Sandra Moore - Without A Trace

Christine,

We’ve gained information from the former senator. It seems he employed a hacker, known only as Diviner, to track down information about Arachne’s whereabouts. Diviner is our next lead.

We’ve tracked his signal to the Port of Miami, and Nikki Bustillo can help us there. I’ll have her use her contacts to find his location. I have a feeling he’ll be heading into international waters—with Arachne close behind.

I’ve got a few assistants in Asia who may be able to aid Nikki. She’s not worked with Oracle before, so see if you can send some Athena alum agents her way, for reassurance. She’s not one to trust easily.

D.

Dear Reader,

Like Nikki, I often wonder what it would be like to have sisters to have fun with, to cry with and to call upon for help. And also like Nikki, sisters of choice have appeared during times I’ve needed them, sometimes in the form of renewed relationships with long-distance cousins (Divas rule!) or new relationships with like-minded women whose company and intimacy add greatly to my life on a daily basis.

What intrigued me most while writing this story was how a woman like Nikki—strong and competent – would handle being a fish out of water in Hong Kong, a city and culture both familiar and utterly foreign to her young American mind. I wasn’t surprised to discover that in her times of need, it was her relationships with special women that brought her through.

That’s what makes the Athena Force series special for me. These books are about independent women who understand their greatest strength lies not just in their own courage, but also in the combined determination of a very unique sisterhood.

All the best,

Sandra

www.millsandboon.co.uk

has been a technical writer, poet, martial arts student and software product manager, occasionally all at the same time. She lives on the Texas coast with her handsome partner and a moody tabby cat, and she hopes one day to ride a Ducati sport bike from Hong Kong to Stanley Village. Visit her on the Web at www.sandrakmoore.com.

To all sisters—by blood and by choice—in a challenging world.

This book could never have existed without the help so generously given by many people:

My thanks and my admiration go out to Petty Officer 3rd Class Sondra-Kay Kneen, who serves her country in the U.S. Coast Guard and has climbed through a bilge or two in her time.

Thanks to Elena Torres-Jovel, for her help with the Spanish.

I’m especially grateful for my patient editor, Stacy Boyd, who never fails to see what I’m trying—and failing—to get on the page, and who is so gracious when pointing me in the right direction.

And many thanks to Sharron McClellan, who gave Nikki such a wonderful big-sister-of-choice in Jess Whitaker.

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Lieutenant Nikki Bustillo knew the shrimp boat her Coast Guard crew had just boarded for inspection was hiding something. It was as plain, she thought wryly, as the nose on her face.

She peered through the boat’s rear pilothouse door at the ragged Hispanic crew members lined up in the vessel’s stern. Yep. Definitely something wrong. Beneath the stench of day-old shrimp lay the almost overwhelming musk of fear. It emanated from the deckhands as strongly as the diesel fumes off the hot engines. This wasn’t about having a net with its turtle extraction devices sewn shut, which was an illegal technique that caught more fish but threatened endangered sea turtles.

No, these crewmen were scared to death.

“Problem?” Ensign Rich Mansfield, the boarding team’s rookie member, joined her in the trawler’s pilothouse.

“The Montoya is carrying more than dinner.”

Mansfield gave her a measured look. “How do you know?”

Nikki nodded at the fidgeting shrimper crew. “They look nervous to you?”

“Yeah. Sort of.”

The truth was, these men didn’t look any more nervous than any other crew Nikki’s command had stopped in the past three weeks along Florida’s coastline. But to put it mildly, they reeked of fear. Literally. The vessel was definitely carrying something besides shrimp. Cocaine was a good guess.

Mansfield hovered at her elbow as she thumbed through the vessel’s shoddily kept logs. She would’ve had the fresh-out-of-cadet-training ensign pegged merely as a nuisance, except back in February she’d received an encrypted e-mail message from someone called Delphi warning her to watch her back: somebody called Arachne was getting her jollies kidnapping Athena Academy students and alumnae, and Nikki’s name was on the wish list.

This Delphi had never contacted her before, but had known too many students—too many facts about too many of Nikki’s friends—for Nikki to doubt she knew what she was talking about. Behind that e-mail had come a visit from a former classmate, Dana Velasco, confirming Delphi’s assertion. Nikki had gotten the impression she—Nikki could only think of Delphi as “she”—was never wrong.

And Mansfield had a habit of pestering Nikki with a lot of questions she preferred not to answer.

He’d been particularly intrigued by her schooling. The Athena Academy for the Advancement of Women was unusual and he’d wanted to hear all about it. Fair enough. She’d given him the Cliff’s Notes version and moved on to her rapid-fire years at Florida State University studying literature, then to her decision to join the Coast Guard.

The truth was, the Athena Academy was the first place where she’d felt like she belonged. After an early childhood filled with seven raucous older brothers, she’d felt like an all-girls school was somehow coming home. Her orientation group, the Hecates, had consisted of four other girls, each unique, each talented and gutsy and strong. How could she possibly explain her sense of sistership with these women? Especially to someone she didn’t know. It didn’t seem…right…to share that with a stranger.

After graduation, she’d hoped to put her unique strengths to good use: her eidetic memory, her particularly fine eye-hand coordination and her martial arts skills. Those strengths and a late-blooming love of the sea had led her inevitably to the Coast Guard, where she’d screamed up the command ladder, making lieutenant at twenty-three.

Her ability to unerringly locate the bags of cocaine, heroin bricks and pot stashes? Well, that was just a little something extra given to her when her mom’s IVF doctor took a few liberties with her genetic material. It was why she could smell trouble in a man’s sweat, and why she’d chosen drug interdiction as her Coast Guard career of choice.

When Delphi told her back in February that she’d been targeted for kidnapping because of her special ability, Nikki had had to take a few days to get adjusted to that reality. Her parents, who’d simply wanted a daughter instead of an eighth son, had applied to the Zuni, New Mexico, fertility lab in an attempt to have one. As far as Nikki knew, the only special order her parents had placed was for gender. And nothing else.