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“We better check it.”
“Okay. I’ll go put it on the table and come back up to keep him busy while you look. I don’t want him to know what’s going on. Not any of this.”
I nodded. “I understand, Melissa. He won’t know.”
“What are we going to do with that one,” she asked, dropping her eyes to my fisted hand.
“It’ll look weird if we just drop it here or try to break it. He’ll know we found it.”
“So?”
“So, we want to throw him off. And the best way to do that is to make him think we went in a different direction.” I jerked my chin at the small port that was coming into focus as we got closer to shore. “There are a lot of boats coming in and out of Manzanilla. We’ll send the tracker with one of them and throw him off. That should buy us some time.”
A slow smile spread across her face. “Brains and brawn. I like it.”
I chuckled at her compliment. My hands ached to touch her and pull her close again but with Jackson only a few feet away, it wasn’t a good idea.
“I’ll go get the backpack.”
“Okay.” I ran a hand down her shoulder and arm before leaving her and going over to entertain Jackson.
By nightfall, we reached the port in Manzanilla. Melissa and I had both gone through Jackson’s backpack as well as both of their suitcases and hadn’t found any other tracking devices. It appeared that the only one Henry had been interested in following around was Melissa. Although, I still hadn’t quite figured out why. Did he suspect she’d been cheating? Or was he worried she’d take Jackson and run off, long before he’d all but pushed her into doing just that.
After we’d searched everything, we both sat down and relaxed knowing there were no more devices and even though we were still being tracked, it would be over soon. And if we played our cards right, not only would Henry no longer be able to track us, but he’d send his goons off on a wild goose chase.
When we were secured in the port, I left Melissa and Jackson on board to have dinner while I went down to the dock, to see about getting refueled. While I wandered back up the dock, I ran across two men talking in front of a cargo ship docked a little way from our boat. They were speaking in Spanish, but I knew enough Spanish to catch the gist of what they were saying.
The first man was preparing to set off with a load of fresh fruit back up the coast to Los Angeles. As they continued chatting, I wandered up the dock, before doubling back. I ducked out of sight and found a small hidey-hole in one of the boxes of produce.
“Perfect,” I whispered to myself. Grinning, I reached into my pocket and pulled out the tracker. I slipped it into the hole and then hurried away. “That should keep your dogs off our trail.”
With that gone, I jogged back up the gangplank and went down below to join Melissa and Jackson as they were finishing up dinner. Jackson had a fork in his hand but his head was dipping lower and lower toward his plate.
He’d had a full day of running around the deck with his newfound binoculars and had worn himself down. I nudged Melissa at the stove as she prepared a serving of the casserole she’d baked. At my prompt, she turned to follow my line of sight and stifled a laugh with her fingertips. “Oh no. Poor sweetheart.”
“Here,” I took the plate from her hands. “I got this. Go put him to bed.”
She nodded and wiped her fingers on her jeans. She went to Jackson and shook his shoulders to stir him. He jolted upright but his eyes were stuck at half-mast. “Sweetheart, come on, let’s get you tucked in.”
I smiled after them as they started down the hall. I heard the sink turn on a little while later as Melissa got him ready for bed.
The casserole was simple but tasted amazing, and I chowed down two servings by the time Melissa slipped from the bedroom and shut the door behind her. “Wow, I haven’t seen him that exhausted since he was a baby.”
I was momentarily stunned to silence as she stepped into the soft light of the galley and I noticed that she’d changed from the outfit she’d been wearing most of the afternoon into a black, silk robe that reached just to mid-thigh.
The belt was pulled tight around her waist, showing off her curvy ass to perfection. My hands ached to be holding her—touching her. “Just wait until tomorrow. He’ll have a whole new city to explore.”
Melissa smiled and sat down beside me at the table. Her bared leg brushed against mine and electricity shot out over every nerve. I pushed aside my plate but was waiting to digest a few more minutes before getting up. “He’ll love it.”
