DrillingDownDeep (7 page)

She wished—

“No!” She threw the stick into the corner by the piled-up
chairs, the ones nobody ever used since they would only be needed if every
single person on the rig happened to be in the cafeteria at exactly the same
time and wanted to sit down. Crouching down to reach through the dust for the
stick, she caught sight of some sort of a box.

Leaving tools or whatever this was lying around was
precisely the kind of thing she was always lecturing against. A clean rig was a
safe rig.

Idly, she pulled the nondescript box out and took off the
cover. And heard the ticking.

Oh no. It could not be. It wasn’t.

Oh shit.

She looked at the wires frantically and then at the timer.
Barely twenty-two minutes left. If the timer was even accurate, that is.
Sometimes it was set for misdirection.

“What have you got there?”

She jumped at Michael Reynolds’ voice suddenly over her
shoulder. He was looking down at her, having dressed and made his way to the
cafeteria in record time.

She stood up quickly, trying to block his sight of the box.
“Nothing. Nothing. Just some odds and ends. It shouldn’t be lying around like
this. I’ll get rid of it.”

He glanced over her shoulder. “Why is it ticking?”

“It’s a, ah…part of it’s a—”

“Let me see that.”

“It’s nothing!” she said frantically, picking it up, but he
took it from her right away and she was loathe to haggle over it, not knowing
how unstable it might be.

“This is a bomb, Vanny.” He crouched down carefully, setting
it on the ground. “Get me a pair of pliers and if you can find it, a magnifying
glass.”

Blinking at the decisive tone in his voice, she hesitated.

“Now. Do it.”

By the time she fumbled in the supply closet down the
hallway and rushed back, a pair of grocery store reading glasses having to
substitute for a magnifying glass, she figured the timer was probably on nineteen.
Michael was still crouched down in front of the device, staring at it
carefully. She handed him the items.

“Are you sure you should touch it?”

“Get out of here,” he said, not looking at her, still
staring at the bomb, this time through the lenses of the glasses. He reached
down carefully, then glanced up at her and barked, “Out. And keep everybody out
of here.”

“If you let me look at it, I might be able to figure out—”

“If you don’t get out of here right now, I’m going to have
to waste three minutes picking you up and taking you out of here myself. And
I’d rather not spare the time.”

She nodded and went out of the cafeteria, leaning back
heavily against the door. She’d give him about eight or nine minutes and then
she would go back in. She’d need at least ten minutes herself to disarm the
bomb.

And God knew how long to figure out who the hell had planted
it and who the hell was trying to fuck this rig over.

She closed her eyes for what seemed like only a blessed
minute, biting her lip, when the door started to open from the inside and she
scrambled away. She glanced at the clock on the wall. It hadn’t even been three
minutes.

Michael was standing there with the conspicuously
not-ticking box in his hand. One look told her it was disarmed.

“How did you know how to do that?” she stammered, unwilling
to divulge that she could have as well.

“I was an electrical engineering major at Cal Tech before I
went to Wharton for my MBA. Bombs are the kind of thing we’d tinker around with
from time to time.” He looked at her, hard and grim. “The question, though, is
what were you doing with it?”

There was none of the companionship of last night in his
tone or even the awkwardness of this morning. This Michael Reynolds looked hard
as nails, as if he’d earned every inch of his ruthless reputation.

“Doing with it? I found it.”

“You were hiding it from me.”

“I-I was trying to figure out what to do. I didn’t want to
alarm anybody.”

He stared at her. “Get me O’Malley. I want to talk to him.”

* * * * *

“Quinn Donald?” Michael repeated to O’Malley in stunned
disbelief.

His mouth was practically hanging open after O’Malley
reluctantly connected the dots for him.

Quinn Donald had been the thirty-year company veteran who
had tampered with the valves on this very rig in protest at having pensions
curtailed by Transcoastal as a cost-cutting matter? The very man who had
botched the sabotage and ended up having steel pipes crush his legs in the
process, leading to Transcoastal’s decision not to prosecute?

That had been the incident that had led Michael to want to
see this particular rig in the first place. But he hadn’t recalled the name of
the saboteur, if it had even been in the report he’d read, and in any case he
had never connected any of that to the lovely unconventional blonde he had been
trailing after. He’d been assured the situation had been dealt with.

“Are you trying to tell me that you kept the daughter of the
man responsible for the sabotage of this rig on as
safety
officer after
the company fired him? What the hell kind of logic is that?”

“Vanny’s a good kid.”

“She was planting a bomb!”

“I don’t believe it.”

Michael was so furious he felt cold with it. “Where is she
now?”

“I told her to wait in my cabin while I talked to you. She
didn’t have nothing to do with it.”

“Fine.” He was ready to talk to her. They were in her cabin,
as he’d considered it advisable to search it. “Bring her down here. She’ll be
cleaning it out anyway.”

He paced up and down the cabin, small as it was, several
times, until O’Malley showed up with her. “Get out,” he said curtly to the old
man.

When he was alone with Vanny, he glared at her for a good
minute or two—although the full effect may have been lost since her eyes were
uncharacteristically downcast—before he finally said, “The fact is, Miss
Donald, there was an explosive device on this rig that could’ve caused untold
damage if it had detonated.”

She shrugged and lifted her eyes. He uncomfortably noted
that they were reddened. Good. Maybe she understood how serious this was.

Michael Reynolds looked furious. Absolutely furious. Vanny
didn’t scare easy, never had.

But she was scared now. Of
what
was the question.
What exactly was at stake here? Losing her job…or something…something maybe
even more important?

She cleared her throat. “Where it was, the damage wouldn’t
have been so bad.”

“You have a lot of experience with bombs, Miss Donald?” he
snapped.

She didn’t answer. He probably knew the answer anyway from
O’Malley or her file if he made O’Malley pull it out.

She did. Part of her training at one point.

“What I have to think about now,” he continued, “is who
could have an incentive to sabotage this rig? And you know the only person I
could come up with?
You
.”

“There’s a whole mess of people who don’t like oil
drilling,” she pointed out.

“Which is precisely why we don’t let them near our oil rigs.
So let me rephrase it. Who might have an incentive to sabotage this rig and
have the access to do so?”

Again, she didn’t answer.

“Give me one reason why I shouldn’t fire you on the spot.”

“Because I didn’t do it, maybe?”

“Not good enough. Here’s what it looks like, Miss Donald. It
looks like your father got bitter because his pension was cut and he took the
opportunity of his last stint on a rig to cause a little mischief, bungling it
and paralyzing himself I might add.”

She straightened her spine, feeling a little of it come back
in the process.

“And when your father got caught and the company fired him
and understandably retracted
any
pension rights from him altogether, you
took it upon yourself to take up where he left off and get your revenge against
Transcoastal.”

“By blowing myself up? Yeah, that was a dandy idea.”

“As you yourself said, the bomb wouldn’t have sunk the rig.
But a repeated series of problems and this rig, and maybe all of Transcoastal’s
rigs would get shut down. A pretty good revenge, wouldn’t you say?”

“I dunno. This is your fucking fairy tale.”

“I’m shutting this rig down myself and getting everybody off
and then having it searched from top to bottom. And when I’ve had it certified
as clean, I’m not letting you back on or near any of Transcoastal’s rigs. And
if I have my way, you’ll never work on a rig in this industry again.”

She stared at him. “You pompous prick.”

“I’ve had about as much crap from you, Miss Donald, as I
intend to take.”

“I’m shaking in my boots,” she said, deadpan.

“You’ve got such a chip on your shoulder—”

“Save it, handsome.” She turned away abruptly, grabbing her
duffle bag from a hook on the wall. “You can go somewhere else and
psychoanalyze. I don’t work for you anymore.” Bag in hand, she stuffed a few
random things in it, more for show than anything else, and then moved to get
past him in the narrow cabin to the door. He reached for her arm and furiously,
she yanked it out of his grasp, dropping the bag.

And then she shoved him, hard, with both her palms flat
against his chest. He jerked back with the force of it. She was used to a
certain amount of physical aggression, roughhousing with the guys. He, however,
did not appear to be.

He looked stunned at first. But livid took an immediate
second.

“What? Did I hurt you?” she taunted over her shoulder as she
went for the door again.

He flipped her around, slamming shut the door she had only
just started to open, and pushed her back flat against it. Hands on her
shoulders, he held her there. Just that easy he had proven how much stronger he
was.

She swallowed hard.

With his long body so close to hers, it was understandable
that she was getting her signals crossed. So apparently was he. He stepped
closer and she could feel the bulge against her stomach growing firmer, harder.

It pissed her off but he held her so tightly that she
couldn’t get any leverage to push him away. Grabbing her wrists as she tried,
he anchored her arms high above her head. After helplessly struggling for a
minute, she went still, meeting his dark-blue eyes.

“This part of your exit interview, asshole? I don’t think
corporate HR is going to like this when I tell them.”

So fast she couldn’t stop it, he shoved his knee in between
her legs, startling her. It should not have turned her on the way it did.

And then he was kissing her.

Oh whoa…wow…

It was familiar and wildly exciting and, truth be told,
much, much missed.

She must have been kissing back because he let go of her
wrists in favor of cupping her ass, sending a wave of pleasure straight through
to her pussy. Then he was lifting it, lifting her, grinding his rock-hard
crotch into hers, pulling one of her legs up to his hip so he could get even
closer, all the while kissing her with fierce open-mouthed, hot kisses.

Apparently, it had been too long since she’d been laid.
Since he had laid her. Way too long. And her body remembered him.

His hands went to her jumpsuit and he ripped the snaps open,
all of them, all at once, tugging the sleeves off her shoulders. Then his hands
were on her breasts, over her T-shirt, shaping, molding, before he pulled that
up too.

He groaned. Or maybe that was her.

Her bra was magically unsnapped and then his long fingers
were on her naked flesh.

He was stunned at how hot she had made him. Just like that.
One minute he was firing her and the next he was making out with her like a
horny teenage boy. Completely and totally out of control.

When she started to retreat from the kiss, he followed those
soft plump lips, not letting her, until she whipped her head to the side and
gasped, “You fucking—”

He kissed the end of the sentence out of her, stumbling with
her over to the beds, the reality of the cramped cabin only then rearing its
inconvenient head.

Horny teenager for sure. How the fuck did they make it in a
bunk bed situation?

But she’d grabbed the hair at the nape of his neck while
they kissed and practically wrapped her legs around his waist and if she was
with him, there was no way he was stopping. He slammed her against the closed
door and dipped his head to one full white breast, tonguing the rigid rosy
nipple and then sucking hard. She moaned and slid her legs down.

“Let me—”

Frantically he went to her lips again, shutting her up again
in the process, and ripped the shorts she had on underneath her jumpsuit down,
taking the panties with them, so he had one hot, curvy naked ass in his hands.
Squeezing for a second, he swiftly went beneath her sweet ass to roughly thrust
two fingers up her cunt. Her wet, wet cunt. He could feel her trying to say
something underneath his kiss.

Picking her up off the floor, he yanked the bottom half of
her clothes all the way down and off one leg and then set her back down and
kicked her legs open farther, wildly excited by the movement. His hand went to
the snap on his jeans.

Throbbing cock in hand, only then did he let her mouth free
to speak, rubbing the head of his cock against her wet slit as he did. They
were both watching, and panting, and so close to it that he for one thought he
would die if he didn’t plunge into her any second. But he had to ask.

“Yes?” he grunted.

“Fuck you,” she whispered and took his aching cock firmly in
hand to shove it inside her. They both groaned as he went in to the hilt. And
then he was grabbing her legs to get his purchase and slamming her against the
door as he went at her, her hands on his shoulders to brace herself, and not
much later coming so hard and so hot and so quickly that he didn’t know whether
to be embarrassed or elated.