Seventeen

Dean cursed, seeing not one but two large boats on the horizon ahead of them. The dots of orange told him everything he needed to know.

Coast guard.

Which meant two things. The island directly opposite North Uist that he’d been headed for was out, as was taking the longer and less risky route around the chain of islands from Barra to Lewis that made up the Outer Hebrides.

Change of plans. He was going to have to chance cutting through the Sound of Harris, the narrow five-mile-long channel that separated Harris from North Uist, and hope to hell they could take shelter on one of the small islands before anyone saw them.

Because of the size and color of the inflatable, Dean didn’t think the coast guard boats had sighted them—assuming no one had been using binoculars.

He cranked the wheel, quickly turning the inflatable around in the direction from which they’d come. After about a half mile, he veered east toward the sound.

He’d been keeping the speed moderate to try to conserve fuel, but that was now secondary to getting the hell out of there.

He opened up the throttle and the inflatable tore across the waves. As he had to keep his focus on the seas in front of him, he shouted at Annie to hold on tight and watch behind them to see if they were being followed.

Even if she couldn’t hear everything he said, she’d heard enough to get the gist.

She held on to one of the handles—not the one with the taped seam—and kept her eyes peeled on the seas behind them as the boat thumped across the waves.

“Anything?” he shouted above the roar of the motor.

“Not ye—” She stopped. “Wait. I think I see one.”

Dean swore again. He was pushing the boat as hard as he dared—almost full throttle. One bad move on his part and they could easily flip. The inflatable was too light with just the two of them to go this fast in these kinds of waves.

“Keep an eye on it, and let me know if it changes direction or speeds up.”

Adrenaline shot through his veins, but he’d been in fucked-up situations too many times to panic.

But getting caught wasn’t an option. His fake identity was good, but it wouldn’t hold up under the scrutiny of a murder investigation.

Dean didn’t even want to think about what the LC would say. If Lieutenant Commander Scott “always-have-an-ace-up-his-sleeve” Taylor didn’t already regret pulling Dean from the explosion in Russia, he would if Dean blew their cover.

“Go dark. Do what you’ve been trained to do and disappear. Keep your head down and wait for my orders.”

Disciplined and always under control, Taylor would blow a fucking gasket if he knew about Annie. Rightly so. Dean never should have gotten involved with her. But given what had happened, he couldn’t regret it. She would have been forced to go along with Jean Paul’s plan, or the bastard probably would have killed her.

Dean doubted that foiling an ecoterrorist plot and possibly saving a young woman’s life would impress the LC.

But Dean couldn’t just leave her—then or now. He would try to help her before he disappeared again.

Taylor was going to be pissed when he heard what Dean wanted to do. Assuming he got out of this, that is.

Which was a big assumption.

“They’re still heading this way,” Annie said, fighting the wind that had her hair blowing in thousands of different directions. “But I can hardly see them now.”

Dean hoped that was a sign that the coast guard boat was just heading in this direction and hadn’t actually caught sight of them. He didn’t usually like coincidences, but he would sure as hell welcome one now.

The coast of Harris on the left and North Uist on the right appeared ahead of him. In between he could just make out the dark forms of one or two of the islands that dotted the channel. Boating through the sound could be precarious with its small islands, reefs, and rocks—especially at low tides.

But low tides actually worked in their favor with an inflatable. It had a very shallow draft compared to a coast guard boat.

He slowed the boat as they neared the sound, not wanting the blare of the motor to draw attention. Fortunately it was still early enough and no one seemed to be around. Although this probably wasn’t the most populated place even in the middle of the day.

Annie said it at the same time he was thinking it. “Where is everyone?”

He had no idea. The coasts were desolate, and there didn’t appear to be a single boat in the water.

All of a sudden it hit him. Finally some good luck! “It’s Sunday.”

She gave him a look that said, So?

He realized she hadn’t been in Scotland for a Sunday yet. “Everyone is at church. The Sabbath is serious business in these parts.”

Lewis and Harris had been referred to in the paper as the “last bastion of Sabbath observance in the UK.”

Her brows drew together. “You mean like how in some parts of the US you can’t buy alcohol?”

She was referring to remnants of America’s old “blue laws,” prohibiting the sale of booze on Sunday. But the staunch Presbyterians of the “wee free,” as the Free Church of Scotland was known, put those to shame.

He nodded. “That on steroids. Shops, restaurants, golf courses—you name it—pretty much everything but hotels shuts down. Good luck even trying to find gas—or petrol as they call it here. There’s one station in Stornoway open for a few hours, that’s it. For years you couldn’t catch a ferry on a Sunday. That changed a while back, but it caused a lot of controversy. Even hanging out your laundry on Sundays can cause offense in some places.”

“That sounds a little medieval.”

He shrugged. He’d thought that way, too, the first time he visited. It was hard for Americans to wrap their heads around it in today’s always-connected world.

The prohibitions had been even worse twenty years ago. His mother had been a MacLeod, and he’d been sent to stay with a great-aunt one summer when his mother wanted to get rid of him. He’d made the mistake of riding his bike one Sunday and Aunt Meg—who’d been named after some illustrious ancestor—had given him a hellfire-and-brimstone rant that would have made any preacher he’d ever heard on the TV proud.

Religious aspects aside, he’d come to appreciate the day of rest and the practice of keeping one day of the week special. “It’s part of the culture and kind of nice sometimes.” He looked over his shoulder. “See anything?”

She shook her head. “No.” She bit her lip, worry clouding her windblown features. “The water looks really low.”

That was another piece of good luck for them. “The tide is almost all the way out.”

“Will they be able to follow us?”

“I don’t know, but I’m not going to wait around to find out. We’re going to make a run for it.”

“Won’t that be dangerous?”

Only if he made a mistake. “Don’t worry, Annie. I know what I’m doing.”

She managed a small smile. “I’m sensing a theme.”

He grinned but turned his attention to the mission at hand: getting them through this channel without hitting something or running aground. He scanned the channel, glancing back and forth at the map. He found a path through the rocks and reefs and took it, hoping for the best.

It was slow, tense going. Navigating and maneuvering through the shallow waters required every bit of his concentration and skill, but about a half hour after they entered the channel, they were out.

He exhaled, releasing the tension that had been holding him in its tight grip.

Annie hadn’t said a word the entire time. He wasn’t sure she’d breathed. Hell, he wasn’t sure he’d breathed.

“See anything?” he asked her. Annie had been keeping watch behind them.

She shook her head, not hiding her relief. “I think we lost them, but God, that was close. I thought we might have to get out and carry the boat a few times.”

He smiled. “You must have Viking ancestors.”

She shook her head. “Not that I know of—Dutch, German, and Brazilian.” That explained her golden coloring. “Why?”

“Vikings sometimes picked up their boats to cross narrow pieces of land.”

“Clever way to make a shortcut.”

It was. One he could appreciate right now.

“Now what?” she asked.

He motioned to a barely visible dark shape beyond the much bigger island—the Isle of Skye—ahead of them. “Tiree. And if we are lucky, someplace to get cleaned up and eat.”

She gave a heavy sigh of pleasure that reminded him way too much of the moans she’d made when he had his hand . . .

He was trying really hard not to remember that. But it wasn’t easy when every time he looked at her his body temperature shot up a good twenty degrees.

It was going to be a long couple of days. He figured it would take at least that long before he could get things straightened out, and he could disappear.

“That sounds divine.” Suddenly her expression changed. “I just remembered. I don’t have any money.”

“Don’t worry about it,” he said. He had an emergency stash of cash in his bag—he never left home without it—to cover him until he could safely access the various accounts he’d set up with different identities in case one or more were compromised.

Dan Warren was history.

SEAL operators were trained to escape and evade after an op went wrong. But the kind of going dark he’d done after Russia had required much more than navigation tools, water collection, and signaling devices to survive in hostile territory for a few days. Fortunately the operators of Team Nine had been trained to disappear—to ghost and live off the grid.

Access to funds was part of that, so he’d taken precautions, including setting up an account at a bank in Liechtenstein—one of the new places to hide your money and your identity, after the recent fall from favor of Switzerland for releasing names of American tax cheats.

Still, it might be a few days before he could access it and arrange for a new identity. He would have to budget accordingly. Their best bet would be a hostel or small guest house that would be happy with cash. Of course, they’d have to find someplace to clean up and get her some extra clothes so they didn’t look as if they’d just washed up off the beach—which they had.

He realized she was frowning. “What’s wrong?”

Her mouth turned up in a wry smile. “You mean aside from being on the run for the murder of my ex-boyfriend and his friend, without anything beyond the clothes I have on and one cherry lip balm?” she asked, pulling it out of her pocket. “Nothing.”

He was tempted to throw that cherry lip balm overboard as he’d done with her phone. It might be the more dangerous of the two.

He wanted to kiss her again. Badly. Not just as a way of telling her it would be okay, but also because she was incredible. He couldn’t think of many women he knew who could go through what they’d just had to do and still have a sense of humor.

Instead he held her with his gaze. “Hang in there, Annie. I promise it’s going to be okay.”

That was one promise he would do everything in his power to keep.

He just hoped to hell it would be enough.

•   •   •

It took longer to reach the island than Annie expected, but fortunately they only saw a few boats in the distance and none with the distinctive orange paint.

The near run-in with the coast guard had been too close. And although it was still midmorning by the time they pulled the inflatable up onto the beach, she was exhausted. Sitting on the edge of her seat—literally—for a few hours had sapped what little energy she possessed after only three protein bars in about twenty-four hours.

She also felt a little like a drowned rat. Thanks to the fire Dan had made last night, her clothes had dried out by morning, but the sea spray from their high-speed dash across the Western Isles had her damp all over again.

He’d picked a beautiful natural harbor with a white-sand beach and jagged black volcanic rocks below a gentle hillside of green grass, wildflowers, and a handful of the ubiquitous white cottages that seemed to be scattered across most of the islands.

It was incredibly picturesque and not what she imagined when she thought of Scotland. The Caribbean maybe, but definitely not the Western Isles of Scotland.

Compared to some of the others she’d seen on her unexpected tour around the islands, Tiree seemed relatively flat and grassy. It also seemed a little warmer.

“Where are we?”

“A village called Balephetnish, according to the map.”

Another one of those Scottish towns that she wouldn’t be attempting to spell.

She looked up at the houses overlooking the beach, of which there were precisely six that she could see. “This is a village?”

He grinned. “It is in the Western Isles.”

“Is one of those white houses a hotel by any chance?”

He shook his head at her tone, which was between pleading and begging. “Could be that one lets out rooms as a small B&B, but we aren’t staying here. We’d draw too much notice.”

She didn’t know whether to be relieved or disappointed. She was exhausted, but the accommodations looked basic to say the least.

“I pulled in here because I saw that.” He pointed toward an old wooden shed.

“What is it?”

“I’m not sure—probably a boat shed or a gear hut at some point. But it looks derelict, and it will be a good place to hide the inflatable. This island doesn’t seem to have any caves.”

“What if someone sees us?”

He shook his head. “That’s why I came in the way that I did. That sea stack should have blocked our approach.”

The inflatable was definitely heavier than it looked, and even though Dan was shouldering most of the weight, Annie was breathing hard by the time they pulled it up the last stretch of beach to the very shabby—not chic—wooden building.

She was surprised it hadn’t blown over; the island was breezy. The shack was a simple square construction with a gable roof. A few of the gray weathered boards were missing or broken, and the door no longer had a lock but was secured instead with a rope.

Dan made an attempt to untie the knot, but time and rain had made the hemp strands about as yielding as steel. After a few minutes, he gave up and took out the multitool he’d used before to cut it.

The rope must have been to deter teenagers from using the place for partying. Once inside, they could see the old beer cans and cigarette butts strewn around the wooden floor. The only boat—an old rowboat—had been turned into a makeshift bed with the addition of a very scary-looking bedroll.

Raging teenage hormones: the mother of invention.

“We could always stay here,” Dan said. “I don’t see any mice.”

Her face dropped, and he burst out laughing.

“That isn’t funny,” she admonished. “Especially when I’ve been promised a shower and food.”

She could see from his grin that he didn’t agree, but he wisely chose not to argue with her. “Help me bring in the boat, and I’ll see about both.”

After pulling in the inflatable and securing a new knot on the door with one of the pieces of cut rope, Dan located the walking path that he said should take them into the main village of Scarinish.

The island wasn’t that big—probably three miles wide by twelve miles long—but she hoped the village wasn’t too far away. She was getting hungrier by the minute, but the last thing she was going to do was complain.

Annie felt that same ridiculous need to prove herself that she’d always felt with her father. With her father, she suspected it was because she somehow didn’t want to make him regret not having a boy. But with Dan, it was something else. Maybe she suspected he appreciated toughness?

Why she wanted to impress him, she didn’t know. But she would faint from hunger before complaining.

They’d probably walked about two miles before he said, “Almost there.” He paused long enough for her to be relieved. “Just another five miles to go.”

Five miles? Oh God. She didn’t say it, but her expression must have given her misery away.

He burst out laughing again. “Just kidding. It’s right over there.”

She didn’t look where he was pointing but turned on him with a scowl. She had never socked someone in the stomach in her life, but she was dearly tempted. “Boy, you are a barrel of laughs today.”

He was still grinning, and if she wasn’t struck by how good-looking he was when he smiled, she would have been furious.

“I’m sorry, but if you could have seen your face you would understand.” He started walking again, and she fell in beside him. “It’s okay to admit you’re exhausted.”

“I’m not—” She started to deny it, and then muttered, “Why bother?” under her breath. “Has anyone ever told you that you have a cruel streak?”

“All the time.” He sounded proud of it. “It’s how you separate the men from the boys.” He gave her a smirk. “Or girls.”

“What? Let someone think they are close to an oasis, and then tell them it’s only a mirage?”

“Pretty much.”

“Fun games you guys like to play.”

“Maybe so, but you can take it.”

Why that made her so ridiculously proud she didn’t want to know.

As the small village came into view, he told her his plan. They’d find a store, pick up a few things, and then use the public toilet—just about every village or town of this size had one—to clean up a little before finding a hotel.

It wasn’t until he told her what else he wanted her to do that she nearly forgot her intention not to complain. “You want me to cut my hair?”

He gave her one of those clueless guy looks—the kind they get when they’ve said something that got a reaction but they aren’t sure why.

He nodded. “The shorter, the better.” His brows drew together as he studied her. “Have you ever thought about coloring it? Maybe lightening it a little?”

Slow down, Paul Mitchell. He didn’t exactly strike her as the hairstylist type. “You want to give me highlights?”

He frowned. “What are those?”

She shook her head. “Forget it. No, I’ve never thought of coloring it. It’s too dark—it would look silly. Unless you want me to go red?”

She’d been joking, but he didn’t seem to notice.

“Na, that would stick out too much. Oh well, we’ll just have to work with the haircut. Maybe you could try curlers.”

Not a chance. The visions of Little Orphan Annie were going to give her nightmares for weeks.

In the realm of things, of course it was silly to be attached to her hair, but she was. She’d had long hair her entire life, and maybe she’d gotten a little used to the “you have such pretty hair” comments.

Before they went into the store, he had her tuck her soon-to-be-short hair up into his cap. Inside he was the typical male shopper—quick, impatient, and overly efficient. He picked up the bare necessities—toothbrushes, toothpaste, deodorant, razor, shaving cream, liquid detergent (presumably to wash out their clothes)—which she added to with her bare necessities of moisturizer, mascara, blush, eyeliner, mousse, and a hairbrush to go with the scissors that he’d tossed in. He frowned at the items before looking at her. “Why do you wear that stuff? You don’t need it.”

She supposed that was a backhanded compliment, but it didn’t matter. “No one does, but I like it.”

Especially if he was making her cut her hair.

Annie wasn’t normally vain, but looking like a drowned rat—a soon-to-be-shorn drowned rat—was bringing out a rather hefty streak of vanity now.

He gave her a whatever shrug and proceeded to the checkout. They passed by a refrigerated display of ready-made sandwiches, sausage rolls—yuck—and salads.

“You hungry?”

This time she knew he was messing with her. She didn’t bother responding. Instead she chose enough food to feed a small army: a caprese sandwich, fruit salad, salt and vinegar chips—or crisps as they were called here—and a couple of hard-boiled eggs.

Proving he was human, Dan doubled down on just about everything.

The store was quiet, and when they reached the checkout, the cashier was unusually talkative for an Islander. Most of the Scots Annie had met to this point were friendly but quiet. This woman was the first but not the second.

Reddish brown hair, apple-cheeked, with the windblown ruddy complexion that seemed commonplace, she had the sturdy build of someone who worked hard for a living outside and lived in green Wellies—a farmer or serious gardener. Maybe both.

“It’s too early for the ferry, so you must have flown in on the eight fifty from Glasgow.”

Dan nodded. “We did.”

Annie was too shocked that the small island had an airport to say anything.

The woman nodded toward the items Dan had just finished pulling from the basket. “And by the looks of it, they lost your luggage? They are usually pretty good with keeping track of bags on those small planes.”

Clearly she was poking around for more information. Dan didn’t disappoint her. “It wasn’t them. It was the international flight before.”

The woman nodded, pleased. She looked back and forth between them. “I thought so. Where are you from, the States?”

“Originally, but I live in Brazil now with my wife.”

“Brazil?” The woman looked at Annie with renewed interest. Annie was still digesting the wife part. “How wonderful.”

“She doesn’t speak much English,” Dan said before the woman could question her.

“You must be here for the windsurfing contest,” the woman said, only too happy to turn back to Dan. “You’re early. Most people won’t start arriving for a couple days.”

Dan gave her a killer grin that even made Annie, who was not the recipient, twitter a little. “How’d you guess?”

He might as well have added “dude” or “brah” to that surfer drawl.

If the woman wasn’t old enough to be his mother, Annie might be more angry by the clearly flirtatious and cheeky grin she gave him. “I can always pick out the athletes.”

Annie was surprised that she didn’t reach out and squeeze one of the muscular arms she was ogling. Apparently Annie wasn’t the only one in the room with a silly weakness for tall and built like a linebacker.

“Any idea where we can pick up a few things until our bags catch up?” he asked.

Annie wanted to snort. Mr. Hard-Ass was laying the laid-back-surfer—windsurfer—thing on a little thick, to Annie’s getting-annoyed mind. But the woman was eating it up.

“There’s a small boutique next to the big hotel. It has mostly women’s things, but Sara has a small men’s section of basics. Tell her Patsy sent you and she’ll take care of you. There are also a couple beach shops for T-shirts, sweatshirts, and bathing suits if you need those. And a charity shop further down the road.”

“That should be plenty to get us through,” Dan said, taking the package that Patsy seemed reluctant to let go of. “Thank you, Patsy.”

The woman blushed like the proverbial schoolgirl—of fifty, Annie thought uncharitably.

“My pleasure,” Patsy said. “Hope to see you and your wife around during the competition.”

Annie thought Patsy had forgotten she existed. Normally Annie was the typical overfriendly American. But since she was now Brazilian, she must have forgotten. Annie also didn’t speak a word of Portuguese. It was close to Spanish, which she did speak, but she wasn’t going to take a chance on hasta luego.

Dan must have noticed. “What’s the matter?”

“No hablo inglés.”

He laughed. “That’s not Portuguese.”

“Which is why I didn’t say anything.” She side-eyed him. “I didn’t take you for flirtatious.”

He shrugged. “When the situation calls . . .”

“Yeah, well, a little advice. If you ever have a real wife, I wouldn’t do that in front of her.”

He gave her a look as if she were crazy—which was exactly how she was feeling. “You’re right. You do get cranky when you are hungry. Let’s eat and then get cleaned up.”

Annie devoured her brunch in an embarrassingly short time, and then headed into the public bathroom to wash up a little. Dan said they’d go shopping afterward to pick up clothes to change into after showering, but he wanted to change their appearances a little before checking into a hotel and too many people saw them.

The mirror was one of those nonglass safety types found in public restrooms and didn’t give off the best reflection, but she managed to dampen her hair, cut a good six inches off in a mostly straight line—her hair was wavy, so it didn’t matter as much—to just past chin level, and do a light application of makeup.

She was fine until she started filling the paper bag Dan have given her for the purpose with her hair. Looking down at the pile of thick brown waves, she wanted to cry. Maybe it was good that she couldn’t really see in the mirror that well.

It’s just hair.

How much difference could it make?

A lot. As she discovered when she left the bathroom and found Dan waiting for her. She took one look at him, and her stomach dropped. Or flipped—she couldn’t tell. But everything inside her seemed to be skidding around in all kinds of directions.

Oh, crap.

He’d shaved.