Barefoot with a Stranger (Barefoot Bay Undercover #2)(76)

“You had no right to take my husband.” He’d arranged for Jorge’s death as sure as he’d pulled the trigger on a pistol.

“Well, you’re going to join him right now.”

She squeezed her eyes shut and stopped breathing, bracing for the pain, needing and wanting to live so badly. “I didn’t take it,” she whispered. “I moved it to another account.”

“Whose?” His hand slipped around her throat and squeezed. “Where is the goddamn money, Alana?”

She couldn’t breathe. He pressed so hard on her windpipe, all the air was cut off.

“Do you really want to die?” he demanded. “Because I will kill you if you don’t tell me where it is.”

She tried to choke in air but couldn’t, blinking as her vision darkened. But if he killed her, he’d never get the money.

“You die and your kids go to the government,” he rasped in her ear. “Is that what you want, Alana? Is it?”

Or maybe he would. Maybe he was just mad enough, and desperate enough, to kill her. “Mal,” she managed to say.

He loosened his grip. “What?”

“I put it in an account that only Malcolm Harris can access.”

He loosened his grip as if he needed to really think about that. “So it will look like he really did steal the money?”

No, so he could have it. But she didn’t argue.

“That was brilliant,” he said. “Get it.”

She slowly shook her head. “You need his fingerprint and his password to take money out. I don’t know them.”

His eyes flashed as he grabbed a handful of hair and wrenched her head backward, shooting pain down her spine. “You’re lying.”

“No, I’m not.”

He twisted her hair and jabbed the gun harder. “Then this is what we’re going to do, Alana. You’re going to bring him here to me. Tonight.”

“I can’t get him here. He’s not allowed on the base.” She was thrashing for excuses now, trying to get time to think.

He gave a sharp laugh. “Alana, I’m surprised at your lack of creativity. When you worked for me, I thought you were one of the smartest people around Gitmo. You’ll think of something.”

She closed her eyes. The last person in the world she should betray was Mal Harris. And yet…her family. Her children. Her mother. Her whole world…they could be gone so easily. That was how a Cuban lived, even one who worked at Guantanamo. They lived on the edge of death.

He finally released her, pulling out a cell phone, and she knew one phone call could be way more fatal than one bullet.

“I’ll arrange for your kids and the old lady to be taken to Havana. Could be years before you see them again. If ever.”

Her babies. Her mother. Or Mal. Who needed her more? Once again, she chose family over a friend. “I’ll bring him here.”

He gave a dry smile. “I’ll wait in my old office. It’ll be just like old times, won’t it?”

* * *

Dead reckoning. That lovely sounding concept, according to Mal, was their navigation technique. It amounted to knowing the direction, estimating the approximate miles, and hoping for fair winds.

That did not sound like a flight plan to Chessie.

Still, there was a seat belt, which Chessie had both hands wrapped around to pull it tighter against the turbulence that tossed the little plane as they cruised over miles of farmland.


As far as speed, the crop duster, which looked and felt like it was built before Chessie was born, was a big step up from the Prefect they left at the farm. But it was not on the ground, which was a strike against it. And it was in the hands of a man who, she was starting to believe, really had never flown an actual plane in his life. Maybe in a video game. Maybe in some kind of simulated training.

But she was in his hands now, and all she could do was hope for the best.

Wind sang through the open-air cockpit, which was about the size of the seat of a VW Bug. The backseat. Mal sat behind her maneuvering the stick with his right hand, a rusty throttle in his left. Chessie had stuffed herself into the tiny seat in front of him, her loose beach cover-up a pathetic fashion choice for night flying.

Ramos had given them a lightning-fast lesson on the dials while they’d donned helmets and climbed in. Air speed, altitude, oil pressure, and horizon position, which in this plane were visible to both pilot and passenger, all looked to be functioning fine and giving a good read. Fuel? Every time they hit an air pocket, that dial dropped to empty, then popped back up again.

This was flying by the seat of your pants, on a wing and a prayer, and every other cliché she could think of to keep her mind occupied. When she ran out, she thought about the whole situation of the money and the child, the woman and the secret school that arranged adoptions…and tried like hell to make sense of it all.

Mal hadn’t stolen money to help a woman; he’d covered for her. Somewhere in that fact lay the answer to his life’s problem: clearing his name without ruining hers. Could something be done with the money? The accounts?

Chessie itched to get on a computer and dig around, but first, she had to find Gabe’s child. And they were flying to the woman who’d adopted him, so that meant they were closer to little Gabriel Rafael.

Surely the woman whose life Mal had essentially saved would be on their side.