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“You and Braden take point on the guards,” Ronan said. “Keep them as clear of Julia and me as possible while we look for Elise. We’ll want to get off the Elysium as quickly as possible, so once we have her, we take one of the two motorboats.” He tapped the Elysium where the lifeboats were suspended. “Here orhere.”
“We should get rid of the one we don’t use,” Bradensaid.
Ronan nodded. “No reason to make it easy for anyone to come after us." He looked around the table. “Anyquestions?”
Julia met his gaze and the steadiness in her eyes sent an arrow of dread into his stomach. He wanted her to be scared, to understand the danger she was assuming in boarding the Elysium. Then at least she might be careful, weigh the risks of her movements aboard the boat against the potential of a positiveoutcome.
But he saw only clear-eyed resolve, a determination he’d come to know well over the past few months. It was determination that said she would do whatever it took, that she would look past fear and even common sense to see somethingdone.
It was a look that said she wasn’t afraid, and that scared him most ofall.
26
Julia lookedaround the table at the people laughing and drinking, the people who had come to mean so much to her over the previous weeks and months, and felt a swell of gratitude. Braden and Nora were laughing over something, their heads tipped together. Julia enjoyed watching them, their movements synchronized in a way that spoke to their history not only as lovers, but as friends andcolleagues.
Ronan’s hand rested on Julia’s thigh, but his attention was on Nick, who was recounting a story from their childhood, the details of which were being hotly but laughingly debated between the twobrothers.
Nora paused from her conversion with Braden to insert her version of the story, uniting the brothers against herrecollection.
Over the previous weeks, they’d become her friends, and in a way, herfamily.
They’d been sitting at the beachside restaurant for the past three hours, drinking cold beer and ouzo and eating an array of delicious food that included octopus salad, fried clams, and crusty bread dipped in olive oil sprinkled with fresh rosemary and seasalt.
They might have been on holiday, five friends, taking a break from their busy lives to eat and dive and lay in the sun, except tomorrow at this time they would be on a boat headed for the open water of the Aegean. Nora would park it far enough away that it wouldn’t set off alarm bells for the crew of the Elysium, and Julia, Ronan, Nick, and Braden would don their diving gear and plunge into the dark waters, then swim toward the yacht that was Elise’sprison.
It was possible not all of them would make it outalive.
It was possible none of themwould.
Guilt rolled through her body like a wave and she had to ball her fists together in her lap to keep her hands from shaking. All of the people around the table were risking their lives for her, forElise.
She had the sudden desire to call it all off, to tell them it had all been a terrible mistake, they should let the police do their job and hope for thebest.
But she knew she wouldn’t dothat.
The police weren’t doing their job, and Elise was too well hidden — hidden by power and wealth and a brotherhood whose bond was victimization — for anyone to find her within the bounds of thelaw.
The people around the table had made their choice. Elise hadn’t had one, but that didn’t make it any easier to know that someone else might get hurt — orworse.
She stood and forced a smile. She needed a minute. Needed to get away from the smiling faces of the people she’d come to love, of the people who were willing to risk everything for her and hersister.
They’d made a lie of everything Julia had believed, of everything she’d told herself she believed, anyway. That people were inherently selfish, that they always looked out for themselves first, that you had to look out for yourself too, because no one else was going to do it foryou.
“Excuse me.” She left her napkin on her chair and made her way through the small group of people on the restaurant’s beachside patio, trying not to think about the silence that had descended around thetable.
Tonight of all nights, Ronan, Nick, Braden, and Nora deserved to havefun.
Stepping around the rope that marked the restaurant’s dining area, she continued onto the beach, her feet sinking into the sand as she made her way toward the darkenedwaterline.
The sun had gone down over an hour ago, but it was still warm, the breeze a caress against her shoulders, bare under her sleeveless blouse. She waited until she’d stepped out of the light cast from the restaurant to take off her shoes, the soft clatter of silverware and murmur of conversation falling behind her like ashadow.
She inhaled the briny scent of the ocean and walked through the shallow surf rolling onto the beach, Ronan’s face as she’d stood from the table fresh in her mind. She’d wanted to smooth the worry from his brow, to apologize for causing him to risk everything on a job even Nick must think was a fool’smission.
She thought about her conversation with Nick on the terrace two days earlier, a conversation that hadn’t been far from her mind since. If he knew she was holding something back from Ronan, Ronan must feel ittoo.
Sorrow squeezed her heart in a vise. She’d thought her fear of the future, her doubt about the foundation of their relationship, had been private. She hadn’t wanted Ronan to see it, but now she saw that that was the most foolish thing ofall.
He saweverything.
