She tiptoed over to the main door and checked the access hallway. Empty. She pulled the door shut, hurried to the nearest computer terminal, and pulled up a hidden subroutine, her way of tapping into the internal security system to keep an eye on her new shipmates. Though she’d long known about the vulnerability, she’d never had a reason to exploit it before. She’d buried her new code under half a dozen unrelated protocols, even masked the signal by passing it through a data conduit normally reserved for air quality analysis. Too bad she didn’t think to do a little investigating on the suspiciously quiet day before she found out she’d been stolen along with the Conqueror. Even so, Jonah seemed like a pretty sharp guy. She didn’t know what he’d do if he found out. Best to keep it secret. Maybe he’d shrug and wander off without saying another word. Maybe he wouldn’t. She’d seen his scarred-over knuckles, the residual hardening around his eye socket and jaw. This was a man who knew violence intimately, a man capable of inflicting it as well.
She sat back in her chair and folded her legs up underneath her. So far, being kidnapped hadn’t changed much except that she was in charge of the engine room now and there was no dress code. She wore a pair of cutoff jean shorts and yoga tank top that would have been expressly verboten under the no-nonsense chief engineer of the Conqueror. The outfit didn’t exactly go with her steel-toed workboots, but who cared? Dr. Nassiri certainly wasn’t paying attention, not since their awkward little moment on Anconia Island. Or maybe he was paying attention, just in the sense that he went out of his way to avoid even crossing her path.
Dr. Nassiri. She needed to flat-out stop thinking about him, stop hoping she’d run into him on her way to the bridge, the kitchen, her bunk, or hell, even the head. She wasn’t about to go full circle back to her upbringing in Amarillo, Texas, a town where the general consensus was that big hair and long legs would get a girl a lot further than what was between the ears. Still, she did wonder about him. For instance, she genuinely couldn’t grasp his need to rename the ship Fool’s Errand of all possible new names, especially since going after his mother’s body and recovering her research didn’t sound very foolish. It seemed noble, somehow. Not a fool’s errand at all. And although she realized a stolen ship would need a new name, to her, it was and always would be the Conquerer.
Men, she thought. Her dad would tell her to forget about them, that her job was to look after herself and keep the engines purring. Her mother would find the whole thing hilarious — well, not the kidnapping and pirate stuff — but that Alexis was worried about what some Moroccan doctor thought of her. They’d always been the kind of parents who went their own way, that gave a tomboy the latitude she needed to pursue whatever interested her. And here she was, an engineer on a beautiful ship in a dangerous part of the world, occupying herself with thoughts of a moonlit evening on the high seas with Dr. Tall Dark and Handsome. Jeesh.
The surveillance system blinked to life on her screen. Alexis hopped up and took one last look down the hall to make sure nobody was coming to check on her. Paranoid much? Probably, but she liked her life like she liked her engine room, with as few loose bolts lurking around as possible.
The screen flicked over to the bridge. Dr. Nassiri stood lone watch, binoculars in hand. How old was he, maybe early to mid-thirties? A bit older than she was, but not ridiculously so. He certainly wore it well — smooth skin, high cheekbones, intelligent, dark eyes. She’d already recognized the initial fluttering of attraction, and had told herself, in no uncertain terms, to get real. Maybe this was what Stockholm syndrome felt like, but she doubted it. Sometimes a handsome doctor was just a handsome doctor, even if he did inadvertently kidnap you.
The screen flipped over to the galley.
Hellooooo Jonah.
Jonah Blackwell stood in the center of the dining area completely naked, his collection of diving gear spread across the floor in neat, squared-off little piles, wetsuit carefully folded on one side. Alexis hit the stop button almost unconsciously, preventing the camera from switching away from the voyeuristic view.
He stood without moving, gaunt, tanned muscles glistening, even in the grainy display of the surveillance system. She watched as he gathered the folded wetsuit in his hands and stepped into it. Her friends at home would be swooning at his lean body, broad shoulders, and fuck-all-y’all attitude, but Alexis felt something entirely different when she looked at him. Danger — a trait she found very unattractive.
Leaning in closer to the screen, she caught a brief glimpse of stitching under his left ribs as he pulled the wetsuit up his abdomen and over his shoulders. Holy shit, it looked like someone had stuck a knife in him, and recently.
Alexis flicked through the other screen views, passed on the option to watch Buzz, binoculars clamped to his face, scanning their wake for company, and then flicked to the bridge with an overhead view directly down at the consoles. Jonah, now dressed in the wetsuit, placed his hand on the finely-machined aluminum and carbon fiber joystick as he wordlessly piloted the yacht. According to the high-resolution digital nautical charts displayed on the consoles, the ship and her illegitimate crew were now well into the lawless Red Zone.
Earlier in the day, Jonah, Buzz, and Alexis had cleaned, loaded, and test-fired all of the weapons in the collection. They wouldn’t fend off an attack for long. She wished they could have picked up more weaponry at Anconia Island, but the security forces weren’t selling. Frankly, the crew of the Fool’s Errand were better set to defend a Chicago bathtub distillery than a megayacht.
In the surveillance screen, Jonah picked up the walkie-talkie from the console and pressed the button to talk.
“How we doing in the engine room?” Jonah’s voice, crackled over the speaker making Alexis jump — for a moment it sounded like he was right beside her.
“We’re five-by-five down here,” she said into her own walkie. “Barely ticking over. When you need power, you’ll have it.”
“Nice work, Alexis,” Jonah said.
Over the surveillance screen, Alexis caught Dr. Nassiri glaring at Jonah’s back. The doctor obviously didn’t appreciate the familiarity with which he’d spoken to her. What, was he jealous? An unbidden smile spread across her face. Flattering, yes, but the timing really sucked.
Jonah put his hand back to the joystick tiller and snuck a glance at the radar screen. Alexis pulled up the radar feed on her own system but saw nothing but coastline. Good. They were close, maybe just a few minutes away from their destination.
Jonah disappeared from the screen and Alexis flicked over to the dining area again. He walked into view and she watched as he programmed his dive computer and then went out to the back deck of the ship where he arranged his tri-mix SCUBA gear, including several tanks of different air mixtures, lift bags, high-intensity xenon lights, reserveair pony bottles, vest, weights, and multiple regulators. Since it was newly purchased from Anconia Island, he was triple-checking everything — even though she could tell it was all top-of-the-line and meticulously maintained.
Jonah had explained the plan. It was simple, he’d said, a 300-foot plunge to the bottom as fast as possible while using the transponder signal to stay on station. He called it a “bungee dive,” and said planes were easy to get into. Big sections of the thin carbon fiber skin were most likely weak or missing. He’d get inside, grab the transponder, hard drives, and whatever else he could find and stick it in the lift bag. Dr. Fatima Nassiri’s remains as well, assuming he could get to her. Maybe the other ones, too, but that would be seriously pushing his eighteen-minute bottom window. Just in case, he and Buzz cleared out enough room in the walk-in freezer of the Fool’s Errand to fit all five bodies.