Chapter 17 #2
“A doctor! I need a doctor!” Amelia screamed.
“Too bad you knocked the ship’s main doctor out,” Wes told her, apparently feeling little sympathy.
He put his hand to an earbud in his ear and turned to Chloe.
“The captain is talking to me—I left my phone on after I called him. He’s sending Doc’s second down to tend to Amelia and he’s gathered the nurses to come look after those who are drugged, but they should be fine as soon as it wears off.
All right, I’m going into the water after Broderick—”
“I’m coming with you!” Chloe told him.
“No! You’ve been drugged! You couldn’t even move—”
“Because I believed I couldn’t. Once I heard you, I could do things—”
“The ship’s crew will be out in force, Chloe!”
“And I’m fine. Remember? I was only half dead, and now, every second, I’m realizing I did manage to avoid the real thrust!”
He shook his head, turning to walk toward the elevator. She followed.
“Don’t make me have to save you!” he snapped.
“Wes, stop! I wouldn’t go in if I couldn’t, I swear. And if I see the bastard, I promise I’ll yell and let you get him!”
The captain was out; the ship’s crew, as Wes had said, were already in motion, setting lifeboats into the sea with a few of
the lifeguards plunging right in.
Wes threw off his jacket, shirt and shoes, covering his 3D-printed gun with his clothing and nodding to one of the security
guards who was standing on deck, watching the water.
Chloe threw her cover-up on the pile; her 3D-printed gun was already back in the bag, and she looked at Wes, concerned.
He paused, nodding to one of the security officers and indicating the pile.
The security officer nodded in turn.
“He’ll watch our stuff. I’m in,” Wes told her.
And as he said it, he plunged over the railing into the water.
Chloe followed suit.
The waves were rough that day. While the sun was out and beautifully shining, the breeze was swift and moving the ocean.
But Chloe loved the water.
She tried to reckon the time since she’d been stabbed with the needle. It had been more than twenty minutes now and the little
she had gotten into her system was truly fading.
Helped by the slap of the cold water!
And yet that day . . .
She loved the force of the waves against her, the feel of the heavy breeze, cold on her wet flesh, the taste of the salt on
her lips.
She loved it all. It was life; it was being. It was feeling.
The chute let on to the aft of the ship and that was where the lifeboats and crew, searching for the man, were centered.
Treading water by Wes, she shouted, “Could he have gotten a grip on the hull somewhere? Or is he back there, or was it so
rough he might have drowned already?”
“Any of the above!” Wes shouted back. “My guess? He found something to hang on to . . . Let’s follow the flow of the water.”
They did so, quickly catching up with the several lifeboats and crew who were on the hunt.
That was when they saw the man.
Somehow, Broderick McClintock had managed to find a piece of wood floating in the sea, as if a broken desk had been discarded
overboard. Chloe knew that the cruise line was adamant about their recycling, their treatment of any kind of water that was
discharged, incineration of some waste, and their respect for the ocean and the seven seas.
But they were in the Caribbean where pleasure vessels of all kinds roamed about from a multitude of islands and countries.
Someone had tossed something broken overboard and Broderick McClintock had found it. He was kicking away, using his float, trying to veer to the starboard and aft of the ship as fast as he could.
As Chloe and Wes swam hard to catch up with the closest of the lifeboats, the lifeguard aboard it dove in after the man.
Broderick slammed him in the head with his makeshift wooden float.
Wes swore softly, hurrying forward with swift, fluid strokes to reach the injured man, to bring him to the second crew member
in the lifeboat, there to retrieve his coworker and friend.
As they worked, Chloe moved on ahead.
Forewarned.
She didn’t swim straight at the man. She dove deep and came up beneath his feet, grabbing his ankles and dragging him downward.
As she had hoped, he was unprepared, and he came down into the water, expelling a savage cough.
But he had fury in his eyes as he reached for her.
She kicked back, leaving him desperate for breath and flailing at the water.
And as he shot up to grab a mouthful of air, Wes shot past her, dragging him down again.
He wouldn’t drown the man, Chloe knew.
He was just making him as weak and desperate as he could before grappling with the man in the water.
Wes let him up; Broderick inhaled on a shaking, ragged gasp.
He grabbed for his lost bit of wooden float; Wes threw it far away from him and stared at him.
The man lunged at Wes through the water.
It was then that Chloe saw that he was still bearing the knife he’d threated to stick into Edward Thompson’s rib cage.
“Knife!” Chloe screamed, lunging forward herself, kicking as hard as she could and almost managing to leap from the water.
To her relief, she did get herself high enough to knock his arm.
And Wes was able to grab the man by the elbow, twist it hard and force him to drop the knife.
It went down . . .
Down to the far depths below.
“Let me go, you bastard!” Broderick raged.
There was, of course, no way in hell that Wes was letting him go. As the man continued to struggle, Wes told him, “You know,
I really was a lifeguard, but keep it up and you’re going to die!”
But he wasn’t going to die.
Another of the lifeboats had reached them and two men were pulling Broderick out of the water, one of them prepared with cuffs
and in no mood to take anything from the man. As Broderick tried to fight him and unbalance the lifeboat, the officer got
the cuffs on him and gave him a hard shove that sent him flying to a back seat on his rear.
Another man on the boat had a chain that he attached to Broderick and the rail on the lifeboat as the first turned to help
Chloe out of the water and then Wes.
“Thanks!” he said simply. He had a radio on the boat; he used it to tell the captain that they had their man and were headed
back.
They couldn’t hear what the captain was saying and the radio call was quickly ended.
“And thanks again!” the man said.
“Incredible faith in you guys,” Wes assured him. “But I guess we had to see for ourselves that this man didn’t get away!”
“Oh, trust me, he will not be getting away. Nor will the others. We’re headed straight back now—every passenger will be offered a future cruise with all perks.
Still, we have a chopper coming for the prisoners.
You know, I’ve worked ship’s security for a long time.
I’ve had more than a few petty thefts, a few unwanted sexual encounters, but .
. . Ah, hell, nothing like this! Nothing like a trio trying to murder people! ”
“Well, thankfully, I don’t think it’s a common occurrence,” Wes told him.
The security officer looked at Chloe, smiling.
“And I heard you were among the drugged!”
“Nothing like a good swim to knock it all out,” Chloe told him. “For real!” she added softly to Wes. “I don’t feel at all
drugged or paralyzed in any way; I feel invigorated!”
“Have a seat,” the man said, smiling. “We’ll get you back to the ship in no time. And, well, it will be one interesting day.
I think that Mr. Thompson’s lecture is going to need to be canceled and, of course . . . Well, the captain gets to explain
it all. Thankfully, not me!”
He indicated that the two of them should take seats on the lifeboat for the short distance back to the ship.
They took seats as suggested.
“Well, Alonzo was right, that’s for sure. They had planned something for the ship. And I believe that the man who was the
most decent to them, Edward Thompson, was the main target, though I guess Celia was glad to get rid of her husband and maybe
Broderick was supposed to get rid of his brother.”
“I wonder if we’ll ever know,” Chloe murmured.
“You really are fine, aren’t you?”
She smiled. “So weird, though! There were moments when I truly felt paralyzed.”
He smiled, nodding at her. “I don’t know how I knew, but I knew . . . I knew you would have figured out how to avoid most
of it.”
“We both knew how they were pulling it all off,” Chloe said.
“I mean, getting people to just sit there staring while they were being shot. But at first, when I felt the needle . . . I really didn’t know!
Wes, it was all so fast, and then . . . that knife.
He had that knife held against Edward’s ribs!
That’s how they moved us all—they were threatening to kill Edward then and there.
” She frowned suddenly, looking at him anxiously.
“George—George and a security officer were down there when we got there. I don’t know how Amelia—oh, no.
Is Doctor Kilbride going to be all right? ”
“Here’s where we got lucky. I don’t think that Daniel had any idea about what his brother had been up to. But once he’d drugged
Daniel, he just—”
“Stretched him out on a lounge chair. I saw,” Chloe told him.
“Who knows? Maybe when Amelia figured out that he hadn’t killed his brother, she would have come back and figured out a way
to finish the task herself. But I asked for help before leaving him and a doctor was onboard, so she headed down with him
and security and they’re all looking after Kilbride. Well, now they’ll have Kilbride, George, the security officer, Edward,
Sally and Jeff Henderson to look after, too.”
“But our suspects will be off the ship!” Chloe said.
Wes nodded. “And we’ll be heading back.” He smiled at her. “We’ll have . . .”
“Paperwork?” she asked.
He laughed. “Tonight! We’ll probably get to port now—the Port of Miami—sometime in the wee hours. I don’t think they’ll wake
people up to force them off the ship at two in the morning, but after this voyage, who knows!”