Riptide (4 page)

Which meant that some of the new hires had gotten sophisticated new identities.

After several minutes of companionable silence, Jonah asked, “So what’s your plan?” He leaned back in the chair, stretching his arms up with a laziness that belied the amused gleam in his eyes. His captain was enjoying the hell out of this.

Nick shook his head. “No plan, yet. I have to decide what I want to do with her.”

That laughing gleam intensified. “May I make a suggestion? Or five?”

Nick didn’t need the help. “No,” he said evenly, proud that none of the agitation simmering below the surface colored his tone. The plush red-and-black Turkish wool carpet muffled his steps as he crossed his office, stepped over Jonah’s feet, and replaced the box carefully on its mahogany shelf.

The room smelled pleasantly of old paper, Gurkha’s premier, Louis XIII Cognac-infused cigars, and fresh salt air. Nick’s office was filled with history. Old charts, notebooks, maps, hundreds of books, and small, priceless artifacts found on various dives throughout the years. The space was crowded, aged, and just right. Unlike the rest of his ship, which was sleek, modern, and minimalist, this cabin could’ve existed, exactly as it was, centuries before. It was the place he felt most at home.

He crossed to the window. The back fin of the helicopter sitting on his landing platform was just visible from this angle. The princess had to have spent a great deal of time and money tracking him down and hiring the helicopter. So she couldn’t be all that hard up for cash.

“Question is,” he mused, “take her at face value? Or lump her into the current situation?”

“Justifiably paranoid, all things considered.” Jonah’s words came slowly, as he mulled. “But don’t you think she’s too … well, obvious to be part of the diamond thing?”

Obvious was an understatement.

Nick dismissed the easy answer out of hand. “That might be exactly the point,” he said. “Why else would she be here? She’s either been sent to keep me distracted for the duration or the king wants a close eye on me.” And his money.

“Then whoever sent her didn’t do their homework on you,” Jonah responded mildly. “It would take much more than a great pair of legs to get past you. You juggle ninety-six things at once, and make it look like you’re only focused on one at a time. And even that one thing looks like it bores you into a coma.” Jonah gave Nick a crooked smile and swiveled in his chair.

“It’s uncanny,” Jonah continued cheerfully. “You’re not a guy who’s easily distracted. Okay, let me rephrase that. You’re not a guy who ever gets distracted. Focus is your middle name.” His lips twitched. “
Spock
is your first name.”

“Multitasking,” Nick said, unruffled by the neat assessment. He shot a quick glance at his multifunction watch.

Jonah rolled his eyes. “The point is, anyone could tell you that having a beautiful, sexy woman shoved under your nose while you pretend you don’t know a fortune in diamonds is being smuggled on board your own ship is a waste of everyone’s time. Especially yours.” He paused. “Unless you think you can learn something from her.”

“I don’t believe I said she was either beautiful or sexy.” Although she was both. Sex appeal shimmered around her like some kind of hallucinogenic drug. Nick picked up an antique jewel-handled letter opener, sliding his thumb across the sharp edge. “She could be a modern day Mata Hari.”

“See, paranoid is all well and good, but let’s not get certifiable,” Jonah said wryly, scratching his stubbled cheek. “Look, whatever she is or isn’t, you can handle it. She might be exactly who she claims to be.”

“Which is?” he asked, curious for Jonah’s take on the matter. He half-expected “sex-kitten” to be at the top of his captain’s list.

Jonah disappointed him. “A concerned sister to one of your most prestigious investors.”

“Maybe,” Nick allowed. “Hell, probably. You’re right. One way to find out what she really wants is to keep on eye on her.” The thought unsettled him, and he tossed the letter opener to the desk with a metallic clatter. “I don’t mind the cloak-and-dagger distraction, but the situation could go from sunshine to shit in a heartbeat.”

“Come on, Nick,” Jonah braced a foot against the bottom of the desk to slow his lazy swing. “Any dive could wind up the same way.”

This was different. “I can’t afford unknowns in this particular equation,” Nick told him, running a hand over his freshly shaved jaw, glad to have gotten rid of the scratchy beard. “For the duration, there are only two people on board that I trust. You and me. And until I’m told that the operation is over, I’m inclined to treat everyone else as suspect.” And as hard as it was to swallow, that included people who’d worked for him for years.

And a certain leggy princess, whose presence was already irking him and she’d only been on board for ten minutes. A woman didn’t travel halfway across the world and dress to kill on behalf of her brother. “Even though I find it damned coincidental that she sought me out in the medina yesterday, I can’t
logically
connect her to the Moroccans. But I’ll find out what the connection, if any, is. What’s the point in having contacts in low places if not for this kind of shit?”

Jonah’s lips twitched at Nick’s wry response. “She might be unexpected, but she
is
royalty and they have a whole different way of thinking,” he pointed out, not unreasonably. “The king did invest several mil with Cutter Salvage. It’s not out of the realm of possibility that he’d send a family member, a good-looking and smart family member, to keep an eye on his investment.”

“Sounds like the guy is having investor’s remorse.” That happened every once in a while. Diving was an expensive business. Sometimes, an investor got scared he’d lose his cash to a dry dive. Taking treasure from the sea was a gamble. The thrill ran in Nick’s veins whether he scored or not. Sometimes it didn’t pan out. When his brother Logan talked to investors, he always drove that point home so that there would be no misunderstandings.

Cutter Salvage had a no-back-out policy.

Jonah shrugged. “So he sends his kid sister to watch the pie.”

Nick’s annoyance flared as he followed that thought. “Doubt it,” he finally said. “Why would the king want to withdraw his investment before we finished the salvage? Not when he stands to make millions on his return.” He leaned back in his chair. The sun beat through the window and painted a white square on the surface of his desk. “I don’t think so.”

“Steal the pie?” Jonah offered.

That one made Nick slant his friend a wry eyebrow. “And haul it out … how?” he asked. In the two and a half months they’d been salvaging the Spanish ship
El Puerto,
they’d found millions of dollars’ worth of gold and silver, and a veritable treasure trove of gemstones. “The money’s wrapped up in gear and equipment. Think she can hide it in her purse on the way out?”

“All right, fine. Call the king and ask,” Jonah suggested reasonably.

“Did that.” And Nick had known before he called what the response would be. Logan had told him a month ago that King Draven Visconti rarely answered the phone, and seldom returned calls. Up until a few minutes ago, that hadn’t bothered Nick in the least. He liked being left the hell alone while he was working. Especially by his investors. “His people told me he was unavailable, he’d get back to me.”

“There you go.” Jonah cupped the back of his head in his hands, reminding Nick of his younger brother Zane at his most annoyingly cheerful. “Not like you don’t know how to handle a needy woman. Explain the intricacies of what happens before a payout is made, and let her fly back to wherever. Seems pretty cut-and-dried to me.”

“Unless—” Nick exhaled, clearing his mind of the emotional clutter. He had all too much of that at the moment, and he needed to zero in on the meat of the matter—and what had been bothering him since he’d first laid eyes on the princess in the medina where she didn’t belong.

“Pretty farfetched that she’s connected to the diamonds, you must admit—”

Nick agreed, except— “What’s my type?” he cut Jonah off.

“I haven’t noticed in the last year.”

Nick refused to crack a smile at his friend’s jab. He was fully aware of how long he’d been without a woman. He’d been busy.

“Okay. Okay. Intelligent? Great legs? Brunette?”

“That’s the princess. In spades. And just maybe someone did their homework well enough to know that.”

Jonah was giving him the look again. The one that suggested Nick was overanalyzing himself into paranoia.

Bullshit.

Nick turned back to the window, memorized the numbers on the helicopter’s side. He’d check it. Find out where it had come from, who’d chartered it, and how it had been paid for. It might not yield any information, but then again, it might. “If good King Visconti wants his money back, why not ask himself? And make no mistake, Logan made the terms crystal clear from the outset as he always does. Why send his sister? Why now? And, for Christ’s sake, her tracking me down in the medina yesterday?”

“Not
you,
buddy. The dastardly Asim Nabi El Malamah. Perhaps she’s just trying to impress her brother with her dedication to the task he’s given her.”

“Didn’t we just get done assuring ourselves that she’s intelligent?” Nick asked dryly.

Jonah waved that away. “Clearly, your parents should have given you a sister instead of two lunkhead brothers. Placate her and send her on her way.” Jonah’s lips twitched. “Or take the scenic route and frisk her, then send her on her way.”

“I don’t trust her.” He had no reason not to trust her, Nick thought. It was
himself
he wasn’t trusting as far as the princess went. Fortunately, in a few minutes he’d send her on her way and never see her again.

“You know what they say. Keep your friends close, and your enemies even closer.”

“You just had to quote Machiavelli in
The Prince,
” Nick told him, amused.

Jonah smiled. “I thought I was quoting Michael Corleone from
The Godfather
.”

“Him, too.” Nick scrubbed a hand across his freshly shaved jaw. “The big question is, if Visconti did send her, what’s he playing at?”

“I presume that’s rhetorical,” Jonah answered, reaching over for one of Nick’s very expensive cigars, bringing it to his nose and rolling it between his fingers as he took an appreciative sniff. “He got the contract, knows we have to take everything back home to be sorted, et cetera, therefore he’s also aware that nothing can be divvied up until after we get back to Cutter Cay and Brian.”

Brian Donahue was Cutter Salvage’s head marine archeologist and a stickler for dotting I’s and crossing T’s. Nothing was leaving until it was researched and meticulously cataloged.

“Might be years.”
El Puerto
was Spanish, but had sunk close to Portuguese waters. There was already a lively debate going on between the two countries as to who would benefit from this salvage.

“Maybe they think they can waltz on board whenever they choose and pick up a chest of coins and jewels as their share?” Jonah offered, circling again to the concept of a thieving princess.

“I’ll explain how it works to her,” Nick told his friend.

“What does a princess do in this day and age anyway, besides pose for paparazzi?”

“How the hell should I know? Preside at balls? Cut ribbons at dog shows?” Nick shrugged. “I do know she doesn’t live on Marrezo. Hasn’t for a long time. I’ve asked my ‘friends’ to check her out. Accent says Marrezo as a young child, but that’s layered with a rural town outside of Paris, a trace of Chicago, and quite some time spent in Northern California.”

“Yeah?” Jonah pointed the cigar at him. “Northern California is pretty vague, pal.”

“Sacramento.”

“Better,” he allowed. His version of yanking Nick’s chain. “What the hell is a princess from a minor Mediterranean country doing living in Sacramento of all places?”

Nick shrugged. “Logan ran the usual background check on Visconti to ensure he was good for his investment.” The Cutters never took on an investor unless they knew who they were and where the money had come from. “According to the report, twenty some years ago their respective bodyguards spirited the prince and princess out of Marrezo after a political coup went wrong. Terrorists killed their parents and took over. Hell of a gruesome bloodbath, and both children were believed to have been killed when the castle was overthrown.”

“Very medieval and Goth.” Jonah put the unsmoked cigar back in the humidor on Nick’s desk. Neither of them smoked. “I presume they were split up so they wouldn’t be found? They must’ve been pretty young when they fled.”

Nick nodded. “She was just a little kid. Taken on a circuitous route through Europe, then to the U.S. Visconti was somewhere around twelve—and taken to South Africa. That’s all I know, I didn’t follow the hoopla in the press when he made his triumphant return. What do you know?”

Jonah gave him an arch look. “The whole media circus of his return from the dead, and his hasty coronation were on the front page of every paper, at the top of the hour on every newscast from Singapore to Siberia a couple of years ago. Hard to miss.”

Nick threw him a glance. Jonah was a news junkie, and read a dozen news aggregators a day when he gave himself time to bury himself on his computer.

“Under his steadying influence, Marrezo’s economy seems to be in the black for the first time in two decades,” he reminded Jonah.

“Presumably she gets a cut?”

And … bingo. Maybe not. Was she here to finagle a cut? If she was, the princess was going to be in for one hell of a rude surprise. Nick shrugged as he flipped open the notepad on his desk and scribbled down the numbers off the helicopter, even though he’d memorized them a few minutes ago. “If she does or doesn’t, it’s a family matter and none of my concern.”

“Harsh, dude.” But Jonah’s tone lacked sting. He got to his feet. “Good luck with your princess.”

“She’s
not
my—” Nick caught the twinkle in his friend’s brown eyes and gave him a level stare. “Send her in on your way out.” He ripped the page off his notepad, folded it in half, and handed it to Jonah. When Jonah cocked a brow in inquiry, Nick added, “She’s right outside.”