Page 1 of Risky Passion

CHAPTER 1

Tory

If there wasone lesson I’d learned since I started flying my surveillance plane for Border Force ten years ago, it was that guilty people often did really stupid things. Like the geniuses on the ragged vessel four hundred feet below me. My first sighting of them was during my initial scout of the area earlier that morning. They’d been at least eighty miles northeast of their current location and they were in one hell of a hurry to get where they were going.

Something about their thirty-foot timber vessel just didn't sit right with me. They had no fishing gear, no dive equipment, and none of the usual tourist paraphernalia. Maybe I was paranoid, given the number of illegal boats and drug traffickers I’d caught in my surveillance over the years, but my gut told me these guys were up to no good.

I noted their coordinates and my stomach twisted. They were located barely thirty clicks from where Whisper and Ryder had found those human trafficking victims last month. Eleven people had been crammed into the hold of a shipwrecked boat, half-starved and barely alive. Modern slavery, right here along the Queensland coast. My own backyard. Just thinking about it made my hands shake. Cairns might look like a tourist paradise, but beneath that glittery surface, monsters still prowled our waters.

I pulled my mic from its bracket. "Ladybeetle to base, do you read, over?"

The static crackled, before the radio clicked. "Base to Ladybeetle, this is Whisper, reading you loud and clear, Tory. What's your status?"

Whisper’s familiar voice always made me smile.

“Hey, Whisper. I got a couple of clowns on a vessel that’s giving me the tingles.”

“Ooh, I love it when your spidey senses kick in.” Whisper chuckled. “What’ve you got?”

“I’m sending you a visual of a thirty-foot cruiser. Can you check the registration?”

“Got it. Give me a few secs and I’ll buzz you back.” Whisper clicked off.

To avoid drawing attention from the boat, I continued flying ten miles past their position. To my right, the midday sun glinted off the shallow water along the mangrove-choked North Queensland coastline. The landscape was a patchwork of vibrant greens and blues–beautiful but deceptive. This stretch of coastline gave me the heebie-jeebies. Too many bad guys lurking in these parts, and too many victims who never saw the light of day once they touched that crocodile-infested soil.

“Base to Ladybeetle, do you read?” Whisper’s voice crackled through the radio again.

“Yes, Whisper. What have you got?”

“We can’t get enough info from that photo. Can you get in for a closer look?”

"Roger that." I banked my Twin Otter around, turning back toward the suspect vessel.

The plane responded smoothly to my touch and the familiar hum of the engines was a comforting melody in my ears. My thoughts cascaded to my parents’ final moments in the sky, and I wondered if they too had felt the same sense of calm up here. Before everything went to shit, that is.

"What’s your location, over?" Whisper’s voice dragged me away from that impossible question.

"I’m about fifteen miles shy of Cooper Creek, over."

She let out a low whistle. “What caught your eye?" Her tone was ablend of curiosity and concern, like she already knew the answer wouldn’t be good.

"No fishing gear," I said, trying to lighten the mood with a weak joke.

“Holy shit. Must be real assholes, then,” she shot back with a dry laugh, but the humor was short-lived. We both knew too much about the horrors that reached this desolate stretch of Australia’s Eastern coastline.

“Approaching the vessel now.” I dropped to two hundred feet and the plane’s shadow skimmed over the water like a phantom.

Two men stepped out onto the front deck of the boat, one raising binoculars to track me. I considered giving them a casual wave, but something about their stiff, guarded posture made me hesitate.

The boat surged forward, and a rooster tail of white water exploded behind them, fanning out across the pristine blue.

“The dickheads are trying to outrun me.”

“Yeah, I’m watching your live feed now,” Whisper agreed. “Wankers.”

I toggled the surveillance camera. The feed beneath the plane zoomed in, and the shabby vessel loomed larger on my screen. A big splash erupted at the boat’s stern.

Oh, hello. What are you up to?

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