*****
Chapter 3
We just lie here, listening to tidal swells press up against the wooden bottom of the boathouse, and the echo-pops of dripping water in between. Hours pass. I sleep fitfully, dream in sharp, menacing sketches that end just before something bad happens. Sometimes he’s there when I wake up, sometimes he isn’t.
The orange glow of sunrise steals in through gaps between planks and rotten knots in the wood. It feels like we’re both a long way from home. Primal forces have brought us here, but we don’t belong here. Barrett Carlisle could do anything he wanted, go anywhere, be with anyone; but he’s opted for these serial blind dates with death. He’s a killer with a conscience. It’s only a matter of time before he’s surprised again—but by the sound of a bullet.
“Why do you do it?” I ask.
He gets up again, rummages through another gym bag he must have brought down from the house while I slept. Then he checks his watch. “We need to head out.”
“Head out for the rendezvous?”
“They won’t wait around. Get changed, Athena. I’ll be outside, prepping the boat. Come as soon as you’re ready.”
The apparel he’s selected for me is much more my style—T-shirt, jogging top and slacks, flip-flops—but they’re all too big, and I’m mortified when I catch my reflection in the glass of his windshield. To distract him from my tragic appearance, I point to the house on the hillside. “Who lives there?”
“He's an acquaintance.”
“Is this his boat, too?”
“No. Jump on.”
When I remind him of my sore ankle, he plays the gentleman again, lifts me aboard. It’s something I can’t quite get my head round—the paradox that is Barrett Carlisle. He’s already a billionaire, but he kills for money. He’s a predator who also protects. He ends lives with relish but is tender and even chivalrous to an injured woman. He goes out of his way to be charming and extravert in public, when in private he’s so taciturn with his emotions he’s barely the same person. I don’t expect he’ll ever tell me everything, but seeing as I’m along for the ride, I’m going to do my best to get to the bottom of the mystery that is my dark defender.
What made him this way? Who started it all? Will he ever stop?
Below deck is a ridiculously overdone boudoir berth, complete with satin sheets on a squashed-heart-shaped bed, Persian rug, mini bar, empty champagne bucket, and air freshener with a perfumed scent straight out of Arabian Nights. I’m not sure whether I should do a dance with veils or just throw up.
“How long still before we get to the rendezvous?” I ask him when he pokes his head in to check on me.
“It's just a couple of hours. You should stay down here till we’re away from the bay, then come up if you like. I bet you’re dying to see what this baby can do.”
“Uhhh, yeah, if you say so...” It strikes me as a reckless thing to suggest under the circumstances, but then he does live life on the edge. And he’s done his homework on me. “Even better than a jet ski...”
“You’ve no idea.”
“It's very trusting of you, last night—to let me pilot like that.”
“I knew you had it in you. And I couldn’t pilot and shoot at the same time, could I.”
“So there’s something you can’t do?”
He nods to a small galley area at the back. “There might be a sandwich or something in the fridge. Help yourself.”
“And you?”
“I’ve already eaten.”
He revs up the cruiser’s beast of an engine, gets us underway as I take a grateful first bite of my cheese, ham and pepperoni sandwich. It’s a good combo, and I wash it down with a sparkling Appletini. Carlisle maintains a respectable speed while I’m below deck, doesn’t push it. And to be honest I’d rather stay down here for a while, until we’re so far out of sight of Valdez’s hacienda it might as well not exist anymore, except in my nightmares.
But if I have to go on deck, I so don’t want to wear what I’m wearing. Next to a sexy British billionaire—no, the sexy Brit billionaire—I look like a slum dog junkie on a bad hair day. So I go to see what the boat’s single closet has in store, not exactly holding my breath. Going off the decor so far, I’ll probably be sifting through exotic negligee. Sigh.
A sleeveless arm lashes out when I open the door. It grabs me before I can react. I scream into a firm hand pressed hard against my mouth, so hard I can feel teeth puncturing lip. The man pulls me in, coughs a few times, and then snarls in my ear, “You make another sound, and I break your neck. Nod if you understand.”
I do as he says. But how did he get in here? When? That hateful voice sounds...recent, familiar. He sweats profusely, and he’s trembling.
Again I hear the click of a gun behind me, just like on the Jet Ski last night. And again the dread washes over me: is this bullet for me? Is this how my kill-trip ends?
“You’re going to tell me who you are, both of you,” he says between coughs. “You’re going to tell me who you’re working for. Then I decide whether to kill you or not.”
I don’t believe that last part for a second. He has no reason to let us live. He's got none. We’re dead, Carlisle and me, unless...
No, we’re just dead. This is Valdez’s personal bodyguard—a man with a vendetta of his own. He’s already failed in his duty once. He must have tracked us last night. Carlisle did think we were being followed across the bay, but he was sure that once we’d cut into the cove, we were invisible. We're untraceable. So how could this man have seen us, without lights, on the dark ocean? And why didn’t we hear him climb onto the boat? Where did he leave his own boat?
There are just too many questions that have no answers. And no way out of this.
On deck, the man fires a shot. It misses Carlisle by inches, makes a hole in the windscreen. Carlisle ducks onto the seat and spins round, just the top of his head visible. He sneaks a peek, then slowly raises his hands and gets up.
“Turn off the engine!” the man yells hoarsely. “Do it now!”
Carlisle complies, and then resumes his posture of surrender. “What now, old boy?”
“Why were you at Valdez’s hacienda last night? Who sent you?”
“What? Nobody sent me. I received an invitation through a business associate. Valdez throws a mean soiree, everyone says so. And, being in Malta for the weekend, I couldn’t pass up the chance, so I made a call to a friend of mine who knows Valdez’s PR man. We got on well, I thought, Manny and me. Do you mind telling me what all this is about?”
He fires another shot, again misses by inches. “Who sent you? I will not ask again.”
“Very well... Let go of the girl and I’ll tell you.”
“No. You tell me now: who is the girl, and who is she working for?”
The inscrutable Brit shifts his weight a little, adjusts his sunglasses. He throws his hands aloft when the man gets fidgety. “Take it easy,” Carlisle says. “Just try to get comfortable, old boy. The girl is Athena Katsaros, daughter of Andreas Katsaros. I assume you know the name.”
My sweaty abductor can barely stand. He wheezes every breath, coughs behind stubborn clenched teeth that chatter in my ear. And his shakes are getting worse. Maybe he caught a chill last night when he swam in the sea in order to sneak onto this boat.
“She came for revenge?”
“Are you serious? She told me all about what happened on the balcony. It was after I’d left. She said Valdez was sick as a dog, and he collapsed in front of her. But when she tried to catch his fall—to help him—someone attacked her, tried to kill her. There was some kind of scrap on the balcony. So she fled for her life, came straight to my home. I’ve never seen her that frightened. And now you’re here, after her again, blaming her for I don’t know what. It’s rotten form, old chap… absolutely rotten of you. And I don’t know what the hell you’re pointing that thing at me for! Manny and I hit it off first thing last night.”
“You keep saying that, but...but ther
e is no such thing as coincidence.” The man staggers with me still in his grip. He’s about ready to keel over. “I-I followed you both. There was no mistake. The fence, the jet ski...”
“No mistake? I’m afraid there’s been some terrible mistake.” Carlisle deftly adjusts his sunglasses again, this time tilting them so that the glare of the sun flashes in the eyes of my abductor. The man reacts, shields his eyes with his gun hand. In that brief moment of blindness, he loses his advantage. Carlisle rips the glove box open and pulls out a pistol of his own. He doesn’t wait for the stand-off. He shoots the bastard in the shoulder above his gun arm.
With a cry, the man jerks back and lets me spin out of his grasp. He slips on the smooth deck. I scramble away toward the onrushing figure of Barrett Carlisle, who pays me no notice. Instead, he tosses his sunglasses overboard and proceeds to kick the life out of the feverish assailant—vicious, vengeful kicks doled out with almost psychotic rapidity. He’s doing a lot more than just protecting us; he’s meting out punishment. The kicks never seem to end, and he doesn’t appear to want them to end.
“Barrett, that’s enough!” I tell him.
As he glances round at me, the oil fires burn with fierce abandon through his stunning blue-gray eyes. Just what is it that’s filled him with this much hate—hate enough to drive a man who has everything to a place from which there’s nowhere left to go. He can jet around the world all he likes, pretend to be whoever he wishes, but the real