Protector (30 page)

“Who wants eight the hard way?”

“I’ll take that. Give me twenty on eight.”

“Come on, little Joe from Ko-ko-mo!”

Jolynn parted the pervasive smoke with her body, winding around slot machines and frenzied gamblers. Her eyes stung, and she tried to attribute the moisture to the cigarette haze.

Right now, she wanted to be done with the fund-raiser so she could ditch her high-heeled shoes and simple black evening gown— and figure out what to do with the rest of her life once she left Genoa. The nerve-tingling clamor of the casino contrasted in her mind with the quiet sterility of her empty future.

Amid the chaos of chiming bells and flashing lights, she elbowed through the crowd in search of her father. He was somewhere here sitting in a chair holding court. He’d done his best to persuade her not to come. But she had to, for her uncle’s memory and for Lucy, who she hoped would find
some peace in commemorating her father. Instead, her cousin was still hollow eyed from the betrayal, her olive green dress making her look all the more sallow and sad.

This wasn’t the big event they’d all been hoping for. Five more hours of the required polite greetings and she could go back to her stateroom on the ship, peel off her basic black evening gown, and pack her bags with a clear conscience.

“Hey there, pretty lady!” A sailor extended one hand while he palmed her thigh with the other. “Come stand by me for luck.”

She offered him a polite smile Venus de Milo would have disdained and kept her chin high, her emotions behind the staunch wall. “I think not.”

How long before Chuck traced the information she’d given him and arrested— She didn’t even want to guess who. Accusing anyone close to her seemed disloyal.

Like turning over the thumb drive wasn’t disloyal?

But looking away, hiding would have made her just as guilty.

Her gaze scanned to the blackjack table. A wiry old man with a goatee encouraged the patrons encircling his area. Their faces, twisted with laughter she couldn’t hear, seemed so surreal.

From behind the clutch of gamblers, a sleek dark head gleamed under the chandelier light. Lean and handsome in a white tuxedo jacket and black pants. She looked harder, studying the muscular figure, and oh my God, there was no mistaking it.

Chuck stood by a pack of heavily jeweled gamblers at the roulette wheel. Hope trembled low inside her. Had he come for her? Why else would he be here? He had the proof he needed, and yet still, here he was. As much as she wanted to shield him from her father’s world, she should have known Chuck wouldn’t give up on her.

And as much as she worried for him, she still couldn’t hold back the joy at seeing him. Even a few hours away from him had been awful. How could she face a life without him?

The room was too noisy and packed for her to shout to him or push through quickly, so she called out to him with her eyes, her stare. He glanced over the heads of the well-dressed crowd, their gazes connecting with the familiar crackle of awareness. Memories of their time together at the cottage came rushing back. She couldn’t have stopped her feet from moving toward Chuck if she’d tried.

The gleam of Hebert’s bald head shone just beyond the clump of gamblers around the blackjack table as she walked. She stifled a smile. He looked profoundly uncomfortable stuffed into his tuxedo. Seeing Chuck and Bear so close, she was amazed that she’d ever missed the similarity in their strengths, a quiet steadfastness. Who needed flowery words?

Jolynn wove through the crush of people toward Chuck. What would she say to him? She wouldn’t know if she couldn’t get to him.

Jostled, she paused, looking over to apologize. “I’m sorry.”

The aging Italian contessa who collected a different boy toy at every port gave an offhanded smile.
“Va bene.”

She seemed more interested in hitting the slots with the hard-bodied eye candy on her arm. Something niggled at Jolynn, but she couldn’t think what. She stared back over her shoulder through the haze, but the woman was already out of sight. Farther across the room, Livia Cicero sang “Stardust” while her colonel boyfriend looked on.

The colonel? The man who worked with Chuck was still here?

Slowly, she realized Chuck wasn’t here for her, but because of his investigation. Where was Bear? She searched
for her rock in the middle of the rapidly disintegrating world, but he was nowhere in sight now. Neither was her father. So who did that leave for Chuck and the colonel to be watching? Not Bear. God no.

But oh Lord, please, it couldn’t be Lucy either, although logic told her it had to be her cousin with her ties to Adolpho.

And as if her thoughts morphed into reality, the colonel pushed through the crowd in Lucy’s direction. Chuck tipped his head to the side, then started walking away from her, toward Lucy.

Jolynn wanted to scream.

“No.” The word slid free on the gust of a whisper. She gasped, confused and light-headed from lack of air. Grief constricted her breathing like a steel band around her ribs.

Like a male arm around her waist.

“Walk,” a voice growled in her ear, a familiar voice.

A gun bit into the tender flesh of her side.

*  *  *

Chuck focused on Nuñez across the packed casino level, dressed as the replacement blackjack dealer. The colonel was pushing through the crowd, although his gaze never seemed to stray long from Livia onstage. Scanlon had wanted her off the ship tonight— but as predicted, she’d stubbornly declared otherwise.

Livia Cicero was the one who’d started this operation by approaching the colonel with her suspicions. She was the one who’d noticed the pattern of those three gamblers taking cruise after cruise, leading the team to see how those men always played the same rotation of slot machines as if making practice runs. But none of them could have foreseen how deep into the past this investigation would reach. Simon Taylor’s
killer was here tonight, a player still jockeying for global power.

The thumb drive data had shown collected pieces of information to build a dirty nuke. Watching those cards slide in and out of the slot machines, it made sense now how the data had been uploaded bit by bit at different ports of call. No one having all the pieces of the puzzle, so if captured, that person couldn’t tumble the whole operation.

But tonight, it wasn’t a dry run, and the final handoff would prove disastrous. A simplified formula for building a dirty nuke placed in terrorist hands would create havoc around the world. No subway, so stadium, no mall would ever be safe again.

Failure was not an option. Chuck didn’t have room for doubting his edge, especially not with Jolynn in the crosshairs.

And if— when— he got a second chance to talk to her, he wouldn’t be screwing it up or taking no for an answer. Chuck mentally reviewed his speech for Jolynn, reminding himself to say “I love you” at least three times. Because damn it, there was no mistaking the feeling pumping through him.

While the husky crooning of the live music swelled across the room, the colonel crossed the last few steps, intercepting Lucy Taylor as she made her way toward the slots. Regret thudded into Chuck.

He would have sworn it wasn’t Jolynn’s cousin. This would be worse for her than if it had been her father. He didn’t feel too good about it, either.

Livia’s voice grew louder through the sound system. Chuck glanced back at her wondering what the hell was up with his old friend. Sure, her voice was huskier since her accident, but there was a strident sound… She was singing
and pointing with her gloved hand as if addressing someone in the audience.

Someone by the slot machines.

The aging contessa was tugging her latest boy toy to the slots. A new face, but a familiar one all the same. Her young date was one of the three suspects identified by Livia from the international terrorist watch list. A student dissident from Albania.

Chuck launched through the crowd toward the machine. They were close, so damn close, and if that card was plugged in, the data would stream through the transmission cables and link up with the rest already floating out there. There would be no calling it back.

Livia screamed into the microphone, “Rex! Over there!”

On the other side of the contessa, the colonel froze, then charged into action. Just as they’d worked together in the airplane in the past, by instinct, through training, Chuck acted. Just as the colonel had told him before. It wasn’t about the techno gear. It was about the person, the trained warrior. And right now, he was that person for the job.

He didn’t even have to consciously tell his arm to lock around the burly student. Before he registered the thought, he snapped the man’s wrist and whipped the card free a whisper away from the brightly lit slot machine.

A quick glance over and he found the colonel restraining the shrieking contessa, who wasn’t even doing a decent job at hiding her culpability.

The room went still, the jeweled and polished partiers staring in shock, others silently scurrying away.

Nuñez leapt over the blackjack table and patted Chuck’s arm, snapping him from his daze. “I’ve got it from here.”

The fog of war clearing from his mind, he passed over the dissident to Nuñez just as security poured from all
corners. Chuck backed a step, scanning the crowd for Jolynn, his arms hungry as hell to hold her now that the nightmare had finally ended.

He turned back to look where he’d seen her last and found nothing but faceless strangers.

Where the hell was Jolynn?

*  *  *

“Where the hell is that thumb drive?” a voice growled in Jolynn’s ear.

Bear’s voice. A voice that had soothed her hurts over the years now threatened her so unemotionally. Hebert Benoit, her father’s trusted friend.

A gun bit into the tender flesh of her side right under her breaking heart. How could he do this? How could she have been so wrong about him?

The arm around her waist tightened. Melding them together, he shielded the weapon from view as he pushed her down the narrow service corridors of the cruise ship. No one to call for help. How had he cleared this area so completely?

The answer was all too painfully clear. Because he was in charge of security, of course. Grassi worked for him. Heat from his body seared her back. The stench of his breath mingled with her fear.

“Walk,” he repeated, “and don’t make a sound or I start shooting the second someone comes running to your rescue. And given the way your boyfriend feels about you, I suspect he would be first to round the corner. The first to die.”

Chuck… She’d tried to do everything possible to keep him safe and had somehow only made things worse. But that didn’t mean it had to end this way, damn it. She wasn’t hiding from life anymore.

She wasn’t
going down without a fight. She jabbed an elbow into Hebert’s thick gut and stomped his instep.

He grunted, his hold loosening for an instant.

She broke free, sprinting down the corridor toward the laundry rooms. Toward a door at the end of the hall. Ten more steps.
Chuck, I should have listened. I’m sorry.
Three steps.

Hebert grabbed the back of her dress. He twisted the fabric, yanking her to a stop. His arm sliced down and he backhanded her across the face. Bear had slapped her. Reeling, she slammed against the wall sideways. The scent of bleached sheets made her dizzy as heat wafted from the oversized machines.

Through a nauseating haze of pain, she stared at the face of the man who’d been like a father to her. Betrayal soured in her mouth. “I don’t have your damned computer drive.”

“Then you better hope you can tell me where it is. I don’t need that out there floating around for anyone else to find and sell,” he scowled down at her. “I don’t like hurting you. But the people I work for will do a lot worse than this if you don’t give them what they want. Now play this right and maybe we can work something out. I can convince them your daddy will pay big money to get you back.”

She desperately wanted to believe him, but saw in his cold lifeless eyes that she was as good as dead already. In fact, this must have been the reason he called her to her father’s bedside in the first place.
Bear
had been trying to kill her since she arrived. With her out of the picture, Bear would control everything.

Resisting the urge to throw up sapped her concentration. Her body hurt all over. Yelling wouldn’t do a damn bit of good between the racket of the washers and the music playing in the casino.

“I’ll
do whatever you say. Let’s please just stay calm.” She pressed the heel of her hand to her forehead, steadying herself.

“Do whatever you need to do to keep moving and show me where you stashed the thumb drive. I know it’s not on the ship. I’ve searched every square inch of the place.”

She thought fast, needing to come up with a lie that would keep her alive and buy her time. “It’s at my father’s, but I’m not telling you where because right now I don’t trust you to let me live if I do. Take me home and then you can tie me up, shove me in a closet to be found while you make your getaway.”

“Good girl.” He smiled, looking so much like the Bear she’d loved for years her heart damn near shattered. “That’s a damn fine plan. Maybe you’ve got some of your father in you after all.”

Unclipping his cell phone from his belt, he punched a number— speed dial?—and barked into the receiver. “I’m ready for pickup. Meet you on the top deck in five minutes.”

Top deck? Pickup? The thought that he had a helicopter ready and waiting threatened to scare the starch right out of her spine. That kind of planning, those sorts of resources hinted at something on a much larger scale than low-level money laundering.

Rattled, Jolynn followed, praying some genius scheme would come to her. She feigned more dizziness and stumbled. She prayed Chuck would notice her missing and come for her. If only she could give him enough time. But she wasn’t going to just sit around and wait to be rescued. She needed to do her part to help things along.

A trail to follow? It sounded almost too simple to work. She couldn’t rig alarm systems as elaborate as his flares and
electronic eye sensors, but then he’d told her that sometimes the simplest, low-tech plans worked best. With her free hand, she flicked her thumb in the clasp of her clutch bag and found her tube of lipstick, carefully, so damn slowly. But she was afraid Bear would notice as he hauled her through the maze of corridors. She got the lipstick open enough to…