Chapter Ten
Jamie caught up with Mel just inside the cargo hold entrance, eyeing the downed mercs and greeting her with a miffed, “I see you started without me.”
“Couldn’t be helped,” she answered with a smile as she shrugged out of her suit jacket and tossed it in a corner. “You armed?”
He shook his head. “Strapped mine to Danny’s leg before Sonja took him.”
“Good thinking.” She handed him Nic’s spare, the mags to go with it, and one of the comm devices, which he tucked in his ear. They started toward the stateroom, Mel quiet on bare feet, with only the glow of Jamie’s phone screen lighting the way. They had to divert when mercs stormed their way a few minutes later, responding to their lookouts’ failed check-in. Rather than engage, she and Jamie ducked into the darkened auxiliary kitchen, wanting to save the element of surprise for later, closer to their intended target.
As they waited for the mercs to pass, Mel glanced around the industrial workspace, the ambient light from the hallway casting the gleaming metal workstations and cooktops in shadow. It reminded her of another time she’d snuck into a darkened kitchen, only then the space had been awash with moonlight, the air scented with cinnamon, and the man at her side her brother, Gabe.
Twenty-Eight Years Ago
Mel followed her much bigger little brother into the kitchen of the family restaurant closest to their home. At three in the morning, the kitchen was long since shut down and this residential area of Miami mostly asleep—including their parents, hopefully. Out way past curfew, Mel and Gabe would be grounded for sure, if their parents discovered them gone. Doubly grounded for breaking and entering into one of their restaurants.
“You know we’re not supposed to be in here,” she whispered.
“Oh, break a rule for once.” The wink he threw over his shoulder, and the hip he bumped against hers, moving her out from in front of the fridge, belied his exasperated sigh.
“Why did we have to come here?” Mel boosted herself onto the polished countertop of the long kitchen island.
“I may only be a sophomore, but I’m pretty sure prom night’s not supposed to end with you coming home alone. In tears.”
It wasn’t, but when her date overheard another classmate bet Mel could kick his ass, he’d tried to salvage his manhood by cutting Mel down another way—dumping her in front of everyone. At the Senior Prom. After she’d given up her virginity to him a week ago, because he loved her and couldn’t wait to be with her.
Singao.
“Figured you could use the cheering up.” Gabe dropped an armload of items beside her. Regular, condensed and evaporated milks, rice, sugar and cinnamon. All the ingredients for arroz con leche, her favorite dessert.
Grabbing him by the sleeve, she yanked him into a hug. “Thanks, hermano.”
Towering over her, he kissed the top of her head, then made a sputtering noise. “How much hairspray did you use tonight?”
She pushed him back to the side, laughing. “Enough to hold all the curls in place.”
“So a whole bottle, then.” Smiling, Gabe began preparing the food. “You want to talk about it?” he asked after he got the pot of rice cooking. “Whatever happened tonight...”
“No,” she mumbled to her swinging feet.
“Luis is a douchebag anyways.”
“Not that I don’t appreciate this,” she said, deflecting, “but we could have done this at home, without the whole sneaking-out-and-breaking-in thing.”
“But not without waking Mom and Dad,” Gabe said. “And there’s something else I wanted to talk to you about, without them overhearing.”
“Oh-kay,” she said, drawing out the syllables. “What’s up?”
He took a deep breath, his massive shoulders climbing to his ears and back down, before he set the spoon on the trivet and leaned back against the counter next to the stove. Hands behind his back, his nails scraped across metal as he clawed at the counter’s edge.
“Just tell me,” she said. “Don’t work yourself into a lather over it.”
“I want my own restaurant one day, after I finish playing football and make some money in the stock market.” Her brother was a genius, at numbers and on the field. A scholar athlete. And damn good in the kitchen too. Even with his hulking, defensive tackle’s body, he moved around the kitchen like a natural, not like a bear caged in a tiny closet. Not like the bumbling idiot she was in a kitchen, genetics and seventeen years of patient, wasted training be damned. She was far better with knives in a different context.
“Isn’t it a given you’ll take over when Dad retires? I can’t cook for shit and you’re the golden boy.”
Their father lavished praise on Gabe—and tried to arrange dates for her—at every opportunity. Advance the son, marry off the daughter. The patriarchy of it all made her sick, but she didn’t want to take away from her brother’s achievements and besides, Uncle Robert was teaching her everything she needed to know to overthrow the patriarchy one day.
“I’m not sure it’s a given,” Gabe said. “Or that he’s going to think I’m the golden boy much longer.”
“Oh,” she said, catching on. “This is about you being gay.”
Stunned, Gabe’s eyes looked like they were going to pop out of his head and his mouth hung open like he was catching flies. She slid a manicured nail under his chin and lifted, helping him pick his chin up off the floor.
“You knew?” he choked out.
“I want to be a cop, like Uncle Robert in Cuba. You don’t think I haven’t noticed you checking out the players’ asses more than the cheerleaders’?”
“Dios mío.” Elbows on the island countertop beside her, Gabe buried his face in his big hands. “Is it that obvious?” he groaned behind his fingers. “Do Mom and Dad already know?”
She put a hand on his shoulder, squeezing. “No, it’s not that obvious. I like looking for hidden things. Detective-like.”
“Well, thank God for that.” Straightening, he turned his attention back to the stove, adding milk to the cooked rice.
Mel hopped off the island and leaned a hip where he’d rested his a moment ago. “Are you going to tell them?”
“I don’t know.” Conflicted dark brown eyes stared back at her. “I don’t want to lose my chance at this.” He waved the wooden spoon in the air, gesturing at the kitchen around them. At their family’s legacy. “Or my chance playing for the NFL someday.”
“And you think you’re going to, just because you’re gay?”
He side-eyed her as he stirred in the rest of the ingredients. “Don’t be naive. I’m a half Cuban, half black boy who plays a testosterone-jacked sport. None of the above works with being gay.”
“But you are.” She grabbed his arm, took the spoon out of his hand and set it aside, before switching off the burner and turning him to face her. She lifted her hands, framing his face, the fear and worry misplaced on a fourteen-year-old kid. On her brother. “Fuck ’em,” she said. “Come out or don’t. Do what’s right for you, and if any of them come at you, including our parents, they’ll be coming at the both of us. And I’ll take them down. That kid tonight at prom didn’t know the half of it. I can kick anyone’s ass.”
Under her palms, Gabe’s cheeks lifted, along with the corners of his mouth. “You really don’t care that I’m gay? You don’t think I’m...wrong?”
She lifted on her tiptoes to kiss his forehead. “You, Gabriel Cruz, are the most perfect person I know.”
“You’re just saying that because I’m your brother.”
Lowering back to her heels, she pulled Gabe into as tight a hug as she could give. Anything, everything, for her brother. “Yeah, you are, and nothing’s going to change that. I will always be by your side, including when you open your first restaurant.”
He dodged her hair-sprayed hair and kissed her temple instead. “I’ll put arroz con leche on the menu just for you.”
“You better.”
Present
Gabe hadn’t lived long enough to inherit the family restaurants or open his own, and whenever Mel was in a kitchen like this, her heart ached with longing—for her brother and the future he was supposed to have. The investment career, the restaurants, a long happy marriage with Aidan, a man he proudly and openly loved, and a chance to know Danny, not just as a brother-in-law but as the man she’d grown to love and marry.
The man she could lose now, if she didn’t come at those targeting her new family like she’d promised Gabe she would come at anyone who came at him. There was no time to waste. As soon as the path was clear again, she and Jamie hustled out of the kitchen and were back on their way, only pausing again when the light from Jamie’s phone brightened.
Jamie flipped the screen over. “Update from Cam. Things on deck are tense but holding. John’s calming the crowd.”
Mel gritted her teeth. “He wasn’t supposed to show himself.”
Jamie shot her a beleaguered look. “Do any of the Talleys ever listen?”
The phone brightened again and Jamie glanced back down, reading. “There are cop cars and media vans converging on the dock.”
Nic was up. She tapped twice in front of her ear, activating the comm, as Jamie did the same across from her. The line opened to sirens and noisy commotion. “Price, report.”
Nic excused himself from a conversation and the din of noise reduced, a little. “Oakland PD is on the scene.”
“They’re holding back?”
“For now. I told them there are federal agents on board and that we’re handling tactically. But they’re not going to wait forever, Cruz. Not with that many lives at stake, and especially not with the media gathering.”
“Shit,” she cursed, then cursed again when another voice joined the fray.
“Let me through!” her best friend demanded, rougher than usual in his Irish brogue. Strung out and on high alert after an already trying day, Aidan was struggling to keep his accent in check.
“I’m sorry, sir, this is a restricted area,” said an unknown voice.
Jamie grimaced, as if he knew what was coming. Aidan didn’t disappoint.
“No shit! I’m Aidan fucking Talley, that’s my family’s ship, and I’m the Bureau SAC for San Francisco. Now let me the fuck through. Dominic!”
“He’s clear,” Nic shouted, then lower, for only her and Jamie’s ears, “Angry Leprechaun incoming.”
“What the fuck is going on?” Aidan said, voice closer.
“Here, Talley,” Nic replied.
There was a click and shuffling sounds before Aidan’s voice came through loud and clear on the fourth comm she’d left with Nic. “Mel, why the fuck didn’t you wait for backup?”
“She’s got backup, Irish.”
Aidan let out a big exhale, his relief palpable over the line. “Whiskey, you’re okay?”
“Fine, baby.”
Jamie didn’t seem the least bit embarrassed using the endearment—never had been—but Mel nonetheless averted her eyes, leaving them to their reunion. She longed for a similar renewed connection to Danny, sooner rather than later. With each passing minute, he put himself in more danger.
Her attention snapped back when Aidan’s tone reverted to short and clipped. “Good, glad you’re alive now, so I can kill you when I find you on that ship.”
Jamie hung his head, and Mel chuckled, amused.
“You’re not getting on that ship,” Nic said, and she could hear the lingering amusement in his voice as well.
“The hell I’m not.”
“Aidan,” Mel called.
“What?” he snapped.
“Katie needs you safe. All the kids do.”
All amusement fled with Aidan’s strangled groan. Every bit of conflict, frustration and dread made vocal. Across from her, Jamie closed his eyes and put a hand to the ship’s bulkhead to steady himself, obviously feeling the same pain Aidan did, compounded by separation.
Nic spoke while the rest of them couldn’t. “I’ve got an update on Lynch. She’s got no ties to the IRA.”
“Sonja Lynch, as in Lynch Shipping?” Aidan gasped. “She’s the one holding the ship and guests hostage?”
“She’s also the one who paid off the TSA agents responsible for holding you both up. And Mitch.”
“Mitch is in on this too?”
“It looks like he’s her inside man,” Mel said. “You can bet when this is over I’m going to interrogate him as to why.”
“I can’t answer ‘why’ for Mitch,” Jamie spoke up, and she looked over to see him staring down at his phone again, face aglow in the blue light. “But I think I can for Lynch.”
He flashed the screen at Mel, showing her a new text from Danny. Relief flooded her veins, then iced over as she read his message. Jamie filled in the others. “They’re after Steele, the onboard software I designed. The IRA story is a front while they bring a hacker on board.”
“Tell that to the media,” Nic said. “One of the reporters said choppers are inbound and guest accounts are already trickling out on social media.”
“Any way to lock down outgoing messages?” Mel asked Jamie.
He shook his head and tapped his ear. “Not without also jamming our signals.”
Another text from Danny lit up Jamie’s screen.
BG incoming.
“BG?” Jamie said, brows furrowed.
“Bad guys,” Mel said, and on the heel of her words, the metal deck below her feet began to rattle with incoming footsteps. She started toward another darkened cabin several feet ahead. “Aidan, Nic,” she said. “Buy us time.”
“You can’t—” Aidan started.
Nic cut him off. “We’ll do what we can.”
“Whiskey—”
“I love you, Irish,” Jamie said, forestalling further argument.
A pause, then Aidan reluctantly conceded. “I love you too. Mel, take care of him. Take care of all of them.”
“Roger that.”
Everyone clicked off, and when Jamie righted his gaze, she could see the wheels turning behind his bright blue eyes.
“I need to get in there with Danny,” he said.
“Can they hack your program?”
“Shouldn’t be able to, but if I’m in there, I can also run countermeasures.”
And take care of Danny. She liked this plan. She’d rather be the one by Danny’s side, but getting Jamie direct access to the computers while she continued to dismantle Sonja’s firepower was a better tactical position.
As the approaching footsteps grew louder, Mel pulled the rest of the game plan together in her head. “Okay, we’re gonna put up a good fight, but then you’re going to get taken.”
Jamie nodded. “And you?”
Pistol in hand, she raised her firing arm and smashed a piece of plate glass with the gun’s butt. The footsteps shifted direction, heading straight for them.
“It’ll look like I’ve been taken too. Then I’ll take them.”