Windswept (17 page)

Then Mia muttered. “Oh, Jesus.”

Now what?

“Cruise ship day.” Her hand snaked over his shoulder, pointing out two huge ships moored just off the town. Ships that must have come in overnight.

“Good? Bad?”

“Crowds,” Mia said. “Big crowds. Kralendijk gets to be a madhouse.”

He tightened his grip on the handlebars. A madhouse. How fitting.

He didn’t have much time to come to any conclusion, because they were within town limits now, and the Hyundai was gaining, and it was getting tight. Very tight.

They zoomed into the old town, with its white-trimmed colonial buildings painted in sunny yellows, bright blues, and rich oranges, all upbeat and cheery. He might have felt that way, too, if it weren’t for the clueless tourists wandering the roads — the
roads
, damn it, not just the sidewalks — and the sedan looking to kill him very, very soon.

On the bright side — and Ryan was trying hard to find a bright side — he knew exactly where the police station was. Knew it all too well, unfortunately. He hammered down the main road as fast as he dared, cut a sharp left, then a right, slowed to a near crawl for an elderly couple taking pictures — pictures! — in the middle of the street, and finally sped up again. Up ahead stood the blue and white building that was police headquarters. They were nearly there. Surely the two men in the Hyundai wouldn’t follow them that far, right?

The crazy thing was, they did, apparently hell-bent on eradicating him and his sailor chick from the face of the planet at any cost. On the other hand, their pursuers had problems of their own, now that a police car with flashing lights had pulled in behind them, making this a three horse race. Or rather, a two-horse, one-pony race, because the scooter was starting to overheat.

“The police know we’re the good guys, right?” Mia muttered.

He kept his mouth shut.

They were so close to police headquarters, he could see the insignia on the flags fluttering ahead. Just as they got close, though, came a detour sign, and he skidded to a halt.

“Detour?” Mia yelped.

“Run for it!”

They jumped off the scooter and did just that, because the inside of the police station seemed like a much better place to do all the explaining they had to do than out here in shooting range. Yes, shooting range, because he caught a glimpse of one man leaning out of the Hyundai’s window, pointing a gun.

Shit. A gun?

He turned in midstep to look back, and yes, there was the guy, swinging the barrel in his direction and taking aim.

“Hey! Stop!”

His head whipped around to where four people had run out of police headquarters to join the two officers stationed outside, all of them shouting and waving like mad.

He was running full tilt with Mia half a step ahead, but everything went into a slow-motion blur in his mind.

Cops ahead. No guns. And one of them, strangely, was a guy who looked a hell of a lot like Lucky.

Behind, two men with guns. Guns taking aim.

He glanced again. Shit — taking aim at Mia, not him.

Looked ahead. Too far to any kind of shelter.

He pictured the safety coming off the gun, a finger squeezing the trigger.

“Stop!” one of the policewomen yelled.

No time to stop. No time to think.

He launched himself at Mia and threw her to the ground a split second before the crack of a gunshot ripped through the air.

A burning sensation ripped through his arm.

He pushed the sensation aside and concentrated on rolling. Bumping. Keeping his body between Mia and the gunman even as the burning sensation turned to a dull ache that spread through his chest. They lurched to a stop and he hauled Mia up, shoving her behind the shelter of a parked car and diving in after her as more shots rang out. Shots from both directions, because it seemed the cops were armed, after all.

Mia swore. The cops yelled. Bullets pinged, but all of it seemed strangely muted.

“Ryan?” he heard her cry. Why did she sound so far away?

“Ryan!” she screamed.

Everything dimmed until all he could see was a splotch of an oil stain on the road, right in front of his nose. He blinked at it once. Twice. Then everything faded to black.

Three days later…

“Oh, Stanley, not another video!”

Mia wasn’t the only one protesting. It was Thursday night in the bar, and Bruno, Marc, Dirk, and Anna were all waving Stanley away from the widescreen TV. Even Lucky and Hans groaned and turned away.

Everyone protested, except one man.

“This one’s a special request,” Ryan said from beside her, loud enough for everyone to quiet down.

Mia turned, sucking in a deep breath. It had been three days since the scariest moment of her life, and she still lost her breath looking at Ryan. Thinking of the near miss, the flood of relief that he was all right. The bullet had passed through the muscle of his arm but not ligament or bone, and not his heart, thank God. He was okay.

He’d waved away her tears in the hospital.
Nowhere near my heart,
he insisted even though his face was pale, his lips pinched.
Those guys had lousy aim.

Sure, lousy aim. That’s why Ryan had to rescue her for about the twentieth time in two days.

She reminded herself to breathe. Steady in, steady out. Ryan was okay, she was okay, everything was okay. The bandage on his right arm was proof of that, right?

She cupped his cheek in one hand, scraped a rough kiss over his mouth, then pulled back and squeezed his hand.

“Come on, Ryan. Let’s call it a night.”

It had been a long couple of days. One bad guy was dead, another behind bars, and an investigation was underway. According to Lucky, a special investigative team was tightening the noose around the group of investors who’d orchestrated the whole thing.

Lucky winked at her from across the table.

“I still can’t believe you lied to me,” Hans said to him.

“I didn’t lie.” Lucky shook his head. “I just left some things off my resume.”

“Like being an undercover agent for the KLPD?”

KLPD. The Dutch secret service. One of the many things Mia had learned over the last few days.

Lucky shrugged like it was nothing. Like he hadn’t been the one to save their lives by being quick on the draw that day in front of police headquarters.

“We had an anonymous tip about a threat to
Neptune’s Revenge
, but we couldn’t be sure what.”

Mia snuggled closer to Ryan’s side and ran a hand over his ribs. All okay. They were all okay.

“Come on, Ryan. Enough videos,” she whispered. Home —
Serendipity
— had never looked so good, bobbing a short distance away on a nearby mooring. She and Meredith had sailed the boat back to town when the questioning was over. Ryan had been in the hospital, and she couldn’t get her hands to stop shaking, but Meredith had been right. Sailing
Serendipity
did her good.

Meredith, her sister, the saint. She’d moved off the boat to house-sit for a friend of Celeste’s, or so she claimed. Mia knew it was to give her and Ryan space. Time. Privacy. The chance to make up for lost time.

She hid a secret grin. Ryan had proven he was ready for that last night, and this morning too, and she couldn’t wait for him to prove it all over again. Their own special kind of therapy for all they’d been through.

He’d kept his good arm slung over her shoulders all evening, and his fingers had strayed into adult-only territory more than once, so he seemed ready to call it a night, too. So why the sudden interest in yet another video? They’d seen hours of footage, helping the police hone in on the diver, his accomplice, and the launch caught in Stanley’s video. Enough evidence to get the investigation headed on the right path, and more than enough to last her a lifetime. At least it had proven one thing: video did have its uses, after all.

Still, they’d all seen more than enough of Stanley’s footage lately. She slid a hand over Ryan’s thigh. Why was he so reluctant to get going?

He shot her a smile that looked a little forced. “This one is important. A special request. Ready, Stanley?”

“Just a sec,” Stanley said, fussing with the TV.

“Good night, everybody,” Marc waved, getting up with Bruno. “We’re going to go.”

“No,” Ryan said, so forcefully half the room stared.

Mia, too. What had gotten into him?

“I need an audience,” Ryan said softly. Soft and…sad, almost.

Before she could say anything, he pulled her to her feet, dragged a chair out in front of the TV, and pointed to it. “That’s for you.” Then he pulled out a second chair, turned it backward, and sat straddling it, facing the screen. His arms looped over the backrest and his head dipped a little bit. She’d never seen him look so tired or serious. What was so important about this video?

“A movie about police work in New York?” Hans asked, chuckling at his own joke.

“Sort of,” Ryan murmured.

Stanley backed up, drawing everyone’s focus to the black screen. It flickered with static then opened with an image of a plain white indoor wall. The drab image was the antithesis of everything Mia had been living in Bonaire: the vibrant reefs, the colorful houses, the tropical sky.

New York,
she thought, placing the scene. That white wall was in a room in New York.

Something moved at the edge of the video, and first there was just a voice. Ryan’s voice.

“Come on already, Murphy.”

She glanced at Ryan, leaning forward over his chair with sad eyes glued to the screen.

A man stepped into the frame.

“Sit,” Ryan’s offscreen voice ordered.

The man sat awkwardly on a metal folding chair, looking everywhere but at the camera. He seemed familiar, but she couldn’t quite place his face.

“Just start.” That was Ryan again, sounding awfully military.

“Um…well…” Murphy squirmed like a little kid who’d been caught with the shattered remains of Grandma’s vase.

“Say it already,” Ryan’s voice barked.

“So…” Murphy looked at a point to the right of the camera, where Ryan must have been standing while filming. “Her name’s Mia, right?”

Her heart started thumping, low and foreboding. Everyone in the bar hushed and stared at her.

Ryan must have nodded to the man in the video, because he went on. “Right. Mia, I’m really sorry about that day…”

All the blood drained out of her face as she placed the face in the video. It was one of the policemen on the dive course that day in New York.

Murphy cleared his throat and started again. “I want to apologize for being such a jerk. I didn’t mean…well…I didn’t want…”

“Say it,” Ryan barked from off-screen.

Murphy dragged his eyes to the camera, and it really felt like he was looking at her. Begging, almost. “I’m sorry for being such a dick. I’m sorry about what I said. I didn’t mean to be disrespectful, but I was, and I’m sorry. Really sorry, and I hope… Well, I hope you don’t hold it against Hayes, because he didn’t say anything about anything that day.”

That day. That hellish day at the dive course when Ryan’s colleagues had made crude comments. The day she’d decided she never wanted to see him again.

Mia stared at him. Real Ryan, a yard away from her in a bamboo chair, his hands clutched tight. His face was grim and fixed steadfastly on the screen.

What was it he’d said to her way back when on Hans’ dive launch?

I came to Bonaire to apologize.
She blinked at the video.

Holy shit. He hadn’t been kidding.

“Ken, you’re next.” The words pulled her attention back to the video, where poor Murphy — and she really did feel sorry for him now — filed off screen and a different man filed on. The one with the huge smile and cackling laugh, except he wasn’t smiling or laughing now. He looked serious, dead serious.

“Mia,” the man — Ken — started, and it was like he was right there in the hushed bar. “I said some pretty inexcusable things that day.” His Adam’s apple bobbed as he groped for words. “I wish I hadn’t, but I can’t take them back now. We didn’t think it was…” He glanced around. “We didn’t know it was you, and we didn’t mean it the way it sounded. It was just…just messing around, and it was dumb. I’m sorry.”

“Say it like you mean it,” Ryan snapped from off-camera, and Ken shrank a little.

“I do mean it! I’m sorry!” Somehow, the thick Long Island accent made him sound doubly sincere. “It’s just… I get it, Mia. Well, I think I do. I get that it hurt. But believe me, I won’t ever do it again. Not to you or anyone else, in front of them or behind their backs.”

It went on like that, one big tough guy after another looking small and almost pitiful in his regret. Then the last guy finished, and Ryan came on the screen.

Mia gulped.

Ryan took a deep breath and opened his mouth. Closed it again. Cleared his throat. Unlike the others, though, he didn’t squirm, hem, or haw. He looked right into the camera. Right at her.

She wanted to reach out and touch him, to tell him he didn’t need to do it, but it was too late. He’d already gone and done it — humbled himself in front of the men who respected him most.

For her. He was doing it for her. And he’d done it long before she bawled him out about not knowing what it felt like to be humiliated in public or to bare his soul.

And there he was, in the flesh and on screen, about to do just that in front of two audiences: his police squad in New York and the dive group huddled in Rick’s bar, hushed and solemn as guests at a funeral.

“Mia,” he said into the camera, clasping and unclasping his hands just as he did in the chair next to her in real time.

Everyone’s eyes burned into her. She could feel it even as she stayed glued to the screen.

“We did a shitty thing.” He shook his head and started again. “I did a shitty thing, and I can’t take it back or make it go away.” One cheek twitched, but his eyes were hard, like he was looking into a mirror and not a camera. “I wish I could, believe me, but I know I can’t. I can’t change what happened to you back then…” He waved, and she knew he meant before they met, when she was in college. “…and I can’t change this, no matter how much I want to. I can only say I’m sorry and I mean it and it will never happen again. Even if you never let me see you again, I swear I’ll remember how shitty it feels to make someone else feel like that.”