Willie clomped over just as the bags began to tumble down the chute and onto the carousel. They found their bags and dragged them to customs, handed the stone-faced Indonesian officers their declaration forms, and walked out into the arrivals lobby. The room was crowded with Javanese taxi drivers clamoring for fares, and bewildered tourists looking for transportation. In all this congested mix of sweaty humanity, Kate had no problem finding Nick. Nick Fox stood out in his fitted white polo shirt with a corporate logo on the chest. The logo was a blue planet with a streak of lighting across it that carried the words HUFFNAGLE GLOBAL in a bold, italic action font that suggested urgency and determination. He had a broad hospitality smile on his face, the kind the best hotel clerks, concierges, and flight attendants work years to achieve, one that convincingly proclaims: My life was meaningless until I had this wondrous opportunity to lay my eyes upon you and cater to your every need.
He rushed to take Kate’s bags. “Selamat siang. Welcome to Bali, Ms. Huffnagle. I hope you had a pleasant flight.”
Kate and Willie followed Nick outside into the hot, humid afternoon, where a sparkling but not very recent Mercedes, provided by the Benoa Bali Regal Resort Hotel, was waiting for them at the curb, a uniformed driver at the wheel. Kate slipped into the backseat, Willie got in beside her, and Nick took the front passenger seat. The streets were narrow, crowded with taxis, motorcycles, bikes, and mopeds, and lined with palm trees and whitewashed buildings covered with signs vying for the attention of rich tourists. The Mercedes turned a corner onto a street packed with outdoor restaurants where diners sat cross-legged at tables eating rice with their hands. The air was thick with the smell of spices carried in the steam from hundreds of sizzling pots.
Up and down the sidewalks, and crouched between parked motorcycles at the curbs, were roving vendors carrying their kitchens either on rolling carts or balanced on sticks across their shoulders. Each stick had a sling with a wok on one side and a bundle of ingredients on the other, and dishes were prepared on the spot wherever vendors found a hungry paying customer. The vendors were so close to the car that Kate was tempted to reach out the window and snatch a bowl from one of them.
The Benoa Bali Regal was a five-star resort built on the pristine golden sands of the Tanjung Benoa peninsula. Once home to ramshackle fishing villages, the peninsula was now a prime tourist destination with high-end hotels taking advantage of the swaying palms, sugary beaches, bright blue seas, and breathtaking vistas.
Nick saw the luxurious resorts of Southern Bali as a successfully executed multibillion-dollar con. The travel industry had convinced people to fly tens of thousands of miles to stay at Bali-themed resorts rather than experience the authentic villages, rice paddies, temples, and tropical forests of Bali itself. The real Bali, even more beautiful than the re-creation, was a few miles farther north. Fortunately the con worked for everyone’s good, ensuring that the real Bali didn’t get overrun with hordes of tourists demanding flush toilets, while the resort Bali brought money into the economy and provided the tourists with a porcelain paradise featuring overhead rain showers and the latest in Japanese toilet technology.
Kate followed Nick through the resort lobby to their private three-bedroom beachfront villa, with its coconut wood paneling, open-air living room, and personal lap pool in a tropical garden. She stood at the edge of the pool and had to admit to herself that a life of crime had some advantages. This beat the heck out of her one-bedroom apartment over Al’s Pizza Pit on Ventura.
Nick tipped the bellman and joined her. “What do you think?”
“Nice.”
“It has a spa pool that has three different kinds of jets and soft lighting at night. Perfect for getting into the mood.”
“What mood would that be?” she asked him.
He was so close she could feel his body heat, and his breath whispered against her neck. “A romantic mood.”
Her heart skipped a couple beats.
“So let me know if you want me to turn the jets on,” Nick said.
“Yep. Sure will,” Kate said. “Thanks for the offer.”
Jeez Louise, the man was diabolical, Kate thought. Wasn’t it enough he was tempting her with a lap pool and a designer handbag? Now he was torturing her with the spa and possibly his body next to hers, pressed against the three different kinds of jets.
“I’m going to unpack now,” she said, anxious to put distance between them. “Maybe I’ll investigate the beach and go swimming.”
“Need help unpacking?” he asked.
“Nope. I’m good.”
“Maybe you need help getting into your bathing suit.”
“No!” She narrowed her eyes at him. “You’re baiting me.”
“Maybe,” he said. “Maybe not.”
Kate stalked off to the master bedroom suite and unpacked her bikinis. Up to this point she hadn’t given them much thought, but she now saw the error in foisting the bikini buying off on Nick. The tissue paper the bikinis were wrapped in was more substantial than the bikinis.
Kate did a trial run on a little white number that had a halterneck and ties at the hip. She stood in front of the mirror, looked at herself from the back, and grimaced at the amount of cheek hanging out. She checked herself from the front and didn’t see anything specifically private in full view, although there were hints of lady parts here and there. She bent at the waist and nothing fell out of the top. She blew out a sigh and grabbed a towel. She was willing to go the extra mile for her job, but criminy, this was about the scariest thing she’d done so far.
Nick missed Kate’s grand exit because he was explaining to Willie why she needed to wear khaki shorts and the white shirt with the Huffnagle Global logo.
“I paid good money for my breasts,” Willie said, “and you want me to stuff them into one of these boring shirts?”
“This isn’t any ol’ shirt,” Nick said. “The shirts in your closet are one hundred percent Egyptian cotton and are made by Chiang Yick Ching, Singapore’s oldest custom shirt maker, who’s been making meticulously cut, finely stitched clothes for me for years.”
“Sweetie pie, you can paint a cow red, but it ain’t never gonna be a tomato. This is not a shirt that says Come look at me ’cause I’ve got nipples.”
“You’re supposed to be the captain of a multimillion-dollar yacht. You’re not selling nipples.”
“I never said I was selling them. I just like when people notice. It’s like you and all those white teeth. Caps, right?”
“Nope,” he said. “They’re mine. I brush twice a day.”
“How about if I wear the stupid khaki shorts but I trade the shirt in for a white tank top?”
“Done,” Nick said.
Willie grabbed him and kissed him. “Perfect! This is going to be great. I can’t wait to see my yacht. This is like one of the happiest days of my life. I’m renaming The Big Adventure. I’m calling it The Really Big Adventure.”
“Good to know you’re happy,” Nick said.
Willie looked him up and down. “You want to make me even happier?”
“Maybe not that happy,” Nick said, “but I appreciate the thought.”
Kate was out in the ocean in her bikini and Willie was off exploring in her shorts and tank top when their personal chef arrived to begin preparing their dinner. Nick went over the menu with the chef, then walked out to the thatch-roof cabana on their private deck. He was standing there, enjoying the tropical air and the view, when Kate emerged from the azure water, her oiled skin glistening in the sun.
Nick thought she looked straight out of a James Bond movie. The only thing missing from the picture was a knife in a sheath clipped to a dive belt. And this annoying, amusing, amazing, beautiful, mostly naked woman was off-limits to him. How crappy was that? He was fairly certain if he put his mind to it he could get into her bed tonight. He was 100 percent certain she’d hunt him down in the morning and he’d be roadkill. And if he actually survived to continue with the partnership, she’d make
his life a living hell.
Kate approached him, and he offered her a towel. “The chef is in the kitchen, Ms. Huffnagle.”
“Thank you, Sam,” she said, ignoring the towel and strolling past him to a chaise, making the most of her role as Eunice Huffnagle. “I’ll take a drink now, something cold and fruity, with plenty of alcohol. Something to take the salt off my lips.”
“Of course,” Nick said.
He looked down at her stretched out on the chaise, eyes closed against the sun, and he thought it might be worth getting kicked down the road and smacked with a tire iron for a night of killer sex with her.
“Anything else?” he asked. “A massage, perhaps?”
“Does the hotel have a masseuse available at this hour?”
“No, but I’m here, and I’d be glad to help you work out any kinks you might have. Any kinks at all.”
“I’ll let the drink do that. Hurry along, Sam. I can feel my lips chapping with each passing moment.”
“Yes ma’am,” Nick said. “Wouldn’t want your lips to chap.”
“Do I detect a hint of attitude?” she asked him.
“Not from me,” Nick said. “I’m your faithful manservant. I’m here to fulfill your every desire.”
Nick, Kate, and Willie sat barefoot and cross-legged on mats at a low table that faced a fire pit circled with lava rocks. Beyond the fire pit was the beach, and beyond the beach moonbeams surfed the gentle waves. Behind the fire pit was the three-bedroom villa and the personal chef slaving away in the outdoor kitchen creating a multicourse meal of Indonesian dishes. One of the dishes was vegetables in peanut sauce. There was also pork boiled in vinegar and pig’s blood, and nasi campur, which was steamed rice and vegetables mixed with fried nuts, grilled tuna, coconut milk, fried tofu, curried chicken, assorted herbs and spices, and shredded coconut. All the foods were served with a generous side of sambal, a chili pepper sauce that was the Indonesian equivalent of ketchup and used liberally on everything.
“You eat with your fingers,” Nick said, pinching chunks of fish, meat, and vegetables between bits of sticky rice.
Easy for him and Willie, Kate thought. They were dressed in wash-and-wear Huffnagle Global uniforms, while she was trying not to slop food on her megabucks halter and shorts. Being a rich bitch wasn’t as simple as one might think.
When they were done with the meal and the chef left, Nick spread maps and navigational charts out on the large dining room table.
“We’re leaving at nine A.M. for Benoa Harbor,” Nick said. “The yacht I rented will be fueled, stocked, and ready to go. Griffin’s island, Dajmaboutu, is about four hundred miles away in the Flores Sea. It’s between a stretch of large islands known as the West Nusa Tenggara and South Sulawesi. We’re going to travel through the heavily trafficked Lombok Strait and then west into the open sea, where we’ll sail a weaving course through the islands, islets, and atolls until we reach Dajmaboutu. The yacht is equipped with state-of-the-art GPS, radar, and autopilot. And if we don’t want to dock by the seat of our pants it has a computer-controlled docking system that takes over the engines, steering, and the thrusters at the bow and stern to take all the risk out of fitting into a tight spot.”
Kate studied the charts. “To bring Griffin into international waters, we’ll have to head back the way we came, through the Lombok Strait, then southwest into the Indian Ocean, where a U.S. Navy vessel can pick him up. That’s roughly another six hundred miles.”
“No problem,” Nick said. “I chose a fifty-five-foot Phelan SevenSeas 550LR, which I got at the bargain price of ten thousand dollars a day because Eunice Huffnagle insisted on using her own crew.”
He dropped the owner’s manual onto the table and turned to a photo of the Phelan under power. It was a beautiful vessel, with a blue hull and white deck, and windows on the main cabin that looked like wraparound sunglasses. Its most distinctive feature was its flybridge, which cantilevered over the aft deck and had standing fins on either side that evoked a 1959 Cadillac.
“It’s a trawler that’s going to lumber along like an elephant,” Kate said. “We’ll be lucky to get eighteen knots out of it.”
“You’re approaching this like a military op,” Nick said. “You want a quick entry and exit. But that’s not what we’re doing.”
“We’re kidnapping a guy and taking him out of the country,” Kate said. “We don’t want to linger around working on our tans. We need to get the heck out.”
“That’s the wrong attitude. What we’re doing is more like a heist, only with a person instead of an object. A successful heist is one that nobody notices until it’s over and the thieves are long gone. But I understand your concerns. I have them, too, which is why I picked this particular yacht. The Phelan SevenSeas 550LR is no ordinary trawler. It can reach a top speed of twenty-two knots and cruise at sixteen. It can plane and plow,” Nick said. It was a phrase he stole from the brochure that he understood the gist of, if not the actual meaning.
“We’ll see,” Kate said. “I’d still rather punch him in the face and spirit him away in a jetboat.”
“And I’d rather be driving the jetboat, but I’ll settle for this,” Willie said, gathering together the literature on the yacht. “I’m going back to my room and study up on this boat so we don’t end up like the Titanic.”
Benoa Harbor had a seedy, industrial feel despite the presence of dozens of sleek yachts stuck in between all of the fishing trawlers, longboats, rusted tankers, thatch-roofed houseboats, ferries, motorboats, huge cruise ships, and the colorful two-masted Bugis schooners with their long, curved bows that resembled a leprechaun’s shoes. Fruit vendors in longboats puttered among the tightly packed boats, selling bananas and oranges to people who reached out of open portholes or leaned perilously over their boat decks to pay for their purchases.
There were two Javanese men sitting on a wooden crate, about the size of a bag of golf clubs, on the dock beside the gleaming new Phelan SevenSeas 550LR when Kate, Nick, and Willie arrived. Kate approached the men, and looked down at the crate. As expected, it was the bon voyage gift from her dad.
“You can put that in the master stateroom,” she said to the men, gesturing to the boat.
Nick repeated her orders in rough Indonesian and the two men lugged the crate up the gangway onto the yacht. Willie followed them on board, tossed her bag into her cabin, and climbed up the stairs to the secondary helm atop the flybridge.
“Play the role,” Nick whispered to Kate. “People are watching.”
Kate’s only point of reference to Eunice Huffnagle was Goldie Hawn in the movie Overboard, so she channeled Goldie and did some improvising. She walked up and down the dock in her strappy gold high-heeled sandals, expensive little black halter top, and skinny white linen slacks that sat low on her hips. She walked and frowned and pouted as she examined the yacht, aware of the attention she was getting from the Indonesians aboard the nearby fishing boats and even some of the tourists lined up for the ferry.
“It’s so tiny,” she said. “It doesn’t even have a helipad.”
“I’m sorry, Ms. Huffnagle,” Nick said. “It’s the best we could do on short notice.”
“I’d hate to see your worst.” She shook her head and got on board, Nick following after her.
The two Javanese men emerged from the master cabin and stood waiting for payment.
“Give them fifty thousand rupiah for their troubles,” Kate said to Nick, “and let’s get out of this dreary place.”
Kate had seen Overboard a couple years ago and couldn’t totally remember it all, but she was pretty sure Goldie would be proud of her performance.
“Yes, right away, ma’am,” Nick said.
Kate marched past the men into the cabin. The floors were bleached oak, the leather settees were tan, and there was decape oak cabinetry throughout. The pinpoint halogen lighting, silver accents and hardware, and the curvy lines of every counter and design element gave the entire salon a smooth, contemporary style that
evoked forward motion.
Two steps up, and on the port side, was a chef’s galley with top-of-the-line stainless steel appliances, German fixtures, and granite countertops. On the starboard side was an impressive lower helm station that continued the curvy theme, presenting the array of screens, keypads, joysticks, and controls in an elegant dashboard arrangement of leather, oak, and brushed aluminum that was Bentley elegance married to Apple sleek.
Kate was dying to take the helm, but she knew she wouldn’t be able to pry it out of Willie’s hands without punching her unconscious first. And probably Goldie wouldn’t take the helm anyway. Have patience, she thought. The journey to Griffin’s island would take about twenty-four hours, if they kept at constant cruising speed. So she could take a shift at the helm once they were out in open sea.
She went down the curving staircase to the lower deck, where there were three staterooms and two heads. The master stateroom, by far the largest and most comfortable, was amidships, where the hull was widest and deepest, and was filled with natural light from two large windows port and starboard. There was a queen-size berth that had plenty of room on either side of it, even with the crate on the floor. There was a roomy C-shaped settee and collapsible dinette under the starboard window, a thirty-two-inch flat-screen television in front of the bed, a port-side cabinet with a minibar and safe, a full-height closet, and a private head with a full-size shower.
Nick followed her into the master stateroom. “Who sent you the crate?”