Stranded with the Captain Read online

“Is that the Bahamian police?” Cat asked Javi, who’d hunkered down beside her.

  “The Royal Bahamian Defence Force. They’re all over the islands searching for the perps. The gunfire likely drew them here.”

  She stood, her heart pounding, an idea blossoming. “Let’s rush to the beach and shout for them to come rescue us.”

  Javi grabbed her hand and pulled her back down to his level. “If you do that, and if the police even notice you and return, the pirates will kill one of your friends. Most likely Joan since she’s on deck.”

  She shook him off and returned to her feet. “You can’t possibly know that.”

  He rose with her. “Trust me. I know. They’re desperate and have nothing to lose at this point.”

  “But—”

  “And then they’ll have Debbie as a hostage and a bargaining chip. Is that what you want?”

  “Of course not.” Her brief flash of joy evaporated as the police boat continued to motor slowly out of the area. Damn Javi. This was their chance for help. A chill crept into her arms and legs again, and she hugged herself.

  “Joan has no doubt informed the authorities that she heard the shots, too, but everything was peachy on Spree,” Javi said. “And then sent them on their merry way.”

  “Why would she do that?” Cat whispered. But she knew.

  “So they wouldn’t kill Debbie. And they would’ve had a gun focused on Joan during the entire conversation.”

  “Oh, my God,” Cat murmured. Poor sweet Joan. All she’d wanted to do was help Debbie get over her divorce.

  “And they’d shoot at you, too,” Javi continued, as if he hadn’t already made his point. “You’d be an easy target on the beach, waving your arms like a lunatic.”

  She whirled on him. “Since you’re so smart, what do you suggest we do?”

  “Cripple Spree so they can’t sail away.”

  Cat stared at him. So he did have a plan.

  “How are we going to do that?” she demanded.

  “For one thing, I took the ignition key when I left so they can’t easily turn the motor over.”

  “Oh.” Focused and intense. “That was a good idea.”

  “But in case one of them happens to be a mechanic,” Javi continued, “when it gets dark, I’m going to swim out to the boat and remove the propeller. Without the prop, they can’t steer.”

  She blinked. “Won’t you need tools to do that?”

  “It definitely won’t be easy, but I have a wrench.” He patted one of the many pockets in his shorts. “And I have your mask to see with.”

  “And the snorkel to breathe.”

  “The prop is too deep for the snorkel to help. I’ll have to hold my breath and repeatedly dive.”

  Hold his breath? Cat stared at him. He acted as if his so-called plan was the most logical strategy ever devised. She saw nothing but holes in the whole idea.

  “If I can’t remove the prop, I’ll foul it.” He nodded. “We need to find some line.”

  “But Spree is a sailboat,” she reminded him. “The pirates could just sail away.”

  “They won’t get far under sail in these waters without running aground. Remember how tricky the approach was? You’d have to be damn good to sail up that channel without assistance from the diesel.”

  “True,” Cat said, her spirits lifting a tiny bit. So he really had thought things through before leaving Spree. He’d even brought a wrench with him ashore.

  “And that’s assuming our pirates even know how to raise a sail,” he said. “They’re probably counting on your friends for sail power.”

  “Yeah, good luck with that,” she murmured.

  “Exactly.”

  “What’s to stop them from leaving right now before you take the propeller?”

  “You mean if they manage to start the engine without the key?”

  She nodded.

  Javi squinted at the sun again. “By the time they figure it out, they won’t have enough time. There’s only another hour or two of light left. They’d be foolish to attempt to leave in the dark.”

  “But they could.”

  “And they might have if the Bahamian authorities hadn’t already checked on them. The pirates believe they’re safe for now but know the police are still in the area and will consider it odd behavior to leave an anchorage at sundown. Tourists wouldn’t normally do that, so it would attract attention.”

  Javi nodded, seeming sure of his analysis. Or maybe he was trying to convince himself.

  “No,” he insisted. “They won’t leave tonight. First light, yes.”

  Cat remained quiet, thinking about the ins and outs of his plan. What good would keeping them here even do? Why did he want to lure them ashore? There must be more to it than he was letting on.

  And how had Javi come up with all this detail when she hadn’t been able to generate one sensible idea? She shivered, which made her realize something else. She had a more immediate problem. She wore a wet bathing suit and an equally wet T-shirt.

  She needed to get dry before the sun went down.

  He had an answer for her every question, but was he right about his assumptions? The captain was obviously an expert about sailing and the sea, but how much did he really know about criminals?

  Maybe she didn’t want to know.

  She definitely agreed with one thing he’d said: those men had to be desperate to take over Spree. And to her that meant you couldn’t expect them to do anything rational. They might sail away right now, abandoning her and Javi on this island.

  And taking Joan and Debbie with them to rape, murder and then dump their bodies.

  * * *

  IT’S A PLAN, Javi reminded himself. A tentative plan, the most feasible one for this fluid situation. Just stay loose and focused. Any plan could be altered as circumstances changed.

  “I really think we need to start a fire,” Irish said, jerking him out of his furious plotting and back to the present. She was hugging herself again, obviously chilled. They would both be hypothermic tonight without a fire.

  “I agree,” he said. “Come on. Let’s gather more wood. If you see any rope or line, grab that, too.”

  When they returned to the clearing, Javi knelt and arranged the branches they’d collected into a pyramid formation so they would ignite efficiently. Sitting on her rocky seat, which was no longer in the sun, Irish opened her hand to show him two small rocks.

  “These were the best I could find,” she said. “But I’ve never been able to start a fire by friction.”

  “Me, either,” he said, holding up the lighter. “Fortunately, I brought this.”

  A slow smile spread across her face. “You must have been a Boy Scout. Always prepared.”

  “Nope,” he said, picking up a twig that looked likely to easily ignite. “My parents never anchored in one place long enough for me to join any sort of group.”

  He flicked the ridges on the lighter’s trigger, relieved when a tiny flame appeared, and held it against the kindling.

  “Let me help,” Irish said. She moved closer and cupped her hands around the twig to block the flame from the wind.

  She remained next to him, her breath soft on his hand, as they waited for the twig to catch. He could smell the clean saltiness of her, but the chill from her flesh seeped into his.

  At least she was beginning to think more rationally. He understood her impulse to rush to the beach and call the authorities back to them, but his goal was to get everyone from Spree out of this disaster alive. Her course of action could have ended only one way: with a lot of people dead.

  His plan might not work much better. But it gave them more time.

  “There it goes,” he said as the twig sparked and caught.

  Irish continued to shield
the twig with her hands as they transferred their tiny blaze to the larger pile of wood.

  Again they waited.

  Javi thought she might be holding her breath until she said, “It must have been tough to be a caveman.”

  “I think their lifespan was around thirty years,” Javi said.

  “Because they froze to death waiting for their fires to catch.”

  She was trembling again, and he wanted to pull her close to warm her but didn’t. Her T-shirt, with lettering about something called Green Gully, was bunched and wrinkled in a number of places where she’d tried to wring out the water. Salt water dripped from her shoulder-length hair while his had already dried.

  “Take off your T-shirt,” he said. “We’ll spread it out close to the fire to dry quicker.”

  She hesitated, but jerked the shirt over her head and handed it to him—immediately moving her chest toward her knees and hugging herself for warmth. She wore a blue one-piece bathing suit, the type swimmers wear for competitions, a good choice for snorkeling. The cloth clung to every curve of her body, which had rippled into gooseflesh.

  He’d seen her naked, but it had happened so quickly. He’d been a fool, too drunk to take the time to savor her beauty.

  He jerked his gaze to the fire. He was staring. He had a lot of regrets about this charter, but now wasn’t the time to brood about that particular error.

  Flames had fully engulfed the pyramid of wood but didn’t yet generate much heat. After laying out her shirt close to the fire, he returned to her side. She’d stopped trembling.

  “Feeling better?” he asked.

  “Yes. I think my problem is more nerves than anything else. I mean, it’s not really that cold.”

  “It will be tonight,” he said, and pulled the bag of conch toward him.

  Time to prepare the meat—never an easy task, even with the proper tools. He withdrew one shell, placed it on the sand and used the wrench and the knife to punch a hole in the top to break the suction.

  Irish watched him with interest. “What are you doing? Making a weapon?”

  “No.” He shot her a grin. “Or I hope not. I’m going to cook us something to eat. I can’t guarantee how it will taste, but it’ll provide some protein.”

  She shook her head. “I couldn’t eat a thing.”

  “You’ll need your strength,” he said, inserting his knife into the hole he’d made to release the conch.

  She swallowed visibly and nodded.

  He extracted the conch from its shell and cut away any visible color or dark spots, repeating the process with the remaining four shells. How old had he been when he’d cleaned his first conch? Six? Eight? He and Roberto had to have done this hundreds of times on the deck of Ganesh. What the sea provided had often been their only food.

  A stab of pain so intense that he almost cut himself made him pause. He pushed away an image of Berto, his tangled dark hair blowing in the wind, his dark eyes laughing at the latest boneheaded thing they’d done. Not now.

  When he’d extracted all the meat, Javi picked up the wrench and pounded on the flesh to tenderize it. For all the good it’d do.

  “And why are you torturing that poor conch?” Irish asked.

  “Makes it easier to eat. If we had seasoning, it would also allow the meat to absorb the flavor better.”

  “What?” she asked. “The Boy Scout brought no lime?”

  “I wish we had lime. Citric acid is a great way to chemically cook conch.”

  “Like ceviche,” Irish said. Then she laughed, a sound without humor. “I can’t believe we’re discussing cooking methods while stranded on a desert island.”

  “It’s not a desert,” Javi said. He placed the meat in the mesh bag and stood. “This needs to be rinsed. I’m going to the beach to use salt water.”

  Irish jumped to her feet. The sight of her upright in that skintight bathing suit, her taut nipples straining through the material, stole his breath. He turned away.

  “I’ll come with you.”

  “Stay next to the fire,” he said. “I’ll be right back.”

  “Promise?” she asked in a small voice.

  He turned back, carefully controlling his expression. The last thing he wanted to do was frighten her into worry.

  “I promise,” he said.

  She was hugging herself again, so he removed his own shirt, made of a fast-drying material, and tossed it to her.

  She grabbed it. “You’re not cold?”

  “Put it on,” he said. “I’m okay.”

  She dropped the shirt over her head. The bottom reached just above her knees and the sleeves drooped off her shoulders.

  “It’s warm from your body,” she said, meeting his gaze with a timid smile. “Thanks.”

  Color had flooded her pale cheeks. There was another regret: that he made her so uncomfortable.

  “I’ll be right back,” he told her, and hurried away. He needed to remain focused on their survival—not ogle the woman. What the hell was wrong with him? But he’d read about this type of sexual awakening occurring to operatives on dangerous missions. When a man and woman feared they faced their last night on earth, they frequently turned to each other for comfort. Or release. Or love.

  Love? Javi shook his head. He didn’t believe in love. At least not for him. But he definitely believed in sexual release.

  When he reached the edge of the mangroves, Javi remained hidden in the cover of the vegetation. Wishing he had his binoculars, he scrutinized Spree for any activity. All appeared quiet, but who knew what was going on below deck. Were the pirates cooking, plotting, snorting coke? Drinking Debbie’s tequila? Where had they stashed the women?

  With a wary eye on the boat, he moved to the edge of the beach, squatted and rinsed the conch in the clear salt water. He’d told Irish the truth. His training and experience told him her friends were unlikely to be raped under these conditions. But perps were nothing if not surprising. And inventive.

  So he had to be equally surprising and inventive.

  No, he needed to be better. If he wanted to rescue Joan and Debbie, if he wanted to get off this island alive. And he intended to. With Irish.

  Who was probably frantic with worry by now.

  He slung the bag over his shoulder and moved back to the mangroves, searching for more wood or abandoned fishing line to foul the prop. He spotted a large piece of driftwood fifty feet down the beach half-buried in the sand and jogged that direction. As he worked the log loose, he caught a flash of something metallic in the sand. Something golden.

  He reached down and plucked a plain gold ring from the sand. Looked like a wedding band. He turned the warm metal over in his fingers. Some tourist or charterer had lost this jewelry while ashore on Gun Cay. There was no way to identify the previous owner.

  Or maybe it was part of the legendary treasure. Yeah, right.

  He stuffed the ring in a back pocket, hoisted the log to his shoulder and continued back to the clearing.

  He’d place the conch on the metal grate to cook it. They’d eat, and then hike to the lighthouse on the south end of the island, maybe a half-mile trek, to bunk down for a few hours in one of the abandoned structures left over from the days the light had a keeper. No glass left in the windows, so easy enough to get inside. If necessary, he could start another fire for warmth.

  A storm was coming, and Irish would feel better with a roof over her head, although he hated to get that far away from the boat.

  His assault on Spree would begin after midnight.

  CHAPTER NINE

  CAT SAT AS close to the flames as she dared, loving the heat that blasted the front of her body.

  And when she wasn’t shivering, she could actually think.

  She’d been holding herself stiff for so long eve
ry muscle in her body was painfully tight. She closed her eyes and focused on relaxing her shoulders. Not easy to do. She imagined herself standing in her vanda house, which she kept at around eighty degrees, surrounded by blooming orchids. The sanderiana should be fully opened by now. She wished she were there to see it.

  Would she ever see any of her orchids again? She opened her eyes and stared into the flames. What if she died on this island? Her parents would be devastated. Their relationship might be difficult, but her mom and dad loved her. They just wanted her to quit hiding in the shadows. Well, she’d tried that and look what had happened.

  What would happen to the plants? Would they sell out? Oh, God. Would Mom’s condition worsen because of stress?

  Stop it, Cat. No one is dying and no one is selling Green Gully Orchids.

  If she got home—no—when she got home, she’d never leave again.

  She took a deep breath. A mistake since she got a good whiff of the stink in the surrounding mangroves, an irritant way down on her list until now. And there were other discomforts. Sand had worked into her bathing suit and chafed her skin whenever she moved. Not to mention how the elastic dug into her flesh at the seams.

  She’d longed to peel off the clingy fabric, but dismissed the idea. How long had Javi been gone? How long did it take to wash conch?

  She should go look for him, but not yet.

  She turned around so the fire could warm her backside. Sitting this direction, she could see the path and know when he returned.

  She should have gone with him, but he’d insisted she stay and truthfully she hadn’t wanted to leave the fire. Some adventurer she was.

  Why hadn’t she and her friends bothered to think about the fact that help would be a long way away from a place like Gun Cay? The idea of a pristine, quiet anchorage had sounded so enticing in the noisy bar in Key Marathon. Wow, but that tequila-soaked dinner seemed like a long time ago. Had it only been three days? Or was it four?

  Should-haves and could-haves were of no help. She needed to pull herself together, organize her thoughts and think logically.

  Now feeling a chill on her cheeks, she turned to face the fire again and forced herself to assess the situation.