Ricochet (3 page)

H
annah kept her game face on. “I can do without the sarcasm,” she lifted her chin, keeping her gaze rock steady, as her tummy fluttered with unease.

Grayson smelled of the ocean. Not soap, or cologne. Just sexy, salty potent male. His dark hair, short-cropped, and as shiny as seal’s pelt, clung to his well-shaped head. The sheen of dark beard stubble reminded her of nights in his bed, and the morning after when he’d left pink marks all over her. That soft prickle against her skin excited her, and she’d begged him never to shave again.

His face looked leaner than the last time she’d seen him. Two years ago, and for all of ninety seconds before she turned her back and walked away. Gray eyes, which used to look gentle and loving, were as cold as fog.

A thin white scar at the corner of his mouth, and another on his tanned forehead showed he’d been in trouble before.

He’d aged. Looked harder.

He was a dangerous stranger now.

She had a flash of memory of her pale fingers stroking down the crisp hair on his broad chest, her mouth trailing down the smooth skin of his abs. He was just-damn it, he was too male. Too damned appealing for his own good. And now he was just irritating as hell.

“Of course I don’t buy everything they’re selling up there. I’m not the idiot,” she said with conflicting emotions. Everything Grayson was telling her resonated. Now she didn’t know if she should trust him or not. When the chips were down—and God only knew they were—would Grayson help? Or would he stick to his nefarious agenda? Because, by the look of him he’d come ready for a fight, and she had no idea whose side he was on.

This whole situation was scary as hell.

That she could debate this with a straight face just showed Hannah she still had an ounce of loyalty left for her friend. And that she was a great freaking actress, because as Gray spoke, she realized what he said made perfect sense, and that was the vibe she’d been picking up all along.

“Where did they say they were taking you?” his voice was hard. Everything about him was hard. His pumice-gray eyes were shrewd and penetrating, missing nothing as he watched her like a wolf watched a fox.

She could do without that freaking patronizing tone of voice, but Hannah met his gaze unwaveringly. “Apparently to see the progress of construction on their private island.” Hating him, she smiled sweetly, because whatever Grayson’s agenda here, and God only knew that could be anything, she had to get Colton and herself off the ship as quickly as possible. How, she wasn’t sure. But it would come to her.

Soon, she hoped.

His brow went up again. Irritating man. “Visiting a construction site? At eight at night, in the pitch dark?”

Nobody could cock an eyebrow like Grayson Burke. It said many things, most of them rude and insulting. She’d been trying to master the skill for years.

“Don’t be an ass.” She wanted to stay angry, she wanted to maintain the same level of hurt and disappointment, because if she started believing anything he said right now, it could be very, very dangerous. A lot of things could change in three years. She’d known him once, but she didn’t know this inscrutable, dangerous, enigma at all. “We’re seeing it in the morning.”
Unless we’re all dead by then
.

“There’s not a damn thing on that island but an old boathouse,” Grayson said tightly. “The investors have been duped. The ANLF will take the stones and disappear. And more than likely they’ll kill the ‘investors’ before they hightail it off the ship. Didn’t you find it suspicious that GQ had to pay in diamonds?”

“I didn’t know about the form of payment until he showed me as we were boarding. He gave the pouch to some muscle-bound guy with a gun, a thick Spanish accent, dyed black hair, and a scowl.” She didn’t want to cry wolf, but perhaps now was a good time to mention the conversation she’d overheard.

Unless Grayson was in on whatever was going on? His appearance here and now was way too freaking convenient as far as Hannah was concerned.

Torn, she tried to picture the layout of the ship, and if she’d seen any lifeboats. There must be some on a ship this size…

Okay.
Hannah’s brain was in overdrive,
Let’s just say, there really
is
a bomb. Let’s say I have less than thirty minutes to find Colton, figure out how to get a lifeboat into the water- let’s just go ahead and say…The situation looks frigging hopeless.

God. Used to being the person everyone looked to for solutions, this was going to be a dramatic and permanent fail.

“Ignado Mauro. The head guy’s number two lieutenant. He’s the one we came for. Did you see what they did with the diamonds?”

“They’re on the table next to the 3-D model of the resort. Or they were fifteen minutes ago when I came down here.”

“Payment is diamonds, near model,” he told someone. Then addressed her. “My men will find them.”

“Who are you talking to?”

“My men.”

“Great.” Okay.
More
men. Two groups to evade now. Colton’s friends with their neck-less bodyguards, and Grayson with his “men”. How many? “Make sure they hold onto a third of them. I’m taking those home with me.” Pushing her hair off her face, she gave Grayson an up and down look. As much as she hated him, if he was the last person she saw before she died, she wanted to be in his arms, not talking about Colton.
Ugh
. Where had that thought come from? Shaking her head slightly, she tried to think clearly, “Your men, huh?”

He had no right to look so good. He should be ravaged with shame, and bowed with unhappiness. Instead he looked tanned and handsome, and ridiculously buff in the thing he was wearing which looked like a skintight wetsuit. The matte black defined his broad shoulders, the ridges of his abs, and his strong arms and legs. Her eyes dropped to his groin, where his package was tucked away, the large bulge flattened behind a hard protective covering which she’d felt when he was on top of her.

Seeing that bulge, brought a visceral muscle memory to her body, of his narrow hips pounding against her as he made love to her. They hadn’t been able to keep their hands off each other-

Maybe the men she’d overheard hadn’t meant a
bomb
. Maybe they’d been talking about…. What else could they
possibly
have meant? Good guy or bad guy, this was still Grayson. And while Hannah sure as shit didn’t trust him with her heart, she did trust him to protect her when the chips were down. And how much more could chips be down than being within yards of a bomb?

“But more importantly-“

“Call it in to the Peruvian authorities, and we’ll leave it for them to deal with. Five.” Gray, still talking to someone else, looked up to catch Hannah watching him. “Did you take your insulin?”

She nodded. Over the shock of seeing him in the last place she expected to see him, Hannah’s synapses started firing. None of that was important now. “Gray. Listen to me. There’s a-“

The door slammed open and Colton burst in. “Hannah, the ship is crawling with terrorists—Grayson?” If not for the Botox, he’d be frowning. “What the fuck?” Not a blonde hair out of place, his summer white designer suit immaculate, the body hugging black, silk t-shirt underneath molded to his flat stomach, Colton looked like a GQ cover model in all his sartorial splendor.

Gray grabbed his brother by the upper arm and jerked him further into the room, which suddenly felt crowded as a man dressed as Gray was, and also carrying a large black gun, followed behind Colton and shut the door.

Clearly Grayson was controlling the urge to do violence to his younger brother. Hannah knew how he felt. That was probably the one thing they still had in common. She curled her short nails into her palms as she moved out of the way. She was so letting him do his thing.

Grayson shook him. “What the
fuck
are you doing here, Colton?”

His brother struggled uselessly in his grip. “Goddamn it, Grayson! What are
you
doing here? Are you hijacking the ship?” he paused, his eyes going from his older brother’s face, to the gun he was suddenly holding, to the pushed back cowl and black outfit.

Realization dawned, and he stepped back. “Oh, shit! You came to steal the diamonds, didn’t you? You can’t!” Colton spluttered furiously. “The diamonds are my share, my
investment
, of the construction costs. Don’t even
think
about fucking with my business. Jesus. Didn’t you see? The ship’s crawling with bodyguards. You can’t possibly get away with this!”

“I don’t give a shit about diamonds, only that they don’t get into the wrong hands. We’re here for Deeks, Sorenson and Mauro. They work for Stonefish. Is the name familiar?” Gray demanded, eyes and voice flat, uncompromising. Hannah felt the hair on the back of her neck rise. His stance, feet spread, gun at his side, made her damn glad he wasn’t aiming that tightly leashed anger at her.

“Stonefish? What the hell is that?” Colton’s face grew flushed. Anyone else seeing him with this irate, and blustering would think he was pissed. But Hannah knew her friend better. His belligerent tone of voice set her teeth on edge.

Denial. Panic. Realization. Followed by fear.

It was bad enough that she was here to beat the crap out of him for stealing from the Moms.
Again
. But now his big brother was here, too. He knew he was screwed. Like any thief, he felt guilty for getting
caught
. He hated being called out. Especially in front of witnesses. “I can assure you, the Ecuadorian authorities are going to have a field day,” he snarled with false bravado. “You’ll be in jail for a long, long time. This time you’ve gone too far, Grayson. This is going to kill the Moms and you know it.”

“The real question here is, what the fuck are you doing with a bunch of terrorists, asshole? You knew Hannah would hightail it after you to get the Moms’ money back. Did you give her safety a nanosecond’s thought? You’re in way over your head, and you’re too stupid to know it. And for your information, your friends are the ones who are the terrorists, and they already hijacked this ship.

“I’m a counterterrorist operative with T-FLAC. We’re here to bring these assholes to justice. You and Hannah are in the wrong fucking place, at the wrong fucking time.”

A counterterrorist operative? She felt a sudden glimmer of hope as all the words dropped into all the right slots in her brain. Her heart skipped several, uneven beats.

Dear God. This explained his long absences, his refusal to discuss what he did for a living for all these years. But if it was his job that had kept him away, why hadn’t he just
told
her? Why leave her in the dark? Not just herself, but his mother and brother?

“What are you trying to pull?” Colton railed. “They’re not terrorists, they’re international businessmen, and I bet they’ve dealt with punks like you all over the world. Your people may have overpowered them, now. But I’m sure there’ll be more security people once we reach the island. You’ll never get away with this.”

Grayson let out a hard breath. “Wanna know what you’ll find on that island? A fifty-year-old boathouse, trees and rocks. Those guys are, among other things, weapons brokers, dickwad. Weapons. Brokers.
Terrorists
.”

Colton glared at his brother. “I already told Hannah, and this is all either of you need to fucking know. I’ll pay the money back four-fold in less than a year.”

“You’ll forgive me if I don’t want to rehash how many times I’ve heard that bullshit, GQ.” Hannah interrupted furiously. “I told you for the last time. I am done. You’ve stolen from the Moms for the last frigging time. I’m not leaving until I have every dime of their money back where it belongs waiting for them when they get home from their buying trip. And I’d listen to Grayson right now, because I believe him.”

“Shit.” Raking his fingers through his immaculate sandy-blonde hair, Colton gave a haunted look from Hannah and back to his brother. “We’re building a three thousand, six hundred room resort. Go take a look at the 3-D model and the architectural drawing.” He jerked a thumb up at the ceiling. “I’m staking the three bars-“ Realizing he wasn’t getting any points right now, his shoulders slumped.

“Fucking hell. I’m in way over my head with this one, aren’t I?” he admitted, his usually booming voice subdued. Dropping down on the foot of the bed, he looked helplessly from Hannah to Gray. “What the fuck do I do now?”

T
ypical Colton. He was all bluff and bravado until he was called out. Then he needed help cleaning up his mess. Hannah was suddenly grateful Grayson was there.

His older brother treated him with a grim look, and a weighted pause. “What did they do with the diamonds?

Colton shrugged in a too casual gesture that made Hannah want to slap him. Controlling the urge took a great deal of effort. “No idea,” he said, surely and defensive. “I handed my pouch to two bodyguards when we boarded. That was the last I saw it.”

Grayson ran his hand over his short hair as he looked beyond Colton to the other man. “Any sign of them?”

“Negative.”

“Check with the others.”

The other man stepped out of the door, and spoke indistinctly. While he was gone, Grayson let the silence fill the room unbearably. Colton swiped a trickle of sweat off his temple with fingertips that shook.

The man returned to the room. “Nobody’s seen them. We’re looking.”

“I suggest you take this opportunity to redeem yourself,” he told his brother, voice hard and cold, “Any idea where they took the stones?”.

Sweat gleamed on Colton’s forehead. Good. He was scared. As he should be. “I might,” he said reluctantly. How she’d not noticed that sulky expression over the years was a mystery to Hannah. What she’d loved about him was his uncomplicated charm, his zest for life. Until he’d stared using the Moms’ money for various sure fire investments. Then the bloom had started fading from the rose. Now that she thought about it, her friendship with Colton had disintegrated at the same time as her non-wedding.

“Go with him.” Grayson addressed the other man, who immediately grabbed a protesting Colton by the upper arm. “Don’t let him get any holes in him. I’m not done reaming him a new one, yet. Go.” The door had barely closed, and he turned to Hannah. “Get your stuff. We’re leaving.”

She put her hand on his forearm without thinking. The black garment he wore felt odd, now that she had a moment to process it, but that wasn’t what she was having a visceral reaction to. She hadn’t touched him, willingly anyway, in three years. A lifetime. Her fingers curled around his arm, and she shuddered with the need to fling herself against his chest and have him hold her tightly.

Instead, she tucked her fingertips into the front pockets of her jeans. “There’s a bomb on board,” she said calmly, while her heart pounded, and her palms slicked with nervous sweat.

“A bomb?” Without any pause between her words and his actions, Grayson propelled her out into the corridor. He had a large black gun in one hand, and her upper arm in a merciless grip in the other. She’d never guess that a man his size could move so quickly. She had to practically run to keep up.

“Explosive on board. Find it-“ He looked at Hannah she tried to keep up with his longer strides. “Detonation?”

She was more terrified now that Gray believed her, than five minutes ago when she’d been trying to talk herself out of making sense of the conversation. “They said thirty minutes. But that was—”

“Don’t look down.” Gray picked her up bodily to put her several steps beyond a man, sprawled out across the foot of the stairs, his head splattered on the wall nearby. The display of graphic violence made bile rose in the back of her throat as her feet touched the stair above him. She slapped a hand on the wall to jeep her balance even though Grayson’s hand was still holding onto her.

“Less than twenty. Go!” He straddled the dead man with his long legs, and kept her moving with a lethal grip on her upper arm as he propelled her up the stairs. Through the door, and into the salon which looked like a war zone. Hannah’s shoes crunched on broken glass and shards of china. It wasn’t easy keeping up with Grayson’s long strides.

The beautifully rendered three dimensional model was smashed to smithereens on and around the table, there was a huge hole in one of the picture windows, and the room smelled pungently of the liquor spilled on the floor near the bar.

Her arm was almost wrenched from the socket as she stumbled over bits of plastic and balsa wood strewn in their path. Crying out she dropped to one knee, hands bracing her fall.

“Keep moving, honey. Come on.” Grayson hauled her up like a sack of feed. They burst through the door onto the deck where men were securing the crew who all protested loudly in various languages.

The cool air smelled really awful, as Grayson pulled her alongside him and she stumbled her way between the bodies littering the deck saw, with horror, why. . He wore a grim expression, and kept the gun at ready in his other hand. Since the only men standing seemed to be his, and other than the contained crew, everyone else was apparently dead, the gun seemed redundant.

Her steps slowed in horror. The scene was surreal. In the light streaming from the open doors, men dressed in black moved silently and with purpose as they headed toward the back of the ship. The throb of engines came from below. She held her breath from the smell of death, and the fear of what else could come out of the enveloping darkness surrounding the small island of light that was the deserted Megayacht.

The fact that Grayson believed her about the bomb, without concrete confirmation frightened her more than her imagination had . Wrapping one strong arm around her waist when she faltered, forced her to run to keep up with his long strides. Her tote—with her wallet, passport, all her money, and insulin—was downstairs.

“Behind me,” Gray shouted, suiting action to words as he slung her around his back as two figures leapt out of the darkness. Two burst of light and two loud shots sounded before Hannah even know what was happening.

“Come on.” Gray pulled her back to his side. “Don’t look. Move it.”

Ice cold from head to toe, Hannah stepped over the bodies. “Are y-you-“

“Just keep moving.”

Every time a shadow detached from the surrounding darkness, Hannah flinched. Waiting to be shot herself. Every now and then she’d hear a shot, the whine of a bullet, a flair, but so far, so god. She was still in one piece, and upright.

They moved across the deck with his men, who, seeing her with Grayson, parted like the black sea to allow them through.

A strange man, dressed as the others, in a black, head to toe, body-hugging wetsuit, helped her down a short ladder to a lower deck—probably a dive platform—where a fat, fishing boat rocked on the wavelets slapping the hull of the bigger yacht. Gray followed her onto the wood deck of the fishing boat.

Gray steadied her as the boat rocked, directing her inside a small pilothouse where a man stood, clearly ready to take off. He indicated a bench seat out of the way. Shell shocked, Hannah sat down, Gray beside her.

Taking both her hands in his, he said quietly, with an urgency she only sensed, because his eyes, his voice, his entire demeanor seemed utterly calm, “Tell me exactly what you heard.”

His hands felt warm around her icy fingers. He was in control. Calm. Focused. She felt as though the only thing keeping her from screaming like girl was Grayson’s firm hold on her. “I’d just walked from the bathroom into the cabin when I heard two men talking right outside the door.”

The fishing boat started pulling away from the mountainous white hull of the bigger ship. She’d never been happier to leave a place in her life. “It was something like…’Savrov used my name,’” she deepened her voice. “‘Get rid of him.’ The other man said, ’Permanently?’ The first guy didn’t say anything else for a few seconds, which I presumed meant he either gave the guy a look, or the answer was rhetorical, then he said, ‘Is it set?’”

The green blinking lights near the wheel made Grayson’s face look a little demonic. Still, Hannah wanted to fling herself into his arms and have him hold her tightly until her heart settled into a normal rhythm, ‘til nervous sweat wasn’t making her eyes burn, and the smell of dead people was a distant memory.

“He could’ve been referring to a date, a clock, the table.”

“Funny.” Hannah continued, “’As you instructed,’ ‘Exactly thirty minutes.’ Then the other guy said, ‘I have the stones. Get the chopper. I want to be out on open water to watch the show.’ Which meant…there’s a bomb on board.”

She realized as she finished talking, that Gray’s mouth was moving at the same time. She hadn’t noticed, in the dark, and lost momentarily in her own fear. Clearly he was talking into his unseen communications devise to his men. It was like a simultaneous translation, as he relayed everything she said to someone…somewhere while she talked. “You got the part about the bomb, right?” she echoed.

“I heard. Yo, Salina? Can this thing go any faster?” he shouted, addressing the man at the wheel. “Do you remember anything more about the conversation? Any idea who they were?”

“I recognized their voices. One served us dinner, the other was one of the bodyguards, I think.”

“Was that the guy on the stairs back there?” He asked, but he didn’t think so. The timing was right, but it didn’t sound like the convo of two underlings.

“Hard to recognize someone without a face.” She let out a short, broken breath. Her pupils were dilated, her eyes black but for small rims of vivid blue. “Why would they blow up their multimillion-dollar boat? It doesn’t make sense.”

“Not their boat. They hijacked it thousands of miles from here, made it their own. If they wanted to lure investors with serious bank, they had to look like they didn’t need it. What was the buy in, do you know?”

“Colton took just over five million dollars.”

“Jesus. The Moms had that much?”

Hannah shrugged. She’d been surprised, too. “Provenance Inc. has always done really well. They buy well, and we have a lot of steady customers from all over the country.”

“You’re the heart of the store, Hannah. Your creativity, and organizational skills have kept it going long after the Moms lost interest in having a shop.”

Hannah’s heart melted a little at the compliment, which surprised her, because she hadn’t really thought she’d contributed anything but a warm body to ring up the sales. She drew in a shuddering breath as Grayson communicated with the men.

His profile, limned by the green glow, looked harsh and grim. As hard and unyielding his expression, she still would’ve liked to crawl into his lap and bury her face against his chest until this all magically went away.

This entire situation was surreal. Adrenaline surged through her body, and her heart beat so hard she felt it in her fingertips.

“Get the lead out, Salinas!” he yelled. “We have
maybe
ten minutes if we’re lucky! By which time we need to be far, far away.”

Ten freaking minutes didn’t sound long enough to be far, far away, but Hannah presumed Grayson knew what he was doing. She didn’t know what he was doing, but that was par for their course. “Good. Because far, far away is exactly where I want to be.”