“It’s on fire,” she admitted, then added, “It was their fault.” She figured since all the bad guys were dead, and technically the house wouldn’t have caught fire if they hadn’t been there, that she should get to blame them for the fire.

“Did they hurt you?” he asked, turning her toward him and running his hands down her arms.

She did a top to bottom mental scan and discovered she was surprisingly unscathed considering everything that had happened to her. “No, I’m okay.” She dropped her hand to her stomach and gave Volkan a worried look. “I don’t know about the baby, though. I took a couple of nasty falls.”

A flash of herself jumping from the balcony to the pool ran through her head and she shook it away before terror could well up and choke her. It was over. She was safe and Volkan was there.

Volkan helped her from the boat and onto the dock, a task made more difficult because the boat was no longer tethered to the dock but rocking wildly against it. “The boat,” she said, twisting to look at it as they climbed onto the dock. “I cut the ropes.”

“Doesn’t matter,” Volkan said.

“But it’ll sink in the storm, won’t it?”

“It doesn’t matter, Yaz,” he said, then turned to grip her face, staring down at her. “We’ll buy a new one. The only thing that matters is getting you to safety.”

Once they were on the dock, Volkan pulled her toward the beach where his airplane was parked on the sand, tilted onto one wing.

She gaped at it. “Did you land on the beach?”

“Yes. I saw him driving toward the dock as I was coming in for a landing.”

He held the passenger door for her as she climbed inside the Jeep, then slammed it shut. She scanned the sky as he rounded the vehicle and climbed into the driver’s seat. Dark clouds had gathered and rain was splattering forcefully against the windshield of the Jeep. The wind was blowing hard enough to rock the vehicle.

Volkan started the Jeep and reversed, spinning the wheel sharply, flinging them around until they were facing the length of the island. As he hit the gas, he reached across, dragging her seatbelt over her chest and buckling it in one impressively smooth move.

He hurtled at top speed toward the airstrip. When they arrived, he opened the door on the hanger and drove the Jeep inside.

She watched anxiously from the relative safety of the hangar as Volkan ran out to move the bad guys’ airplane off the runway. He’d said the runway would need to be clear in case a rescue plane was sent for them. As he jogged back, she asked, “Will we have to spend the night here?”