Target of Mine: The Night Stalkers 5E (Titan World Book 2) Read online

  Nikita knew the warrior. That woman she understood completely. This one—with the feathered haircut that fluttered every time she turned to look up at her man, whose stomach was sore with laughing rather than with inverted sit-ups, whose body was still loose with the memory of how he had made love to her—this one was a stranger to her.

  Then Zoe had delivered the ultimate reality check.

  “Let’s go clothes shopping.”

  Nikita had decided she would rather die, but the tour guide whisked them ten kilometers up-island to Junk Boutique in French Harbour.

  “This sounds promising,” Nikita whispered to Zoe.

  “For Esly. Her wardrobe is horrid. It just won’t do if she’s going to continue being with Drake Roman, Inc. We have standards.”

  Which was true. “But Junk Boutique?”

  “We are a small island,” Mercedez overheard her question and replied with her cheerful but unstoppable charm. “We have several very good designers here. This is where they sell. Casual and couture. It is also on the center of the main walking street of our second largest and most pleasant town.”

  Through the morning it had become clear that Mercedez was practically adopting Esly. By now they appeared thick as thieves, leaning their heads together and laughing. It was almost as if Mercedez had found her missing daughter for a brief moment.

  The shop’s window, in a stone building that looked as if it just might have been here since the ships of the 17th-century buccaneers had filled the bay, included a cheerful array of trinkets and a very skimpy bikini that she could see was giving Drake ideas. Thankfully the shop was little bigger, though much better stocked, than the one on the ship. Nikita was able to use that as an excuse to sit out on the bench just in front of the store with the two men and the driver, letting Esly and Zoe go in with their guide.

  Across the street was a short beach with a good bay.

  “The largest fishing fleet in the Western Caribbean,” Emmanuel nodded toward the boats anchored throughout the bay and along the piers.

  The traffic and pedestrians of French Harbour swirled around them. Not with the hurry of Mobile or the frantic rush of Norfolk, Virginia, near DEVGRU’s base. No one was in too much of a hurry to greet Emmanuel their driver, who rarely spoke more than a word or two but was apparently well known and liked. English, Spanish, black, white, brown—the populace was more mixed than a Navy mess hall. Fashions ranged from khakis and t-shirts to flowing caftans. Every person seemed unique, yet they all seemed to belong.

  And, once she managed to get over the near miss of a life-threatening shopping trip with Zoe, she was able to appreciate that this too fit with Drake’s plans—Mercedez was serving them very well. Every single person who called out a greeting to Emmanuel carefully inspected the people he was escorting. The island patois was hard to follow, but she caught snatches of questions.

  Drake had introduced himself to the guides as a businessman seeking new opportunities throughout Central America. A businessman who had an entourage and required Altman and Esly as his putative guards.

  Esly had walked off the ship standing tall. The cautious, carefully-spoken woman who had shared their suite since last night had stepped into her role, looking almost as fierce as Altman, especially after she pilfered a set of Altman’s dark, wrap-around shades.

  Emmanuel was very circumspect about his current customers, and that alone seemed to speak volumes to those who talked with him.

  Esly emerged from Junk Boutique looking even tougher than when she’d gone in. The changes seemed minimal: sturdy boots, a light jacket with a military flair to it, and a brilliant yellow blouse with a low enough neck to accent her dark, creamy skin and generous cleavage. But the alteration in appearance was substantial. She looked tough and sexy at the same time. Maybe Nikita should introduce her to Sugar. Mercedez also emerged with a black clothing bag and wearing what Nikita now recognized as a very expensive smile.

  Nikita couldn’t help laughing and Mercedez only looked a little abashed—she’d taken them to her own store. But Esly looked both sexy and powerful in her new clothes, which said Mercedez was also good at what she did.

  “I am hoping that it is okay I buy two dresses. Zoe said I must,” Esly was saying.

  Drake was nodding his okay, but she was looking at Altman.

  “I look very good in these dresses. Perhaps I can wear one when we go to dinner tonight.”

  Nikita looked over at her commander. He eyed both Esly and the smiling Zoe cautiously, but kept his mouth shut despite the fact that he now had two women teasing him. Altman was a smart man. It was a no-win scenario.

  “Now,” Mercedez said cheerfully as Emmanuel loaded the dress bag into the back of the van. “Maybe we should all go swimming along with the dolphins. That is very popular with many people.”

  Nikita hadn’t brought a suit. The string bikini in the window mocked her, but she ignored it. Or tried to. It was far too easy to imagine Drake getting her into it.

  “Or perhaps we have done enough in public places for you,” Mercedez winked at them all. “I know a very private beach of beautiful sand and tall palms trees where the swimming is far more casual.”

  Nikita opened her mouth hoping to come up with any other suggestion when she spotted Arthur coming toward them along the street.

  She called out his name with relief as a welcome distraction.

  At Nikita’s call, Drake looked up in time to see Arthur’s reaction: oddly pleasure, not dismay.

  “I am so glad I found you, Mr. Roman,” he bumbled through the locals going about their business and finally came to stand close in front of the bench they were gathered around.

  “Why is that?” He tried to stamp down on his irritation at the interruption and knew he was doing a lousy job of it. The image of going swimming off a tropical beach with Nikita, with or without bathing suit, had rocketed to the top of his mission list. And now, of all irritating beings on the planet, he had to contend with Arthur. If he ended up being the key to all of this, Drake was going to turn in his Minigun.

  “Norma has been pushing me for a way to help you. And I’ve been thinking on it very hard.”

  “I’m not buying your damned painting. Wait. Norma has been pushing you?”

  “She can be a very persuasive woman, Mr. Roman, and she seems to have taken quite a liking for you. I finally thought of something this morning but you had already left the ship. That’s why I’m so glad I ran into you.”

  Drake checked sideways, but Nikita simply shrugged. He suppressed a sigh that now he probably wasn’t going to get to see what that shrug would look like in a bathing suit.

  “Spill it, Arthur.”

  The man waffled from one foot to the other. “It isn’t very much; I only hope it can help. I was told to make sure that Mr. Baer of GSI was informed that this painting was available for purchase.” His stance stabilized as if he was now done.

  “Who told you to sell it to Baer?” Drake was getting tired of this.

  “I don’t know.”

  Drake cursed and rose to his feet.

  Arthur stumbled back and almost crashed into Zoe. Esly shot out a hand and clamped on to Arthur’s jacket like she was clamping an unruly kitten by the scruff of the neck. She held him in place. Drake could get to like her.

  “How can you not know?”

  “That’s not how it works,” Arthur continued in a hurry. “We aren’t actually part of the cruise line. My company contracts to run the gallery, present art education programs for the passengers, and hold auctions. We have stables of artists we buy from frequently as well as freelance artists. We try to make sure that there are paintings for every taste, including a few exceptional pieces.”

  “You’re not saying—” Drake remembered that damn nude far too clearly.

  “No. No.” Arthur shook his head. “The technique is good though. Borrowing from both the Dutch Masters’ depth and Art Deco’s clarity of line. I feel that the composition is somewhat lacking, however�
��”

  He trailed off when he caught sight of Drake’s expression and cleared his throat carefully.

  “Items are accumulated, sorted, and distributed to the ships in containers. I get a provenance sheet on each piece and a cost. I make a commission on every dollar above cost that I can sell a piece for.”

  “And the provenance sheet said to sell this to GSI.”

  “Not exactly. Sometimes we have frequent travelers with known tastes and we try to make sure to have a piece or two from their favorite artist or style aboard. This was noted as a definite purchase for Mr. Baer—he buys every one and insists that he always sees them first. He pays rather well for paintings in this particular series.”

  “There’s a series of these goddamn things?” Drake managed a deep breath but it didn’t calm him. “Can we see the sheet?”

  Arthur reached into his pocket and pulled it out.

  “You’re not earning points for proactive helpfulness, Arthur.”

  The man blanched white. Even hard-core method actors weren’t so obvious. Maybe he was authentic.

  Drake inspected the sheet, didn’t see anything unusual except the note: Definite purchase for GSI. He handed it to Zoe, who struck him as most likely in their group to have a clue about something like this. She inspected it more carefully than he did, then shrugged.

  “Is there anything unusual on that sheet?”

  “Nothing,” Arthur shrugged.

  “Or the case it came in?”

  “A simple cloth bag with a rigid protection board. It would be very unlikely that I ever shipped a painting to a client in the same bag it arrived in so I doubt if there would be more information there,” then he blinked several times. “But I’ll check if there’s anything else that came with the painting. I can’t imagine there was. I knew Mr. Baer would be aboard because one of that series of Myora’s paintings was in this sailing’s collection. Who makes sure that they are sent to me? I have no idea. Inquiries into how our buyers work is…not encouraged.” He grimaced with the face of prior experience.

  Drake nodded to Esly, who let Arthur go. He was so insubstantial that he seemed to waver at the sudden release.

  “We need to see the painting,” he couldn’t believe he was saying the words. “Now.”

  “So, you will be purchasing it?” The overeager art salesman was back as if that’s truly all he was.

  “Don’t push your luck.”

  “I can promise you an excellent price,” Arthur seemed to realize that he wasn’t making any headway and pulled out his cellphone, “I can have it delivered to your suite; my assistant is still aboard.” He placed the call. “All set. It will be waiting for you.”

  “How did you find us here?”

  “Oh,” Arthur pointed at the boutique behind them. “I wanted to get something pretty for Norma.”

  “For Norma,” Drake felt as if his ears were ringing and he couldn’t make enough sense of it to answer the call.

  “She’s just the most wonderful woman, but she doesn’t see herself as beautiful as she truly is—too many years of working the cruise ships can do that to you. I’ve been trying to show her otherwise.”

  “They have several stunning nightgowns. Very pretty, very tropical,” Zoe prompted him.

  “Oh my. Exactly the kind of thing I was hoping to find. I must be the luckiest man there is. Good day, Mr. Roman. Good day,” he nodded to the rest of them and hurried inside.

  “Is he for real?”

  Nikita rose from where she’d remained on the bench and kissed him on the cheek. “First Sugar and now Arthur. I suspect they are both for real. You do seem to attract some very odd sorts, Mr. Roman.”

  “Present company included,” he hugged her back and kissed her temple. Over the top of her head he saw the elegant bikini that would have looked so good on Nikita. He cursed to himself over lost opportunity and turned to Mercedez.

  “I’m afraid that our day has been cut short by business.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  I hate that painting even more in daylight,” Drake sat on the sofa. He couldn’t stop staring at the hideous thing. The nude was so blatant. Too realistic to be ignored. It was almost as if a naked harlot was lying in their midst.

  “You only hate it because you have taste,” Nikita curled up on the couch beside him with her bare feet tucked under her. He had his arm over her shoulders and if Altman or Zoe had anything to say about it, they were keeping it to themselves.

  Esly sat in her armchair, unaware of anything out of the ordinary—like a Night Stalker getting cozy with a Navy SEAL.

  Altman inspected it again. “There’s no card, no secret inscription carved on the frame, we don’t have x-ray vision to see if there is actually a copy of Dogs Playing Poker underneath it.” They had tried holding it up to the muted sunlight lost behind the heavy clouds, but learned nothing that way either.

  Zoe tipped her head back and forth to inspect it. “Maybe her head is on another of his paintings and her missing foot on yet another. If it’s a piece in a larger puzzle, we’re nowhere.”

  “I can’t believe that there’s a series of these goddamn things,” Drake managed a deep breath but it didn’t calm him.

  He went to the window and stared out. They were docked in Mahogany Bay, a narrow, deep-water inlet five kilometers from the town of Coxen Hole. There was room to squeeze in two cruise ships. Beyond the dock a small quaint “village” had been set up—half souvenir shops and half tour providers. Beyond that lay a forest as thick as and even more foreign to him than the Alabama one. Here all he could smell was the sea.

  It would have been prettier if not for the high layer of thin, gray clouds that had moved all the way across the blue sky since dawn. It reached to the mainland, sixty kilometers distant across the turquoise water gone dark blue beneath that sullen sky.

  “I know this place.”

  Esly was from Honduras, so he wasn’t sure why she sounded so surprised. But then Drake turned and saw that she wasn’t looking at the view, she was looking at the painting.

  “What place?”

  “It is la cascada, a, uh, waterfall near El Carbón. It is deep in the national park.”

  He hadn’t even looked at the background of the painting as a picture, merely to see if it hid words or a map.

  Drake grabbed his satellite phone and punched a speed dial.

  “5E Tours,” someone answered. “How may we help you today? We have special discounts on heli-diving, heli-jungle tours, and women’s lingerie.”

  “Say what?”

  Then the voice registered.

  “Rafe!” Drake was so glad to hear his pilot’s familiar voice that he forgot to use the lieutenant’s title, which was just as well with Esly in the room. “How close are you?”

  “Flying, driving, or walking?”

  Drake looked at the phone and tried to make sense of the question. Finding no clue as to what game Rafe was playing, he put the phone back to his ear.

  “We’ve been in place for a couple of hours, but we were told you were already off ship. I guess you’re back. Been enjoying your luxury transport? It’s a very pretty ship, by the way.”

  Drake stepped out onto the verandah and looked down at the dock. Nikita followed him out. She spotted them first, resting a hand on his shoulder to get his attention, then pointing. Most of ten stories below he spotted two guys sitting on a bench in the shade. Both wore outrageously loud Hawaiian shirts. The two of them appeared to be wrestling over the control of a phone.

  “Look up and forward,” he instructed them. He and Nikita waved and in moments they were waving back. “Be with you in ten.”

  “Damn, Nikita. You look like a major babe in that outfit,” Rafe offered a wolf whistle.

  Nikita wasn’t sure how she could possibly be a “major babe.”

  “And Zoe, way hot!” Julian offered her a high five that she smacked hard.

  “You two are awfully cozy.” She followed Rafe’s attention down to her hand with
some surprise.

  She’d come down the ramp with her hand tucked around Drake arm as if it was a completely natural thing to do. Perhaps because it had been a perfectly natural thing to do. This whole romantic whatever-it-might-be was getting out of control. Except it didn’t feel as if it was.

  “These two not so much,” Julian pointed at Altman standing stiffly beside Zoe.

  “And this must be Ms. Escarra. Our friend Parker has told us so little about you.” Rafe bent low over her hand and kissed it.

  “Hey,” Julian protested. “Stop trying to hog the hot women.”

  Esly looked at Nikita in a bit of a panic.

  “Do not worry, Esly. It isn’t just you, they’re always this irritating.”

  “I do not mind. Two such handsome men, I very much am not minding. Also, have no reason to complain. I am mostly happy that I am not dead yet and that I do not kill you, Nikita.”

  “Nor anyone else…according to our records,” Rafe was suddenly serious, almost nasty. His flirt of a moment before was now schizophrenically set aside between one breath and the next. Usually he made it easy to forget he was the officer in charge of a forty-million-dollar war machine and that both he and his helicopter were known for their fiery temper.

  “The only people I ever shoot was in the line of my duty,” Esly raised her chin.

  “Before you went to the fucking dark side and—”

  “Can it, Rafe,” Drake stepped right up in his commander’s face. “Old ground, already covered. Moving on now.”

  Rafe glowered and Nikita almost wondered if they were about to fight over the woman.

  But Julian gave Esly a reassuring wink. Then he looked at Drake, “What the hell happened to you, Duck-man?”