“I’m a dead man!” he told her.
“Not yet, you aren’t!” she yelled, retrieving an extra clip from her pocket. Grabbing her Sig, she ejected the old magazine and slammed in the new. And that’s when a round crashed into Rusty’s skull. Blood flew from his head and he dropped to the floor, immobile in an instant.Nowhewasdead…
“Rusty!” She screamed his name, the wall exploding under renewed enemy fire. She ducked down, her heart breaking into a million pieces, her stomach disgorging her lunch so violently it hit the wall across from her. And in those seconds when she was too busy puking her guts up to fire, the rebels closed in. The sound of their boots pounded down the hall in her direction. Getting her mutinous stomach under control and realizing she was left with no other choice, she spared Rusty once last look before turning and running for the back door.
“…like Morales seems to think,” Bran was saying when she suddenly found herself yanked from the past back into the present. It happened so fast, she suffered mental whiplash.
Holyhell.That memory always struck when she least expected it, hitting her like a freight train and leaving her emotionally broken and bloody. If she wasn’t mistaken, that was her stomach crawling up into her throat, ready and waiting to disgorge its contents all over the pilothouse. She couldn’tbelieveRusty had survived his wounds long enough for Leo and his men to find him. She would have sworn on her mother’s grave that he’d died instantly with that last shot. And even though Morales had assured her time and again there was nothing she could have done differently, nothing he said could suppress her guilt at having left Rusty there. Still alive. Still—
“I say we sail on by them and see what we see,” Bran continued, and Olivia covertly sucked in a ragged breath, forcing herself to exhale past the vise crushing her chest. After she managed that, she swallowed repeatedly until her stomach resumed its usual position. Then she pushed the terrible memory back into its safe, separate mental compartment and slammed the door shut.Andstaythere!
She couldn’t change the past, no matter how much she wanted to. But at least she could concentrate on the present. And in the name of that…
“If everything is on the up-and-up, they won’t bat a lash if we drop anchor and make a dive,” Bran added. “We’re a salvage ship. They’ll just assume we found something worth salvaging.”
“And if Morales is wrong and somehow they’re not on the up-and-up?” Wolf asked.
“Well, I guess we’ll need to be locked and loaded, won’t we?” Leo said.
“Roger that.” Bran nodded.
Mason muttered something, and Olivia looked over at him with a start. The man made being motionless an art. She’d forgotten he was in the pilothouse with them. Though how that could be, since he was the relative size and shape of a Mack truck, she’d never know.
“What did you say?” she asked.
“The contractors,” he said, his Beantown pronunciation making the word sound more like “cahntractahs.” “Did Morales say when the fuck they’d be joining us?”
“They’re having trouble fixing their prop, and the current is pulling them in the opposite direction. Morales says the best-case scenario is an ETA of two, maybe three hours. Do you all want to wait for them? Or do you still want to do this Han-style?”
Leo looked around at his men, one brownish-blond brow lifted above the frames of his mirrored aviators.
“Let’s just get this over with,” Bran proposed. “I don’t know about the rest of you guys, but I’m over this suck-ass gig. And those steaks I threw in the refrigerator back home won’t eat themselves.” He lifted his wrist to check the big, black diver’s watch he wore. “I figure if we get the lead out, I can have them on the grill by nineteen hundred tonight.”
“So in the legendary words of Larry the Cable Guy”—Leo smiled, that brow of his quirked even higher—“you’re ready to git ’er done?”
Bran’s mouth twitched, and for a couple of seconds the two men just stared at each other. Olivia frowned.Apparently, I’m missing something here.Then Bran winked and said, “Exactly.”
“And the rest of you?” Leo asked.
“‘Time and tide wait for no man,’” Wolf said, then added, “I could use a steak.”
Mason simply grunted, which she’d come to understand was the same as ayes.
“Done.” Leo smacked his hand on the back of the pilot’s seat. “Wolf, put us in gear. Mason and Bran, you guys go downstairs and grab the weapons. You know, just in case.”
And even though Leo was no longer their commanding officer, the men followed his orders without hesitation. After Bran and Mason disappeared belowdecks, Leo walked to the back of the pilothouse, motioning for Olivia to follow.
Her eyes automatically traveled down the length of his broad back to his trim waist. Then lower. To his ass. Where they stopped so fast it was a wonder they didn’t leave skid marks on the backs of her eye sockets.
She couldn’t help herself. The man had an amazing ass. All high and tight and—
Oh, for the love of Peter, Paul, and Mary.There she went again. And this emotional roller coaster she was riding, filled with guilt and ready to blow chunks one minute and brimming with lust and eager to knock boots the next, was getting really old, really fast. Not to mention keeping her slightly disoriented and wound tighter than a suicide bomber.
“What?” she whispered after Leo stopped at the far wall, glancing surreptitiously over her shoulder at the back of Wolf’s head.
The feel of Leo’s big, callused hand gently gripping her upper arm had her head whipping back around. They were standing so close she had to tilt her chin way back to look up at him. She couldn’t help but wonder which hue his hazel eyes had taken on behind those blasted sunglasses.
“I’m wonderin’ what your plans are after we retrieve those chemicals,” he said, his voice low and rumbling through her chest. Her stupid nipples perked up as if he’d specifically chosen the timbre to titillate them. Andwheeee! Here I go again,ridingthatdamnedrollercoasterupanotherhill!
