Diamonds Are Truly Forever: An Agent Ex Novel 2 (41 page)

He picked up the phone. “Sam has Staci.”

A string of Quebecois followed. “We’ll get ’im,
mon ami.
Meet me at the marina. Jasper Bradford has rented a boat. If we hurry, we can cut ’im off.”

*   *   *

Sam shoved Staci into a rented twin-engine fishing boat, a good twenty-six-foot beauty with a sixty-degree bow deadrise meant for cutting through waves and ocean waters. Nice, sturdy enclosed cabin. Probably had a sleeping compartment belowdeck. Staci knew a boat made for open waters when she saw one. Her heart sank. Sam bound her hands behind her back and tied her to the rigging station that was meant to hold fishing poles. Fortunately, she’d managed to drop her second earring on the dock.

“Scream and I shoot you between the eyes. Right here. No questions asked.”

His words fell like ice. She believed he’d do it. In the silence in the cab on the way to the marina, she’d made another terrible connection—Sam was Drew’s mission. He had to be. Sam worked for a satellite manufacturing firm. He had access to design specs and documentation. His unexplained absences? Not an affair, though he may have had one with Lucy, too. Espionage. Selling out his country.

Everything she pieced together fit, including the extra money Sam seemed to have, his close, guarded handling of his and her mother’s finances. How long had he been a traitor? How long had Drew and Emmett been tracking him? How could Drew do this to her, come back and pretend to love her again as part of his mission? Break her heart.

She felt sick, physically sick. Heartsick. Drew’s love had all been a sham. Depressed and heartbroken, she wanted to give up, just lie down and cry. But she couldn’t let Sam get away. She had a mission. She thought about Drew’s jest over dinner about his mission—a crazy maniac who wanted to take over the world.

Drew wasn’t joking. He was telling the truth. Sam’s part of the plan.

Millions of innocent people’s lives depended on her.
She
had to do something.

She scanned the deck and what she could see through the tinted glass of the cabin, looking for her mother. Hoping, praying …

“Is Mom aboard?”

“No, I’ve left Linda behind. She isn’t cut out for the new life I plan to lead.” He sounded casual, cold, and selfish.

“Alive? You left her behind alive, right?” Staci fought to keep the tremble of fear from her voice.

“Very much so. Why would I hurt her? I love your mother.”

Really? You have a funny way of showing it.
She wanted to believe Sam was telling the truth, that her mom was fine.

Sam untied the boat from its moorings and pulled up the bumpers. Behind him the sunset showed off, lighting the sky in golden tones of orange, red, and pink.

“Calm water. Red sky at night, sailor’s delight,” Sam said, making casual conversation as if they were headed out for a friendly evening cruise. “The strait should be pleasant this evening.”

Stall him, Staci, stall him.
Sam didn’t know Drew was a world-class spy with the full resources of the US and Canadian governments behind him. Didn’t know Drew had been watching him.
Buy time.

“Why, Sam? Why kill me? What have
I
done?” She was still confused about that.

“You think I’m going to kill you?” He knelt beside her and stroked her cheek. “I love you. You’ve always been my little girl.”

At his touch, she shrank away and fought back the bile rising her throat. “Don’t game me, Sam. This obviously isn’t a pleasure cruise.”

Sam looked genuinely sad and upset, agitated. “I didn’t want it to come to this. I didn’t want to kill you
myself.
But you have nine lives, my dear. No one I hired to do it could get the job done. Don’t worry. I’ll be gentle and quick. I don’t want you to suffer.”

She shuddered. “You still haven’t answered my question—why?”

“That’s complicated.” He smiled sadly and shook his head. “I’ve always wanted to be a wealthy man.” His expression changed, became outraged. “But no one’s ever recognized my talents. Attitude passed me over for promotion time and again. And then I realized I was sitting on my fortune, I just had to seize it.

“I began selling Attitude’s secrets, government secrets, to a very nasty group of terrorists. When I realized how nasty, I wanted out. But you don’t walk away from RIOT alive. SMASH will kill you.”

RIOT. SMASH. She tried to keep track of the names.

“So I made a plan to dupe them and disappear. I didn’t want the blood of thousands of deaths on my hands. I’ve just ‘delivered’ the final installment of information they wanted and received my payoff.

“Actually, it’s misinformation. And more correctly, I stole it back. Attitude doesn’t have the technology to do what they want. But try telling RIOT and Random that.”

Random, the name on the brochure.

“I’ve just inked my own death warrant. They’ll eliminate me. If they can find me.” He shrugged. “So I have to disappear.

“Unfortunately, I can’t take your mother with me.” He sighed. “You, Staci, were in the wrong place at the wrong time. On my boat in those choppy waters at Westport. I forgot to lock one of the drawers with vital paperwork in it. I’m sure it popped open in rough water. My guess is the papers flew out and you put them back—out of order.

“I’ve been carefully creating a new identity. Whether you realize it or not, you saw it.”

Jasper Bradford. Thank goodness I blurted that name out to Drew less than an hour ago.

“I was afraid the people I’d been dealing with would find you and torture it out of you. This is really easier and kinder for you, believe me.”

He was crazy. Certifiable as he stood before her acting like some kind of humanitarian.

“But Mom, won’t they try to torture info out of her?” She swallowed hard.

Sam shrugged. “She doesn’t know anything. And I’ve eliminated the only other two people who knew—Lucy, and Wade, the nosy brew master at Hook House.”

“Lucy? But I just saw her…” She felt as if she was about to lose her wine and appetizers.

Sam patted her hand. “Don’t think about it. I try not to. Just sit back and enjoy the cruise. This is a fine boat, the best. High tech. Twin engine. Great GPS system. Should give us a nice, smooth ride.”

He rose and walked into the cab, closing and locking the cabin door behind him. An instant later the boat roared to life and jolted forward.

Sam did the equivalent of flooring it. The spray rose up around her, misting her as she assessed her situation. She sat on a large built-in fish storage locker and shivered from cold and shock. Her barely there dress hadn’t been designed for warmth. Several small bait wells sat on either side of her. The fish locker might be just large enough to hide in.

Those black high-powered twin engines Sam mentioned gleamed behind her.

She peered over the edge of the boat into the water as she fought to free herself from the railing. If she
could
get free, she could jump overboard.
And be dead within minutes from hypothermia.

Especially dressed as she was, without a wet suit or dry suit. The waters of the Strait of Juan de Fuca in British Columbia were a few degrees cooler than the waters of Puget Sound, barely more than fifty degrees in the heart of summer. This time of year, probably not out of the forties. Two to the head was probably a better way to die.

Cocky as he was, Sam had left her evening bag slung over her shoulder. She had her gun in there. If she could get free of the railing and release her hands, she might have a chance.

Whether Drew really loved her or not, he’d be looking for her and Sam. It was his job and he was good at it. She scanned the waters, watching dozens of boats cruise the harbor, enjoying the last of a beautiful day’s light. Assuming Drew thought to look on the water, how would he find her? Sam had taken her phone.

She had to stop Sam from reaching the strait.

She managed to slip her bag off her shoulder and slide it behind her to a spot where she could reach the clasp and open it.

She felt inside. Her cling fingers sat on top. She’d thrown them in nearly last, just before her phone, kind of as a gag. Feeling the fingers encouraged her. Cling fingers had saved Maxwell Smart’s butt, they could save hers. She had to stop this boat. Sam may very well kill her, but she wouldn’t let him escape.

Fortunately, Sam and her dad took her fishing and taught her about boats when she was young. If she could disable the gas lines to the engines, they’d be dead in the water. She was willing to bet she could get access to them through the fish box she sat on.

She carefully maneuvered the cling fingers toward the edge of the boat and stuck them to the side. There. It looked as if she’d fallen over the edge and gotten a grip at the last second. Not much subterfuge, but better than nothing. She remained in front of them, blocking them from Sam’s view as she tried to free her hands.

Ironically, Sam had also taught her about knots on some of their family fishing trips—how to tie them and how to untie them. She recognized this knot as one of his favorites.

The knot Sam had used to secure her with a rope to the fishing rigging fell away easily enough. But her hands were bound wrist-to-wrist with sturdy duct tape. Unless she could find a way to cut the tape, she wasn’t going to get free. The good thing about duct tape, though—once you got it started, it ripped easily enough. All she needed was a good sharp edge to get things started.

She couldn’t think of anything in her purse that would do the trick. She didn’t even have a mirror on her she could break for bad luck. Too bad. She could use any kind of luck at all. The fish box looked like her best bet. Or one of the hatches next to it. A filleting knife, a hook, or simply a rough edge. She’d take anything.

She kicked off her heels, looking, praying for a helicopter or seaplane to appear and rescue her. No such luck.

Fishing boats didn’t have rearview mirrors. Intent on escaping, and evidently totally unconcerned that Staci possessed any ability to free herself, Sam hadn’t even glanced back in her direction since starting the boat.

If she got her hands free, she could use her gun and hold Sam hostage. She picked up it and her purse, and slid off the fish locker onto her butt on the floor.

Fortunately, the fish locker was unlocked. With her back to it, she managed to open it. With a bit more maneuvering around, she wiggled past the doors and backed into it. She bumped up against what felt like a tackle box or tool kit. Hands bound wrist-to-wrist flapping behind her like butterflies wasn’t the easiest way to work. She couldn’t get the box open. She felt around. Scraped her arm and felt the sting.

Excellent. A sharp edge.

*   *   *

Drew drove the cigarette boat into the sunset toward open water, chasing the
Limit Out,
the boat Sam had rented under his alias. No sign of Staci on deck, though the guy at the rental office assured him a pretty young woman wearing a cocktail dress had boarded the boat with Sam. And she’d been very much alive.

Noe sat next to Drew, intent and smiling behind dark sunglasses as he directed Canadian operations. Both US and Canadian Coast Guards were on alert to apprehend the
Limit Out.
But right now, they were still in Canadian waters.

Drew pushed the boat to just under one hundred knots.

“A fast boat makes up for a lot of crap, does it not?” Noe yelled over the roar of the engine as they skimmed across the waves.

Drew’s thoughts exactly. “Yeah. But I’ll be a whole lot happier once we rescue Staci.”

Noe nodded and barked something in French into his Bluetooth. Suddenly he pointed to a pinprick on the horizon, skimming across the water like an insect toward Sam’s boat, closing in on it faster than they were. “What is the ’ell is that?”

Steering with one hand, Drew held his high-powered binoculars to his eyes. “A Jet Ski moving at the speed of a hydroplane. Not one of ours.”

Next to him, Noe looked through his own pair. “Not one of ours, either.”

Drew swallowed hard.

Noe voiced what Drew couldn’t. “SMASH?”

Drew slapped the steering wheel and cranked up the throttle. He was almost to redline. Damn it! He had to reach Staci before RIOT’s death squad assassin did.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

Staci broke free of the duct tape. Her wrists stung as she ripped it off, and blood trickled down her arm from the scratches she’d received. She didn’t have much time. Already it was dark in the fish box.

She put her Pocket 9 next to her and climbed into the box where she pulled a back panel loose, giving her access to the gas lines that fed the engines. She didn’t want to cut them and risk spilling gasoline everywhere. She just wanted to block them.

She reached into her purse and pulled out a pair of sturdy hair elastics. Never travel without them. Thank goodness for oversize evening bags! Working mostly by feel, she crimped one line and looped a hair elastic around it, hoping it held. The engine sputtered to a stop. Moving quickly, she banded the second line.