Dangerous Desire

9

Connor walks up beside me and folds his arms over his chest. “That didn’t take long.”

Supple as a cat, Tabby stretches her arms overhead. “Girl power puts everything in turbo mode.”

“Play it,” I say, gravel in my voice. “Let’s see where she went.”

Tabby taps a finger on another button, and the video comes to life. The three of us watch in silence as Eva hurries down the wide main path along the harbor’s edge, then turns down one of the piers. She seems unsure of her destination, stopping every so often to squint at a docked vessel before moving on.

“What’s she doing?” asks Connor. “Trying to find a contact?”

“Doesn’t seem like she knows where she’s going,” offers Tabby.

When Eva stops again, I figure it out. “She’s looking at the ships’ names.”

“If that’s the case, she isn’t familiar with the vessel by sight.” Connor glances sideways at me. “It’s not one of Dimitri’s.”

This again. “So he sent someone else to pick her up.”

Tabby says, “Whoever it belongs to, Eva found it.”

Connor and I turn our attention back to the screen and watch as Eva ascends the gangway of a large black sailboat. Sailing yacht, more correctly. The picture is grainy, but the size of the ship is evident by how it dwarfs the ships moored around it.

I try not to be freaked out by the billowing black sails, which strike me as all kinds of wrong. “Can you get a better angle? Anything closer so we can see the name?”

“Hang on.”

She tries to zoom in, but the picture quality isn’t good enough. The hull becomes one big blur of pixels. Then the screens change images as Tabby tries to find the next closest camera, switching from one to another as her fingers move swiftly over the keyboard.

The next camera must be mounted on a light pole or other high object, because now we’re looking down onto the foredeck of the black ship. Three people stand together. There’s no audio, so there’s no way to hear what’s being said, but suddenly one of the people—a man with silver hair wearing a dark suit—turns and disappears into the main cabin. The two left facing each other are Eva and another man, much larger than the first. I don’t need to see anything other than his size, his posture, and the amount of tattoos covering his arms to get a bad feeling about him.

Then he reaches out and grabs Eva by the throat, and my bad feeling morphs to incendiary rage.

My roar of anger is so loud everyone in the room stops what they’re doing and stares at me.

“I’ll f*****g kill him!” I slam both fists on the console next to Tabby’s keyboard. Then, when the man knocks Eva to her knees and drags her into the cabin by her hair as she writhes and kicks helplessly against his grip, I let loose a bellow of such fury I’m sure all the major arteries in my body will explode under the pressure of it.

The room is perfectly silent, except for my labored breath. Then Tabby swivels around in her chair and looks at me.

“Good,” she says calmly. “You got that out. Now batten down the hatches, soldier. Eva needs you at the top of your game, and so do we.”

I whirl away and drag my hands through my hair. Then I start to pace, just for something to do.

If I don’t keep moving, I might kill something.

“I can’t see the name of that ship from any of these angles, so I’m going to check the port registry and the marine traffic satellite and see what we’ve got. It’ll be a few more minutes.”

That loud, angry rumble of noise echoing off the walls is coming from me.

Connor watches me with a steady gaze as I pace the length of the room, then back again.

How could she have left? Didn’t she trust that I’d keep her safe? Or that I’d handle Dimitri myself? Didn’t she know this would kill me?

Oh s**t—what did that fucker do to her after he dragged her inside?

I’m furious, panicked, and in shock. I’m also in a fair amount of physical pain from my busted-up leg and whatever the hell is going on with my lungs. Pretty sure I’ve got a concussion, too, because my head is throbbing like some asshole’s working it with a jackhammer.

Eva. Eva, why?

Connor says thoughtfully, “That didn’t make sense.”

Another growl tears from my chest. I’m so enraged the power of speech has momentarily left me.

“If those guys are Dimitri’s, they wouldn’t treat her like that. He’s the boss. She’s his property”—he shoots an apologetic glance in my direction—“or at least they think she is. You don’t damage the boss’s property.”

I reply through gritted teeth. “They’re thugs, Connor. Criminals. They don’t have a code of honor like ours.”

“No, not like ours, but every criminal organization has a hierarchy, and Dimitri Ivanov is at the top of the ladder in his. The men who work for him would know he’d kill them without hesitation for stepping out of line. And that”—he gestures to the video screen—“was definitely out of line.”

I stop pacing and look at him.

He says, “But if they weren’t Dimitri’s guys—like I was saying before, if they were friendlies, her plan B or C—they wouldn’t treat her like that, either.” He pauses for a moment, his black eyes drilling into mine. “So if they’re not Dimitri’s men, and they’re not hers, who are they?”