Tack, who couldn’t take her eyes off Cate’s just-short-enough shorts, nodded once. His view was spectacular.
Distant alarm bells in his brain told him his thoughts were wandering into dangerous territory. He needed to keep this all business. He had a job to do. A job that had more riding on it than just money.
They made their way to the small airport parking lot and an old, slightly battered minibus with St. Anthony’s Resort in faded blue paint on the side. She wasn’t exactly living the luxury resort life he’d thought she would be after taking off with so much cash. Clever, he thought. Wouldn’t be good to be flashing money around that she’d taken. Maybe she was smarter than he thought.
He stuffed his seabag into the luggage caddie behind the bus driver’s seat and settled into a worn blue bench where he could watch her drive. She climbed up into the big bus seat and looked like a child trying to reach the pedals.
“Okay, just want to apologize in advance,” she said. “I don’t normally do shuttle duty. My driver, Henry, is out today.”
Henry the driver? Maybe the socialite hasn’t wandered so far from the money, after all.
“He had to take his wife to the doctor, and I’m all left feet when it comes to driving the beast.”
“The beast?”
Cate patted the old, cracked dash affectionately. “This old girl doesn’t know how to quit, but she does know how to give one heck of a bumpy ride. You might want to fasten your seat belt.” With that, she threw the bus into gear and they launched out on the road, with Tack nearly flattened against the bus window as they jostled down the bumpy asphalt.
“Are you all right there, Mr. Reeves? Hope you don’t get carsick.”
“Nope. And call me Tack.” He stared at her decidedly not manicured nails and felt a flicker of doubt. He was 90 percent sure this was Cate Allen. But that left 10 percent uncertainty, and he didn’t like it.
He met her gaze in the oversize rearview mirror above her head.
“Sure...Tack. Unusual name.”
“Nickname, for tactical, I guess. You could say I’m a planner.” Nobody went over a mission like he did. He thought of every possible scenario far in advance. His unit thought he was crazy, but when the shit hit the fan, he was ready. He was never without a backup plan. “My parents named me Thomas, but nobody calls me that.”
“Tack.” His name sounded good coming from her pink lips. “I like it.”
He ought to be friendly, try to fish out some information, but he didn’t feel like letting down his guard. This woman, if she really was Cate Allen, was cunning and dangerous, he reminded himself, no matter how pretty her smile happened to be.
She shifted gears on the bus, and the beast protested with a black puff of smoke out the back. Tack wasn’t 100 percent sure they’d make it to the resort in this old clunker.
“You in the marines?” she asked nonchalantly, as if somehow his service were emblazoned on his forehead like a tattoo.
“Why do you say that?” He knew he sounded overly defensive. He needed to calm down. There was no way she’d be able to trace him to his employer, no way she’d find out what he was really doing on St. Anthony’s.
Cate glanced at him in the rearview, surprised. “Your luggage,” she said. “The seabag? My dad was a navy man. Let’s just say I saw a few of those in my time.”
Tack glanced at the olive-colored knapsack, wondering if he should lie, but decided not to, remembering the cardinal rule of deep cover: the truth was easier to remember. “Yeah, I used to be in the marines.”
“Where’d you serve?”
“Six tours of duty in Afghanistan.” And a dishonorable discharge. Tack wasn’t proud of that. Who would be? But if it came down to it, he’d do the same damn thing all over again. He’d take that court-martial, again and again. Sometimes, principle outranked rules.
“Well, thank you for your service,” Cate said.
He knew she probably meant well, but he wished she hadn’t said that. He’d served his country, and he’d gone through hell, so what? Lots of guys did. Lots of good men died. Some men served America who weren’t even in the armed forces. He thought of his brave translator, a local Afghan named Adeeb, who’d saved him more than once. Now, he was the one in trouble.
But this job could change all that. Allen had promised to help. That’s all that mattered. Tack had a job to do, and when he did it, everything would be made right.
Tack grew silent, watching as she steered the old clunker down the road. Still, why did she have to be so...nice?
She jostled them down a narrow, barely two-lane road with no lane markers and no shoulders. The tiny road wound up the coast, the view of the water brilliant below them. Cars drove on the left side here, probably because the island used to be British, before it was French and then Dutch. Battered trucks and rental hatchbacks passed them in the opposite direction. Just a line of wildflowers separated them from a plunge down a fairly steep cliff to the water below.
A loud bang shook Tack to his core, and for a second, he was right back in the godforsaken desert. Then he heard the rim of the front left tire hit the road with a deafening screech as they careened sharply to the left.
Cate went silent as her hands gripped the oversize steering wheel. The old minibus lurched dangerously close to the cliff face. Another foot and they’d be taking the shortcut to the beach, grille first. She struggled to keep the three good tires on the asphalt. Tack leaped to his feet. He leaned over the back of Cate’s seat and clutched the wheel. Her hands looked tiny compared to his as he gripped the plastic hard and tugged them away from the cliff. They managed to come to a precarious stop in the middle of the road.
“Oh, my God,” Cate breathed, her chest heaving. “We could’ve...”
“We didn’t,” Tack said, reaching over and throwing the vehicle into Park. “You okay?” He knew shock when he saw it, and Cate looked like she might faint. He moved over beside her in the open area between her and the accordion door of the minibus. “Hey, look at me.”
She stared numbly at him, eyes wide and pupils dilated. For a split second, she wasn’t a mark, and he wasn’t a detective. This was just a scared woman about to hyperventilate sitting in front of him.
“We’re okay,” he said.
Behind them, someone slammed on their brakes, honked and veered around them.
“I know.” She abruptly pulled her hands away and was herself once more, regaining her senses, almost as if she’d woken up from a daydream, or day nightmare. She flipped on her hazard lights and stood. “I’ve got a spare tire in the back. Hopefully, a jack that works.”
The record time she’d taken to recover from the near accident impressed him. This was a woman who didn’t crack under pressure.
Of course, women who try to kill their husbands usually don’t.
Tack glanced out the window and the other cars speeding around them. They wouldn’t be safe for long here, and they needed to get the minibus moving before someone slammed into them on this narrow road. Cate was already at the back panel, wrenching up the trapdoor and lugging out a near bald Michelin.
“Whoa, there,” Tack began. “I can help...”
“What? This old thing?” She grinned at him, a gorgeous, effortlessly flirty smile, and he felt his crotch grow tight. “I’ve got it.”
And it looked like she was going to take that tire and the partly rusted jack with the paint flecking off and fix this thing before Tack could even get a word in about it. When she leaned in to