Page 55 of Wait for Me

Marie went to the small refrigerator. “Want some mineral water? Cranberry juice? Those are all I have.”

“Water is fine.” Logan peeled himself off the carpet and padded to the sliding glass door. “Look, it stopped raining. The moon is out. Let’s go sit outside. We’ll talk about our troubles later.”

“Sounds good. I’ll see you out there in a minute.” Marie closed the bathroom door.

Logan stepped out onto the balcony, leaving the sliding glass door ajar behind him. The wind tossed his wavy hair a bit, and flapped his dress shirt. The rain had stopped.

A small dark cloud covered the moon. Logan looked up to see if it was going to rain again, and if the cloud would move. He wanted to get a photo of the moon.

The dark cloud was still there.

Oddly enough, the cloud started to come toward the small balcony, making weird motor or engine noises, and turning into odd-shaped shadows as they approached Logan—standing there with his jaw hanging down.

The cloud turned into what looked like several pairs of giant black boots—or something. Logan couldn’t tell in the dim balcony light.

“What in the—”

Oomph!

The heavy objects made contact with Logan’s torso. He fell backwards, his shoulders smashing against the partially opened sliding glass door—

And he heard a sharp, loud crack in his left arm.

Chapter Twenty-Five

Marie stepped out of the bathroom to the sound of jetpacks and the sight of men in black landing on her small balcony. Someone in a light-colored shirt was moaning on the floor at the sliding glass door.

“Logan!” Marie ran toward her ex-husband, fully aware that her Sig Sauer was still locked inside the safe. Great. “Siri! Call security!”

The barrel ends of two handguns with silencers, each held by a different person, appeared in front of her nose.

“Make a move, Lucy, and your husband dies.” His voice was gruff and slightly muffled behind the ski mask.

Marie wanted to correct him, but now wasn’t the time. It was also pointless to try to pin down his accent. In today’s world of mercenary work, he could be from anywhere.

Instead, she tried the benign. “Who is Lucy? You must have gotten the wrong stateroom.”

“You both still die.” Gruffy Voice nodded to the other intruder, who then slowly moved around Marie to point his gun at the back of her head.

God, help us.

Out there on the balcony, a fourth intruder was pulling Logan to his feet. He yowled in pain, holding his left arm. Marie couldn’t tell if he had been shot.

Marie wasn’t sure how she was going to defend herself and Logan against three armed men.

Well, she assumed they were men by their physiology, but Marie couldn’t tell for sure since they all wore ski masks and hid behind Kevlar vests—or something similarly bulletproof—although it mattered not at this point. They had weapons. She had none.

There was little she could do standing in between the two men. She could do even less for Logan, now being hauled into the stateroom.

“Who are you?” Marie asked Gruffy.

No response.

“What do you want?”

Gruffy made a noise, something guttural, something unintelligible. To Marie, it sounded like a cross between a bear and an elephant.

“I guess you don’t want money,” Marie continued the charade.

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