A Cold Dark Promise (Cold Justice #8.5)(27)

Beautiful people in expensive clothes were standing on the gangplank, which led from the yacht to the quay. Shiny, expensive cars were parked next to the sea wall. The dinner party must be breaking up. She needed to move fast if she wanted witnesses.

She wasn’t wearing a headset because if she was captured their team didn’t want Ahmed’s people to know she had help. She was the distraction. She didn’t intend to be the weak link.

And there he was. A man she’d once loved with all her heart. A man whose child she’d born. A man who had beaten her more times than she could count. He was still rugged and handsome. Well groomed. Sharp-eyed. Intelligent. Violent. Mean. Small minded. Vicious.

Her lungs squeezed as hatred and fear nearly overwhelmed her.

If it hadn’t been for Taylor she’d have shot the bastard years ago and to hell with it. But Jane didn’t want that to be her legacy. She wanted to be a good person. A good mother. She needed to regain the self-worth he’d stripped from her.

When she was twenty yards from the boat, Ahmed looked up and away from his guests and his gaze found her, unerringly. He’d always been able to sense her presence. His back straightened. Surprise flickered over his face, replaced by satisfaction, then anger and alarm.

He spoke into a radio that was attached to his cuff, and she saw shadows move on the deck.

Ahmed’s guests seemed to sense the sudden tension in the air and started to move toward their waiting sports cars. The women would kill themselves trying to walk down these old, cobbled streets in their skyscraper heels.

Ahmed clearly wanted to wait for his guests to leave before confronting her, but that wouldn’t be making a scene now, would it?

“Hello, Ahmed. I want to see our child.” She spoke clearly and calmly, and her voice echoed powerfully across the water.

“Who is this, Ahmed?” a tall man with a French accent asked him.

“No one. A crazy person.” Ahmed moved down the gangplank and tried to hurry the man toward his Porsche.

“I must have been crazy to marry you, and believe your lies,” Jane continued calmly. It helped to see Jack Reilly meandering slowly along the quay toward them.

“This is your wife?” another man asked.

“Ex,” Ahmed said bitterly.

Oh, he still hated her for divorcing him.

“I thought you said she was dead, mon ami?”

Jane smiled coldly. “If had been up to him, I would be.”

“What does she mean?” the tall man demanded.

“Nothing. She is a nasty woman who tried to steal from me—”

“You stole from me the only thing that matters. Our child. There is an Interpol Red Notice out for your arrest, and I demand you hand her over to me.”

The guests looked a little startled at that.

Jane raised the volume but kept her voice calm. No one ever listened to hysterical women. “I want my child back. If you don’t hand her over as per the court order, I am going to call the police.”

“She isn’t here.” Ahmed looked flustered now. Torn between not looking like an ass in front of potential investors and probably wanting to kill her with his bare hands, and worried his secret arms deal was going to spiral down the toilet thanks to her actions.

She hoped so.

The guests looked at one another. One couple hurried to their car, clearly uncomfortable with confrontation. She’d been like that once. Scared. Pitiful. The other two couples hovered nearby, unsure what to do.

“Perhaps you two need to talk about this amicably,” the Frenchman tried. “It is surely better for the child to try and work together like mature adults than to argue?”

Jane cocked her head. “I haven’t seen my daughter for four years because I was stupid enough to think Ahmed would act like a mature adult. He abducted her on her first court appointed visitation.”

“Not true!”

Two of Ahmed’s henchmen moved down the gangplank. Good. If they were watching her, they weren’t likely to bump into Alex.

“Of course, that was after he spent three years of marriage beating the hell out of me every opportunity he got.”

One of Ahmed’s goons grabbed her by her upper arm. “Time to move along.”

“Bring her onboard,” Ahmed bit out.

She pried the guard’s fingers from her arm. “So, you can beat me again? Maybe kill me this time and dump my body in the Med?”

“Hey!” The voice was very male and American. Dear and familiar. It had soothed her repeatedly over the last few interminable days. “You need some help, ma’am?”

Reilly.

She could easily fall in love with a man like Jack Reilly.

The boat’s engines started, and everyone looked around in confusion. Ahmed darted back onto the ship, shouting in Arabic. The smell of diesel smoke filled the air. She noticed someone preparing to cast off and started to panic. This wasn’t part of the plan. One man tried to drag her toward the gangplank but Reilly smashed him in the face. The tall Frenchman shouted at the other goon who looked like he was about to grab her. Instead they both let her go and sprinted up the gangplank, then pulled it aboard. The boat started to pull away from the sea wall.

Reilly wrapped his arms around her, holding her in place while she sobbed. “What about Taylor? What about—”

He pressed her face into his chest, smothering what she was about to say.