Vortex (Cutter Cay) Read online

  The unasked questions tasted bitter on her tongue, but she dared not ask them. They weren’t questions one could ask a total stranger. Like, are you following the election primaries? Who’ll get your vote?

  “Not for the last six months, but for sure after this salvage.” He grinned. “But my family sailed with us recently, so I don’t get too homesick.”

  He didn’t appear to recognize her, but her appearance had changed quite drastically since leaving DC. From blond back to brunette. Chances were that seeing her here would be out of context, and he wouldn’t recognize her.

  The air she was holding in her lungs hurt, and she let it out slowly. Don’t buy trouble. She wrapped one hand around her mug. Breathe. Smile.

  Aaron Cooper introduced himself as the youngest member of the team. He was in his early twenties, with a surprising six-pack for such a thin guy. He wore his long dirty-blond hair in a long skinny ponytail down his long skinny back.

  It was clear to Daniela that the men had all been friends for a long time. They joked with ease and finished each other’s sentences and teased like siblings.

  A man dressed in white shorts and a white polo shirt with epaulets on the shoulders came outside and waited for a lull in the conversation. In his forties, he had short, sandy hair, and a deeply tanned, craggy face. Cutter introduced him as the captain, Piet Vandyke. He’d come out for his orders.

  Daniela held her breath, her mug suspended between the table and her mouth.

  Go south!

  “We’ll stay put until tomorrow. I have something I want to check out before we move our location,” Logan told him easily.

  Yes!

  The captain went back inside, and Cutter gave her a considering look. “I suppose we can cobble together some clothes for you. This is an all-male ship, so it’ll be slim pickings, but I’m pretty sure we have some women’s odds and ends lying about, and everyone could contribute to your wardrobe. But perhaps we need to send someone into Lima to do a little shopping for you.”

  The last damn thing she wanted was someone going into Lima and mentioning to the wrong person that they’d fished a woman out of the sea. “Thanks, but there’s no need to go to all that trouble. A pair of shorts and a couple of T-shirts will do.”

  Wes met her eyes and gave a small nod before shoving his chair back. “I’ve got cabin fever, why don’t I make a port run? I can be back by late tonight.” He looked over at Logan for approval.

  Logan nodded. “Who else needs some shore leave?”

  A couple of the men got to their feet. “God, yes,” Aaron said fervently.

  Izak tossed his empty soda can in a receptacle nearby and got to his feet. “I’m in. I saw a shop selling locally dressed dolls. The girls will love ’em.”

  The beautiful brown-skinned, dark-eyed, black-haired dolls, dressed in Peruvian alpaca wool textiles, with their intricate designs and vibrant colors, were popular at the Blue Opal Gallery. With a lump in her throat, Daniela sipped her coffee.

  Wes walked around the table. “We can leave in an hour. Annie, wanna come and give me a list of essentials?”

  She glanced at Logan as she got to her feet, Dog beside her. “Are you sure…?”

  “Use the company credit card,” he told Wes. “Might as well check with Hipolito to see if he needs anything for the galley. Hell, make an announcement. Anyone who wants to go, can go. Twenty-four hours.” Logan paused. “Wes—Annie doesn’t want anyone to know she’s on board. Tell the others. Come and see me before departure.”

  “Well, one thing I can say.” Jed cupped his clasped hands behind his head and shot Logan an annoyingly cheerful smile across the table as Annie walked off with Wes. The two of them disappeared inside. “You don’t look bored to tears anymore.”

  “I’ve never been bored a day in my life. I’m too busy to be bored,” Logan told his friend, his tone light.

  “Our little mermaid is going to provide—days? Weeks? Of entertainment. I can’t wait. What’s her story?”

  Logan took a sip of the steaming brew in his cup. The woman could say anything she wanted to, but he knew fear when he saw it, and could almost taste her desperation. “A story is probably exactly what it is—pure fiction. My bullshit meter is in the red zone.”

  Jed gave him a bogus look of shock. “That sweet girl, BSing you? Say it isn’t so.”

  Ignoring his mocking, Logan filled Jed in on what Annie had shared with him, then paused to give Wes instructions when he returned to say he and the others were taking off. “Where’s Annie?”

  Wes smiled. “Helping Hipolito with lunch.”

  “We might all be dead by the time you get back tomorrow.” Logan told him, only half joking. Rydell Case would love that.

  “She did look like she knew her way around a butcher’s knife.” Wes’s smile widened.

  Great. Everyone was amused by the situation. “Go before I change my mind. And buy her a bra, for God’s sake.”

  “Yes, sir.” Wes went.

  Logan found it annoying as hell that they were all so entertained just because a mystery woman was now on board. He frowned at Wes’s retreating back. “Maybe they should take her to Lima and leave her there.”

  “When she’s clearly afraid of someone?” Jed’s brows rose with surprise. “With no money, and not even a pair of shoes?”

  “All of which could be resolved with the swipe of a credit card.” Why the hell couldn’t they just find the treasure of the Nuestra Señora de Garza and be working their asses off bringing up a boatload of emeralds and diamonds right now? Then he’d be too involved, too damn busy to be distracted by a pair of guileless, whiskey-brown eyes and pale, slender feet.

  “What if she’s telling the truth, and some amorous, and clearly dangerous, man is really after her ass? Will your credit card protect her then, even if it is black?”

  Logan set his mug down with an irritated chink on the table. “Could be she conked herself on the h—Okay, that doesn’t make sense either. Not that she couldn’t have done it to herself, but wouldn’t she have fastened the vest correctly before doing so? Fuck. I have no idea what game she’s playing.”

  Jed sat back in his chair, irritatingly silent for longer than Logan liked, assessing him. “If she’s playing a game at all. For once in your life, can’t you just accept someone at face value and enjoy the ride?”

  Logan couldn’t just sit there. He got up and walked to the railing, curling his fingers over the smooth wood, staring into the cool, clear water. Too bad not everything in life was so damn transparent. “No. Because I smell a rat. And that rat could very well be Case, so I won’t let my guard down. There are too many of us invested in this project. I won’t allow that dick to fuck it up.”

  Jed hefted himself out of the chair and came to stand beside him. “We didn’t find the treasure, so it’s not as though he’ll swoop in and steal it from under our noses,” he pointed out in an annoyingly reasonable voice. “Last we heard, he was on the other side of the world, near the Cape of Good Hope, on trial for stealing that treasure.”

  Logan glared at him. “Whisper Nuestra Señora de Garza a bit louder, and the son of a bitch will be hovering like death on the horizon.” He cocked his head as the mechanical whir of the helicopter doors opened overhead on the upper deck.

  Jed shook his head. “You are one cynical bastard, you know that? I find it fascinating that your protective instincts are still fully intact even though you hate liars and don’t believe a word our mermaid says. Why didn’t you just send her to shore with the guys? No skin off your nose, right?”

  The loud mechanical noise of the helicopter rising from beneath decks halted their conversation for a few minutes, then the whop-whop-whop of the rotors starting up blocked out conversation for a few more. The sound changed as Cooper lifted off. The chopper skimmed overhead, whipping up the water, and their hair, as it hovered low before ascending.

  Logan watched them skim over the water toward Lima until the sound of the rotors faded. He leaned ov
er, hanging his wrists over the rail, and turned his head as Jed continued the conversation as if there hadn’t been a break. “If she’s lying, why not jettison her before things get even more complicated?”

  “I want to see how this unfolds.”

  “That makes two of us, Wolf, my man.” Jed’s eyes lit up. “In the meantime, if you’re determined to hold her at arm’s length, may I say dibs?”

  “Don’t be an ass,” Logan told his best friend coldly. “She’s on board my ship, and until I decide otherwise, under my protection.”

  Jed’s eyebrows rose a fraction. “Really?”

  “Really.”

  “For the duration?”

  Logan narrowed his eyes. “Are you trying to piss me off?”

  Jed had the audacity to grin back. “Is it working?”

  “Not at all.” Logan pushed away from the rail and went back to the table and sat down, stretching his legs out beneath the table. Where his damned dog should be.

  Jed followed. “Can I at least flirt a little? I’m getting out of practice. Remember flirting? You used to be pretty good at it until you went all serious on my ass.”

  The past year, his brothers had had … issues, which, because they were so close, affected them all. But worse, and more immediately, his nemesis Rydell Case had recently ripped off one of his salvage teams near Cape Town, South Africa, to the tune of seven million dollars and change.

  Right now Logan had the bastard tied up in court there. Not nearly satisfying enough as far as he was concerned. Case should be thrown in jail, and the key tossed in the sea. If he’d sent Annie, Logan wanted to know why.

  Logan acknowledged that juggling ninety-nine things at once was his norm—he liked making order of chaos. He ran pretty much every aspect of Cutter Salvage, dealing with the numerous headaches, large and small, that went into running a multimillion-dollar business with employees and investors.

  Usually he thrived on the disorder of life’s curveballs. But the last few days he’d been feeling—inexplicably—flat. He tried blaming it on not finding the treasure this trip, but knew that wasn’t really at the bottom of his listlessness.

  His brothers depended on him to be a rock. Unmovable. Always there. He took his job as the oldest seriously. Maybe sometimes he went a little overboard, but his family and friends always knew that his word was his bond, that he would shoot straight on any issue. That his integrity, unlike his old man’s, was one thousand percent there when they needed it. There was no room in his life to play.

  “Life is serious. People depend on me.”

  “This is unfortunately, and too frequently, true.” Jed sobered. “Okay, what do we do if and when we find the boat she was on?”

  Logan bypassed the carafe of coffee in the center of the table, and reached over to snag an iced bottle of water from the cooler. He missed having Dog at his feet, damn it. If anyone needed a bodyguard it was himself. Annie’s braless state had about given him brain freeze. He didn’t need her here to remind him he hadn’t had sex, not with anything other than his fist, in almost a year. Jesus. He needed shore leave himself.

  “Work backwards” he told Jed, trying to shove the image of her small, plump, unbound breasts out of his usually bland imagination. “Find out who else was on board, start digging, get some answers, dig for more. The gash on her head is real. Her being in the water for hours is real. The rest is up for conjecture.”

  “What happened to your zero-tolerance policy?” Jed asked, curiously. “Think maybe it’s time to realize that sometimes a little bullshit is necessary to make the world go around more smoothly?”

  “Prevarication is never necessary.” Logan had been raised by a man who lied just because he woke up in the morning. Everything about his childhood had been built on a mound of fabrications and half-truths. “I have a new half-brother to prove it.”

  Still, it had taken years of negative reinforcement before he got the memo, and pared his life down to a couple handfuls of people he trusted.

  “You like family,” Jed pointed out. “Why’s this new brother an exception?”

  “This character worked for Nick for years before presenting himself. I’m predisposed not to like this family. We’ll see.”

  “The problem with people who have no vices is that one can pretty much figure they’re going to have some pretty annoying virtues. Just sayin’.” Jed tossed his empty soda can into the bin. “The sooner we find our wreck, the happier you’ll be. Hell, the happier we’ll all be.”

  “Damn straight, and on that happy note, our mystery guest had something interesting and unexpected to offer. She claims that emerald bowl I bought last month is a map. A map, coincidentally, to the treasure we’re looking for.”

  “Seriously?” Jed laughed. “Now I’m with you on the bullshit meter.”

  “Come up to my office and let’s see what the bowl tells us.”

  Still grinning, Jed got to his feet. “Maybe we should call in Madam Mermaid to interpret our reading.”

  Logan’s eyes narrowed. “No, we’ll figure it out without a slanted editorial. Get the lead out. We have a mystery to unravel, and a treasure to find.”

  Four

  Daniela was on her way back to her cabin from the galley, a steaming mug of tea in one hand, a plate of warm brownies mounded with melting vanilla ice cream in the other, Dog a shadow beside her.

  The corridor was quiet, the movement of the ship barely noticeable at all. On this deck were the cabins of the dive team. Half of them had gone with Wes that morning to buy her a bra. Dinner had been several hours ago, and she was so bored she was ready to run laps around the deck.

  Her cabin was at the end of the long corridor, apparently right next door to Logan. Lucky her.

  It was decent of him to allow her to stay on board, especially since he was making little attempt to hide his suspicion.

  She was lapsed, but the whole Catholic guilt thing made a hard knot in her belly when she thought of everything she was doing to stay alive. Justified? She hoped Father Morgan would be proud that after all this time, she still felt pangs when she lied. He’d done a good job.

  Her parents must be sick with worry. They knew some of why she’d run, but not all—thank God—and not where. Senator Victor Stamps had a very long reach and a way of persuading people that terrified Daniela, making whatever she did to protect her family worthwhile. Anything.

  Her parents were enjoying a Mediterranean cruise. They’d return to New Mexico in three weeks. That was cutting it awfully close, but she’d had no say in the matter.

  Thanks to Logan Cutter, Daniela felt safe, too. At least for the moment. Well, as safe as she could feel with two hundred pounds of muscular brooding male watching her every move. Right now all she needed to do was figure out how to outsmart her cousins before she repaid Cutter by bringing danger and mayhem to his pretty ship.

  It hardly seemed fair. But then sacrifice was supposed to bring one closer to God. Cutter might very well be up for sainthood when she was through with this nasty business.

  Even eating an elephant required one bite at a time.

  Locate the bowl. Check.

  Give said bowl to Cutter. Check.

  Give him the broadest clues she could without hitting him over the head with said bowl or actually drawing him a map. Check.

  Now it was up to him to decide what to do with the information. Logically, in her mind at least, he’d believe her, and hotfoot it down the coast in the other direction to see if maybe she was right. But since he didn’t appear to be the trusting sort, she suspected they’d stay parked right where they were. “In the middle of the ocean until hell freezes over, right, Thor?” She tried out a new name for Dog. He didn’t appear to like it one way or the other.

  In their short twenty-four-hour acquaintance, Daniela had come to some conclusions about her reluctant host. “Would you say intractable, stubborn, and believes he’s always right? Yeah. What I figured.” Her dad was the nice version of the characteristics, so D
aniela had cut her teeth on the breed. Still, experience hadn’t prepared her for Victor, who practiced the dark side of those traits.

  The next step, if necessary, was a club over Cutter’s thick head, then wrest the steering wheel out of the hands of the nice captain, and move the ship herself.

  “On the other hand,” she whispered to an oblivious Dog. “Why do I care if he believes me or not? I don’t give a flying fig if we stay anchored here for the next two and a half weeks. In fact, that would be even better. What do you think?” No treasure would ensure the cousins stayed away.

  “It’s not as if he can salvage all the treasure in one day, right?” she quietly asked the dog beside her.

  The dog didn’t share his opinion, just cocked his head and perked up an ear. Judging by the hopeful glances he kept giving the dish in her hand, he was anticipating some of the ice cream melting off her plate as she walked.

  Various scenarios galloped through her head. Right now she didn’t doubt that her idiot cousins were just over the horizon, waiting for the Sea Wolf to move. The second Cutter retrieved all the treasure, they’d swoop in and take it. She’d tried to reason with them, and they’d agreed to split the treasure fifty-fifty with Cutter.

  Even she wasn’t that gullible. In fact, Daniela had never been that gullible. Which was why she couldn’t figure out how she’d ended up in the mess that was her ex-lover, Victor.

  Thank God he didn’t know where she was.

  That was a terrific place to be.

  The cousins wouldn’t make a move until Cutter had the treasure. That could take weeks, or months, or … years? By which time, please God, she’d be back home in DC. Or wherever.

  Victor’s people were beating the bushes for her in New York, San Francisco, anywhere an upscale art dealer might normally go. She’d spent the last month zigging and zagging across the country, using buses, trains, and ferries to cover her trail. He’d had two fluky, lucky-for-him breaks, but she’d managed to elude his thugs both times.