Illusion (Billionaire in Disguise Series, #2) Read online

  I covered my face with my arm and ran down below the deck. If anyone else was trapped down there, I still had some time to get to them. I walked around, hacking and coughing as my eyes began to water. I could hear the security guards above the deck yelling for people to get into their lifeboats.

  Then I heard Derek yelling for me.

  “Sam! Sam! Where are you!?”

  I had to ignore his voice. I knew he was panicked and worried, but I had to make sure no one was trapped down here. I walked around, darting into the small kitchen to see if I could find where the fire originated from. My first thought was the kitchen. That would’ve been the easiest to conceal, especially with having gas stoves on board. I rushed over through the thick haze of smoke, knowing I was getting closer as the smoke grew thicker.

  And still, Derek was yelling for me.

  “I’m not getting off this damn boat without you, Sam! I’m coming down!”

  That man was as fucking stubborn as they came. I threw open the ovens, trying to see through the thick fog barreling from below deck. I was choking on the lack of oxygen, on the ship being burned and going under. Water was gathering up to my ankles as I sloshed around, looking at the knobs on the stoves.

  But none of them were turned on.

  The fire wasn’t originating from the kitchen.

  I could hear Derek tussling with someone above ground. The security guards were probably trying to get him onto a boat. I sloshed along the floor, dipping below the smoke as I caught my breath. I swam across and threw open the bathroom door, making sure no one was down here. I was about to abandon the ship altogether when I got to the stairs, ready to get off this death trap and back into Derek’s arms.

  Then, I heard it.

  The smallest groan coming from the very back of the ship.

  “Sam, please!”

  I looked up and saw Derek’s eyes as he pleaded with me.

  “Take my hand. The ship’s sinking.”

  “Get on the lifeboat. I’ll be there in a second,” I said.

  “What? Sam, are you crazy?”

  “Someone’s down here, and I’m not leaving them!”

  I pushed off the stairs as Derek continued to fight with someone. I heard him cursing and shouting for me, and I tried to block him out. I swam toward the groan, getting closer as the water rose higher and higher. I could feel the instability of the boat as it continued to tip onto its side.

  But then, I felt the weight of the hull give way.

  “Fuck,” I said. “This ship’s going to split.”

  I threw open the very last door I came to. Nothing but a closet and a storage place for mindless shit. But there, floating around in oblivion, was one of the security guards.

  “Come on. I got ya,” I said.

  Throwing my arm around the man’s body, I dragged him from the closet. I could feel the ship’s weight severing the boat. I raced toward the staircase and pulled the man up, his cough sputtering ocean water up this throat. I yelled for some guards to help me with this man as Derek yelled for me, spotting me on the deck of the ship as he was pushed toward a life raft.

  “Sam! Sam!”

  I tugged him over to where Derek was, and I could see the fire in his eyes. He was angry and worried, and he helped me gather the man into the boat. Someone shoved a life vest over my head as they threaded it around my body, buckling me in as some random guard dragged the man into the ship.

  Then I felt a tight grasp on my wrist before I was pulled.

  “Derek!”

  “I’m not letting you go again. Get on this fucking boat, Sam.”

  I fell into the inflatable raft just before we pushed away from the ship. I held the security guard tightly in my grasp as Derek cradled me against his heaving body. There was a very scared chef on our boat with us, his eyes watching the ship as the last of the security guards made it off.

  I could only watch in horror as the rest of the ship went up in flames.

  “What the hell’s all this?” Derek asked.

  That was a strange question to ask.

  “There was an explosion below the deck,” I said. “Consumed everything in fire. Blasted holes in the side of the boat, I’m sure. It’s why we started taking on water.”

  “And was there any reason for you to go below deck and risk your life? Again?”

  “You mean to save the man in my arms? No, Derek. No reason at all,” I said.

  “What a waste.”

  “Seriously?” I asked.

  “Yeah. I had this nice outing planned for us. Romantic. Filled with fireworks. I proposed a new job to you that would set you up for life. You know, the usual that comes with me. Then, my yacht has to go and sink.”

  I furrowed my brow as I turned toward him and took in the annoyance written all over his face. He wasn’t upset. He was scared. He wasn’t even the least bit worried.

  The man was annoyed.

  “You’re annoyed.”

  “Of course, I’m annoyed,” he said. “A sinking ship wasn’t really in my plans for the evening.”

  I laughed, shaking my head before a bombastic cracking sound rang out. I whipped my head around, watching as the ship split into two and upended in the middle of the ocean. More of the hull was exposed, and it gave me enough of a view to see the flames spewing out from the massive holes in the side of the ship.

  Holes that had the carnage hanging on the outside. Exposed to the elements and the waters.

  That was what happened.

  Someone had set an explosion to go off from the inside of the ship.

  “Holy fuck,” I said breathlessly.

  I could hear the chef beginning to cry as Derek’s voice wafted against my ears.

  “It’s going to be okay. The Coast Guard is only a few minutes out, and you’re safe with us. And trust me, all of you are getting a very big bonus for putting up with all this. A glowing recommendation, too, to wherever you want.”

  I smiled at his kind words as I turned around and looked at him. He was shaking with fear like the guard between my legs. He wasn’t crying like the chef whose hand he was holding. He was stable and kind. Compassionate and loving. Exactly the type of man who differentiated himself from the world of business. Exactly the type of man needed to garner the success he had in his life.

  I felt a pinch of guilt surge through my body, however. Before I’d met him, his ship going up in flames would’ve rattled him. It would’ve scared him and panicked him. He would’ve kept asking me all sorts of asinine questions, and I would’ve been the one to try and calm his mind.

  But he was perfectly calm, strong and independent of needing me to comfort him. That only happened when someone got used to the dark and got used to the black cloud looming over their heads.

  It hurt my heart to see how used to this he had become.

  “This wasn’t an accident, was it?”

  I panned my gaze over to Derek, whose arm was around the trembling chef.

  “No,” I said. “It wasn’t.”

  “What did you see down there?” he asked.

  “None of the gas stove knobs were turned up all the way, and none of the stoves were spewing fire. I couldn’t get all the way to the front of the undercarriage of the ship because of all the thick smoke, but the security guard I found was stuffed in a closet. And judging by the knock on the back of his head that’s bleeding, I’d say someone ambushed him and knocked him out.”

  “Just like they did Jacob,” he said.

  “Looks about the same. We won’t know until he gets checked out, but I’m eager to compare his wound to the files on Jacob’s.”

  I saw the anger growing in Derek’s face. As his eyes gazed out over his burning ship, helicopters started whirring above our heads. The Coast Guard was here, ready to rescue us one by one from the middle of the damn ocean as fireworks continued to crack above our heads. The colors were ironically beautiful for such a damning night, and I took a moment to drink it all in before I sighed.

  “Why
the fuck would Jacob come after and endanger innocent people?” Derek asked.

  “We don’t know it was Jacob,” I said.

  “He could’ve paid someone! You said it yourself that he must’ve had resources.”

  “Derek, now’s not the time,” I said. “We have civilians on board.”

  “I’m a civilian, Sam!”

  I winced at his words as a helicopter positioned itself over our heads.

  “I’m a civilian,” he said defeatedly.

  I didn’t have an answer for him. I didn’t know why Jacob would come after him when innocent bystanders were on board. It didn’t fit the original attack. Hell, it didn’t fit the original letters. The letters made sense when Jacob came into the picture, but the only way to describe his attack in Derek’s office was desperate. He was willing to put a bullet in both of us, but the question was had he considered me an innocent bystander? If he didn’t, then it would make sense why he would make the comment about killing both of us.

  But if he did consider me innocent that night, then it gave us precedence for him attacking this boat.

  I came to when Derek was helping the security guard up from my grasp. We worked him onto the airborne gurney, then watched the Coast Guard funnel him up to the aircraft. They sent down one more, and it was a no-brainer to stick the chef in it. She was scared and crying profusely, and I wanted to get her out of this situation.

  Which left Derek and me in the boat.

  Alone.

  The helicopter started flying toward the shore as others waited to be filled. I sighed and sat back, closing my eyes and listening to the bobbing of the ocean. Something that had been so serene and comforting only days ago was now the cause of so much heartache and stress. I felt defeated. Angry. In the dark on so many things that didn’t make sense. Someone was pulling the wool over our eyes. It was the only conclusion that made sense.

  But my mind was rendered useless when Derek tugged my body toward his.

  “Come here,” he said. “Lean against me.”

  I sighed, no longer fighting him as I curled into the strength of his wet form.

  We sat there, our lifeboat bobbing up and down as a boat made its way toward us. They were coming for us by sea now that the helicopters were full. I gazed up at the fireworks still popping off, its residue falling into the ocean around us as the rest of the ship sank.

  The ocean guzzled it down like a hungry child waking up after a nap.

  “We’ll figure out who did this,” Derek said. “This is what you do.”

  It had happened. The moment when people like me quit their jobs. I was now being reassured of my own competency by the one person I was trying to protect.

  I was no longer the best, and that thought made me sick.

  Chapter 19

  Derek

  WITH THE ATTACK ON my yacht, the FBI was officially brought in to investigate. They were getting fed up with all the nonsense going on in my life, and quite frankly, I was as well. This was getting out of hand, and it had to stop.

  The problem?

  They were treating Sam as if she was a suspect.

  We were meeting with two very particular agents with steely glances and tough exteriors. Sam and I, over the past week, had undergone some very rigorous interviews with them both. Sam seemed to be okay with everything, but it was tearing me apart. Some of the questions they were asking turned my stomach.

  “What do you know about Samantha Williams?”

  “How long have the two of you been involved under your employ?”

  “Where was she during the explosion?”

  Yep. That was right. Divers had recovered enough of my yacht to confirm there had been a bomb on the yacht. The security who was attacked? The wound was almost exactly the same as the one Jacob had behind his head. Same shape, which meant the same object was used. Same indentation, which meant the same force behind the object was used. Same length, which meant the same trajectory was used.

  It was practically confirmed that it was the same assailant.

  The FBI was also running triple-checked background checks on all the crew and staff on the ship. They wanted to know anything that seemed out of place. I told the agents that Sam already took care of that, but the only thing they did was roll their eyes.

  “Everyone’s a suspect until they aren’t.”

  They sounded like Sam when she first got here. But I knew Sam. I knew she wasn’t involved in this. She couldn’t be. She was as perplexed and shocked about the explosion as I had been. Hell, she ran down the stairs and into a fucking fire to make sure no one was trapped down there to die.

  She wasn’t the one doing any of this.

  And nothing they could say would convince me of it.

  I walked into the interrogation room and saw Sam sitting there. Her face was stoic, and her eyes were locked on the wall as Special Agents Smith and Jones sat across from her. The heavy metal table was bolted to the floor, and they were staring hard at her, no doubt waiting for her to answer a question they had asked.

  “Mr. Steele, glad you could make it. Have a seat beside Miss Williams.”

  I raked my eyes down her body, registering how annoyed she was before I sat down beside her.

  “Why was I pulled from my office?” I asked. “And why is my hired bodyguard not with me?”

  “Just a few questions for her,” Agent Smith said. “But she’s a little hesitant to answer some of them.”

  I looked over at Sam as she gritted her teeth. I could see her temple flexing as she clenched her jaw, physically biting down on her tongue.

  What the hell was going on?

  “Maybe I can help,” I said as I sat back. “What is it you need to know that you haven’t found out over this past week?”

  “When Miss Williams went down below the deck, what happened?” Agent Jones asked.

  “Sam, why aren’t you answering that question?” I asked.

  But all she did was draw in a deep breath.

  “Miss Williams, we can arrest you for obstruction of justice if you don’t answer the question,” Agent Jones said.

  “That won’t be necessary. Miss Williams is in my employ. She might simply be waiting for me to give her the okay to talk,” I said.

  Sam panned her calm gaze over to mine, but the anger in her eyes was obvious.

  “Answer the question, Sam.”

  She shook her head like I was playing into someone’s hand before she parted her lips to speak.

  “I went below the deck and headed through the smoke for the kitchen. I was trying to find the point of origination of the explosion.”

  “So you knew an explosion had occurred before you got down there,” Agent Smith said.

  “No. But it was the only logical explanation for the boat listing the way it did when I was on the upper deck,” Sam said.

  “What side did the boat tilt?” Agent Jones asked.

  “To the right. Made it hard to keep my balance until I got below the deck,” Sam said.

  “Why was below the deck easier to navigate?” Agent Smith asked.

  “Because water was filling up the bottom of the ship. Spilling in from the holes in the sides,” she said.

  “Did you see the holes down there? From where you were?” Agent Jones asked.

  “No,” Sam said.

  “Then how did you know there were holes in the ship?”

  “Because that’s how water usually gets on a ship.”

  “Now hold on a second,” I said. “Sam isn’t responsible for this. She was with me the whole damn time on the deck of the boat, preparing to watch the fireworks. If there was a bomb planted or detonated, it wasn’t by her. Not by a long shot.”

  “She could have planted it before the two of you got on the ship,” Agent Jones said.

  “So could you have, by that reasoning,” Sam said. “And if you’re really trying to pin this on me, then hear this. I’ve had plenty of opportunities to kill Derek. I’ve been in his home, in his office, in his bed
. If I wanted him dead, he would’ve already been dead.”

  “It’s interesting you’d frame this in a way so you could talk about yourself as the killer,” Agent Jones said. “Is that kind of talk easy for you?”

  “She’s right. She’s had plenty of moments, and if you want to travel down this insane rabbit hole further, allow me to assist. When these threats that led to this moment first started happening, there was no way for her to predict I would need her help. There was no way for her to anticipate I would hire her to protect me.”

  “Someone could’ve bribed her once you hired her. That kind of stuff happens all the time,” Agent Smith said.

  “Well, it didn’t happen,” I said. “But if you’re still questioning us, it means you’ve got something on her that makes her look guilty. So what is it?”

  Sam shot me a hot look as the two agents sat back and grinned.

  “I see you enjoy your police procedurals, Mr. Steele. Fine. Here’s Miss Williams’ connection. Your former head of security, Mr. Steele, was in cahoots with Jacob.”

  “What?” Sam asked.

  “No, he wasn’t,” I said. “I would’ve known about that.”

  “He was. It was confirmed last night. Jacob was paying him a very nice kickback to turn his head whenever Jacob made his way onto your property. Griggs was the one feeding Jacob your personal schedule. And now that we’ve caught him in his own web of lies, Griggs has made the decision to testify against Jacob in exchange for a reduced sentence,” Agent Jones said.

  “And don’t you think it’s a little weird that Griggs suggested Miss William’s firm for hiring?” Agent Smith asked.

  “Now wait just a second. I’ve worked hard for my reputation. I’ve got contacts and reputations all across the world, which is more than the two of you can say for yourselves. Why would I throw all of that away in the blink of an eye to plant a bomb? Why would I come out of the woodworks now and jeopardize everything I’ve worked for my entire life?” Sam asked.

  “I find it interesting that, according to our sources, you’re the best in the business but didn’t see Jacob coming. And, by the look on your face, you still didn’t know about Griggs,” Agent Smith said.