Dangerous Passions. Brenda Harlen
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the helm. There was nothing of the passionate lover in his touch, yet somehow it evoked a flood of memories of those same hands on her skin the night before.
“Why?” she asked again.
But he’d already disappeared below deck.
Shannon blew out a breath and tightened her fingers around the wheel. She hoped he didn’t have any particular course he expected her to follow, because she had no idea what she was doing. She simply fought to hold the craft steady as it bounced along on top of the rolling waves, lurching and swaying.
The blanket fell from her shoulders, but she didn’t dare let go to retrieve it.
A couple of minutes, he’d said.
It was the longest two minutes of her life—except maybe those last two minutes she was in the water. Two endless minutes in which she couldn’t help but wonder how her life had turned down this path, how everything had spun so completely out of her control.
Michael’s return put an end to her ineffectual ruminations.
He carried a backpack slung over one shoulder, which he dropped at his feet before nudging her away from the wheel. “I’ll take over now.”
She stepped back gratefully, her gaze once again drawn reluctantly to the pursuing boat.
It was closer now. Too close.
Michael was right—there was no way they could outrun Drew’s yacht. And although she still wasn’t sure she trusted him, she couldn’t deny that she needed him right now. Which meant that he needed to know the full extent of the threat they were facing.
She swallowed, forcing down the fear that was clawing its way up her throat, then said, “They have weapons on the yacht.”
The information didn’t surprise Mike; the fact that Shannon knew about the illegal arsenal did.
“What kind of weapons?” he asked.
“I don’t know. They were packed in straw inside a wooden crate. Guns of some kind, and some tube-shaped things.”
Her description, vague though it was, confirmed what Garcia had told him. “Could be AK-47s,” he told her. “And shoulder-mounted rockets and RPGs.”
He maneuvered the boat around the tip of the island, cutting the Femme Fatale from view—at least for the moment.
She worried her bottom lip with her teeth. “What does all that mean?”
He could give her any number of specs on each of those weapons: caliber, velocity, effective range. But he figured all she really needed to know could be summed up in a single word. “Trouble.”
“I’m starting to wish I’d never left Chicago,” she admitted.
“If Peart had already made up his mind that you were his target, you wouldn’t have been any safer there.”
She fell silent again.
He wished there was something he could say or do to reassure her, some way he could comfort her. But his priority right now was to keep her safe, and to do that he needed to stay focused. If last night had taught him nothing else, it had at least proven that touching Shannon Vaughn blew his focus all to hell.
He concentrated on steering the boat. They were getting into shallower water now, closer to the island. Close enough he could see through the turquoise water to the rocks on the bottom, and he didn’t want to risk damaging the hull.
He heard Shannon’s quick intake of breath and turned to see the bow of the Femme Fatale appear around the bend.
“We need to get to the island,” he said. “It will be easier to evade them on land.”
“Do you think we can evade them?”
“I know we can.” He didn’t believe in making empty promises, but he was confident the skills he’d learned and honed with the U.S. Army Rangers would ensure their survival—if they made it to shore.
He didn’t know if she believed him, but she didn’t argue the point. After a minute of tense silence, she spoke again. “They’re not following anymore.”
He turned to see that the Femme Fatale had, in fact, stopped pursuing them.
“That’s good, isn’t it?” Her voice was filled with cautious optimism.
“I wouldn’t count on it.” Even if the water was too shallow for the yacht to come farther, he didn’t believe for a minute that Peart would give up.
Mike squinted against the sun, focused on the tall, dark-haired man on deck. Or, more specifically, on the weapon he was settling on his bulky shoulder.
He cut the engines and turned to Shannon. “We’re going to have to swim.”
She balked. “What? Why?”
He understood her resistance. She’d already spent too much time in the water, and now he was asking her to dive right back in. He understood, but he didn’t have time to argue with her or explain.
Instead, he snagged the backpack with one arm, Shannon with the other, and jumped.
They hit the water only a heartbeat before the boat exploded.
Chapter 4
Shannon kicked her way toward the surface, sputtering and gasping as she broke through the water. She sucked in a lungful of air and blinked to clear her vision. The acrid smoke stung her eyes, burned her lungs. Broken pieces of fiberglass and twisted shards of metal—all that remained of the boat—slowly sank to their watery grave.
She twisted around, searching frantically through the debris for any sign of Michael, breathing an audible sigh of relief when he surfaced next to her.
She’d been shocked, even angry, at the way he’d thrown her overboard—until, even under the water, she’d felt the shock waves from the explosion.
He reached for her, squeezed her hand. “Are you okay?”
She nodded.
“Good. Because now we definitely have to swim.”
This time, she didn’t ask any questions. He’d saved her life, and that, she decided, entitled him to a certain level of trust.
Her muscles screamed in agony, but she swam. She found reserves of strength she hadn’t known she possessed and followed Michael as he cut through the water. But her strokes weren’t as strong or as smooth as his, and she quickly found herself falling behind.
Or she would have, if he hadn’t taken her in a rescue hold and towed her.
She felt guilty for being such a burden, but she had no reserves of strength to draw on. He didn’t release her until they were only in hip-deep water. “Can you run?”
She nodded, determined to at least make the effort.
And it was an effort, the drag of the water and the slickness of the rocks conspiring to impede their progress toward the beach. Her already overtaxed muscles threatened to give up entirely, and she knew it was only the solid grip of Michael’s hand on hers that kept her moving.
She heard the sound of an outboard motor and knew that Rico and Jazz were in pursuit. She didn’t turn to look. She didn’t want to know how close they were.
The water was at her thighs, her knees, her ankles.
They were moving faster now, but the sound of the approaching engine was almost deafening. Or maybe that was the sound of her heart pounding in her ears.
The rocks gave way to sand, heavy and wet at first, then soft and hot beneath her bare feet. She was running as fast as she could, breathing hard with the effort of trying to keep up with him.
“I can’t—”
“You can,” Michael interrupted. “Into those