“Shit, I didn’t need this,” he said, wondering where the hell she’d come from. The poor excuse for a dog jumped from her arms and bolted across the floor, stopping by Max’s feet and barking so hard his rear legs rose from the deck. The woman moved forward, and her double image trailed slightly behind as she rushed to scoop up the mutt.

“Who are you? Do you work for the Thatches?” she demanded. He didn’t have time for dogs or questions or bullshit in general. She had to go. The last thing he needed tonight was a barking mutt and a yapping woman. She and her dog were going to have to jump. The tip of Paradise Island was less than a hundred feet behind them now. They’d probably make it. If they didn’t, it wasn’t his problem.

“Shut that dog up or I’ll drop-kick it overboard,” he said instead of forcing her and her mutt into the sea. Damn, he was getting soft in his old age.

“Where are you taking this yacht?”

He ignored her and glanced one last time at the fading lights of Nassau, at the fuzzy green buoy markers and flashing lighthouse, then he turned his attention to the controls. He had a few questions of his own, but he would have to wait to get the answers. At the moment, he had more important concerns, like survival.

His hands shook from pain and adrenaline. Through the sheer force of his will and years of experience, he steadied them. He hadn’t detected another vessel following him, but that didn’t mean much.

“You can’t just take this boat. You have to return to the marina.”

If his head hadn’t ached like a bitch and his body hadn’t been used for a punching bag, he might have found her damn funny. Turn back, after the hell he’d lived through? Take the yacht back, after he’d gone through the trouble of stealing it? Not freaking likely. It took a rare talent to hot-wire when a person couldn’t even see straight. He’d been aboard just about every Navy vessel imaginable. Everything from an inflatable to an attack sub. He knew how to read a Global Positioning System, and in a pinch he could read chart maps and use a compass. Problem was, with his vision, the best he was capable of at the moment was to head west and haul balls to the walls.

“Who are you?”

He squinted at the golden blur of the controls in front of him and reached for the radio. He missed and tried again until he felt the knobs beneath his fingertips. Static filled the air around him, drowning out the woman’s questions. He adjusted the squelch knob, cutting out the background noise, then he turned it slightly. The radio picked up the marine operator’s transmission with a passenger ship, then he switched to a noncommercial channel. He heard nothing out of the ordinary and continued to switch. Each channel sounded normal. Again, nothing out of the ordinary, but he wasn’t listening for normal or ordinary traffic.

“You have to take me back. I promise I won’t tell anyone about you.”

Sure you won’t, honey, he thought as he glanced over his shoulder, but he could see nothing out of his left eye and turned his attention back to the controls. If she’d shut the hell up, he could almost forget she was there.

He’d been out of communications with the Pentagon for twelve hours. In his last transmission, he’d informed them that there would be no need for a rescue, no need for further negotiations. The two DEA agents he’d been seeking were dead, and had been for a while. Obviously unused to torture, they’d succumbed at the hands of their captors.

“People will notice I’m gone, you know. If fact, I bet someone has missed me by now.”

Bullshit.

“I’m sure someone has already contacted the police.”

The Bahamian police were the least of his problems. He’d been forced to kill Andre Cosella’s oldest son, Jose, and he’d barely managed to escape with his own life. When Andre found out, he was going to be one extremely pissed-off drug lord.

“Sit down and be quiet.” Through his double vision, he made out the lights of a sailboat heading toward them on his port side. He didn’t think the Cosellas had found the body yet and doubted the sailboat was filled with drug smugglers, but he knew better than to rule anything out, and the last thing he needed was for the woman beside him to start screaming her head off.

He felt rather than saw her move, and before she could take a step, he reached out and grabbed her arm. “Don’t even think about doing anything stupid.”

She screamed and tried to pull out of his grasp. The dog yapped, jumped to the deck, and locked his jaws on the leg of Max’s pants.

“Get your hands off me,” she yelled, and swung at him, almost connecting with his already aching skull.

“Damn it!” Max swore as he spun her around and slammed her back into his chest. He set his jaws against the pain shooting along his ribs and grappled for her wrists. She fought to escape, but she was soft and very feminine and no match for Max. He easily forced her forearms to cross her breasts, pinning her to him and controlling her jabbing elbows. Her hair piled on the top of her head tickled his cheek as he clued her in on their untenable situation. “Be a good girl, and who knows, you just might live to see the sunrise.”

She stilled instantly. “Don’t hurt me.”

She’d misunderstood him, but he didn’t bother correcting her. It wasn’t him she had to worry about. He wasn’t going to hurt her, unless she took another swing at him. Then all bets were off.

The sailboat sliced through the calm waters, a blur to Max, and all too clearly reminding him of his weakened position. He couldn’t see straight. At the moment, his vision was better in the dark than the light, which had just about as many advantages as disadvantages. He didn’t need a doctor to tell him his ribs were cracked, and he was sure he’d be pissing blood for at least a week. Worse, Cosella’s men had taken all of his toys- his weapons and his communications. They’d even taken his watch. He had nothing to fight back with, and if they found him, he was a sitting duck. Worse than a sitting duck. His bad luck had cursed him with a soft civilian woman and her irritating mutt. He shook his leg and the little yap-per slid across the wooden floor.

“Let me go and I’ll sit down like you said.”

He didn’t believe her. He didn’t believe she wouldn’t try something, and in his present state, he wouldn’t even see it coming. He’d lived through too much already tonight to let her finish the job. He narrowed his gaze and his double vision slid into one image. The stern light of the sailboat slid past without incident, and to his vast relief his double vision did not return.

“Who are you?” she asked.

“I’m one of the good guys.”

“Right,” she said, but she didn’t sound convinced. More like she was trying to pacify him.

“I’m telling you the truth.”

“Good guys don’t steal boats and kidnap women.”

She had a point, but she was just plain wrong. Sometimes the line between the good guys and the bad guys was as hazy as his sight. “I didn’t steal this vessel, I’m commandeering it. And I’m not kidnapping you.”

“Then take me back.”

“No.” Max had been trained by the best the military had to offer. Excluding tonight’s fiasco, he could shoot and loot better than most. Scale just about any installation, get what he needed, and be out by dinner, but he knew from experience that one hysterical woman could make a solid situation as unstable as hell. “I am not going to hurt you. I just need to put some distance between me and Nassau.”

“Who are you?”

He thought about giving her a fictitious name, but since she would probably find it out when she tried to have him arrested for kidnapping, he told her the truth. “I’m Lieutenant Commander Max Zamora,” he answered, but he didn’t give her the whole truth. He left out that he was retired from the military and that he currently worked for a part of the government that didn’t exist on paper.

“Let go of me,” she demanded, and for the first time Max looked downward into the blurred image of his hands wrapped around her wrists. The backs of his fingers and knuckles pressed into the soft pillows of her breasts, and suddenly he felt every inch of her slim back crushed into his chest. Her rounded behind was shoved into his groin, and hunger mixed with the ache riding his ribs and thumping his skull. He was equally disgusted and surprised that he could feel anything beyond pain. Awareness of her spread across his skin, and he pushed it back, tamped it down, and forced it into the dark recesses where he buried all weakness.

“Are you going to take another swing at me?” he asked.

“No.”

He released her and she flew out of his grasp as if her clothes were on fire. Through the dark shadows of the cabin, he watched her disappear into the corner, then he turned to the controls once again.

“Come here, Baby.”

He looked over his shoulder at her, sure he hadn’t heard her right. “What?”

She scooped up her dog. “Did he hurt you, Baby Doll?”

“Jeesuz,” he groaned as if he’d stepped in something foul. She’d named her dog Baby Doll. No wonder it was such a nasty little pain in the ass. He returned his attention to the GPS and pressed the switch. The screen illuminated, a gray blur of lines and fuzzy numbers. He squinted and brought the screen a bit more into focus. On the port side of the screen, he could just make out the approaching lines of Andros Island and the chain of Berry Islands off his starboard side. He couldn’t see well enough to read the increments of longitude and latitude, but he figured as long as he headed northwest for another hour before turning due west, he would land along the coast of Florida by morning.

“If you’re really a lieutenant, then show me your identification.”

Even if every piece of identification hadn’t been taken from him when he’d been captured, it wouldn’t have told her anything anyway. He’d entered Nassau under the name of Eduardo Rodriguez, and everything from his passport and driver’s license to his pocket litter had been falsified.