CHAPTER EIGHT

Sawyer studied the painting. “This is on my top five list. Of ways not to die.”

“Hey, me, too.” After a long, slow sip, Riley managed a smile. “What’s your number one?”

“Snake pit. You?”

“Drawn and quartered.”

“That’s a good one.”

“What is drawn and quartered?” Annika asked.

Reaching up, Sawyer rubbed her hand. “You don’t ever want to find out.” He looked over at Sasha. “You saw this?”

“Yes. Very clearly.”

“Us, surrounded by the bad guys, the sharks circling.”

“Yes!” Sasha snapped off the word as she shook her head at Riley’s offer of a drink.

“Looks dire,” he commented. “It also looks like we’ve got a wall between us and Bruce and pals.”

“Bruce?” Shaken, Sasha pressed her fingers to her eyes. “Who the hell is Bruce?”

“Crew’s name for the mechanical shark in Jaws,” Riley explained. “Hmm.”

“Exactly so. Now sit.” Firmly, Bran nudged Sasha into a chair. “We couldn’t ask for a bigger distraction.”

Now Sasha just closed her eyes. “A shark attack is a distraction? A distraction.”

“Damn good one. Odds are they’d go for the prey in the outer circle first.” As he might a battle plan, Doyle stood, studied the painting. “It’s something I’ve missed in my extended life—a shark attack. And you, Gorgeous?”

“We can hear—feel?—them, and we stay away. But we can also make a sound they don’t like, and warn others if they come to feed.”

“What sound?” Riley wondered.

Annika drew a breath, opened her mouth.

Though he heard nothing, Sawyer felt as if an ice pick had been jammed in his ear, and straight to his brain. In the distance, dogs began to bark.

“Wow. Okay.” Riley rubbed her ears.

“If they still come, you fight. Hit them here.” Annika tapped her nose. “Hard.”

“‘Sometimes the shark go away; sometimes he wouldn’t go away.’”

“Quint,” Riley explained. “Sawyer’s still on Jaws.”

“The seas are filled with easier prey. Here, in the painting, the bad guys are easier prey than we are.”

“Annika’s right.” Riley nodded. “Plus, thanks to Sasha we’re forewarned. How do we use it?”

“They’re looking to capture, not kill,” Doyle pointed out. “There’s blood, some of us, some of them are wounded. But we’re outnumbered more than three to one here, and we’re all alive. If they wanted us dead, at least one of us would be. Or more seriously wounded than this.”

“And we’re in a group,” Bran added. “A fairly tight one. Tight enough?” he asked Sawyer.

“Yeah, tight enough. The trick’s going to be getting to this point, letting them surround us, and holding it together.”

“We let them . . .” Calmer now, Sasha took the drink she’d refused. “Yes, I see.”

“Our instinct’s going to be to fight, not surrender. But, we let this happen?” Riley tapped the painting. “Their instinct’s going to be to take out the sharks, or try, or get the hell away.”

“We stay close enough to each other, I shift us back to the boat, and—”

“The sharks take the rest.” Riley lifted her glass toward him. “To Quint.”

“Not the rest,” Doyle corrected. “Odds are on a dive boat, and if I planned an attack like this, I’d have men stationed on the boat, and a couple, at least, on ours.”

“Buzzkill. Right,” Riley added. “But still. Those teams won’t be expecting us to pop out of nowhere. So, you or I get to the wheel, and fast. The others deal with the bad guys, if any, on our boat.”

“We’ll deal with it. All of it,” Bran assured them. “It’s what we’re meant to do.”

“What we’re meant to do,” Sasha agreed, “but we need to factor in one more thing. Abject panic. Those aren’t mechanical sharks in a movie. And it only takes one of them to decide, hmm, look at the delicious chewy center.”

“Good one. We’ve got Anni’s secret shark whistle as backup,” Riley reminded her.

“Even so, factor it in. Because I now have a list of my own—something I’ve lived my whole life without making. Being eaten by sharks is now number one.” Sasha gulped margarita. “With a bullet.”

Prepared for an attack, resolved to do whatever needed to be done, they set out to search the next morning. And the day after, and the day after that. No attack came, nor did they find the star or any new path toward it.

Restless, Doyle prowled the yard during combat practice.

“Use your feet, Sasha!” He snapped the order out when she ended up on her ass, again. “Stop going easy on her, Gwin, and go in for the kill.”

“She’s holding her own,” Riley shot back.

“Bollocks. You’ve a knife in your hand, Sasha, use the damn thing.” When Sasha sliced out, missed the mark by a foot, he strode forward, grabbed her arm. “Combat grip, downward stroke.”

He guided her arm, hard and fast enough to make the muscles still sore from the damn pull-ups twinge.

“It won’t cut her, or don’t you trust your man?”

“Yes, I trust him. I’m trying.”

“Try harder. She’s not that good.”

Riley cocked a hip. “Oh, really? Then bring it, big guy. Take me on.”

Obliging, in the mood for it, Doyle took the knife from Sasha, who muttered, “I hope she kicks your ass.”

He glanced over. “Put some of that pissed-off into your own practice next time.”

As he spoke, Riley hit him, dead center, with a flying kick, propelled him back a good three feet. She landed, set, smiled.

“Always be ready, always be alert. Isn’t that what you hammer at us? Looks like you forgot, Sir Dick.”

“As you forgot to go in for the kill.”

They circled each other. She dodged the swipe with the knife, but not the fist in the belly. She went down with it, jabbed the charmed knife at his thigh, rolled back and up.

“Missed the artery,” she said as they circled again. “Won’t next time.”

Jabs, feints, kicks, a punch.

Sawyer and Bran stopped their own practice battle to watch, and Annika lowered her arms as her practice balls hovered in the air.

Doyle swept Riley’s legs out from under her, but she rolled again, backflipped up, kicked out as she did, aiming—a bit harder than practice called for—at the groin.

Doyle set his teeth, went over the pain—she’d hit her mark solidly—scored a point on her left arm.

“You’d be bleeding.”

“Wouldn’t be the first time.”

They charged. Knives met, crossed. They held there, like pirates, eyes hot before Doyle shoved her back. She recovered, swung into a roundhouse kick, hit him chest high. He grabbed her foot, used momentum to thrust her into the air. She managed to flip, landed, but off-balance enough to have to reset.

He charged again, took her down, his knife to her throat.

“And you’re done.”

“You, too, old man. My knife’s in your gut.”

He lay on her a moment more, admitting only to himself he was winded and his balls ached like a bitch. Then he lifted enough to look down, and sure enough, her knife was hilt deep in his gut.

“Wouldn’t kill me for long, but you’d still be dead.”

“Good thing I won’t be fighting Lazarus. Get off me.”

“In a minute.” He looked around at the audience. “I’ve got her down, and we’ll say she’s unarmed for these purposes. My knife’s at her throat. What do you do? Annika?”

Without hesitation, she jerked up her arm. He felt a tingle in his knife hand. “Perfect. Aim and reflexes. Bran.”

Bran flicked his hand, and the knife turned into a banana.

“A bit of humor,” Bran said. “But effective.”

“Good enough. Sasha?”

She took Bran’s knife, threw it. It hit Doyle in the back of the head.

“Impressive.”

“I was aiming for your back, center mass. But I’ll take good luck where I find it.”

“Sawyer?”

With a hand in his pocket, he measured distance. In an instant he crouched beside Doyle and Riley, sliced his knife cleanly on Doyle’s throat. And gripping Riley’s shoulder, popped them both back to where he’d stood.

“Good enough.” Doyle got to his feet. “Of course, this is saying any one of you has that split second to act.”

“We’ll make the second,” Annika insisted. “We’re meant to protect each other. If we don’t do all we must for each of us, we fail. If we find the stars but one of us falls, we fail. We thought you’d fallen that night in Corfu, and we grieved. Because we’re family now. Family protects, always.”

“You used your second to shield Riley that night,” Sasha reminded him. “Anni’s right. It’s the six of us who are meant to find the stars. If any of us fall, we fail. We can’t fail. I’ll work harder.”

“You’re better than you were. You’ve had the farthest to come.”

“I think that’s supposed to be encouragement. You’re angry,” Sasha added, studying Doyle. “I can feel it. Angry and starting to doubt if we’re on the right track, in the right place. If the vision I had that brought us here was just wrong.”

“You’re still new at reading them.”

“She’s yet to be wrong,” Bran reminded him. “Impatience, while human enough, isn’t productive.”

“The compass backs her up.” Sawyer took it out. “It says here. I check it every night, and we’re where we’re supposed to be.”

“When you’ve lost something, it’s always in the last place you look. Because when you find it,” Riley added, “you stop looking. We haven’t hit the last place yet.”

“Have you asked yourself why she’s yet to come at us? We’ve been here nearly two weeks.”

“She has.” Bran slid an arm around Sasha.

“Not a day goes by she doesn’t try to get inside me.” She reached up to the necklace Bran made for her, rubbed the protective stones. “The gods have nothing but time, do they?”

“Gods and immortals,” Riley commented. “But the rest of us? Not so much.”

“So we keep looking.” When Annika slipped her hand in his, Sawyer squeezed it as he spoke. “Until we hit that last place. It’s here, and I’m not going to complain about not having to fight to the freaking death for a week or two while we search.”

Couldn’t they see five stood on one side, and Doyle alone on the other? Because she could and did, Annika walked to him. Disarmed him by wrapping her arms around him in a hug.

“You’re angry because you have no one but friends to fight with.”

“Maybe a little pissed off he has friends.” Riley smirked at him. “And one of them kicked him in the balls.”

“Maybe. And maybe we haven’t found the last place because we’re looking in the wrong one. Not the island, I’ll concede that. Seer and magic compass say Capri, it’s Capri. But maybe it’s not in the water, not in a cave. We haven’t assessed other possibilities. You said in the water, of the water,” he said to Sasha. “But what about fountains, wells, underground springs? Bays, coves, inlets?”

“The Bay of Sighs.” Sasha’s eyes went deep. “Lost between what is, what was, what will. There abides beauty without end, and regret. Are you worthy to pass between? The truest of hearts, the purest of spirits? Sighs for those accepted. Sighs for those turned away. Hope, never quenched for redemption. And the song sings from the star to guide you.”

Sasha let out her own sigh. “They’re waiting for us to find it.”

“Who?” Doyle demanded. “Where?”

“I don’t know. I can feel . . . something waiting, hoping. But I don’t have the answers, I’m sorry.”

“Neither do I,” Riley said. “I’ve been digging on Bay of Sighs, but I haven’t found anything yet. I’ll keep looking, try different angles. A parallel world, maybe? A time shift—which would be Sawyer’s deal. I’ll try some other resources.”

“As will I,” Bran said. “It may be someone in my family knows something of it, or knows someone who might. Meanwhile, we search and eliminate.”

“We’d better toss some breakfast together and get down to the boat.” Riley paused, pulled out her phone when it signaled. “Hold on. It’s my Malmon contact.

“This is Gwin,” she said as she walked away.

“I can help you with breakfast because Riley is busy.”

Watching Riley, Sasha nodded. “Let’s get to it.” And headed inside with Annika.

By the time Riley came in for coffee, Sasha was flipping the last slice of French toast on a platter beside a heap of bacon.

“What did you find out?”

“I’ll tell it all at once. Thanks for taking my KP, Anni.”

“I don’t mind. I like to make the fruit bowl.”

“Looks good, smells good. I’ll report while we eat.”

She didn’t waste time filling her plate or filling the rest in.

“Malmon’s still in London, but he’s booked a villa—big-ass villa, overlooking Marina Grande. Degli Dei.”

“Villa of the gods,” Doyle translated.

“Fate’s little wedgie, right? He took it for a month—doubling the asking price as incentive. His tenancy starts in three days. Word is he’s enlisted John Trake.”

“I don’t know that name,” Sawyer said.

“I do. Formerly Colonel Trake, United States Army, Special Forces. Black ops. Dishonorably discharged about seven years back, quietly, when he went way off the reservation. Got to like killing a little too much, and didn’t worry about collateral damage, even when it included his own men, unarmed civilians, children. Trake’s bringing along Eli Yadin.”

“That name I do know. Yadin was along for the ride in Morocco. Mossad—formerly, I think,” Sawyer added.

“You think correctly. He got a little too wild and crazy for them, and you have to be pretty wild and crazy to shock Mossad. He’s an assassin, but he specializes in torture. One more name. Franz Berger. Hunter, tracker, sniper—of both the four- and two-legged variety of mammals.”

“How confident are you in your source?” Doyle asked her.

“Completely. She’s with Interpol, and believe me, Malmon and the others on that list are very much on Interpol’s radar. They’re as interested in what he’s putting together as we are.”

“We could do without blipping on Interpol’s radar ourselves,” Bran pointed out.

“Then we’ll have to be careful. We’ve got a few days. I’m thinking why don’t we check out Malmon’s digs here on Capri? Say tonight, when everything’s nice and quiet.”

“A little B and E?” Sawyer forked a bite of French toast. “Sounds like a good time. You know, if I could get my hands on a few things, I could put a few bugs together.”

“How do you put bugs together?” Annika asked. “Why would you want to make bugs?”

“Listening devices,” he explained. “We call them bugs. We go in, case the place, plant a few where it seems most logical. It could give us a leg up.”

“It could. First? You can make bugs?”

He smiled at Riley. “I’m handy.”

“Okay, second. He’s bound to sweep for them.”

“I could help there.” Bran considered. “A spell to hide them from an electronic sweep. I could work that out.”

“More handy, and I’ll make three.” Riley poured more coffee. “Tell me what you need, Dead-Eye—and give me options. I’ll tug some lines. But it may take a day.”

“I’ll make you a list, we can break and enter tomorrow night. Three days,” Sawyer calculated. “Maybe we’ll get lucky, find the star before he gets here.”

“And if not?” Sasha looked around the table at the five people she’d come to trust above all others. “We do whatever we have to do to protect the star and each other.”

Sawyer made his list; Riley tugged her lines. It made for a later start than planned, but Sawyer figured if he could put together a few bugs, give them some insight into Malmon’s plans, it would be more than worth losing an hour in the water.

As he grabbed his gear, Annika stepped to the doorway of his room.

“I need to speak to you.”

“Sure.” But when she came in, closed the door behind her, he stopped what he was doing. “Serious?”

“Important. In Sasha’s painting, you’re wounded.”

“We’ve all been wounded in this little adventure, Anni. It looked like Doyle took a hit, too, so—”

“He can’t die.”

“And I won’t.” Reading the worry in her eyes, he went to her, took her hands. “I’ll get us out of there.”

“It’s hard for you to travel with so many. Please, don’t lie to soothe me. I won’t be soothed with lies.”

“Not hard so much. It’s tricky. But hey, I got us here, right?”

“It would be tricky—more tricky—when you’re wounded?”

“Annika, there’s no point worrying about that.” Now he ran his hands up her arms, held her by the shoulders. “I’ll get us out, and safe. You have to trust me.”

“I trust you. All that I am trusts what you are. But you’ll be hurt. You and Doyle—he can’t die but he feels pain. I’m not hurt in the painting, and I’m of the sea.”

“Okay.”

“I can get away from the men, from the sharks. I can—the word is distract—until you get away with the others, then—”

“Forget it.” A lick of temper had him tightening his grip on her.

“You must listen!” Temper slapped against temper. “If the tricky is too hard, you can trust me. I can get away without the traveling. You take the others, leave me to—”

“I’m not going to leave you. I’d never leave you. No.” He snapped it out before she could speak again. “If you think I would, if you think I’d even consider it, you don’t know me.”

“Do you understand, I could get to the boat, my way, almost before you could, yours?”

“Doesn’t matter. I’m not leaving you behind, not today, tomorrow, whenever the hell that painting becomes reality. Not anywhere, not anytime.” Because he read something in her eyes—she’d suck at poker—he released her shoulders to take her face in the same firm grip. “And don’t think you can pull away far enough so I can’t connect. That’s not happening either, and you’d just make it harder for me.”

“I don’t want to make it hard. I want you safe.”

“I will be, and so will you.” He tipped her head back, just a little, laid his lips on hers. Quiet, soothing. At first.

Then she wrapped around him, surrounded him, and he lost himself in the warmth and wanting. He pressed her back against the wall, let himself take, let himself savor what she gave, let himself savor what she made him feel in his blood, in his bones.

The three rude bangs on the door barely registered.

“Sawyer! Get your hands off the girl,” Doyle ordered. “We’re moving.”

“We have to go.” Reluctantly, almost painfully, Sawyer took his hands off the girl.

“Why don’t you have sex with me?”

“What?” He took a step back, as if from a live grenade. “What?”

“Your sex part gets hard for sex, but you don’t ask for sex. I don’t know if I’m allowed to ask for sex. I don’t know the rules of this.”

Because she gestured toward him—it—he had to fight an urge to cross hands over his groin. “I haven’t . . . It’s not that I— Rules.” He jumped on that concept. “There are rules. Lots of complicated rules. We should talk about them. Later. We need to go.”

“You’ll explain the rules?”

“I . . . Yes, probably. Later.” He grabbed his pack, opened the door. But oddly still couldn’t suck in a full breath. “But now, we have to go. Lost stars, worlds in peril, the evil mother of lies. You know, the usual.”

“When I know the rules, we can lie together in my room. My bed is larger.”

“Well, that’s an idea all right.” Hastily, he slung the pack over his shoulder, and careful to keep one hand on the open door, grabbed hers with the other. “Let’s go.” He pulled her out of the room, kept going until they were outside where the rest waited.

He managed to separate himself enough to mutter to Sasha. “Distract her. I need to talk to Doyle and Bran.”

“Well, I—”

Since Sawyer already moved ahead until he caught up with Doyle’s faster pace, Sasha slowed a bit, pointed. “Oh, look. A butterfly.”

The comment brought a puzzled look from Riley, but caused Annika to stop and admire long enough to give Sawyer some distance.

“Listen,” he said to Doyle, “it wasn’t all about hands.”

“I don’t need to hear about the rest of your body parts.”

“Not what I mean. I need to talk to you and Bran—and the other women—about this harebrained idea Anni had about the painting, and how we need to watch her in case I didn’t talk her out of it.”

He glanced back, casually, gauged he had enough room if he made it quick. And signaled to Bran.

Annika didn’t mind walking with her two friends. She thought, perhaps, women would be less shy and nervous about sex.

“Can you tell me the rules of sex?”

“Rules?” Riley responded. “What rules?”

“I don’t know them, not here. Sawyer says there are many, and complicated rules. I don’t see why they should be complicated, but I can learn them. I like to learn.”

“Complicated.” Riley snorted. “I say simple. My top three? Both parties willing, available, and clean.”

“Those are very simple.” And very satisfying. “Your rules mean Sawyer and I can have sex.”

“I’m still trying to work out why he hasn’t jumped you yet.”

“Riley.” Sasha rolled her eyes. “Different rules for different people. Or not rules so much as . . . sensibilities, and it’s not always easy to explain.”

Riley ticked off on her fingers. “Willing, available, clean.”

“An important foundation,” Sasha agreed. “We really need a little more time and privacy,” she added as they passed people on the road.

“But you’ll explain, so I’ll learn.”

“We’ll do that.”

“Thank you! Then Sawyer and I can have sex like you and Bran. I’m sorry you can’t have sex,” she said to Riley.

“You and me both, sister.”