The Soldier's Secret Daughter. Cindy Dees

freedom, he craved human company. Someone to talk to him. Just normal, meaningless conversations about normal, meaningless things.

      But he doubted his life would ever be normal again. Eventually, he’d catch some disease, or he’d become malnourished, or maybe he’d just give up on living. Then he was a goner. And not a damned soul would know or care. He figured his captors would push his entire crate overboard into the middle of the ocean and call it good. No more Jagger Holtz.

      What kind of life was it to have lived where no one would give a crap if he died? There ought to be someone to care. But that would’ve meant having someone permanent in his life. Like Emily Grainger. A forever woman. But people in his line of work didn’t do long-term relationships. At least not often, and generally not well.

      If only he had someone to look forward to going home to. Maybe that would help him endure this unending nightmare.

      He glanced at the hole he’d punctured in the corner of his crate when he was first thrown into this shipping container to rot. It served as his only marker of the passage of time. Darkness had fallen outside. Another day gone, which made this the seven hundred twenty-eighth day of his captivity. And that would make tomorrow … he checked the math and a bitter laugh rose up in his chest … New Year’s Eve. Again.

      For the thousandth time, he relived that fateful New Year’s Eve two years ago. He should’ve seen the signs. His instincts should’ve warned him. But he’d been so besotted with Emily Grainger he’d never seen the trap coming. He’d let his guard down. Gotten distracted by a woman. No wonder James Bond never let himself fall for any of his many conquests. Ol’ James understood the dangers of losing focus, apparently. Lucky bastard.

      One thing he knew for sure. If he ever got out of here, if he ever found the people who’d put him into this hellhole, he was going to kill them all. Slowly and painfully.

      

      Emily winced and looked back over her shoulder at yet another AbaCo facility festooned with those awful metallic Christmas decorations. They must be regulation company issue. At least this office had the advantage of being in paradise. She’d leaped at the opportunity to take this exotic position when it had come along. All part and parcel of her campaign to become Danger Girl for real. Jagger Holtz might have run out on her, but she would never forget how he’d made her feel. She’d been fully alive for the first time. She couldn’t ever go back to the way she’d been before, Jagger or no Jagger.

      The Hawaii AbaCo office occupied its own private island at the far western end of the chain of one hundred thirty-seven atolls, islets and islands that made up the Hawaiian archipelago. Although it was more of a refueling depot than an actual office. The Rock, as most of the employees called it, boasted a deepwater dock and underground fuel-storage and pumping facilities, plus a small collection of buildings.

      Oddly, the staff numbered close to sixty, even though the lone office building here could probably only hold half that number—standing up and tightly packed. Two dozen longshoremen refueled and resupplied the ships, and the security team accounted for another dozen of the tall, silent men on the payroll. She was told that AbaCo put divers in the water for security purposes whenever one of its container ships came into port, which supposedly accounted for most of the rest of the powerful-looking men that made up the staff.

      But in the time she’d been here, the actual work getting done and the number of able-bodied men stationed here to do it didn’t add up. There always seemed to be spare guys hanging around the small AbaCo building, going in and out of Kurt Schroder’s office for hush-hush meetings. He was the site manager.

      He’d seemed surprised when she’d shown up, letters of introduction in hand from the North American chief of security for AbaCo. But after Schroder read the letter, he merely shrugged and showed her to a desk. Her job here wasn’t so different from what she’d done in Denver. It mostly entailed tracking shipments, making sure they got to where they were supposed to go on time, that the money got into the right accounts and answering a few phones.

      The staff rotated in and out of this remote location. Two weeks on the Rock, two weeks off-duty on a Hawaiian island of personal choice. She’d chosen Kauai. It was everything she’d imagined Hawaii to be and more—tropical, lush and laid-back. She’d fallen in love with it from the first moment she’d set foot on it.

      She’d even talked her mother into moving out here with her on this once-in-a-lifetime assignment to hold down the fort at the Kauai condo during the times Emily was posted on the Rock.

      “There you are,” a deep male voice grumbled from behind her.

      Schroder. Dang. That guy could track her down anywhere. Here she was, parked on the far side of the island from the offices, and he still showed up unannounced to check on her. It bordered on creepy. It wasn’t that he had any kind of a romantic interest in her. Two years ago she might have suspected that. But now she knew better. She’d experienced true chemistry once—and she and Kurt Schroder did not have it.

      Of course, look where having it with a guy had gotten her. Maybe chemistry-challenged guys were a better bet if a girl wanted some sort of sane, stable life. Still, she didn’t like how Kurt was constantly popping up unannounced when she least expected him.

      “There you are, Emily. Strange place to take your lunch break.”

      She shrugged. “I was tired. I thought a hike might wake me up. I still have a little work to do this afternoon to wind things up before the New Year’s Eve party.”

      She winced as she said the words. Would she never get past her memories of the fateful New Year’s Eve party two years ago that had so completely changed her life—changed her?

      Schroder seemed to accept her explanation. “Be careful out here. The rocks can be treacherous, and they get slippery when it rains.” He cast a grim gaze up at a low cloud bank, which was indeed threatening to wet down the tiny island. The Kona Winds were blowing today, bringing in a heavy, muggy air mass and terminally bad hair to this corner of the world.

      She sighed, pushed the frizzies out of her face and followed her boss back to the shipping office. So much for a moment of privacy. A person would think that there’d be plenty of alone time to be had on an isolated rock in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, but that person would obviously have failed to figure in the pervasive eye of AbaCo always watching over its employees.

      She was due to rotate off the island the day after tomorrow, and she dared not leave much by way of unfinished work for her replacement, a taciturn ex-German Army man who was about as capable with paperwork as she was with a submachine gun. Which was to say, she couldn’t tell the business end of a gun from the…. whatever the nonbusiness end was called.

      She filed the last stack of bills of lading and had all but finished matching the latest round of payments received with their various shipments when the bell on her computer dinged to indicate an incoming e-mail. She swung her chair around to face her screen and pulled up the message.

      Zhow Min. 3-6-D-15472.

      

      What on earth? She stared at the message for several seconds trying to make sense of it. There was no greeting, no signature block. The e-mail address from which the message originated was MysteryMom. Not exactly the sort of address one of AbaCo’s shipping clients was likely to use. Was this message even meant for her? Emily glanced at her screen again and saw the message was addressed to her personally and not to the AbaCo office here on the Rock.

      What did it mean?

      The Zhow Min part was obvious. A supercontainer ship by that name was due in from China sometime after midnight tonight. It was scheduled to be in port for twenty-four hours to refuel and take on supplies. The crew would lay over in the dormitory provided for that purpose until tomorrow evening.

      But what were those numbers all about? She pulled up the ship’s cargo manifest on her computer and compared the numbers to the various cargo shipments on the Zhow Min. Nothing even remotely resembled the number sequence. Was 3-6 a date? She couldn’t think of anything special about March 6, and a quick