A Kiss to Kill by Nina Bruhns Read Free Book Online

engines roared to life. Chet grabbed his torso, helping her hoist him over the final barrier.
    “Everyone onboard?” Captain Montgomery yelled from behind the wheel.
    “We’re good!” Chet yelled back. There was no time to go back for the two dead men. “Go!”
    She and Chet both landed on their butts and collided hard with the injured Sampson as the boat shot forward with a jerk and a spinning turn to run full out. Water sprayed in a rooster tail, drenching everyone in the frigid wake. But they’d gotten away.
    Not a moment too soon.
    With a deep rumble, Allah’s Paradise lit up in a ball of flame and a deafening ka- boom .
    Rebel covered her ears and threw herself over Sampson just as Chet did the same. She ended up sandwiched between the two men. A second explosion ripped through the air. Flaming debris rained down around them.
    Then just as quickly, the early morning air went deathly still.
    “Jesus on a freakin’ fork,” Chet swore after a few tense heartbeats.
    “Language, ensign.”
    He deftly lifted himself off her and Sampson. “Sorry, ma’am. You hurt?”
    At least she was pretty sure that’s what he said. Her ears were ringing and her hearing was muffled like when she used to wear those fluffy earmuffs on ski trips to Switzerland as a kid. She gave him a wobbly smile. “Just my dignity,” she answered, then turned to Sampson to check on his injury. She peeled off her jacket and pressed it to his bleeding gunshot wound as Chet reeled off to check on the prisoner. “And my suit,” she added resignedly, meeting Ensign Sampson’s grateful eyes. “Donna Karan,” she told him philosophically. “My favorite.” Now covered in blood, guts, and black ash. At least it matched the rest of her. But Sampson was alive, and that’s all that really mattered.
    “I’ll buy you . . . another damn suit,” the ensign wheezed out with a cough. Then he grinned painfully. “But with . . . a shorter skirt.”
    She laughed and made a face at him. “In your dreams, sailor.”
    “Oh . . . yeah.” His eyes fluttered closed.
    She glanced back at the burning remains of the rapidly sinking yacht. They were lucky to be having any more dreams at all. If her Bluetooth hadn’t picked up the static from that bomb’s timing mechanism, they’d all be dead now. Blown to little, tiny bits.
    A long shiver traced down her spine.
    That’s when she noticed the whop-whop-whop of an approaching Coast Guard helicopter.
    “Hang in there,” she told Sampson, who was barely clinging to consciousness. “Help is already here. You Coastie boys are fast.”
    “Always ready,” he croaked proudly, which turned into a groan.
    The helo roared overhead, circled once, then spit out four guys in black wet suits from the open side doors. Within seconds they’d splashed down in a perfect formation alongside the RB-M, which Montgomery had pulled up just out of range of the sinking yacht, and swiftly climbed on board.
    The helo circled again and another guy dropped out of its door, this time on a line, along with a stretcher basket for Sampson. They both zoomed down at breakneck speed toward the RB-M’s rolling deck. Rebel cringed, hoping they didn’t hit a bad swell so the guy went splat.
    Just then her cell phone rang again.
    “You have got to be kidding me,” she muttered, and mashed the Bluetooth’s on button. “I really can’t talk right now,” she yelled over the deafening whop-whop of the rotors.
    “Goddamn it, Rebel!” a man yelled back over the phone, shocking her senseless with the familiar sound of his voice. “Where the hell are you? Are you hurt?”
    She froze, her reflexive language admonition sticking in her throat. Impossible. It couldn’t be . How could he possibly know—
    “Fucking hell, answer me, goddamn it! Is this stretcher for you ?” he bellowed.
    She peered closer at the man descending on the line from the helo. He hit the deck, spotted her standing there, scowled ferociously at her blood-covered