Chapter 27
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Maverick
E ve flops onto her ass, followed by Aven. They drop back on the deck with their arms outstretched as they fight for each breath. I’m just as winded, but I manage to stay upright.
“That could’ve been a touch easier with our fourth,” Aven says. “I dinnae get a break.”
His accent is thicker when he’s tired, making him difficult to understand, but I get the gist. He’s irritated that Frankie wasn’t here to help, and I concur.
We were forced to saw through the plank as the Cattle inch-wormed his way toward us, and it’s a race we almost lost. Unlike the other teams, we couldn’t take breaks in pairs.
Eve and I just repeatedly switched with each other.
“Sorry, boys. My career doesn’t exactly encourage strength training.” Eve sits up. “Not many models walk about with guns for biceps, you know?”
I swat the brim of Eve’s hat, sending it over her eyes. “No worries. You did great, and we weren’t last.”
Aven sits up and drapes his arms over his knees. “Would’ve been, if that old geezer hadn’t kicked off about the guy on his team.”
I glance down the deck, to where a pirate lies in a pool of blood.
Another fed has been ferreted out and dispatched, and the noose tightens around my neck.
Well, it tightens around Frankie’s neck, but it might as well be mine.
Despite the absolute irrationality of it all, I’ve grown entirely too fond of her.
I see her as an extension of myself, much as I see my other friends.
The fierce need to protect her began as an assignment but has turned into something much more complicated.
Speaking of protecting Frankie, I haven’t seen her since before the second game started. Worry nips at my heels as I glance around for that purple feather and find it missing. Jim said she went to the bathroom, but she should have been back by now.
I hurry over to Jim as the crew cleans up the deck for the next game. Well, they remove the bodies, but the bloodstains remain. Jim said it “gives the old girl character.” He stands at one of the smaller masts, with his arm around the tall wooden post as he stares at the distant island.
“Frankie still hasn’t come back. Do I have time to check on her before the next game starts?”
Jim pouts and leans his head against the mast. “I’m starting to think you people don’t appreciate my games.”
“We love the games, but things have a habit of happening during them. But hey, the sooner I find Frankie, the sooner we can start the next one.”
“Don’t bother. I’ll need to adjust the next two games to make them work for two people, anyway.
I didn’t expect Grim to discover his teammate so quickly.
” Jim sighs and hugs the pole a little tighter.
“Just make sure you’re back in time for the fourth game, hmm?
I’ve brought along a surprise for Frankie, and my day will be positively ruined if she isn’t here to see it. ”
“She could be hurt, Jim. Don’t you care about that?”
He pins me with a look as the melancholy leaves him. “If you felt she were in real danger, why on earth would you require my permission to save her? Have you ever tried thinking for yourself, son? My indifference is a direct result of your lack of concern.”
I’ll tend to my bruised ego from that tongue lashing later. He has a point. Why am I wasting time when she could be in trouble?
My heart hammers a little harder in my chest as I turn for the stairs. I pick up the pace as worry nests like a bird in my chest. Wing beats flutter against my ribcage, and I realize the bird isn’t nesting. It’s trapped. It’s panicking.
“I wish I were a bird,” I mutter under my breath. “I’d fly into the first window I saw. Repeatedly. Anything to end this.”
I’m about to turn toward the hallway lined with cells when I pick up a feminine voice in the other direction.
It’s hard to make out, and it could be a crew member, but I want to believe it’s Frankie.
It has to be her because the sooner I find her, the sooner this growing ache in my chest will recede.
When I reach the door, I spot a small sign to the left that says it’s a supply closet, and there’s no mistaking that the voice on the other side belongs to Frankie.
Her cadence rings through, easing my worry.
I raise my hand to knock on the door separating us, but I freeze when a male voice reaches beneath the door and grabs me by the throat.
“So you’re buddying up with these shits?” the man says.
“Castle...it’s more complicated than that. Look, I appreciate the intel, but I’m just trying to fit in so that they don’t kill me. The moment we dock at the end of this cruise, I’m turning in every single piece of shit I’ve laid eyes on.”
This isn’t new information, but it hits me like a slap in the face. I was wrong to worry she was getting too comfortable in her new role. She certainly fooled the fuck out of me.
“I saw you with that pretty boy,” the man— Castle —says.
And what a dumb fucking name. I’d love to meet his brothers: Skyscraper, Townhouse, and Quonset Hut.
The man scoffs, and the disgust in his voice makes my skin crawl.
“I saw the way you looked at him, Ghost. Typical whore moves, using your dirty snatch to get your way. King will hear about this shit. You’re fucking the enemy, and it’s gonna cost you the job. ”
Despite feeling destroyed about what Frankie said, I hold my breath as I wait for her to tear this asshole a new one. She can be a real bitch, which I find refreshing.
So imagine my disappointment when she self-flagellates instead.
“You’re right,” she says. “I agreed to be the killer because I thought I could use my femininity to my advantage. I was wrong, Castle, and now I need your help. Let me tie your hands so that we don’t get caught.
Once you’re on deck, I’ll cut you free so we can kick all their asses.
Regardless of what you told me, we’re still federal agents. ”
So that’s her fucking game? And I fell right into it.
The blood heats in my veins and rockets upward until my head feels like a furnace. Castle says something else, but I can’t hear him over the thunderous rush of my heartbeat in my ears. How could I have been stupid enough to believe we were getting closer?
Something bumps against the door, and a whimper from Frankie clears my head in an instant.
“Castle, personal space, dude,” she says, but the slight quiver in her voice betrays her. She’s scared. “Just turn around and let me tie your wrists.”
“What, you think you can just fuck everyone else over and avoid getting fucked yourself? It doesn’t work that way, slut. I’ve hated you since the moment King brought you into our division, and I’ll continue hating you while I choke you to death with my fat cock, you filthy cunt.”
“Doubtful. You’d need more than two inches to accomplish that.”
Castle chokes on air. “What the fuck did you say?”
“I hear you’ve been hiding a little secret of your own, Castle. I don’t know the details yet, but when I figure them out, I’ll bring them to King’s attention. I never even thought about taking your position, but if it’s as empty as your fucking head, I might as well.”
When Frankie finally delivers the heat I expect, I’m overjoyed, but that joy is short-lived.
Muffled bumps, bangs, and grunts filter through the door.
She might be a federal agent trained in the art of hand-to-hand combat, but she’s also shut in a confined space with a fucking bull. The horns are bound to gore her.
But when I try the door, I realize she isn’t just shut in that space. She’s locked inside.
With no room to gear up for a running start, I ram my shoulder into the door. As I repeatedly beat my body against the unyielding slab of wood, I feel so helpless. I have to get her out of there.
A bug-eyed man emerges from the bathroom further down the hall. He’s a member of the crew, so I can only hope he’s high enough in Jim’s ranks to have a key to this fucking door.
“Little help!” I shout toward him.
He looks to his left and right, then points to his chest. With raised eyebrows, he mouths Me ?, and I want to scream.
“No, the little green man behind you,” I bellow. “Yes, you! Do you have a key to this door?”
The man hurries closer, stopping a few feet from me when he hears the commotion.
“Not the lady with the purple feather,” he says. “Not her.”
“Yes, her. Now help me help her!”
Frankie screams, and that seems to get him into gear. He hurries forward again until he’s at my side.
“On three, we’ll ram the door,” I say. “Ready?”
He nods, then shakes his head. “Wait, on three? Or after three? Like, one, two, ram ? Or one, two?—”
“The fucking first one! One, two?—”
We push into the door with all our might, but it still isn’t enough. We manage to knock the doorknob slightly loose, but that’s about it.
The cannon blasts, adding to the sounds of the struggle happening just out of sight.
I squeeze the back of my neck and fight the urge to panic as Frankie’s whimpers intensify.
I hope she realizes I’m not up on deck, playing a game as she fights for her life.
I’m down here with her, trying to save her.
And when I get my hands on this man, there won’t be anything left of him.
The door rattles again, shaking the dangling doorknob, and I have an idea.
“Can you get a hammer?” I ask the bug-eyed man. “Anything metal and heavy, really. A few blows to that doorknob should have us in there in seconds.”
His eyes bulge a bit more. “I don’t know about a hammer, but after Jim found me, part of my skull had to be replaced. Is titanium strong enough?”
The man doesn’t realize what he’s offering. The force it would take to dislodge the doorknob would likely kill him in the process. Despite being who I am and doing what I do, I can’t bring myself to take advantage of his ignorance.
But then he says, “I know I might not survive it, but she was so kind to me. In the bathroom, she?—”
I grip the side of his head and slam it against the doorknob.
“The plate’s on the other side,” he says so matter-of-factly, as if I didn’t just bash his head in. As he stands upright, blood drips into his eye from a large gash, but at least the scar will go well with the dozens littering his face. “I don’t feel much pain, so don’t worry about?—”
My hand takes the other side of his head and rams it onto the doorknob. This time, the metal gives way and crashes to the floor, followed by the man.
There isn’t time to tend to him. I knock the mechanism loose from inside the door, then yank open the useless slab of wood.
Castle currently straddles Frankie’s prone form, his hands coiled around her throat.
Her nails dig into his wrists, but she’s fighting a losing battle.
Her glassy gaze rises to mine, pleading for me to help her.
With a hop step, I slam my shin into Castle’s side, but the brute is immovable.
I repeat the action until something cracks, and only once he grips his side and grunts do I know it was his rib cage.
Intense pain radiates through my leg, but it was worth it, now that his hands no longer close Frankie’s airway.
She gulps oxygen and coughs beneath the lug groaning on top of her.
I take the opportunity to land another kick, this time aiming for his head.
His skull rocks to the side, and then he crumples against the shelf as Frankie scrambles out from under him.
“You son of a fucking bitch !” she screams as she rises like a phoenix.
I can practically see the tendrils of smoke curling from her ears.
When she raises her foot and stomps her boot heel on his crotch, I damn near get a boner.
“You’re a sick piece of shit, and I hope they blow out your asshole in prison! ”
He won’t make it to prison. When I see the red finger marks on Frankie’s neck, coupled with her swollen lower lip and puffy right eye, rage overcomes my senses.
“What the fuck did he do to you?” I bellow as I search the shelves for something sharp. “If he violated you, his death will be so much more fucking painful.”
“It’s not enough that he beat the fuck out of me?” she says. “I think that’s grounds enough for torture.”
“I agree,” says a voice from the hall.
“Gary? Are you okay?” Frankie squeezes past me and hurries to help him stand. “Jesus, what happened to your head? You’re a mess!”
I snap a wooden mop handle in half, giving me a nice pointy stick. That’ll do. “Take Gary to the medical bay. I’ll deal with this piece of shit.”
“Stop!” Frankie shouts.
My hand freezes mere milliseconds before driving the sharp end into his neck. “What am I stopping for, sweetheart? This man just tried to take something that doesn’t belong to him. So please, tell me why I should stop when I have never wanted to continue more in my fucking life.”
“I’ve had a change of heart,” she says. The glassy haze clears from Frankie’s eyes, an unrecognizable look replacing it. She plucks her hat from the floor, situates it on her head, and looks down at the unconscious asshole. “It’s time for round four, and I’m ready to play the fucking game now.”