Shit.Dean controlled his expression—barely. He’d slipped and he knew it. This girl did something to him. Made him forget his defenses. Made him forget his damned head.
He needed to stay away from her. She was too easy to talk to.
“Customers,” he said flatly by way of explanation, and then moved past her. He was so angry with himself that he didn’t even need to steel himself when their bodies brushed against each other.
Or so he thought, until every nerve ending in his body seemed to jump into overdrive.
Cool down, old man.He was thirty-three, for fuck’s sake, not a horny teenager.
Well, not a teenager, at least.
“Thanks—for the help with the bag,” she said, clearly confused by his abruptness.
He nodded, trying not to notice that expression on her face again. It was the same one she’d had when he left her at the guest house a couple of nights ago.Wounded.As if his curtness and eagerness to leave had hurt her.
But it couldn’t be avoided. He was attracted to her—tooattracted to her. And worse, he actually kind of liked her.
Which didn’t make a damned lick of sense. He had lines that he didn’t cross, and bleeding-heart liberals—a protester, for Christ’s sake—who probably sat around the campfire wearing Birkenstocks and eating granola while singing “Kumbaya,” and burning the flag that he’d spent his life defending were definitely over that line.Waythe hell over the line.
But politics aside, she was sweet. Young—probably tooyoung for him—and undoubtedly a little “I can change the world even though I’ve never been in it” naive, but undeniably sweet. And even if he couldn’t get behind her politics, he could admire her passion for her studies and her love of what she was doing.
It had resonated with him the other night. It was how he felt about his job.
Or at least how he used to feel.
He felt the now familiar mule kick in the gut of reality, and his jaw clenched against the memories. It came over him like that sometimes. All those men—his men. His friends. Dead. He didn’t want to believe that someone had betrayed them. There had to be another explanation.
The navy had been his life for almost fourteen years. Hell, it had given him a life—a fucking purpose. It had saved him and given him a way out of the future that had been ordained for him. He knew exactly where he’d be without it. In some shit hole, with a shit job, a wife he couldn’t stand, kids to take out his anger on, and drinking himself into oblivion every night.
Just like his old man. Wherever the hell he might be.
Dean turned his back on her and headed up the stairs. Before he could get sucked in again.
Eight
What was she doing down here? Clearly Annie had watched too many movies. Who did she think she was, sneaking around like this, superspy? There wasn’t anything down here.
The first two cases Annie opened contained exactly what they were supposed to: grappling ladders and other climbing equipment that they would use to board the ship. The third contained camera equipment for them to film.
One more and she was out of here. She pulled one of the newer-looking suitcase-sized cases from the stack and flipped open the lid.
She froze. Her stomach dropped, and most of the blood in her body went to the floor along with it.
The small storage room near the engine room only had a single overhead bulb for light, but it was enough to make out the plastic-wrapped cylinders taped together in bundles of three with duct tape, a yellow-and-black cord wound through them. They looked like packages of cookie dough or breakfast sausage.
That wasn’t what they were.
She stared at the contents with a mixture of disbelief and horror. Although she’d never seen explosive devices before, it didn’t take an expert to know what she was looking at.
Fear set in, and she quickly closed the lid—as if that would somehow make them go away. Her skin was like ice as she backed out of the room and closed the door.
She was so scared that she couldn’t think. God, she was shaking! What were they planning to do? Blow up the drillship? Julien must be crazy if he thought she would go along with anything like that.
She returned to her room and lay down on one of the berths, no longer needing to feign sickness as she listened for sounds of the men above. She’d claimed not to be feeling well and left them to their lunch. But she couldn’t stay down here forever.
What was she going to do now?
Her thoughts went to one person. The captain was involved with this whether he wanted to be or not. She suspected not.
