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The river, the rain and the wind did their damnedest to defeat them. Then, just when Tanner began wondering if he’d really seen that tiny cove, the canoe bumped into something.
A tangle of mangrove roots.
He stood up. Grabbed for a tree branch, missed it, cursed, made a second grab and felt the roughness of the bark under his fingers.
Grunting, straining, struggling to keep his balance against the current and the wind, he pulled the canoe into the relative safety of the small cove and its stand of mangrove trees. Then he turned towards Alessandra.
“Get out of the canoe,” he yelled. “Fast.”
She scrambled out. He followed, grabbed the boat’s bow and dragged it further into the cove so he could snug it into a small cavern of roots.
He flashed Alessandra a smile. “Good job, sweetheart.”
She grinned and shot him a thumbs-up. What could he do but lean in and kiss her? Anything less wasn’t possible.
They took a couple of minutes to catch their breath. For now, they were sheltered from the worst of the storm, but that would only be temporary. The river was already lapping at the tangled mangrove roots, waiting to engulf them.
Tanner tilted Alessandra’s chin up and looked into her eyes.
“You okay?”
She nodded.
“Let’s see if we can get a little farther from the river before I check our coordinates.”
They fought their way twenty feet in, fifty feet in, until they were standing on swampy but solid soil. Tanner got out the GPS and the satphone. They worked as well in the midst of an end-of-the-world storm as they did on a sunny day.
The GPS brought good news.
They were where they were supposed to be.
A call to Chay made the news even better.
They were less than two klicks from the ocean and the place where they would take shelter until a helicopter could be sent in to extract them.
“You’re heading for a house.” Chay ratted off the coordinates. “I think you’ll like the accommodations.”
“Yeah,” Tanner said wryly, “I bet.”
“No joke, dude. It’s on the beach.”
“Right. A beach house. In the fucking middle of nowhere?”
“Some tech billionaire owns it. Bought a shitload of land, figured to turn it into—get this—eco-friendly housing for those who long for simplicity.”
Tanner snorted. “In other words, Bullshit Acres for the Rich and Famous.”
Chay laughed. “Anybody ever tell you subtlety is one of your finest traits? Yeah, that about sums it up, but we shouldn’t be too hard on the guy. He’s a client of one of your hostage’s brothers. Half-brother. Stepbrother. Something like that. Travis Wilde. Hotshot financier, used to be a hotshot pilot for Uncle Sam. It’s veritable family of hotshots. Anyway, the finance wizard knows the tech billionaire. He also knew about the property, asked if we could use it, and his tech pal said yes.”
Tanner shot a look at Alessandra. She came from the kind of family most people only read about in the papers.
“And if you’re wondering about Bright Star…”
“Yeah?”
“I can’t verify their involvement.”
“Or their lack of involvement,” Tanner said grimly.
