She couldn’t see much from where she lay. There was the low ceiling and the little port window. Across from the bed was a dresser and a small vanity table with chair. Everything was bolted down, of course. There were no loose objects anywhere. The lights, she’d seen when they had come on, were recessed. There were no table lamps.
There was also a second door. They’d come in and out of the one kitty-corner from the berth. This one, she had come to believe, led to the head. Which she would really like to use. Soon.
She still couldn’t get over how calm she felt. Other, normal people probably wouldn’t consider this calm, not with her still-pounding heart and the numbness in her limbs. But given her circumstances? She was doing damn well. She wasn’t going to bet the farm that all her panic issues were resolved, but this was okay. This was survivable. Which was irony at its finest.
In between figuring out the second door and trying to hear if someone was coming, unwanted memories came to haunt her. The first kidnapping, not the second. The one that had cost her Lisa.
They’d been taken from Tate’s bedroom. Lisa, her best friend and cousin, had spent the night, which was something they did often. The two of them had been held in a basement for two days. Somehow, for reasons that had eluded her and made guilt a part of every single day, she’d escaped. Lisa hadn’t.
She froze again, listening hard. Nothing. She heard the lap of the waves against the boat, but even those were soft, barely audible. She heard her own breathing, too. But at least she could hear things over the pounding of her heart, which was an improvement.
She lifted her right leg, making sure to keep her cuffed arm as still as possible. It actually wasn’t that bad. She was able to move without screaming or trying to slash her own artery so she’d bleed out.
Then she lifted the left leg. It worked as well as the right.
One of the things she had done in college was work her body. Thank goodness that, in addition to yoga and Pilates to keep herself limber, she’d taken those self-defense classes. She’d learned to shoot and shoot well. She’d done those things to make her feel courageous, and none of them had worked worth a damn.
But as of this afternoon her universe had changed. She wasn’t sure if she would remember one thing she’d learned from any of her classes or if she’d just pass out again the moment the door opened, but she was going to move forward under the assumption that in this universe she kicked ass.
The first thing to do was to move her legs, stretch the muscles. It was vital that she had control over every part of her that still worked. One hand, two legs and a brain. With luck, she’d get in at least a few licks before they tossed her into the ocean.
“WHY SHOULD I BELIEVE you?”
Michael wished they’d undo the rope that was cutting him across the chest. Of course, if they did, the first thing he’d have to do was kill his brother.
Goddamn Charlie. He must have gotten into the safe when Michael had gone to his bedroom to change shirts. There was no other explanation, and for that, for this, whatever deal he’d made with his father, deathbed or no, he was through with Charlie. Assuming they both weren’t killed in the next five minutes. “You should believe me because you’re here. You think Charlie could have put this together?” He laughed and he wasn’t the least bit sorry to see the look of hurt in Charlie’s eyes.
“Speaking of being here, how did you find us?”
“I got that one covered, boss,” Jazz said, holding up Michael’s GPS.
“That’s great, Jazz. What’s he tracking?”
“The woman.”
Ed Martini, who Michael deduced the tan gentleman to be, sighed. “What on the woman is he tracking?”
“Oh, crap.”
“Want to share, Mr. Caulfield?”
He debated lying, but all they had to do was bring the GPS in proximity to Tate’s purse and it was all over. “Her purse. It’s wired.”
“Jazz, ask Danny to come up, would you? Then have him take Miss Baxter’s purse and dump it somewhere in New Jersey.”
“Sure thing, boss.”
Ed turned back to Michael. “I still don’t see how you’d convince her to give you that number. You’d have to kill me and pretty much everyone I knew to convince me.”
He looked back at Ed, willing himself not to move, not to do what his training had ingrained in him: escape. “Tate Baxter has been rich her whole life. The kind of rich that alters her perception of money. I think fifty million dollars is one hell of a lot. But when you’ve got over a hundred billion dollars in assets…”
Jazz whistled. “I knew she was loaded-”
“Look up the Baxter Corporation online,” Michael said. “Look William Baxter up in the Forbes 500. He’s the third wealthiest man in the United States, and that doesn’t include his numbered accounts.”
Michael forced himself to relax and to keep his mouth shut. The ball had been lobbed over the net, and he had to see whether they were going to put it in play.
He wished he’d thought of something smarter, something that would get them both off this boat tonight, but it wasn’t a terrible plan. Ed Martini was a bookie, one of the biggest on the East Coast. He was a man who liked to play the odds. The potential of a ninety percent profit would appeal to the gambler in him.
What did he have to lose by checking it out? Michael knew Ed wasn’t about to forget the five million. No one seemed to be in a huge rush to get it, so they either hadn’t called in the ransom yet or they must have given William some time to gather the cash. Michael’s whole objective was to buy time.
Eventually the circumstances for victory would come his way. This was the kind of thing he’d trained for all his adult life, and these guys? They knew nothing but the brute fundamentals. He’d win and he’d get Tate out of this in one piece. If they believed him right now.
“Yeah, that’s all swell, but the five million, we don’t need her for that. And there’s no guarantee-”
“She’s crazy about him, Ed,” Charlie said. “You threaten to hurt Mikey and she’ll do anything you want.”
Ed barely gave Charlie a glance. “It seems like a lot of trouble.”
“Not so much trouble,” Michael said, “not fifty million dollars’ worth. Completely untraceable.”
“But if she signs over the money, she can just as easily blow the whistle.”
Michael smiled at Jazz. “I don’t see how, unless she can communicate from the other side.”
Jazz’s thin eyebrows came down as he frowned.
While Michael waited for him to comprende, he took a moment to think about a particularly juicy way he would kill the man when the time came.
“Oh. The other side. I get it.”
“Once you know the account is legit and you make the transfer, there’s no way anyone’s going to trace the transaction. Not if you put the money back into the same bank under your name.”
Ed chuckled just as the hatch opened at the front of the saloon. A bald guy came up the stairs. He stopped there and pulled a big tray filled with food up from the hold. Then another. Following the second tray there came a man in a white chef’s coat.
Michael turned his attention back to the bald guy. He was older than Michael by at least a couple of years, but, shit, he was in great shape. Michael would need to bring a weapon along to kill that one.
Evidently he was Danny. The one who was going to lose the GPS tracker. Jazz made him wait as he went into the berth at the inside of the saloon. He came out again holding the Coach bag. Before he handed it to Danny, he took the cash out of Tate’s wallet and her wristwatch.
Michael changed his mind. He would kill Jazz with a dull fish knife instead.
The chef was nothing. A chef. If this was everyone who would be on the boat, he could manage. There was only one guy who truly scared him and that was Jazz. Michael knew the type-he enjoyed his job. The more people he could hurt, the better.