Clive Cussler - Shock Wave

“Is this all yours?” she gasped.

“It was either this or a wife and kids,” he joked.

She turned and tilted her head coquettishly. “You’re not too old to marry and have children. You just haven’t found the right woman.”

“I suppose that’s true.”

“Unlucky in love?”

“The Pitt curse.”

She gestured to a dark blue Pierce Arrow travel trailer. “Is that where you live?”

He laughed and pointed up. “My apartment is up those circular iron stairs, or if you’re lazy, you can take the freight elevator.”

“I can use the exercise,” she said softly.

He showed her up the ornate wrought-iron spiral staircase. The door opened into a living room-study filled with shelves stacked with books about the sea and glass encased models of ships Pitt had discovered and surveyed while working for NUMA. A door on one side of the room led into a large bedroom decorated like the captain’s cabin of an old sailing ship complete with a huge wheel as a backboard for the bed. The opposite end of the living room opened into a kitchen and dining area. To Maeve, the apartment positively reeked of masculinity.

“So this is where Huckleberry Finn moved after leaving his houseboat on the river,” she said, kicking off her shoes, settling onto a leather couch and curling up her legs on the cushions.

“I’m on water most of the year as it is. These rooms don’t see me as often as I’d like.” He removed his coat and untied his bow tie. “Can I offer you a drink?”

“A brandy might be nice.”

“Come to think of it, I carried you away from the party before you had a chance to eat. Let me whip you up something.”

“The brandy will-do just fine. I can gorge tomorrow.”

He poured Maeve a Remy Martin and sat down on the couch beside her. She wanted him desperately, wanted to press herself into his arms, to just touch him, but inside herself she was seething with turmoil. A sudden wave of guilt swept over her as she visualized her children suffering under the brutal hand of Jack Ferguson. She could not push aside the enormity of it. Her chest felt tight, and the rest of her body, numb and weak. She ached for Sean and Michael, who were to her still babies. To allow herself to fall into a sensual adventure was little short of a crime. She wanted to scream with despair. She set the brandy on the coffee table and abruptly began to weep uncontrollably.

Pitt held her tightly. “Your children?” he asked.

She nodded between sobs. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to mislead you.”

Strangely, female emotions had never been a big mystery with Pitt as with most men, and he was never confused or mystified when the tears came. He looked upon women’s sometimes emotional behavior more with compassion than discomfort. “Put a woman’s concern for her offspring against her sex drive, and motherly concern wins every time.”

Maeve would never comprehend how Pitt could be so understanding. To her, he didn’t seem human. He certainly was unlike any man she’d ever known. “I’m so lost and afraid. I’ve never been more helpless in my life.”

He rose from the couch and came back with a box of tissues. “Sorry I can’t offer you a handkerchief, but I don’t carry them much anymore.”

“You don’t mind ... my disappointing you?”

Pitt smiled as Maeve wiped her eyes and blew her nose with a loud snort. “The truth is, I had ulterior motives.”

Her eyes widened questioningly. “You don’t want to go to bed with me?”

“I’d turn in my testosterone card if I didn’t. But that’s not entirely why I brought you here.”

“I don’t understand.”

“I need your help in consolidating my plans.”

“Plans for what?”

He looked at her as if he was surprised she asked. “To sneak onto Gladiator Island, of course, snatch your boys and make a clean getaway.”

Maeve made nervous gestures of incomprehension with her hands. “You’d do that?” she gasped. “You’d risk your life for me?”

“And your sons,” Pitt added firmly.

“But why?”

He had an overpowering urge to tell her she was lithe and lovely and that he harbored feelings of deep affection for her, but he couldn’t bring himself to sound like a lovesick adolescent. True to form, he swerved to the light side.

“Why? Because Admiral Sandecker gave me ten days off, and I hate to sit around and not be productive.”

A smile returned to her damp face, and she pulled him against her. “That’s not even a good lie.”

“Why is it,” he said just before he kissed her, “that women always see right through me?”

January 30, 2000

Gladiator Island, Tasman Sea

The Dorsett manor house sat in the saddle of the island, between the two dormant volcanoes. The front overlooked the lagoon, which had become a bustling port for the diamond mining activities. Two mines in both volcanic chutes had been in continuous operation almost from the day Charles and Mary Dorsett returned from England after their marriage. There were those who claimed the family empire began then, but those who knew better held that the empire was truly launched by Betsy Fletcher when she found the unusual stones and gave them to her children to play with.

The original dwelling, mostly built from logs, with a palm frond or palapa roof, was torn down by Anson Dorsett. It was he who designed and built the large mansion that still stood after being remodeled by later generations until eventually taken over by Arthur Dorsett. The style was based on the classical layout-a central courtyard surrounded by verandas from which doors opened onto thirty rooms, all furnished in English colonial antiques. The only visible modern convenience was a large satellite dish, rising from a luxuriant garden, and a modern swimming pool in the center courtyard.

Arthur Dorsett hung up the phone, stepped out of his office-study and walked over to the pool where Deirdre was languidly stretched on a lounge chair, in a string bikini, carefully absorbing the tropical sun into her smooth skin.

“You’d better not let my superintendents see you like that,” he said gruffly.

She slowly raised her head and looked down over a sea of skin. “I see no problem. I have my bra on.”

“And women wonder why they’re raped.”

“Surely you don’t want me to go around wearing a sack,” she said mockingly.

“I have just gotten off the phone with Washington,” he said heavily. “It seems your sister has vanished.”

Deirdre sat up, startled, and lifted a hand to shade her eyes from the sun. “Are your sources reliable? I personally hired the best investigators, former Secret Service agents, to keep her under surveillance.”

“It’s confirmed. They bungled their assignment and lost her after a wild ride through the countryside.”

“Maeve isn’t smart enough to lose professional investigators.”

“From what I’ve been told, she had help.” Her lips twisted into a scowl. “Let me guess Dirk Pitt.”

Dorsett nodded. “The man is everywhere. Boudicca had him in her grasp at our Kunghit Island mine, but he slipped through her fingers.”

“I sensed he was dangerous when he saved Maeve. I should have known how dangerous when he interrupted my plans to be airlifted off the Polar Queen by our helicopter after I set the ship on a collision course toward the rocks. I thought we were rid of him after that. I never imagined he would pop up without warning at our Canadian operation.”

Dorsett motioned to a pretty little Chinese girl who was standing by a column supporting the roof over the veranda. She was dressed in a silk dress with long slits up the sides. “Bring me a gin,” he ordered. “Make it a tall one. I don’t like skimpy drinks.”