Chapter Eleven
Liz bolted upright in bed. She jerked her eyes away from the midday sun shining through the porthole. What had she heard?
“Drone! Drone!” echoed loud and clear from somewhere up above, along with a pulsing buzzer.
Pressing her eyes tightly together, she covered her ears, trying to muffle the screech. The sound ceased a half second before a pounding fist hit her door.
“Liz. This is real. Open the door,” Mitch shouted.
She jumped out of bed, flicked open the lock, and turned the handle. Before she finished, he’d pushed himself into her doorway. He looked fierce, his gaze intense, every muscle straining against an unseen enemy. A gun clenched in his hand.
“Get dressed,” he said as he chambered a round and turned away. “And stay quiet. No matter what happens. Stay quiet.”
“What’s happening?”
“What part of quiet do you not understand?”
She figured he didn’t want an answer.
Grabbing the stack of clean clothes from the small dresser, she quickly shucked the oversized men’s T-shirt she’d slept in then pulled on her clothes. All thoughts of decorum had gone by the wayside. But that hadn’t mattered, because his focus was entirely on the stairs at the far end of the boat’s main cabin.
Obviously, Mitch had jumped right out of bed and taken up position at her door, because all he had on were a pair of black boxerjock briefs. The stretch of the material only served to accentuate his body but, trying to focus her nerves, all she could do was stare at the red waistband.
A loudthudsounded on deck, and Reese and Drake shouted a loud laugh and hoorah. Had they caught someone? Who? She took a step toward the porthole.
“Stay away from the window.”
“Please tell me what’s happening,” she whispered, moving close behind him once again. If he could talk, so could she.
“Onboard air detection must have picked up a drone flying into our space.”
A drone? Out here? How had anyone been able to track them down in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico? She’d been involved in working with drones for some of her magazine articles. They made easy work of what used to be dangerous climbing to get the right view or close-ups of a nest of endangered birds. But she didn’t like being on the receiving end of the close-up.
“Why?”
“Someone’s watching us?” he said.
Nodding, Mitch halfway glanced in her direction while keeping his eyes, and gun, trained on the hallway. “Reese and Drake are doing their best to convince the drone guys this is nothing more than a charter boat.”
Okay, she got that. Kind of. “So, what was the thud?”
“Drake landed a really big fish on deck. Now he and Reese will take a moment to do some big-time celebrating like guys do.”
“Lucky for us, a big fish grabbed onto his line so fast.”
“You are something else, Liz. I tell you what, when they cook that fish, you watch out for the remote control.”
Some things he said were so far above her realm of thought, she just let them pass. She’d ask for specifics later. Assuming there would be a later. The seconds slipped into minutes, slipped into a quarter hour. Finally, she sat down on the side of the bed.
Suddenly she heard Drake and Reese laughing and joking, coming down the stairs into the cabin. Their chatter abruptly stopped, and she heard what sounded like thewhooshof a sliding panel.
“Where the fuck did that drone come from?” Drake asked.
Lowering his gun, Mitch stepped into the hallway then joined the other men in the cabin area. “Better question, how did they even find this boat in the middle of the Gulf?”
“Got anything on sonar, Reese?” Drake asked.
“Looks clean. They must have bought the fishing routine.”
