Siren's Surrender Read Online Free PDF Page A

fine.
    Right now things were at a stall. Tessa had slipped through their fingers. With her went control of the sea-gate.
    A plan had to be made, and quickly. Which was kind of hard to do when floating in the middle of the fucking sea. Swimming in water for a few hours was one thing. Living in it for a few days was quite another.
    Enter the Algerians, who were obliging enough to illegally drop him off on the beach of Kokkinos Pirgos. He couldn’t have asked for a more fortuitous place to come ashore. The beach was only fifty meters from a hotel, with taverns, a couple of cafés, and even a minimarket.
    Arriving on the beach, Jake had no passport, no money, and his BlackBerry had shorted out after being submerged in the sea.
    The one thing he did have was contacts.
    His ex-partner in Recoveries, Inc., was a Greek man based in Crete. A simple phone call was followed by the arrival of a “friend of a friend,” who put a roof over his head and provided enough euros to replace his clothes. Forty-eight hours later, he was setting step two in motion.
    It was amazingly easy to do when you already had the first part taken care of.
    That would be the money. He had a good amount tucked away in a secret numbered account. One he could access from anywhere in the world. No passport or ID was required, and there were no limits on deposits or withdrawals. The account even came with a totally anonymous ATM card. All it took was a simple e-mail to have a new card sent out by overnight courier.
    Jake had always suspected there would be a time when he would have to disappear, though he’d imagined the circumstances under which he’d have to go on the lam would be far different. Before his former partner had bowed out of Recoveries, Inc., they’d been involved in some illegal operations—namely artifact smuggling. Research and recovery wasn’t a cheap operation to enter into, and the cost of crew and equipment was astronomical.
    Not all the money had gone back into the business.
     
     
    He’d skimmed a bit here and there, socking it away for the proverbial rainy day. He’d continued to hide numerous dollars even after he’d bought out Niklos Sarantos and offered a partnership in the company to Kenneth Randall. Though Randall didn’t know it, Jake had also managed to siphon off $250,000 by charging Kenneth for equipment Recoveries, Inc., had already bought and paid for. All in all, he had $1.9 million in his little tax-free offshore shelter.
    But that wasn’t the only deception Jake had tucked away for a rainy day.
    The second part of any successful getaway was to know the wrong sort of people who ran the right sort of scams. A couple of years ago a nice chunk of his ill-gotten booty had gone to purchase a new—and legal—identity. Enter Jean Luc D’Marquis, a Canadian of French descent from Quebec. He’d chosen Canada because of its proximity to the United States and he could speak the language well enough to get around without arousing suspicion.
    Unfortunately his looks had to change. His shoulder-length hair was banished, switched for a shorter, darker style. Nonprescription colored contacts changed the shade of his eyes to a striking gray.
    But that didn’t mean Jake Massey had to stay dead forever. There was always a chance a miracle could occur.
    Without a doubt Tessa would know that was possible. She and Kenneth had already done all they could to put some distance between themselves and the Mediterranean Sea. After the so-called “tragic diving accident” that had supposedly claimed Jake’s life, Kenneth Randall had shut down Recoveries, Inc., ceasing all operations.
    Nobody was talking.
    In this case, silence was golden.
    And an opportunity to be taken advantage of.
    Getting his old partner back hadn’t been difficult either. All it took was a couple more phone calls to Niklos and the two were back on the water. But this time the men weren’t seeking lost treasure or smuggling ill-gotten booty. No, the cargo they