If The Seas Catch Fire (21 page)

Sergei was running out of time. He hadn’t anticipated being on the boat this long. It was supposed to be a simple job—kill the mark, jump ship, swim to the rendezvous point to meet Baltazar.

And now they were heading back out to sea. This was going to be a long swim, but he didn’t have a choice. Not while Felice’s men were tearing the boat apart in search of him. He needed to get to one of the aft sundecks, but there was a security guard between him and his escape route. And the boat was moving now.

He swallowed. If they stopped, and that fuck was still between him and the water, then there’d be two dead Italians on board. No way was Sergei getting caught.

As the boat approached the harbor, the boat slowed, and Felice ordered the shaking Koreans to do their jobs. Sergei winced as they dragged a crab pot outside, but he didn’t have time to worry about them now. He had to get off this boat.

Sergei hurried out to the sundeck, past the two bodies, slipped off the rocking boat’s stern, and eased himself soundlessly into the water. He swam up between the hulls and grabbed onto the rope securing his equipment.

Teeth clenched to keep them from chattering—he was sure someone would hear him if he made a sound—he clipped the karabiners to his wetsuit. If the boat moved, he’d be dragged along with it, but at least he wouldn’t be left behind or caught in the props. As he cut away his tank, a heavy splash startled him. That wasn’t a crab pot dropping. Much too big and heavy.

Like a body.

Fuck! Now there was blood in the water. Which meant sharks.

Heart pounding, Sergei worked even faster, cutting away the ties that had secured his tank. Putting it on was a challenge when he was also clipped to the network of ropes, but it was a necessary evil. No way in hell was he getting left out here with no fins, no tanks, and a bleeding corpse nearby.

The tank was the most cumbersome part, especially since he couldn’t let it touch the hulls, or else the sound might echo and give him away. Finally, though, he had it secured to his shoulders. Once he had the regulator in his mouth and the air was flowing, he unclipped himself and the rest of his gear and dove beneath the surface.

He was right about the splash—the dead man floated on the surface, a rusty plume swelling beside his torso.

Definitely time to get the fuck out of here.

Safely away from the propellers and hopefully out of sight, Sergei pulled on his fins, cleared his mask, and then started toward the shore. Considering some of the Italians thought it was fun to attract sharks and then shoot them, he dived deep to make sure they didn’t see him.

He looked at his watch. Shit. He was running out of time. Getting off the boat had taken a lot longer than planned, and Baltazar wasn’t going to wait for him.

“
I don’t see you by 10:30,
” he’d reminded Sergei last night, “
I’m assuming you’re shark chum and I’m outta there.
”

Which had seemed more than reasonable right up until Sergei’d found himself unable to make his planned escape from the yacht. He’d lost precious minutes. And not just minutes—the yacht was farther out than he’d anticipated.

It was going to be a long swim anyway, but if he didn’t make it to Baltazar in time, that was going to be a
long
swim back to shore.

He checked his compass and started swimming. He had to swim hard—between the current and the time crunch, he had no choice. And damn it, even the exertion wasn’t enough to keep him warm this far down. The water was fucking cold. Inside his fins, his toes were already getting numb. His gloves did almost nothing to keep him warm either. Gripping the regulator with his mouth kept his teeth from chattering, but just barely.

Just what he needed—hypothermia. But that wasn’t his biggest concern. Between the cold and the exertion, he was asking for the bends, but he’d be okay as long as he could surface gradually.

He passed one of the red navigational buoys, which had been marked underneath with a number six. Only two to go. Thank God.

Motion above his head caught his eye, and he looked up as a catamaran sliced two white gashes into the surface. Another boat—single hull this time—shot past. Moments later, another went by, crisscrossing the wake from the previous one. The closer he swam to buoy five, the more boat traffic cut across the water. It didn’t get any better as he neared buoy four.

Damn it. Too many boats out today, and no way to tell if they were friend or foe. He didn’t dare surface out in the open. Even without the goons who liked shooting divers for sport, the harbor was too busy to come up just anywhere. He had to surface beside a boat with a diver down flag flying to warn other boats, or else a hull or a propeller could kill him even before a coked-out Mafioso with a pistol did.

Finally, he saw the buoy he was looking for, and the boat bobbing nearby.

He ascended a few meters at a time, doing decompression stops for as long as he could. Still too far beneath the surface for a fast ascent, he looked at his watch.

10:27.

His heart sped up. He was almost out of time.

All he had to do was let Baltazar know he was here, then go back under and come up again slowly. It would take time—he’d have to go down slowly and carefully since he’d already been down and up once—but the alternative was being left out here in a harbor full of boats, sharks, and trigger happy Italians.

He made a few more decompression stops. Not much farther to go. Maybe he could still—

The props came on.

Sergei cursed into his regulator, and then swam upward for all he was worth, his heart pounding all the way.

The instant he broke the surface, he yanked the regulator out of his mouth. “Baltazar!”

The Greek turned and leaned over the side. “Oh, shit, kid. We almost left without you!” He extended his arm. “Get in! Now!”

“I can’t.” Sergei shook his head, teeth chattering furiously. “I need to go back down and come back up so I don’t get the fucking bends. I need at least—”

“No time.” Baltazar pointed past Sergei.

Sergei turned around, and swore. The Coast Guard was out. So were the Cusimanos. With a dead Mafioso dead on a boat out here, Sergei didn’t want to be around when fingers—and guns—started pointing.

He faced Baltazar again, and this time clasped his hand around the Greek’s forearm. Baltazar grabbed Sergei’s tanks with his other hand, and helped him over the side, but as soon as Sergei’s center of gravity had shifted enough to keep him from slipping back into the water, Baltazar let him go.

Sergei tumbled unceremoniously onto the deck. “Thanks, asshole.”

“Sorry.” Baltazar gestured to his nephew, who was at the wheel, and the kid gunned the throttle, knocking Sergei off balance again.

Sergei cursed in his native tongue as he unfastened his tanks and kicked off his fins. “You’re gonna get me the bends.”

“You should’ve been here sooner.”

“Yeah, well.” Sergei spat some salt water on the deck. “Things didn’t…”
I got an innocent man killed. I almost had to kill…
Shuddering, he muttered, “They didn’t go as planned.”

“Occupational hazard, my friend,” Baltazar said coolly.

“Just give me a fucking oxygen tank. And a blanket before I fucking freeze.”

Baltazar dug into one of the compartments beside the helm, and pulled out a small tank and mask. He also found a thick brown blanket and tossed it to Sergei. “You get it done?”

Sergei shrugged off his scuba tanks. “Yep. Dropped Privitera in the—”

“
Privitera?
” Baltazar froze. “What the hell are you talking about?”

Sergei nearly dropped the tanks on Baltazar’s foot, and met his glare unapologetically. “I took out the second man down. What was I supposed to—”

The Greek’s hand came out of nowhere and connected with Sergei’s face, his ring cracking against bone. “You fucking
idiot
!”

The pain caught him off guard. Sergei touched his cheekbone and narrowed his stinging eyes at Greek. “What the fuck was that for?”

“I had a lookout on the marina who said Domenico Maisano was on that boat, Dmitry. How in the
fuck
did you think—”

“What?” Sergei lowered his hand, carefully schooling his expression to hide the shaky panicky feeling in his stomach. At least this violent shivering was good for something. “I didn’t see him.”

“Holy shit, Dmitry! Did you fucking
look
?” Baltazar shoved his fat fingers through his greasy hair. “How am I going to explain—”

Sergei seized Baltazar by the throat and slammed him up against the bulkhead. “Listen to me, motherfucker.”

Baltazar stared at him, eyes huge.

“If you want me to take out a specific person,” Sergei snarled, “you give me a goddamned name. From where I was standing, Privitera was the highest man on the roster besides Felice himself.” He shoved himself back, using Baltazar’s throat as leverage, and let go.

The Greek rubbed his neck.

“You wanted a message sent, and I sent it,” Sergei hissed as he snatched the blanket off the bench. “Why the fuck didn’t you tell me if you wanted someone specific?”

Baltazar showed his palms. “My orders were to tell you to take out the second man down. No one said who he was.”

“Yeah, you don’t say.” Sergei jerked the zipper down on his wetsuit and stripped to the waist. As he wrapped the blanket around his shoulders, he growled, “Give me that tank so I don’t get fucking bent.”

Wordlessly, Baltazar handed it over. Sergei took a seat, put on the mask, and turned the valve. He breathed slowly and deeply through his chattering teeth. The air was cold, which didn’t help him warm up, but between the blanket and the brutal sun, his limbs were beginning to thaw.

He leaned over, pressing his elbow into his knees and his stinging fingers into his temples. Muscles ached. His fingers burned. But his biggest worry was that rapid ascent, and he kept on breathing that cold, cold air, no matter how much it made his lungs burn and his teeth hurt.

Baltazar’s contact would be pissed, and Baltazar himself was pissed, but at least Sergei had the vague order as an alibi. And thank God no one had been specific, or Dom would’ve been a dead man.

Just like the poor Korean guy who was probably still floating out there somewhere, assuming the sharks or the Coast Guard hadn’t found him yet.

Sergei winced.

He played and replayed the whole incident in his mind, over and over again. It wasn’t supposed to happen like that. The Korean’s screams echoed in his ears, drawing bile up his throat. Thank God Dom had killed the poor bastard. Sergei was in this to kill Mafia men, for fuck’s sake. Not get desperate immigrants killed. It was his fault. He hadn’t been able to kill Dom, so he’d gone for the next best target, and he hadn’t been careful enough about when and where he did it, and one of the immigrants had taken the fall. It was
his
fucking fault.

Except it probably would have played out the same if he’d killed Dom. Felice would’ve flipped out, and he’d have blamed one of the men working for him.

It would have happened exactly the same way. The only difference was that Dom would be dead.

Closing his eyes, Sergei tucked his arm against his stomach and gritted his teeth against the wave of nausea. There was no holding it back, though, so he tore off the mask, twisted around, and heaved overboard. God knew if it was the bends, seasickness, or if he was just fucked up in the head after the way things had gone down on the boat. Or a combination of all three.

That
wasn’t
how it was supposed to go down. Especially not in horrific fashion. Wherever the unfortunate man had taken the bullet, his screams had been the stuff of nightmares.

Sergei was convinced the other Koreans were only alive—if shaken—because of Dom. Felice had no doubt had every intention of killing all of them. But Dom had stepped in, and then he’d put the wounded man out of his misery and made no apologies for it.

That was a side of Dom that didn’t make sense. Even though he’d known Dom wasn’t like the others, that he wanted out of this life more than anything in the world, it was different to see it. To witness his humanity outside the privacy of a shitty motel room, out where the rubber met the road.

He was Mafia. He was one of
them
.

But you’ve seen him in private. You’ve heard him say how much he hates what he is. You know what he is and what he isn’t.

Sergei cradled his throbbing head in his freezing hands.

He wanted to believe the Dom he met at night was human. He didn’t want to believe that a Mafioso was. But Dom was a Mafioso. Dom was human. Dom was…

Fuck. I’m losing my fucking mind.

*              *              *

Sergei was still shivering when he made it to shore. Even after he changed into some clothes that had been soaking up the morning’s warmth in his car, he couldn’t get warm. Time to go home and take a shower. A long, hot shower that would take away the cold, the salt, and maybe some of the guilt that—