Chapter 6 #3
Okay. They just had to get across the deck and down to the swim platform and then leap aboard the trawler. Hopefully, there was a ladder.
Declan was glancing askance at Hunter as if they had some sort of secret communication going. She wanted to lean into him and say, “Don’t worry, Steinbeck is here,” but that was probably a bad idea. She took his hand and gave him a smile. “It’s going to be okay,” she said softly.
“Stop talking!” said the thug.
“I’m not talking! I’m just, you know, trying to stay calm—reminding everybody to stay calm , okay? I mean, calmness is what we need here. No matter what happens, stay calm.”
She got a few eyebrow raises from the crew and the chef.
“Stop babbling,” the thug said.
“I don’t babble!”
He stepped toward her, but Declan stood up.
Oh.
A moment passed, and clearly, Declan didn’t care if he got hit again.
The man stepped back and Declan sat down. Squeezed her hand. Her heart thundered, and maybe her breathing had hitched up just a little.
She shot a look at the sliding doors. Please don’t be locked. What if the thugs didn’t go for Stein’s distraction? She spotted a dolphin statue on one of the consoles. It looked made of brass. That could work—she could pick it up and throw it.
“Stay still.” Funny, it wasn’t her voice but her instructor from Hawaii when he taught her how to face a shark in the water. “Stay still; keep eye contact; don’t run away.” Well, maybe two out of three was the right answer here.
She’d never been great at not running away.
Popping. Then fire lit up the night sky. Flames glistened on the water, bright and sudden.
“Oy!” One of the thugs jumped up and ran to the sliding-glass door. He opened it and stepped out, looking up. Another flare burst into the air, followed by gunshots.
Steinbeck.
The first man ran back in and shouted something in Russian. Then he took off, which just left one against many. Although he did have a gun, so there was that.
She glanced at the dolphin statue, trying to decide if she could grab it with a leap, and then the door to the galley broke open. A shot fired, and the thug dropped. She looked over, expecting to see Steinbeck, but no.
Belle , the steward, charged in, wearing her white uniform.
“Run!” Belle shouted.
Hunter had already leaped up, along with Elise, and Declan gripped her hand, heading for the sliding door.
“Get to the boat!” Austen pointed to the swim deck, and Camille, Jermaine, the engineer, and the big blond Swede ran past her. Hunter and Elise came next, Hunter gripping his wife’s hand.
Declan pushed her ahead of him. “Go!”
She scrambled down to the deck even as the Swede stood on the swim platform, holding the line, helping people to the ladder. Shots fired from the bow, and Austen turned, searching for Steinbeck. Oh please, God, don’t let him get killed.
Camille boarded the boat, and then Jermaine, and behind him Raphael. Hunter practically flung his wife up the ladder before leaping for the boat himself. But around the side of the ship charged two of the Russians, including the one who had gone to the stern.
Austen just barely made it to the swim deck before bullets tore through the cushions in the back of the boat. Declan pushed her to the ground, then braced his body over hers.
Belle landed beside them, crouching low, shooting back in intervals.
Someone had started the trawler engine, and Ivek leaped onto the ladder, the rope untied from the yacht.
What? No! “Wait for us!”
“Come on, come on!” Raphael leaned over the edge, arms out. “Hurry up!”
The gunman aimed toward the ship, and whoever piloted the trawler put it into reverse.
“Get on that boat!” Declan practically pushed her toward the sea. The trawler was close enough that she could leap and grab the edge of the ladder.
“Go!” Declan put his hands on her waist as if to toss her. Another shot, and she ignored it and leaped for the boat, hands out for the ladder.
Too far away. She splashed down into the water, the trawler inching away.
“Swim for it!” Declan shouted, and then he, too, dove off the edge of the swim deck.
She started swimming as bullets ripped into the night at the trawler.
The pilot rammed it into high gear. The motor revved, churned up a wake.
From the yacht’s bow, more gunfire.
The trawler turned and sped into the darkness.
Declan surfaced. “Stop! Wait!”
More shots, now pinging into the water. Austen grabbed Declan’s hand. “Big breath!”
Then she pulled him down, deep under the water. Silence filled her ears, followed by the distant hum of a motor as the trawler thundered away.
Hide.
She kicked and pulled Declan around the side of the yacht. They surfaced in the luminescence of the boat, puddling out the back, and she maneuvered them deeper into the shadows.
Declan treaded water beside her. “We have to get to the life raft,” he said. “It’s on the swim deck. We can just throw it in the water and it’ll inflate.”
“I’ll do it.” She started to swim, but he grabbed her arm.
“No, you stay here. I’ll do it.”
“For the love! We’ll both do it. Let’s go.” She took off, slicing through the water, the waves choppier in the darkness.
Belle still had a position on the swim deck, shooting.
Then, nothing. Her gun empty.
She stood, her hands up, and just as Austen reached the ladder, one of the Russians advanced on her.
Belle glared at him, and Austen couldn’t help it: “No. Don’t shoot her! Please don’t shoot her!”
Austen scrambled aboard, and yes, Stein would have killed her, but she walked right up to Belle, hands up. “She’s just a steward. She has nothing to do with this.”
Honestly, Austen didn’t know what this was really. Belle could have something to do with it, she supposed, but it didn’t feel that way. Especially when Declan, his hands up, stepped between them and the gunman.
“Everybody just calm down. I’m still here, and I’m the one you want.”
And if Austen had any final question as to whether or not Declan was a criminal, it died as he walked up the stairs and said, “I’ll tell you everything you want if you let them go.”
* * *
According to his SEAL training, no plan survived first contact with the enemy, but especially one as reckless and probably poorly thought out as Stein’s epic failure to recapture the ship.
Not that he really wanted to recapture the ship, but he would have preferred spending the next two days on Declan’s luxurious yacht to being shoved into a smelly fishing trawler.
But since he was currently swimming in the ocean in the darkness, trying to figure out how to get back onto a boat, either option might have been better.
At least he wasn’t dead. And as far as he could see, Austen wasn’t dead either, nor Declan and Phoenix.
No, they all sat under the bright stern deck lights, their hands up.
Whoever had helmed the trawler and driven away had probably done the right thing.
However, he would be having a small conversation with said person later about doing unto others .
Stein just had to wait till everybody went into the salon again, and then he’d reboard the boat. Same way he had earlier, although without having the dinghy to draw alongside it, pulling himself up the prow of the yacht might be a little trickier.
Right now, the yacht sat still in the water, so that was a plus. If he had to, he’d hang on to one of the dive ladders and just let it pull him along until he could board.
He should probably lose the Sig Sauer. It weighed about a billion pounds in the water. But who knew what he’d find once he got back on board? He refused to think about it. So instead, maybe he’d think about Phoenix and the look on her face when he had surprised her.
Feisty. Shocked. But was that a smile? As if she was glad to see him?
He didn’t know how he felt about that. She hadn’t left him for dead again in Mariposa—in fact, she’d probably saved his life, although he didn’t have the foggiest clue how.
So maybe she hadn’t been lying when she’d told him that she hadn’t wanted him to get hurt three years ago in Krakow.
Not just hurt—wrecked. Physically and possibly emotionally, although he hadn’t taken a good look at the status of his heart when he’d awakened in a hospital in Germany.
If he was honest, he definitely had feelings for her—the kind of feelings that ranged from wanting to run far and fast from the woman to the desire to sweep her up in his arms. And he had a very clear, slightly dangerous memory of kissing her in an alley in Krakow.
And while it had been meant to be a ruse, she had responded—playfully, probably, as part of their cover.
Still, she’d responded and kissed him back.
Shook him more than a little. So maybe he had meant something to her too.
But that was three years ago and before the Black Swan team had blown up the café where he was supposed to meet his SEAL team, absconding with their target.
And before, of course, he’d had to separate from the SEALs altogether thanks to his injury.
So everybody just hold your horses. There was nothing happening here except him getting his sister off that boat.
The motor started up again, and he started to swim toward the boat. His gaze stayed on the captives. He’d taken out one of the Russians, and maybe Phoenix had rendered one ineffective. But three remained, and two of them brought the three captives back into the salon.
His new plan went like this: Get on the boat. Take out Thug One. Get the hostages off the boat and onto the two Jet Skis that sat attached to the swim deck.
He still had to figure out a way to keep the yacht from chasing them down. That would require a bit of tomfoolery.
He didn’t have to blow up the yacht. He just had to disable it. The second Russian left, climbing the stairs again for the bridge, which meant it was three hostages to one—no, scratch that, four to one—in the salon. He just had to get inside without being seen.