Force of Nature (43 page)

“How do you know that?” Robin asked. “One of out four?” She’d said something like that before, back at the hotel, but it still sounded like total bullshit. She had to be making it up.

“It’s true.” Annie sat down next to him. “When I was in college, I had this plan to save my father. I did all this research and…See, he was ready to admit that he might have a problem, but he kept saying he wanted to handle it himself. I tried to talk him into going into a program—because of those health risks. Of course, I shouldn’t have worried—he never actually quit. But I’ll always remember that. It
is
one in four, Robin. Do you really want to gamble with those odds?”

His lips were dry and he moistened them with his tongue. “If I drink this,” he said, “and I’m still sick…”

“Then you
have
got the flu.” It was obvious that Annie didn’t believe that for a half a second.

Robin held out his hand for the glass. God damn, but it felt as if he were betraying Jules. His hand was shaking so much, Annie had to help him bring the damn thing to his lips. And then the scotch burned and then warmed and Jesus, it tasted so simultaneously awful and good…He drained the glass, then held it out to her. “More.”

Annie hesitated.

“I need more,” he told her.

“That’s probably not a good idea. If you’re drunk you’re not going to be able to swim to shore, either.”

“I don’t give a damn.” He took the bottle from her, and drank straight from it, using both hands to steady it.

“Robin.” She was getting pissed. “Stop.”

“I don’t want to live without him.” Robin was crying now, tears just streaming down his face, because he could feel the scotch in his fingers, in his feet, in his blood. And it was true. He was a fucking alcoholic.

But it didn’t matter, because here in this vague place between brain-scramblingly, detoxingly sober and completely skunked, he knew that Jules—his beautiful, amazing Jules—was probably already dead. “
That
should be our plan,” he said. “We’ll light the fuse and go on deck and I’ll grab Foley while you go overboard and get to shore. I can’t swim sick and I sure as hell can’t swim drunk—you’re right about that…”

“Stop,” Annie said again. “We’re both going. We’re sticking together.” She was crying now, too. Great, he was emotionally contagious. “I refuse to accept the fact that Ric is dead. I
will
not accept that possibility. He’s alive, and Jules is alive, too. We are going to see them again. We need to believe that.”

Robin let her take the bottle from him. “Even though it’s a lie?” he asked.

“Yeah.” She nodded, wiping her tears from her eyes. There wasn’t room there for both her grief and her determination. “Lie to me, Robin. Lie
for
me if you won’t do it for yourself. You’re an actor. I need you to act.”

She was quite possibly the most magnificent woman Robin had ever met—brave and strong and smart and beautiful. In a lot of ways, she reminded him of his sister, Jane, whom he’d always adored. Martell had been right. If Robin were straight, he would’ve fallen for her, hard.

Maybe it was that second helping of scotch finally kicking in, numbing him to the point of acceptance. Whatever it was, Robin couldn’t bear to disappoint her. So he nodded. “All right.”

And he got to work with fingers that could have threaded a needle on the very first try.

C
HAPTER
T
WENTY-FOUR

H
e was hit.

It shouldn’t have been a surprise. Ric had been expecting it, but it still knocked him down and took him into another dimension, where everything moved in fits and starts.

It didn’t hurt. He wasn’t sure where he’d been hit, but he saw the blood. It was on his jeans and his jacket—it was everywhere, and he knew from experience that the lack of pain was only temporary. In a matter of seconds, he was going to be screaming.

He hit the deck as he wrenched the skinhead’s weapon from his hand, as he turned it on the man and fired. Once. Twice.

Skinhead fell on top of him, solid and unmoving. Ric felt Jules grab him and drag him, but as they moved he still felt that deadweight, bumping against him, and he realized, Christ, Jules was using the skinhead’s body as a shield.

It was Junior’s shaved-headed friend that Ric had just killed—that kid who’d been in the limo with Junior on the night that Ric had saved his life.

Ric had saved Junior’s life.

And now, because of that, Annie was going to die.

Fueled by fury, he finally snapped back to here and now—just in time to realize that Jules had pulled him to safety. They were already in the galley, hunkered down. Jules had possession of both that gun and a switchblade knife, and he was pulling extra clips of ammunition and everything else he could find from the dead kid’s pockets. A cigarette lighter and a pack of smokes. A roll of twenty-dollar bills. Two vials of crack cocaine.

“Cell phone?” Ric asked.

Jules shook his head. “No luck. How bad is it?” He sat on the floor beside Ric, their shoulders against the restaurant-size oven. Wedged there between the refrigerator and bank of below-counter cabinets that included a heavy-duty dishwasher, they had a clear shot—literally—at all entrances and exits from the room—including the door that led down to the lower-level pantry.

“I don’t know,” Ric admitted. “I don’t even know where I’m hit.”

“Right leg,” Jules told him without even looking. His full attention was given to watching for another attack, listening for sounds that would let him know from which direction it was coming.

Ric could hear Junior screaming at his men, from wherever they’d run to safety.

“We get any of the others?” Ric asked.

Jules’s response was terse. “No.”

“Sorry.”

“You’re kidding, right?” Jules asked. “You did great.”

In Ric’s opinion, great would’ve been Junior and all five of his henchmen lined up on the deck, ready for body bags.

As it was, they were trapped here, indefinitely.

One thing was in their favor, though. Someone had closed the door leading from the galley to the game room, as well as the door leading up to the deck-level dining room.

Someone? No doubt it had been Jules—while Ric was off in la-la land.

“Now what?” Ric asked.

“We stall,” Jules told him. “You need me to help you stop the bleeding?”

“No,” Ric said. “I’m, uh, just…you know…” Moving a little slowly on account of having been shot.

And oh yeah, he’d definitely been hit in his upper thigh. The wound wasn’t that bad as far as entry and exit went. The bullet seemed to have missed both the major arteries and the bone, which was good.

But oh. Christ.
Now
it hurt.

Jules took off his T-shirt so that Ric could use it to stanch the flow of blood.

“Proof of life, Junior,” Jules shouted as Ric pressed the shirt to the top of his leg. He was going to need something else for the exit wound. He started opening drawers, hoping for a stack of rags or…Dish towels. He grabbed two.

“I want proof that Robin and Annie are still alive,” Jules continued. “You get me proof of life—only then will we negotiate. Do you hear me?”

Negotiation was a classic stall tactic.

“Fuck you!” Junior shouted back. “I’m calling Foley and telling him to kill them.”

Ric was ripping Jules’s T-shirt into a longer strip of fabric to tie the towels in place, but now he froze. Was this going to backfire? He looked at Jules.

“We don’t know that Foley really has them,” Jules reminded him, then shouted back to Junior: “You do that, and we will sit right here until my team discovers I’m missing. You got mere hours,
dude.
They
will
come looking and they
will
find me. You want to kill me? You’re going to have to do it soon. You want me to surrender? Give me proof that Robin and Annie are alive and that you’re going to keep them safe.”

Annie couldn’t find any matches.

She’d checked everywhere and then she’d checked again.

She’d searched the pockets of all of the raincoats and slickers hanging in the stateroom’s cabinets. She’d emptied everything out of every bench compartment. She’d searched the bar and the bathroom more than twice.

To no avail.

Robin had worked his magic on the suitcase filled with C4, adding a blasting cap and that long length of time fuse.

“This stuff works underwater,” he told her as he worked. “They call it underwater demolition. It’s pretty amazing—but what’s
really
amazing is how into it some of the SEALs are. Not so much Cosmo”—Robin’s brother-in-law was a SEAL—“but the others…There’s a SEAL named Izzy. I swear, he likes blowing things up better than sex.”

Robin was talkative to start with, but the Johnny Walker had loosened his tongue even more than usual.

As he piled the suitcases back into a stack, leaving the det cord dangling out from the one with the largest amount of explosives, he talked about Jules.

“It’s more than just sex,” Robin told Annie, “although the sex is…We could have sex 24/7 and it still wouldn’t be enough.”

That sounded pretty familiar.

“And yet…at the same time, just being in the same room with him is enough.” He tucked the length of fuse around the edge of the room. “You’re not supposed to coil it on top of itself,” he explained, then went right back to Jules. “You know what I love? I love just sitting next to him. Just talking to him. When our eyes meet, and I know we’re both thinking the same thing or, I don’t know, laughing at the same stupid joke, or even just enjoying the same instant of time…It’s…unlike anything I’ve ever felt before.”

He poured himself another drink.

“You sure you want that?” Annie asked.

“Oh, yeah,” he said. “I’m sure. You know, I can picture Jules smiling at me like that, the same way, when we’re both, like, eighty years old.”

He swayed and it wasn’t just the movement of the boat beneath his feet making him unsteady. Annie took the glass away from his mouth and poured the rest of it down the bathroom sink. “Help me look for matches, okay?”

“He was the love of my life, you know,” Robin confessed as he obediently started searching through the bench storage area, even though she’d already been through it. Maybe he’d find something she’d missed. “And it was mutual. I know that he loved me. I read this e-mail that he wrote to one of his friends, and…I probably shouldn’t have read it, but…I’m glad I did now, because I know. It really helps to know.”

In a way, Annie could completely relate. Ric had told her he’d loved her, so she, too, knew.

But she’d been too much of a coward to admit that she’d loved him—and what was she doing, thinking in the past tense? She
was
going to see Ric again, and when she did, she was going to tell him that she was in love with him, too. Present tense. Simple as that.

“At first, I was all freaked out,” Robin continued, “because I found out in this e-mail that Jules was in line for a promotion. And I started thinking I should walk away, you know, for his sake? But I’ve been thinking more about it and, if we get through this…” He looked over at her. “
When
we get through this. I’m going to grab hold of him and I am never going to let go. And I’m going to do it for
his
sake. Because finding someone who loves you as much as you love them? It’s a gift. It’s a…a…motherfucking miracle, Annie.”

“Yeah,” she said. “I do know.” Although she probably would have used a different adjective.

“Most of the time it’s one-sided,” Robin told her earnestly. “Like it was with Jules and Ben.” Last night, Robin had told her about Ben, Jules’s Marine friend who’d died in Iraq. “And with Jules and Adam. And with me and Adam.”

“Who’s Adam?” Annie asked.

“We kind of share an ex,” Robin told her. “Not at the same time,” he quickly added. “That’s not…Just…Don’t ask. It’s…a long, ugly story. In a nutshell, I screwed up because I was too much of a coward to realize what I’d found. With Jules, I mean.”

“This was back when those pictures were taken?” Annie asked. “The ones on the Internet?”

Robin nodded. “My point,” he said, “is that finding someone who loves you, too, the same way you love them? It’s a one-in-a-million thing. But I’ve seen it happen—it’s real. My sister, Janey, and her husband, Cosmo…They are so connected, so solid…I’m telling you, it’s not something you can just throw away, especially not just because you’re a little scared.”

“What if you’re a lot scared?” Annie asked.

“Tough shit,” Robin said. “Even if you’re a lot scared, you just have to…grow a pair. You have to take the risk and to tell yourself that you’re willing to do whatever it takes both to make it work and to make it last. Because it’s worth it. I mean, sure, okay, it might
not
work out. Life has no guarantees. You might try your best and still crash and burn, but what if it
does
work? Then you get a lifetime with someone who loves you as much as you love them…” He stopped himself, listening. “What’s that?”

It was more like,
what
wasn’t
that?
“Foley killed the engine,” Annie realized.

Sure enough, he was coming downstairs.

“Matches?” Annie asked.

Robin shook his head, as empty-handed as she was.

And Foley unlocked the door.

Pulling himself up to push the elevator call button took everything out of him.

It was all Martell could do, when the door finally opened, to stick a foot in to keep it from closing and disappearing again.

It was harder to push himself forward than back, but he got down to work, inching his way into the elevator.

He was leaving a trail of blood, so that if someone came looking for him, they’d find him in about four seconds. But even that thought wasn’t enough to make him move any faster. Apparently, he was already going at his top speed.

When the door tried to close on his shoulder, the pain was so intense, he nearly blacked out. Maybe he did. God knows how long he lay there, with the elevator buzzing angrily at him for holding the damn door too damn long.

Getting angry was good. It was sheer anger that took him those last few inches, so the door could finally close.

Martell didn’t have the strength to push any buttons, but the elevator moved, going up, thank you, Lord Jesus.

The door opened with a ding and Martell found himself looking up into the stunned faces of a woman and a little boy. They both started to scream.

It was nice that they did it for him, because he had nothing left.

Still, he knew he couldn’t quit. Not yet. He had to tell them—tell someone—that Robin and Annie had been taken.

But he couldn’t remember the FBI agent’s name. He couldn’t remember and…

Martell fought the darkness, but it was too much.

He had nothing left. Nothing.

And the darkness won.

Foley was on the phone.

As the door opened and Robin moved to stand in front of Annie, he heard Foley say, “You’re lucky. The water’s been choppy, so I stayed up on deck.” He paused. “Yeah, I get fucking seasick, but you’re a fucking idiot. And now
they
want proof of life. Just waste ’em. How hard could it be to just plug the sons of bitches?”

Another pause, during which time Robin looked at Annie.

Hope made her almost glow. “They’re alive,” she told him.

He nodded. “Yeah.” How hard could it be to plug Jules and Ric? Pretty hard, apparently. He should have had faith. He shouldn’t have had that last drink. Could he swim like this? He honestly didn’t know.

“Jesus Christ,” Foley said in exasperation. “All right. Just…give me a few minutes.” He hung up his cell phone and drew his gun. “Up on deck,” he ordered them.

They hadn’t lit the fuse. With no matches in the stateroom, that part of the plan had to be aborted.

But apparently Annie wasn’t ready to give up on anything, because as Robin followed her out of the stateroom and through the tiny galley to the companionway stairs, he saw her reach out and take a cigarette lighter from the countertop.

She palmed it as she pretended to lose her balance, as she used the counter to steady herself.

Robin could feel Foley right behind him, and he braced himself for the man’s retaliation. But it never came. He hadn’t seen her theft.

“Move it faster,” Foley said as Annie slipped the lighter into the front pocket of her jeans.

Part two of their plan was to grab something and knock him over the head. It was ridiculous—the idea of their getting the jump on someone like Foley, even though it was two to one.

But Foley was seasick—fucking seasick was how he’d described it.

Maybe they actually had a chance.

Junior was stalling.

Jules had good ears, and a few minutes ago he’d heard what sounded like Junior, sotto voce, ordering one of his men to call Foley.
Make sure he keeps Robin and Annie alive.

Of course, it was possible that Junior had intended for Jules to overhear him. It was possible that Foley didn’t have Robin and Annie—that they were still safely back at the hotel.

Junior’s voice was plaintive as he shouted to Jules now. “How the fuck am I going to give you proof of life?”

Jules shouted back to Junior: “Call Foley, have him put Robin and Annie on the line, then toss your phone in here so we can talk to them.”

“I’m not going to give you my phone,” Junior said. “What? Do you think I’m a moron?”