Cornered

From this position he could use his binoculars to scan the marina. Sailboat masts bobbled and a cool wind blew off the water. People lined up on the dock. A group of men talked with each person as he or she stepped into line for the ferry.

Cam didn’t know what that was about, but the lack of uniforms and the fact that no one had performed those checks when he landed a few hours ago suggested it wasn’t legitimate. More likely this group was part of the one that had shot up Julia’s house.

He scanned the faces he could make out and body types for anyone who looked like the fake police chief. That guy struck Cam as the leader. If they cut the group off at the top, the rest should wither or at least be confused enough that wiping them out would be easier.

He glanced at his watch. Before he could read the dial, she piped up. “The ferry will be leaving soon.”

“You’ll be on it.” For some reason that promise sliced through him. He felt the cut through his midsection.

Which meant he needed to get her on that boat now. She was a distraction. A long-legged, sweet-faced distraction with a butt that held him captive and a drive that enthralled him.

He’d watched as other members of the Corcoran Team paired off. Marriage, engagements, living together, serious dating. Strong men who vowed to put work first bowled over by compelling women they could not resist.

The Corcoran traveling team had made a vow, too—keep moving and stay bachelors. He had no idea how the promises broke down with the other members, but looking at Julia, watching her trace a fingertip over a crack in the tabletop as her long hair fell over her shoulder, he felt an odd tug. One he planned to ignore, and that started with a no-more-kissing rule.

“Do you plan to roll me down the hill?” she asked as the finger tracing morphed into drumming.

He almost laughed at that. “Might be faster than carrying you.”

She looked up long enough to glare at him. “No to both.”

“You need to get away from the island.” Cam was starting to think everyone should leave, because no one would be safe until his team figured out the random pieces of what was going on and put them together in a way that made sense.

“Will that matter?” Her shoulders fell. “If these men know who I am, they can track me down.”

He hated that truth but liked that she kept thinking it through, thinking about the angles. That caution would keep her safe. “You’ll stay in a hotel and use cash.”

“For how long?”

He wanted to tell her a day or two, but that could be a lie, and he refused to get her hopes up. “However long it takes to make sure you’re okay.”

She glanced off to the side. Stared at the trash cans without talking for almost a minute. “It’s not my house.”

Whatever he’d expected her to say, that wasn’t it. “What?”

“The house was my father’s.” She drummed those fingers against the table again.

The steady rhythm started a ticking in the nerve in the back of his neck. He reached over and put a hand over hers. “Okay, back up. Where is your dad?”

“Dead.” She delivered the information in a flat voice.

He wasn’t sure what to say or how to read her mood, so he went with the obvious response. “I’m sorry.”

This was not his area of expertise. His birth mother had lost custody before he hit kindergarten. She’d held on just long enough to make him too old and unadoptable, according to state officials. He’d spent the rest of his youth passed around from one foster home to another until he aged out of the system and turned to the military for a more permanent home.

“I was cleaning the house out for sale, though I’m thinking that might not be happening now.” She sighed as she opened her hand and let his fingers fall between hers. “My point is, anyone who looks up the deed will trace my father to me, and me to Seattle.”

He was still trying to process the news and what it meant in terms of keeping her safe. “You don’t live on Calapan.”

“Not since I was smart enough to run away at eighteen and not look back.”

“Very smart,” a familiar male voice called out from around the corner of the market just before he came into view. “I hate this place.”

Shane Baker. The Corcoran traveling team member who was the most likely to make a joke to get through a tough situation.

Julia snatched back her hand and spun around. Looked ready to jump to her feet, which was the last thing Cam wanted her to do with that ankle.

Shane and Holt Kingston, the head of the traveling team, stepped into view. Cam hated to admit they’d gotten the jump on him. Hated more the idea they might have seen the whole hand-holding thing.

“Whoa there.” Cam put a reassuring hand on her arm. “They’re with me.”

She sat down hard on the bench again and glanced at him. “Huh, you really all do look like that.”

He had no idea what she was talking about. “What?”

“Nothing.”

Cam decided to keep the focus on the problem instead of whatever might be running through her head, though he did wonder. “Holt Kingston and Shane Baker, this is Julia White.”

Holt shook her hand, then moved in beside her on the bench. “Your hostage.”

That was the last thing Cam needed to hear. If they thought he’d messed up, they’d never let him forget it. “It wasn’t like that.”

She looked at Holt. “It sort of was.”

Shane joined the group at the table. He sat across from Julia and looked her over with a frown on his face. “You okay?”

“She sprained her ankle.” He’d also scared the crap out of her and killed a man in front of her, which had to have her mind blinking, but the team knew that from his check-in, so Cam didn’t repeat it now.

This time she aimed her sigh at Cam. “She twisted her ankle and she can speak.”

Shane barked out a laugh. “I like her.”

“She’s a talker.” Cam figured they might as well get that out of the way because Holt operated on the say-as-few-words-as-possible theory.

Shane’s smile faded. “Oh.”

With that done, Cam turned back to the case. “What do we have?”

“No identification on the deceased. Connor and Joel are working on it from the photos and fingerprints we sent.”

She put a palm on the table. “Who are they?”

Something about the way she held her hand out had them all quieting down. Cam had never seen anything like it. The team members tended to talk over each other when it came to handling assignments. Connor and to a lesser extent Holt and Davis, the leader of the Annapolis home team, could demand the floor with absolute certainty.

Before Cam could give a personnel rundown, Holt jumped in. “Connor runs the Corcoran Team. It’s his baby. Joel is our tech guy. Both are back in the Annapolis main office.”

She held up one finger. “Okay, one more question—”

Shane whistled. “I see what you mean about the talking.”

“—who or what is the Corcoran Team?” She ended the comment by glaring at Shane.

There was a long-winded answer about undercover, off-the-books work. Cam went with the easier response. “We are.”

“That doesn’t really clear anything up.” Her last word cut off before she looked at Holt. “And did you say you checked the deceased? I’m guessing that means you went back to the house, though I have no idea why you’d want to see that scene.”

Holt nodded. “Yes.”

“Have we figured out why these guys tracked Cam and kept shooting at him?” she asked as she leaned in.

“Not yet.”

Cam could have listened to her rapid-fire questions and Holt barely answering all day. It summed up their respective personalities. But he knew from experience Holt’s patience would expire, and that was reason alone to end this.

“We came here to talk to a witness who reported some concerns. Raised some questions about illegal drug running on Calapan,” Cam explained, trying to keep the intel as neutral as possible.

“Who?” she asked.

Shane shook his head. “I don’t think—”

“Rudy Bleesher.” Cam ignored the stunned stares from his teammates. He was surprised he’d shared that information, too, but nothing made sense on this job. They’d come here for an interview and ended up in a shoot-out. Not the usual assignment. “She’s from here. We aren’t.”

She snorted. “If it’s about drugs, Rudy will know.”

Holt’s eyebrows lifted. “Because?”

“We went to school together, and the guy knew all about drug dealing.”

Finally a piece of the puzzle that fit for Cam. If Rudy had started out using and maybe dealing and now wanted to turn in evidence to cut a deal or get out of trouble or whatever, that made sense. And they were talking about drugs in serious amounts.

Cam had been with the team for three years and had never gone after a run-of-the-mill drug user. But word was the operation on Calapan was serious business and served as a source for moving drugs up and down the coast and into Canada, which made it Corcoran business.

“You’re sure this is the same guy?” Shane asked.

She started drumming those fingers again. “The island is thirty square miles, and most of that is wooded and uninhabited. Yeah, I know Rudy.”

“We need to talk with Rudy and get Julia off the island.” Holt glanced down at her hand but kept talking. “The ferry isn’t an option until we clear these guys out, which means we need to find the real police chief.”

“You know about him?” she asked.

“They were there when I got shot at.” Cam thought that part had been obvious but he guessed not. “They were watching when everything fell apart.”

Julia flattened her hand against the table. “Which time?”

“The first, the time that led me to you, but you make a good point.” Back then Cam had called the scramble code and they’d scattered. At that point he’d still thought they could grab Rudy and be gone without trouble. Talk about a miscalculation.

Holt looked through the binoculars and Shane rechecked maps on his watch. Cam waited. He could tell something ran through her head. Maybe it was the way she gnawed on her bottom lip.

The quiet stretched on for a few more beats before she exhaled. “I can take you to Rudy’s house.”

“No way.” Shane clicked on the GPS function on his watch. “Give us the address.”

“You’ll never find it,” she said in almost an I-told-you-so offensive strike.

Cam sided with Shane on this one. “We’re pretty good at this.”

He wanted Julia long gone and far away when they tracked down Rudy. The man wasn’t where he was supposed to be this morning, and all hell had broken loose because of that.

“Fine.” She shrugged. “Go to the fourth turn past the group of willows by the water where all the kids went skinny-dipping in high school.”

Shane stared at her. “Maybe a street name?”

“There isn’t one, to my knowledge. Rudy lives in a shack.” She sent Cam that I-told-you-so grin she’d all but promised. “Getting mail is the least of his concerns.”

“You win.” Holt slapped a hand against the table and got up. He pointed at Cam. “You take Julia and look for Rudy. Shane and I will find the chief or at least clear the ferry area of suspects.”

She shifted to look up at Holt, who now towered over her. “How?”

He smiled for the first time since he had sat down. “We can be persuasive.”

“But first.” Cam eyed Holt.

“What?” She glanced around, looking more confused by the second.

“Right. Sorry.” Holt bent over and picked up a bag. He took out a bandage, then an ice pack. “Cam is going to set your ankle.”

Her gaze flipped to Cam. “You know how to do that, too?”

The woman needed to have some faith. “My skills are endless.”

* * *

RAY MINER STOOD in the ferry’s ticket-buying area, just inside the building, so he could get a good look at anyone approaching the marina. But he was looking for one person in particular—Cameron Roth. The guy was supposed to be some superstar pilot who was good with a gun.

Ray had some skills of his own and was pretty sure he’d impressed the guy by shooting the man he was holding from right under his arm. But now he was down two men and Ray didn’t like that at all. Cameron would pay for that.

Two more of his men returned from their search of the ferry decks after the most recent unloading. “There’s nothing and no one left on board, but the waiting passengers are getting antsy.”

“Tell them there’s a delay and to come back for the next one.” When his men stared at each other but neither moved, Ray saw the positives in eliminating a few of his guys without Cameron’s help.

Ned, the bigger of the two and the one who usually did the talking, cleared his throat. “They’re starting to have questions.”

As if Ray cared. “We have the captain tied up and the rest of the crew believing I had to come in from Seattle and commandeer the boat because of the transfer of illegal goods in one of the cars. Have the crew inform the passengers that there is a search ongoing at the moment.”

“What if someone calls the real police chief?” Ned asked.

“He’s busy running around the island right now, and we have control of the phones.” Besides, Ray liked this cover. He could get used to wearing the uniform. It went with the gun. “My bigger concerns are Cameron Roth and Julia White, the woman with him.”

Now Ray knew her name. Knew the boss wanted her tracked down and brought to him. Apparently Ms. White didn’t live on the island and wasn’t supposed to be there. She was the type who liked to stick her nose where it didn’t belong. She’d learn the hard way what a bad idea that was.

“They can’t get far. We have the marina in lockdown and they’re about to run out of ferry service. There’s only one more after this.” The one who wasn’t Ned delivered the information.

Ray didn’t remember his man’s name, because it didn’t matter. The guy’s job was to not mess up as he followed orders. “What about a boat on another part of the island?”

Ned pointed to the boats docked around them. “Possible, but they didn’t come in with a boat, so that should lead them back here if they want to find one. We also have a few guys watching the water and checking private boats.”

“Do we have the okay to shoot?” the other one asked.

The guy suddenly became more interesting. Ray liked where his head was in this. “Not the woman. The boss wants her brought in and this Corcoran Team guy taken out.”

Ned’s eyes narrowed. “Why?”

“Just do it.”

Ned shrugged. “I’m just saying it would be easier to kill them both. Set up some sort of lovers’ argument gone wrong.”

Ray agreed, but he didn’t have the final say. Not in this. He took care of logistics and security for the business. He was the reason they’d been tipped off about Roth showing up in the first place. A guy like that, with his reputation and background, made enemies, and when a DC business associate heard Roth was headed for Calapan, he’d passed the word on. Ray had taken it from there.

But whether he liked this Roth guy or not didn’t matter. Ray knew the guy was dangerous.

“Don’t underestimate them. This guy Cameron took down two of our men.” Really only one but Ray guessed it would be bad for morale if he told them how expendable they were.

Ned stared at Ray. “Roth couldn’t get to you.”

Ray would not let that happen. He would win that battle every time. “Not me.”

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