Miranda watched the ship growing bigger as the car she was riding in sped toward it. The harbor lights shone on a dull red hull. The top of the ship was black and white. The lights illuminated men on deck too. She tried to count them but it was impossible to get an accurate number as the car got closer and the top deck disappeared from view. She’d lost track at five.

The ship wasn’t the biggest one in the harbor, but it was still pretty big.

The driver stopped and turned to her. He pointed at the gangway leading into the side of the ship and spoke in broken English. “You go. They wait for you. When you done, Miss Dira send car.”

Not that it mattered, but Miranda asked anyway. “How will she know I’m ready?”

“She send car in morning. You wait.”

“And if Mr. Conti is finished with me at midnight?”

“You wait.”

Miranda rolled her eyes as she climbed from the car. Yeah, not waiting. Not hardly. Ian Black had driven her to Miss Dira’s brothel himself. She’d asked him point-blank why he was helping HOT if he’d been disavowed—and why they were accepting his help, even if they didn’t accept it without some suspicion. Trust but verify.

He’d looked at her with that enigmatic gaze, and she’d known she wasn’t going to get anything out of him. He was a brutally handsome man, the kind that made women of all ages swoon. But he did nothing for her. Nobody but Cody did these days.

“Have you ever played with one of those Chinese finger puzzles? You stick your fingers in and then you can’t get them out, no matter how hard you pull?”

She shook her head. She knew what those were, of course, but she’d never played with one. And she didn’t know what the hell that had to do with the question she’d just asked.

“I’m still pulling, Miranda,” he’d said.

She hadn’t even been surprised that he knew her name. At that point, she’d expected it. “Maybe you have to stop pulling then.”

He’d grinned. “Yeah, well, maybe I will one of these days. Right now, I’m not ready to stop.”

“I’m not sure I understand a damn thing you just said. But I get the point. You’re stuck in something and there’s no way out just yet.”

“Maybe there is a way,” he said. “Maybe I’m not willing to take it.”

They’d arrived at the brothel then and a tall, dark-skinned woman walked out to greet them. Her name was Dira and she was gorgeous. She’d taken one look at Miranda and decided she was going to be a French hooker who’d just arrived in Jorwani. Miranda didn’t bother to ask how she’d supposedly arrived, but she got the idea it wasn’t completely willingly.

Disgusting thought, but there it was. Now she stepped up the gangway and walked onto the ship as a man motioned her forward. He gave her a rough pat-down, squeezing her ass as he did so. When he reached her breasts, she closed her eyes and gritted her teeth as he felt her up. She could elbow him in the stomach, whip around and knee his balls—but that wouldn’t get her where she needed to go. So she endured the groping and then meekly followed along as he led her into the bowels of the ship.

It was a confusing warren of passages. She thought about Cody and his team trying to find her in this metal monstrosity, and she hoped to God the tracker device worked this deep in the ship. Lucky had told her that HOT might not get a signal from her until they were on board.

Miranda peered into dark corners and passageways as they walked, trying to get a hint about the cargo that Conti was so keen on—and that Black wanted.

But there was nothing she could see, nothing that indicated what was so important to either man. If there were women on this ship, they weren’t being kept anywhere close to where she was headed.

They were still belowdecks when the man stopped at a door and rapped on it. A rough voice that she recognized told him to enter. He swung the door open to reveal a suite that looked like something from a cheesy porn set.

Dear God, Victor Conti was disgusting. The room was shadowed in pink light—a plus for her since it wouldn’t illuminate her face too much—and incense permeated the air. Conti was lying back on a large bed with black satin sheets, the burgundy smoking jacket he wore barely concealing his formfitting black briefs. She decided that was done on purpose. He’d very clearly arranged himself in such a way as to show off his assets—or what he considered his assets.

Bile rose in her throat but she swallowed it down.

“You can go,” he told the man, who bowed and walked out of the room, shutting the door behind him. At least it wasn’t locked.

A fine sheen of sweat rose on Miranda’s skin. It was disgust, pure and simple. But she had a role to play and she was going to play it. Because HOT was extracting this dirtbag tonight thanks to her willingness to stand here with a tracking device.

“What’s your name?” Conti asked.

Miranda only smiled. She’d been told to pretend she didn’t speak English. That worked for her.

Conti swore as he climbed to his feet. “Ah yes, Dira said you spoke no English. Fresh off the boat from France, she said. But she also said you’d know what to do.”

He came over and walked around her very slowly, studying her. Then he reached out and took her chin between his fingers and turned her face this way and that.

Her heart pounded, but she worked to keep her face smooth and calm.

“Very pretty,” he said. “Very pretty.” He started to untie his robe. “I want to see that mouth wrapped around my dick, pretty girl.”

Come on, Cody and the gang. Don’t make me do this.

She grabbed for the tie of his robe and slipped it open. Conti’s eyes gleamed. “Yes, baby, that’s what I want.”

But she didn’t stop there. She made a game of it, pulling the sash all the way from the robe and holding on to it. She could tie him up with this thing. But how soon should she do it? If she disabled him now, what if HOT didn’t show up for another hour? Fuck, she hated being out of the comm loop, but there’d been no way to keep her in it.

She just had to trust that they were coming.

* * *

The SEALs slipped into the Zodiac boats that would take them to the harbor. Cody slung his pack onto the floor in front of him and waited impatiently to be under way. Some of the Alpha Squad operators were coming with them and planned to split off to find the cargo while the SEALs secured the ship and went after Conti. Though SEALs were typically considered to be the combat swimmers, in reality all Special Operators went through combat-swim training—which meant the Army guys were perfectly capable of keeping up on this mission.

The rest of Alpha Squad would be waiting at the docks. The Brandons, both expert snipers, were on overwatch duty, tucked into a building overlooking Conti’s ship. From there they could report on the number of men on deck as well as eliminate any threats that cropped up while the team was infiltrating the target.

The boats fired up and they motored off into the night. Cody could see the harbor lights up ahead, and he knew which ship was Conti’s. The harbor wasn’t that big, thankfully, and Conti’s ship was docked in an area by itself.

The wind was cool on his face, but not cold. Jorwani was temperate for most of the year with both a rainy and a dry season. Fortunately, it was the dry season.

He thought of Miranda. Of that kiss. Hell, of every touch over the past couple of days. He’d been so fucking mad at her, and yet he’d wanted her too. He’d been determined to have nothing to do with her, and then he’d buckled at the first sign that Money might be trying to get into her panties.

No way in hell. That was his pussy. His mouth. His body. His, well, everything. He was learning to go with the flow of that idea, though he wasn’t sure how long it would last. But right now, it showed no signs of going away anytime soon.

He tried not to think of the danger she was putting herself in tonight, but he couldn’t quite block it out. The last time they’d faced off against a foe, she’d died. It hadn’t been real, of course, but this time—hell, this time it was all real. The foe. The danger. The possibility that she could die. He wasn’t going to be there to protect her from Conti, at least not for the first few minutes. What if the man recognized her?

He told himself that wasn’t very likely. She had red hair. She had green eyes. She’d been wearing a shitload of makeup tonight that made her look different than usual. Conti would have to be damn good to notice she was the same woman in the little amount of time he was going to be with her.

But even if he did—fuck, Miranda was a professional. She could take down an assailant lightning fast. He didn’t doubt her skills—but that didn’t stop him from worrying.

The boats entered the mouth of the harbor and skirted along the edges, getting as close to the ship as they dared. They cut the engines, and then everyone slipped into the sea with their waterproof packs on their backs. They were each wearing a Rapid Diver system, which was attached to a harness and capable of providing them with twenty minutes or so of air without taking up the kind of space ordinary scuba equipment would. Twenty minutes would allow them to swim underwater to the ship and surface undetected.

When they reached the ship’s fire line, Cody slipped out of the harness for the RDS and stowed it against the hull. Everyone else did the same. If they had to exfil by water, they could retrieve the devices and go. But the plan was that Ian Black’s men would collect the devices when they took control of the ship.

Cody waited his turn to go up the fire line. He climbed hand over hand and slipped over the railing and onto the deck. Everyone got out their night vision and comm equipment. They inserted microphones and ear pieces and surveyed the area with their scopes. Next, weapons were removed from waterproof bags and everything stowed for their return.

“Brandy, we’ve reached the deck. Report,” Viking said into the mic.

“Copy, Viking. Three male skinnies on aft deck, starboard. Smoking. How copy?”

“Viking copies all. We’re going to put them to sleep and go below. You got a read on Juliet Whiskey?”

Juliet Whiskey—JW—was Miranda. Cody’s heart thumped.

“Not since she went below. We’re too far from the signal.”

“All right. Viking out.”

“Roger that, Viking. Good luck.”

Viking shot a look at Blade, who was fiddling with his radio equipment. “Got her,” Blade said. “Signal’s faint, but it’s enough.”

They’d known this could be a problem with the steel hull deflecting the signal, but at least they had enough to go in and get her.

“Let’s get the skinnies,” Cage said. “Camel, with me.”

The two of them ghosted away toward the aft deck, two others headed toward the bridge, and the rest of the SEALs started toward one of the metal doors that led into the ship’s interior. If Conti expected invasion, he’d have had his men set up funnels and trip grenades to warn them of intruders. But nothing in the intel Ian Black had gotten indicated that Conti had reason to believe a team of American military Special Operators was on their way to get him.

Still, they would follow their training and slip through the passageways carefully, looking for trip wires and bolted doors that funneled them into a specific path where they might be ambushed.

And then, once they got through all that and found where Conti was trying to get his freak on with Miranda, they were going to take that motherfucker down and bring him to justice.

Cody only hoped they got there fast.