The Trouble With Paradise

of Cadence, he hit the wood dock face-first.

Andy dove on top of him, presumably to hold him down, but Denny was out cold and not going anywhere.

Brandy grabbed the fallen knife. Christian skidded down the last step to the dock. “Are you hurt?” he asked Cadence.

Looking shell-shocked, she shook her head, then glanced down at Denny. “I almost gave up my penis embargo for you!” Then she kicked him in the butt.

Denny stirred and lifted his head. “Hey, that hurt!”

“So would that knife if you’d have used it on me!”

“Kick him again, honey,” Brandy directed. “Just for the hell of it.” She sneered down at Denny with disgust. “I should have known you were evil from the moment I saw you treat Bobby like your slave boy. A person who is rude to the hired help is not a nice person.”

Dorie got onto the dock and reached for Cadence, who looked like a good wind might knock her over.

“Thanks,” Cadence whispered, squeezing hard, her eyes a little wet.

“I wasn’t going to use the knife on you,” Denny said, still flat on the deck.

“How am I supposed to believe that when you used it on poor Bobby!”

Denny nearly choked. “I did not-” He tried to get up but Andy was sitting on him so he gave up. “Let me up!”

“Don’t think so.”

“Listen to me. I did not hurt Bobby. And I wasn’t going to hurt Cadence.”

“Still not letting you up,” Andy said.

“Goddamnit!”

Cadence let go of Dorie’s hand and crouched at Denny’s side. “Maybe you should just relax,” she suggested.

Denny didn’t look like he appreciated the irony. “I am telling you I did not use that knife on Bobby!”

“Then who did?” Cadence demanded.

Christian went very still, then whipped toward the boat. “Ethan.”

Ethan, who’d managed to get onto the Elegance unnoticed, had pushed off from the dock. Already a good hundred feet out, he started the small motor and lifted a hand in a wave. “Ahoy!” he yelled as he sailed away.

In Michael’s boat.

Without Michael.

Without any of them.

“Oh, Christ,” Andy said, his foot still on Denny’s back. “He’s the one who-”

“Goddamn, you’re brilliant.” Denny looked furious. “Now can you get off me so I can swim out there and nab his sorry ass?”

Andy removed his foot from Denny, but when Denny leapt to his feet and whipped around, Christian was still standing there, tall and tense, and very much in Denny’s way.

“Move, man.”

Christian didn’t budge, didn’t even blink as he spoke. “Someone needs to go after Ethan.” He put a hand on Denny’s chest when he moved to do just that. “Not you.”

Michael came down the stairs and absorbed the situation in one glance. “Shit, I’ll get help-” His hand went to his belt, but his face slackened in disbelief. “My radio’s gone.”

Denny laughed but it was mirthless. “Yeah. Ethan used to be a pickpocket.”

Michael swore, and turning, went running back up the stairs.

Brandy grabbed Dorie, and they raced after Michael to help however they could. At the top of the stairs, Dorie would have liked to double over and gasp for breath, but Michael didn’t stop. He ran around the back of his huge mansion, toward what looked like a one, two, three, four-car garage directly in front of… a moat?

And another dock.

Moored there was a small motor craft. Michael hopped in, and the girls did the same. The engine leapt to life, and Michael tossed them life vests. “Put them on!”

Dorie was still buckling in when he punched the gas, and after a moment of following the small waterway to the open water, they were faces to the wind, heading after Ethan.

“What are we going to do when we catch him?” Brandy yelled.

“Depends on if he’s hurt my boat.” Michael spoke evenly enough but there was underlying violence there. Dorie wouldn’t want to be the one crossing him or his million-dollar boat, that was for sure.

“Why didn’t you use this thing to take us directly to Fiji?” Brandy wanted to know. “Instead of putting up with us in your place?”

Michael glanced over. “This is just a ski boat. You do know how far from Fiji you are, right?”

“No idea.”

“Let’s just say it’s going to take Ethan days to get anywhere close to a place he could possibly even think about hocking my boat.”

“How long for us to catch up with him?”

Michael pointed, and as they came around a sharp, craggy curve of the island, they saw a white dot that was the Elegance, a few miles out on the horizon. It didn’t take them long to get closer. Ethan wasn’t having the easiest time sailing the huge yacht by himself.

Dorie looked back. She could just barely make out the vague outline of Michael’s house high on the rocks, and far below, the beach where though she couldn’t see them, she knew the others were with Denny.

Ethan tried to cut left, out to open sea, and got tangled up in a sail, which allowed them the precious seconds they needed to get closer. He was on deck struggling with the lines, swearing the air so blue it blew his hair back.

“Need a hand?” Michael asked politely, cutting his engine to be heard.

Ethan whipped toward them, and it wasn’t the glint of a knife that stopped Dorie’s heart this time, but the flash of a gun.

Going off.

Michael flew back against Brandy, who was propelled off her seat to the floor, with Michael in her arms. He rolled off of her, gritting his teeth before he could say anything. “It’s just a knick. Duck, now, before he shoots again.”

But Ethan had lost interest in them and was battling with the yacht, trying to hoist a different sail.

“Take the controls, Dorie,” Michael commanded. “Quickly.”

Gulping because his white shirt was covered in blood, Dorie whipped around and look at the controls. They might as well have belonged to a spacecraft.

“That’s more than a knick,” Brandy accused him, panic in her voice.

Dorie didn’t look. She was trying to figure out how to make the boat go. At her elbow, something squawked, making her jump.

A radio.

“Base to Phillips,” came a very French voice. “Tell me that wasn’t a gunshot we just heard.”

“They’re at the other dock.” Michael’s face was shiny with sweat, tight in a grimace of pain. “Tell him to get out my Stryker. It’s an offshore runner. He can catch Ethan on that.”

“He’s not going anywhere because we’re bringing you straight there to him,” Brandy said. “Do you hear me?”

Michael’s face was cushioned between Brandy’s two very expensive and beautiful breasts, and he didn’t look as if he minded. “Hard not to hear you,” he said. “You’re shouting.”

“Goddamnit, answer me,” came Christian’s voice over the radio, sounding very unhappy.

Dorie eyed Ethan. He was making headway, moving away from them with alarming speed. She lifted the radio to her mouth. “Yes, that was a gunshot. Ethan’s getting away and Michael’s shot and I’m trying to get back to you but I don’t know how-” She ended this with a scream when a large swell slapped at the front of the boat and splashed her right in the face.

“Hit the throttle,” Michael yelled at her. “Steer into the swells, not