Which meant they had tied Doc and the others up so they could threaten and abuse them until they gave up the location of the treasure. As for the masks? Maybe the gunmen simply liked the idea of hiding their faces from their victims. Like executioners of old.
Fuck!
In the matter of a moment, things had gone from bad to the worst-case scenario.
LT had one hell of a poker face.Usually.But he couldn’t hide his surprise and dismay. It was obvious he’d come to the exact same conclusions Doc had. Still, LT played dumb when he answered, “What are you talkin’ about? We haven’t found the treasure yet.”
“Bullshit,” the man spat. “You hauled it up yesterday durin’ the king tide.”
How the hell do they know that? Did they use a surveillance plane?Doc wondered.
It was possible, he supposed. Except surveillance planes required serious scratch, and by the looks of the gunmen’s ragged jeans and work-worn boots, they weren’t exactly rolling in the dough.
A drone maybe?
But Doc and his partners had a habit of watching the sky. Call it a survival instinct left over from their time in the Navy when death sometimes threatened from above. If there’d been a drone hovering around the dive site, surelyoneof them would’ve noticed it.
Is it possible someone from the Deep Six crew let something slip last night in Key West?
That was the easiest to answer.Hell to the naw.If his former SEAL teammates knew anything, it was how to keep a secret. For shit’s sake, keeping secrets was second nature to men who’d spent most of their adult years working in the black and gray areas of international intelligence and being deployed into just about every combat zone on the planet.
So how? How do these bastards know we brought up the treasure?
Olivia asked his silent question aloud. “Who told you that?” And then, proving you could take the woman out of the CIA, but you couldn’t take the CIA out of the woman, she added, “Because whoever they were, they were full of shit.”
She made the lie sound like god’s honest truth. Spooks were world-renowned for their ability to deceive.
For a moment, Doc thought she might’ve convinced the gunmen because dread skittered through the man’s darting eyes. Then his mouth curved into a nasty frown. “Shut your lyin’ trap, missy. The men are talkin’ here.”
Doc could feel Cami bristling beside him. She wasn’t one to put up with anything that evenhintedat misogyny. He’d found that out the hard way when she’d damn near torn him a new asshole after he told an off-color joke.
But Olivia? She only laughed. “Wow. Does that machismo work on the women in Maine? Because I have to warn you, it doesn’t fly down here.”
Even though the man’s face was obscured by a ski mask, Doc could tell by the look in his eyes that Olivia had scored a direct hit. Not about the feigned bravado, but about where they were from, which answeredanotherof Doc’s questions.
“I told ya to shut up,” the man snarled, taking a step toward Olivia and bringing the evil eye of his weapon closer to her forehead.
The temperature in the room jumped ten degrees. A direct result of the molten anger that rolled out of LT.
John spoke up with a distraction. “Ow! Damn. Not so tight,” he told Zip Tie Guy when the plastic cord locked around his wrists. “I’m old. I already got poor circulation.”
“You’re notthatold,” Zip Tie Guy countered.
John, always one to add levity to a situation, chuckled. “Thanks for noticin’. Also, you can’t blame a guy for tryin’, right?”
Zip Tie Guy said nothing to that. When he moved on to Olivia, the dude holding the gun on her turned his eyes on LT. “I’ll ask this one more time, shithead. And if ya don’t answer me, I’ll pistol whip your woman. Where. Is. The.Treasure?”
A hard muscle worked in LT’s jaw that had nothing to do with the Big Red gum he usually chewed. “Upstairs.” The two syllables dripped from his lips like venom. “Room at the end of the hallway. The blue duffel bags.”
“That’s better.” The gunman’s smug smile showed through the mouth hole in the mask. “Hurry up and tie this last one,” he added to Zip Tie Guy. “Then come around and guard ’em while I run upstairs and grab the treasure.”
He appeared to be the leader of the group. The others followed his orders without question.
“Almost done.” Zip Tie Guy started to secure LT’s hands. But before he could cinch the plastic tight, the ink peeking out from beneath LT’s T-shirt caught his eye and had him lifting LT’s sleeve. Gasping, he stepped back and pointed. “Holy shit! Check that out.”
“What? What is it?” The man guarding John and Dana demanded. He reminded Doc of Mason, about as thick as he was tall. A human wrecking ball. “Jeezum Crow, you know what? I don’t have time to check anything out. Hurry up and finish tyin’ him. It’s already gettin’ breezed up out there.”
Doc glanced toward the shuttered windows. Weak sunlight still streamed through the slats, but it was obvious Julia’s tail end was closing in quick.
