Ward #2
Ben lifted his hands.
“Then you know what happens next.”
“You die?”
“No.”
Ben’s eyes became cold.
“You look at me instead of the woman holding the flare gun.”
The man glanced down.
Willow fired.
The flare struck his thigh.
He screamed and released her.
Ben crossed the distance before the man hit the floor.
One blow.
Then another.
The attacker stopped moving.
Willow stared at the flare gun.
“I told you it worked.”
She ran to Ivy, crying.
Coast Guard crews boarded Sea Whisper.
They contained the stern fire before it reached the fuel system.
The yacht was damaged but was still floating.
The engines had been deliberately disabled, not destroyed.
I’m sure Storm and her sisters could repair them.
Ivy sat near the salon while a medic cleaned the cut above her eye.
Willow and Hazel refused to leave her.
Ben stood near the broken doors, staring toward the shoreline.
His entire body had gone still.
I knew where his thoughts had gone.
Calle.
He had helped save three sisters.
But not the one he needed to see.
I approached the surviving attacker.
John had secured him beside the stern railing.
The man’s burned leg had been bandaged.
“Where did Ross take Calle?”
He turned his face away.
Ben moved beside me.
The prisoner looked at his bloodstained shirt.
“You’ve already been shot once.”
Ben crouched in front of him.
“Where is she?”
“I don’t know.”
Ben grabbed the burned leg.
The man screamed.
I didn’t stop him.
“Where is Calle Sinclair?”
“Old lighthouse!”
Ben released him.
“Which lighthouse?”
“The one above Blackwater Cove.”
“What does Ross want there?”
“I don’t know.”
Ben pressed his hand against the wound again.
“Yes, you do.”
“He needs Thomas to read the inscription!”
“What inscription?”
“The one James carved inside the lighthouse.”
“Why does he need Calle?”
“She has the journal.”
Ben’s face hardened.
“It was a copy.”
“Ross knows. But James hid something in the photographs.”
I remembered Ivy carrying her camera everywhere.
“What photographs?”
“The ones she took aboard the trawler. She captured a marking on the hull that Ross has been searching for.”
“What marking?”
“A set of coordinates.”
Ben stood.
“Get us to the lighthouse.”
John looked at his shoulder.
“You’re going to a hospital.”
“After Calle is safe.”
“You’re losing blood.”
“I have more.”
“That isn’t how blood works.”
Ben walked away.
John looked at me.
I shook my head.
“We’re not stopping him.”
“He could get himself killed.”
“So could anyone who tries to keep him from Calle.”
The Coast Guard boat carried us back to the marina.
Hazel refused to let go of my hand during the crossing.
When we reached the dock, Storm pushed past the barricade.
“Haze!”
Hazel ran.
Storm caught her and hugged her.
Ivy and Willow joined them.
Elanore wrapped her arms around all four daughters.
For a few seconds, there was nothing but tears.
Relief.
Love.
A family almost whole again.
Almost.
Storm finally looked over Hazel’s head.
She found me.
The pain in her face eased.
She crossed the dock.
I expected her to ask what happened.
I expected her to check whether I was hurt.
Instead, she wrapped both arms around me.
The force of it knocked me back one step.
I held her.
I had no choice.
My body recognized where she belonged before my mind could argue.
Her face pressed against my chest.
“You came back.”
“I promised.”
“I thought the explosion—”
“I know.”
Her fingers tightened in my wet shirt.
I lowered my face to her hair.
Around us, people moved across the dock.
Coast Guard officers shouted instructions.
Medics treated the wounded.
None of it reached me.
There was only Storm in my arms.
And the truth I could no longer deny.
Tonya had released me from the future we had planned.
But Storm had become the future I wanted.
Ben stepped onto the dock behind us.
He was going after Calle.
Nathan saw the answer in his face.
“Where is she?”
“Ross took her to the old lighthouse above Blackwater Cove.”
Storm pulled away from me.
“Then we go now.”
Ben walked toward the Coast Guard vehicles.
Elanore caught his arm.
“Your wound has opened.”
“I’ll live.”
“How do you know?”
“Because Calle will kill me if I bleed to death before I find her.”
The words escaped before he could stop them.
Everyone fell silent.
Ben looked at Storm.
Then Nathan.
Then me.
Something guarded entered his expression.
“Get the vehicles ready.”
He turned away.
No one called him back.
But Storm watched him cross the marina.
Her eyes narrowed thoughtfully.
She had heard it.
Maybe she didn’t understand yet.
But she would.
Nathan opened the passenger door of the first Coast Guard vehicle for Elanore.
“You’re staying here with the girls.”
“No.”
“Ross already kidnapped you once.”
“And he has my daughter and Thomas.”
“You’re injured.”
“So are you.”
“That’s different.”
“It always seems to be different when a man wants a woman to obey him.”
Nathan closed his eyes.
“Elanore.”
She touched his face.
The anger left him instantly.
“I waited years for you to stop protecting me from a distance,” she said. “Don’t start doing it again while I can see you.”
Nathan covered her hand with his.
Then helped her into the vehicle.
Storm looked at me.
“Don’t even think about telling me to stay.”
“I wasn’t going to.”
She blinked.
“You weren’t?”
“No.”
“Why?”
“Because Ross expects me to fight you all the way to the lighthouse.”
Understanding entered her eyes.
“You want him to think I’m somewhere else.”
“I want him to believe the Coast Guard locked you down at the marina.”
“How?”
I looked at Ivy, Willow, and Hazel.
“All four of you will leave here beneath blankets in separate vehicles. Ross’s watchers won’t know which one carries Storm.”
“And which vehicle will I be in?”
“None of them.”
Storm smiled slowly.
“Where will I be?”
“With me.”
Ten minutes later, the convoy left the marina.
Three Coast Guard vehicles headed toward the highway.
A fourth turned north.
The Sinclair sisters appeared to be divided among them.
But Ivy, Willow, and Hazel were all in the first vehicle under guard.
The remaining blankets covered Coast Guard operators.
Storm lay hidden beneath a tarp in the back of the SUV.
I was beside her.
Ben drove.
Nathan and Elanore sat in the cab.
The old lighthouse waited above Blackwater Cove.
And somewhere inside it, Calle and Thomas were fighting to stay alive.
Ben drove without speaking.
His injured shoulder had bled through a second bandage.
Storm shifted beneath the tarp.
“How long?”
“Eleven minutes,” I whispered.
From the cab, Elanore asked Nathan something I couldn’t hear.
His answer carried through the rear window.
“Ross’s father didn’t die because of James.”
Storm went still.
Neither of us moved.
“What happened?” Elanore asked.
“James tried to save him.”
“From whom?”
“August Ross.”
The truck seemed to grow colder.
“Ross killed his own father?” Elanore whispered.
“Yes.”
“Why would he blame James?”
“Because James witnessed it.”
Nathan’s voice became grim.
“And Thomas helped him hide the body.”