Deep Blue
Suzanne McMinn

www.millsandboon.co.uk

Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Epilogue

Chapter 1

Cade Brock lowered the binoculars he had trained on the house down the street, his grip tightening on the cell phone at his ear as his pulse froze. “What did you say?”

The PAX League chief, Harrison Beck, let a beat draw out. “It’s Adal Chaba. I wanted to tell you myself.”

“Keep going.” Cade continued to watch the target location from the parked car he’d positioned down the block even as his jaw clenched and something dark banded his chest.

“We nailed Kerbasi,” Beck told him. “We got the data off his hard drive that links him to Chaba. I’m taking you off the case.”

“No.” The word burst tightly out of Cade’s mouth. His fingers moved of their own accord to the rigid slice of a scar not four weeks old on the side of his throat. A parting gift from Harmon Kerbasi. If he hadn’t wanted this case for revenge already, knowing Kerbasi was linked to the terrorist kingpin Chaba clinched it.

“You sound like hell,” Beck said. “As much as we need you on this case, it’s too soon. This is too personal already, and now—”

“No.” He knew he sounded like hell. He felt like hell. But he had people to put in hell. And yeah, it was personal. “You need me.”

“You need some R&R.”

“I had enough R&R.” The last month, in the hospital then recovering at home on enforced leave, had been more R&R than he’d ever wanted or intended to suffer again. He needed a case to work on. Downtime was nothing but an invitation to nightmares of guilt and loss so deep he didn’t want to relive them. And yet he did. Every time he closed his eyes. And sometimes when they were open.

“You need to come in for more testing.”

He was sick and tired of testing. And he knew the PAX chief didn’t just mean the endless scientific probing he’d endured for most of his life. Beck meant psychological testing. He knew what they thought of him. They called him “The Machine” as if he weren’t even human. And maybe he gave that impression. Good enough. He didn’t have buddies in the League. He worked alone, no other agents at his side. He liked it that way. If they thought that made him an emotionless machine, so be it. He was respected but not befriended. He kept his emotional distance. It was better for everyone that way. Especially him.

Changing any of that wasn’t on his agenda.

“I’m not coming in for more testing. I’m not going back on R&R. And you can take me off the case, but I’m not taking myself off.” He had a slippery relationship with the League. Technically, he was their agent. They’d raised him from age six, and some people would say that made them his family. But they’d never owned him, and the last thing they were going to do when it came to Chaba was control him. “Now tell me about Chaba.”

Another moment passed in which he was certain Beck was considering the ten different ways he wanted to throttle him. The PAX chief respected him, though, and he knew what getting Chaba meant to Cade.

“The hard drive didn’t have much on it,” Beck said finally. “Kerbasi’d been ditching his laptop regularly. Chaba’s careful. He would have insisted on that. Unless Kerbasi starts talking, all we’ve got are a few e-mails that link him up the chain of command. We need the woman. She’s the key.”

A red compact car slid down the street toward the house and stopped. Tall and leggy, the woman stepped out of the car then turned to scan the quiet, palm-lined Key Mango street. Cade lifted the binoculars again.

“And I’ve got her,” he said.

He punched the phone off, leaving the PAX chief without the time, or the connection, to change one damn thing that was about to happen. Cade watched the target stand, rooted, for a few moments in the driveway of the house.

It was almost too convenient. Not even a challenge. It couldn’t have been easier if she’d tied a ribbon around her slim, pretty neck and handed herself to him.

He waited, adrenaline burning, in the nondescript sedan he’d rented, parked several houses down and across the street from the two-story house. There was an apartment on bottom, another on top. Nothing was this easy, and he wasn’t taking any chances. He’d tangled with Tabitha Donovan before, and she’d nearly cost him his life when she’d left him to Kerbasi. There would be no repeats of that scenario.

She stood there, as if she were waiting for someone, too, as he’d been waiting for her. Or did she fear someone was after her? For a second, he thought she was going to get back in the car and drive away. If someone was after her—someone besides him—well, he might have a chance to kill two birds with one stone, because the people she was dealing with were even more elusive than Tabitha Donovan—or whatever she was calling herself today. And they were definitely a hell of a lot more dangerous.

Cade knew from personal experience that mass murder was Chaba’s stock in trade.

“Run, baby. Run!”

His mother’s wild eyes seared him as he wobbled, panicked, on the fiery beach.

“Take care of your brother. You’re a big boy.”

“No, Mama.” He clung to her arm even as she pushed him away.

“I have to find your father, baby. Take your brother. Run!”

She shook him off, and turned….

Fire, then blackness and screaming, so much screaming—

Cade squeezed his eyes shut for a horrific beat. For the millionth time, he couldn’t stop the screaming, couldn’t go back and make it different, couldn’t change the lives that had been lost, couldn’t bury the memories and anger deep enough. Even blowing Chaba to hell wouldn’t do that. But it would be a start.

He opened his eyes and focused on the present, the woman, the link to the evil that had haunted him all his life.

Even from a distance in the clouded twilight, she was the most gorgeous terrorist he’d ever seen. She wore hip-hugging pink cropped pants and a white camisole top that clung to curvy breasts and a trim waist. Blond hair fell free to her shoulders, and even in the soggy Florida Keys heat, she looked fresh as the proverbial daisy.

He tipped the binoculars to his eyes—the better to see her deceptively lovely oval face in the scant light, slender with intriguing hollows that made her look delicate…when she was anything but.

She nibbled her lip as she hesitated in front of the building. Did she see him, even from this distance, through the tinted windows and murky shadows of the oncoming night and a brewing storm?

A breeze whipped the lush palm fronds up and down the street and the first plops of the storm front hanging gray in the sky above hit his windshield. She turned to retrieve an overnight bag from the rear of the vehicle. She hadn’t seen him. She didn’t have a clue.

She was about to get one.

He lowered the binoculars, satisfied. She’d be spending the rest of her life in a government lockup if what the PAX League believed about her was true. And considering the evidence he had already, he didn’t have any doubts. In the meantime, they needed her.

Alive, not dead, and with the dangerous double-crossing game she was playing, she was on borrowed time already. She didn’t know it, but he was about to save her sorry life.

Getting to the truth, and to her secrets, including her real identity, was his job, and unfortunately, that meant keeping her alive. He watched as she swayed her wickedly sexy hips, crossing to the wooden outside steps leading up to the second-story apartment, overnight bag in hand. The small island community of Key Mango that she’d apparently chosen for her home base was hardly exclusive housing. The tiny key was made up primarily of locals, shrimp trawling seamen and dive fanatics, with a sprinkling of Bahamian rental homes and run-down duplex apartments that attracted tourists going for economical over trendy. Not that anything came cheap down here. Even a one-bedroom weather-beaten studio on the least fashionable island in the coral keys would cost a pretty penny this close to the water.

Tabitha Donovan had plenty of pretty pennies tucked in her secret Swiss bank account, no doubt courtesy of Chaba, but she wasn’t showing them off, not with the used car she was driving and not with the less than stellar housing she’d used a credit card in her made-up name to lease. It was how PAX had tracked her here. Mistakes. Criminals always made them, even the beautiful ones.

The street lay quiet in the early evening, nothing but the beat of palm fronds in the wind and the rush of gathering rain hitting the steaming street. This late in the summer, the vacation renters were heading out and more than half the homes and apartments were empty, their distant owners putting months at a time on sale to attract off-season travelers who would be arriving in the coming weeks. The cute blonde wasn’t planning to leave, though. She’d booked her rental through the fall. The better to search for the ancient secret she was planning to sell out at the cost of thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands, of lives.

But her plans were about to change. Whether he liked it or not—and he didn’t—she was going with him, and going alive. She was a pawn on his way to the top, and now that he knew that top was Chaba, he’d do anything to get there. Even put up with the woman who’d set him up to die.

Shiny hair tucked behind one ear, she pushed the key in the lock of the upstairs apartment. He debated his options. Was the lower level of the building occupied? There were no lights, no signs of life from the first floor residence, but a van was parked on the street in front of the building. He’d been watching for nearly an hour. He didn’t want any hassles with nosy neighbors interfering if she started screaming bloody murder. No way was he letting her, possessor of the deadly secrets of the Santa Josefa and his link to Chaba, slip away, and no way would she go with him easily.

She thought he was Cade Brock, renegade treasure hunter, playboy, wastrel, only interested in the lost Spanish shipwreck for his own gain. It was a role he played well. Just as well as she played Tabitha Donovan. He absently fingered the scar at his throat. He wasn’t interested in money at all, though he had an amazing knack for acquiring it. He wanted justice. And oh yeah, revenge. He was a PAX agent, but no matter what his fellow agents thought of him, he was also a man, human despite the physiological mutations that made him of unique value to the League.

Through the uncurtained upper-story window, he watched the woman walk into the apartment, shut the door and shove something—the car key?—into her back pocket and then…A shadow moved from behind the door as she shut it. A shadow that reached for her throat and yanked her back into his arms.

Cade’s pulse slammed and he keyed the ignition. He wasn’t the only one who’d been waiting for Tabitha Donovan. And this had just stopped being easy.

She tasted panic and pain as a hard arm appeared out of nowhere, slamming her back against an even harder body. Her overnight bag thunked to the floor. A scream strangled in her throat as the pressure of the hand over her face left her desperate for air.

Spots swam in her vision. The shadows of the apartment faded toward black.

Adrenaline surged past the shock and fear. The attacker’s hand moved slightly. She could breathe through her nose and her vision cleared. The chilling butt of a gun pressed against her temple.

Was this what had happened to Sabrina? Or did he think she was Sabrina?

Sabrina with her strange disappearances, her mysterious plans, the charts in her apartment—Not that she’d wanted to believe any of that. Not that Sienna had wanted to believe her twin sister was doing what she thought she was doing.

Sabrina had also mentioned she was involved with a man, a man who frightened her, and now…Desperate, Sienna twisted her head, managed to break free of the hand over her mouth for a second.

“This isn’t what you think,” she said quickly, her voice thin, unrecognizable. “I’m not Sa—”

The hand brutally retook her mouth and she couldn’t breathe again.

“Shut up and pick that bag back up then open the door,” a rough voice ordered in her ear. “Walk outside. Slowly.”

She had to get away. She’d open the door, and then she’d make a break for it. She’d run. She’d scream. But for now, she could barely feel her shaking hand as she picked up the bag then reached for the knob with her other hand, pulling open the door of her sister’s shadowed apartment.

Fear left her swimming in a disembodied, surreal state in which she just knew this couldn’t be happening to her. This happened to women she heard about on the news. Choppy, disjointed sound bites of women abducted and murdered staggered wildly through her mind.

The rain-laced breeze struck her as the man pushed her onto the small landing. He was right behind her.

“Move,” the attacker demanded, and she did.

She twisted in his arms, shot her knee into his groin and, in the split instant when he roared, she ripped away from him, still gasping for breath, stumbling blindly down the steps.

Pain exploded as he grabbed her back and slammed the gun against the side of her head, choking her scream. Her bag thunked down the stairs, rolling to a stop.

The blow brought tears stinging to her eyes and then she forgot pain, forgot everything except the deadly coldness of the eyes she saw as the man ripped her to her feet and jerked her tightly against him again. She was aware of hollowed features, dark clothes, iron strength. Rain dashed against his cheeks, sliding down as if off a slab of marble.

“Don’t do that again.” He jerked her around, pushing her down the rest of the stairs ahead of him.

Horror gripped her as she realized the van parked on the street in front of the apartment must be his. He pushed her toward it. He was going to take her away from here and do God knows what to her next. All she knew about crimes against women told her that if she got in that van, she was going to die.

Another man pushed out of the rear passenger sliding door of the van suddenly. Another man with another gun. He dashed forward, grabbed her bag and threw it in the van before turning back. Why were they taking it? Her mind reeled. There was still the rental car. When Sabrina got here, she’d find it, know she’d been here…But it would be too late.

“Get in the van,” the attacker snarled, releasing her to propel her forward toward the other man, and she caught the tip of her sandal in a break in the cement walk.

She fell to the wet concrete, hitting her knees, the impact robbing her of breath or she’d be screaming. She lifted her eyes as the man grabbed her by her hair and a dark movement flashed into her consciousness even as new pain seared her head.

“You’re lucky he doesn’t want you dead,” he snarled. “Yet.”

He? Who was he?

A screech of tires broke the wind-whipped air. Rain splattered down, harder now, as a dark sedan swung to a halt in the middle of the street. A man reared from the car, leaning over the hood, a dark object glinting in his hand. Police?

Her heart thudded against her ribs. No. Like the men abducting her, he was dressed in civilian clothes, a black T-shirt stretched over powerful shoulders. Clipped brown hair, lean-planed features, chilling eyes.

And a gun.

Rain instantly plastered his hair to his head as the drops turned into a downpour.

“Let her go,” he shouted.

The hand holding her shoved her sideways and she was back on her knees as the sound of gunfire exploded. She heard the distant sound of a door opening down the street, a startled scream, then a slam.

She realized one of the men was down, the man who’d jumped out of the van. Blood.

Her pulse boomed in her ears. She scrambled on her hands and knees for the red compact car she’d rented at the airport in Key West, pulling the door open and banging inside, desperate breaths biting her lungs. She felt the humid warmth of the leather seat, her clothes and hair dripping onto it.

Adrenaline burned her veins and she could barely think. The key.

She twisted awkwardly, shoving her hand into her back pocket. Was it there or had she dropped it in the apartment when he’d grabbed her?

Heart thumping into her throat, her fingers closed with numbed panic over the cold outline of the rental car key.

Whipping her head to the window, she could barely see the outline of the man who’d grabbed her in the apartment. He’d made it to cover behind his van and another shot boomed through the pounding rain as he aimed at the man crouched behind the sedan.

Surely the police would be on the way. But how long would it take them to get here? Did tiny Key Mango even have full-time emergency personnel?

One of the two men left was going to kill the other, and then they’d come for her. And the idea that at least one of them had sworn he didn’t want her dead, yet, wasn’t a comfort.

And as for the other one…

He looked every ounce as dangerous as the abductor and he’d just shot a man dead. They were fighting over her—or fighting over Sabrina, if that’s who they thought she was. Why? Where was Sabrina?

Panic roared through her bloodstream. She slammed the key in the ignition and sobbed when the car leaped to life. She screeched backward, plowing past the man by the sedan, striking the fender. A flash of hot blue eyes seared her as he reared back out of her way.

She braked, spun, and in the stormy blur of the rearview mirror as she floored it, she saw the abductor from the apartment seize the moment of distraction to make it around his car and leap into the van. He was coming after her!

Town. She had to head back to town. Find people. Key Mango didn’t have much, but she’d driven past a commercial strip of businesses, restaurants, small neighborhoods and a church, before reaching the touristy outskirts of beach rentals. She gulped in panicked breaths, roaring at blinding speed through the tearing rain.

And she didn’t have the slightest idea where she was going. Had she missed the turn back toward the town?

All she could see on either side of the road were jungle-thick mangroves. She’d gone into the interior of the island, but this wasn’t the road to town. Desperation clawed at her stomach. She crossed a bridge fanning over a lagoon. She must have gone the wrong way from the beginning.

Headlights broke the storm-dark behind her. She caught a sign whizzing past: Key Mango Bird Sanctuary. Ahead, through the rain, she saw a chain-link fence, the gate padlocked shut. Dead end.

The car spun, sliding sideways, tires losing traction on the wet road. She regained control and headed back, whipping past the van as it, too, spun around.

As she hit the bridge again, she saw the sedan coming straight at her. She jerked the wheel to swerve around it. She should never have left North Carolina. This was a nightmare. This couldn’t be happening. She was a university librarian. She never did anything more risky than exceed the daily recommended fat intake for a woman of her height and weight.

That was the last thought she had before she realized the car was hydroplaning. She felt the bizarre sensation of spinning over the blacktop road, then the shocking crash of breaking through the guardrail.

Dark water slammed up at her—oh, God, water!—and she struck the windshield.

Chapter 2

Cade hit the brakes, hanging on to the wheel as the sedan threatened to twist into a dangerous spin, stopping only when he crashed into the van that ground to a stop just short of following the woman’s car through the wiped-out guard rail. The impact thunked him forward hard, then back, his seat belt holding him in place.

He jumped out, tearing through the howling wind and slashing rain. The driver of the van lay against the steering wheel, blood pouring out of the side of his head.

The man moved, mumbled, his eyes flashing open. Cade landed his fist into the man’s face and he slammed back, dead to the world again.

Cade raced from the van to the edge of the bridge and dove straight in. No way was he losing his target—and the lagoon was about to swallow her whole. The passenger compartment was taking in water fast. Already, the car was more than halfway to a watery grave. His body, skin made up of microdermal ridges invisible to the naked eye, streamed into the dark water like another liquid.

He’d been six years old when his adoptive parents had found him at the bottom of the family swimming pool. They’d thought he was dead. He was just napping, and the fact that everyone didn’t nap underwater was news to him.

The PAX League had already discovered that a shocking number of the children who’d survived the Valuatu Island bombing several years earlier had returned home with strange aftereffects. Biological mutations. And thus, the PAX League, once an organization dedicated purely to the philosophical pursuit of global peace through human rights missions, environmental campaigns and charitable projects such as the Valuatu Island hunger delegation, had transformed into something more.

Beginning with those children, the new and secret underlayer of Paranormal Allied Experts had spent years researching the mystical, telepathic and transformational sciences. Its goal was not only to protect the work of the League’s outer humanitarian organization, but to prevent terror worldwide as it molded those original children into agents and created even more through its own experimentation.

And Cade had lost his family—again.

He surged back up to the surface beside the car, not for air—he didn’t need it. But she did. The woman’s head slumped against the window, water rising to her neck. He saw tangled wet hair, blood. Bracing his feet against the side of the vehicle, he yanked at the door.

The water reached her mouth and nose and he slipped beneath the surface now to pull at the door. He saw the woman gasp and jerk back as the lack of oxygen stabbed her into consciousness.

With corneas and lenses shaped to see light through water, he had the visibility to see her eyes bulge as she first jerked up to take in air, then reached for the door handle. She shoved uselessly, then screamed, taking in water again, and pushed up to the interior roof of the car, coughing and gagging, struggling for the last few inches of air.

Then she slid her head sideways, panic in her gaze as she met his through the water. She was in emotional shock, had been even before the crash, and the physical shock was going to set in fast. The lagoon wasn’t cold, but without the specialized thermoregulatory system that kept him warm, she was probably losing body temperature already and at the rate the car was sinking, she’d be out of air in less than a minute if he didn’t get the door open.

Still underwater, he motioned in efficient movements for her to shove as he pulled. Her gaze flicked down then back to his face as the water crept higher.

Fear and survival warred in her eyes.

No two ways about it, she was scared of anyone who would have leaped off that bridge after her.

He grabbed the handle, yanked hard. The pressure of water inside and outside the car held it firm. He felt his muscles bunching as he heaved on the handle again.

The water completely covered the car now and it was sinking at accelerated speed. He could see her holding one last breath of air, anxiously pushing outward against the door even as he pulled. The lagoon wasn’t deep, twenty or thirty feet, he estimated, and the car tumbled heavily now to the bottom, sand clouding upward from the disturbed bottom. He didn’t need more air, but she did, and soon.

One more heaving pull, and the car door suddenly thrust outward. Reaching blindly through the muddied water, he felt her soft, drenched body.

He pushed hard with his feet against the sand of the lagoon floor and streamed upward toward the clear surface and the light of the storm. She felt like nothing in his arms. He gave a last powerful kick, popping up to the surface. He shifted to grip her tightly against his heat with one arm as he swam.

Pulling her up on the damp, sandy shore, he felt her react, coughing and gagging as she had in the car. He set her down and she rolled over, retching.

Rain lashed down. He was stunned for a second by how glad he was that she was alive. The helpless panic in her eyes when the car filled with water…The memory of it streaked into him. In the dim light he watched her shoulders tremble, and she turned, lifting her pale, shocked gaze to his.

For a long moment the storm seemed to almost recede around them, and then she pushed herself up on her elbows. In spite of himself, he felt something strange and unallowable. Sympathy.

He shoved it back. She didn’t deserve it.

He’d been tricked by her once, and he wouldn’t be tricked again.

He stood over her, water streaming down his sides. “You’re coming with me.”

“No,” she gasped, barely audible over the pounding rain. “No.”

She scrambled away. He tore up the bank, twisting her and pinning her on her back where she fell against the soggy ground.

“Stop!” he ordered.

“No!” she screamed. “Let me go!”

Her eyes were huge, shocked, radiating cold fear. He could feel the trembling of her body, see the confusion in her wild eyes. He held on, even as she struggled. She felt different than he expected.

Lighter, softer somehow.

Raindrops slid down his face and onto hers. Her breaths came in panting gasps. The storm blew around them.

“Not this time,” he grated, his voice whipped away in the wind. He jerked her to her feet. “You’re not getting away this time.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about!”

“You know exactly what I’m talking about, Tabitha.”

“I’m not Tabitha!” she shouted at him. “I’m Sienna!” Inches away, her eyes were lost and scared, and her words knocked him off balance enough that she was able to tear free again and run, slipping and sliding, up the bank.

He made chase, and she didn’t have a chance. Together they slammed into the drenched, sandy bank.

A shocked breath escaped her, then she was fighting him again, shoving against him with her hands. He grabbed both arms and pinned them to her sides, covering her body with his.

“My name is Sienna!” she cried. “Whoever you want, I’m not her! That was my sister’s apartment. My twin sister. Sabrina. I don’t know who Tabitha is!”

He felt something icy prick at the back of his neck. He sensed the shaking desperation of her body, knew the piercing confusion of her gaze.

She was a liar. She had lied to him before. She’d lie to him again. It was all he could do not to shake the truth out of her right there and then on the bank of the storm-tossed lagoon, but—

“Nobody said anything about a sister.” He gripped her arms tighter when she tried to get away. She contorted her body as she struggled to free herself. He could feel her heart pounding against him as she turned her wild gaze back to him.

“Well, I’m saying something about it! I’m not Sabrina,” she cried. “Or Tabitha! I don’t know who those men were at the apartment. I don’t know who you are! I’m telling you the truth.”

“You wouldn’t know the truth if it bit you in the ass,” he ground back at her. “Sabrina. Tabitha. Whatever you’re calling yourself today.” Fury rose up again.

“Sienna. My name is Sienna!”

A sound pricked his hearing through the wind and the rain. He lifted his head. Someone was coming up the road. Headlights swayed through the storm above them on the bridge. A car door slammed.

She pushed against him again. “Police—”

He cut his gaze back to the woman beneath him, let go of one of her arms and wrapped his hand over her mouth. Before she could try anything else, with his other arm, he forcibly rolled her over him, down the bank, his body thunking against the ground, against her, once, twice, till they were up against the foot of the bridge.

Voices sounded above them, the words carried away by the wind. Then a gunshot exploded, and seconds later a body flew darkly past them, over the bridge and into the water.

Whoever the hell was up on that bridge, it wasn’t the police. Whoever it was had just executed the man from the van and dumped his body right in front of them.

Close against his chest, the woman’s gaze spun, locked with his. She was so close, he could feel every panicked beat of her heart.

Then, more voices, shouts, and they were coming closer, down off the bridge.

They were coming to see if there was anyone left alive down here. He could see the understanding streak across the woman’s shocked eyes. He could see the battle as she decided who was more dangerous—them or him.

“I’m going to take my hand off your mouth,” he said quietly, quickly. “And you’re going to get back in the water.”

“I can’t.” Her voice was thin, begging. She wasn’t fighting him now. She wasn’t moving, period. He yanked her to her feet.

“You can.” He slipped to the bank, pulled her with him. They had no more than seconds before they’d be seen. “Or they’ll kill you.”

“And you won’t?”

Vengeance twisted, sharp in his gut. Kill her? God, he’d like to. “No.”

“I can’t swim!” she shrieked, and in the same second he shoved her in, he realized he had no idea who the hell she was.

Because she wasn’t lying. She couldn’t swim. She wasn’t Tabitha Donovan.

Chapter 3

The water was dark, swirling with shadows and one big, fearsomely powerful man. Sienna felt light and heavy, panic and shock so familiar now. A nightmare that would never end, that’s what she was living.

Crazy strangers with guns above.

Crazy stranger holding her captive below.

Below water.

She was going to die. She was going to drown. He was drowning her. And she was going to have a full-blown panic attack. No way could she think straight. She felt sick, afraid of dying, out of control. She burst to the surface, clawing wildly at the water.

Her feet couldn’t touch bottom. She flung her arms desperately, fighting hysteria. Then something pulled her back down, under the surface, and her mind screamed even as she held onto the gulp of air she’d gotten in that second above the water, and for a sickening moment, she didn’t know what had gotten hold of her.

All she knew was that she was going to drown because whatever had her, it was pulling her down, deeper, and she couldn’t stop it.

Something hit her feet, and she realized with a shock that it was sand. It was the bottom of the lagoon. She contorted her body, fighting frantically, and something pulled her tighter, held down her flailing arms. She was slammed against a hard wall.

No, a chest. A very powerful chest. Him. The man who’d called her Tabitha then shoved her into the water even as he claimed he was saving her life. And there was no way she was going to break free of his grip.

She lifted her head, stopped fighting, knew she was going to die now because she couldn’t hold her breath one more second, and her eyes locked with a fierce liquid gaze that stunned her, it was so near, and then it was even nearer. Something touched her lips—

His lips.

And in complete, unthinkable shock, she opened her mouth—that was it, she was going to drown—and his mouth closed over hers and suddenly…she was breathing.

She was breathing.

She forgot the water that had been suffocating her a second before. Forgot the deadly men on the bridge, the attacker at the apartment. Forgot that she’d almost been killed more than once in the past twenty minutes.

How could she be breathing?

Then she realized his strong arms had slid around her back and he was stroking her, comforting her, calming her down with efficient control. The sudden gentleness of his hold struck her, and the shocking intimacy of his mouth breathing life into her mouth had her gasp against him, and her tongue touched something warm and sweet. His tongue swept inside her mouth even as he continued to stroke her back, her arms, her shoulders, and she clung, desperate for his air, his amazing, mysterious safety.

Safety that made no sense. She’d been running from him moments before! And yet—he was everything she knew in this dark, wet world, everything keeping her alive. All the pain and fear and panic receded into a surreal vortex as he sweetly and tenderly claimed the last shred of her sanity.

Maybe she was delirious. It was all she could think of. In reality, she was drowning. This couldn’t be happening. Her arms were clinging to him, absorbing his unbelievable warmth, her body pressed up against him. She was—oh, God—she was kissing him back and it was like nothing else existed except this hard, wet man holding her at the bottom of the lagoon.

And that realization shocked her so, she jerked back, and the look in his eyes through the dark water made her realize that he was as shocked as she by what had just happened. She held the last breath he’d given her, her heart clanging furiously in her chest, fear returning full force.

He reached up, touched his warm finger to her mouth, and cocked his head, as if listening. Listening to what? All she could hear was the blood pounding in her ears.

Then he placed his mouth on hers again, gently pushing her to open her lips. Oh, God. She did. And her stomach left her body for one more tingling mindless beat. He breathed another breath into her and let go.

A strange energy hummed from him, or maybe it was her. She didn’t know anymore.

How could this be happening?

When he pulled away this time, he gave her a long look, nodded as if assuring her of something, grabbed her arm and together they shot upward through the water. Then she was on the surface, and he was pulling her up, onto a bank crowded with weeds and sand. She coughed and fell limp on the dark shore near the bridge.

She lay there, gasping in the air, heavy rain pummeling her—as if she could get any wetter. Then she turned her head and saw him standing over her. Sharply aware of him, she stared up, watching the droplets slide down his cheeks and cascade off his soaked hair and shoulders, the sky darkly wild above him.

His lips were hard, unsmiling, his jaw uncompromising. She felt odd inside, loose and hollow, and he looked utterly, fearsomely, in control. He looked like a tough, dangerous action movie star who was as deadly as his weapons. And yet she wasn’t afraid of him now.

Or, at least, not as afraid.

He’d just saved her life. For the second time.

“They’re gone,” he said. “We were down there long enough that they’ll think we either ran away or drowned. Either way, we need to get out of here.”

The gunmen. The gunmen were gone. Good thing, since if they were still here, they’d have to kill her where she lay because she felt like one big piece of overcooked spaghetti.

“Who are you?” she breathed. “What are you?”

And then she was sure she must be delirious because for a second she thought he was going to say something like, I’m your worst nightmare. Only maybe that wasn’t true. Under the lagoon, he’d been downright fantasy-like, and the memory brought a renewed, inappropriate prickling of sensual heat, and more confusion.

They couldn’t have been underwater that long. He couldn’t have been breathing air into her lungs. That wasn’t possible.

She gathered her wits, jerked her loose-limbed, disobedient body into gear and pushed to her elbows. The adrenaline started flowing again.

“Who are you?” he grated in return, and he moved swiftly, took hold of her elbow and lifted her to her shaking feet.

For once, he was listening. He was giving her a chance. She grabbed it, desperate.

“Sienna Parker. I’m Sabrina’s sister. That was Sabrina’s apartment. She’s on sabbatical from the university. We both work there. Sabrina—” She stopped. How much did she really want to tell this stranger?

She knew nothing about him. He wanted to take Sabrina somewhere with him, and he’d been prepared to take her against her will.

“Are you some kind of…. police, or—” How much trouble was Sabrina in?

“Sabrina’s sister,” he repeated, ignoring her question, watching her, those steely liquid blue eyes of his searing her to the bone. He reached up with one hand and his warm, wet finger slid across her cheek. Something crackled inside her. He dropped his touch abruptly. “Twin sister?”

She nodded.

“Where is Sabrina?” he demanded.

“I don’t know.”

“Where is she?”

“I said I don’t know! I don’t know what’s going on. But if she’s in trouble, I want to know.”

“Oh, she’s in trouble,” he said.

His eyes on hers were so bright, so sharp, they almost hurt.

“You’re scaring me again!” Dammit, what had made her admit that?

“Good.”

He was making her angry, too.

“Let’s go,” he said. “My car.”

It didn’t sound like an invitation. It was an order.

And dammit, she followed. What other choice did she have? Walk back to Key Mango, hope she didn’t run into any gun-toting lunatics along the way?

That option wasn’t exactly viable.

The van was gone. Sienna scrambled into the passenger side of the stranger’s sedan. He slammed into the driver’s seat. Inside the car, the muted sounds of rain and wind tapped and blew. They were both soaked to the skin and she shivered despite the warmth of the island summer night. Shock.

She was in some kind of shock. She was shaking all over.

“You’re bleeding,” he said. “Your forehead’s cut. I’ll pick up a first-aid kit somewhere or that’ll get infected.”

She hadn’t even realized. She touched her head, pulled her fingertips away gleaming red in the dim light from the glowing dashboard inside the car. He started the engine and headed the car back toward town.

Her head reeled just a little. What had happened here? She’d gone to Sabrina’s apartment, been attacked, chased, run off a bridge, nearly drowned—twice. Now she had willingly gotten into this stranger’s car for lack of any better alternative.

This day was so not going well. Her head began to throb and she couldn’t stop shaking.

“Why is Sabrina in danger? What did those men want?” What did he want? “Who are you?” She couldn’t tell a lot about him in this light, but his hair was dark, clipped short, his eyes a fearsome blue. His shoulders seemed to fill the car and he scared her to death at the same time as he made her feel oddly safe.

“My name is Cade Brock,” he answered finally.

She hugged her arms around her waist. “So are you the police or what?” Cade Brock. The name buzzed at the back of her mind. Think! She had to think.

Her brain felt as if it had balls bouncing around inside of it.

“Not exactly.” He negotiated the dark, wet road like a professional driver.

“What are you exactly, then?” And where were they going? “Is there a police station in Key Mango?”

“We’re not stopping in Key Mango.”

She cut her eyes to his face again, a nervous twist in her stomach.

Cade Brock. A small gasp escaped her. It all hit her at once. “I know who you are,” she breathed harshly, adrenaline rushing her again.

Oh, God. She’d found a magazine in Sabrina’s apartment, folded over to an article about treasure hunters. There’d been a photograph of Cade Brock. He was a treasure hunter—a renegade treasure hunter, and some of the quotes in the article had suggested without outright accusation that he was the sort who lived outside the law, sabotaging, scheming and pirating his way into a fortune.

Her head reeled again. Sabrina had said she was afraid of someone, a man. Was it Cade Brock? He was looking for Sabrina. He’d thought she was Sabrina. He might have thought her name was Tabitha, but he’d certainly recognized her.

She moved to grip the door handle. The idea of rolling out of the car at this speed, possibly to her death, wasn’t appealing.

“Don’t even think about it,” he said.

Did he read minds, too?

“What do you want with my sister?”

“I want to help her.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“Then that makes two of us, because I’m not sure I believe much you’ve said so far either. But I saved your life, so that’s one point for me, don’t you think? And I plan to save Sabrina’s life, too. But first I have to stop her.”

“Stop her from what?”

“Have you ever heard of the wreck of the Santa Josefa? Ramiro’s globe?”

Oh, God. She felt hot and cold at once, sick. Hurting. She didn’t want to even think about the Santa Josefa and what the search for that shipwreck had done to her family. Ramiro’s globe was the legendary artifact discovered by Spanish explorers in the 1700s and, according to survivor reports, carried aboard the doomed Santa Josefa as the ship headed back to Spain. Shaped like a globe held up by an outstretched hand, the stone artifact would prove early man once knew the world was round and point to the possibility of ancient interstellar visitors who, legend had it, created it and mapped on its surface the original configuration of earth’s tectonic plates. Shipwreck explorers had been looking for the Santa Josefa for years.

“Our father used to search for treasure. It was his life.” It was his death, too. “Sabrina had all of his old charts and readings. But I don’t understand—”

“Did your father find the Santa Josefa?” Cade demanded suddenly.

She swallowed hard. “I think so.”

For a second, she could almost believe all the air had been sucked out of the car by the intensity of the gaze he burned on her.

“What do you mean you think so?”

“I don’t know! We did find something that day. I think it was the globe. But we never brought it up, and then—”

The car seemed to close in on her. Bone-deep grief contracted her chest. Deep blue water, strobe light dancing through the gloom, fan grass swaying through coral. The globe in her hands. Then the blood— Pain streaked through her temples.

“What does it matter? We were diving for it that summer. Looking for it. My father was sure we’d found the Santa Josefa, that’s all I know.”

“You said you couldn’t swim—”

“I can’t swim! Not anymore.”

“Can’t swim or won’t swim?” His expression turned hard, his eyes slicing her.

Was there a difference? She’d have drowned back in that lagoon but for him. Immediate hysteria, that was her reaction to water now.

“What is this about?” she demanded.

The wet, dark night kept spinning past the car windows. Inside, in the glow of the dash, the man beside her, the very strange and frightening man beside her, suddenly looked more like some kind of warrior than a rich playboy.

“Your sister was looking for someone to help finance an expedition to find the Santa Josefa. And short of that, she was looking for someone to buy the charts, buy the information. And she was dealing with some very dangerous people.”

Sienna sucked in a painful breath. This was so much worse than she’d imagined. “I want to go back to Raleigh,” she said. “I want you to take me to the airport. Or take me to a bus station or a police station. I don’t care what. I want to go home.”

She didn’t know how to get in touch with Sabrina now. The last cell phone number she’d had for her sister had been out of service for a week, and her own was at the bottom of the lagoon. She’d left it in the car. But she couldn’t stay in Key Mango. Maybe if she went home, Sabrina would call her there.

“You can’t go home,” he pointed out. “They have your overnight bag, don’t they? Did you have some identification in there?”

She nodded mutely.

“And some papers I found in Sabrina’s apartment in Raleigh. Our father’s charts, with all the sites he’d searched that last summer.” She’d found them and brought them with her, intending to confront Sabrina and try to shake some sense into her. “So if that’s what they wanted—”

“They want Sabrina,” he cut in. “She claimed she knew which site on the chart was the Santa Josefa.”

“She doesn’t know! She wasn’t with us that day!”

His look hardened even further. “They don’t know that. And they’re going to want you now, too. They think her name is Tabitha Donovan, but they’ll use your identification to track you back to North Carolina. They’ll figure out that her real name is Sabrina Parker, and they’ll figure out you’re her sister.”

Her life was over. He was telling her that her life was over. If she went back to Raleigh now, she’d be hunted down by thugs who wanted to get their hands on that information. And the ironic thing was, she’d looked at those charts and she still had no idea which one had been the Santa Josefa. That was fifteen years ago. It might as well have happened to someone else. She’d woken up that day in the hospital and they’d had to tell her what had happened to her father. The slices of horrific memory had come later, but never the whole summer, only bits and pieces.

And she’d never wanted that summer to come back. She’d never wanted to remember.

“Who are these people?” she asked. “Treasure hunters?”

“Foreign terrorists.”

He might as well have said they were flying pigs. “What?”

“They’re people who blow up buildings and trains and kill people like you and I breathe. They think they can use Ramiro’s globe to pinpoint hidden weaknesses in the earth’s tectonic plates and set off strategically placed bombs to wipe out the eastern seaboard.”

“That’s crazy!” The sick feeling clawed her middle now.

His laser gaze pinned her in the night. “That’s not the point now, is it? The fact is, you have two choices right now. You can go back to Raleigh and put yourself in their hands, or you can stick with me and stop your sister before she ruins not just her life, but maybe a whole lot of other lives as well.”

He drew to a stop at the one light on the main strip of Key Mango. The businesses were dark, closed, except for a restaurant and a gas station.

Was he really giving her a choice?

What if she got out right now and walked into that gas station and asked for help? Terrorists. If she believed that. And right now she didn’t know what to believe.

“I’ll go to the police. Or the FBI or the CIA or somebody! Surely they can provide protection. Who do you think you are anyway?” she demanded. He was Cade Brock, playboy and treasure hunter, but that didn’t explain everything she’d seen tonight. It didn’t explain the way he’d jumped from that car at Sabrina’s apartment to shoot it out with those gunmen to rescue her, nor did it explain what had happened in that lagoon, unless she’d imagined that part. And surely she had.

The light changed. He had one eye trained on the mirror, watching the road behind as they headed for the bridge connecting Key Mango to the next key.

“You go to the police,” he said, “and your sister’s going to end up in prison for the rest of her life. It doesn’t matter whether Ramiro’s globe can really provide the sort of information they think it can—if she helps a terror group find it, she could end up charged with conspiracy, or worse. You stick with me, and maybe that won’t happen. I don’t want to hurt Sabrina. I want to help her. She’s into something bad, and she’s in it over her head. Whatever game she was playing with these people, they’re tired of it. They weren’t playing tonight.”

“Why do you want to help her?” And why had he thought her name was Tabitha? Why would her sister have been using a false identity? Because she was up to her eyeballs in something illegal.

Oh, God, he could be telling her the truth. She didn’t want Sabrina to end up in prison. And she didn’t want to end up dead. He’d saved her life twice tonight. Maybe he could save Sabrina’s and get her out of this mess before she ended up in jail.

“Are you a friend of hers?” she demanded.

“Something like that.”

Something like that. That wasn’t a real answer.

“What do you want with me?” Maybe—maybe—he was Sabrina’s friend, maybe he wasn’t the man Sabrina had been involved with, but why would he help her, too? “That was fifteen years ago. I don’t know which one of those sites could have been the Santa Josefa.”

“Did you look at those charts again?”

“Yes. I looked at them. They were my father’s original charts. There were ten sites marked.”

“Then you can duplicate them,” he said. “That’s a start.”

“So what if I help you find the globe? What then?”

“I’ll turn it over to the proper authorities.”

Would he? According to what the article had said, he was rumored to live outside the law when it came to treasure hunting. And he couldn’t know it, but he might as well have just asked her to poke a stick in her eye. The last place she wanted to go was back in time to the shipwreck that had stolen her father’s life, broken her mother’s mental health and nearly destroyed her.

But he was telling her it might be the only way she could save Sabrina’s life and keep her out of jail. He was right, she had to pick who she would trust, and she had to pick now. He’d saved her life twice. That had to mean something.

And if it didn’t, then she was about to make a big mistake.

“Shouldn’t government authorities already be involved?” she asked, thinking desperately. “If you know—”

“I know because Tabitha—Sabrina—told me. She wanted to know if I’d pay more for the information to find the globe than they were offering. But you’re right. Authorities will find out, if they haven’t already. Word gets around in the treasure hunting community. That’s why there’s no time. If we’re going to stop this thing, we have to do it now. They’ve got the charts, but they don’t have Sabrina, at least not yet. And I have you.”

She didn’t want to believe Sabrina would really do this, but he had a point. If they brought up the globe, that would be the end of it. No way could she do it on her own. But Cade Brock…

He would have all the means at his disposal. She swallowed the huge lump in her throat. Did she even care what he did with the globe? All she cared about was Sabrina.

“If I help you find the globe, are you going to help me find Sabrina?”

He cut his hard, blue-black gaze on her. “Oh, we’ll find her. I promise you that.”

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