He looked at her and laughed. “Because you don’t do these deals, and this is what it’s all about,” he said. “Don’t worry. I’m sure they won’t keep you alive for too long.”
“Just long enough to hand me over,” she said bitterly. “But what makes you think they’ll keep you alive?”
“Why wouldn’t they?” he said, looking at her.
“You’re just lost money to them,” she said, with a hard tone. “Didn’t you figure that out yet? Anybody who brokers a deal like this doesn’t have a problem taking you out at the same time. Why share the profits?”
“That’s not how business works,” he said, with a sneer. He turned as the boat approached, and he lifted a hand and called out, “Ahoy!”
Then he grabbed her by the arm, dragged her over, and said, “This is her.”
Immediately one man stepped forward. Dark and swarthy, he could have been from any Middle Eastern country, but she’d never seen him before. He looked at her, took several photos, spoke to somebody on the phone, and then nodded. “Good,” he said. “Nice job.”
Her captor smiled and said, “As long as the pay is good, we’re ready,” he said. “Where’s the money?”
The guy bent down, picked up something from the side, and, sure enough, it was a semiautomatic machine gun. She stared at it in fascination as it started to fire.
She got loose and flung herself to the side, while her captor took multiple bullets, as if dancing midair. By the time the noise stopped, she was curled up in a ball, her hands over her ears, staring in horror at the pulverized body of her kidnapper. And she knew that things had just gone from bad to worse. She was quickly grabbed by the man who had been driving the speedboat and hauled into the new boat, where she was dumped unceremoniously onto the deck. The guy with the gun turned to look at her.
“Don’t even talk,” he said. “I don’t like women to begin with, so, as far as I’m concerned, you’re nothing but a piece of baggage that I’ll get paid for at the other end. So, shut the fuck up, don’t say a word, and I’ll keep you alive. I really don’t give a shit at this point if the deal goes down or not.”
She clamped her mouth tight and nodded.
He turned to the driver and gave him the thumbs-up; then he sat down on one of the big cushioned seats and glared at her. She didn’t know what his problem was, but it was obvious he didn’t want to be here doing this job. Well, she’d have been perfectly happy if he’d given up on it, but what she didn’t want was for him to take his frustration out on her.
Things had already gone from bad to worse, so the last thing she wanted to do was air-dance, like the last guy. She knew it would be a long time before she got the images of his last moments out of her mind. She didn’t want to feel sorry for him because he’d asked for everything he’d gotten, but still it was a hard ending to a new life born with so much promise, like all the others, yet some took wrong turns that led to a path of violence and despair. Closing her eyes, she sent out another silent message to Bullard. Hurry please, damn it. Just hurry!
*
“Did you just see what I saw?” Fallon called back.
“Yeah,” Bullard said. “How close are we?”
“Not close enough, and they’re running a speedboat.”
“Can we disable it somehow?”
“Maybe,” Dave immediately signaled Garret to check out the weapons tucked off to the side.
“What do we have here? Because if they get loose on us,” Bullard said, “no way in hell we’ll catch them.”
“We also don’t know for sure that they’ve got her.”
At that, Ryland called back from the front of the boat. “Yes, they do. At least if we’ve got the right female.” He handed his phone to Bullard to check the photo.
“That’s Leia,” he said, excited. “Now we have to track him.”
“Or we take him out here,” Dave said.
“What are the chances of doing that without getting her killed?” he said.
“Not as good as we’d want them to be.”
“They may not be racing away from here anyway,” Bullard said, and, making a sudden decision, he pointed to the right and said, “Head back toward the mainland.”
Ryland looked at him in surprise.
“We can’t get close enough to him from here. We don’t want to spook him, but we do want to make sure everybody has eyes on him.” He turned to Dave and said, “Call Ice and ask for satellite tracking.”
“Got it,” Dave replied.
Bullard turned to Ryland. “Come on. Let’s go. Let’s go.”
Ryland nodded his head and said, “If you say so.”
“I do,” he said. “These guys are here for business. They took that guy out in no time, so he was just hired to find and kidnap her, but they didn’t want to spend the money to pay him off.”
“You know what? This sounds like everyone else we’ve been dealing with,” Ryland said. “That is what happened everywhere we went as we tracked down leads on you or followed up on the attacks on us. They never left anyone behind.”
“Well, I don’t know if it’s connected to us or not,” Bullard said, “but enough bad guys are in the world to keep us all hopping.”
“That there is,” Ryland said, as he pulled on the controls, changing the course enough that anybody looking at them wouldn’t have suspected they were heading toward the boat. As they watched, the speedboat turned and headed back in the same direction they were going, and, because Bullard and his crew were closer to the coast, they were likely to end up almost cutting them off. Bullard considered that for a long moment, then decided that he’d probably be better off to find out who was at the other end of this.
As much as he hated to keep her in captivity any longer, if he could get close enough to see who these men were, at least they could track down who was doing the transaction for her. Maybe it was these guys; Bullard didn’t know. What he didn’t want was to have her spend the rest of her life looking over her shoulder and wondering when the next attack would come. As it was, as they got closer and closer to the shore, these guys appeared to be following them. “Interesting,” Bullard muttered.
“Yeah, not exactly making me feel very good though,” Dave replied.
“Do you think they’re tracking us?” Bullard asked.
“I wouldn’t be at all surprised. If they thought we were out there because of them, they would.”
“In which case, everybody needs to be on high alert,” Bullard said.
“They’ve got heavier firepower than we do,” Dave said.
“Yeah, but they still have to know how to use it,” Bullard replied. “That was incredible overkill before. Like rage or somebody just happy to kill,” he said. “I don’t think there was anything businesslike about it.”
They were still about one hundred yards offshore and moving along the coast, when Ryland signaled from up front.
Bullard made his way up. “What’s up?”
“They’re gaining on us,” he said. “They’re following directly in our wake.”