“You had a fucking choice, Landy!” she screamed the uncharacteristic profanity. “You always have a choice! And you’ve already made yours, haven’t you?”
“Evelynn, please?—”
“Haven’t you?”
Landy’s silver head moved in a slow, shameful nod. “Yes,” he whispered, still meeting her furious gaze. “A man has already agreed to buy you. He’s scheduled to arrive tomorrow night.”
CHAPTER TWENTY
The next evening…
“Damn. That’s one helluva boat.”
Beckett followed Apollo’s dark brown gaze to the high-powered vessel their boss offered up for the mission to rescue Evie. Even in the midst of worrying himself sick for the woman he loved, he had to agree with his teammate’s assessment.
Rafe Owens was a man of taste in all of life’s finer things. Including his Outerlimits SL-36 high-performance speed boat.
“I’ll say,” Falcon agreed as the team began boarding their boss’s boat from the man’s members-only covered slip. “Staggered Mercury Racing five-twenties? This bad boy will get up to eighty, ninety miles per hour, easy.”
“I don’t care how fast you have to go.” Beckett dropped his dive bag onto one of the boat’s leather cushions and turned to Digger, who’d already taken his place behind the wheel. “As long as you get us to Evie.”
Thanks to Baker’s genius, they knew exactly where they needed to go. In Shadow’s worrisome absence, the impressive man had worked his computer magic yet again.
Last night, while Beckett and Digger had been chatting it up with Phillip Mitchell, Baker had spent the evening trying to locate Landy Granger’s yacht. Using a program Baker had personally designed, the system was able to estimate the yacht’s projected trajectory after it left the marina.
Once he had the estimated location, the computer genius accessed satellite imagery to confirm the yacht’s precise coordinates. And after that…
He put in a call to Owens.
That was hours ago, and they were just now heading out. But everyone on the team had agreed a nighttime approach was their best chance at mission success.
Including Beckett.
Despite being out of his mind with worry for Evie, the others were right in their decision to wait. Just as it had with Isak Rahal, the coastal night sky would offer the best chance for concealment as they made their approach.
And since this was Evie they were talking about, Beckett would suffer in silence for as long as it took. He’ddowhatever it fucking took. As long as this thing ended with her still being alive.
“The man has a point.” Someone commented on the conversation he and Apollo had been having about the boat. “Although personally, I would have gone with the five-sixty-fives.”
Every man on the boat turned to see who it was. When Beckett spotted the two men headed in their direction, he blinked a few times, untrusting of what he was seeing.
“Aleck?”
Both Aleck and Mustang—two of the SEALs they’d recently worked with—were making their way down the wooden dock. Slung over their shoulders were what appeared to be dive bags similar to the ones Beckett and his team brought.
Between their unexpected presence, the bags, and both men’s purposeful steps, Beckett couldn’t help but assume they were planning on tagging along.
“Hey, Bones.” Aleck jutted his chin in Beckett’s direction. “Heard your girl ran into some trouble and thought you might need some extra hands on deck.” The corner of his lips curved as he looked at the group. “Get it…’cause it’s a boat, and boats have decks…”
Mustang muttered a deep curse as he and his teammate stopped just shy of boarding the boat. “What Aleck istryingto say is we’re here to help.”
“Let me guess…” Apollo spoke up next. “Owens called your commander, gave him a rundown of the situation, and your guy gave you two the green light to assist.”
“Something like that.” Mustang grinned. “Lucky for you, as soon as we landed after rescuing Isak Rahal, the two of us were voluntold to help with some training a few miles down the coast.”
“We landed with you all, then picked right back up and went south,” Aleck further explained. “Our initial orders were to be there for the next ten days, but when Command agreed to loan us to you, he made arrangements for us to be choppered in.”
A rush of emotion Beckett hadn’t been expecting left him uncharacteristically silent. Owens had called in yet another favor. For Evie.