Free Windswept by Anna Lowe Page A

murmured, “You
really
don’t want to know.”
    He sighed a little inside. So they were back to that, were they?
    “Ryan Hayes,” he said, leaning in to shake Meredith’s hand.
    “Nice to meet you, Ry—” she started, before her eyebrows shot up. She turned to Mia.
“That
Ryan?”
    He winced, because Meredith’s tone didn’t imply oh-my-God-is-this-that-sweet-Ryan-you-told-me-about? It certainly didn’t say, Ryan-who-made-your-toes-curl-Ryan? More like Ryan-rat-bastard-Ryan-who-betrayed-you-Ryan? Ryan-whose-nuts-you’d-like-to-put-in-a-vise-Ryan?
    Mia sighed a heavy sigh. “That Ryan.”
    Meredith looked at him, cocking her head. It looked like she was reserving judgment — for the time being, at least. “Well, welcome aboard, Ryan,” she said, then added a quieter, “I think.”
    God, it had been a long day. And it sure looked like it might be a long night.
    “We have to get moving,” Mia said, uncoiling the lines by a winch on the starboard side.
    “Going? Where?” Meredith protested.
    “It’s a long story.”
    Meredith looked at him to embellish, but he kept his mouth shut. Mia told him not to say anything about the dive that day, right? And anyway, it was bad enough that Mia was in danger. The more they told Meredith, the more she’d be dragged into the mess, too. Okay, she was already dragged in, but still. He crossed his arms, sealed his lips, and became the audience to a two-woman show.
    “It’s night. It’s dark.” Meredith gestured wildly. “We can’t go anywhere right now!”
    “We have to go,” Mia grunted, moving to the other side.
    “The engine’s out. You know that. Mia, what’s going on?”
    Mia stopped and slumped over the winch. God, she looked tired. Really tired. “I saw the man who bombed that ship today.
Neptune’s Revenge.
”
    “You what?”
    Mia barely moved, though he sensed a tiny tremble. He nearly went to her side, but Meredith got there first, reaching a hand to Mia’s shoulder in one of those sister-sister moments a guy had no business barging in on.
    “Don’t worry. My friend Celeste said they had the suspects in custody,” Meredith said.
    Mia let out a bitter snort. “They had
us
in custody.”
    “They what?” Meredith hit a high note.
    Mia waved her hand like that wasn’t the point. “Listen, we have to get out of here. Whoever bombed that boat is after us now. And if they figure out I’m on
Serendipity…
God, Mer, they could come after us here. They could come after the boat!”
    Ryan cocked his head at her. Someone had tried to kill her twice that day and she was worried about a boat?
    “Serendipity?”
Meredith wrung her hands and breathed the name like it was holy or something.
    “Yeah,
Serendipity.
We have to move in case they come looking.”
    “Move where?”
    Mia straightened and looked north, along the dark coastline. “You know that anchorage we stopped at one day? The one tucked under a cliff? Wilhelm’s Baai?”
    “The one surrounded by reefs?”
    “Reefs we made it through once before.”
    “At noon, with the sun lighting up the pass.”
    “We have the way points. There’s an obelisk there, too. The one you line up with the tree to run the pass.”
    “Are you crazy?”
    He was wondering the same thing.
    “Do you have a better idea?”
    “Yes! We go to the police.” Meredith’s anxious fingers twisted the hem of her white shirt.
    Mia shook her head. “We were just there. They won’t help. Look, we can do this, okay?” Her voice had that forced kind of certainty to it. “We can do this, Mer. We have to.”
    Okay, maybe it was time to step in.
    “Mia, the boat’s not worth risking your life.”
    She turned to him, and even in the moonlight, he could see her face go red. “My grandfather sailed this boat for thirty years and never hurt it!”
    Hurt it,
she said. Like it was a living, breathing thing and not an inanimate object.
    Mia rushed on. “My cousins sailed it all the way from the US to the Caribbean and