Dancing with Deception (2 page)

His breathing strained while he waited her out. He had her arms pinned above her head and held her torso and legs still with the weight of his body. As her breathing calmed, she became aware of his powerful muscles holding her down. The weight of him pressed against her caused something to curl in the pit of her stomach. Willing her muscles not to tremble, she lifted her chin and looked into eyes that were angry and distrustful.

She matched his glare. “I don’t want to go in there.”

“I don’t want to be shot at.”

She could see his point, but she didn’t have the energy to lie her way out of this mess. He wanted answers and she couldn’t give them. “We’re far enough away from the shore now. Let me jump.”

“And if they get in a boat and decide to come after you?” He growled when she said nothing. “You jump on my boat, shots fly and you just expect me to let you go? What in the hell is going on?”

“I already told you!”

“I’m not quite ready to believe that was just a random mugging. Seems to me they went pretty far out of their way to try to kill you.”

Another lie burned on her tongue, but she only shrugged. “I don’t know how a mugger's mind works.” There, she thought, fighting not to flinch under his direct stare. That was the truth.

“Fine. Then come in the cabin, take a load off, and I’ll drop you off at Lakewood.”

She thought about it. If he were to take her there, it would save her a lot of time and energy. She could rent a car in Lakewood and drive to—where? Her father had completely screwed her over. Not only did she not know how to reach him, but the men who were after her had to know where she lived—where she and her mother lived.

Her stomach sank and bile rose in her throat. Her mother was home. What if they thought to use her mother to get to her?

“Fine,” she decided quickly. He was offering her a quiet place to sit and think while he took her farther away from the danger. Once they docked in Lakewood, she would find a pay phone and call her mother. Then she could make an anonymous call to the police station and claim that she saw someone prowling around the house. That would get a couple of cops over to check things out, may patrol the neighborhood, and the goons would think twice before bothering her mother—she hoped.

She could only hope he was telling her the truth about his intentions.

“Fine.” He stood up and offered a hand. Her eyes flew to his, then away again. His hand was so big. She knew if she were to place hers in it, her hand would be swallowed. They were also rough. She imagined they would have to be, him being a sailor. She took it and he hoisted her up in one fluid movement as though she weighed nothing.

“Thanks,” she said, a little breathless. His pure, masculine strength made her mouth go dry. On one level, it was comforting to know that if trouble came, he could handle it. On another, she was here alone with him in the middle of the lake.

“Don’t mention it.”

Looking around, she spotted her gym bag lying where it had landed when she’d jumped. She picked it up and clutched it to her chest.

He opened the door to the small cabin area and gestured for her to go inside. “Go on in and sit down. Don’t touch anything.”

She swept by him and sat her bag down on a tiny table in the middle of the cabin. The room wasn’t much, but what there was of it was cozy. There was a small bed that looked like it doubled as a window settee. The windows were the small circular portholes one would see below deck on a ship.
Charming
, she thought, but not a way out should things get sticky.

She wanted to poke around, but sat at the table as instructed. It wouldn’t do well to piss this guy off again. For the time being, he was her only key to escape.

She jolted when the door swung open, then cursed herself for being thrown off guard again. She had to start paying better attention.

The man filled the doorway, blocking the sunlight so that it seeped in around him. Her breath caught in her throat; in that moment, he looked more dangerous than a hundred goons. Then he stepped forward and sat down across from Rebecca at the table.

“We’re going out to sea for a couple hours, then we’ll head to Lakewood,” he told her quietly in a tone that left no room for argument. “That way if those idiots decide to go looking there, they’ll already be gone by the time I dock. I don’t feel like getting shot.”

“I don’t blame you.”

“What’s your name?”

“Sarah,” she said without flinching. “Jones.”

“Well, Sarah Jones, it looks like we’re going to be spending a little time together. While we’re out here, I’m going to do what I came out here to do: fish. You can sit up there with me, or you can stay in here.”

She needed air. She didn’t want to be sitting on the deck of a boat with a cranky sailor. On the other hand, she didn’t want to be stuck in a stuffy room waiting for hours either. “What’s your name?”

“Gideon Avery.”

“All right, Gideon. I guess we fish.”

“Fine, and—” He craned his neck around toward the door. “Do you hear that?”

“What?” Right after she said it, she heard the unmistakable sound of a boat approaching. Her stomach dropped to the floor. Had she come all this way only to be caught? She looked around, fighting terror. There wasn’t a weapon in sight. She looked back at the man who had become her only hope out of this mess.

He fixed those dark eyes on her face. “We have company.”

Chapter Two

Not for a minute did Gideon believe Sarah Jones had been mugged, but he would go along with her story until he could dump her off in Lakewood.

Right now, he had to decide where he was going to hide the girl, and then he was going to go up on deck and bullshit his way out of this mess.

“Come here.” He walked to the closet and pushed back the shirts that hung there, revealing a compartment camouflaged in the shadows. “This is for storage, but right now it’s empty. Get in and don’t make a sound.”

She clutched her bag to her chest like a shield. “There won’t be spiders in there, will there?”

The girl had been dodging bullets, and she was worried about spiders? “Probably not.”

She hesitated. He threw her an aggravated look.

“All right,” she muttered.

Once she was in, he shut the door and arranged the shirts back in front of the compartment. Saying a quick prayer, he headed up to the deck.

A fishing boat similar to his own slowed down next to his. He recognized it as one of the docked boats back at the pier. He would have bet his island that it didn’t belong to the men driving it. The men were dead ringers for characters from The Three Stooges, minus Larry. They were opposite in size; one tall and thin, the other short and plump. The taller man’s hair curled from beneath his beanie. The other man’s hair was mainly on his face.

When the shorter of the two signaled to Gideon, he gave them a friendly wave, purposely mistaking their request for him to stop. When the man signaled more insistently by throwing his arms higher, Gideon nodded, smiled, and held up a hand telling them to wait a second.

He cut the engine. “Can I help you?”

“I’m a private investigator. This is my partner David. We’re working on a missing person’s case. I’m looking for the girl who jumped into your boat a little while ago.”

Where’s your badge?
he wanted to ask, but only smiled and nodded. “She’s in my cabin. Do you want me to tell her you’re here?” Gideon turned toward the cabin, ready to oblige.

“No, no. I’ll go tell her. You don’t mind, do you?”

“Go ahead. She was taking a nap, last time I checked on her.”

“Great, thank you.”

The man hopped over onto Gideon’s boat and Gideon led him down into the cabin. He walked with a limp, and Gideon wondered what the girl must have done to him. He knew by experience that she could hold her own. She might be small, but she packed a punch and she packed it well.

“Well, where is she?”

“That’s odd.” Gideon stepped in and looked around the empty cabin. “She was lying right here on the bed twenty minutes ago.”

“Could she be hiding?”

“Not unless she’s…” Gideon lifted the lid to the storage space under the window settee. “No, she’s not hiding. This is the only place she could fit.” He moved his sleeping bag over and looked beneath an extra blanket.  “Ah, hell.”

“What?”

“My inflatable life boat is gone.”

“She took it, snuck out of here, and you didn’t know about it? Wouldn’t she have had to blow the damn thing up?”

Gideon scratched his head and tried to look sheepish. “I kind of dozed off on the deck for a few minutes. Couldn’t have been more than a few. What time is it?”

“Barely after four.”

“Yeah, only a couple of minutes. She has to be close to the boat. The life boat hasn’t got a motor.”

“Did she mention where she was going before?”

“No. I told her I was going to drop her off at Lorain,” he told him, naming a town further westward than where he intended to take her. “I thought she was up to no good by the way she was running from you guys, the way those bullets were flying. Guess she’s dangerous?”

The man’s brow rose slightly, then fell again. He pulled out his cell phone, read the display screen, and closed it with a snap. “You could say that.”

“Well, I’m glad she’s out of my hair, then. I hope you find her. And my life boat. Would you return it to me if you find it? It wasn’t cheap.”

He smiled, reminding Gideon of a snake. His eyes were like black beads set too far apart—cold and mean. “Thank you for your cooperation. I’ll be sure to have it returned to you.”

Gideon waited for the boat to fade out of sight before going to the helm. He gunned the engine and drove for a while before cutting it again, wishing desperately for a pack of the cigarettes he had given up months ago. Satisfied that he’d misled the “private investigators,” he went to the back of the boat and opened the compartment that held his fishing gear. He needed to give himself time to think.

He cast off and sat the pole against the seat. He thought about going into the cabin and letting Sarah—if that was even her name—know it was clear to come up. But first he needed to decide what to do about his unwanted guest.

He could wash his hands of her faster by dumping her back in Cleveland. Let her fend for herself, he thought as he scanned the lake. As cruel as it sounded, it was more logical than letting her swim back to shore as she had wanted to do.

Had been desperate enough to do, he corrected himself. And because of that, he had a nagging feeling in the pit of his stomach that she needed help and he could be the one to help her.

He remembered the look on the girl’s face when he had yanked her off the side of his boat, wild and desperate one instant, determined and mean the next. Maybe he’d been a little rough with her, but considering the jabs and punches he suffered, he couldn’t regret it. She was a fighter. He didn’t doubt her when she’d told him she had kicked one of them in the crotch. And judging by the bruises already forming on her face and neck, she had plenty of reason for fighting back.

He fished for a few more minutes before going back into the cabin. He stopped in the doorway and listened to the silence. He half-hoped she had fallen asleep. That way, he could just coast his boat on over to the closest dock, wake her up, and dump her off before those big, blue eyes further clouded his judgment. But he’d already promised to take her to Lakewood, he reminded himself as he crossed the room to the closet.

He yanked open the door of her hiding spot and found himself at the pointy end of a wire coat hanger.

“What? Are you going to skewer me with that thing after I covered for you?”

“Sorry,” she said, releasing a sigh of relief. “I couldn’t know—I mean, I thought that—”

“I get it. You thought I’d screw you over. Are you going to put that thing away?”

“Sorry,” she said again and dropped the hanger onto the floor of her hiding place. She swung her long legs around and scooted out of the hole. “Thank you for hiding me.”

“Just sit down.” The guilt was returning now that he was facing those big, vulnerable eyes again. He had nothing to feel guilty about, he thought as he rooted around the cabinets for coffee. She was nothing to him, after all. He should have no problem taking her and her troubles to Lakewood.

After the coffee was taken care of, he turned around and stared at her.

Her dark eyes were a little too wide, but no longer panicked, as they had been when she’d realized she’d been found.

“Are you going to tell me what’s really going on?”

“I told you.”

“No.” He turned around and took two mugs out of the cabinet. After pouring them both one, he sat down across from her at the table. “You told me what you figured would get me to let you go. Who are those guys?”

“I don’t know them. I don’t,” she insisted when he only stared.

“You keep pulling this shit, you’re going to really piss me off, lady. You want to play it straight with me.”