Page 81 of Pucker Factor

“For whatever the fuck Fox has planned.”

“Well, I can’t guarantee she won’t do anything stupid. This is Sarah we’re talking about.”

I snuffed at the thought that just a few days ago, I didn’t know this woman from a hole in the ground. Now, I felt like I could predict her moods and whatever bad decisions she was going to make just by looking at her face.

“Any idea what Fox has up his sleeve?”

I shook my head. “It has something to do with Rafe.”

“How do you figure? This whole fucking trip was unplanned. There’s no way Rafe could possibly know where we are or what moves we’d make.”

I stopped and turned to him. “Really? Fox is here because he hacked a spy satellite, something I doubt he has the skill set to achieve. That has Rafe written all over it. And he gave away his tracking data. Does that sound like Fox to you?”

“He says he did it to find you,” Red said, though I could tell he wasn’t convinced.

“Exactly. There’s no way he’d leave Anna all alone by coming to save our asses. Especially when he could have found any other form of getting to us. He fucking set this up for a reason.”

“Fuck, I hate it when he does that,” Red grumbled. “So, what’s the plan?”

I glanced back over at Fox. “He’ll let us know soon enough.”

“That’s what I’m afraid of.”

I nodded in agreement, then caught sight of the way one of the workers kept looking at the stairs. “Who’s with Sarah right now?”

“Scottie,” Red answered.

But Scottie was currently on the other end of the boat with IRIS. “Shit,” I swore, racing for the stairs. I nearly hit my head as I ran down there, and stumbled to a stop when I heard her talking.

“I completely understand. It’s rough when you’re at sea with no female companion. But trying to force yourself on someone is not a very nice thing to do.”

I rolled my eyes as Red came to a stop beside me. “She’s at it again.”

“What?” he huffed.

“Making friends with people that want to hurt her.”

“I really am sorry,” the guy continued. “Everyone else says it’s the way we do things.” I heard his grunt of disapproval. “I never wanted this life. But my old man doesn’t take no for an answer.”

“And he’s the captain?” Sarah asked.

“Yeah, if you want to call him that. He thinks I don’t know what’s really going on here, but I’m not stupid.”

“What’s really going on?”

I inched closer so I could hear.

“They’re not really fishermen. They sell weapons to really bad men.”

“How can you be sure?”

“Trust me, the amount of fish we actually catch wouldn’t keep this boat running. Plus, one night, I saw my father meeting with this guy. Dark, dangerous sort of asshole. He was dressed in a fancy suit and he was inspecting something in a crate. After an hour, my dad’s guys went down in the hold and started hauling up crates and transferring them to another boat.”

“That sounds nefarious. Why haven’t you left?”

“What reason would I give?” the guy asked in defeat.

“Um…I don’t want to live a criminal life?”

---