“That was stupid,” Gabe said.
Josh leaned his head against the wall, still disoriented, and wondered how badly he was bleeding. “I had two choices. Try to avoid a beating, or just sit and take it. I’ve never been good with sitting and taking it.”
Gabe sighed, raised the barrel of the gun a few inches, steadied his aim. “You ever study the Spanish Inquisition?”
Frowning painfully at the weird segue, Josh gave a small shrug. “Not in depth.”
“The Inquisitors would get it into their heads that someone was a witch and they would torture them for a confession. If they confessed, they were executed as witches. Only if they died without confessing did the Inquisitors believe they were not witches, and by then it didn’t matter anymore.”
With the knock to the head he’d just gotten, the pain in his face, and the blood dribbling down his cheek, Josh didn’t feel like being a smart-ass anymore. Still, he almost thanked the captain for the history lesson. He wanted to pretend he didn’t know where Gabe was headed with this line of thought, but that would have been a lie.
“You’re going to tell us where the beacon is,” the captain went on. “You don’t want to tell us, we hurt you. If you keep pretending there isn’t some kind of tracking device on board my ship, we hurt you. Deny it exists, and the only way I’m going to believe you is if you die without telling me where it is. By which point, you being here won’t be an issue anymore.”
The gun barrel did not waver. Nor did Gabe Rio’s furious gaze. Josh had some doubts that the man would actually kill an FBI agent aboard his ship, knowing that capture might be imminent. But he didn’t want to test those doubts.
Boggs started to climb wretchedly to his feet. His chest rose and fell as he continued to catch his breath, and he focused watery, raging eyes on Josh.
Gabe Rio might not kill him, but Hank Boggs would do it just for fun. Death ranked number one on his list of Things to Avoid, followed closely by torture.
Josh opened his hands in surrender. “It’s attached to the back of the stove down in the galley.”
Gabe didn’t smile. “Was that so hard?”
A dozen retorts crossed Josh’s mind and he rejected them all. His mouth had gotten him in trouble in the past, but those lessons had been valuable. He might piss people off with a sharp tongue, but he wasn’t about to taunt the man with the gun in his hand.
“You don’t want to mess with it, though,” Josh said. “If you try to shut it down or detach it from the back of the stove, you’ll automatically send a distress signal, and the cavalry will come running.”
“Bullshit,” Boggs sniffed.
But the captain didn’t look so sure. “You’re lying.” Josh shrugged.
“Better for me if you don’t believe me.”
“Captain,” Boggs began.
Gabe turned to the chief and nodded. “I want to check it out. Make sure he’s telling the truth. If you want to have a little payback while I’m gone, I wouldn’t blame you. But try not to break him, Hank. I may need him later.”
Boggs didn’t even look up at the captain. Instead he stared at Josh with bloodshot eyes and nodded slowly.
“Yes, sir. He can bleed, though?”
“Oh, hell yeah. Make him bleed.”
The captain slid the pistol into the rear waistband of his pants and went out the door. Someone moved outside, one of the men guarding the room. Then the door closed, and the pain began.
It couldn’t have been called an interrogation. Boggs never asked any questions.
24
Rachael Voss had been against her partner going undercover on a Viscaya ship from the outset. The case had been simmering for a long time and it killed her to think Turcotte would move in with his Counter-Terrorism group and snatch the thing out of her squad’s hands, but she’d warned Josh again and again that it was too dangerous.
In private. They’d whispered a lot before and after meetings and spent a lot of time alone together — so much that Chauncey had gotten up the guts to ask if they were sleeping together. Against the rules and all that. Voss shouldn’t have been surprised. She was single and Josh’s marriage had fallen apart the way so many agents’ relationships did. If they had ended up in bed together, no one would have blamed them. No one but Chauncey, who was such a stickler for the rules.
But as close as Voss had gotten to Josh Hart in the time they’d been partners, and as much as they sometimes bickered, their intimacy had never extended to the bedroom. Still, Josh meant more to her than any of her boyfriends ever had.
The drug lord’s impounded yacht couldn’t go fast enough to suit her.
Voss couldn’t stay below, but she didn’t want to be in the wheelhouse, either. She’d been out on the foredeck for a while, but even with her sweatshirt on, the wind had snaked chill fingers down her spine, and she’d grown frustrated with staring out across the dark water in search of some sign of the Antoinette. The weight of expectation she felt was irrational; they were still a long way from the point of origin of Josh’s satellite phone call, and even when they reached those coordinates, the Antoinette wouldn’t be there, unless it was just sitting around in the water waiting for them to arrive.
No. They were waiting for the beacon.
And Voss hated to wait.
Now she sat on the aft deck in a white simulated-leather bucket chair that was one of a quartet attached directly to the deck. They were meant for fishing, complete with belts to strap herself down in case she got a bite from a swordfish or whatever. Voss didn’t fish, and she doubted Rojas, the drug lord who’d owned this boat before the FBI took it away from him, had done much fishing, either. The chairs were glorified bar stools. Voss obliged by drinking a piña colada that Pavarotti had whipped up in the tiny galley, albeit without the rum. She felt fourteen again, but deprived of sleep and wired with adrenaline. Neither alcohol nor coffee would help her do her job tonight.
The cold drink made her shiver even more than the wind off the sea, but the flavors of pineapple and coconut were wonderful, and kept her body distracted. Though too tense to eat, she could manage the piña colada just fine.
“You should get some sleep.”
Voss jumped a little, then turned to see Pavarotti standing beside her. With the wind blowing, she hadn’t heard him approach, and now she was embarrassed. She forced herself not to let it show.
“You’re stealthy for such a big bastard.”
Pavarotti smiled to let her know he didn’t mind the teasing. Voss made sure her expression told him she didn’t care if he minded or not.
“Seriously. I know you’re worried about Josh—”
“Special Agent Hart,” she corrected.
Pavarotti actually laughed. “He’d choke on his coffee if I called him that, and you know it. I get it, you hate being called Rachael. This is your squad, Agent Voss, and that’s fine by me. But Josh isn’t going to drink with anyone who calls him Special Agent Hart.”
Voss wanted to argue, but she forced herself to exhale. Uncoil.
“You’re right. I’m a little tightly wound right now.”
“I don’t blame you. But none of us is going to be any good when this goes down if we don’t get at least a little sleep, and that includes you. The doctor prescribes rest.”
“How am I supposed to rest down there with all of you guys playing cards and watching movies?” Voss asked.
Pavarotti put a hand on the back of her chair. “Nadeau and Mac are in the wheelhouse, keeping us on course and waiting for the signal, dealing with incoming communications. I’m on watch. Everyone else is asleep. It’s nearly three a.m.”
Shit, Voss thought. She hadn’t realized she had been out here so long.