Riptide (34 page)

Jonah rubbed his hand around the back of his neck, then nodded his agreement. “Which ones?”

“Don’t care. Since we have no idea about the good, the bad, and the ugly, let’s halve the odds, and send off fifty percent of them immediately.”

Jonah raised a brow and glanced from Bria back to Nick.

“The princess is here until Aries airlifts her to wherever,” he told his friend, without him having to ask. A valuable trait in a friend, Nick acknowledged gratefully. “But for now, she’s with one of us. No exceptions.”

“I’m desperate for a shower,” Bria said brightly. “Who do I get to do that with?” She looked from one man to the other.

Nick was desperate for a shower as well, but he had things to do, and being distracted by a naked Bria was counterproductive. He met Jonah’s eyes. “Do you want to choose who goes and who stays?”

Jonah, sensing his need, said smoothly, “I need some down time with zero confrontation. I’d prefer for you to do it.”

Nick smiled his thanks. “I’ll take care of it from your office then.” Where he could gather his thoughts and grab that shower Bria-free at the same time. “Give her the Bersa in the safe.”

*   *   *

“Sorry you pulled the short straw,” she told Jonah as they bypassed the small elevator, taking the stairs down to Nick’s cabin.

“He’s not happy about ditching the crew. But he’s worried as hell about—”

“He told me about the extra cargo,” Bria said quietly, although there wasn’t anyone around.

“Did he now? That’s interesting.” Jonah blinked his watering eye a couple of times. “Yeah. That. But he likes to look at the log book and charts several times a day. It was nothing personal.”

Bria hadn’t thought it was anything personal before Jonah had said it wasn’t.

“He’s pretty self-contained, isn’t he?” Bria asked rhetorically, as Jonah used what she presumed was a master key and let her into Nick’s cabin, then locked and bolted the door behind them.

“He’s … reserved.” She followed him into Nick’s office and waited while he opened the safe, then handed her the Bersa. “He doesn’t trust easily. You know how to use this, right? No shooting off strange men’s body parts before Nick gets back?”

Bria smiled. God, she couldn’t be more tired, more darned confused, and more jumpy. She hoped Nick was right. That his other friend would come and get her, and that, for Nick’s sake, this was all over sooner than later, without anyone else getting hurt. Getting dead. She shivered. She needed to get out of her damp clothes and into a hot shower.

“Part of it, I think, is just who he is.” Jonah grabbed a few clips, then closed the wall safe. “He’s pretty calm and collected most of the time—”

“
Most
of the time?” Bria asked, amused as she sat on the foot of the bed to remove her damp, sandy tennis shoes. “Someone just tried to kill us on a mountain and he barely broke a sweat.”

“Pretty much all of the time.” Jonah blinked rapidly to dislodge whatever was still in his eye, which was now bloodshot and watering.
Men!

“Don’t keep rubbing it, you’ll scratch your cornea! Would you like me to get that out?” Bria stepped forward.

He held up his hand with a smile. “No, I’m good, thanks.” Sitting in the chair by the window, he swung his feet up on the ottoman and grabbed one of the magazines on a nearby table. “I’ll just wait right here while you’re in there. Lock the door, and take your time.” Taking out a Beretta, he laid it down on the table beside him.

“You don’t really think anyone is going to break in, do you?”

“Doesn’t matter what I think, honey. It’s what Nick thinks that counts.” Rubbing his eye he opened the magazine. “Enjoy your shower.”

Bria took her time. A sponge bath in a twelve-inch sink, while the best she’d been able to do, didn’t cut it. She needed lots of soap and hot steamy water to wash away the dust, and to soak out some pretty colorful bruises.

She was sorry Jonah was stuck babysitting her, but with any luck Nick would be in the bedroom waiting for her when she was finished.

Putting on the white toweling robe that was hanging behind the door, she stuck the gun in the deep pocket and unlocked the bathroom door.

Jonah, his back to her, was at a mirror over the dresser across the room. She padded over to him. “Men!” She gently tugged on his arm. “Why do you have to be so damned stubborn? Let me look at that before you poke your eye out.”

“My contact has a tear in it I think. I have it.”

“If you had it, Jonah, you wouldn’t have your finger in your eye,” she told him with asperity, tugging at his wrist. “Let me look.”

Jonah turned slowly.

One eye was a dull brown. The other, the white red from prodding it, was a startling, bright Cutter blue. Her belly dropped to her toes. “Oh my God,
Jonah
! Does Nick know? He doesn’t, does he?”

Chapter 20

Able to breathe freely for the first time in what felt like a month, Nick opened the door to his office, then strode across to open the connecting door to the bedroom. Half an hour to shower and collect his thoughts and he’d get a second wind. He’d called in six crew members and assigned them to the motor launch to return to Tenerife immediately.

Giving them no time to collect their personal items, or even return to crew quarters, he escorted them to the launch and had seen them off. At gunpoint.

No doubt they’d set foot on dry land and contact whomever they had to contact, and without a doubt there was a possibility that one or more of the remaining men were in fact the bad guys. But the odds were severely shortened.

It was the best he could do.

He anticipated joining Bria for a slower, more exciting shower, then taking her to bed for a few hours before he filled Jonah in on what’d happened on Marrezo.

“Hey, buddy, I’m here to—” His best friend and the woman he— And Bria stood close together. Bria had an intense look on her face, Jonah looked guilty as hell, and she was saying urgently—

“Does Nick know? He doesn’t, does he?”

They turned as one as he asked coldly, “Does Nick know—
what
?”

He searched Bria’s pale face first. Her dark eyes were large and troubled, and she took a step forward. “Ni—”

“What don’t I know,
pal
?” He dragged his attention from Bria to look at his best friend. One look at Jonah’s face, and Nick felt as though someone had hit him across the chest with a two-by-four.

Jonah started back. One eye was its customary brown. The other was as familiar to Nick as looking into a mirror. Or looking at Zane or Logan.

“You fucking son of a bitch!
You’re
the brother?” he demanded, ice cold to his marrow.

Guilty as hell, Jonah put out his hand. “I can expla—”

One moment Nick felt absolutely nothing. The next, blind rage exploded out of nowhere. His fury erupted like Mt. Vesuvius.

He pulled back his arm and slugged Jonah square in the nose. Idiot didn’t even put up a hand to protect himself. He went down without a whimper.

Bria grabbed Nick’s arm, holding on to him with both hands. “Don’t, oh, please don’t. Let Jonah explain.”

Nick shook her off, staring down at the man he thought he’d known so well for two fucking years. The stinking proof of his father’s infidelity. The proof that shook Nick’s trust to its very foundation. Sucker punched, he struggled to shove the anger somewhere manageable.

It wasn’t goddamned easy! “I’m not interested in explanations.” His voice was filled with icy disdain that cost him. “Are you going to get up? I’m not done beating the shit out of you.”

“I think I’ll lie here and look at the ceiling awhile,” Jonah said, but after a few seconds he sat up a bit, leaning on one elbow. He wiped the back of his hand under his bleeding nose, which was already starting to swell. “I’ve got plenty of explaining to do. But I guess that can wait.” He gave Nick a baleful look from one blue, very bloodshot eye and one brown eye.

“Is your name even Jonah Santiago?”

“Jonah Cutter.”

“Fucking, fucking hell. He gave you our name as well?”

“Afraid so.”

“You lied on your papers.” The least, the very
fucking
least of Jonah’s perfidy, Nick thought savagely, but right then the only thing he could wrap his brain around.

“Am I relieved of my duties?”

Nick narrowed his eyes as he looked down at the reclining, traitorous son of a bitch on the floor. Wishing he’d waited another fifteen minutes to send the crew off in the motor launch so he could’ve sent Jonah with them.

“Do you have anything, I mean
anything
to do with the diamonds?” he demanded tightly, noticing that so far Bria had remained silent. How long had she known about this?

“Nothing. I swear.”

“We all know how much your sworn oath is worth.” Nick scoffed, his chest tight, and his breathing constricted. He’d never suspected this. Never. Not from Jonah—“You’re still captain until we get to Cutter Cay, then your ass is fired, and I never want to see you again. Same goes for Logan and Zane.”

“You can’t speak for Logan or Zane.”

Nick’s eyes narrowed dangerously, and his temper slipped its moorings. “You think we don’t stick together, you conniving dishonest prick? Think again. The three of us are like this!” He held up twined fingers. “Think that ingratiating yourself to me, insinuating yourself onto
my
ship, into my
life,
will change that? It won’t. Get out of here—I can’t stand looking at you.”

Jonah straightened his shoulders, the muscle in his jaw jumping as he clenched his teeth and stumbled to his feet.

He started for the bedroom door, then turned to address Bria, his voice level and contained. “Check his hand. I think my nose broke it.” He let himself out, closing the door quietly behind him.

Nick stared at the closed door. “I didn’t see it. How could I not see it?”

His fiery Bria sounded subdued as she said, “He was waiting until the three of you were together at Cutter Cay. Think about that for a second, Nick. He was waiting until you were on your home turf. Until you had the support of your brothers. He was going in alone. No support at all. To tell you all something he must have known would hurt and upset all of you.”

He turned on her, his stomach sick. “You feel sorry for
him
?”

“I feel sorry for all four of you. None of you asked for this. It isn’t a situation of your making.” He wanted her to shut up, but she kept talking. Not giving a shit that he was twisted inside. “What a wonderful gift this could be if you just went with it. He’s your best friend. You already like each other—”

Nick gave her what Zane called his dead-eyed snake look. She took a step back, but kept talking. “Okay, you
liked
each other for two years. I think that once you think this over, you’ll realize that Jonah is just as much a victim of what your father did as you, Zane, and Logan.”

A victim. He was never a victim. He had to call Logan. Feeling in his pocket for his phone, he realized with a jolt of pain that he’d left it in the pilothouse. “Damn it to hell.”

“Is your hand broken?”

Felt like it. “No. I left my phone in his office.” He was damned if he’d go there and see Jonah’s lying, duplicitous face.

“You can’t avoid him until you get home,” Bria said gently.

Ten days … Hell. “I could ignore him if we were the only two people on a fucking ice floe in the middle of the Arctic. Don’t open the door to anyone. I’m going to take a shower.”

He took a punishing ice-cold shower, then turned up the heat, letting the water scald the anger from his bones.

His father—Jesus. Nick didn’t even have a word in his vocabulary to describe how he felt about his father. Yeah, the lawyer had contacted them and said there was another kid out there—intellectually he knew it wasn’t that kid’s fault—that son of a bitch
Jonah’s
fault.

In spite of his anger, his lips twitched. Christ. His father had named his fourth son
Jonah
? He slapped his palm against the wall. His hand wasn’t broken, but it hurt like hell and was starting to swell.

He. Did. Not. Want. To. Fucking be
amused
by
anything
about this whole goddamned mess.

He wanted his simple,
un
-fucking complicated life back. Diving, drinking a beer with a good friend at the end of the day, sleeping with the occasional attractive brunette …

Diving was still in. But Jonah had ruined the drinking a beer with a friend. And, God only knew. Bria had certainly put the kibosh on sleeping with any other attractive brunette. Between the two of them they’d fucked up his life in ways he could never have anticipated in a million years just a week ago.

What a clusterfuck. A killer possibly still on board. Killers loose on Marrezo. Fucking Aries AWOL. Bria glued to his side for the duration. And Jonah the missing link. Nick braced his hands on the mosaic-tiled wall, letting the hot water pound his back. Pound on the bruises, nicks, and cuts sustained from the rock fall.

Shit. He lifted his head, water pouring into his face. He hadn’t even looked at what Bria must’ve sustained. He shoved away from the wall, and backed into silky, curvy, wet Bria.

He’d been so engrossed he hadn’t heard her come in. And him with ears like a fucking bat.

She put her arms tightly around his waist, laying her cheek on his back. Sliding her hands up his chest, she held him tightly, pouring soundless empathy into him like refilling a well. He felt the soft brush of her lips across his shoulder blade, then she slipped under his braced arms.

“You’re not part of my plans,” he told her roughly.

Bria placed her cool hands on either side of his face and murmured, “I know,
tesoro,
I know.” And she kissed him, so pure, so perfect that it dislodged an icy pain deep in his chest.

The gentle sweep of her tongue felt like a benediction. A man drowning of thirst, he feasted on the flavor of her sweetness, and was warmed by her heat. Wrapping his arms around her because he just couldn’t help himself, Nick deepened the kiss.