Vortex (Cutter Cay) (6 page)

Then in walks a woman he doesn’t know, with a suggestion that the same artifact was a map. Call him a skeptic, but that stretched the bounds of coincidence to a whole other level bordering on science fiction.

He liked pretty things, and his new guest was certainly that, with her soft mouth and wealth of shiny dark hair. How much of her story was true? If she was lying, she was good. A trait Logan didn’t find commendable.

He didn’t give a shit if the lie was important, or to cover someone’s ass. He demanded straight talk from his business associates, employees, friends, and family.

He was a hard-ass about it and didn’t give a fuck if people liked his rule or not. If he caught anyone in a lie, the association was over. Done. Finished. Forever. He cut them out like a cancer and didn’t look back.

So, liar or not, Annie Ross?

Not too many facts to trip her up, a little self-deprecating humor, and a studious suppression of her not inconsiderable sex appeal. He couldn’t, wouldn’t let the fact that he found her sexually appealing cloud his bullshit radar.

He was already predisposed to doubt her veracity because she’d been found floating in the ocean miles from anywhere and was strangely cagey when he’d asked how she’d ended up there.

Yet if this was some sort of nefarious scheme, it was a pretty dangerous one. She hadn’t cried out when she was in the water. If not for Dog, Logan wouldn’t have known she was out there.

“Well?” she asked eagerly, leaning forward.

“I’m checking the location to see if it’s even possible.” Peru was the third-largest country on the central west coast of South America, and unless this “map” was specific, it would be like searching for a needle in a 1,500-mile-long haystack. “But if these three marks here are what I think they are…” His voice trailed off as his heartbeat accelerated.

“What marks? The little ships behind the big one?”

“No, inside. There are four tiny uninhabited islands several miles off the coast down south that are spaced apart just like this. With a fifth about—” He ran the tip of his finger down inside where the fifth, and smallest, island would be. He couldn’t see it on the surface, but he thought he felt a slight rough spot. “Hmm.”

“Well?”

Or it could be wishful thinking. “Maybe there’s another bump. But it might be a divot in the stone.” He wouldn’t tell her that the bowl was an emerald, or it might disappear. Or did she already know what it was
and
its worth? Was this what she’d come for? If so, it wasn’t smart to bring its importance or value to his attention this early in the game.

“What about the ships on the outside? Do they correspond to what you know of the ship you’re looking for?”

Logan’s lips twitched as he turned the bowl in his fingers. She was stopping just short of hitting him over the head with whatever she was attempting to convey. Not subtle. But in spite of himself he was intrigued by her game. So much so that he was curious enough to let her keep going just to see where she thought he’d follow.

There was a galleon, followed by three smaller gunboats. His heartbeat kicked hard against the wall of his chest in excitement. He’d seen the carvings, but it had never occurred to him that the four ships depicted could be
his
ships. Lima was an ancient seaport that had seen ships coming and going for centuries. What were the chances?

Annie was very interested, and apparently suddenly quite knowledgeable about the details on the artifact. Yes, there were markings inside, but how would she know that the rings were longitude and latitude unless she had spent time studying maps?

Or unless she knew about the bowl before she’d been hauled aboard his ship.

Logan smelled a con. A Rydell Case kind of con.

He had two choices. Toss her back overboard, with a “fuck you” note pinned to her chest, for his nemesis to retrieve.

Or keep her close and find out what kind of con was being run on him. Then he’d deliver the note himself.

He held the bowl up to the sunlight streaming through the window. “The
Nuestra Señora de Garza
was protected by three gunboats.
La Daniela, San Isidro
, and
Conde del Mar.
Ninety guns apiece. All said to have been blown off course by the storm, then attacked by pirates.” There was no record of the ships splitting up. “All hands dead—”

“Or there was at least one survivor, who grabbed a chunk of emerald and made it home.” Annie’s eyes glowed with excitement. Seemed she understood the monetary value of the bowl as well. And how could that be when she’d just seen it here in his office? How did she know it was an emerald, for that matter? Had Case told her to keep her eyes peeled for emeralds as evidence that Logan had found the treasure?

“Maybe he carved in what he remembered of the location of the ship carrying the treasure.”

“The
Nuestra Señora de Graza
.” Logan tried to make the pieces fit—which they didn’t. It was a nice fairy tale, but his ship had been sunk too far out to sea for anyone to have survived, let alone make it back to dry land. He shook his head, back to reality. “No one could have survived the attack, and certainly none of the ships were left intact after the storm hit, so even if someone had managed to escape death, there was no way they could’ve made it to land.”

“Maybe the four ships weren’t together. Maybe one sneaky little ship carried all the treasure on board for just the eventuality that they’d be attacked? Maybe she made it and went the other way.”

He tilted his head to stare at the opinionated stowaway. “No. They would’ve stuck together, that’s why the gunboats were with the galleon. They wouldn’t have left her alone. Not in the storm, and not at the mercy of pirates. They were the muscle on the trip to and from Spain.”

“Oh.” She sounded disappointed. Why wouldn’t she? She’d woven a romanticized story about what had happened hundreds of years before. “That’s too bad. But what if?”

She was a dog with a bone, which made him even more suspicious. “Tell you what.” Logan rose, and Dog rolled onto his back with a yawn that showed a lot of large white teeth. “I’ll work with my team and see if the lines inside match any actual latitudes and longitudes, and if these bumps correspond to the outcroppings along the coast. I have some work to do topside first.”

Tempted to lock the now intriguing bowl away, he decided against it. Wanting to see what she’d do next, Logan placed it back on his desk next to the photograph of himself arm in arm with his brothers. The photograph, the last taken by their mother, showed three kids in swim trunks grinning from ear to ear.

Annie stood too. Dog lumbered up beside her, pushing his massive head under her hand so she could scratch behind his ears the way he liked. Logan had to grab her arm so the dog didn’t push her over as he leaned against her hip in ecstasy.

Her naturally olive skin was as silky smooth as satin, and cool to the touch. “I’ll remember to brace myself next time,” she said with a smile, shifting out of his hold to stroke a delicate hand between Dog’s eyes. Logan smelled soap on her, and a female scent that teased his senses. The muscles in her arms were well defined, as if she used them for more than dumbbells at the gym.

He was glad she’d moved, because he was tempted to stroke her skin and linger in his sun-warmed office. “Dog will pin you to the ground and insist on ear rubs all day long if you indulge him.” He indicated the door, and she and his dog preceded him into the companionway.

“As long as he doesn’t suddenly decide I look like a meal, we’ll get on fine.” She looked at Logan under the sweep of her bangs. “He’s never, um, tasted anyone, has he?”

“He seems to have a taste for you.”

Her smile widened. She had pretty teeth, almost straight except for a charmingly crooked eyetooth. “That didn’t exactly answer the question.”

Neither have you, honey
. And until she did, Logan had no intentions of letting his guard down. No matter how attractive his mermaid was.

Three

They’d provided her with socks, but no shoes. Daniela chose to go barefoot, and the highly polished floors felt cool and smooth beneath her feet. Cutter, who wore deck shoes and no socks, spared her feet a glance and kept walking. He was wearing black boardshorts with his T-shirt, and he had hairy, strongly muscled, tanned legs. For some odd reason, looking at his legs made her feel fluttery inside.

She shoved her hair back from her face. She felt naked without at least the little bit of makeup she habitually wore. Mascara and blush would help. She’d seen in the mirror how pale she looked, and while the bump on her forehead had gone down considerably, leaving a thin red scab surrounded by purple, it still throbbed in time with her heartbeats. She reminded herself she wasn’t here to impress. It was merely her own vanity that wanted a little color on her skin.

The
Sea Wolf
was a magnificent ship, spacious and well appointed, with plenty of sparkling glass windows giving uninterrupted views of the water. The interior looked more like someone’s home than a ship. He had some excellent artwork: oils, watercolors, Japanese woodcuts, and several bronzes—he favored headless female nudes. That must say something about him, she wasn’t sure what.

If she wasn’t here under freaking duress, she might enjoy taking a leisurely tour of his works.
If
she wasn’t here under duress.

Being pissed off at her cousins was counterproductive. She was here now and might as well make the best of it. Not that she had much choice. Daniela vowed she’d keep well out of Logan’s way and be as inconspicuous as possible. God only knew that was a skill she’d honed in the past few months.

Usually she enjoyed other people’s living spaces. What they chose to share their environments with told her who they were, or in some cases, who they wanted the world to think they were. In the last few years, she’d dealt more with the latter. She knew the type well; they came into her upscale Dupont Circle gallery, Blue Opal, every day. The art gallery and small retail store were located on the first two floors of a row house, her apartment on the third. Her building was situated in a well-established, tree-lined neighborhood, surrounded by brownstones, high-rises, galleries, bars, clubs, and trendy boutiques.

She wondered if she’d ever see any of those things again, as she walked through the sleek modern interior of Cutter’s ship.

He didn’t have a lot of “stuff” cluttering up the beautiful teak paneling or white painted walls. From the look of things, he liked life without complication—simple, easy, clean. Was this who he really was, or a façade created by an expensive designer trying to please her client?

To be honest, right now Daniela didn’t give hoot about the décor of Logan Cutter’s fancy boat. She could be back on the smelly fishing boat with the Idiots for all she cared. Being here was merely a means to an end. A means to two ends.

One was a minor blip on her radar, or had been a minor blip, until the Idiots had taken matters into their own inept hands. Her cousins were unpredictable, and far more dangerous than Daniela had suspected.

They were a different kind of villain than she was used to. Muscle, no brains. Still, she’d been a fool to let down her guard just because they were family. She sure as hell hadn’t seen them as killers, but as soon as she’d refused to participate in their plan, they’d taken the choice out of her hands by hitting her over the head and dumping her overboard to get eaten by sharks or climb on board the
Sea Wolf
and do what they wanted her to do.

Trust no one was her mantra for a damn good reason.

Two weeks and four days.

She’d follow through on their scheme, because doing so suited her purposes, but she’d do it her way.

Stay hidden. Stay alive.

Those were
her
goals.

If she could manage that for the next two weeks and four days, she’d be home free.

Dog padded happily at their heels while Logan kept up the small talk as they walked through various large rooms and down several flights of stairs. A few black-and-white, artistically framed photographs—mostly of divers—graced the walls in one long corridor.

There were bookshelves everywhere, filled with a wide variety of neatly lined-up reading material, and hermetically sealed boxes holding interesting artifacts, she presumed from some of his dives. Daniela had never seen so much highly polished teak and brass in once place.

He told her there was a gym and a movie theater on one of the decks, but didn’t show her. She suspected that, unlike Wes, Cutter didn’t need the gym to pump up his muscles. He looked like a natural athlete and had the long lean lines of a swimmer. She kept her eyes off his legs.

They passed several men wearing white shorts and T-shirts. Daniela presumed they were crewmen, but they seemed relaxed as they greeted her and Cutter. Must mean that Logan was a decent man to work for. That boded well for the next few weeks.

“You okay?” he asked, slowing his steps as they wound their way through groupings of deep, comfortable-looking, white canvas slipcovered chairs in what looked like a library cum business office cum family room, all done starkly and dramatically in black and white. Wide windows gave an almost three-sixty panoramic view of cobalt blue water and a cloudless azure sky. Several open doors allowed a light breeze to play through the fronds of tall palms in glossy black pots strategically placed about the room.

“Yes, sorry. Just admiring your artwork. That’s a Stephanie Kayne, isn’t it?” She indicated a large unframed oil painting hung away from direct sunlight and positioned between two ceiling-to-floor bookcases. Three curls of smoky black on a white background. One had to stand twenty feet away to see that the curls were the curves of a woman’s naked back. It was one of the artist’s most iconic works.

“It is. You have a good eye. I have several of her pieces. You enjoy art?”