“Take a seat, lady. This will all be over before you know it,” he said, because there was nothing more he could tell her. Nothing she would believe anyway. The American public was better off not knowing about men like Max. Men who operated in the shadows. Men who performed untraceable missions for the U.S. government and were paid with untraceable money. Men who answered nonexistent calls from nonexistent phones in a nonexistent office in the Pentagon. Men who gathered intelligence, disrupted terrorist activity, and took out bad guys while allowing the government its deniability.

“Where are we going?”

“West,” he answered, figuring that was all the information she needed.

“Exactly where west?”

He didn’t need to see her to know by the tone of her voice that she was the kind of woman who expected to be in charge. A real ball-buster. Under the best of circumstances, Max didn’t let anyone bust his balls, and this wasn’t the best of circumstances. And he’d be damned if he’d allow some woman to screw up his night even more than it had already been screwed.

“Exactly where I decide.”

“I deserve to know where I’m being taken.”

Normally, he didn’t enjoy intimidating women, but just because he didn’t enjoy it didn’t mean it bothered him, either. He backed the engine off to a nice cruising speed of about twenty knots, punched up the cruise control, and stalked to where she stood with her dog, a shadowy figure in a dark corner of the bridge.

Light from the full moon slipped through the windshield and lit up the top of her shoulder and throat. She must have gotten a glimpse of his face, because she sucked in her breath and sank back even farther into the corner. Good. Let her be afraid of him.

“Listen real close,” he began, towering over her and placing his hands on his hips. “I can make things easy for you, or I can make them real hard. You can sit back and enjoy the ride, or you can fight me. If you choose to fight me, I guaran-goddamn-ty you won’t win. Now, what’s it gonna be?”

She didn’t say a word, but her dog propelled itself from her arms and sank its teeth into his shoulder like a rabid bat.

“Shit!” Max swore, and grabbed the mutt.

“Don’t hurt him! Don’t hurt Baby!”

Hurt him? Max was going stomp it into a grease spot. He pulled and the fabric of his shirt ripped. The snarling beast came off in his hands and he dropped him to the floor. The dog yelped and scampered away.

“You bastard!” she yelled. “You hurt my dog.” Only after her fist connected with the side of his head did he realize she’d blindsided him. His ears rang, his vision blurred a little more, and he called her some very choice names.

She took another swing, but he was ready for her and grabbed her wrist in midaim. He swept her feet out from beneath her and she went down, hitting the deck hard. Max was through playing nice. He flipped her onto her stomach and planted his knee in her back. She flailed and fought and called him a few pathetic names of her own.

“Get off me!”

Get off her? Not likely. He was going to gag her, tie her up, and dump her overboard. Sayonara, sweetheart. Dim light from the GPS spread across the floor and reached her bare feet and calves. She kicked, and he grasped two fistfuls of her skirt and ripped a long piece from the bottom.

“Stop! What in the heck do you think you’re doing?”

Instead of answering, he straddled her and squeezed her hips between his knees to keep her still. She tried to twist and turn, but he managed to grab one flailing ankle and tie a half hitch knot around it. Then he grabbed the other and wound the material in a locking cleat around them both. She yelled her lungs out while Max secured her feet. Then he grabbed the bottom of her skirt once more and ripped. This time the whole thing came off in his hands. The backs of her long legs were pale against the darker wooden deck. Her panties might be pink or maybe white. Max wasn’t sure and he wasn’t going to dwell on it.

She begged him to stop, but her pleas fell on his still ringing ears. He tore another long strip from the skirt, then placed his hand flat on her behind. Silk. Her panties were silk, he discovered as he held her down. He quickly reversed his position so that he faced the back of her head instead of her feet. He knelt over her, her waist squeezed between his thighs like a vise while he tied a half hitch knot, and she still fought him. She tucked her hands beneath her body, but he grabbed her arm and easily brought it to the small of her back. He tied her wrists together, then stood over her. Now that the rush of adrenaline was slowing to a trickle and it seemed as if he just might live after all, his neurotransmitters were running less interference, and the pain in his head and side made him more nauseous than before.

Breathing hard, he stepped over the woman on the floor and moved to the helm. He’d wasted precious time dealing with an unwanted passenger and her unwanted dog. He flipped off the cruise control and pushed the throttle to fifty-five knots.

The scratch of the little dog’s nails reached his battered ears as it scurried from its hiding place to dart past him. Then silence filled the cabin, and he reached for a box of emergency signal flares stuck to the side of the helm. Over the next half an hour, his vision cleared enough for him to sort through the ten handheld flares. As far as making them into any sort of defense weapon, he determined there wasn’t enough magnesium to make a decent incendiary bomb.

He set the box of flares on the helm and glanced at the Global Positioning System. He could now see the outline of Andros and the Berry Islands to his stern. He changed the heading a few degrees west and headed toward the coast of Florida. Then, once he was fairly sure they wouldn’t run aground on one of the seven hundred islands and cays that made up the Bahamian Commonwealth, he once again lowered the speed of the boat and flipped on the cruise control.

Max set his teeth against the pain in his side, and as he walked from the bridge, he looked into the dark corner. The woman had managed to pull herself into a sitting position. Within the shadows, he could make out the white of her blouse and a sliver of light from the window shone on her red toenails. Her little dog lay curled up by her feet.

Without a backward glance, Max walked from the bridge, slowly making his way down the stairs, holding his side against the jolt of each step. His breathing became more labored, and by the time he entered the lit galley, he saw spots in front of his eyes. He found a first-aid kit beside the stove and a tray of ice in the freezer.

In the refrigerator, he discovered bottles of wine, several fifths of rum and tequila, and about a case of Dos Equis beer. Under normal circumstances, Max only allowed himself a beer or two. Tonight he needed more, something with a bigger kick, and he reached for the rum. He unscrewed the top of the clear bottle and brought it to his mouth. He winced at the pressure against his split lip but took several big swallows anyway. He wrapped the ice in a hand towel, then stuck it beneath one arm.

Grabbing the first-aid kit, he headed through the salon and flipped on the switch in the bathroom, coming face-to-face with his reflection in the mirror above the sink. He didn’t know which was worse: the way he looked or the way he felt. The left side of his face was swollen and turning purple. Dried blood from his nose smeared his cheek, and the cut in the middle of his bottom lip had bled down his chin. He took a long drink of the rum as he studied the rip in his shirt and the small dog bite on the ball of his shoulder. It wasn’t deep. Just a scratch, really, and, compared to the rest of his injuries, didn’t even warrant inspection. He just hoped like hell the mutt had had all his shots.

With one hand, Max pulled his shirt from the waistband of his black jeans and lifted it up. Nasty red welts criscrossed his torso, while a bruise in the shape of a bootheel marked his left side. At least he was alive. For the moment anyway.

He rummaged around in the first-aid kit until he found a bottle of Motrin. He emptied five tablets into his palm and chased them down with rum, then he wrapped an Ace bandage around his ribs. The elastic bandage didn’t help all that much, but he pinned it in place anyway. He found some antiseptic soap, and as he washed the blood from his face and neck, he thought of what had happened to him tonight, and wondered how the mission could have gotten so messed up from the beginning.

The intelligence he’d been given had been wrong, his contingency plans had all failed, and he wanted to know why. The report had placed Cosella’s men in one part of the church on the vast compound, when they’d clearly been in another.

The DE A agents had been held in the front of the building instead of the back, but none of that really mattered. Terrorists weren’t the most predictable people and intelligence was subject to change on a minute-by-minute basis. Max knew that, dealt with it often.

But he’d never had all his escape routes so unexpectedly and totally blocked before, and it occurred to him that perhaps someone on the inside hadn’t meant for him to survive this one.

He washed away the traces of blood and closed the gash on his forehead with a few Steri-Strips. With the icy towel held to the side of his face and the fifth of rum in his other hand, he returned to the galley. There was only one person he completely trusted at the special ops command. Joint Chief of Staff General Richard Winter, a chainsmoking, foulmouthed straight shooter who’d served in Vietnam and Desert Storm and knew a thing or two about living in the trenches and fighting with your back against the wall.

The general was a real hard-ass, but fair. He understood about going clandestine, what it took, and what it involved. But Max couldn’t risk contacting the general yet. Not on an unsecured line. Not when the transmission could be picked up by anyone within a thirty-mile radius. Not when he was such an easy target.