Page 19 of Poison Evidence

She bolted down the ladder and ran to the forward stateroom where she’d stored CAM. The room that should have been her bedroom, but she’d spent the night screwing a terrorist instead.

“Ivy!” Jack shouted as he followed her. “Stop and let me explain.”

But she didn’t stop until she yanked open the stateroom door and saw all six cases stacked on the bed. She leaned against the sill, faint again, but this time with relief.

Jack was right behind her. “You didn’t let me finish. I’m counting on the Navy tracking CAM so you’ll feel safe, knowing you can call for help at any time. Odds are there’s a team in Guam tracking your signal right now. I know you won’t believe it, but you’re safe with me. This isn’t an abduction.”

“Then what the hell is it?”

“A negotiation.”

“And what the hell are we negotiating? Whether or not you’re a liar and a terrorist? Because if I get a vote, I’m pretty sure we’re deadlocked one to one. Let’s forgo Robert’s Rules of Order and skip to the part where I call in the Navy and they drop Hellfires on your ass.”

A corner of his mouth kicked up in a smile. “You have a magnificent brain.”

“Tell me something I don’t know—like why the hell you kidnapped me.”

He laughed outright at that, then leaned against one of the shelves that flanked the doorway. “This is aworknegotiation. I need you and CAM to help me find something. That’s all. Once we find it, I’ll take you back to Koror.”

“Right. You’ll take me to Koror. Where a team of SEALs will be waiting to take you out for stealing top-secret high-tech equipment.”

“I hope SEALs will be there to protectyoumore than CAM. The men we dealt with last night are proof you’re in danger.”

She took a step back, shocked by his gall. “I’m in danger fromyou.”

“No, Ivy. Not from me. I need your help.”

“You fucked me so you could kidnap me.”

“I had sex with you because youbeggedme to. I already had you here. I had what I needed and wouldn’t have touched you except you begged for it. Hell, I even warned you that you would regret it in the morning.”

“So you’re saying Iimaginedyour lips on my back in the shower—the action that led to the rest?”

He cocked his head and frowned, then said, “Okay. I fucked you because I wanted to. Better?”

She slumped down to the floor at the foot of the triangular bed that filled the stateroom. Stupid to argue about who’d initiated sex when the man had abducted her.

She could lock down CAM. That would signal Mara that something was wrong. SEALs would come. She’d be rescued. Lockdown was simple. Enter the wrong code three times and boom. Locked out forever.

“I know what you’re thinking. My IQ might not be as high as yours, but I’m no dummy either. If you lock down CAM, I will throw all six cases overboard and hightail it away from the drop site.”

Dammit.The sonofabitch could read minds. He’d certainly done his homework. He knew about her mangrove swamp study and her freaking IQ. Only one article included her high-genius numbers. She’d been embarrassed, but the journal insisted. It had been published as part of a series on women in science. She and her sisters, Hazel and Laurel, had been interviewed together. The article had to be at least seven years old. Given the number of far more recent articles about her and Patrick, Jack Keaton must’ve dug hard to find that story.

She did her best to appear unfazed. “So? If they’ve got a team in Guam, they’ll get here fast. They’ll find me. You can’t have moved usthatfar in the night. We can’t be more than a hundred nautical miles from Palau.”

Jack shrugged. He could give lessons in appearing unfazed, while her act was unconvincing. She couldn’t even stand; hence she huddled at the foot of the berth and leaned on the built-in cabinets at her back.

Damn boat. Every surface boasted storage of some sort, and the knob for the cabinet dug into her spine.

“This boat might look like a simple pleasure yacht, but her previous owner was Russian Bratva, and prior to that, the guy was KGB. He had her built to mirror the design of one of the fastest yachts in the world.Libertyhas three gas turbines. Combined with the surface drives, she can generate upward of thirteen thousand horsepower. I’ve clocked her at sixty-five knots. We’ll be far from the drop point by the time a SEAL team could get here. They’ll never find us in the open ocean.”

Holy hell, what had she done in boarding this yacht last night? Tears slid down her cheeks. “Yet you said you wouldn’t hurt me.”

“I won’t. But that doesn’t mean I won’t drop you off on some remote island in Indonesia, Malaysia, or the Philippines. There are lots of uninhabited islands in the Celebes Sea.”

No way had they gone all the way to the Celebes Sea. He was screwing with her, rattling her confidence.

Geography was her freaking superpower.

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