Page 19

Chapter

Ten

“We are not going to die,” Jake growled into the night.

That was almost definitely a lie. If the boat had been sabotaged and they couldn’t make it to land then the chances of them surviving were slim, but Alannah was in his arms, trembling and crying, and he had to do something to calm her down.

He should have had the boat checked out more thoroughly.

When they arrived, he’d done a quick sweep and not come up with anything.

Since he hadn't really expected the men to have done a deep enough dive into Alannah’s life that they would know about the boat, let alone that they would think she might go to it, he hadn't thought he needed to do anything other than a cursory sweep.

Stupid.

It was his job to think up every possible scenario and play them all through.

Because of his mistakes, Alannah really was going to wind up paying the ultimate price.

From the note, it seemed they thought that Alannah would wind up on the boat alone and not with him, because unlike the last note that they’d left in her car, this one was speaking to her and not to him.

But he was there.

Which meant maybe they still stood a chance.

At least he hoped they did.

“Alannah, listen to me.” Hardening his voice, pretending that it wasn't his best friend shivering in fear in his arms, he spoke to her like he would anyone else.

The lack of softness and gentleness in his tone seemed to snap her out of her impending meltdown, and she looked up at him. Even in the thin light from the moon and stars spread out above them like a canopy of twinkling diamonds, he could see the raw terror in her eyes.

This was supposed to be a safe place.

She’d gone out there thinking she was eliminating herself as bait to control him and thus his family, and instead she found she was still in the same position she’d been in the previous morning before they set sail.

A worse position in fact.

Because on the ocean they didn't have many options.

“I need you to hold it together,” he said, keeping his tone brisk when all he wanted to do was hold her tight and apologize to her, begging for forgiveness for getting her into this mess.

It was too late to wish he’d maintained his distance, that he hadn't given in to the urge to spend a little time with the best friend who kept him grounded. What was done was done. There was no going back and redoing it, all he could do was deal with the problems set out before him.

“I want you to go and put on warmer clothes, then your life jacket. I'm going to see if I can take a look and figure out what exactly they did to the boat.”

Giving a jerky nod, she went to move out of his arms then hesitated. “I'm scared, grumpy.”

“Me too, sunshine.” Admitting his fear wasn't something he would normally do. Not even with his brothers. He’d been scared in his career in Delta Force and in his career with Prey as part of Charlie Team.

He’d also been scared of losing his brothers while each one of them fought for their lives and the women who had claimed their hearts.

But this level of fear was something else.

It was akin to what he’d felt when they were trapped in the basement of Alannah’s gym, and again when he thought he’d lost her in the fire at the park.

This fear was about losing Alannah not losing his own life.

Without her he …

Couldn’t even allow himself to go down that path for fear he might not be able to come back.

Another nod and she was off, hurrying back below deck.

If they had to jump, dressed in nothing but the tiny sleep shorts and tank top she was wearing, she wasn't going to last long in the cold water.

Too bad they didn't have proper wetsuits on board, those would help keep them warm in the water and not impede their ability to swim.

With no time to worry about that right now, Jake turned his attention to the boat. If he could find out what they’d done then maybe there was a way to fix it or at least minimize damage.

First things first.

What he should have done before allowing Alannah’s panic and his own to take hold was get out a distress signal. He could use the radio to let the coast guard know they needed help, then he’d use the satellite phone to call his brothers.

As he was reaching for the radio, the yacht gave another violent shudder.

Whatever was wrong was getting worse. This time the shudder was enough to send him to his knees, his hip crashing painfully into the side of the controls as he went down.

The pain registered only briefly as he snatched up the radio and shoved back to his feet.

Silence met him as he flicked the switch.

Nothing to indicate it was working.

Damn.

Had whatever these people done to the boat taken out the radio system so they wouldn't be able to call for help?

“Jake?” Alannah’s scared voice called out to him as her head appeared at the top of the stairs. “Are you okay?”

“Fine. You?”

“Yeah, okay.” There was a slight wobble to her voice, and he wasn't sure if it was because she was just afraid or if she’d hurt herself when the boat shuddered. There was no time to grill her about it.

“Radio is out.”

“Then we can't … can't call for help.” She appeared before him, dressed in a pair of leggings that would be easy for her to swim in if they had to bail, and a long-sleeved T-shirt that was also not bulky so wouldn't impede her ability to swim. She’d put her hair in a ponytail and slipped her feet into a pair of sneakers.

Those would weigh her feet down, but if need be, she could always kick them off if they had to abandon the boat.

“We still have the satellite phone. Can you go grab it while I see what I can do here.”

“Here.” She shoved one of his long-sleeved T-shirts at him, then hurried back down below deck while he leaned over to assess the controls and see what he could do to keep them afloat and safe until they could get help.

Nothing.

As he looked at the control, he realized that was the answer.

There was nothing he could do to fix this.

Not a single thing.

Because the control panel was dead.

Whatever they’d done to sabotage the boat had taken out all power to the controls.

There was no way to fix that, especially since the boat seemed to be experiencing some kind of problem.

“Yes, he’s right here, I’ll hand you over,” Alannah was saying into the satellite phone as she came back up onto the deck.

Thank goodness.

At least they had alerted his brothers that something was going on.

A tiny flicker of light caught his attention right at the back of the controls almost hidden where the panel met the floor.

“One sec,” he told Alannah when she held the phone out to him and crouched down.

That’s when he saw it.

Tucked away out of sight unless you were looking directly for it. The only reason he could see it now was because it was night and dark out, meaning the tiny little light was just visible.

The little light was attached to a bomb that was promptly ticking down the seconds until their demise.

Whatever the saboteur had done to mess with the yacht’s computer system was obviously set to have a delayed response so they would be out alone in the middle of the ocean with no way to stop whatever was going to happen.

Sensing his fear, Alannah leaned over to see what he was looking at. “What's wrong? Did you find something. Yeah, I think he found something,” she said into the phone.

Another violent shudder sent him crashing sideways.

Alannah screamed as she was also thrown about.

“Jake, the phone!” she yelled as she must have lost her grip on it.

That was the least of their concerns.

“Forget the phone.” Pushing back onto his feet, he reached over and grabbed her hand. She still had the life jackets in her arms, and he took one and quickly put it on her. Then he took the other and slipped it on.

“You're scaring me, grumpy.”

“We have to go,” he told her. As soon as they were both in the life jackets, he towed her down to the far end of the boat.

“Go? We can't go. We’re in the middle of the ocean.” Alannah pulled back against his hold on her, but he tightened his grip.

“There’s a bomb, Alannah. The entire computer system is down, and we have about sixty seconds to get as far away from this yacht as we can if we don’t want to die.”

“A b-bomb?”

“If you hadn't woken up and come out here when you did, we wouldn't have known.”

The shuddering would have woken them both, but the fact that she was already up and about had saved them the seconds they needed. Those sixty seconds would otherwise have been him going into her room to check on her.

It gave them a chance, but that was all.

No guarantee.

“Jump, Alannah,” he ordered.

When she gave a shaky nod, her eyes full of fear but also trust, together they leaped off the boat and into the freezing water.

October 18 th

2:47 A.M.

No sooner was she encased in freezing water than the deafening sound of an explosion rocked through the otherwise quiet night.

Even though Jake had been holding her hand when they jumped off the boat—luckily since she wasn't sure she would have had the guts to do it alone—when the boat blew up, it tore her out of his grasp.

Alannah had been out on the ocean in rough seas before, knew how dangerous the water could be, how deadly, and she respected it as such.

But this was nothing like anything she’d experienced.

It was like in the Disney movie Moana, where the water was alive and it picked up things and people and moved them, putting them where it wanted them. That was exactly what this felt like. The water grabbed hold of her and threw her about, tossing her around like she was nothing.

With the dark of night and the ocean all around her, it was hard to figure out which way was up.