had probably found it, complete with his research notebooks and his satellite phone in its watertight pouch, which would have come in mighty handy right about now.
Their only chance was to make it two miles down the coast to his research station and his Jeep so he could head to the little rural police outpost in the next village to report what he had seen.
If anybody would even believe him. After his wildness of the last few years, he didn’t exactly have the greatest reputation among the villages on the Osa.
He pushed that depressing thought away as he towed the kayak out into the surf, then climbed in behind his hostage and started paddling like hell to get them away.
The woman was making small whimpers in front of him. He was sorry for her panic—terrifying a woman wasn’t something that sat well with Neva Galvez’s younger son.
His brother Daniel, the sturdy and honorable sheriff of Moose Springs, Utah, would probably frown on this whole business. But it couldn’t be helped. Right now he didn’t have breath left to explain anything. He could only work the oars with all his energy.
They made it to the point at the edge of the moon-shaped beach of the Suerte in half the time it would have normally taken him and only after they slid around it and out of sight of the estate did Ren begin to breathe a little easier.
They certainly weren’t out of trouble yet. Rafferty’s men had probably already found his kayak—easily identifiable to anyone around these parts—and figured out he was the idiot who had intruded on their boss’s private little party. But the roads in this section of the Osa were wild and primitive, requiring four-wheel-drive most of the time. This was the rainy season, when the roads turned into big sloshy piles of mud.
He could kayak down the coast far more quickly than they could drive to his place.
He cursed himself all over again. None of this would have happened if he had just slipped back the way he had come as soon as he figured out what was going down at the hacienda’s pool. Nobody would have even known he was there.
But seeing Rafferty standing over the body of a dead woman, the gun in his hand and the grisly hole in her forehead, had stunned him so much he had stood frozen like a damn piece of furniture as he watched Rafferty taunt the man tied to a lawn chair about the gambling debts he owed him and Rafferty’s uniquely effective form of debt collection.
The shock wore off quickly, leaving hot dread in his gut as he realized what a mess he had stumbled into.
He had tried to back out quietly. He was used to stealth—hell, he could sneak up on a twelve-hundred-pound nesting leatherback without making a sound.
He would have probably made it, if a howler monkey hadn’t chosen just that moment to come swinging through the trees and making a ruckus, giving away his position in the process.
One of the thugs Rafferty surrounded himself with had sighted him and he had given up on stealth and had just run like hell. A few moments later, he had stumbled onto the woman whose soft, hunched shoulders were currently trembling in front of him.
Ren sighed and slowed his frenetic paddling enough that he could catch his breath. They needed to hurry, but he could at least take a moment to allay her fears.
“Hold out your hands,” he said.
She turned, flashing him a wide-eyed look of fright in the moonlight, and he felt like some kind of perverted rapist again.
“Come on. I told you I won’t hurt you. If you promise not to jump out, I can untie you now.”
After a moment’s hesitation, she held out her trembling hands. Regretting her fear, he pulled his pocket knife out and cut through the leather binding her. She flexed her wrists and he thought maybe her big blue eyes lost a little of their panic.
“I’m Lorenzo Galvez. Ren. What’s your name?”
“Olivia Lambert. My…my father will pay to have me home safely.” Her voice faltered.
She had said that already, he remembered. And with that same note of doubt in her voice.
“You don’t sound a hundred percent convinced of that, sweetheart.”
“He will.”
“He a gambler?”
She blinked, her lashes looking impossibly thick and dark in the moonlight reflecting off the water. “Excuse me?”
“I’m just trying to figure out how you got messed up with Rafferty, Olivia Lambert. What are you doing at Suerte del Mar?”
“I’m…I’m here on my honeymoon.”
A raw, strangled laugh escaped him and he was tempted to smack the paddle against his head a few times.
Could his life get any more delightful?
“Your honeymoon. Perfect. So not only will we have a homicidal gazillionaire after us but a frantic groom looking for his bride.”
She made a sound he couldn’t interpret, but it was cut off when a dark shape moved past them in the water, brushing his paddles as it went.
“What was that?” she gasped.
He peered into the inky water. “Nothing to worry about. My guess is a triaenodon obesus. White-tipped reef shark. Around here they call them cazón coralero trompacorta. That’s what it looked like from here, but I could be wrong.”
“A…a shark?”
Her voice wobbled. Afraid she was about to cry, he hurried to reassure her.
“They’re relatively harmless. Pretty easygoing. Sometimes they even let divers hand-feed them. I’m a little surprised he would come this close to the surface, since they usually stay pretty close to the substrate at the ocean floor where they feed, but he was probably just curious about what we might be doing up here.”
“Are…are you a diver?”
He had to admit, she was taking all of this remarkably well, though he could sense every time the moments of panic seemed to creep in. As a scientist, he had to admire any creature that could adapt to its circumstances.
“When I have to be,” he answered. “I’m a research biologist. I study the nesting habits of sea turtles. Olive Ridleys and endangered leatherbacks.”
“And you moonlight as a machete-wielding maniac, apparently, capturing innocent women off the beach.”
Despite the grimness of their situation, the sweat pouring off him and the strain in his muscles as he paddled like hell down the coast, his lips curved at her tart reply.
“You know what they say,” he drawled. “It’s tough work, but somebody’s got to do it.”
Chapter 2
“Where are you taking me?”
His hostage’s sexy voice cut through the darkness as he power-stroked as hard as he could.
He inhaled
