CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN #2
Jagger didn’t answer, he just stared Dutton down.
“The ferry stopped,” I cried, pointing ahead at the noticeable lack of a continued wake and bubble trail behind it.
Jagger nodded, and hope made hesitant footsteps through me.
We reached the ferry, but with the massive swells beating the Zodiac with relentless force, Jagger nearly fell into the water several times before finally managing to grab the first rung of the ladder.
He did an impressive pull-up, bending at the hips into an almost complete forward fold, in order to get his feet onto the rung, then he propelled himself upward.
I’d never seen anything like it. He climbed the ladder until he disappeared over the side.
Faces appeared up top, staring down at us in confusion.
Dutton grabbed his radio. “San Juan Princess, this is Orca Bound 1. I have the mother of the abducted child here in my Zodiac. Are you able to lower down a life ring for her, please?”
“Orca Bound 1, who just climbed onto our vessel?”
“A friendly. Jagger McEvoy. He’s there to grab the child. He’s friends with the child’s mother.”
“Sending down life ring now, Orca Bound 1.”
“Roger that.”
A red-and-white-striped life ring was lowered down over the side and Dutton helped me into it, all while the boat kept getting bashed against the ferry, or pitched nearly onto its side from the waves. “You might just need to get to the first rung,” he said. “Then you can climb.”
Nodding, I held onto the rope.
“San Juan Princess, this is Orca Bound 1. We’re ready for you to pull up the child’s mother.”
“Roger that, Orca Bound 1.”
A jolt of the rope had me holding on tighter with both hands as they slowly started to pull me up.
I reached the first rung and put my foot on it.
“Can you climb?” Dutton asked.
I gave him a thumbs up, then he spoke into the radio again, and the rope stopped moving.
Barnacles cut into my palms, and my fingers throbbed from the cold as I struggled to wrap them around the metal rungs. But I kept going. Marco was at the top. Jagger was at the top.
Shivering by the time I reached the last rung, gloved hands came over the side and helped me climb onboard.
“Orca Bound 1, this is San Juan Princess. We have the mother. You are safe to return to port.”
“Roger, San Juan Princess.”
Ignoring the wind and the way it cut through my drenched layers of clothing, my skin and muscle, only to drive straight into my bones, I didn’t even bother to shed the life ring before I started running through the rows of cars.
“He’s over here, ma’am,” said a ferry worker, forcing me to change direction and follow her.
The sick, undeniable sound of fist colliding with flesh broke through the whistling wind, and I rounded the corner just in time to see Jagger take a very hard punch to the face from Ozais. My brother had Jagger by the jacket collar and reared his fist back to land another punch.
“Need to … mind your own … business,” Ozais said, his deep, sinister voice a trigger for me, and making me flinch. “This is a family matter, and you … ain’t … family.” With each pause in his speech, he landed another blow to Jagger’s face. Blood sprayed from Jagger’s nose.
Why wasn’t anybody stopping this?
“Mom!” Marco screamed.
Spots clouded my vision and my knees grew weak when I took in the scene on the bow of the ferry. Soloman had my son in his arms, and a knife to his throat as they stood on the wrong side of the single strand of thick chain strung across the opening to keep vehicles from rolling into the sea.
Ferry workers, paralyzed with fear and unable to help because of how close Soloman had my son to the edge of the boat, not to mention the knife at his throat, only called to my brother-in-law, pleading with him to let Marco go.
“She did this!” Soloman hollered over the wind and waves, drenched from the rain. “She killed my brother. I have no son. I have no one. She did this! This is my brother’s son. He belongs with me!”
“It’s not the child’s fault!” one person yelled back. “Let him go!”
More people screamed for the maniac to let Marco go.
With his thinning hair plastered to his face from the rain, Soloman shook his head and pressed the knife blade harder against my son’s throat until a sliver of crimson emerged on the thin, pale skin of my child’s neck. “Come any closer and I’ll jump—with the boy.”
That crippling, incapacitating sense of helplessness took hold of me again, bringing me back to when Ozais would smack me around and my parents would do nothing to stop him.
Then when Josiah would treat me like a servant, a maid, and a whore, emotionally and psychologically abusing me until I almost believed him.
My brother landed another hard punch, this time into Jagger’s stomach, drawing my attention away from Marco and Soloman. Jagger doubled over with a pained groan. One of his eyes was swollen completely shut.
“You think … you … can … take … me?” Ozais asked with malicious amusement. “I … will … kill … you.” He delivered a hard uppercut to Jagger’s jaw, sending him flying across the hood of a sedan.
Tears streamed down Marco’s terrified face as he begged me for help. To do something .
“Marco?” Jagger said, blood soaking his beard and mustache as he scrambled to his feet and approached Ozais again.
Ozais swung out right away, but Jagger ducked just in time, managing to land one of his own, this time to Ozais’s left kidney.
My brother went down to his knees. “Remember your lesson on climbing?”
Marco’s eyes went wide, then landed on mine before quickly darting to the bow of the kayak that was on the roof rack of the car right at the front.
“Can you jump?” Jagger asked, kicking Ozais in the other kidney, now that my brother was down.
“I’ll try,” Marco said, determination on his face.
Jagger made eye contact with me. “High beams,” he managed to get out, just before being swept off his feet by my brother, kicking him sideways in his bad knee.
Everyone on board probably heard the crunch as Jagger crumpled to the ground with a gut-wrenching cry. He curled up into a ball, hugging his knee to his abdomen.
I ran to the vehicle with the kayak on top. “High beams! Now!” I said, knocking on the driver’s side window.
The man nodded, and flicked on his high beams, which seemed to be enough to blind Soloman, that he lifted one arm up to shield his eyes.
More vehicles followed suit until my brother-in-law was cast into an almost heavenly glow.
But it gave my kid the break he needed and Marco was able to duck away.
He hopped over the chain, and rather than risk going anywhere near Ozais, he kicked his foot into the grill of the Subaru, and propelled himself up enough to grab onto the bow of the kayak.
Wrapping his arms and legs around it like a baby koala, he flipped himself around until he was on top and scooted back.
Soloman had nowhere to go, but Ozais seemed to find his second wind, and managed to climb on top of Jagger, pinning him to the ground.
He sat on his chest, landing blow after blow into his face, smiling like the demonic, soulless bastard that he was.
“I … told you … I was … going … to … kill … you.” Grinning through the blood all over his teeth, joy filled my brother’s eyes as he did his best to snuff out the life of the man I loved.
“Do something, Mom,” Marco said, still on the kayak.
More crunching of fists meeting face competed with the roar of the wind and waves.
“Mom!” Marco cried. “He’s going to kill Jagger. Why isn’t anybody helping him?”
Because Ozais was a monster of a man, and everybody on this ferry knew it.
But I needed to show my son that I wasn’t afraid of monsters anymore. That we stood up to them.
I still had the life ring around my waist. So I shoved it down to my feet, stepped out of it, and grabbed the rope, running up behind my brother and wrapping it around his neck, then pulling tight.
He roared as best he could, stopped punching Jagger as his fingers tried to pry the rope away from his throat. “Harlot!” he gurgled out, still scrambling for the rope.
“I won’t let you hurt me, or anyone I love anymore, Ozais.
You don’t have a hold on my anymore.”I shoved my foot into his spine and leaned back, pulling with all my might.
With every memory, every bruise, every moment of terror I felt growing up with such a deranged lunatic for a brother, fueling my strength.
Was I looking to kill him?
Maybe not.
But I definitely wanted him dead.
After a moment, he collapsed to the side, and I didn’t even bother to check to see if he had a pulse.
I ran to Jagger, sliding to my knees in a puddle.
He was unconscious and barely recognizable.
There was already so much swelling and blood.
His nose had to be broken, possibly his eye socket and cheekbone too.
Tears spilled down my cheeks as I bent my head against his chest.
Marco raced up beside me. “Is he going to be okay, Mom?”
The blinding lights of the Coast Guard boats had us shielding our eyes.
“This is the Coast Guard,” they announced.
Soloman spun around and put his hands behind his head. A big part of me just wished he’d jump and get sucked into the turbines. Even fish need to eat.
A ferry employee came over and checked my brother’s pulse. “Dammit. He’s alive,” he said, genuine disappointment on his face as he hauled out some zip ties from his back pocket and secured them around my brother’s wrists and ankles just in case.
“He needs to go to the hospital right away,” I said, referring to Jagger. “We need an ambulance on the other side.”
Nodding, another ferry employee got on her radio just as the first of the Coast Guard officers boarded the vessel.
“He’s going to be okay. Right, Mom?” Marco said, nuzzling into me. “Please tell me he’s going to be okay?”
I wrapped my arm around my son and pressed a kiss to the crown of his head. “He better be okay, honey.” I glared at my brother, who started to come to. “Or your uncles are going to wish they’d jumped into the ocean and died.”