45. Jezebel

CHAPTER 45

JEZEBEL

T he assholes were lazy. A single key fit the padlock at the sally port, the one securing the service entrance at the rear of the prison, and the two on the side doors. Based on my recon, I was almost certain Six was still in the building.

I chose the door closest to the sally port, slipped into the gun gallery like the wraith that I was, and settled in to wait.

And wait.

And wait.

Damn, it stank in here. No normal person would put up with the stench, which was another reason I thought these assholes were drug runners. Drug runners with a penchant for sampling their own product. Chronically snorting illegal substances led to fun side effects like frequent nosebleeds, a collapsed septum, and a fucked-up sense of smell.

But at least Cole was safe. I’d parked him in the trees beyond the barracks, and on my way back, I’d brushed over the occasional footprint so Six couldn’t track him there. Not that Six seemed to be doing much of anything. He was in the kitchen. Occasionally, I heard movement in there, but he hadn’t shown his face yet .

Hurry up, hurry up, hurry up.

My patience was thin today. These fuckers had screwed with me personally. Although I wasn’t worried about the future—I could switch to a new identity in a heartbeat, and Cole had no idea where I lived—I felt an aching loss that hadn’t been there after the split with Bastian. Cole would go on with his life, but I’d play no part in it.

I’d miss him.

I’d always miss him.

Then I heard the boat.

A powerful roar, and it was heading the wrong way. Away from Skeleton Cay. For the first time in forever, I felt a twinge of fear. The Mako was leaving, but who the hell was driving it? For a moment, I wondered if I’d miscounted, if there had been seven men on the boat and one of them had stayed quiet and hidden, waiting to escape when the coast was clear. But I knew I hadn’t miscounted.

Could someone have been on the island already? A person left to guard whatever the gang had stashed in the prison? No, that didn’t make sense. The main building had been locked from the outside when we arrived, and the barracks hadn’t been touched in years. A guard wouldn’t be living wild in the forest.

There was only one explanation. Cole had ignored my safety instructions, found the keys, and taken the boat.

Fuck my eternally damned life.

I only hoped he went home to Emerald Shores rather than heading to Windjammer Bank, because Witt was the type of man who’d lash out if cornered.

Six must have heard the boat engine too, because he jogged down the central walkway, heading for the admin block at the front of the prison where he could see the harbour through the barred windows. I shot him in the chest, and he sprawled across the floor.

Instinct nearly sent me running to the sea, but reason told me I’d never catch the Mako anyway. Instead, I glanced at the empty harbour as I unlocked the sally port. Cole was gone, but at least I could find out what had been so important to the gang that they’d ruin my relationship.

Drugs.

It was drugs.

All those folks on Treasure Atoll had been looking in the wrong place for the spoils.

Plastic-wrapped packages had been stacked in cells on the south side of the prison, almost reaching the ceiling in places. I stuck my knife into several of them and found a smorgasbord of illegal substances. White powder that might have been coke, but I wasn’t about to taste it and check. Black tar heroin, the more refined brown heroin, dried marijuana, as best I could see in the low light. There was money too, US dollars and San Gallician pounds. Several million bucks at a guess. No wonder our visitors had been trigger-happy.

What would happen to the stash? That was above my pay grade, thank fuck. Demelza had some uses. First, she’d interview me, then she’d complain I was making her job difficult and give me a lecture on protocol. Once she’d chewed me out, she’d liaise with whoever she needed to liaise with and explain the situation with as little information as she could get away with giving. My name wouldn’t be anywhere in the picture. I’d simply be an anonymous operator who stumbled across something unexpected while on vacation.

And maybe I’d get that lecture sooner rather than later.

Another boat was approaching.

Friend or foe? The Choir or more drug smugglers?

I had twenty-nine rounds left, and I stopped to collect Six’s spare magazine on my way out of the building. Would this shitshow ever end?

Yes .

Unexpectedly, yes.

I squinted at the single figure in the approaching Mako, and my heart flipped when I recognised him.

Cole.

He was coming back?

I ran down to the harbour and onto the jetty as he drew up alongside. “What the hell are you playing at?”

“I remembered that Makos have storage beneath the seats.”

“Yes, I know that. I checked the compartments.”

“Not this one.” He stood, pulled the seat on the captain’s chair forward, then lifted it from the rear. “My neighbour has a Mako, and this is where he tosses his keys when we go diving. I thought it was worth checking, and there they were.”

“And then you just took off?” The words sounded angrier than I’d intended, so I made an effort to soften my voice. “I thought you’d gone for good.”

“I won’t lie and say I didn’t think about it, but I told you before—we came to this island together, and we’re leaving together. But I didn’t want the gunman to sneak out and escape, and the easiest way to prevent that was to take the boat. Then I heard the shot and figured it was over.”

A sob welled up inside me, but I swallowed it down. After everything I’d done, Cole hadn’t abandoned me.

He hadn’t abandoned me.

Relief flooded through my veins, and so did pain. I tried to smile, but it turned into more of a grimace.

“Great. We can go now.”

“Bella, are you okay?” Cole asked.

“I think I broke a rib. Adrenaline is a wonderful thing.”

Adrenaline and analgesics. I remembered the bottle of Tylenol I’d seen in one of the lockers earlier and retrieved it.

“Damn. And the guy…? Is he…? ”

I nodded and swallowed two capsules dry. “No longer a problem.”

“Did you find any drugs in there?”

“So many drugs. Heroin and marijuana, for sure. I think there’s coke too, or it might be China white.”

“Can I see?”

Didn’t he trust me? “Sure. The bodies are in the central walkway, and the contraband is to the left.”

Thankfully, the bodies were at the far end of the prison, lumps in the gloom. The aroma of decomp warred with shit where the freshly dead had let go of their sphincters. I hurried Cole past. He gave a low whistle when he saw the endless stacks of drugs and gasped when he spotted the piles of hundred-dollar bills.

“Holy shit. There must be a million bucks here.”

“At least. A million bucks in hundreds fits into a carry-on bag. Don’t ask me how I know that.”

“There are going to be a lot of things I can’t ask you, aren’t there?”

“Yes.”

Cole eyed me warily. “Are you thinking of taking the money and running? You could disappear with this amount.”

What? “You have the boat keys.”

I’d deliberately let him keep them so he’d feel more comfortable about the shitty state of affairs.

“You have the gun.”

For fuck’s sake. I snapped out the magazine and gave it to him, then passed him the spare from my pocket too.

“I’m an assassin, not a thief. And arguably, you need the money more than I do.”

“I’m not going to steal it either.”

“I know. That’s one of the things I like about you, Cole. You have morals.”

“Do you? ”

I did. They just didn’t line up with most other people’s. The Choir’s brief was simple—make the world a safer place. Oh, and try not to cause too many diplomatic incidents.

“I’m not some renegade. I save more lives than I take.”

Cole’s sharp intake of breath said he didn’t believe me.

“How many people die from drug-related incidents in San Gallicano?”

“Four hundred and twenty-seven last year.” His voice dropped. “Frankie’s brother was one of them.”

I touched his arm, relieved when he didn’t flinch. “I’m so sorry. Did you know him well?”

“We weren’t close, but he was always around. They say there was a bad batch of heroin.” Cole eyed up the stacks. “Maybe there’s more.”

“It’ll be destroyed.”

“We should burn it.”

I shook my head. “Leave that to the government. Let them put these bricks on TV and make some Colombian drug lord cry.”

We needed the evidence of narcotics to use in our negotiations, and by “we,” I meant Demelza. Hey, Mr. Police Chief, a US operator killed six people in your jurisdiction, but it was self-defence and look at all the drugs we found.

“What if more men show up in the meantime?” Cole asked. “Are we going to stay here until the government sends in soldiers to guard the place?”

“Did you forget about Dr. Blaylock?”

The look of horror on his face said he’d done exactly that.

“You’ve had plenty of other shit to worry about,” I reminded him.

“We need to get help.”

“No, I need to get over there.”

“I know what the three boys did was bad, but on a scale of zero to running a drug empire, they’re somewhere near the bottom. They don’t deserve to die.”

I sat on a pile of drugs, unlaced my left boot, and tipped out a stone. The boots didn’t smell much better than the corpses.

“I don’t always kill people.”

“You said you were an assassin.”

“Sometimes I am, when the need arises. But I also do other stuff.”

“What stuff?”

“Hostage rescue, intelligence gathering, security audits, training…”

In the Choir, we’d settled into roles we were comfortable with, based on our strengths. If someone needed to die, the chances were that Tulsa, Dice, or I would be sent to dispatch them. Tulsa also masterminded our hostage rescue missions, and she wasn’t a bad investigator. Spider was our B Echo had made sure of that—“so let’s not pretend that background checks are something out of the ordinary.”

“There’s a difference between googling and whatever it is you do.”

“And right now, that’s a good thing because I know what I’m up against.”

“What we’re up against.”

Huh? “We?”

There was no “we.” My secrets had been well and truly spilled, and now we were two separate entities. A gentleman and a psychopath. It was time to go on our not-so-merry way and live unhappily ever after.

“Did you forget about the past month entirely? The part where we spent every night together? The part where I fucked you bare yesterday? The part where I told you I loved you?”

Loved. Past tense. My eyes began to prickle, dammit. I realised how much I’d miss Cole when he was gone, how much I’d wanted him to be a part of my future.

“I didn’t forget, but everything’s different now, isn’t it?”

“And that means you can just walk away, no discussion and fuck my feelings?”

“What else do you expect me to do?”

“Talk? I get that you see yourself as a monster. I get that you think you’re unlovable. I get that you find it hard to trust people, and you’ve spent so long alone that you struggle to share with somebody else.”

“I never said any of that.”

“You didn’t have to. ”

“And I’m not alone. I share a house with nine other people.”

“How many of them are in your bed?”

“None. But seven of them are women, and I’m mostly straight. One of the men is gay, and the other is old enough to be my father.”

Technically. I was twenty-nine; Priest was forty-five and heading for silver fox territory.

“Mostly straight?”

“I’ll take one for the team if I have to.”

Occasionally, it was even fun.

“Somehow, you’re the most selfless and selfish person I’ve ever met.” Cole sat beside me on the pile of heroin. “This isn’t me forgiving you for everything you didn’t tell me. But I can’t turn my feelings on and off the way you do. I loved you yesterday, and yeah, I’m really fucking pissed at you, but I don’t not love you today.” He pulled my dive knife out of his shorts’ pocket and handed it to me. “If you’re going to rip out my heart, do it properly.”

“You can’t love me.”

“My feelings are a real fucking mess right now. The only thing I know for sure is that I hate the thought of never seeing you again.”

“I’d never be able to give you what you want.”

“And what do I want, Bella? Jerry? Whatever your name is.”

“Jezebel,” I whispered. “Call me Jezebel.”

“Jezebel.” The briefest smile played across Cole’s lips. “I like it. And I also like independent women. Years ago, I read a magazine article that said women hate a man who talks about his exes, so I try not to do that, but you’re not like any woman I’ve ever met. So let me tell you about Gretchen. She was beautiful. Beautiful and needy. Since she was my first real girlfriend, I thought it was normal for her to call sixteen times if I was ten minutes late getting home. I was flattered when she asked for my opinion on her clothes, and I learned to gush praise because anything less sent her running back to the closet and made us late for wherever we were going. She took a course so she could dive with me, but she hated night diving, and currents, and shore diving because the sand got into her wetsuit, so the number of sites I could visit kept decreasing, but she still managed to make our relationship look great on social media. Everyone thought we were the perfect couple.” Cole corrected himself. “Almost everyone.”

Uh-oh. I thought I knew what was coming…

“I thought it was sweet that she brought drinks and snacks for my friends if they came over, but now I look back and realise she was flirting with Marcus right in front of me.” Called it. “I gave her everything I was capable of giving, and it still wasn’t enough.” Cole didn’t look at me, but he did twine his fingers through mine. “I thought you were perfect. There when I needed you, no pressure to give when I had nothing left in the tank. Plus you saved my life twice. Maybe three times if that story about those men at Uncle Mike’s place is true.”

“It’s true.” And now I had a lump in my throat. “But as I said, in hindsight, I think they were just there to scare you.”

“With guns?” Cole didn’t sound certain.

“Whoever provided the loan would never have gotten his money back if they’d killed you.”

“He won’t get it back anyway—I don’t have a million bucks kicking around.”

“He won’t get it back because I’m going to educate him on his mistakes.”

“Please, no more bodies.”

“I will absolutely fuck him up in a different way.”

Cole squeezed my hand. “It isn’t your problem.”

“When I picked you up that night in the Black Diamond, it became my problem.” I squeezed his hand back. “If we were in a parallel universe where I had a different job, one where I was capable of letting my emotions do as they pleased, you would be the man I’d love.”

The silence stretched my nerves tauter than any terrorist had ever done.

“I’ll take that,” Cole said finally. “For now.”

“Why are you acting like this?”

“Like what?”

“Nice? You’re not a fan of violence.”

“I couldn’t do what you do. And I can’t pretend I’m comfortable with you doing it either, but I’ve seen firsthand why it’s necessary. Sure, if you’d told me that first night that you killed people with terrifying efficiency, I’d have shit myself, but then I got to know the girl behind the gun. You’re not a psycho.”

My shrink would disagree with him there. But better not to mention that part.

“I need to get to the Crosswind .”

“Not this afternoon, you don’t. There’s a storm rolling in. I felt it when I was out on the water.”

A storm? Thunder? Rain?

“A storm is perfect.”

“Do you want to get struck by lightning?”

“Statistically, the chances of that happening are low. The hardest part of this job is going to be the approach. Witt won’t be expecting to hear other boats in the vicinity, but if I keep the speed low, the storm will mask the sound of the engine.”

“What will you do with the boat?”

“Beach it on Windjammer Bank.”

“In a storm, it might float free.”

“That’s okay; I won’t need it anymore. I just need to get onto the island. ”

“And then you’ll use the storm as cover to board the boat?”

I shook my head. “No, I’ll hunker down and wait for the weather to clear. When Witt makes his next dive, I’ll board. The two college boys are the least risky to handle, and they don’t have a gun. I checked their luggage when they boarded.”

I was confident they wouldn’t have found mine. There would simply be no reason for them to feel around under the bathroom sink, and Cole didn’t carry a weapon. Did he? Rather than being upset about the invasion of privacy, Cole grimaced.

“They might have a gun.”

“Elaborate.”

“There was one at the helm.”

“I thought you hated guns?”

“It’s Frankie’s. A few years ago, a bunch of assholes in a speedboat were boarding nice-looking yachts and robbing the passengers, so she decided I needed protection. I told her I didn’t, but she insisted, and it was easier to just tuck the gun away and forget about it.”

“Isn’t there a rule in San Gallicano stating that guns have to be stored safely?”

They had controls and licencing. Firearms had to be bought from licenced retailers, and private sales were verboten. I’d read up on the rules on the plane, just to see how long I’d spend in prison if I got caught. Two to five years, apparently.

“Frankie doesn’t always play by the rules.”

“I kind of love her for that.”

“I was worried you’d hate her. Because of our past, you know?”

“Did you sleep with her when we were together?”

“Of course not.”

“Then it’s just that: the past. ”

“While we’re on the subject, stop using the past tense when you’re talking about us. We’re still working this shit out.”

“The end is inevitable.”

“Only in your head. Neither of us is ready to play happy families. We both have demanding jobs at the moment. Instead of me dating my right hand and you picking up lonely men in hotel bars, we could try a different option.”

“People always leave me. My father left before I was even born.”

“My father didn’t want me either.”

“But my dad didn’t not want me. At least, I think so. He sent money my whole life, but we never met.”

Cole wiped something off my cheek. A tear. Dammit, it was a tear.

“I’m so sorry.”

“Plus I live in Vegas. You’ll move back to San Gallicano in a year.”

“A year is a long time. Who knows what might happen?” He kissed my hair, the asshole. “Live for the moment.”

His lips met mine, and I couldn’t find it in me to push him away. I still had secrets, of course I did, but the biggest one was out in the open now. I kept waiting for Cole to change his mind, to pull back and tell me reality had finally sunk in, that I was a savage.

“These clothes are disgusting,” he murmured.

Agreed. “I needed an outfit that wouldn’t stand out in the dark.”

“Can they go now?”

I wriggled out of the jacket and toed off the boots, then Cole tugged off the sweatpants. He was already hard, his cock tenting his shorts, but when he picked me up, I protested .

“Not here. The forensics team will be all over this area soon, and cum stains would be hard to explain.”

Cole slid my bikini bottoms to the side and nailed me in a dusty office at the front of the building. It reminded me of the night we met, those frantic first hours together, and in a way, it was the same. Masks had been stripped away. Cole was meeting the real me, and I was seeing a new side of him too. But some things didn’t change. He gave me what I needed—a red ass and his hand around my throat as I came. He followed, releasing deep inside me as he groaned my name.

Jezebel.

I did love him.

I did.

But I kept the words to myself. We still had challenges to overcome—retaking the Crosswind and dealing with AceInTheHole—and for the first time in my life, I was scared of rejection.