Alana’s name uttered in Jason’s distinctive British accent, the voice he hadn’t been able to disguise from day one, sent a wave of blessed relief through her veins and a rush of tears to her eyes, but the gag kept her from answering. Her would-be attacker scrambled to his feet, and she moaned frantically to let Jason know she was alive and to warn him they weren’t alone in the hold.
He didn’t seem to need her warning. A series of powerful blows from him, and the man she’d only temporarily incapacitated hit the deck...and didn’t stir again.
Jason was at her side instantly, gentle hands raising her up and turning her around. She recognized the whisper of metal against leather, and knew he was drawing his knife from its sheath. “Hold still,” he ordered.
Then, just as the first time Jason had rescued her, the gag melted away. “Oh, God. Jason!” Those were the only words she managed before tears of thankfulness closed her throat.
His irreverent “One and the same, lang loi” made her choke on laughter as the rope binding her wrists was carefully cut loose. Laughter, because she knew he didn’t really mean it that way. Because she knew him. Despite the accomplishments that in any other man would have accompanied an ego twice the size of Alaska, despite the quiet confidence and assurance he exuded, Jason was relatively modest and unassuming. He’d only said what he’d said now because he knew her well enough to know she needed something to buck her up, to make her laugh so she didn’t start crying.
He sheathed the knife before lifting her effortlessly into his arms and splashing toward the rectangle of light spilling down into the hold from above. “Cam!” he bellowed.
A giant figure appeared in the opening, then strong hands reached down to lift Alana onto the deck. Three seconds later Jason was at her side, and his arms closed around her. Tight. She didn’t mind in the least because her arms were doing the same to him, holding him as if she’d never let him go. And now that it was all over, the adrenaline letdown had her silently weeping as if she’d never stop.
He pressed her head against his chest, one hand stroking her hair in soothing fashion. In a distant corner of her brain she recognized there was movement going on around them. But all she could hear was the not-so-steady beat of Jason’s heart beneath her ear.
Eventually she cried herself out and raised her head, gasping when she finally got a really good look at him. “Oh, my God!”
Unlike the first time he’d rescued her, he wasn’t wearing camouflage face paint. But he was wearing a disguising black mask over his eyes. That wasn’t what made her gasp, though. That was caused by the white bandage across one side of his forehead, which was secured by a bright red bandanna, giving him a somewhat piratical look. And the bruises already forming on the right side of his face made her exclaim, “You’re hurt! What happened?”
“Slight disagreement with a tree. Nothing serious.”
The tall man with a shaggy mane of blond hair standing beside them, the man who’d lifted her out of the hold and whose face was camouflaged, suddenly snorted. His “Don’t listen to him, Sheila” was delivered in one of the broadest Australian accents she’d ever heard. “He’s going to need stitches, but the bloody fool insisted on coming to your rescue first.” He shook his head in mock disbelief at Jason’s supposed stupidity, but his eyes were kind and his voice held rough affection for the man whose arms were still around her.
“Alana, this is Cam,” Jason said in a long-suffering voice. “Cam only thinks he knows best. Must come from being the oldest of a large family.”
Cam winked at her, then grinned. She wiped away the remnants of tears from her eyes with the back of one hand and tried to answer his smile. “Pleased to meet you, Cam. You’ll pardon me, I’m sure,” she said with the same mock seriousness he’d used, “but I’m awfully glad Jason didn’t stop to get stitches before rescuing me.”
He laughed and clapped Jason on the right shoulder. “She’ll do for you, mate.” Jason’s sudden wince of pain wasn’t lost on either of them, and their smiles faded. “Damn it,” Cam growled. “Hospital for you.”
Jason shook his head. “For Alana, not me. I want her checked out.” His gaze turned back to her, a terrible question in his eyes. “They didn’t...?”
“No, oh, no!” she reassured him, understanding what he couldn’t bring himself to ask. “They didn’t.”
His profound relief was obvious even beneath the mask. But just as obvious was the assurance that his relief was for her, not for him. That his love wouldn’t have abated one iota or been altered in any way if she had been raped. Her heart swelled with renewed love for this incredible man, and she laid her head against his chest as their arms tightened around each other again. “They didn’t even hit me this time,” she admitted softly. “Just overpowered me with chloroform.”
“I still want a doctor to look you over,” he said in decisive tones, his voice rumbling in his chest.
She privately concurred, although not for herself, for the baby. I want a doctor’s reassurance our baby’s okay. But her voice was quietly insistent when she told Jason, “Only if you’ll agree to do the same.”
* * *
Events moved swiftly after that. Another camouflaged man, whom Jason introduced merely as Trevor, came up to them. “This boat’s taking on water, Jason...as if you didn’t know,” he added when his gaze took in their wet clothes. “What do you want to do about the boat...and about them?”
He jerked a thumb over his shoulder, and that was when Alana saw the five men who, with the man still down in the hold, had abducted her that morning. Bloodied, but alive. Tightly bound and gagged, just as she’d been. But alive. Standing guard over them were two blond men in full camouflage, each with a rifle slung over one shoulder.
Her heartbeat stuttered at the instantaneous and terrifying change that came over Jason’s face as it morphed from loving concern to implacable anger. And for just a moment she feared...
“No, Jason,” she pleaded softly, clutching his forearm, which was like corded steel beneath her fingers. “No.”
He glanced down at her, and the frightening expression had vanished. “Did you really think I’d turn them into shark bait, lang loi?” he chided mildly. “Much as I might want to for what they planned to do to you?”
He didn’t say anything else, but in her mind Alana heard his words from weeks ago. Not in cold blood... We’re not judge, jury and executioner... We want to bring them to justice. Not mete out a death sentence. And she knew she’d worried for nothing.
“No. Not really,” she stammered. “Well, just for a moment... But I know you wouldn’t.” Then she focused on his last sentence. “How do you know what they planned to do to me?”
Jason’s absolute stillness revived her earlier fear. But all he said was, “I know. Let’s just leave it at that.” He turned back to Trevor. “Let’s get them aboard the Night Wind. And the one in the hold, too. We’ll decide what to do with them on the way back. As for this boat...” He smiled, but it was a smile she’d never seen on Jason’s face before. Cold. Ruthless.
Whatever that smile meant, Trevor seemed to get the message. His answering smile matched Jason’s. “Consider it done.”
* * *
Jason and Trevor transferred Alana to the Night Wind, and saw her safely ensconced on a seat in the cabin, before she thought of something. “Oh. One of the men who abducted me has my cell phone as well as my keys and beacon key fob. I assume the beacon is how you located me, and I want it back. I was never more grateful for any electronic device than I was when I remembered I had it.”
Trevor glanced at Jason, then back at her. “I’ll get them, ma’am.”
After he left, Alana said with certainty, “He was involved in my first rescue, too. Not the driver of the van that took me home—the other man.”
“What makes you say that? We were all—”
Alana mentally added the word he didn’t say: disguised. We were all disguised. Just as they were all disguised today. She smiled faintly. “I recognize his voice. Same way I recognized yours.”
He didn’t bother trying to deny it, but he didn’t confirm it verbally, either. The flash of admiration in his eyes, though, betrayed him.
A dark-haired man entered the cabin just then, and Jason introduced him by his first name, too. She wasn’t upset when she figured out why he wasn’t giving her last names...she didn’t have a need to know. And what she didn’t know she couldn’t inadvertently reveal.
“Pleased to meet you, ma’am,” Chao said politely before taking the seat at the helm and unlocking the controls.
“Him, too,” she mouthed at Jason. “He was the driver.”
“You’re entirely too perceptive, lang loi,” he murmured.
“And don’t you forget it,” she teased. “You’ll never be able to lie to me and get away with it.”
* * *
And just like that, Alana slid a verbal knife between Jason’s ribs again, all unaware. The knowledge that he had lied to her from day one hurt worse than the airbag that had punched the breath from his lungs earlier.
She must have read something in his set expression because her smile faltered. “I was just teasing, Jason. I know you’d never try to deceive me.”
He almost blurted out the truth then and there. “About that,” he began, but then Trevor walked in and the moment was lost. “Here you are, ma’am. Cell phone, keys and key fob.” He handed Alana’s belongings to her. To Jason he said, “All set,” as he took a seat across from them, and Jason nodded his understanding.
Cam, Luke and Logan suddenly crowded into the cabin, and Cam told Chao, “Good to go,” before taking a seat on the other side of Alana.
Chao started the engines immediately, and in less than a minute the Night Wind was pulling away from the now-listing Eight Tigers boat.
“Which one ran you off the road, Jason?” Cam asked in the manner of a man who was just making conversation. “Could you recognize him?”
Alana turned startled eyes on Jason. “Someone ran you off the road?” Before he could answer, the question cleared from her face. “Of course. That’s what you meant when you said you’d had a slight disagreement with a tree.”
“Thanks, Cam,” Jason said drily, glancing over Alana’s head at his friend and mouthing the words You’re toast at him. He removed his mask, debating what to tell Alana. Then his gaze slid to meet hers. “I was already at the DeWinters’ when you set off the beacon. I was on the road a couple of minutes later, and I was right behind the van that had you.”
“Oh, Jason.” She leaned thankfully against his undamaged shoulder. “I was praying when I was in the back of that van. Praying you’d rescue me again. I knew I shouldn’t count on it, but...I couldn’t help hoping.”
One corner of his mouth flicked upward in a half smile. “If they hadn’t run me off the road, they’d never even have gotten you on their boat in the first place.”
“One man against six?” There was a doubtful note in her voice.
“Are you questioning my manhood or my resolve?” he teased and was rewarded by a somewhat watery chuckle.
“They ran Jason off the road after they failed to stop him with bullets,” Cam volunteered in the voice of one who was merely trying to be helpful.
Alana’s hand tightened on his shirt. “They shot at you?”
“Thanks, Cam,” he repeated even more drily than before. To Alana he whispered softly in her ear, “They’d have to kill me to stop me, lang loi. Guess they figured that out.”
“Oh, Jason.”
Across the cabin Trevor glanced at his watch and stood, turning around to gaze through the open doorway at the rapidly receding Eight Tigers boat in the distance. No other craft were anywhere in sight. He tugged something from his pocket and Jason tightened his arm around Alana.
“Wait for it,” he said quietly.
Alana raised her head from his shoulder. “Wait for what?”
Trevor said matter-of-factly, “Three, two, one, boom,” and pressed the detonator button.
An explosion rocked the air, and the Eight Tigers boat disintegrated in a fireball. The ignited fuel in its tanks caused flames to dance atop the surface of the ocean for a few seconds...then they disappeared, one by one. Until all that was left was a black smudge in the distance and a cloud of smoke that quickly dispersed.
“You...you blew up their boat.” Shock was evident on Alana’s face.
He’d known it wouldn’t be easy for her to accept that RMM’s tactics were sometimes...problematic. But it was best she know now. It was one thing to tell her he and RMM broke the law on occasion. It was another thing for her to witness it firsthand. “Prostitution, drugs and pornography made using trafficked women paid for that boat,” he reminded her. “And we had to rescue you, no matter what it took.”
“Yes, but...”
“We fired on that boat. Rammed it. Boarded it. Took six men prisoner. That’s piracy and kidnapping, any way you look at it.” His voice was steady. “We couldn’t leave physical evidence behind. It’s bad enough there are six men in the hold who could testify against us...although in order to do that they’d have to admit kidnapping you. And they’d have to be able to identify us, which we’ve made sure they can’t do.” To make his point, he lifted the mask he’d removed earlier. “So as long as there’s no physical evidence...”
“You and RMM are in the clear. I understand.”
He searched her eyes for long moments, and she held his gaze. “I think you do understand,” he said finally. Unutterably relieved.
She nodded. “That’s why I want to join RMM.”
He did a double take. “What?”
“You told me that if a woman trained as you train, if she was as dedicated to the cause as you were...you’d let a woman join your ranks.”
He stared helplessly. “Yes, but...”
“You said the members only recruit their trusted friends. What I just witnessed is something no one outside of RMM has ever seen. Which means you trust me.”
Shock held him silent for a minute until he acknowledged Alana was right. He did trust her. Not just personally, but professionally. Still... “That doesn’t mean you’re physically up to the challenge, though.”
“I’ve been training for the past six weeks. Ever since I went to Zakhar. Running. Lifting weights. Hand-to-hand combat, too—I asked Juliana, and she assigned the head of her security team to work with me, Captain Mateja-Jones.” She smiled in self-deprecation. “I’ll never be as good as Angelina. But I’m a lot better prepared than I was when I started out.”
His thoughts swirling, all Jason could think of was Alana putting herself at risk the way he did. Gambling with her life. His first reaction—absolutely not!—was purely selfish. Because he couldn’t bear the idea of anything happening to her. Because he’d give his own life to keep her safe.
But...did he have the right to make that decision for her?
“You don’t have to decide now. I need more training before I’ll be ready. I just wanted you to understand how I feel. I’m not asking because I love you and I want to share this with you...although I do love you and I do want to share this part of your life.” She smiled faintly. “I want to join RMM because of what it stands for. You were called to do this work, Jason. It’s a moral calling. You can’t not do whatever you can to protect the innocent. I feel the same way.”