Midnight Sun (10 page)

“It’s his own fault,” the douche said. “He rushed you. What did he think would happen?”

One of the adventurers, Marcus reasoned. But was anyone else hurt? He didn’t hear the crying woman anymore, or the sound of any other voices below him. And Douche was being pretty open about his association with the pirates. Marcus doubted he’d do that in front of the other passengers. So maybe they’d been moved, but where? It’d have to be the dining room. Just when he wanted to ask Brylie if they’d have a better view of the dining room, the men below him got quiet, and he couldn’t risk speaking. He didn’t want to move.

“Do you know who that is?” Brylie asked, close to his ear so it was more breath than words.

He nodded again. She eased back to look into his face questioningly, but he didn’t dare speak. He could enlighten her later.

“I can go look for Devlin, bring him in,” another voice said.

“No. I want you where I can keep an eye on you. He’ll come in on his own. He’ll have to.”

Below them, he heard the men move away, and he shoved Brylie’s hips in a signal to head back. They wouldn’t learn anything else here.

“They shot one of those four kids,” she said when they were huddled back on the freezer. She was shaking with a bone deep chill that had nothing to do with the temperature. They hadn’t been able to reach the dining room through the vent. She had no idea how they’d know what was going on now.

“He was a man, not a kid, and he tried to take out a guy with a gun. Not the smartest thing.”

 “You went up against men with guns,” she retorted. “That could have been you.”

His jaw tightened, as if he hadn’t considered that. Of course he wouldn’t. He charged down snowy hills at sixty miles per hour. That the young man had acted on impulse was something Marcus should understand very well.

“The man they were talking to was the asshole from my table the first night, the one who kept asking about the pirate threat. There was another voice, too, but I couldn’t place it. And I counted four shots. We don’t know if anyone else was hurt.”

“I want to go check on my dad. While everyone’s distracted, now might be the time to go.”

He blew out a frustrated breath, his mouth grim. “We need to know who else is helping them. You don’t know that other voice?”

She shook her head.

“I think it’s an employee, which means you’d know better than I.”

She shook her head. “I didn’t recognize it.” What good would it do to know anyway? It wouldn’t help them out of this mess.

“Marcus Devlin,” a voice boomed over the intercom, making them jump. “One of your passengers is dead and another gravely wounded. It is up to you whether or not I dump them over the side of the ship. Meet me in the dining room in fifteen minutes, or the wounded man goes over.”

Marcus swore, low and deep, and hi body tensed. She grabbed his arm as he shifted toward the opening of the vent. “Don’t even think about it.”

He turned to her, his eyes bright with pain. “And what? Let them throw another wounded man over the side? This one is my responsibility. He paid to go on my ship.”

Terror squeezed her chest, made it difficult to speak. She couldn’t let him go. She’d never see him again. She was certain of that. “So you’re just going to march in there and hand yourself over to men with guns? What’s stopping them from killing you?”

“My name.” He pitched his voice to soothe. It didn’t work. “They won’t get the payout they want without me.”

“They can still hurt you and get it.”

“A chance I’ll have to take.” He gave her that damned tilted grin. “I’ve been hurt before. I can deal.”

She tensed when he removed the pistol from the small of his back and placed it on top of the freezer.

“You know how to use this.”

Okay, reason didn’t work. She’d use guilt. “You are not leaving me out here on my own.”

He lifted sad eyes to her. “You’ll be fine. You were smart enough to get food and water, it must only be a matter of time before the Southern Ocean Patrol gets here. Just stay out of sight. You have the satellite phones, you can check in with Harris and let him know what’s going on. I’ll be all right, you’ll be all right.”

“I’m not buying that. You think they’ll keep their word? They’re
pirates
.”

“I’m thinking it’s a gesture of goodwill, and if I show myself and make it known to Harris where I am, this will be over. We’ll all be safe.”

She rolled her eyes. “That’s never going to work.”

“The other option is that they find us, and that will be less pleasant. I’m thinking if they have me, they’ll be more merciful to the others.” He curved his good hand around the back of her head and leaned forward to kiss her. His mouth was hot and she tasted a touch of desperation. He pulled away before she could lift her hands to grip his shoulders, holding him to her. He stroked her hair and let his hand fall away. “You’ll be fine.” He moved toward the opening of the vent.

“Where are you going?”

“If I waltz in through the kitchen door, they’ll know where you’re hiding. Even if they don’t know you’re here, I don’t want them looking, you know?”

Smart. She nodded, even though every ounce of her being wanted to go with him, take her chances with the pirates. Instead, she sat on top of the freezer and watched Marcus disappear into the vent.

She couldn’t bear not knowing what was going on, so slipped into the freezer, then into the kitchen, and crept over to the door to watch what would happen when Marcus entered.

***

Marcus had been called a hero before, a hero to kids who wanted to learn about snowboarding, to kids who liked sports. But he’d never acted heroically, and this was why.  Being that guy was damned hard. His heart thundered as he climbed down from the vent into the hallway outside Brylie’s room, where he’d entered the thing in the first place. Damn, he hadn’t thought walking away from her would be so difficult, and the challenge was more than because he wanted to look out for her. It was knowing she had his back, knowing that he could trust her. He didn’t remember the last time he trusted a woman, or even got to know one. Would he have spent the time getting to know Brylie if they hadn’t been forced together?

Yeah, so he was no hero as he approached the doors to the dining room. He wanted to bolt, to say to hell with it all, but he had a responsibility here, and he didn’t want anyone else hurt.

He pressed his good hand to the door only to have the barrier yanked inward. Someone grabbed his arm and dragged him through so that his first impressions of the room were jumbled—angry faces, terrified faces, overturned chairs, a body on the floor with the doctor kneeling beside it, her own face drawn with stress. Blood soaked the kid’s shirt, the top of his jeans. Oh, hell. Not good.  Even if the helicopter evacuated him, his chances were grim. But the doctor didn’t stop.

Marcus landed on his knees with enough force to jar his teeth, and a blow to the back of his head made his eyes spin in their sockets. Yeah, this hero crap wasn’t what it was cracked up to be. He looked up into the dark eyes of who he presumed was Hilario—at least the guy acted like he was leading this thing.

“You don’t look like so much.” Hilario jabbed a finger at his shoulder, the borrowed sweatshirt. “You are the one who killed one of my men?”

Marcus lifted his chin. “I think that was you. Threw him overboard, didn’t you?”

Hilario’s nostrils flared and Marcus realized he’d let Hilario know that he knew what was going on. Would the man figure out he’d been listening in? Marcus wasn’t sure if that was good or bad. Probably would have been better to hold onto that information. Hell.

Hilario held out a hand behind him, and one of his men placed a sat phone in it. Hilario offered the phone to Marcus. “You need to let your brother know you are with us, and if we don’t receive the ransom money within the next four hours, we’re going to start cutting off your fingers.”

Fear bubbled up and escaped in a laugh. He curled his fingers inward and told himself it was to resist taking the phone, not to protect his fingers. “Yeah, well, Harris’ll tell you I don’t use my fingers all that much. Now my toes, I need them to snowboard. Otherwise, no balance, see.”

Hilario’s face twisted and he lifted his other hand as if to strike, then lowered it again and a smile curled his lips, though it didn’t reach his flat dark eyes. “We can start with a different body part, if you prefer. I’m sure your brother will be horrified to receive that reminder that we are serious.”

Marcus inclined his head, determined not to flinch. “Now that, he’ll tell you I use too often. How will you be sending this? You have a courier service I don’t know about?”

“We have ways.”

Marcus damn near expected to see Hilario twirl an invisible moustache. He scanned the passengers who huddled together on the floor on the other side of the room, looking stunned and beaten, the douche among them, blending in. So they didn’t know a traitor was among them. More than one—who was the other?

Hilario pressed a few buttons, then shoved the phone against Marcus’s ear. “Tell your brother where you are and what I’ve said.”

Marcus held Hilario’s gaze as he spoke into the phone. “Harris. You may have heard I’m on a cruise in the Antarctic.”

“I hear it’s not going so well.”

Leave it to Harris to match his smart-ass comment. He could picture his big brother in the Sydney office, sitting behind his desk, sleeves rolled up, hair rumpled as he worked through a solution. “No, the situation has deteriorated.”

“They’ve taken you.”

Pride wouldn’t let him leave that one alone. “I wouldn’t say taken so much as I surrendered. Two of the passengers aren’t faring so well, from what I’ve seen. It was this or they’d drop them in the ocean.”

“Shit. How many? Do you know now?”

Marcus was working out how to let his brother know that some of the passengers, and maybe employees, were in on it as well, when the phone was snatched from him.

“You believe me now that your brother is in my custody and in danger. You need to send the ransom now, to the coordinates I’ve given you. I’ll be sending a man for the money at that time.”

What was to stop Harris from sending cops with the money, or to just giving the coordinates to the authorities? Marcus wanted to ask the questions but didn’t. He wanted to know if Brylie had called to let Harris know what was going on, how far out the Southern Ocean Patrol was. Now he had to wait with the others, wait and hope.

Two of Hilario’s men yanked him to his feet and half-walked, half-dragged him across the room to the wall by the kitchen where the others were gathered.

The kitchen, where Brylie waited, safe.

Marcus looked at the other passengers. The douche was there, Trinity, her family, the other two adventurers, looking more shell-shocked than the rest. One kept his gaze riveted on his friend, the other anywhere else.

“Where’s the captain?” Marcus asked Trinity, but she just shook her head and eased away. Poor kid.

“He’s alive, isn’t he?” he asked the adventurer, Evan, who wouldn’t look at his friend.

The young man nodded, but wouldn’t meet his gaze.

“Have they hurt anyone else?” he asked.

“Sh!” Trinity’s mother hissed, folding her arms about her daughter, protecting the girl from his brashness and apparent inability to follow directions.

He folded his arms over his bent knees. “Right. So we just wait here and do as they say.”

“If we don’t like bleeding,” the douche, who Marcus noticed wasn’t bleeding, said.

“Quiet!” one of the pirates ordered.

Marcus squared his shoulders. He considered countering the order, but he could imagine Hilario taking out Marcus’s punishment on one of the other passengers. So he kept his mouth shut.

He’d been sitting for a bit, trying not to think about his throbbing hand, easy enough to do when a kid was bleeding to death in front of him, when someone eased up behind him. He glanced back to see Monica, Brylie’s assistant chef, the one who’d been so brave about getting the food for the other passengers, for taking Brylie’s place.

“Is she okay?” Monica whispered, her voice barely audible.

He nodded. “She’s safe.”

“Alone now, though.”

“With a phone and a gun, well-hidden.”

Monica squeezed his arm in gratitude. He glanced about to gauge the distance of the other passengers, the interest they showed in his conversation with Monica, then leaned back a bit.

“Who is working with them?”

Monica’s dark eyes widened. “What are you talking about?”

“Two passengers are helping them out—at least two. I know who one is, but can’t figure out the voice of the other.”

She leaned closer. “You heard them? Man or woman?”

“Man. Have you seen them go off with one of the passengers? Or maybe one of the crew?”

She shook her head, her full lips pressed together.

How could she not? Marcus had clearly heard the man and one of the pirates speaking in the kitchen. They had to have walked right past here. Of course, maybe Monica and the others were too shocked from the shooting to see anything else going on.

“What happened there?” He gestured with his head to the young man losing his battle despite the doctor’s best efforts.

Monica glanced about and scooted closer. “After the storm, a couple of the pirates were ill. A few more were elsewhere on the ship, and only three remained in here. Those four guys were whispering together and they charged them at the same time. One of them was shot in the chest, and died right away. The other one was shot in the abdomen, and the other two were hit on the head and subdued.”

“Was anyone else hurt?” Marcus had looked over the passengers, but didn’t know if anyone was missing. But he had thought more people were on board to begin with.

“One of the tour guides was grazed.” Monica nodded in the direction of a woman who cradled a bandaged arm.

“So where is everyone else?”

Monica shook her head. “This is everyone else.”

He frowned. The roster had said two hundred people were on board, and another thirty as crew. He’d counted less than half of that in this room. The captain, he was sure, was on the bridge, and maybe a couple of others were running the ship. Had some been moved to the terrorists’ ship?