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calling you lately?”
    Actually, she did. Fourteen. Fifteen, if you counted the last voice mail. Her relationship with Helena was . . . complicated. Which was why she’d been routinely ducking the other woman’s calls for the past month. Okay. Maybe two.
    Montgomery strode past Rebel to the railing and yelled across the gap to the swarthy, bearded captain of Allah’s Paradise . “Captain Brett Montgomery, here. Permission to come aboard, sir?”
    “Yes, sure. Come ahead,” the man answered in heavily accented English.
    “Seriously, I can’t talk now,” Rebel told Helena under her breath, reaching up for the off button behind her ear.
    “Keep weapons secured unless provoked, people.” Montgomery’s quiet order sounded over her comm headset. “On my order.”
    “Oh, this’ll just take a second,” Helena’s drawl insisted stubbornly in the other ear. “I promise.”
    Sweet goodnight. “Talk fast. There may be gunplay,” Rebel warned dryly, giving up. Not that she really expected any, but one could always hope. It wasn’t Helena’s fault she was clueless and obstinate as the day was long. She’d been brought up that way. Her parents were even more myopic than Rebel’s. A difficult feat.
    “Bless your heart,” her friend said with a perfectly modulated laugh. Every thing Helena did was always perfect. “Keeping the country safe as usual, I presume?”
    At Montgomery’s signal, Chet and Sampson vaulted easily over the rail onto the other vessel and came to attention, followed by the captain, who flicked a withering look back at Rebel. Well, more precisely at her outfit.
    She returned his smile through her teeth.
    She’d drawn this assignment after arriving at NFO—the FBI’s Norfolk Field Office—for work this morning, and therefore had of necessity reported to the USCG dock located in the neighboring harbor of Portsmouth wearing a sea-foam green skirted linen suit and strappy heels.
    Yeah. That had gone over well.
    Montgomery had issued a long-suffering sigh, thrust a pair of chum-riddled puke-yellow sneaks two sizes too large at her, snorted at her inappropriate pencil skirt, and wordlessly led her onto the waiting Coast Guard RB-M response boat.
    She now unhooked the latch of the gangway gate and swung it open, hiked her skirt up and jumped inelegantly across onto the rolling deck of the yacht. “What do you need , Helena?” she asked, fixing to hang up.
    “Oh, it’s not me who needs you,” Helena said blithely. “It’s Alex.”
    At the smug pronouncement, Rebel almost tripped over one too-big sneaker. She grabbed the rail for balance, missed, and nearly went down again as the gate smacked closed on her behind. “What?”
    Until six weeks ago, Alex Zane had been Helena’s fiancé. He had also been Rebel’s best friend. Operative phrase: had been. Talk about complicated. She’d been ducking his calls even longer than two months. Including twice just last night. Seriously. Like she was going to talk to him before bedtime? So she could dream of him all night? Again? She might have it bad, but she wasn’t that nuts.
    And oh, yeah. For the record? Her avoidance had nothing to do with that steamy almost-kiss she and Alex had shared in a very weak moment last December. Nor had her hasty move to Norfolk within days of that weak moment. Because of that weak moment.
    She slammed her eyes shut. Okay, what. Ever. So maybe it had.
    “What’s wrong with Alex?” she asked Helena, those two phone calls yesterday suddenly changing character. “Is he okay?”
    All at once, the air was rent by machine-gun fire.
    Whoa! Two men burst out from the bridge of the yacht, yelling in guttural Arabic as bullets sprayed the deck wildly. Instantly, Chet and Sampson returned fire. The swarthy yacht captain went down with a bloodcurdling scream.
    “Take them, people!” Captain Montgomery yelled.
    “Gotta go,” Rebel told Helena as she rolled for cover and whipped out her Glock 23. Bullets splintered the