UndercoverSurrender (3 page)

And he should not have stayed the whole night. That was
another mistake.

But he was lonely. And he was about to be even lonelier, for
a very long time.

* * * * *

Flunking out of college was ridiculously easy to do. Miss a
few paper deadlines, skip a number of finals altogether and the admissions
office got all huffy on you. Add in hacking into the college’s database to
change a boyfriend’s grade and any hope of a diploma was history.

Whatever happened to academic probation?

“What I don’t understand, Samantha, is that I’m told it took
a tremendous amount of expertise and intelligence to hack into the grades
database and yet you couldn’t seem to pass Introduction to Basket Weaving or
whatever the hell it was you were taking. I don’t understand that.”

She said nothing.

“You have such a brilliant mind.
My
mind as a matter
of fact.” The fruits of Damien Reynolds’ brilliant mind—as well as the
generations of wealth passed down to him—were all around them. From the
original Renoir hanging on the silk-draped wall to the size of this five-story
townhouse smack-dab in the middle of Manhattan to the three-carat diamonds in
Samantha’s own earlobes, everything about the Reynolds family screamed money.
“Thank God you have your mother’s looks without her pea brain.”

“Leave my mother out of this, please.”

“I wish I could. Unfortunately, her genes keep surfacing in
this lamentable tendency of yours to run away from things.”

“Mother ran away from you, Daddy. Not things.”

“And consequently left our daughter running away from every
opportunity she’s ever been presented with, time and time again. I just don’t
understand it.”

“What do I need to go to college for?” The question was a
reasonable one and she’d thrown it at him a thousand times. “It’s not as if
I’ll be working for a living or anything.”

“What will you do for a living? Bar hopping? Sunbathing?”

He left out running away with the riding instructor as her
mother had done, but she didn’t bring that one up.

“How about both?” she said instead. When she reached for a
decanter from the bar, a mere glower from her father as he sat behind that
mammoth desk from which he always lectured her had her snatching her hand back
like a child.

“Don’t you want your life to have some meaning, Samantha?”

She got up and walked to the picture window looking down on
the streets of Manhattan, turning her back to him. “Like yours, you mean? I
don’t see what increasing the Reynolds’ family fortune will do for the world.
We already have more money than we could spend in a hundred lifetimes.”

“Then find something to do with that money. Run a charity
or—”

“Is that what you’re billing Reynolds Industries as these
days?” She whipped around to face him again. “A charity?”

“You don’t have to work at the company. In fact, I don’t
think Michael would want you to.”

“He’s not the boss of me,” Samantha muttered automatically
at the mention of her oldest brother’s name.

“My point is you have to do something. I thought that
college would give you some time to think about that, like it did your
brothers. But your mother’s genes seem to be interfering with that.”

“How do you keep track of all the mothers of your children
and their defective genes, Daddy? You divorce them all so quickly.” She picked
up the sole photo on her father’s desk—a picture of a black-haired beauty
beaming from under her wedding veil, circa 1970s. “If only Michael’s sainted
mother hadn’t died in childbirth, you wouldn’t have been put to all the trouble
of perpetually looking for just the right replacement.” She put the photo down
with a noticeable clatter. “Or maybe you would’ve gotten around to divorcing
her, too, after a while.”

Her father leaned back in his leather chair. “Do you say
these things to hurt me, Samantha? I’m an old man. You’re my youngest child. My
only daughter.”

Samantha looked at Damien Reynolds’ full head of white hair
and firm ruddy skin and trim waistline. He looked easily twenty or thirty years
less than his true age of over eighty. But he was old. And she
was
trying to hurt him. She was always trying to hurt him, whether she admitted it
to herself or not. It was silly.

She was silly.

She sighed. “I’m sorry I didn’t take Yale seriously, Daddy.
It just seemed to take itself seriously enough for the both of us. But I’ll try
again if you want. It probably has to be somewhere else, though. I know you had
your heart set on Yale, but I’m guessing that unless you offer to buy the
place, they’re not letting me back in there.”

“I don’t know about that.” Damien Reynolds was a firm
believer in the adage that there was nothing money couldn’t buy. “But I agree.
Let’s try someplace new altogether. How about the Sorbonne? You’ve always loved
Paris. You can stay in your grandmother’s apartment. It’s been empty a long
time and it’ll be yours when you come into your trust fund next year anyway.”

“Sure, Daddy. You know me. I’ll try anything once.”

She smiled. Besides, her new boyfriend Justin would adore
Paris. Just perfect for a poet. And he had nothing else to do either.

Thanks to her hacking, he’d just flunked out of Yale too.

Chapter One

January 2012

Oh Christ. This wasn’t right. What the hell was that doing
here?

“You seeing what I’m seeing, Vik?”

Vik lowered the night-goggle binoculars and glanced at Rolf
Gunderson. He had hoped tonight would be one of the last times he’d have to put
up with this vicious Neanderthal, but it looked as if that wasn’t happening.

This was so not going according to plan.

“I see it. It looks kind of small, though.” Lying through
his teeth in the calmest voice imaginable was one of Vik’s special skills. One
of the many that had led Interpol to recruit him as an agent so many years ago.

“Small? Are you fucking kidding me? It’s a hundred feet at
least. State of the art. It’s perfect.”

Vik shrugged. “If you say so. It’s probably easier to take
than
The Victory
anyway. So if you don’t think we’re up to that one,
this might be a good second choice.”

Reverse psychology often worked on the stupider of the
criminal element.

On the stupidest, not so much, unfortunately.

“Yeah. Fuck
The Victory
. We go with this one.”
Gunderson signaled to the rest of the crew to start the engines of this sleek
little motorboat up again. With a shout he indicated over the resulting noise
that they were headed for the yacht dead ahead.

The Samantha
.

* * * * *

Samantha Reynolds was going insane with boredom. She missed
Justin. She hated her father.

And she was hot as hell.

Already in the briefest pajamas she owned—short shorts and a
spaghetti-strap tee—she didn’t think even stripping naked would help with this
South Seas heat and if she did she wouldn’t be able to go up on deck and at
least catch the occasional breeze. As it was, her father would probably scold
her for walking around in her jammies in front of the crew. As if her bikini wasn’t
even more revealing. Who cared anyway?

Since she was reduced yet again to nothing more than a
naughty child in her father’s eyes, nothing really mattered. Except maybe
getting the damned air conditioning on this overpriced heap cranked up.

The last few days had left her dazed and bruised. Not
physically of course. A girl like her didn’t get actual bruises. But it hurt
anyway. To have Daddy show up like that in Paris and pay Justin off and then
practically kidnap her, even though she was almost twenty-three and would soon
have her own money from Granny.

It hurt. Just when she was starting to feel like an actual
grown-up.

She didn’t blame Justin for giving in. What else was he to
do? Damien Reynolds was a powerful man. And Justin was just a poor, starving poet.
Not starving really. But his trust fund was miniscule.

Now that he’d signed that paper with Daddy promising not to
see her upon the payment of a certain undisclosed sum, she supposed that
relationship was over.

Like all her relationships. Her father didn’t seem happy
unless he could prove that there wasn’t a man alive who didn’t want her for her
money. Which was just ridiculous. If anything, men wanted her for
his
money.

She supposed being the only daughter of the legendarily
male-dominated Reynolds brood had its disadvantages. At least the boys got to
have some fun, even stodgy old Michael with his mistresses of the moment. Every
time Samantha made the slightest misstep and did something as minor as ending
up with a tiny mention in a tabloid about planning to elope to Rome, Daddy
swooped down with his checkbook and whisked her away.

She was getting tired of it.

She’d have her own checkbook soon and she’d pay almost
anything to keep him from interfering all the time.

The door to her cabin burst open.

“Daddy!” she complained. “Now you’re not even knocking? For
goodness’ sake, I’m a grown woman.”

Even as she was objecting, she registered her father’s
normally pristine mane of silver hair was all askew and his reddened complexion
was even more fiery than usual. And he was waving a gun.

The sound of a motorboat outside her port window drew her
attention away from the odd tableau of her father’s disarray. In all the days
since her father had had the two of them helicoptered here, dropped right in
the middle of the South Seas, she hadn’t heard another single boat.

“What’s going on?”

Her father grabbed her arm.

“Ow!” Now that was going to leave a bruise.

“Come on. Now, Sam. I’ve got to hide you.”

“Hide me?” she cried, even as he was dragging her out of the
room and down the passageway.

Without further explanation, he shoved her into a
musty-smelling closet of some kind. Oh no, wait. There were benches and
lockers. A crew storage room perhaps?

“Whatever is going on, Daddy?”

“Shhh,” he hissed urgently, trying locker after locker until
one opened.

She heard some shouting above just as her father, incredibly
enough, tried to shove her into a locker. As she was about to cry out, he put a
hand over her mouth. His familiar aftershave comforted her, though his still
frantic features did not.

“Here,” he whispered. “Take this gun and stay hidden.”

Then he slammed the locker door shut on her.

* * * * *

“Make sure we got everybody,” Gunderson said, motioning with
the machine gun that he, like all of them, carried. “I don’t want some hero
cook springing out on me at the last minute. Take Santiago.”

Vik surveyed the captain and assorted crew of the yacht
milling around under gunpoint. They all seemed pretty scared silent. Even the
old, white-haired one who owned the yacht. He wasn’t blustering or mouthing off
or doing anything that would risk him getting killed while Vik went to search
below. Just by good luck, the only women aboard were two older Polynesian ones,
servants by the looks of them, who wouldn’t be to Gunny’s taste. So they were
safe there.

Vik nodded and headed below with the other crewman. They
opened each of the cabin doors and made cursory searches of the heads. The
place seemed cleaned out. “You go check the engine room,” he instructed
Santiago. “I’ll finish here.”

Santiago nodded.

Vik continued down the passageway, opening doors as he went.
The laundry room. A pantry. When he got to a darkened storeroom of some sort,
he glanced inside, not inclined to do much more, when Santiago showed up behind
him. “It’s all clean in the engine room.”

“Okay. Let’s go back up.”

“Did you check these lockers? Crew probably has some good
grass.”

Santiago moved forward before he could stop him, trying
lockers, finding them locked. He pointed his weapon at one.

“What’re you doing?”

“I’m going to shoot one open.”

“We don’t have time for that now. You can come back down.”

Santiago hesitated.

“Go on,” Vik urged. “You better get back up on deck.”

“You’re not coming?”

“I got to take a leak. Go on.”

Santiago nodded and left.

Vik held his breath, hoping he was wrong. Approaching the
locker with the very slightest bit of pink material caught in the door, he
opened it quickly.

To the sight of a gun trained right on him.

Oh, he so did not need this.

“Hey, did you see—”

At the sound of Santiago coming back into the room, Vik had
no choice. He knocked the gun out of the girl’s shaking hand and hauled her
out.

“Shit! A chick!” Santiago exclaimed.

“Yeah.”

“Is that why you were trying to get rid of me, Vik? Trying
to nail her before any of us even know she’s on board?”

“Don’t be an asshole.”

The girl was shaking, but her skin where he held her arm was
feverish hot. It must have been one hundred and ten degrees inside that locker.
She probably would have suffocated if he hadn’t found her anyway.

He tried to console himself with that. But given the way
Santiago was checking her out, it was hard to do.

There was a complicated set of unwritten rules by which
undercover agents lived. Of course the rules were different for each agent. But
Vik’s included not letting innocent people get involved if he could possibly
help it. Unfortunately, he could only “help it” if it didn’t compromise the
mission. Others had a rule about not personally killing anybody, innocent or
guilty. Vik’s only included the first part of that one. He had no problem
killing one of these cutthroats if it saved his own life or the life of a
bystander. He’d done it to Bobby, the disgusting pedophile who had gotten him
the space in Gunny’s crew. Unfortunately, that rule often ran into the “not compromising
a mission” one. Sometimes it was a choice between the two.

He’d wanted to kill Gunderson almost the entire time he’d
been on his crew. The man was an animal, like most of these guys, but without
the occasional glimpses of humanity even the most hardened criminals usually
displayed. He was also one of the linchpins of this operation. Killing him
might set things back God knew how long. He couldn’t afford it.

So he’d dutifully brought the terrified girl up on deck and
pushed her toward the others. The white-haired old man clutched his heart when
he saw her and she went into his arms. He’d been thinking rich man’s mistress
but from the body language he saw it was worse.

Rich man’s daughter.

“Nice, Vik,” Gunderson commented, eying the girl.

Oh shit.

“So is this everybody?” Gunderson asked him.

“Yeah.”

“Okay. Good. Put the lifeboat in the water,” he instructed
one of the other crewmen and Vik felt a surge of relief. He’d talked Gunny into
doing this with the last few yachts they’d taken—instead of killing everybody
on board, as was Gunny’s natural inclination—but it always felt like a
crapshoot each time as to whether he’d do it or not. Since all of the yachts
they’d taken so far were from drug dealers or gun runners, hardened criminals
themselves who knew the risks of their trade, the term “innocent victim” in
these situations was a relative one. But still.

Here, though, these people were just caught in the wrong
place at the wrong time. Thank God Gunny had signaled for the lifeboat.

“You can take your chances on the sea, everybody. Good luck
and all that. Thanks for the boat. That’s right. Everybody get the fuck out of
my hair.”

The assorted terrified members of the staff started climbing
into the raft quickly, without comment.

“All but the girl,” Gunderson said. “She stays behind.”

The girl froze and the old man clutched his daughter’s arm.
“No! You can’t do this. Please.”

Vik didn’t move a muscle.

“Get in the raft.” Gunderson usually didn’t add an “unless”.
It just came. He was going to spatter the girl’s father all over the deck in
two seconds if he didn’t get in the boat.

Vik moved forward. “Go on.” He pushed the old man, roughly,
which should have caused him to let go of the girl’s arm just with the force of
it, but it didn’t.

“No! I’m begging you!”

Gunderson laughed. Jesus, the old guy was just making it
worse.

“Move aside, Vik. Let him beg.”

Vik glanced over his shoulder. “No. I’m not cleaning it up
and I’m not living with the stink of blood on the deck.” Catching the old man
by surprise, he pried his hand from the girl’s arm and picked him up, dropping
him into the raft to the arms of one or two of the men who came forward to
catch him. The old man scrambled up and Vik whipped out his knife and cut the
ties to the raft, shoving it with his foot. The farther away these innocent
bystanders got the better.

Then he’d deal with the girl.

He pocketed the knife again and turned back to her. She was
shivering in her flimsy pajamas, despite the ninety-degree heat, too young, and
too pampered maybe, to be able to mask her terror. And she was clearly
terrified as she watched her father drift away, the others in the raft visibly
restraining him from jumping out to swim back it seemed.

“Tell him you’ll be okay,” he instructed gruffly.

She turned big, chocolate-brown eyes on him, asking for
something he couldn’t give her, not in this crowd and probably not at all.

“Tell him we’re just going to ransom you. We won’t hurt you.
Tell him or my boss is going to shoot him if he manages to get out of that boat
and head back here.”

“I’ll be okay, Daddy!” she called frantically, rushing over
to the railing to do it. He followed her just to make sure she didn’t jump
herself—Gunny would fire on her for sure if she did—as she repeated what he’d
told her to say. Whether it calmed her father or the poor guy had just
exhausted himself, Vik couldn’t tell as the others in the raft frantically
paddled away and the yacht’s engines started up in preparation for pulling away
in the other direction.

Long after they had, the girl still stood at the railing,
watching the shrinking dot that was her father in the raft until finally it was
gone completely.

“You did the right thing. There’s nothing he could have done
and he would’ve just gotten himself killed.”

“Won’t he die anyway? How far can they get on open sea in a
raft like that?”

Vik shrugged. “Sometimes there’s some traffic in this
neighborhood.” The yacht was running at quite a clip now, the motorboat they’d
come in following close behind, white wakes of water on either side. “They
might run across a boat. You never know.”

He knew for a fact that there was one boat they would run
into. The one he was supposed to be on right now.
The Victory
. Christ,
what a fuckup.

“Or starve to death in the meantime.”

The big brown eyes were on him again, but the terror in them
had receded. Now they were just blazing hatred. That was probably better for
her all around. She just might make it.

Samantha looked at the pirate who had dumped her flailing
father into the raft and now coldly stood discussing his possible demise. The
one who’d wanted to minimize the blood on the deck so it didn’t stink since he
vowed he wouldn’t clean it up. She wished to God she could spill his blood on
the deck right now. She wished she could mow the whole lot of them down.