The agent led the girls from the room, but before Maddy could go, Bran found his voice and blurted, “Hey, Maddy?”
She glanced back at him. Even windblown and red-eyed and wearing grubby clothes, she was still so beautiful it hurt to look at her. “Yeah?”
“I’m sorry for…”For your uncle. For all the bad shit you had to go through tonight. For not being the kinda man worthy of a woman like you.He wanted to spit out the words but they stuck in his throat, choking him. So he simply ended with, “For everything.”
She searched his eyes for what felt like an eternity. Then she nodded. “Yeah. I’m sorry too.”
Chapter 27
Two weeks later…
“Any news on the trawler and the missing mercenaries?” Alex asked Bran as she grabbed a chair and scooted it next to his. “Have the feds found them?”
Bran was sitting at the rickety computer desk pushed into the corner of the ramshackle Wayfarer Island beach house. As usual, all the windows in the house were open to allow the sea breeze to trickle inside. Outside, the sound of voices was joined by the crooning twang of Jimmy Buffet drifting through the speakers of the old battery-powered boom box. Jimmy was singing about being a pirate two hundred years too late, and occasionally someone outside would join in with Jimmy’s lament.
Ahhhh, home, Alex thought, crunching on a strawberry-flavored Pop-Tart.
“It’s my turn at the laptop,” Bran snarled, protectively hunching his shoulders toward the glowing screen.
She made a face. “Iknowit’s your turn. But I saw you had the CNN website open, and I thought maybe there was something about—”
“They found the trawler scuttled off the coast of Mexico, but Rory Gellman is still missing,” Bran said, scrolling up to the top of the article. The headline read:Former Army Ranger at Large after Blundering Attempt to Ransom Oil Heiress.
For the last two weeks, the details of what had happened on Garden Key had been the top news stories. Alex was grateful that Wayfarer Island was so remote or there likely would have beenmorereporters camped outside their door looking for exclusive interviews. As it was, after the initial story broke, a single ship had anchored beyond the reef. But every time the reporters tried to load up in a dinghy to reach the beach, one of the Deep Six crew motored into the lagoon, shotgun in hand, and informed them the island was private property and wasn’t very welcoming to trespassers.
After seven days, the reporters had given up and sailed away.
“Gives me the willies knowing he’s still out there,” Alex said, shivering and taking another bite of Pop-Tart. A crumb fell to the floor. Meat, who’d learned to follow her around because she was usually eating and sometimes—okay, more often than not—made a mess of it, lunged at the morsel like his life depended on it. Lapping it up, he sat back on his haunches, panting and offering her a doggy grin.
“You’re welcome,” she told him, ruffling his ears and the fat row of wrinkles that made up his neck.
“Those things give him gas, you know,” Bran said, looking at Meat askance like the Pop-Tart had already begun to ferment in the dog’s belly.
“Everything gives him gas,” she corrected, taking another healthy bite and continuing to scratch Meat until she found the spot. The one that made his back leg bicycle like crazy.
“True,” Bran admitted, clearly unmoved by Meat’s hilarious antics.The man has become a total sourpuss.“So why don’t you and Sir Stinks-a-Lot scram and let me finish what I was doing. I prefer my air to remain unfouled.”
“I’m not sure that’s a real word,” she informed him while licking at the strawberry icing.
“If it’s not, it should be,” he insisted, shooting her a long-suffering look. “Now beat it. Both of you.”
“So you can write a private email to Maddy?” She wiggled her eyebrows, trying to tease a smile out of him. She wasn’t sure she’d seen one on his face since that awful night. And she missed it. “Do you guys have email sex? If so, how does that work exactly? Sort of like sexting, I assume, but—”
“Alex,” he gritted between clenched teeth, “I’m warning you.”
“Yeah, sure.” She waved him off. “So what else is new?”
“What’sthatsupposed to mean?” he demanded.
“That you’ve been stomping around here barking at everyone for the past two weeks.”
“Have not.”
“Yes, Benji,” she assured him, “you have. So why don’t you just admit you love her, you want her, and you’re miserable without her? Why don’t you go get her and make yourself happy, which, in turn, will make all our lives that much easier?”
He snorted. “That sounded so altruistic.”
“Hey,” she said in affront. “If I don’t look out for number one, who will? And stop avoiding the subject.” She skewered him with a hard look, refusing to let him get off track.Yeah, I’m on to you.“Why don’t you go tell Maddy how you feel?”
