Awaken to Danger (23 page)

her throat and he kept pivoting until she saw...

Carson.

Carson cranked the anchor up, prepping the boat to set sail back to Charleston. Before they reached

shore, Nikki would know every dark secret from his past. Although he almost wished now he'd

broached the subject with her earlier, when she'd been in a more receptive mood.

Nikki had gone silent since he woke from his catnap, refusing to meet his eyes and he didn't have a clue

why. Now she sat back by the wheel, studying the other boaters in the distance, hugging her knees as she

stared out over the stretch of murky water. No ponytail or ball cap, just wild windswept hair and the

elegant curve of her neck he'd explored with kisses a couple of hours ago.

Before she'd shifted to deep freeze mode.

Women were tough enough to understand on a regular day and never had understanding a woman been

more important. Stepping over lines and a loose life preserver, he made his way toward her. She

flinched. Flinched?

Once under full sail power, autopilot set, he asked the question burning his brain. "Is something wrong?"

She dropped her forehead to rest on her knees. "I'm just confused, that's all." She turned her face to

stare back at him, tears in her eyes. "I want to trust you, but it's difficult when I can't help but think you're

not being straight with me."

Had her father already spoken to her? Regardless, the time had come to tell her what he'd only discussed

with J.T.—and a room full of people sworn to uphold the anonymity of the program. "I'm an alcoholic."

"What?" Her head jerked up, confusion chasing away tears. "Wait. I heard you, I just don't understand.

You hardly ever drink. Even with your flaming Dr Pepper call sign, I can only think of one time I've seen

you with alcohol."

One time, the night they'd been together.

But if she hadn't been questioning his drinking with her initial comment, what had she thought he was

keeping from her? They would get back to that shortly.

"Yes, I was drunk the night we slept together." Guilt hammered all over again, as strong and fresh as the

morning he'd dragged his hungover butt to A.A. "I'd been working on staying sober for two years until

then."

A wry smile kicked through the furrows of confusion. "Great. I was a drunken mistake."

He was making this worse, and that was quite an accomplishment since the situation had pretty much

sucked from the start. "You could never be a mistake. You are the most amazing, tempting woman I've

ever met. The only mistake was my selfishness that night, because I knew I would hurt you eventually."

Her chin jutted with a quiet stubbornness he'd seen often in her father. "You hurt me by walking away."

And in that stubbornness he could see that, regardless of her words to the contrary, she hadn't forgiven

him, not really. So why was she sleeping with him?

He'd assumed being her first meant he was somehow special to her. Now he wasn't sure of anything and

he didn't like that feeling one damn bit. "I joined A.A. after our night together. I'd had blackouts before,

but not one that led me to hurt someone. It was a wake-up call."

She blinked fast, straightening. "You had a blackout that night?"

"We discussed this before—the reason I didn't remember we never had sex that night."

"A blackout? You didn't remember anything?"

Hadn't he already said that? "Not much, no."

He wasn't sure if that helped her come to grips with this or not, but it certainly sent her eyebrows

trenching deeper until she softened and leaned ever so slightly toward him. Her deep freeze seemed to

have ended. He could all but see the wheels churning in her brain as she sifted through his words. A

promising sign and incentive to keep spilling his guts even if the talk grated all the way up his throat.

Carson rested an elbow on the silver railing, the waves below offering none of their usual comfort or

answers. He shifted his attention to the speedboat in the distance. "I've always known I wouldn't get

married. That's the reason I dated women with zero interest in commitment, until you came along and I

started questioning what I knew, damn it, what I still believe, but am having trouble holding strong all over

again."

"Why are you so sure you shouldn't get married?"

"My parents were drug addicts. Two of my grandparents had substance abuse problems, as well as an

aunt and a couple of uncles. I've stopped counting the cousins with chemical dependency issues." He

ticked off the dreary stat count on his fingers. "It's in my genes and I've seen what it can do to a family."

"Did any of them acknowledge the problem or get help?"

"My dad tried, along with one of my uncles, a couple of my cousins. But even with all the successes in

A.A., I've seen failures, too. Hell, I was a selfish failure with you seven months ago."

She shifted to face him, her hands falling to rest on his thighs and searing through his jeans. "So you're

doing this totally selfless thing in pushing me away, which proves you're actually a really good man.

You've put us in a no-win situation, pal."

He gripped her fingers. "Jesus, Nikki, you just don't know how bad it was."

"Or maybe I know how good it
can
be."

Her optimism could be contagious, dangerously so. "I'm glad that you've had a life that leads you to trust

that easily."

"So you're walking out again?"

"We're on a boat. I'm not walking anywhere." They were definitely stuck here until they hashed this out

one way or another.

Her jaw shot out again. "That's not what I meant and you know it."

"Being with you scares the crap out of me, no question about it. That night I saw you at Beachcombers, it

rocked me. Hard."

The mast creaked and groaned as an ominous silence stretched between them. "And you've been dry

since last May? No more blackouts?"

He'd already answered that once. What was she driving at? Even as he understood he hadn't done squat

to deserve her trust, he wouldn't escape the sense of impending doom, thickening the late-afternoon air.

"I'll admit, seeing you at Beachcombers that night was tough for me."

The boat pitched to the side, mast cracking, leaning.

Falling.

Seconds away from crashing into Nikki.

Screaming, Nikki grappled for the boat rail. Anything stable in her abruptly tilting world as the mast

leaned, held only by a couple of pathetically frayed metal lines.

"Carson!" she shouted, extending her arm toward him as she slid backward, toward the ocean.

"Jump!" he barked back. "Get clear of the lines before the boat pitches—"

A crack split the air as the mast careened out of control. The boat lurched to the side, catapulting Nikki

airborne with only a few frozen seconds to gather her thoughts before...

Water gushed up her nose. Frigid and dark as she sank, not at all like the clear depths of a pool.

Up or down? Nikki couldn't determine which way since the bubbles swirled all around. All she'd learned

in swimming classes said follow the bubbles but the underwater world churned and her senses shrieked

conflicting messages.

She kicked. Against seaweed? No. Stronger. Slicing. Lines from the boat.

Ohmigod.
Panic urged her to gasp, but she kept her lips pinched shut. She struggled to slide the metal

lines—shrouds, Carson had called them—off her ankle and wrist.
Shrouds?
How horribly ominous that

sounded.

And what an interesting word to tell her little student later. What an off-the-wall thought that stung her

eyes with tears over the possibility she might not get to share in expanding his vocabulary any longer.

The watery world closed around her, wrapping like a blanket. Or a sail. The fabric sealed to her skin.

Her lungs burned, her skin numbing. Her brain even more so.

Panic gave way to terror that this might really be beyond her control. She could die.

How could she have been caught so unaware that she didn't notice the mast crashing toward her until too

late? She'd been obsessed with the dream of Carson in the VOQ room the night Gary died.

Carson. Terror squeezed tighter. Where was he? If he'd been knocked unconscious, he could be

drowning even now.

No. Hell no. She wouldn't let it happen.

She didn't care what he may have done the night Gary died. If Carson had been there, she was certain he

didn't remember. . .none of which mattered if she couldn't find him now. She kicked against the restraints

seeking to suck her deeper, ignoring the bite of metal through her skin.

The bubbles sparkled, brighter, her head lighter, her arms and legs sluggish even as she continued to fight.

Not much time left. Now that she was seconds away from checking out, too, she realized that the image

of Carson had come in a dream, not in a memory flash like the recollections she'd recorded in her

journal. Her confused and terrified mind could well have been playing tricks on her.

Something bumped against her. The boat? A shark? She shivered even though she'd long gone beyond

numb.

Light pierced her cocoon. Death? No. The sail parted, sliced open, Carson's form looming as he split the

water with sluicing sweeps of his arms, a knife in his hand.

He was alive. Relief threatened to steal precious seconds. She had to help or he would die trying to save

her.

Kicking, he plunged down, unwinding the line encircling her ankle while she loosened the snaking vise

around her arm.
Freedom.

He clamped her to his side, surging up. She blinked back unconsciousness, but couldn't escape the stab

of guilt over even thinking he could have lied about the night Gary died. Carson may have kept the

alcoholism a secret, but this man would never have let her hang for his crimes. That much, she knew with

a certainty as strong as the muscled arm banded around her.

The world righted as her equilibrium returned, up, up, blasting through the surface by the wounded boat.

The massive keel along the bottom had righted the craft, even if the mast stretched a good thirty feet or

more along the water, lines and sails such a tangled mess she wondered how he'd found her, much less

freed her.

His feet trod water, brushing her with vital reassurance. Still he held her. "Are you all right? The mast

didn't hit you?"

"I'm fine." She gasped, lungs aching, her feet pumping now as well since she didn't have to worry about

dragging him down. "Thank you. Ohmigod thank you. And are you okay?"

"Fine." He didn't look fine. In fact he looked really pissed, his eyes stormy below a purpling bruise on his

head.

Well, she was petrified to her toes. Only an idiot wouldn't be. They were in near-freezing waters, and

while there were boats in the distance, they needed to book-it over before somebody lost a foot—or

worse—to exposure.

"Somebody's head's gonna roll for this." Anger simmering, Carson paced in a back office at

Beachcombers, while Special Agent Reis jotted notes. "I'm thinking it's going to start with you soon,

Reis, if you don't figure out who the hell's trying to kill Nikki before she remembers what happened."

The horror threatened to crash over him again as heavy as that boom. The mast giving way, tipping the

boat, launching both of them into the water. Then watching Nikki sink in a tangle of shrouds and sail.

His boots pounded hardwood floors in the antebellum building, intense, louder.

"Major, I understand you're frustrated." The agent sat on the corner of a desk, working a piece of gum

while he typed notes in his PDA. "A freezing dip in the ocean will ruin a good mood."

"No." He stopped short, the window behind Reis providing too clear a nighttime view of the dock where

someone intent on harming them had lurked in the past couple of days. "A deliberately broken mast will

do that to a person."

"We can't know that for certain until your boat has been recovered and examined."

Carson wrenched his attention off the dock, back to the present and getting answers this man had the

power to provide. "And I'm telling you, I keep that craft in tip-top shape."

"You weren't at all distracted today?" The agent tucked his PDA into an inside jacket pocket. "Couldn't

you have screwed up locking the mast in place?"

For a second Carson wondered if maybe...then as quickly shoved aside the doubts. "I've been sailing by

myself since I was ten." Which now that he thought about it didn't sound all that safe, but he'd been an

expert in ditching his parents and nanny in those days. "And on the job, my life and the lives of others

depend on following checklists. I do not 'screw up' in the air or on the water. Inspect those lines. I bet

you'll find someone filed through the metal just enough to weaken one or two of the shrouds. Even a

couple of small cuts would be imperceptible to the eye, while posing an insidious danger. Once the sails

filled and pulled the lines taut, it would continue to fray until it snapped."

"An angle to investigate. I'll look into that once your boat has been impounded. I'll also ask around about

activity at the dock."

Tension downgraded to half power. The guy was doing everything he asked, keeping him posted with all