Presumably.
The yachts in the slips around the club were varied in their styles, from the snowy-white, explorer-type yachts that resembled miniature cruise ships to the sleek, gunmetal-gray motor yachts that looked like floating spaceships. The latter were fortified to defend their billionaire owners from the pitchfork-wielding rabble.
Or, you know,boats,Maxence reminded himself.
Boats.
He needed to concentrate on Simone’s plight.
On the dock, Simone stood on the sidewalk and stared at his yacht. The wild wind picked at the red scarf he’d snatched for her in the casino, and it fluttered away, floating until it dropped into the water. She clutched Maxence’s tuxedo jacket around herself, holding the lapels closed over her white dress. “This isn’t going to work.”
On the cliffs around the harbor, high-rise buildings from five to fifty stories, lit with bright yellow windows and decorated in red and green lights, loomed beyond the yacht club and the main thoroughfare. More hotels and apartment buildings packed together on the mountain terraces and rolling streets in the distance.
Ropes mooring other yachts to the docks creaked like haunted houses, and the lapping water clicked on the boats’ hulls.
“We can’t take a boat!” she whispered loudly. “Estebe has a bigger boat. He’ll catch us!”
“His boat,The Colossus,is a mega-superyacht,” Maxence told her as he tugged her hand. She stepped up the three stairs of the gangplank.“The Last Toy,on the other hand, is a modified Pershing 88 motor yacht. If it were any faster, it would be a cigarette boat. My brother won’t mind if I borrow her for a bit.”
His brother, Pierre, would definitely mind and probably throw a tantrum, but Maxence did not give a flying shit about what Pierre thought.
“Estebe will find us,” Simone said, looking around as if she thought the men chasing her might have already located them. The sidewalk leading around the bay had only a few people strolling or staggering back to their hotels or yachts, though. “If he catches us out on the water, I don’t know what he’ll do to me. At least there are people around on land.”
“Simone, if you want to get back to your family,come on.”He poured intensity into those last two words, trying to get her on the damn boat.
Simone sucked in a deep breath. Her eyebrows bunched together in worry, but she squeezed his fingers and climbed aboard the boat.
“Let’s go. Gita!” Maxence called into the yacht. “We need to cast off right now!”
A woman wearing loose white clothes emerged from the lower decks of the ship, dragging her feet because she was wearing bedroom slippers. “Monsieur Grimaldi? What are you doing here? It’s almost midnight, and we weren’t informed the boat would be leaving the dock.”
“We need to leave right now. Get Amnon up.”
Gita shouted back into the boat, “Amnon! We need you in the wheelhouse!” She asked Maxence, “Where are we going?” as she bent her knees to begin untangling the rope from the mooring on the dock.
Maxence thought quickly. “Genoa. Estebe would expect us to go to Nice, wouldn’t he, Simone? Nice is the closest airport, and it’s where we always fly into because it has the heliport with regular service to Monaco. He’ll put people at the heliport and the Nice airport, so we’ll go to Genoa in Italy. You can get a plane to Rome and then Mauritius from there.”
Simone stared at the other boats alongsideThe Last Toy,her eyes wide. “He’ll catch us.”
“How fast can that behemoth of his go?”
“I don’t know,” Simone said, still flustered. She gathered Maxence’s tuxedo jacket more closely around her, holding the coat tightly around her throat. “He said ten or twelve knots, sometimes.”
Maxence laughed.“The Last Toyis built for speed. She does forty knots or faster. We’ll leave him in our wake. We’ll be in Genoa in two hours. I doubt he could ready that beast to sail before we pull into the port in Italy.”
“It’ll take us a while to get up to cruising speed,” Gita told Maxence. “I’d allow three hours to get to Genoa, perhaps somewhat less.”
Simone told them,“The Colossushas four tenders. They’re practically little speedboats. They seat four and can hop over a wake.”
“But they don’t have the range,” Maxence assured her. “In half an hour, we’ll be in the open Mediterranean, out of sight of land. They won’t be able to find us in the dark. We’ll be in Genoa around three in the morning. You can catch the first flight to Mauritius. You’ll be home in time for a late supper.”
She paused, and her dark, lovely eyes lifted to stare into his. “I’ll behomeby tomorrow night?”
“By tonight, actually,” he said, checking the screen on his phone to confirm that it was after midnight.
Phone.
On the off chance that Estebe Fournier knew that Simone had found Maxence, they might try to trackhis phone.
