Rumours: The Dishonoured Copelands. Jane Porter

was thudding so hard and fast she thought she might be sick and she drew great gulps of air, fighting waves of nausea and intense relief. Dad was alive. That was huge. “Thank God.”

      For a moment there was just silence as Morgan sat with the news, overwhelmed that her father was indeed alive. After a moment, when she could trust herself to speak, she looked up at Rowan. “And he’s well? He’s healthy?”

      He hesitated. “We don’t know that. We only have his location, and evidence that he is alive.”

      So Dad could be sick. He probably didn’t have his heart medicine with him. It’d probably been left behind on his boat. “What happens now?” she asked.

      “We get your father out, take him to wherever you want him to go.”

      “How does that happen, though?”

      “We’re going to have you call your contact, the one in Somalia you’ve been dealing with, and you’re going to ask to speak to your father. You’ll tell them you need proof that he’s alive and well if they are to get the six million dollars.”

      “They won’t let me speak to him. I tried that before.”

      “They will,” Drakon interjected, arms folded across his chest, the shirt molded to his sculpted torso, “if they think you’re ready to make a drop of six million.”

      She looked at him. “What if they call our bluff? Wouldn’t we have to be prepared to make the drop?”

      “Yes. And we will. We’ll give them a date, a time, coordinates for the drop. We’ll tell them who is making the drop, too.”

      “But we’re not dropping any money, are we?” she asked, glancing from him to Rowan and back again.

      “No,” said Rowan. “We’re preparing a team right now to move in and rescue your father. But speaking to your father gives us important information, as well as buys us a little more time to put our plan in place.”

      She nodded, processing this. “How long until you rescue him?”

      “Soon. Seventy-two hours, or less.”

      She looked at Rowan, startled. “That is soon.”

      “Once we have our plan in place, it’s better to strike fast.” Rowan’s phone made a low vibrating noise and he reached into his pocket and checked the number. “I need to take this call,” he said, walking away.

      Morgan exhaled as Rowan exited through the sunroom, into the stairwell that would take him back up to the main level of the villa.

      “You okay?” Drakon asked, looking down on her, after Rowan disappeared.

      “Things can go wrong,” she said.

      “Yes. And sometimes they do. But Dunamas has an impressive track record. Far more successes than failures. I wouldn’t have enlisted their help if I didn’t think they’d succeed.”

      She hesitated. “If Rowan’s team didn’t succeed … people could die.”

      “People will die even if they do succeed. They’re planning a raid. The pirates are heavily armed. Dunamas’s team will be heavily armed. It’s not going to be a peaceful handover. It’ll be explosive and violent, and yet the team they’re sending are professionals. They’re prepared to do whatever they have to do to get him out alive.”

      So some of them—or all of them—could end up dying for her father?

      Nauseated all over again, Morgan moved from her chair, not wanting to think of the brave, battle-tested men, men the world viewed as heroic, risking their lives for her father, who wasn’t a hero.

      Stomach churning, she pushed open one of the sunroom’s tall arched glass doors and stepped onto the terrace, into the sunshine. She drank in a breath of fresh air, and then another. Was she being selfish, trying to save her father? Should she not do this?

      Panic and guilt buffeted her as she leaned against the terrace’s creamy marble balustrade and squeezed her eyes closed.

      Drakon had followed her outside. “What’s wrong?”

      She didn’t answer immediately, trying to find the right words, but what were those words? How did one make a decision like this? “Am I doing the wrong thing?” she asked. “Am I wrong, trying to save him?”

      “I can’t answer that for you. He’s your father. Your family.”

      “You know I tried everything before I came to you. I asked everyone for help. No one would help me.”

      “Who did you approach?”

      “Who didn’t I?” She laughed grimly and glanced out across the terraced gardens with the roses and hedges and the pool and the view of the sea beyond. “I went to London to see Branson, and then to Los Angeles to see Logan, and then to Tori in New York, and back to London, but none of them would contribute money toward Dad’s ransom. They’re all in tight financial straits, and they all have reasons they couldn’t give, but I think they wouldn’t contribute to the ransom because they’re ashamed of Dad. I think they believe I’m wasting money trying to rescue him. Mom even said he’s better off where he is … that people will find it easier to forgive us—his kids—if Dad doesn’t come back.”

      “You mean, if the pirates kill him?” Drakon asked.

      She nodded.

      “Your mother is probably right,” he said.

      She shot him a swift glance before pushing away from the railing to pace the length of the terrace. For a long minute she just walked, trying to master her emotions. “Maybe,” she said, “maybe Mom is right, but I don’t care. I don’t care what people think of me. I don’t care if they like me. I care about what’s right. And while what Dad did, just blindly giving Michael the money, wasn’t right, it’s also not right to leave him in Somalia. And maybe the others can write him off, but I can’t.”

      She shivered, chilled, even though the sun was shining warmly overhead. “I can’t forget how he taught me to swim and ride a bike and he went to every one of my volleyball games in high school. Dad was there for everything, big and small, and maybe he was a terrible investment advisor, but he was a wonderful father. I couldn’t have asked for better—” Morgan broke off, covering her mouth to stifle a sob. She couldn’t help it, but she missed him, and worried about him, and there was just no way she could turn her back on him now. No way at all.

      “I think you have your answer,” Drakon said quietly. “You have to do this. Have to help him. Right or wrong.”

      They both turned at the sound of a squeaky gate. Rowan was heading up toward them from the lower garden.

      “And if anybody can get your father home, it’s Argyros,” Drakon said.

      Morgan wrinkled her nose. “He looks like a drug smuggler.”

      The corner of Drakon’s mouth lifted. “He isn’t what one expects. That’s what makes him so successful.”

      “As long as you trust him.”

      “I do.”

      On reaching their side, Rowan announced that his office was now ready for Morgan to try to phone her pirate contact in Somalia. “We have a special line set up that will allow us to record the conversation,” he said. “And my team is standing by now, to listen in on the call.”

      “But I can only use my phone,” she answered. “And my number. They know my number—”

      “We know. And we can make it appear to look like your number. Today’s technology lets us do just about anything.”

      In the villa’s dark-paneled library they attempted the call but no one answered on the other end. Morgan left a message, letting her contact know that she had six million in cash, in used bills, and was ready to make the drop but she wanted to speak to her father