“Which means you’re next.” He looked around, spotted a pair of jeans lying at the foot of the bed and tossed them to her. “Get dressed,” he ordered, turning his back to give her privacy. Or to give her a chance to shoot him in the back of the head, but he was betting she wouldn’t. “You’re a pretty sound sleeper,” he added after a moment.
“Clear conscience, I guess,” she told him.
Henry gave a short laugh. “That would explain my insomnia.”
He was about to say something else when he heard the sound of metal rattling. He turned to her, putting a finger to his lips; she nodded at the front door. They moved soundlessly out of the bedroom together, weapons drawn.
The doorknob was twisting back and forth slightly.
Again Henry looked at Danny and she nodded. He threw the door open, surprising the hell out of the guy on his knees in the hallway, so much so that the lockpicks he’d been using were still stuck in the knob. Henry put him to sleep with the butt of the Glock.
“This can’t be an agency-sanctioned op,” Danny said, her voice small and toneless. She followed Henry as he went to the patio window. “These guys have got to be rogues.”
If it had just been the clown with the lockpick Henry might have been tempted to agree, except for what had happened at his place. Even if those guys hadn’t had much chance against him, they hadn’t been amateurs, either. But there wasn’t time to debate pros and cons. He had to get Danny onboard quickly or neither of them would get out of this alive. “Fine. Either way, they’re rogues with agency assault rifles.”
Now he saw a black SUV cruise slowly through the marina parking lot, lights off.
The marina…
“All the boats have dupe keys in the office, right?” Henry asked. Danny nodded. “Are any of them especially speedy?”
Danny nodded just as the guy in the doorway groaned and began to stir. Henry gave him a kick to the head that put him out for the night. He didn’t so much as twitch when Danny stepped on his back as they left.
Danny had a quick look through the marina office’s windows; the sky was only beginning to lighten and she couldn’t see very much. But the office wasn’t very large and offered little in the way of places to hide. As near as she could tell, no one had tossed it. To her relief, no one had jimmied the back door lock, either. She would just have to trust Henry to secure the perimeter, she thought as she let herself in.
The cabinet with the rack of spare keys was still padlocked; that had to be a good sign. She unlocked it and found the keys she wanted almost immediately. But just as she took them off the hook, someone behind her cleared his throat and said, “Feeling the call of the sea?”
Mentally kicking herself for not checking the bathroom, Danny turned around slowly. Her heartbeat went into high gear; the man who had come up behind her was dangerously close and the gun pointed at her chest was even closer. She took a breath and, still moving slowly, raised her hands, holding them just far enough apart to make it difficult for him to see both of them at once.
“Where is he?” the man asked.
Danny looked downcast and sighed unhappily, the way she had as a kid whenever her father caught her red-handed and she had no choice but to give up. The man with the gun bought it; she could tell by the smug look on his face. The moment she saw him relax his guard, she went for him, grabbing his gun with one hand and throwing a punch at his throat with the other.
He twisted out of her grip and backhanded her with the pistol. The explosion of pain filled her head with bright flashing light as she flew backwards, one hand automatically going for her own gun. The man knocked it out of her grasp and she heard a distant clatter as it hit the floor. When her vision cleared, she looked up to find him standing over her, aiming his gun at her face. Blood was flowing from her nose, running down her mouth and chin. Face and head wounds bled copiously because of all the capillaries; she’d learned that in first-aid class. The damnedest things crossed your mind at the damnedest times, she thought as she inched her hand toward her ankle.
“You can tell me where Brogan is now,” the man said in a reprehensibly smug tone, “or you can tell me in five minutes minus your teeth. But you’re going to tell me.”
In one smooth motion, Danny drew the knife from her ankle sheath and swung at his knees. Or tried to—he blocked the movement, caught her wrist, and twisted it till she had to open her fingers. The knife landed on the floor; at the same moment, there was a rifle shot from outside. Two more followed; then silence. The man froze, still holding onto her.
“Well, I counted three,” Danny said chattily. “How many guys did you bring?”
The question confused him, kept him immobilized just long enough to let her sweep-kick his legs out from under him. He went down with a grunt, and for a few seconds they grappled on the floor. He was a fist-fighter, a brawler, used to punching his problems into submission. But he wasn’t as quick off his feet as he was on them and not terribly agile, either—Danny managed to wriggle around behind him and applied a chokehold until he went limp. Shoving him aside, she grabbed his gun as well as her own and when he came to, she was standing over him, giving him a good view of the barrel of her Beretta.
“Okay, let’s hear it.” Her blood was salty and warm in her mouth. “Who sent you?”
He didn’t answer.
“You can tell me now,” she informed him, “or you can tell me in five minutes minus your teeth.” She gave him a red smile. “But you are going to tell me.”
Waiting on the dock with their burn bags, rifle in hand, Henry was just starting to wonder if he should go after Danny when she came out of the marina office. In the early morning light, he could see she was roughed up, a little bloody, and more than a little freaked out, but not seriously injured.
“It’s Lassiter,” she said flatly.
Henry had already come to that conclusion but he had to ask. “How do you know?”
She was shaking with adrenaline as she took his hand and dropped something on his palm—four broken and bloody front teeth. Henry looked from them to her, showing his own teeth in a wry smile.
He almost expected her to say something like He started it, but she only strode past him down the dock. Impressed, Henry followed with the rifle and their burn bags to slip number seventeen. The thirty-fourfoot Corsair moored there was brand new and whoever owned it had gone with the full package of options—which meant they weren’t going to be terribly happy when they found out someone had taken their baby for a joyride.
We’ll treat her only with the utmost respect and we’ll try like hell to bring her home safe and sound as soon as we can—I give you my word, Henry promised the owner silently. Whether the owner would have thought the word of a retired government assassin counted for much was a different argument, and one that Henry didn’t imagine would go his way. But what the hell—Grand Theft Nautical was pretty tame compared to what he’d been doing for the last twenty-five years.
Danny climbed aboard and motioned for him to load the bags, wiping away the blood from her nose with the back of her hand. Henry did so and untied the Corsair from the piling on the dock before joining her.
He cleared his throat and she turned to look at him. “Before we do this, there’s something you should keep in mind—stepping on this boat is saying goodbye to everything you know. You understand that?”