Pilot Error (37 page)

"You've got to get under cover. If they are still searching for us, then being in the open makes you a target for a passing speedboat."

"No way. I'm not going anywhere without you."

"Sweetheart, you're my only chance. I'm counting on you to get off this island and bring back help."

"But, Luke—"

"Listen, even if I did manage to grab your hand, both of us know you're not strong enough to haul me out."

Micki hesitated. What he said was true; she didn't possess the physical strength to pull him to freedom, no matter how much she wanted to.

"Go," he repeated deadpan. Then he gave her a cocky grin meant to abate her misgivings. "That's an order."

There was nothing cheerful about her decision. "I'll be back," she said, aware that she was mimicking him when he had abandoned her on the sandbar in the Keys. "I promise I'll be back."

"I know. And Micki?"

"Yes?"

"Just in case... if they find me first, I want you to know..."

She looked into his eyes and found herself looking into his heart.

"I love you," he said simply, honestly. "Whatever happens, I just wanted to tell you that."

For an extended moment, she struggled with something to say. A very large part of her wanted to repeat the words to him, to tell him the feeling was mutual, and yet that small niggly, nagging, doubting part of her sealed her jaws firmly shut. Since the moment dictated she at least come up with some sort of reply, she finally settled for repeating herself.

"I'll be back, Luke," she promised in a quivering voice.

When Micki rolled away from the opening, she did it with an aching constriction in her chest. She lay there for several moments, before slowly picking herself up, pausing to regard the silent hole that was to remain Luke's cell of solitary confinement for an unspecified length of time. Without food, she wasn't sure just how long he could survive, and that pooled rainwater at the bottom of the natural skylight wasn't going to last forever.

Nearly blinded by unshed tears, she started up the sandy slope, away from the ocean and toward so many uncertainties.

***

An island was an island was an island—at least as far as Micki was concerned. Just one big circle. Maybe not circular, but if she kept walking in the same direction, following the seashore, then no matter how many twists and turns it made, it would eventually lead her back to Van Allen's main compound where there was a marina and, more importantly, boats. For the moment, Micki was focusing on simply getting there. When she arrived, she would come up with a plan on how to 'commandeer' a craft to go for help.

Luke's catch-phrase brought a smile to her lips, then an ache to her heart. She had to do this, survive this, if not for herself then for him.

Micki stuck close to the underbrush bordering the seashore, ready to use its dense cover if needed. So far it hadn't been. She had skirted the gentle curve of three beaches, spanned between as many rocky headlands, without seeing anyone or anything.

On the second beach, she ventured down to the water's edge to wash the dirt from her hands and fingernails. The saltwater made the scratches on her hands and arms sting like hundreds of tiny needles, making her regret her decision to wash up. Rounding the second headland, she was forced a little farther inland, since the rock face blocking the end of the beach was too steep and too sheer to climb safely. It was a detour that actually turned out well, since it led her through a grove of wild mango trees and an impromptu breakfast.

On the fourth beach, her luck changed for the better. Crouching in the brush beneath a cluster of palms, she studied a deserted speedboat, run aground on the sand, for at least fifteen patient but wary minutes. The boat was a match for those she'd seen from the bedroom window in Van Allen's compound, and caution reasoned that speedboats usually didn't run aground all by themselves.

Studying it, she considered the remote possibility it had broken from its mooring in last night's storm and drifted there. The idea was as tantalizing as the craft itself, beached just a hundred yards in front of her. It was the only way off this island; it was Luke's only chance.

She waited, crouched low in the scrub, for at least another five minutes, this time scanning the surrounding trees for any signs of life. Finally, she concluded that there wasn't another living soul for miles.

"Since when are you afraid of taking a chance, Micki?" she asked herself. She should make her move now and be done with it.

With a soft disgusted sound at her indecision, she pushed to her feet and stepped out onto the sand. Breaking cover immediately filled her with the same sense of vulnerability that she'd had when stepping out onto that beach in the Keys. Luke had been at her back then, pretending to be one of The Bad Guys, and Reynolds had been headed toward her from the beached boat.

Hesitation made her come to an abrupt and unexpected standstill. Micki stood there, in the open, trying to swallow her unfounded fears while staring longingly at the vessel so close within reach. Reynolds was nowhere in sight this time... even if she did have a creepy crawly feeling that made her skin tingle.

Before she fully convinced herself that she was just imagining things, she was knocked off her feet from behind by a person or persons unknown. A pair of strong hands wrestled her face down in the sand. Micki struggled and squirmed, kicked and punched, desperately fearing she had just walked head first into one of Reynolds' traps.

God, if this was Reynolds on top of her, then she was already as good as dead.

She waited for the cold, sharp pinch of his switchblade against her throat. Then she remembered his broken arm. Her attacker had two good handholds on her, so that ruled out Reynolds. She attempted to turn her head to see the man's face—for she was sure it was a man who held her virtually motionless on the sand—but he pinned her wrists and thrust his knee into her back to discourage the idea of doing anything but staying motionless beneath him.

"Quiet." His voice was an unrecognizable hiss in her ear. "And hold still!"

In return she tried yelling obscenities, but all she got for her effort was a mouthful of Bermuda beach as his hand cupped around her face to silence her. Micki waited, with her cheek pressed against the sand and his knee still in her back, for him to make the next move.

When it came, it surprised her even more than being jumped from behind. "Thank God you're all right," he said, removing his hand from her mouth.

Next, she was flipped over onto her back by a force not of her own doing, only to find herself looking into the face of the man she had so recently branded as a monster.

"Dirk!"

Dirk knew he was grinning like a fool, but he didn't care. How could he? When the one thing in the world he finally realized he loved more than money was right there in front of him. "You're alive!"

"No thanks to you," Micki snarled, struggling against him again. Dirk kept a firm grip on her arms, and after it was obvious she was beaten, she let her belligerent gaze swing back to his. "Let go of me, Dirk."

His heart leapt as he looked down at her, still pinned beneath him on the soft white sand, stirred by a memory from their short but passionate affair. How many nights had he looked down at her in just this manner, with her silky dark hair fanned on his pillow? He'd seen love, then, in the same sapphire eyes where he now saw only hate.

Dirk bowed his head under another realization. Her hair was again loose at her shoulders, but now matted by dirt and grass, and her ivory skin that he so longed to caress was marred by crimson scratches.

And those eyes... those eyes would never show him love again.

He sat back, knowing that the only gesture of tenderness he could make was to let her go. Not only physically, but emotionally as well. To love Micki was to set her free.

To love her, was to live without her.

"I'm sorry," he said. His hesitant gaze lifted to hers as she sat up and glared at him. "I never meant for any of this to happen."

She snorted sarcastically and spat out some sand.

"I only wanted us to be together," he confessed lamely. "All I ever wanted, Micki, was for you to love me, the way I love you."

"You don't want to love me, you want to possess me."

"I just... wanted us to be happy."

She scoffed again. "Do I bloody look 'happy'?"

Angered, she pushed to her feet, and Dirk hastily did the same. Body language told him that she was ready to bolt. Somehow, he had to make her understand his feelings were genuine, that she could trust him, rely on him. Again.

When she took an experimental step away, he instinctively reached for her arm to stop her. Their eyes locked, and Dirk immediately let go again. As he fumbled to explain his automatic reaction, Micki turned to regard the speedboat he'd beached when he'd come ashore to search for her on foot. Dirk studied her back, clad in that wonderfully sexy black dress, and pondered what divine providence had led him to land at that precise spot.

Escape from the compound and stealing the boat had been as easy as predicted; word of his 'house arrest' had not reached the ears of all employees. Dirk had simply gone down to the marina and ordered a vessel be made available to him. He'd spent the first hour and a half of the new dawn skimming around the foreshore of the estate, following the crescents of virgin sand from the rocky windward side of the island around to that beach.

Although he'd met no resistance thus far, Dirk was sure that word of his breakout would now be common knowledge. What the hell was keeping Van Allen so busy that he couldn't launch a flotilla of thugs after him?

Maybe pursuit was going to come by land. Dirk cast a quick, uneasy glance over his shoulder. Were there armed men, even now, up on a dune, taking aim at them with orders to shoot to kill? From where they stood, arguing on that damn beach, he and Micki were easy targets. Reynolds, for one, would take great pleasure in putting a bullet in both their heads.

"I only want to know one thing," Micki said, breaking into Dirk's thoughts and drawing his gaze back to her. She spoke over her shoulder, her back still to him as she surveyed the speedboat. "And that's if you're going to stop me."

As she turned to challenge him with a head-on look, Dirk reached into his shirt pocket for the tiny blue flash card containing criminal evidence against his boss... and against himself. "Here."

"What is it?" she asked, eyeing the postage-stamp-sized square of plastic like it was a piece of toxic waste.

"It's your insurance policy." Annoyed by her distrust but without time to argue, Dirk grabbed her right hand and pushed it into her palm. "This data storage card contains complete records of Van Allen's counterfeit business. His contacts, inventory, associates—you name it. There's enough evidence on it to put him and his friends away for twenty or thirty years."

Micki regarded him warily. "Including you?"

Dirk solemnly held her gaze. Yes, including him. But the law would have to catch up with him first, and he was very good at moving from place to place and pretending to be someone he wasn't. New identities could be bought for a price, and Dirk still had access to the money he had intended to use to buy Micki the house in South Shore. That would keep him out of trouble, and out of the limelight, for a few years at least.

Without answering her question, Dirk went to take her elbow, thought better of it, and instead moved past her toward the speedboat. "Come on, we're wasting time."

He was relieved when she followed without argument, tucking the flash card securely into her bra as she padded after him on the sand. It was one of the things he had tried—unsuccessfully—to change about Micki; her inability to let him choose what was right for her. When he stopped at the water's edge and turned to help her into the boat, he saw the fear shading her sapphire eyes again.

"Where are we going?" Micki asked defiantly.

Dirk saw through the bravado and recognized the wariness. He frowned, the waves lapping midway up the calves of his trousers. Why couldn't she let him lead, just this once? Did she really think he was going to take her back to the compound and certain death?

"I asked you a question, Dirk."

Her lack of trust angered him, even though he knew he deserved it. "I'm taking you away from here. Damn, Micki, don't you get it? I'm taking you to Hamilton, to the police. You'll be safe there."

He thought this was the sort of White Knight rescue routine she wanted. He'd failed her before, when he'd uncuffed her in the back of the van only to confine her in his office, but couldn't she see that he was trying his damnedest to rectify that mistake?

When she didn't gratefully fall into his arms, Dirk just barely resisted the urge to grab her wrist and drag her into the boat. "What, you got a problem with being rescued?"

She surprised him by grabbing both his arms in something akin to desperation, the light of sudden hope in her eyes. "Dirk, you've got to help me!"

"That's what I'm trying to do!"

"No, I mean... you've got to help me free Luke!"

***

Micki watched effort ruddy Dirk's face as he attempted to haul Luke out of the cave. The narrow circumference of the collapsing tunnel only permitted him to reach down into it with one arm, and presumably Luke faced the same challenge below.