Cindy Dees – Taken By the Spy (страница 7)

She cut the engine and let the Baby Doll drift toward the boathouse. “Are you calling me spoiled?”

“If the shoe fits.”

“The shoe does not fit. I can’t help being born into a wealthy family.” He was doing the same thing everyone else did. They took one look at her, labeled her a spoiled little rich girl and completely wrote her off as a waste of oxygen on the planet. What was it going to take for someone to take her seriously?

Gritting her teeth in frustration, she guided the Baby Doll to the dock and Mitch jumped ashore. He made his way to the locked boathouse doors and did something to them that didn’t take more than a few seconds. And then they swung open. She eased the Baby Doll into the empty slip and tossed him a line. While he tied off the prow, she shut down the engines and tied off the aft line.

In the abrupt silence inside the barnlike structure, a thick blanket of darkness wrapped around them, as warm and sultry as the night without.

“What jobs have you ever held?” he challenged.

Still grinding that axe, was he? “I graduated with honors in English from Vassar and was an intern in my father’s law firm. And I was a darned good one, too.”

He shook his head, a sharp movement in the dark. “Not a paying job, and you were working for daddy. Nobody was going to bust your chops or fire you from that place. Name me one real job you’ve ever had.”

She huffed in irritation.

“I rest my case,” he stated archly.

Annoyed, she replied, “How many charity balls for thousands of guests have you organized from scratch? How many millions of dollars have you raised for worthy causes and given away? How many scholarships have you interviewed a hundred people for and then granted? How many press conferences have you endured? How many political campaigns have you spent a year working on around the clock, road tripping and stumping and getting by on two and three hours of sleep a night for months on end?”

He threw up his hands in mock surrender. “All right, all right. So you don’t sit around on daddy’s fancy boat every day working on your perfect tan.” But he still didn’t sound convinced.

She wasn’t quite sure why, but it was tremendously important to her that this supremely competent man perceive her as being able to do something worthwhile. Maybe she was sick of being compared to tabloid princesses. Or maybe it was because she’d felt so helpless in the face of being shot at. He, on the other hand, had taken action. He shot back. He took out his enemies. And she…she splashed some water at them with her cute pink boat.

Chad slept with her best friend and then posted those damned pictures of her on the Internet when she dared to be mad about him sleeping with her maid of honor two weeks before their wedding. And all she’d managed to do was tuck her tail and run away. She wished she had a gun like Mitch’s. She’d have blown off both their heads with it. Okay. Maybe not shot them. But she’d have scared them both to death. But no. She’d been as weak and spineless, as useless, as Mitch thought she was. Her face burned with the humiliation of it all.

She was useful, dammit! Just because her entire family and everyone she knew thought she was supposed to spend her life doing nothing more than being attractive fluff to decorate the arm of some powerful successful man, didn’t mean it was true.

She finished buttoning up the Baby Doll for the night, her movements a little too jerky. Mitch prowled a circuit around both the outside and inside of the boathouse and finally came to a halt beside the boat. His gaze was black. Inscrutable in the near-total darkness.

“Now what?” she grumbled, still miffed.

“Now I make a phone call. And we sit tight until the cavalry comes for us.”

She watched as he pulled out his cell phone.

“It’s me,” he muttered into it. “St. Thomas. In a boathouse at some private estate on Magen’s Bay. Heh, swanky doesn’t quite cover it. Any luck on a catamaran?”

A short pause while he listened to whomever he was talking with. She could swear his eyes glowed in the dark, gold and dangerous. It must be a trick of the faint moonlight creeping in through the boathouse windows, but the effect was eerie.

Without warning, his gaze speared into her, pinning her in place. “I’m telling you, she can do it. She’s perfect for it.” A short pause. “Yes, I know the risks. And yes, I’m sure.”

He sounded like he was trying to convince himself as much as the person on the other end of the line about whatever they were talking about.

“Okay. Call me back.” He disconnected.

Not long on words, her pantherlike companion. When he didn’t say anything to her after he pocketed the phone, she said, “And?”

“And we stay here while my people set up transportation for us.”

“To where?”

He didn’t answer right away. In fact, he almost looked hesitant to tell her. How bad could it be? He’d need to take her someplace secluded, far away from Cuba where the killer wouldn’t think to look for her. Maybe Europe. It was nice there at this time of year.

“How do you feel about big game hunting?” he asked.

“Africa?” she blurted, surprised, “It’s awfully hot there at this time of year. But I suppose I’m up for a safari. As long as we don’t shoot anything. But I could go for some big game photography.” Now that she thought about it, she could see where he’d feel at home on the Dark Continent.

“Not Africa,” he bit out.

“Then where?”

Finally, he said reluctantly, “Cuba.”

“What?” she squawked. “But that’s where your assassin is from.”

“That’s correct. It’ll just be for a few days. Long enough for me to find our guy and neutralize him. His name’s Camarillo, by the way.”

“We need to stay away from him. He’ll try to kill us again!”

“That’s why we’re going to hunt him down and eliminate him before he gets us. Ops thinks it would be safer to go on the offensive and not sit back and wait for him to come to us.”

Shock rendered her speechless. They were going hunting for their would-be killer? She burst out, “That’s the dumbest idea I’ve ever heard of.”

He snorted without humor. “Wait till you get a load of the next part, where you act as my cover to smuggle me into Cuba.”

“How am I supposed to do that?”

“Can you handle a sailboat as well as you handle a motorboat?”

“Well, yes.” She frowned. “How did you know that?”

He made a noise that might pass in some circles for a laugh. “Tortola? Hyannis? Magen’s Bay? You grew up on water. And where there are rich people and water, there are sailboats.”

“I happen to prefer motorboats,” she replied a little stiffly. She hated fitting his stereotype of her, but she had, in fact, grown up around boats of all kinds.

Mitch’s voice rasped across her skin like a cat’s rough tongue, drawing her attention once more. “I need you to sail a wounded catamaran into port on the south side of Cuba and request repairs. They’ll let you come ashore in an emergency. I’m going to hide in one of the pontoons. Once you’ve docked, I’ll sneak out and we’ll head inland from there.”

“Sounds dangerous.”

“Not especially. If the Cubans catch us, they’ll only throw us into prison. In six months, a year tops, the U.S. government will negotiate our release. I figure with your father being who he is, the Cubans will spring us after a few weeks. At least, they’ll spring you that fast.”

“I do not want to be incarcerated in a Cuban jail, thank you very much.”

“Me, neither. That’s why you’re going to pay attention and do what I tell you to.”

“I don’t like it,” she announced.

“Neither do I. But I’ve got no time to fool around with setting up another entry into Cuba. You’re it, Miss Hollingsworth. We need to stick together anyway until I kill Camarillo. I may as well put you to some good use.”

“Gee, thanks. I always love sounding like some sort of disposable power tool.”

“You don’t throw out power tools,” he corrected gently.

She merely narrowed her eyes and glared at him. Fine. So she’d never seen a power tool in person in her life. He knew darn good and well what she had meant. She sulked for several minutes, trying to figure out some better way to get into Cuba. But she was completely out of her league on this one. She turned her attention to something that had bothered her from the very beginning. “How did Camarillo find you? Wasn’t your meeting with whoever you were supposed to meet with a secret?”

He looked roundly irritated that she dared to question his work and didn’t bother to answer.

She wasn’t about to let him go all strong and silent on her, like she didn’t matter enough to talk to. No, sirree. She got enough of that from her father. She poked again—something simple to get him talking. “How did you get those boathouse doors open?”

His teeth flashed white in the darkness. “Have you ever heard of a don’t ask, don’t tell policy? If you won’t ask, I won’t tell.”

She absorbed that one in silence. Eventually, she asked, “How long are we supposed to sit here, waiting for your phone call?”

He shrugged. “Could be all night.”

Great. All night in a dark, secluded place with this macho male. Darned if that didn’t make her heart beat a little faster. More in an attempt to distract herself than actually make conversation, she commented lightly, “I don’t know about you, but I’m hungry.”