Hell or High Water (Deep Six #1)(47)

“If I knew that,” he told her, “we wouldn’t be havin’ this conversation, would we?”

For a moment she studied his face, then frowned. “How did this get turned around to me, anyway? I thought we were talking about what’s going on in your head.” She lifted a hand to shade her eyes.

Without hesitation or conscious thought, he pulled off his sunglasses and slid them onto her face.

“Thanks,” she told him. “That’s very gentlemanly. Is it meant to be a distraction from my question?”

“I am nothin’ if not gentlemanly, darlin’.” He intentionally thickened his accent, smacking his gum cheekily.

“Mmm.” She pursed her lips. The gesture could either be construed as annoyance or an invitation for a kiss. He decided to place his money on the latter and bent down to quickly—

“There’s movement on deck!” Bran called from his position farther along the railing.

Smirking up at Leo, Olivia whispered in that smoky voice of hers, “To be continued?”

“You bet your ass.” He was grinning when he straightened and lifted the binoculars to his face. Olivia did the same beside him. They were close enough to the Black Gold that minor details aboard the gleaming black yacht snapped into sharp focus. The bright glint of the stainless-steel fittings. The rich teakwood decking. And the line of four dudes standing at the railing. Leo narrowed his eyes. The men were thin, bearded, and wearing stained clothes—not at all the kind of crew one would expect on a multimillion-dollar yacht. But he cataloged all of that as an aside, because what immediately snagged his attention were the familiar diagonal belts fastened across their torsos.

Gun straps. Like the one he was wearing. The hair on his arms stood up at the same time Olivia whispered, “Sonofabitch!”

“LT!” Bran yelled, jogging toward them.

“Yeah.” A quick spurt of adrenaline burned through Leo’s blood as he quickly glassed the rest of the vessel, trying to count heads, trying to determine exactly what it was they were dealing with. “I see ’em.”

“So much for Morales’s calculations,” Bran grumbled, stopping beside Leo and Olivia. The clanking sound his M4 made as he swung it around to the front of his body registered in the subconscious portion of Leo’s brain. He’d hoped he was being overly cautious when he’d instructed his friends to lock and load. But he should have known better. Like most missions, this one was turning out to have more curves than a barrel full of snakes. Son of a frickin’-frackin’ bitch!

“I don’t understand it,” Olivia said. “Morales isn’t wrong about these things. Maybe the marina’s records were tampered with or—”

“Oh, ay! Who cares how it happened,” Bran interrupted her.

“I do,” she hissed. “It doesn’t make any sense. Even if the terrorists somehow had ties with the yacht or the captain or the Texas oil tycoon, why would they toss the chemicals overboard? Why would they—”

That’s as much as Leo heard, because right then he noticed a man standing on the landing by the back door of the Black Gold’s bridge. The guy was looking through his own set of binoculars, and Leo knew the instant he saw the weapon in Bran’s hand because the man lowered his field glasses and yelled something to the four guys on deck.

Leo quickly adjusted his sights to the yacht’s lower level. And what he saw through the magnified lenses had his heart growing frog legs and jumping into his throat. Unlike most folks who froze in the face of danger or imminent death, spec-ops warriors were trained to use their adrenaline to sharpen their minds and enhance their reactions. Which was why, without a moment’s hesitation, he dropped his field glasses overboard and grabbed Olivia’s arm.

“Rocket launchers!” he bellowed, yanking her away from the rail. “Run!”





Chapter Ten


2:13 p.m.…

Olivia wasn’t sure if she was running across Wayfarer-I’s deck or being carried by Leo. She felt like her legs were spinning uselessly in the air, Scooby-Doo style. But one thing she was certain of was that the two words a person never wanted to hear back-to-back were “rocket” and “launchers.” That is what he’d yelled, right?

Holy shit! What the hell is happening?

She didn’t have time to think of an answer to that question because Leo grabbed the back waistband of her shorts and, with a mighty heave-ho, promptly tossed her overboard.

“Go with Olivia!” she thought she heard him yell. She couldn’t be sure. Not with the humid air whipping by her ears and the bright turquoise water rushing up at her at an alarming rate.

Oh God! Oh God! Oh—

Sploosh!

She’d read somewhere that hitting the water from any sort of height was pretty much the same as hitting concrete. Sure as shit, she could vouch. The wind was punched out of her by the impact, her belly and chest on fire from the blow. She was immediately enveloped in the arms of the ocean, the warm water sucking her down, down, down…

Swim, Olivia! Kick your legs!

Yep. That’s what she should be doing all right. And it’s certainly what she wanted to be doing. But her body seemed to be experiencing some sort of disconnect from her brain. The shock of the collision with the water’s surface had scrambled her synapses. Deeper and deeper she sank until the sea began to press in on her, squeezing her, lulling her with its liquid embrace even though her lungs burned.