Riptide (39 page)

Everything in him wanted to close the gap and wrap her tightly in his arms. He stayed put. This wasn’t over yet. Not by a long shot.

“On paper,” Jonah said, taking in the scene at a glance. The rearranged bins, the water flooding the floor and rapidly rising. “Officially, she’s still
my
ship.”

“Scuttled—?” Bria stared at the water around them with dawning horror. “As in
sink
?”

“It’s the only thing I could come up with that’ll foil everybody’s plans,” he said, his voice calm. “And give Aries what he wants.”

“God.” Jonah rubbed his chest. “This hurts my heart.”

“You’ll get over it,” Nick told him briskly, grabbing Bria’s upper arm as she was almost swept off her feet by the moving water. He kept his fingers around the cool skin of her arm, in case she fell. Damn it. Because he couldn’t
not
touch her.

“Heard the explosion,” Jonah braced a hand against the bulkhead for balance. “Where’re we at?”

“What do you care—”

Jonah moved so fast, Bria beside him yelped in surprise. Suddenly, Nick was wedged in the doorjamb, the edge jammed into his back and Jonah’s fingers closed not that gently around the base of his throat. Staring into Jonah’s eyes was like meeting Zane’s in a temper. Or Logan’s when the Wolf meant business.

“Look, you jackass,” Jonah yelled over the bleating of the alarm. “She’s my ship and I love her too! We’re in this together because, surprise! We’re all on the
same
fucking side!”

Nick grabbed Jonah’s wrist, as Bria pulled on his arm. “Jonah, stop, this isn’t helping!”

“You lied to me,” Nick snarled.

“Yeah, so I lied. You’ll get over it. But to do that, we’ve gotta survive the next twenty fucking minutes.”

Pissed as he was, angry as hell at
both
of them for a mess he now believed they didn’t cause, Nick could only stare at Jonah’s fierce blue eyes and swollen nose.

Bria’s attempt to keep them focused made him realize that it was relief filling his chest now. Relief that Jonah was at his back one last time. That Bria could be protected better when she was with both of them. Hell, he was pleased to see them.

He pushed Jonah’s hand away from his throat, and straightened. “Ventilator pipes removed,” he said tightly. “Valves open.”

Jonah looked pained. Nick knew how he felt.

As they stood there, water was rising steadily, flowing through the hole in the bulkhead and into the waste disposal tank. Without check valves in the holding tank, the water was coursing through the main drainage pipes, rising like a tide within the ship.

Every waste disposal unit, every sink, toilet, shower, and basin on board was now hemorrhaging water as the enormous pressure of seawater rushed into the sewage system.

Jonah scanned the vast space. Nick could see him calculating how long it would take the hold to fill—about thirty minutes, maybe less. “I’ll disable the doors,” his ex-best friend told him briskly. The watertight doors that, if automatically closed, would contain the water on the lower level. Now they needed just the opposite. “What else?”

“Took care of the diver access holes—” Another opening that was currently hemorrhaging seawater at the rate of hundreds of gallons a minute.

Water now lapping at their hips, he and Jonah quickly did a checklist of every conceivable way they could fill the
Scorpion
with even more water, and faster.

“And, yeah, turn off that alarm,” Nick ordered. Jonah waded out to do so. Half a minute later, the alarm went silent, leaving Nick’s ears to throb in the quiet.

“Are you okay?” he asked Bria gruffly. Her hair was a wild tangle of gypsy curls, the water came up under her breasts, and her inside-out, back-to-front T-shirt clung to her skin, showing Nick every curve and valley.

Her sweet nipples peaked under the thin cotton of her T-shirt. When had seeing a woman’s erect nipples caused his throat to close with emotion?

Her eyes were dark and shadowy, and her lips pale as she nodded, then added, “I had nothing to do with—”

He cupped her cheek. “Yeah. I figured.”

“We should head up,” Jonah said loudly from the doorway.

“Can we run like hell?” Bria shouted over the sound of rushing water as she waded toward the door. The lapping water was cold and he saw her shiver. But she didn’t complain. “Don’t just
stand
there, Nick! Come on! If you go down with the ship, I’m going down
with
you. And then I’ll haunt you and make your ghostly afterlife a living hell.”

“I’d die before I let anything happen to you,” Nick told her grimly, then scowled when Jonah shot him a knowing grin. “Wipe that smile off your face,” he added blackly, splashing forward to extend his hand to help Bria. “I’m not even close to being done with you.”
Either of you.

The water was already darkening her shirt over her breasts.

Good. Water was rising faster than he and Jonah had estimated. Not good if they didn’t move higher ASAP. Bria’s cold palm slid into his hand, and her fingers curled around his. Her hand felt ridiculously small and fragile in his.

She wasn’t fragile, he knew. She had admirable tensile strength and grit. “When we get topside—” He steadied her as she swayed toward him as the water surged in the narrow corridor. “I want you to get in the lifeboat.” It was the safest place he knew. Faced with a sinking ship filled with their diamonds, no one was going to be looking inside a seemingly empty lifeboat. The lights blinked out, leaving them in stygian darkness. Bria gave a little squeak of surprise.

“We’ll join you as soon as we can,” he finished, tightening his grip on her hand. When the ship sank, the boat would break free. If anything happened to him—

The lights flickered back on at half power just in time for him to see her shoot him a glare sharp enough to cut through steel. “When this is over, Nick Cutter, you and I are going to have a long,
long
conversation.”

“If it gets you out of my—”

“I don’t care if you threaten to shoot me yourself,” she said over him. “I’m not leaving your side until we’re all safe! Deal with it.”

“Coming?” Jonah yelled from the stairs.

“Bad guys?” he yelled, ignoring the surge of warmth her words elicited as he held tightly to her hand and waded toward Jonah.

“Secured in the steam room.”

Where he would’ve put them, Nick thought, satisfied. “Let ’em out at the last second. At least give them a fighting chance.”

Jonah’s lips twitched as he walked up the stairs backward. “Another member of Amnesty International, huh?”

Jesus, he looked like Zane at that second. Nick couldn’t figure out how he hadn’t seen it the second he’d met him. He shot his ex-best friend/brother a disgruntled frown. “They’d’ve heard the alarm. Bad guys or not, we’re not murderers.”

“I hear you, but shit, the temptation—”

The wall sconces flickered again, but held, the golden light playing on the ripples as they moved down the corridor to the foot of the stairs. Nick intended to keep Bria between Jonah and himself, but he wasn’t letting go of her. No matter what.

The force of the rushing water tugged and pulled at his body, strong and insistent. Every time Bria staggered off balance, his firm grip kept her on her feet. He grabbed at whatever he could to keep her from being swept from under him.

They reached the stairs, the bottom three already submerged. Jonah grabbed Bria’s free hand to help her up. As soon as he was sure she was steady, he let go so she could grab the hard rail.

Water cold-kissed the back of Nick’s leg as he took the stairs two at a time. God damn it. It was keeping pace with them, rising at a rate that, while satisfying for the situation, was alarming because there were still people on board. He had a gut sick feeling as the
Scorpion
listed slightly to starboard under his feet.

The lights flickered again, but the auxiliary generator kicked in and they came back on. That wasn’t going to last. In a short time that generator too would be covered with water and inoperable. “Jonah, head directly for the lifeboat. We’ll be right behind you. With any luck we can be a mile away when they show up like a bad guy convention.”

Bria glanced back as Nick prodded her to move faster. She was several steps ahead of him and at eye level. “Nick, I—” Her attention flickered from his face to something behind him, and the color drained from her skin. Her fingers tightened in his. “All your treasure—”

“And the diamonds. All one hundred feet under when this is all said and done.”

She winced. “What a horrible waste!”

He didn’t point out the obvious. One hundred feet below was where Cutter Salvage operated best. It was their hallmark in the industry. Jonah had their location marked, and Nick had transferred all the diamonds to one bin, attaching beacons for later retrieval.

Halfway up the stairs Nick pulled the Sig from the small of his back. Jonah followed suit.
“Yes!”
Bria took the Bersa from her waistband, checked the clip, then held it like she meant business. “About frigging time!”

Nick gave a nod of approval before glancing to Jonah. “Anyone on board that shouldn’t be yet?”

“No.”

“Won’t be long.” One lifeboat then, Nick motioned the others to move faster up the stairs and out onto the deck and the hell out of the rapidly flooding ship. One lifeboat would be enough. If they could get to it in time.

Or not.

On the landing between decks, he stopped, touching Bria’s arm to get her attention. She turned to look at him, and he yelled, “Yo! Jonah! We take the shortest route and get to the lifeboat.” Nick’s voice was low and dead serious. “There’s absolutely, and I repeat, abso-fucking-lutely
no
reason to engage
anyone
boarding. This isn’t our fight. They’ll want the diamonds, we can’t give that to them. There’ll be guns and knives, and people with nothing to lose by killing us stone-dead. We’re sure to be outnumbered and out-gunned. T-FLAC won’t be here to save our asses in the nick of time, no matter how appealing that sounds.”

“You saying kiss our asses good-bye?” Jonah inquired politely, glancing up the stairs, head cocked, body braced to run like hell.

“Trying to defend the ship would be pointless. Odds are stack—” Nick held up a hand, sensing sound before he heard anything. He strained his ears to hear anything other than Bria’s breathing, and the lap-slosh of the water. “Pointless and suicidal.”

The plan had been flawed from the get-go. But it was the only plan he’d had. Factor in greed, betrayal, and revenge, and one had the recipe for disaster. “Counterproductive to get involved in what’s coming,” he added, feeling a sense of foreboding he couldn’t shake.

Yeah.
There
. Now he heard it.

“Shit. We have company!” Hard to miss the whop-whop-whop of a fast-approaching chopper. It was an ominous heartbeat under the watery, pulsing sound of the water inching insidiously up the stairs behind them.

Chapter 23

“Starboard lifeboat!” Jonah yelled. They increased their speed, taking the stairs three at a time. Bria found herself almost flying as Nick scooped her up, one strong arm tight around her waist, as if afraid she’d be wrenched out of his hold at any minute. Even though they’d be able to run a hell of a lot faster if they weren’t attached, she was more than happy to be his Siamese twin. She didn’t want to be parted from him for even one second.

The lights, already dim, blinked, then flickered out. Her steps faltered at the absolute darkness, but Nick didn’t hesitate, just kept running, making sure she didn’t fall. Bria wasn’t sure if she really felt the dragging weight of the
Scorpion
as the ship sank lower and lower into the water, or if it was just her imagination. The strong briny smell of ocean and the sound of rushing water were unnerving enough without going the extra mile to envision the large ship sinking like a rock beneath their very feet.

She suspected there was suction involved, and she really, really didn’t want to go there.

They reached the landing on the main deck just as the lights flashed on. Then off. The illumination settled into a disorienting, irregular on-off, on-off flicker that was a little—okay, a
lot
—unnerving.

“Take Bria to the lifeboat,” Nick instructed urgently, pausing to pass her to Jonah like a feudal lord handing off a chattel. Jonah automatically grabbed her hand and held on. God, they were more alike than either realized, Bria thought as Jonah reeled her in closer.

They were all soaking wet, their clothing sticking to their chilled skin; she couldn’t remember ever being dry. The men’s shoes squished as they moved, but she was barefoot. “I can get there on my own.” She held up the Bersa. “Do whatever, and meet m—”

“No fucking heroics,” Nick cut her off as he glared from Jonah to Bria and back to Jonah. “From
either
of you,” he had to shout over the sound of the water, which was rapidly ascending the stairs behind them and starting to insidiously pool on the landing. But there were other ambient sounds she couldn’t identify.

“You take Bria to the lifeboat,” Jonah told Nick flatly. “I’ll get the men out of the steam room and meet you. Back in five.”

Nick hesitated. “Make that four. Watch your back.”

Jonah gave him a mock salute and disappeared back into the dark corridor.

“Move it.” Nick pulled her through a doorway into a shadowy room. The library. The side deck ran alongside the room, and she froze as dozens of men, dressed in dark clothing, ran past the picture windows in the darkness.

She spun around to whisper a warning, but Nick was right behind her. Ears like a bat.

“See them,” he assured her. “We have eleven minutes before that second charge goes off.” His voice was raised, although it was still hard to hear him over the noise of what sounded like approaching boats, planes, and helicopters. And running, shouting men just outside the window. Subtle they weren’t. No shooting yet, so she presumed this was just one side. The real fun would start when the other side showed up. She hoped like hell they’d be long gone by then.