Windswept by Anna Lowe Page A

end.
    But she didn’t ask, so he didn’t say. Just held on to her eyes and willed her to believe.
    Meredith looked at Mia, then him, then back at Mia, and finally plowed on. “It doesn’t have to be the developer. It could be someone with a stake in the company or a competitor who could step in if that developer couldn’t build. Really, it could be anyone.”
    “Not anyone,” Mia growled. “A guy with dark eyes and a blue wetsuit and UltraFlow fins.”
    Meredith’s eyebrow shot up, but Ryan just nodded. Leave it to Mia to notice the brand of the guy’s dive gear.
    “Not much to go on,” Meredith said.
    They all fell into silence, each of them shooting covert glances over their shoulders. Mia made constant adjustments to the lines, harnessing every breath of the light sea breeze.
    Ryan closed his eyes and let the wind comb his hair. His salty skin itched, but that wind was fresh and invigorating, and thank goodness for that, because when things eventually slowed down tonight, his body was going to crash and crash hard.
    A quiet hour ticked past as they inched closer and closer to escape.
    “Clearing the cape,” Meredith murmured.
    “Not far now,” Mia whispered, almost to herself. “This is the tricky part.”
    As
Serendipity
nosed around the corner of the bay, the lights of town winked out of sight, one by one. Ryan wasn’t the only one who sighed a little in relief. The boat heeled a couple of degrees harder as they angled into the wind, and the gentle rocking motion became a lively romp. He eyed the dark coastline ahead. Where exactly were they headed?
    “You can’t see it until you’re on top of it,” Mia murmured, seeing him peer ahead. “It’s just a tiny cut in the coast, but once you’re in, it opens up to a little bay. No obstructions.”
    “Once you’re in, that is,” Meredith muttered. “The pass, on the other hand…”
    Mia nodded. “The pass is a little narrow.”
    “And hard on the wind.” Meredith pointed out.
    And we have no working engine to help us power through it,
he read in the nervous glances they exchanged.
    Mia didn’t comment. She just went below and eyed the chart. He peeked over her shoulder to see for himself and, Christ, that pass was narrow. When he looked up to match the chart with the view, he heard the murmur of waves breaking over a reef.
    “Okay, we’re almost there.”
    He watched Mia fiddle with the GPS, calling up the way points they had marked on their previous trip in — points that would guide them to safety like Hansel and Gretel’s trail of crumbs. Or better than a trail of crumbs, he hoped. But damn, the pass looked narrow, a tiny cut between razor-sharp reefs. One degree off and they’d be sunk — literally.
    “You don’t have a pair of night vision goggles, do you?” he tried.
    Both sisters laughed dryly.
    Right. This wasn’t the Navy or the NYPD. It wasn’t a fancy yacht either, just a sturdy little workhorse that had been lovingly kept up over the years. He could see it in the woodwork, in the polish of the brass. Serendipity was what you might call a good old boat, low on electronic gizmos but high in old-fashioned faith in Lady Luck. If he ever met the cousin who’d brought this boat all the way down from New England, he’d shake his hand — or her hand, because it sounded like Mia and Meredith had a whole pack of Amazonian relatives just as capable of handling this boat as they.
    Sailing blind through a reef, he didn’t like. But the crew — these sailors, this family — he liked. Figured he’d have liked the grandfather, too.
    “I can keep lookout on the bow,” he offered.
    She shook her head. “I’m on the bow. You’re watching the GPS.”
    He blinked, slowly processing the fact that he had just been given an order. His gut rolled that one back and forth for a second before he nodded. It was her boat, after all.
    She pointed at the display and briefed him on the data points they had saved from their last time