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- Herausgeber: Valley Publishing Ltd.
- Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
- Sprache: Englisch
Running away can often lead to the same thing you were trying to leave behind …
Vince is not on board with the wave of romance happening at Legendary Security and so is happy to escape all that, but he soon finds himself aboard a research vessel off the coast of the Galapagos Islands, dealing with his own tide of emotions.
Vanessa loves her research trips. This latest one is finally coming to a successful conclusion, as she completes their data collection, when their vessel is boarded by pirates. She’s knocked unconscious and moved to an old sinking tub and left adrift in the ocean. She wakes to find the only other female member of the team is missing …
Worried, the team returns to shore, trying to sort out what happened. Vanessa insists on tracking her missing team member, even as the others vote to return home. Vanessa refuses. She’ll help or die trying. Vince can stay with her or go with the others—his choice—but no way is Vanessa’s lost researcher being left behind.
And, one by one, the other members of the team go missing too
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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2019
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Table of Contents
Cover
Title Page
About This Book
Prologue
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
Epilogue
About Ice’s Icing
Excerpt from Ryland’s Reach
Excerpt from Damon’s Deal
Author’s Note
Complimentary Download
About the Author
Copyright Page
About This Book
Running away can often lead to the same thing you were trying to leave behind …
Vince is not on board with the wave of romance happening at Legendary Security and so is happy to escape all that, but he soon finds himself aboard a research vessel off the coast of the Galapagos Islands, dealing with his own tide of emotions.
Vanessa loves her research trips. This latest one is finally coming to a successful conclusion, as she completes their data collection, when their vessel is boarded by pirates. She’s knocked unconscious and moved to an old sinking tub and left adrift in the ocean. She wakes to find the only other female member of the team is missing …
Worried, the team returns to shore, trying to sort out what happened. Vanessa insists on tracking her missing team member, even as the others vote to return home. Vanessa refuses. She’ll help or die trying. Vince can stay with her or go with the others—his choice—but no way is Vanessa’s lost researcher being left behind.
And, one by one, the other members of the team go missing too …
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Prologue
On his way to buy steaks for dinner, Vince Manor had been stopped with a phone call. As he stood in the compound, he heard Dezi and Diamond in a corner of the room.
He shook his head at Dezi. “Holy crap,” he said, watching the two. He knew it was serious, but he hadn’t realized just how serious.
Levi walked in to stand beside him and said, “You’re next.”
“That’s guaranteed to make me run,” Vince said. “This is freaking scary stuff.”
“No,” Levi said. “It’s the best thing that can happen to any of us. Don’t be scared of it. When it’s your turn, you’ll know it.”
“Nah,” Vince said, “everybody around me has all the good women. There isn’t another one left in the world, I’m sure. Knowing me, I’ll end up with some nutcase, a bitch, and I mean that in the nicest canine way.”
Levi chuckled. “No, but maybe what you need is somebody with a bit of spirit, somebody to help you laugh.”
“Oh, no,” he said. “No matchmaking.”
“No matchmaking required,” Levi said. “I’m pretty sure the next job with your name on it will find you the perfect woman.”
“Hell no. And, if her name starts with a V, I’m out of there. There will be no Victorias in my world or Valeries or Veras or anything else.”
Levi chuckled, then burst into great big guffaws of laughter.
“What are you laughing at?” Vince asked suspiciously.
“I know exactly what it’ll be. It’ll be Vince’s Vixen.” Then he went off in a storm of laughter again.
Vince stared at him. “Oh, hell no,” he said. The last thing he wanted was somebody who would argue all the time. He wanted spirit, yes, but he sure as hell didn’t want too much of it.
And he had a sad feeling it was just too damn bad. Levi had already forecasted Vince’s future. Whether he liked it or not.
Chapter 1
The crackling static of the PA system shook Vince out of the computer work he was doing. He was in the office at the compound, handling some of the research he took over for Stone so he could upgrade the security system. With the advent of the completed swimming pool installation, they’d added in fences and made strategic use of plants from California in the yard too, so now they were taking a new look at security and who could see stuff going on in the pool area.
Of course, Reyes and Raina were handling that part. It was always about security here. And Vince understood that. Often meetings were all about new ideas, new concepts they were sorting out through research. He was currently looking at a different kind of sensor to allow them to see if anybody moved within one hundred yards of the perimeter of the compound. The problem with that, given the countryside they lived in, was the animal wildlife. Levi could put up a sensor and set a target weight for detecting an intruder, so anybody moving in the two-hundred-pound category would set off the alarm, whereas anything small, like a coyote, wouldn’t. And, of course, that would help, but would it be effective? And an awful lot of crazy-ass men were out there who were in the 150-pound range. Women too…
Vince continued going through the research, printing off and circling sections he thought should be reviewed.
“Full staff meeting in the kitchen right now please,” said Ice, her voice coming across the PA system. “We have a call coming in. Attention, everyone. A team is going out immediately. All hands on deck.”
Vince closed down what he was working on, stacked up the research paperwork and headed to the kitchen. Being on paperwork duty wasn’t his ideal task. He understood the necessity, but, if there was an op, he wanted in on it.
He really enjoyed being here, loving the camaraderie of working for Levi and Ice. They were now engaged, with no wedding date planned yet, but Ice’s face always held a smile. For that, Vince had to give it hands down to Levi. He’d done a good thing when he had asked her to marry him. Levi probably didn’t know how much it meant to some people, and maybe Levi didn’t even think it was important to Ice. She always seemed so independent and so capable. But then Levi must have realized how much their lives were entwined and that a commitment mattered to her.
And it had.
As Vince walked into the kitchen, a good seven people already waited. That was reassuring. His odds of going out on the job just went up. He frowned. “Not many are here, huh?”
Stone looked up. “Two headed out last night. We’re down to a skeleton crew. Instead of wondering when we’ll have some work, we’re in a constant state of not having enough men.” He wore a hard smile. “The world is in a sucky spot right now.”
“Isn’t that the truth.” Vince headed to the sideboard, poured himself a fresh cup of coffee, grinned when he saw the massive chocolate chip cookies and snagged two. As Vince sat, Stone munched away too. “I gotta say one thing.” Vince’s mouth was half full of cookie. “Bailey and Albert are one dynamite duo.”
Stone, his mouth too full to talk, just nodded.
Ice walked in toward the large screen, clicked on several buttons and picked up the remote. She stepped back and brought it online. The face of an older man appeared. “George, you’re live. Go ahead,” Ice said.
George’s eyebrows lifted as he surveyed the table. “This darn technology.” He shook his head. “I never would have figured this was possible. I’m sitting in my place, and you’re sitting all the way over in Texas.”
“For those of you who don’t know, George is a scientist working in the Arctic.”
Vince nodded. “Interesting place to be.”
George nodded. “My life’s work is here. If this global warming doesn’t stop, we’ll all be in trouble.”
Vince didn’t have anything to add to that because George was right. The world was in a crazy place right now. “I gather you have a problem there?”
“Not here,” he said. “My daughter is currently working in the Galápagos Islands.”
Vince sat up straighter, a grim look on his face. “Galápagos Islands? What is she doing there?”
“She’s working on a government-funded study to assess the ecological damage of the tourist industry,” he said heavily. “And I’m sure you can imagine her results will impact a lot of lives. It’s a protected area, and only specific tours are allowed in and out. The local officials do what they can to control the damage, but there’s been recent poaching.”
“And what does poaching have to do with tourism?” Stone asked.
Vince had to admit he didn’t quite understand himself.
“We’re not sure that one has anything to do with the other.” Then George stopped, frowned and shook his head. “No, that’s not quite true. We were considering they were connected. Until recently. Two tour guides had been left behind, to help with turtle counts. Both men turned up dead. It was thought they got in the poachers’ way.”
Slowly everybody in the room straightened. “Dead?” Ice asked. “How were they killed?”
“They were both shot in the head,” George said. “I’m sure you can see why I’m a little concerned about my daughter.”
“Have you spoken with her?” Levi asked.
“And have you talked to her about these concerns?” Vince was sure George had done that, but it still needed to be asked because why else was he calling Levi’s team?
“I would if I could,” he said. “I have spoken to her almost every day, but, for the last twenty-four hours, she’s not answering her phone.”
“Is she there with a team, or is she on her own?” Vince asked.
“A team,” George said. “A very experienced team. So, as you can see I might be a little concerned.”
“And because of the two tour guides being shot, you’re assuming the worst, is that it?” Ice asked, her pencil moving rapidly on a scratch pad in front of her. “Do you have any visuals on her team? Anybody else answering their phones? Anybody else popping up at the local hotels? I presume she and her team are not staying on the island?”
“No, they stay on board the research ship. By a special dispensation, they were allowed to spend four days there while counting the turtle population. And that went off well. They’ve done this every year for several years to see the impact to the turtle numbers. This year was no different. It went off without a hitch. She was due to come back in another week. She did send me a weird email not too long ago.” His voice was heavy. “In it she intimated this might be her last trip there. As she was struggling with some of the team members. Maybe it was nothing, I don’t know. It just seemed an odd thing for her to say as she’s not one to complain. She loves her work. She loves these animals. Normally she’d ignore everything else in order to help them.”
“Meaning, one of her team might have been involved in poaching?” Vince frowned. “It would certainly be easy for the team to be involved in illegal operations when they’re there and have such good connections.”
“Exactly,” George said. “But, like I said, the team is experienced, if not in the field then through their studies and their areas of expertise. She’s worked with them many times. So I’m not sure if she’s talking about poaching or something else.”
“Sure, but maybe one person on that team is not quite as experienced,” Levi said. “We’ve seen it time and time again, George. A team is only as good as its weakest link.”
“I know,” he said. “I’ve spoken to the local government. As far as they’re concerned, there’s absolutely nothing to worry about. I’ve spoken to other family members of the team, and again they all believe there’s nothing to worry about. It’s just something to do with me being me.” He wrinkled up his face. “Yes, I’m a father, and all my instincts say something bad has happened.”
“But there’s been no contact, like from kidnappers? No requests for ransom? No blackmail of any kind?” Vince asked. He hated to bring it up, but it was certainly one of the things first on his mind.
George shook his head violently. “No.” Then he added slowly, “Not yet. There is still time, if they’ve been taken captive somewhere.”
“And when you say somewhere,” Stone said, “what do you mean?”
“I mean, taken to a second ship. So much of the work down there is done on ships. My daughter’s team was on a big research vessel where they worked most of the time. It’s quite possible somebody has taken over the research vessel or alternatively just took off some of the crew.”
“To what purpose?”
“It’s hard to say. The government contracts alone are worth millions,” George said. “So who knows what kind of influence the team has, on both who gets the contracts and on whether the tourism dollars will get cut in order to allow the area to recover. There was open tourism until the government slapped those doors closed, and then installed just a few tours to bring some control back to the area. But, if that’s not enough to bring the animal numbers back up and to stop further damage to the ecosystem, then the government will do more. Maybe the Galápagos Islands are closed for ten years. In a way, I’d like to see that. But it’s very hard to determine what way they’ll go. I don’t have the data.”
Ice, as if sensing he was heading off into research mode, brought the conversation back on topic.
George hesitated and then said, “I have to admit. I’m really worried about pirates.”
There was silence in the kitchen.
Vince was the first to speak. “Okay, that’s a word to make every father’s heart crash.”
“Exactly,” George said heavily. “She’s very much like me. We both went after our passions, and, because of that, we’re often at opposite ends of the planet. I wasn’t there a ton while she was growing up, but, since her mother died, we’ve become closer. I don’t want to lose her. And if she’s suffering at the hands of anybody …” His face twisted up with anger. “Please make sure they pay for it.”
Ice looked up from her notes. “I need her full name, contact information for the entire team, anybody you know in the government—ours and the local authorities—who have given the okay for her team to work there, and whoever you spoke with to date. The more names and contact info you can give us, the more chances we have of tracking down somebody who is there on the spot and who knows something.”
“I’ll email them to you.” George smiled. “My daughter’s name is Vanessa, and she has three more researchers with her, so four total on the team.”
Stone chuckled. And then his face grew serious as George looked at him inquiringly. “The name,” Stone said. “It’s a great name for a woman.”
George smiled wistfully. “It is, indeed. She was named after her grandmother. And that woman was a hell of a vixen,” he said affectionately.
Ice turned to Vince, a smile on her face when she said, “Vince will head the mission to look into your daughter’s disappearance. Send me that information, George, and we’ll arrange flights to get him there as soon as we can.”
“You’re not sending him alone though, right?” George asked in alarm. “He’ll need a team.”
Ice smiled and nodded. “Not an issue. I’ve got one or two more guys we can send out.”
“I can go,” Stone said with a big grin. “I’ve never been there. I’d love to go.” He looked up to see the screen was black. “I guess it’s a good thing he was gone before I said that, huh?”
“You think?” Ice asked, raising her eyebrow. “But I get what you’re saying. I haven’t been either.” She looked like she was figuring out the schedule, who she could juggle to add to this op. She looked at Vince. “You don’t have any problem with that, do you?”
No,” he said. “I don’t. I can’t say I’ve been to Galápagos either.”
“You won’t go alone,” Levi said. “Give us a little bit, and we’ll figure out who’s going with you.”
Ice looked at Levi. “Not many are here to choose from, and I think you said you always need to have, what? Four on hand here at all times?”
Levi nodded. “Yeah, that’s what I said. We’ve got six now, but Merk is heading out tomorrow for California.”
“Anybody new coming in?” Stone asked. “Didn’t Ice say you had a transfer from Bullard’s side coming?”
“Johan Wagner,” Levi said slowly. “He is coming. I know the man from our visits over there. He was part of Bullard’s security team for the new settlement on the Tunisia border. So he’s got a lot of rough-and-ready and maybe even pirate experience.” Levi stayed calm. “I should give him a go.”
“We weren’t expecting him until next week though,” Ice interjected. “We’ll have to see what his schedule looks like.” She stood up. “I’ll start on this. I’ll let you know when and who and where.” And she disappeared around the corner, the hard clip of her footsteps fading down the hall.
Stone looked at Vince. “This one is yours.”
“Why is that?” Vince asked absentmindedly, his mind already considering the Galápagos Islands and pirates. He loved sailing. He loved the water. The Galápagos archipelago was on his list of places to see. He didn’t really want to do a lame civilian tour though. And, as luck would have it—something very nice for a change—this job had just dropped in his lap.
“Starts with a V,” Stone said with a smirk.
Vince stared at him in confusion. “What are you talking about?”
“The woman you’ll rescue,” he said. “Her name starts with a V.”
Vince laughed. “So?”
“And named after her grandmother who was a vixen. So, she likely is too,” Stone said with a head nod. “And that’s a V. That makes her Vince’s Vixen.” He laughed. Standing up, he refilled his coffee, grabbed two more cookies and headed back to the security room. He was still laughing as he went down the hallway.
“Didn’t you say something similar earlier?” Vince frowned at Levi who had half a smile playing at the corner of his mouth. “That really isn’t working for me.”
At that, Levi chuckled. “I did say that. But we’ll see. That’s not the issue. I suspect she won’t be the only one who needs rescuing. If she’s been separated from her team, maybe, but chances are the entire team has been taken out.”
“Then the families should have heard something. No one else appears worried.”
“George was always very intuitive of danger,” Levi said. “I’ve known of several of his other research projects. One time, in the middle of the night, he hustled an entire town to move out, against the government and even the villagers’ wishes. Later that entire side of the mountain came down in a mega-avalanche and buried eighty percent of the town.”
Vince shook his head. “Wow. In other words, you trust that if he says something’s wrong, it’s worth checking out.”
“Definitely. We can’t afford to let time slip by. We already have five hours of traveling distance to get there if you could leave this instant. But the time zone change gains us one hour. So the net time change is four hours. Regardless, in those four-plus hours to get you to Houston’s international airport and on a flight,” he snapped, “all kinds of trouble could go down. We might get a trace on her for right now, but, by the time you land, it’s a completely different story.”
“Anybody close by you can haul in earlier?”
Levi tapped the tabletop as if running through his list of jobs and where all his men were.
Vince glanced around. “With your growing team here, you may have this covered electronically, but I almost feel like you need a wall map of the world and colored flag pins to assign to each man and to track who’s in and who’s out, and in what country, or at least what continent they’re all in,” he said with a laugh.
Levi nodded. “We’re getting to that point, aren’t we? We also have time off, holidays, marriages, all kinds of stuff going on,” he said, in deep thought. “Have to make it work though.”
“Are you okay with Johan?”
“I’d take Johan in a heartbeat,” Levi said. “I’d also take his brother Jezeus. Both men are cut from the same cloth. They were raised in war times, turned into guerrilla fighters at the age of ten. Bullard pulled them out at fourteen, and it took until they were eighteen to stop the brainwashing, to straighten them up and to put them to work for him. Once they understood how allegiance actually worked, and the difference between the universally accepted concepts of right and wrong versus the skewed concepts of right and wrong of the man who had taken them prisoner, the brothers turned out to be incredible assets for Bullard.”
“So why are they leaving him?”
Levi shook his head. “They’re not leaving. We’re doing a temporary switch, the brothers for Kasha and Brandon, who wanted to work over here for six months then for Bullard in Africa for six months—like those student exchange programs in high schools and colleges.”
Vince nodded. “I might go for a deal like that too, down the road,” he said with a smile. “It’s a hell of a way to see the world.”
“It’s also a hell of a way to see that, no matter where you are in the world,” Levi corrected as he stood, placing his cup on the table, heading for the door, “it’s all the same.”
*
She pulled the too-tight gag off her mouth, glad to breathe freely again. “Trussed up, tied up, whatever the hell you want to call it,” Vanessa said as she lay on a hard bunk, “we’re in a shit spot.” The rest of her team were in various states of consciousness, tied up around her. All of them had been gagged too, with their hands tied behind them. Like her. To begin with at least.
Only not all of her team was here as she studied those around her. Dr. Laura Sanchez was missing. Vanessa’s heart filled with dread. Vanessa had been alone in the lab when attacked by two gunmen. In the process she’d been knocked unconscious, only to wake up with her team around her—minus Laura.
These gunmen were serious, and they had nothing to do with the research her team was here to conduct. These men were either pirates or poachers. And that just broke her heart. Poachers were the bane of any research group looking to preserve the life of a species.
Species at risk was one of the areas that made Vanessa’s heart bleed. And to see poachers stealing eggs, shooting and killing the turtles, broke her heart and made her realize once again that the most dangerous predators in the world were its humans. Half the time they killed not for food or out of necessity but for sheer pleasure. And humans were one of the few species to kill each other as wantonly as they did everything else.
She tried once again to wriggle her hands free. They were in front of her now, only because she’d managed to slip them down over her butt and up in front of her legs. She was average height for a woman with fairly short legs, and that made the job a little easier. Across from her, Dr. Willard Walker watched her, hope in his eyes. She tried hard to bite the knots free, but the rope was nylon, and her teeth weren’t cutting through. She collapsed back down, breathing heavily.
They could hear footsteps above them. The boat itself was fairly rickety. She imagined whoever had kidnapped them had taken over their research vessel as spoils of war. And, if that was the case, what boat was she on now? The research vessel was a wonderful ship, and she’d do a lot to reclaim it. The last thing she wanted was to be treated as somebody who didn’t matter. Somebody who was just a means to an end.
She’d spent her lifetime looking for attention from her parents, who were both scientists, so involved in their own work sometimes that she had to be an outright nasty child in order to get them to look up at her. They’d been confused and surprised and never really understood her. Never understood what drove her. But then she hadn’t really understood what had driven them either, until she became a teenager and got hooked on saving as many animals as she could. Then she understood completely.
For that reason alone, she decided there was no way in hell she would have a family. She wouldn’t do to her children what her parents had done to her. She’d grown past that sense of insecurity and neediness but still had no plans to repeat the cycle.
A muffled sound came across from her. Her eyes flew open to see Dr. Walker motioning toward her bound hands again. She stared down at them as she lifted them up. They were already torn and bleeding, but she knew she had to get them loose. She studied the hard edge of the board where she lay, wondering if any frayed edges could saw away on her ropes.
She sat up, swung her legs over the edge and worked the ropes up and down the sides of the wood. She knew at some point it would work, but she didn’t know if she had enough hours or energy. She’d lost track of time. Surely they’d been kidnapped at least twenty-four hours ago, with very little food and water, only what they had on them. If she didn’t know better, she’d think the damn kidnappers planned on letting them slowly die down here.
She knew she and her crew were worth money. But, in order to exchange her team for said money, she’d have to let their kidnappers know her team had value. And that was a catch-22. Because, to gain the kidnappers’ attention, they took a chance on getting another beating.
She wasn’t sure what the kidnappers were smuggling. Because of the location, she wondered if it was turtles. But it could also be that the gunmen were just using a sacred spot to hold and move goods that had nothing to do with the actual habitat. Since the archipelago was shut down for tours right now, it made for very little traffic back and forth. As she thought about it, that was a smart move on the kidnappers’ part.
Tony made a strangled sound in the back of his throat.
She turned and looked at their valuable research assistant. This was his first on-site job, and he’d been thrilled to join them. That it had turned into his biggest nightmare was something she had no control over.
He lifted and humped his butt several times.
She studied his face, and he kept motioning with his head to his side. She hopped off the bunk, hobbled over with great difficulty, her ankles still bound, using the bunk to walk. When she got to him on the floor, she crouched beside him to see a shape in his pocket, then dove her fingers in and pulled out a penknife. She snapped it open, cut her own ties and then cut him loose and went around systematically cutting everyone else free.
Finally with everybody untied, they stared at each other. She handed the pocketknife back to Tony. “I’m so glad you thought to bring that,” she whispered. “Anyone see Dr. Laura?”
They all shook their heads.
Tony asked, “How do we get out of here?”
She bolted to look out the small porthole window. “There’s only water on this side,” she said.
Tony checked the other side and nodded. “Here too.”
“So, on three sides, we’re looking at endless ocean,” Dr. Walker said. “That leaves only one other direction. We don’t have any tools. We have no weapons except for a small pocketknife.”
She turned and smiled, baring her teeth, holding up the ropes she’d cut off. “And these.”
Tony nodded. “And rope. You’re right. If we can get behind the kidnappers, we could strangle them.”
“There’s four of us and at least two gunmen that I know of,” she snapped, her voice low and hard. “If need be, I’ll be the tease, bring them into the room. You guys will have to go after them.”
The men nodded.
Dr. Walker asked, “Do you really think their end game is our deaths?”
“How much water have you had in the last twenty-four hours?” Tony asked.
For that, Dr. Walker had no reply.
She checked her pockets. “Everybody see what you have. Phones, lighters, anything.”
“What would you do with a lighter?” Dr. Walker asked curiously.
“Torch the boat,” she said.
