Page 25 of Anchor (First to Fight)
Jones jerks his gun and twitches it toward the bench. “No fast movements,” he says. “You take a seat there and keep your hands where I can see them.”
I do as he says and I keep him in my eyesight the whole time. When I’m sitting with my hands resting on my thighs, Jones shoves Chloe across the room and I catch her just before she goes down on her injured wrist. She doesn’t make a sound, but what little color remaining in her face drains away. I try to help her up, but she gives her head a little shake and stands on her own. By the time she collapses in the seat next to me, her lips white. Her body is as taut as a bowstring, but she jerks her chin up and maintains eye contact with Jones.
The stubborn jut of her chin almost makes me grin. She may appear to be an angel, but she’s got the spirit of a warrior.
“You two stay right here while they unload the cargo from below,” Jones is saying when I turn back to face him. “Put out your hands.”
I won’t gain anything from arguing with him, so I do as he says, even though it makes my skin crawl to be at his mercy. He zip-ties Chloe’s wrists in front of her first and I don’t miss the wince when he jostles her injured wrist. It’s already turning colors and I’m worried it may be broken instead of just strained.
A chilling grin pulls at Jones’ lips by the time he finishes with her and gets to me. First is the collar around my neck followed by restraining my wrists. He’s humming and all the earlier tension that seemed to grip him about the surprise visit from the sheriffs is gone. In fact, he seems…happy? For someone with no less than ten assault weapons trained on him this very moment, he’s too relaxed. Especially considering we outwitted him and he’s cornered, giving up the one bargaining chip he had. Three hostages—including the captain—is nothing compared to the dozens he’s voluntarily giving up.
Something about it nags at me.
I know there’s an ulterior motive at play. A man doesn’t just hijack a boat with this many hostages on a whim and then relinquish them at the first chance. Which means either he has what, or in this case who, he wants, and he no longer needs those hostages, or he has something else planned for us.
It’s pitch black out, but the spotlights from the Coast Guard’s boat are trained on the area where they’re preparing to unload the small crowd of people. They’ve situated a makeshift ramp and are helping everyone off one by one, a few uniformed officers guiding them along the wobbly plank.
If I were him, I’d have contingency plans. He has to know a boat isn’t the most secure place. He has to know being ambushed by the cops was an option. Since he’s got me, they’re no longer important.
And then it hits and before I can second guess myself, my brain goes into auto-pilot and I move.
Jones has his attention on the people unloading, no doubt to calculate his next move, so he doesn’t see me dive for the throttle. I engage it with my bound hands, but it does the job. The ferry jerks forward, throwing me to the ground. The people down below squawk and I hear their distressed screams before they are swallowed by the ocean.
All this happens in a manner of seconds, but it’s enough to wipe the cheerful expression off the bastard’s face and it gives me some level of satisfaction.
Then another explosion rents the air and throws us both to the ground. The boat shudders and for a moment I’m terrified we’re going down, then it stabilizes and sputters forward. I’ve seen a lot of shit in my life, but for a few seconds, I can’t bear to look up. The fear of seeing what horrifying thing is waiting for me paralyzes my thoughts.
“Gabe,” comes a desperate whisper. “Gabe!”
I roll over to my back with a groan and consider the view. “We have to stop meeting like this,” I tell the two of her.
She slaps at me with her bound hands and I grab it, which jars my throbbing head. “Why would you do that?” she screeches. “Do you have a death wish?”
I think about it for a second, then I say, “No, I don’t think so.”
She grabs a pair of scissors after searching the dash drawers and releases both of our bound hands. My head spins as she helps me to my feet. Mayhem greets me, and it takes a few minutes for my brain to decipher what my eyes are seeing. The tail of the boat is engulfed in smoke and the scent of singed plastic and hot metal. A cacophony of shouts pepper the air and then there’s a rapid-firepop-pop-popfrom an automatic weapon.
Chloe wedges her shoulder under my arm to help me to my feet. Still reeling from the rush of adrenaline, I wrap an arm around her waist and we both go back down to the ground at the first sound of gunfire.
I shield her body with my own, tucking her face into my neck and caging her with both of my arms. “Don’t move.”
Her body vibrates with fear, but when I scan her expression, there’s fire in her eyes. “Was that him?” She strains against me to get a better view of the lower deck. “Did they get him?”
“I don’t know, but I have a feeling I’m not that lucky.”
“Oh, you’re definitely not lucky today,” Jones says from behind us.
Chloe
Above me, Gabe’s body becomes one long, hard line of hate. My blood is pumping and my reflexes are all heightened so when I feel the six feet of male pressed against me from top to bottom, heat, oblivious to the situation, washes over me.
His glare is lethal and the hand on my shoulder contracts with bruising strength. I don’t think he knows he’s doing it and I don’t dare interrupt their epic stare-down. If they’d been in the Wild West, guns would be drawn.
Jones doesn’t point the angry-looking rifle he has slung from his shoulder at us, but I feel it watching me as he strides across the room to the controls. He sets it on top of the dash and I have a hard time turning away from it to see what his hands are doing.
“First chance I get, I will get you off of here,” Gabe says in a half-whisper. His breath tickles my ear and I shiver against him.
I pray he doesn’t feel it. In fact, I even close my eyes for the barest half-second. But when I open them, I see his slightly widened and want to throw myself overboard.