Riptide
Riptide
is for all my Facebook Pips. Thank you for coming to my Deadline Dementia parties on FB and playing along with such gusto. In gratitude, I’m interviewing more waitstaff so there’ll be no waiting for service at future parties. Unfortunately, due to Certain People who shall remain nameless, closet doors have now been bricked over. Tsk. Tsk.
Smooches,
Cherry
Contents
St. Martin’s Paperbacks Titles by Cherry Adair
Praise for the novels of Cherry Adair …
Chapter 1
TARFAYA
MOROCCO
Trouble.
He didn’t anticipate it, but Nick Cutter always planned for it. And right now the hair on the back of his neck lifted.
Good enough for him.
Eyes concealed behind both brown contacts
and
dark glasses, he stretched his long legs out beneath the table. Toying with a small cup of fragrant mint tea, he scanned the immediate area. Just because he couldn’t see it, that didn’t mean it wasn’t here. The café was situated in the deep shade on the perimeter of a busy public square. Nick enjoyed a good meal, and since he was in control of the meeting, he’d eaten well, then pushed aside his empty plate to conclude business. The men seated across from him conversed in low Arabic, trying to come to agreement with his terms.
Two principals. Three bodyguards. All heavily armed.
Ostensibly bored, he waved a buzzing fly away from his face. He scanned the throngs of gregarious, noisy shoppers milling about the square for an indication of why he suddenly felt a brush of disquiet.
He wasn’t worried that anyone would recognize him. His disguise was solid. Like many of the people in the square, he wore a mushroom-colored djellaba, a kaftan-type robe that covered him from throat to toe. His most recognizable features were concealed behind the dark glasses and contacts. Judiciously applied makeup simulated the dusky skin tones of the majority of the people around him. And to further his disguise, his face was covered by a thick black beard that desperately needed grooming. It itched like hell. He’d had the beard for a while, now; time to shave it off.
If trouble was out there, it was for his alter ego Asim Nabi El Malamah, not Nick Cutter. Which increased Nick’s sense of disquiet. El Malamah had a bad rep for good reason. Nick had made sure of it.
Nothing seemed out of place. It was lunchtime, and the old city center of the twelfth-century fortress-walled medina was crowded and off the charts noisy. The hot breeze smelled of cumin, paprika, coriander, garlic, onions, and the half-empty dishes of
tajine
on the table.
Women vying for the best produce bargained loudly, their long jewel-colored djellabas brilliant as hummingbirds in the harsh sunlight. Laughing and shrieking, their children darted in and out of the stalls and between other shoppers, adding to the noisy chaos.
Nick had metaphorically chased the two principals until they’d caught him, then intentionally priced himself high enough to make himself almost unattainable. Almost. They wanted him, they’d pay. It was a precarious call, but a calculated risk.
Calculated risks were something of his specialty. But his superpower was his extraordinary ear for dialect inflections. He was one of only a handful of people in the world capable of determining a man’s history from a snippet of conversation.
He spoke eleven languages fluently, understood seven others, and even when he didn’t speak the language, prided himself on his ability to pick out nuances so minute that he could pinpoint the difference in dialect from towns fifty miles apart.
His specialized skills weren’t in high demand, which made the few “assignments” he accepted a novelty. He enjoyed doing his thing—which usually meant listening in on conversations at a safe distance from actual danger.
Players on the hook, Nick wanted back on board the
Scorpion,
suited up and a hundred feet deep in the ocean doing what he loved. Treasure hunting. They’d been salvaging the
El Puerto
for several months, and he was very pleased with the results. It was almost time to take his haul back to Cutter Cay.
Sooner would suit him better than later. The original “favor” he’d agreed to should have only taken an hour, tops. Instead, it had taken him three days to make contact. Now he knew what he wanted to know, and that should have been the end of it.
But the favor was different this time.
His friends had asked him to go way beyond a quick listen to ID a person of interest’s backstory, a hell of a lot more. Nick had agreed to see this through to end game.
He just hoped to hell his fascination with puzzles, his linguistic abilities, and his love of a challenge didn’t come back to bite him in the ass.
Like right about now.
He swiped a hand around the back of his neck as the two men continued talking in urgent undertones. They thought he was distracted, but he had ears—as his brother Logan would attest—like a bat. Najeeb Qassem and Kadar Gamali Tamiz whispered in
darija,
the informal Moroccan Arabic spoken by the locals, but the inflection was definitely Krio.
The fact that Qassem and Tamiz were both from Sierra Leone, although they’d informed him they’d been born and raised in Rabat, was not his concern. But the people he’d report this meeting to in a couple of hours would have one more piece in their intricately constructed puzzle.
And so would he, though he doubted his friends would share anything else with him. He’d baited the trap, as requested. It was past time for Asim Nabi El Malamah to disappear, and Nick Cutter to get the hell out of Dodge.
Ready to close the deal, Nick placed his cup on the table and shifted in his seat. Just then a gap opened between the shoppers, and his swiftly moving gaze snagged on a leggy brunette entering through one of the stone-arched gates. Hard to miss her killer body displayed in tight jeans and a loose white shirt among the loosely flowing djellaba-garbed people around her.
Now wasn’t
she
interesting and very much out of place?
He had a thing for tall, sophisticated brunettes.
Oh, yeah, Nick thought, observing the woman as she paused to talk to the ancient man selling dried rosebuds by the gate; she was definitely his thing. Her presence here could only mean the trouble he was sensing. The old man pointed across the square. He could be indicating the nearby silk kiosk, or the jewelry maker next door to the café. The medina was so tightly packed, the old man could have been pointing to a dozen different things.
Nick’s gut said otherwise.
The rose-seller was directing her to the table where he was concluding business. The woman glanced across the square in his direction, then turned back to smile her thanks, before heading his way.
Oh, yeah. Trouble with a capital T.
The only European woman in the bustling outdoor market, she stuck out like a catwalk model, and all eyes watched her saunter across the uneven stone on her high heels as though she were gliding over water. She had a loose-hipped stride that triggered carnal thoughts and turned heads. Like a heat-seeking missile, she was headed his way, her long legs drawing attention Nick didn’t need.
Damn it to hell.
He didn’t have the luxury of a long slow perusal. The closer she got, the faster he tried to figure out who’d sent her, what they wanted, and what her angle was. She was striking, and walked with the confident knowledge that men would look. And want.
Yeah, she was trouble all right. And out of place in the sun-drenched, noisy, frenetic medina filled with midday shoppers. Nick leaned back in his chair as she closed in.
“You know the woman?” Najeeb Qassem asked in Arabic. He couldn’t possibly miss the intent in the woman’s long-legged stride, or the direct path she was taking.
She had a fascinating awareness of the space around her. The square was crowded, but she didn’t let anyone get within arm’s length. A nifty trick that must have taken a lot of practice. She pulled it off like she wasn’t even trying.
Fifty yards and closing.
“La,” Nick responded shortly as he swiveled to redirect his attention at Kadar Gamali Tamiz, seated on his left. No, he didn’t know her. But he suspected he knew who she was. Even though her presence here in Morocco, and specifically in the medina, made no sense.
Which made her sudden appearance in the same place as Nick Cutter suspect.
Forty yards. “The number of containers, while somewhat difficult to conceal, is acceptable,” he said, his voice cool. “The price, however, is not. Getting on board undetected with all eyes on the ship will be a risky endeavor. Cutter is no fool. And while he is docked here to find more crew members, he will have his people scrutinize each new hire scrupulously.”
“Our men will pass even the closest scrutiny undetected, we assure you.”
Nick made to rise. “Then I suggest you use these men to carry the merchandise on board,” he said with enough finality in his tone to suggest he wasn’t anteing up any more than he had already. “If it’s such a simple task, you don’t need the likes of me to assure your prize is hidden well enough to avoid discovery.”
Tamiz’s fingers closed on his wrist. Narrow-eyed, Nick glanced from the man’s hand to his face. Tamiz quickly dropped his hand. “Apologies for the insult, my friend. My men are merely insurance that the product stays where you place it. Simple men.”
Nick settled back into his chair. “Well armed?” Thirty yards. Damn it.
“Of course.”
“Good.” Shit. Not good at all. Unknown, armed men on board his ship was just asking for trouble. “Your product would be valuable in any hands.”
“You are a hard man to negotiate with,
sadiqi
.”
“Not when the price is right.” Nick kept the woman in his peripheral vision. Twenty yards. With any luck she’d pass by, he’d enjoy a glance at her ass, and that would be that. He didn’t have excess time to admire the gentle bob of her breasts under her crisp white linen shirt. The hot breeze teased a few strands of her dark hair out of the severe hairstyle, and lovingly pressed the thin fabric of her shirt against her body, highlighting her mouthwatering shape.
Fifteen feet.
Her footsteps slowed. A calculated move? Or indecision?
“We would double your fee should you escort the merchandise to its final destination.” Qassem, a stick-thin man in his late sixties with a sun-lined face and bottomless black eyes, leaned forward. Nick had no intention of spending weeks on board his own ship in disguise.
