Chapter Four
Jazzy Christmas tunes played as Danny worked the crowd on The Ellen’s deck. Next week, this area would be piled high with shipping containers for the cargo vessel’s maiden voyage, but tonight it was more shiny and sparkly than he’d ever see it again. Trimmed in garland, bows and twinkling white lights, with standing heaters spaced every ten feet or so, the deck glowed and overflowed with holiday cheer. Not to mention all the finery in human form. Waiters carried trays of caviar canapés and champagne among men and women in tuxedos and gowns, couples twirled on the two parquet dance floors set up over the reinforced hatches, and on the bow, at the opposite end of the deck, his mother and father stood on a raised dais, toasting glasses among family and friends.
They’d had onboard TE parties over the years—for commissionings, retirements and holidays—but never anything this extravagant. Then again, they’d never had a commissioning, retirement or holiday quite like this one.
The commissioning of a vessel designed to hold more while traveling faster and cleaner than any other ship in its class, with custom-designed tech that allowed customers to pinpoint the exact location of their goods in transit and to pre-clear them through customs.
The retirement of Danny’s father, the company’s founder, who’d left an empire behind and fled Ireland after Sean was killed, rebuilding a bigger and better shipping empire here in the States.
A holiday party capping off one of TE’s best years, and one of the Talleys’ best too. Near-deaths notwithstanding, the ever-growing army of red-headed grandchildren was happy and healthy, Aidan had found love again and proposed to Jamie, and Danny had settled down with Mel.
They had so many reasons to celebrate, and Danny played the part well, clinking champagne glasses, shaking hands and making smiling small talk, even as his insides churned. He was not the same carefree, thrill-seeking Danny of a year ago. The one who’d butted in on Bureau matters, who’d blithely tagged along to defuse a bomb with Mel and Aidan, who’d wooed a paralegal so Jamie could get access to her files. That Danny’s bravado had waned while sitting vigil at Mel’s hospital bedside, listening for the slightest change in her heartbeat that would spell his doom. Now, the silence of his phone, despite the cacophony of noise around him, was equally terrifying.
Finishing the conversation he’d already checked out of, Danny moved on, toward the stage, gaze bouncing left and right, searching for any sign of Mel and Aidan, and when it didn’t find them, for Jamie and Cam. Jamie, inches taller than everyone else, was a few feet away, his posture on alert. After another few seconds searching, he located Cam, the agent sticking out as one of the few men in a suit rather than a tux. He stood halfway up the deck, stationed near the green-carpet gangway that led to the pier. Cam’s dark eyes shifted from the arrived guests on deck, to the arriving guests on the gangway, to the pier and parking lot beyond, watching for the two people they most wanted to see.
Until suddenly Cam’s attention snapped back around and down to the phone in his hand. Jamie likewise jolted into motion. And when his own phone vibrated, Danny startled too. Digging it out of his pocket, the screen was lit with a text from Mel at Nic’s number. A smile spread across Danny’s face, a real one, as he breathed easy for the first time in hours. It grew wider when another message came through on the heels of Mel’s, this one from Aidan on a burner number. He was on his way too.
Danny glanced up as Jamie’s entire being sagged with relief. He made his way over and laid a hand on the big man’s shoulder. “I think I can finally drink this and enjoy it.” Danny tilted his champagne glass toward Jamie’s. “Cheers.”
Jamie chuckled, tapping his full glass against Danny’s. “Cheers, indeed.”
Cam joined their group as Danny swapped his glass out for a fresh one. He swiped a second and handed it to the agent. “If the threat has passed, drink up.”
“I’m not convinced it has.” Cam sipped, badly hiding a grimace.
“Or you just don’t like champagne.”
“Or fancy parties,” Jamie added.
“Please tell me I don’t have to wear a monkey suit at the wedding.”
Jamie grinned. “It’s called a morning jacket, and it has tails.”
“Jesus fucking Christ.” The curse came out extra thick in Cam’s Boston brogue before he washed it down with the entire glass of champagne, face contorting.
Danny laughed, slapping Cam’s back. “Nic’s brewery is providing kegs for the big day. I’ll make sure your pint glass stays full.”
“See,” Cam said, eyes narrowed at Jamie, “Danny-Boy’s a real friend.”
“You do know that was a fifty-dollar glass of champagne, right?”
Cam nearly choked and Danny laughed louder.
He wished Mel was here to share the moment. After what had to have been a long day, the laugh would do her good, as would the champagne—her favorite, Bollinger. He’d learned that nugget of information by accident on their way back from Galveston.
Sixteen Months Ago
As they prepared the jet for departure, Danny slipped a couple hundreds into one of the ground crew’s hands. “See if you can get our neighbor over there—” he nodded toward the other G-5 in the hangar “—to part with a bottle of whatever bubbly they’ve got on board.”
“You got it, boss,” the crewman said. He scurried off, flagging down another guy in a utility jacket and giving him a complicated handshake by which Danny guessed money was exchanged. The neighboring crewman disappeared onto the plane, then reappeared a minute later with a noticeable bulge under his vest. A poorly disguised handoff later and Danny’s man brought back a bottle of Bollinger, along with one of the hundreds. “Saved you some cash too.”
Danny took the bottle and left the bill. “You keep that. For your trouble.” The crewman smiled, shook his hand, and Danny headed up the stairs. Inside, he stashed the bottle in the on-board chiller before taking his seat, ignoring Mel’s eyes tracking him across the cabin while she rattled off orders to someone on the phone.
Later, the pilot announced they’d reached cruising altitude just as she hung up.
“Was that a bottle of champagne you tried to sneak in here?” she asked.
He unbuckled his seat belt and walked over to retrieve it. “I wasn’t trying to sneak anything.” He grabbed the bottle, a towel and two crystal flutes from the built-in mini-bar and brought them to where Mel sat on the bench seat. “How about that date now?”
“I don’t believe I ever agreed to that,” she countered, even as she took the glasses from him.
He popped the cork on the bottle. “Yes, well, no matter how good you are at getting out of binds, and let me just say, as frightening and impressive as that display of combat skills was today, I do believe this—” he gestured at the cabin around them, where they’d be confined for the next few hours “—is the definition of captive audience.”
“Maybe I should be commending you on your display of skills today. When’d you start picking locks?”
He finished filling the glasses, wrapped the base of the bottle with the towel, and placed it in the cubby in the ledge behind the couch. “Eight,” he said, lowering himself next to her. “By ten, I was better than my teacher.”
“Let me guess, Aidan?”
He tilted his glass for a toast, and she clinked the crystal rims together before taking a sip. Her muted moan of pleasure was an unexpected torture, in his pants and elsewhere. “What did you need to pick locks for at that age?” she asked.
He didn’t hide his leer, remembering exactly to what use he’d put those skills, stealing certain magazines out of the older boys’ lockers at school.
“Dios mío. I don’t want to know.”
“All in good fun,” he said, before taking a swallow.
“If that’s what you call it,” she said, chuckling. “But seriously, Daniel, you did good today. You kept your cool.”
It was all he could do not to preen under her praise, and the way his given name rolled off her tongue. “Well, I couldn’t look like the hapless civilian next to James Bond and M.”
She twirled the stem of the flute with her delicate, deadly fingers. “I did always have a fondness for Bollinger.”
He stretched out an arm over the seat back behind her, and she didn’t flinch or move away, but rather leaned into it. He took that as a sign, a very good one. “Think you might be developing a fondness for me, M?”
“I don’t know, Q, maybe.” She smirked, affectionate and playful, and Danny thought maybe that was the second he fell.
The next second, when her lips met his, he was gone for good.
Present
His father’s tap, tap, tap on the dais microphone jarred Danny out of the memory. “Family, friends, can I have your attention, please.”
Tall and strapping, dark eyes glittering and lively, his father looked far from seventy, only his thick mane of hair, gone from black to silver to white over the past few years giving him away. Danny hoped he looked as good at that age. But it wasn’t just the healthful appearance Danny aspired to. John stood tall, proud and happy, with an arm around his glowing wife of fifty years. That sort of fulfillment, professional and personal, was what Danny wanted. And he knew who he wanted it with, Mel’s gift in his pocket the next step in getting that life.
“I want to thank you all so much for joining us here tonight,” his father began in his still heavy Irish accent. “This is the biggest party I can ever remember throwing, and I’ve had six children and six grandchildren—”
“Seven,” Danny’s sister Grace, who’d just recently had her second child, shouted behind him onstage.
“Seven grandchildren,” he corrected with a hearty laugh, “to throw parties for over the years. Not to mention all the weddings.”
Danny jostled Jamie’s arm, and Jamie hid his smile behind a gulp of champagne.
“Now I know you all want to get back to eating, drinking and dancing, and Daniel, where are you, Daniel?” His father peered out over the crowd.
“Oh!” Danny raised his hand. “That’s my cue.”
“My son has some wonderful shipping advancements to tell you about in a little bit.”
The crowd looked to him, politely clapping, then back to his father.
“But as this will likely be the last chance I have to address all of you, I wanted to take this opportunity to thank a few people. First, to the TE employees here tonight and all throughout the years. You helped me rebuild this dream from the ground up, with your time and effort and heart, and here we are today, number one, because of you.” He held his arms out wide to raucous applause. “Next, to my family, who are the greatest joys of my life, and who have and will keep this company, my other great joy, running.”
He made sure to make eye contact with Danny and each of his siblings. All of them except Aidan were in the family business.
“And finally, to my wife, Ellen, who in the darkest days of our lives held our family together, moved us across the pond and convinced me I could do this again.” John held her tight to his side, grinning down with affection Danny felt in his heart a deck-length away. “I did it, mo chroí, because you said I could, and I saved the best for last. Merry Christmas. I hope you like your ship.” He bent down as she stretched up on her toes, the two of them kissing, as much in love in their golden years as they had been as teens.
The partygoers cheered so loudly Danny didn’t hear the errant noise at first. But the men on either side of him did, their relaxed bearing vanishing. Seeing them tense, Danny tuned out the crowd, straining to hear and see what they did, and a low whoomp-whoomp-whoomp, like propellers, registered first. Then, following Jamie’s and Cam’s gazes to the sky, he spotted the dark mass with a single red tail light off in the distance.
Approaching fast.
“I didn’t see a flyover listed on the program,” Jamie said.
“Because there isn’t one. Why would we do that, at night?” Danny’s stomach resumed its somersaults, sloshing champagne. “Maybe it’s military. Not uncommon, with all the bases around.”
On the phone already, Cam rattled off his name, title and badge number. “I need to know who’s got clearance to fly a chopper over Port of Oakland tonight.”
Guests around them started to notice the disturbance, glancing skyward, but an equal number paid it no mind. Like he’d told Jamie and Cam, late-night flyovers weren’t unheard of, though come to think of it, those were usually closer to midnight. And the approaching chopper was flying directly at them, the whoomp of the propellers and growl of the engines growing louder by the second.
“There’s a reason Mel and Aidan were held up, wasn’t there?” Danny said, putting two and two together.
Cam lowered his phone. “No scheduled flights over the port tonight.”
Helicopter almost on them, the whoomp and growl drowned out the music and drew everyone’s attention. “I need to get to my family!” Danny shouted.
Cam put a hand to his chest and shoved him back into Jamie, whose big muscled arm wrapped around his chest from behind. “I’ll secure the family,” Cam said to Jamie. “Get him clear!” Cam rushed off, plowing through the crowd to the far edge, while Jamie drew Danny backward. People scattered around them, ducking low and covering their heads, as the helicopter hovered overhead.
Black, no lights, no markings.
All signs pointed to no good.
Onstage, his father directed traffic, rushing people off the dais and handing their mother over to his sisters and their husbands. Danny needed to be with them. “I’ve gotta go!” he hollered, trying to wrestle free from Jamie. “Let me go!”
Jamie pointed toward the gangway. “Danny, look.”
Confused, anxious party guests were being herded back onboard by armed men dressed in black. Mercenaries, judging by the trail of TE security guards left in their wake as they stormed up the plank.
“What the fuck is going on?” Danny gasped.
“Someone’s hijacking this party,” Jamie replied.
Proving his point, ropes unfurled from the chopper, and the crowd shifted from confused and anxious to full-on panic, running for the blocked exits. Danny needed to do something. He was TE’s COO, the CEO as of tomorrow. This was his party, his company, his family. And yet fucking Jamie kept hauling him backward. “Dammit, J, I need to go!”
“You need to stay out of sight, so we keep our advantage.” Jamie spun him around and clutched both his shoulders. “You’re apart from the rest of the family. Designated survivor.” Danny’s stomach lurched and he nearly puked on Jamie’s shoes. Jamie palmed his cheek, steadying his gaze. “And you’re the most valuable, as far as skills. I need your help, baby bro. Can you help me?”
Jamie’s use of Sean and Aidan’s nickname for him steadied Danny. Made him focus on the other words Jamie had said.
Help.
Skills.
Jamie was right. He was more useful apart, with Jamie, picking a lock and handling the crisis. Across the deck, Cam was securing his family, dispersing them into the crowd, pairing each with a tuxedoed Talley security guard, a redundancy safety measure Mel had insisted on. Cam was hiding them in plain sight, protected, among the other guests, as the mercs flooded the stage and surrounded the crowd.
Danny nodded. “We need to call Mel and Aidan.”
“After I get you clear.” Jamie pushed him toward the bridge stairs, hand on his shoulder, forcing him low as they scrambled up.
Two steps from the top, a familiar voice halted Danny in his tracks.
“Ladies and gentlemen, if you’ll remain calm, no harm will come to you.” The speaker was a woman, as evidenced by her voice, and by her stunning face and long blond hair, unveiled as she ripped off her helmet and mask.
Many in the crowd gasped. They knew her too, though perhaps not as intimately as Danny did.
“Who is she?” Jamie asked, catching on to his and the crowd’s recognition.
“Sonja Lynch,” Danny answered. “Head of Lynch Shipping. TE’s biggest competitor.”