free, no worse for wear! But then everything went wrong and Tony wouldn’t stop! He wouldn’t stop, Maddy!” Her uncle’s voice broke on a hard edge.

“How
could
you?” The fear, the betrayal in Maddy’s eyes cut into Bran’s heart like a ragged piece of metal. “How could you
do
this to Daddy? To me?”

“It was for the greater good!” Gene swore. “Once we got the business up and runnin’, all U.S. oil companies would profit, includin’ Powers Petroleum. They’d stop havin’ to sign foreign contracts. They’d stop havin’ to kowtow to OPEC. He just didn’t see and I couldn’t make him!”

Maddy choked on a sob, and Bran wanted nothing more than to make this all go away. He’d barter his own sorry soul if he could somehow make this all go away.

Gene must’ve heard her, even through the narrow opening of the window, because he dropped his head, his shoulders shaking, and said something that didn’t travel up to the bridge house. Bran could feel Maddy start to stand, and he reached out and grabbed her wrist, shaking his head. “Don’t, Maddy. You can’t go out there.”

“But—”

“I wasn’t a perfect man, Maddy,” Gene said, lifting his head. Tears flowed freely down his lined face. “But before this night…” He looked around at the bodies splayed across the decks of both boats and shook his head, his shoulders sagging. “Before this I was a good man. I don’t know how to live any other way. I
can’t
live any other way. Tell Gerry I’m sorry.”

Bran knew what Gene was up to a split second before he did it. “Don’t do—”

But that was all he managed before Gene lifted the pistol and put a bullet through his right temple.

“No! No!
No!
” Maddy screamed, and Bran had to throw one arm around her shoulders to keep her from bolting.

He turned her away from the sight of her uncle collapsing onto the yacht’s deck, head open like a melon, mouth wide in one last soundless scream. And then something on the horizon caught his eye and forced him to let her go so he could swing his scope in that direction. Moonlight caught the white water kicked up by the trawler beelining for them, making it glisten. Good thing, or Bran would have missed it in the dark.

“Get these engines running,” he barked at Captain Webber. “Now!”

“What?” The captain glanced over at him, eyes wide with shock. “I can’t leave without my men’s bodies, and—”

“Normally, I would agree with you,” Bran said. “But that fishing trawler you saw on the radar is coming our way fast. And I don’t get the impression they’re responding to your Mayday.”

“What?” The captain peered over the console in the direction of the approaching boat.

“That’s why Mr. Slick…uh…Tony was being so chatty. He was stalling. Buying time and waiting on backup.”

I shoulda known. I shoulda—

“How can you be sure?” Webber asked.

Bran looked away from his sights to pin his stare on the captain. “’Cause I got a sixth sense when it comes to this shit.” He didn’t have to say
Remember what happened the last time I got this feeling?
It was there in his eyes. And the evidence that his sixth sense was on the money was scattered all over the decks of the two ships or floating around them in the sea.

Captain Webber nodded. “Right.”

Bran turned to find Maddy down on her knees, crying into her hands. He wanted to hold her more than anything else in the world, but there was still work to be done. He crouch-ran to the opposite wall of windows and threw open the nearest one. “Mason!” he yelled down. “Cut us loose while I cover you!”

He scrambled back across the bridge and scanned the deck of the yacht as Mason appeared below, knife in hand, ready to saw through the nylon cords tethering the two ships together.

“Captain!” he yelled. “We hafta get the hell outta—”

He didn’t need to finish his sentence because the engines rumbled to life. He saw Mason cut through the last rope and hollered down, “Mason! Hold tight!” To the captain, he roared, “Punch it!”

The cutter was a fine piece of American-made machinery. It exploded away from the yacht, cutting across the tops of the waves and picking up speed with every second. Through his scope, Bran watched the trawler turn to give chase. His attention settled not on the man he could see on deck, but on the long shiny tube that caught the starlight above and glimmered.

As the incomparable Yogi Berra had once said,
It’s déjà vu all over again
. The last time he’d faced down a rocket launcher was three month ago, when Maddy’s father’s yacht had been hijacked. He didn’t hear the
thump
of the weapon discharging its load, but he saw the flash of fire and the explosion of smoke.

“Hard to starboard!” he yelled at the captain. “Now, now,
now!
”

The captain didn’t hesitate, cutting the ship to the right. Bran grabbed onto the windowsill to steady himself, and looked up in time to see the rocket whiz by them, hit the ocean some twenty feet from the vessel, and send up an explosive plume of water on impact.

Lifting his weapon, he looked through his scope and was dismayed to see a second man appear beside the first one, another rocket launcher at the ready.

“Again!” he yelled when the second weapon belched up its projectile. “This time hard to port!”

The cutter sliced through the ocean like the war machine it was, easily parting the waves as its big engines roared with happiness. The second rocket missed by nearly twenty yards, and Bran steadied himself against the new list of the ship. He sighted through his scope, pleased to see the fishing boat was no match for the Coast Guard’s ship.

When he assured himself they were outpacing their pursuers and the reach of their rocket launchers, he dropped his M4. The next instant, he pulled Maddy into his lap.

9:48 a.m.…

“Coffee?” Maddy glanced up to see a Styrofoam cup steaming in front of her face.

“Bless you,” she told Rick, curling her frozen fingers around his offering. For some reason, she couldn’t get warm. It was probably eighty degrees outside, but she was freezing. Feared maybe all the coldness was coming from her heart. From deep in her soul.

“I can’t vouch for the quality,” Rick warned. “But it’s hot. And if the muddy color is any indication, it’s strong as hell.”

“I need strong as hell right now. I feel like I’ve been awake for a decade.”

They were in the bowels of the Coast Guard station on Key West in some sort of utilitarian-looking conference room with no windows. So when she glanced at the clock loudly
tick-tocking
on the wall, she couldn’t be sure if it was morning or night. She just knew she wanted sleep.
Days
of sleep.
Weeks
of sleep. As her grandma Bettie would’ve said, she was too pooped to pop.

Taking a sip of coffee, she closed her eyes and welcomed the burn. It made her feel something besides the cold of the AC units and the crushing despair of her uncle’s last minutes. Rick was right; it was strong enough to raise a blood blister on a boot.
Just what I need.

When she blinked her eyes open, she smiled her thanks and indicated the metal chair next to her.

“I think I’ll just keep standing, if you don’t mind.” Rick blew across the top of his cup. “I was sitting in that chair in the interrogation room for so long I think I may have permanently flattened my ass.”

“Do we still call it an interrogation room if we’re not criminals?” Maddy asked, taking another sip.
Come on, caffeine. Keep workin’ your magic.

“I
felt
like I was being interrogated,” Rick said.

When they’d arrived at the Coast Guard station, they’d been met by a swarm of FBI agents. Apparently, crimes in national parks and in U.S. territorial waters fell under the purview of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

“I think I answered more questions this morning,” Rick continued, “than I have in my whole life up to this point. How about you?”

“Mmm,” she hummed noncommittally. The FBI questioning had been intense. No doubt. But the CIA’s questioning after the hijacking of her father’s yacht had been worse. Of course, she couldn’t tell
Rick
that.

“Everybody else still being raked over the coals?” Rick asked, looking around the empty room.

“I don’t know about Bran or Mason,” she told him. “But according to Agent—” She blinked and shook her head. She’d spent hours in a little room with the FBI agent and she couldn’t remember his name. Her brain was mush. Her heart was pretty much the same consistency. “I’m totally blankin’ on the guy’s name,” she admitted. “Thomas or Thomson or Tomlinson. It’s somethin’ like that. Anyway, he told me they’d taken the girls to grab some food and make calls home to their parents. He’s supposed to bring them here in a bit so we can board the private plane my father sent to take us h—”

Her throat caught. Thoughts of her father inevitably conjured up thoughts of her uncle. If she lived to be a thousand years old, she’d never forget the awful look on Gene’s face right before he pulled the trigger.

“Hey.” Rick slid out the chair beside her, plopping down and throwing an arm around her shoulders. The weight of it felt immense.
Everything
felt immense. All the violence. All the death. All the loss.

“And for what?” she whispered, searching Rick’s youthful face for answers.

“What?” He blinked his confusion.

“This
night
,” she said, setting her coffee on the table so she could wrap her arms around herself to try to keep the pieces of her heart from flying out of her chest. “All of it. All the awful things that happened were done for oil.
Oil.
Smelly, black sludge that spews out of the earth. It doesn’t make sense.”

Rick’s lips twisted into a grimace. “Since the invention of the internal combustion engine, oil has been the altar that power, corruption, and greed pray at. So it makes perfect sense to me.”

The noisy clock on the wall kept track of the half-dozen seconds she sat there looking at him, really
seeing
him. “You’re pretty smart for someone so young, you know that?”

“I’m not
that
young,” he insisted, and all she could do was smile. After tonight, she might agree. She felt like she’d aged ten years. No doubt he did too.

“It’s all so ugly. So…
unnecessary
.” She shook her head. “He was a good man,” she insisted. “My uncle, he just…”

“Got himself into an untenable situation,” Rick finished for her. “And then he couldn’t live with the guilt of it, the shame of it.”

She squeezed her eyes shut. “My father is wrecked.” Her lips were quivering. “And the sounds he made when I called and told him what happened…” She shook her head.

“I’m so sorry.” Rick gave her another squeeze. “I know those words don’t count for much, but—”

“They count for a lot, actually.” She blinked away the burning wetness threatening in her eyes. She wouldn’t cry. Not in front of him. Not in front of the girls once they arrived. She still needed to be strong, project courage. Once she was home alone, then she’d let herself fall apart.
When the shakes come. When the nightmares come…

She shivered at the inevitability of it all. Then convinced herself she’d beaten back the horror before, and she’d do it again.
With the help of Bran.

Bran…

Could she really go on as if nothing had changed between them?

You promised you would
, her conscience reminded her.
You made a deal with God. And He’s not the kind of guy you renege on.

“I haven’t had the chance to say thank you for all you did tonight,” she told Rick. “You were great.”

Rick’s answering grin made his dimples deepen. “Thanks. I’d say it was my pleasure, but…” He let the sentence dangle and widened his smile. That look was back on his face.
The
look.

Oh no.
She opened her mouth to try to prevent him from saying anything. But before she could, he blurted, “You know, if you ever need anyone to talk to, I could give you my number and we could—”

“Rick,” she said, cutting him off, “you are a sweet, adorable man.” She almost said
kid
, but she reckoned maybe there was no more kid left in him. “Somewhere out there is a sweet, adorable woman who’s goin’ to give you everything you deserve.”

His eyes dimmed. “But that sweet, adorable woman isn’t you?”

“I’ve already given everything to someone else,” she told him without prevarication.

“We’re talking about Bran, right?” When she nodded, he sighed. “Well, I hope he deserves you.” He flashed her his dimples again. “But if you ever decide he doesn’t, you know where to find me.”

Maddy hesitated a second before going with her gut and throwing her arms around his neck to hug him tight.

“Thank you,” she whispered, closing her eyes. Then a sound in the doorway had her blinking.

There he was. The one.
Her
one.

Or at least he was for one wonderful, awful night…

* * *

9:52 a.m.…

Red.

That was the color of Bran’s world. The instant he saw Maddy in another man’s arms, the monster inside him roared to life, and it always viewed things in shades of crimson. It urged him to run over, yank Maddy away, and flatten Rick the Prick with a haymaker to the mouth. Just
pow!
Then, once Rick was down and out, the monster wanted to stomp on his remains.

“Bran!” Maddy pushed out of Rick’s arms. Through sheer force of will, Bran beat his dark side back and made sure his expression was blank as he watched Maddy scurry toward him. “Are they finished questionin’ you? Did they tell you if they’ve found the fishin’ trawler? Have they gone to secure the yacht and bring in…” She trailed off and gulped before finishing with, “the bodies?”

Bran didn’t answer her immediately, instead glancing over at Rick. Something in his face must’ve revealed what he was feeling, because Rick cleared his throat and pushed up from the table.

“I need a warm-up,” the young park ranger said, indicating his Styrofoam cup as he sidled by Bran. Bran waited until Rick disappeared down the hall before stepping fully into the room.

“They haven’t located the trawler yet,” he told Maddy, trying not to drown in the disappointment that filled her liquid-mercury eyes. “But they have planes in the air searching. And they’ve put the word out.”

She blew out a breath. “Well, I guess…I guess that’s somethin’.”

Something. But not everything. They both knew this wouldn’t be over until every last one of the men involved had been brought to justice.

And on the topic of the men involved…

“They ran the prints on the two bodies we brought with us from Garden Key,” he told her. “Both men were Army.”
No surprise there.
“Both in the gun-for-hire business with their former CO, a guy named Rory Gellman. From what the suits told me, Rory and Tony went to school together.”

“My daddy always says it’s all about who you know,” Maddy said with a disgusted twist of her lips that momentarily distracted Bran with the urge to kiss the expression away.

He had to look at the file cabinet standing in the corner to beat back the impulse. After a second, he managed, “Now, about the yacht…”

The tone of his voice must have told her the news he was poised to impart wasn’t good, because she placed a hand on his forearm. Despite the fact that her fingers were icy cold, a hot streak of awareness shot through him. “What is it?” she asked.

And he wished he could save her from this final calamity, the last nightmare, but he respected her too much,
loved
her too much, to withhold the truth.

“It was burned, Maddy.” She gasped. And when her lips trembled, he almost looked away again. But he forced himself to hold her horrified gaze. “All that’s left are a few bits of charred debris. The Coasties are gonna try some recovery dives later this afternoon, but…” He shook his head, not needing to go on. Not needing to tell her they’d probably never find the remains of her uncle, and her family would be left with nothing and no one to bury.

Maddy nodded her understanding, fresh tears pooling in her eyes. Tears she blinked back and refused to let fall.

So damned brave. So strong. So…
everything.

For a second there while he’d been giving his statement to the feds, he’d allowed himself to think that maybe he could make it work with Maddy. That maybe there was a chance for them. A chance for
him
. That maybe he wasn’t so much like his father after all.

And then he’d walked into the room to see her with Rick…

You were wrong, Mom. You were so wrong when you said I only got the good in you both.

Maddy searched his face. “Bran, I—”

But before she could finish her thought, the girls filed into the room. They were followed by one of the agents. Maddy stepped away from Bran to give hugs and ask the girls how they were doing. When her hand slipped from his arm, it felt like a vital part of him went with it.

“The plane is fueled and ready to taxi,” the agent said. “And I think these girls are as anxious to see their parents as their parents are anxious to see them. So whenever you’re ready, Miss Powers.”

Maddy turned back to Bran. “I…have to go.”

“I know.” If he gritted his jaw any harder, he’d likely break a bone. “Me too. I have a flight waiting to take me to Virginia.”

Her brows formed a delicate vee. “What’s in Virginia?”

“The family of one of the Coasties,” he told her, sick to his stomach at what lay in store for him upon landing, nauseous too from the thought of walking away from Maddy for the last time.
It’s for the best. You know it’s for the best.
“I made a promise. Now I have to see it through.”

“Oh, Bran,” she said, not needing him to elaborate. She was a smart cookie. She could guess what his mission must be. “I wish I could go with you.”

He didn’t say anything to that. What could he say?

For a couple of seconds she searched his eyes, looking for something she obviously didn’t find. Then she went up on tiptoe and wrapped her arms around his neck.

He tried to just stand there and take it. Tried to make himself give her a friendly pat on the back. But in the end, he couldn’t manage it and crushed her to him, burying his nose near her temple.

“Thank you,” she whispered. “Thank you for comin’ for me. Thank you for savin’ me. For savin’
all
of us.”

He couldn’t speak around the lump in his throat.

Maddy pushed out of his arms, and he had to fist his hands to keep from reaching for her and pulling her back. “So I guess…” She blew out a breath, watching him with wide, knowing eyes. “I guess I’ll…email you then?”

When he nodded, a painful look of resignation tightened her features. If he’d still been armed, he would have capped his own ass for hurting her. For disappointing her.

“Okay then,” she said and turned to the teens. “Let’s go home, shall we, ladies?”

The agent led the girls from the room, but before Maddy could go, Bran found his voice and blurted, “Hey, Maddy?”

She glanced back at him. Even windblown and red-eyed and wearing grubby clothes, she was still so beautiful it hurt to look at her. “Yeah?”

“I’m sorry for…”
For your uncle. For all the bad shit you had to go through tonight. For not being the kinda man worthy of a woman like you.
He wanted to spit out the words but they stuck in his throat, choking him. So he simply ended with, “For everything.”

She searched his eyes for what felt like an eternity. Then she nodded. “Yeah. I’m sorry too.”