“Almost,” Keane said. He was busy contacting their landing position. “I have it up here. You’re heading forward another twenty-seven nautical miles, and we’re going due east another twelve degrees.”
He quickly made his adjustments. “And they’re expecting us?”
“They are.”
Nico nodded. “That’s good. This bird will fly for a while, but we’ll have to fuel up somewhere.”
“Our destination is out in international waters right now, and she’s a little bit farther ahead, so we’ll probably take about an hour to get there.”
“Good enough.” He tapped his comm on his headset and called back to Charlotte. “We have about an hour of flight time,” he said. “Sit back, relax, and enjoy.”
“Will do,” she said. Then she added, “You’re a man of amazing mystery.”
“I’m just a man,” he said. “Nothing more, nothing less.”
She didn’t answer that, but he could see that she was settled in and staring out at the ocean below.
“I always find that I fall asleep if I’m sitting and looking at the water,” Keane said.
“It’s pretty special,” Nico said with a nod. “There’s just something about the endless waves on the horizon.”
But he could see up ahead the lights of where he was going.
They landed four minutes early, coming down on the huge USS Bainbridge. It brought back so many memories for Nico, and it felt almost like coming home. By the time he shut off his rotors, hopped out, and walked around to open up the passenger side and to assist Charlotte onto the deck, he was as comfortable here as he had been up there.
She looked around at the completely different scenario and stared at him. “Are we on a warship?”
“Well, we’re on one of America’s ships, compliments of the US Navy, yes,” he said. “But we’re hardly at war.”
“I didn’t really mean that we’re at war.”
He nodded. “I know what you meant. And, yes, this is the USS Bainbridge.”
She nodded and smiled. “Am I allowed to be here?”
“Well, not very many people will know you’re here,” he said. And with his bag and once again holding her hand gently, he led her toward one seaman, standing but not looking at them, yet he saluted nonetheless as Nico and his party went past. Nico nodded to the sailor and kept on going.
“Have you ever been on this one before?” she asked.
“I have,” he said cheerfully. He led her down to the cabin area, marked off the one that they’d been assigned, quickly opened it, and pointed her inside. “Up or down bunk?”
She looked to see four bunks and shrugged. “I’ll take an upper bunk.”
“Done,” he said. He picked her up and gently popped her onto the top bunk.
She let out half a shriek and said, “That’s it? We’re just here now?”
“That’s it,” he said. “Now sleep. It’s been a rough night.”
“You’re not kidding.” She rolled over and faced the wall. “You’ll wake me if anything happens, right?”
“Hasn’t enough happened yet?”
She chuckled. “Absolutely. I’m just too damn tired now to watch and wait and see for myself.”
And, with that, she fell into a deep sleep. He dropped his bag at the end of the bunk below her. With Keane crashing on the opposite bunk, he stepped out to see if anybody was around. Instead he found an envelope on the floor outside his door. He picked it up and stepped back inside.
“What have we got?” Keane asked.
“Instructions apparently,” he said. “Sitting there and waiting outside.”
“It always blows me away that you can be on a ship so full of men, and yet nobody sees anything.”
“It’s what the military is good for, following orders,” Nico muttered. He walked over to the far end, where a tiny table was, and sat down. He brought out everything and took a look. “Interesting,” he said. “Included a photo of her assistant in here.”
“And why is that?”
“Because she’s dead.”
Immediately Keane hopped off his bunk and came over. “The previous assistant or the new assistant?”
“The previous one,” Nico said, his voice dark. He held up the image and said, “She can’t be twenty-seven or -eight.”
Keane looked at it and nodded. “And do we know how she died?”
“Hit-and-run apparently. She never had a chance, mowed down while she was walking home one evening.”
“I wonder if it’s connected.”
Nico tossed a glance at Charlotte. “I don’t see how it can’t be.”
“Ditto. More coincidences than I’m prepared to accept at this point.” Keane sat down and tugged some of the other papers toward him. Together, they went through every bit of information they’d been given, but there wasn’t a whole lot. Mostly just their travel plans. “This should be fun,” he said.
“Yeah. But at least part of the journey will be on a private jet.”
“I’m all for that too,” he said. “I wasn’t really thinking that we would make it home that fast, but this way we’ll be there soon.”
“And I’m thinking that’s a good thing for her to disappear from sight even when we get her home—at least until this is over.”
“Unless they’re waiting for her to show up back home again.”
“That’s my concern,” Nico said. He opened up his laptop and sent off a message, making sure that undercover security would be at her house before they arrived and continuing until the kidnapping mastermind was caught. As an afterthought, he added, Make sure you sweep for bugs.
Will check came the response.
“And why would the previous assistant be killed, even if her death is connected? Other than tying up loose ends. We still don’t know why
