Page 41 of Rescuing Micah (Prey Security: Cyber Team #3)
The water was a lot colder than she’d been expecting.
While Teresa tried to take a breath before she went under, the shock of being knocked over the side of the boat, right when she thought it was all over and she was finally safe, meant she lost precious seconds.
Seconds that might turn out to be the difference between living and dying.
A mere ten seconds or so after she and William had left the small surgical room, they’d heard the first of the gunshots.
Knowing that meant Prey had arrived, that they were on the boat with her, had almost had her bursting into tears.
But she’d held them back.
Prey might have arrived, but it hadn't guaranteed her or William’s survival.
She had no idea how many guards were on the boat, or how many medical personnel.
She’d asked the young nurse, and he’d told her there were only half a dozen guards, and a dozen and a half doctors and nurses.
According to William, about a dozen of those were here by choice, and the other half dozen were like him.
Add in another two dozen or so patients like herself, and she knew there was no way she could protect them all.
While she hadn't had a firm plan in mind, she’d kind of been thinking they would go room to room and amass whatever army they could.
Some of the victims would be in no shape to get out of their beds and arm themselves, but surely some of them would be.
Scalpels might be no real match for guns, but at least they were something, and she had felt better clutching hers in her hand. Without their own little army, there was no point in doing anything to try to help the Prey people who had boarded the boat.
When she’d asked William if he knew a place they could hide until it was safe, he’d suggested taking the back stairs up to the top deck. Apparently, there was a little building up there that had at one time been a bar and kitchen back when the boat had been used for its intended purpose.
That idea had seemed as good as any, so they’d crept up those stairs, both holding onto their scalpels like they were the only thing keeping them alive, and hidden.
Eventually, the shooting had stopped, but since they had no way of knowing which side had come out on top, they’d stayed right where they were.
Teresa would bet everything she owned, gamble her entire future on the fact that Prey would win, but there was always the slimmest of slim chances that something could have gone wrong.
If that was the case, she would have thought their best bet would be to jump overboard.
The helo that had brought Prey would have still been out there and might have spotted them.
Even if it hadn't, she’d rather die at sea than on this boat.
Now dying at sea seemed like it might actually be a possibility.
Right as she’d been about to run into Micah’s arms, relieved beyond words to see his face, and those of the SEAL team who had helped rescue Ava, and then Isabella. They might not be Prey, but they were on the same side, and they were every bit as skilled and experienced as any of her Prey family.
There was no one she would rather have heard calling her name than Micah.
If he was there, then she was going to be okay.
At least she thought she was.
Since Micah and a couple of the other guys were up there, she had assumed that meant everyone on board who was a threat had been taken care of. The guards were likely all dead, and the doctors and nurses were restrained.
But one of them wasn't.
The snarky doctor from earlier must have hidden up there as well, like the coward she was.
For whatever reason, the woman must have realized it was over, that she was about to be caught and would have to face the consequences of her actions, and decided that it was a better idea to throw herself at Teresa and take them both overboard than to just turn herself in.
Maybe she thought that if Teresa was with her, the others couldn’t shoot at her. Which was likely true, Micah and the others wouldn't risk hitting her so they would need a clean shot, which would be difficult to get with them both tangled together.
It wasn't just that the cold was a shock to her system that had her momentarily freezing, or the fact that she’d never been out in the ocean like this before, so far away from shore.
Not only was that terrifying in and of itself, but so was the fact that the woman who had taken her over the edge didn't seem to be content to let it stop with that.
She was trying to drag her further down.
Trying to drown her.
How the doctor thought that would help anything, Teresa had no idea. Maybe the woman wasn't thinking clearly at all. Whatever the reason, if she didn't snap out of her stupor soon she was really going to die.
Die with Micah and a team of SEALs literally right above her.
No .
You are not going to die.
Not here and now.
Not like this.
Not when you can get back the future you once thought was a sure thing.
The little pep talk helped a bit, and she finally managed to claw her way through the shock causing her system to freeze and get her body and brain back in sync.
Micah and the others might not be able to safely shoot at the doctor, but it wasn't like they were going to just stand up there and watch her try to break away from the woman’s hold.
They were going to do something about it, which meant she had to as well.
While she hadn't been able to draw a proper breath before they went under the surface, the doctor obviously had, because her arms were still wrapped tightly around Teresa’s chest, and she was actively pushing them both deeper and further away from the boat.
She couldn’t let that happen.
The boat was safety.
Everything else was wide open, empty ocean.
Or not so empty.
Now was not the time to worry about sharks coming to get her. Honestly, they were the least of her worries right now. The deranged doctor trying to kill her was topping that list.
From the way her lungs burned, and her brain tried to convince her to open her mouth and take a breath even though she knew there was nothing but water for her to inhale, Teresa knew that the doctor wasn't actually all that far away from succeeding in her goal.
It was now or never.
She’d lost her grip on the scalpel somewhere along the way, either on the deck as she was falling, or as her body hit the water, so she no longer had a weapon. Her arms were pinned by her sides, but that didn't mean there weren't parts of the woman she couldn’t reach.
Groin. Teresa had taken enough self-defense classes at Prey to know it was a great area to aim for if you were being attacked by a man. It was how she’d almost escaped those two men who tried to snatch her outside the deli that day she’d been saved by Micah.
That strategy worked on a man, but there was no reason it couldn’t work on a woman, too. No guy wanted to be hit there, but it was a sensitive spot for a woman, too.
Curling her fingers into a fist, she rammed them between the woman’s legs.
Underwater or not, she heard that howl of pain, and the arms around her suddenly loosened.
Shoving away from them, desperate to get back to the surface and take a breath, Teresa thought she was in the clear when something, a fist, a foot, a head, she wasn't quite sure what, rammed into her stomach.
The blow to her partially healed wound that had then been cut open again had her seeing stars, the edges of her vision going black.
No.
Can't pass out now.
Unconscious means drowning.
Refusing to give up, Teresa kicked and swung at the hands that tried to claw at her. She wasn't going to die down there when Micah was somewhere close by. Maybe he was even in the water with her, trying to find her beneath the surface.
She had no idea how long it had been since she went overboard, it felt like many minutes, but it was probably mere seconds since she’d hit the water and been taken under.
After all, she was still holding her breath, and she wasn't experienced at doing that for long periods of time like Micah would be.
Her fist connected with something, and the presence beside her disappeared.
Thinking she was in the clear, she began to kick her legs with everything she had, needing to get to the surface so she could breathe in oxygen instead of water before her body’s instincts took over and tried to make her take that breath where there was no air to be found.
When something snapped around her arm, she didn't hesitate to lash out all over again. She wasn't dying down there. She had too much left to live for.
May 7 th
12:34 P.M.
By the time Micah reached the edge of the boat, Teresa had already gone under.
Tossing his weapon onto the deck, he swung a leg over at the same time Rex came up beside him and did the same.
“You're being daring,” he said as he swung his other leg over and held onto the railing with his hands, surprised he could make any kind of joke at the moment. But he had to do something to try to break through the terror threatening to clog his mind and body and render him useless.
“I know, right?” Rex replied, shooting him a huge grin before they both let go.
This drop into the water was so much shorter than the one jumping from the helo had been, and a couple of seconds later, he plunged beneath the water.
It was still pretty calm, the waves small, but Teresa had been caught by surprise, and it seemed like whoever had knocked her over had done so with the purpose of killing her.
For what reason he had no idea, it certainly wasn't going to save them. If anything, it was only going to make their situation worse. Now instead of simply being arrested and forced to face the consequences of their actions, there was every chance they were going to wind up dead.
Maybe that was the point. Suicide by cop. Well, by SEAL.
“Try not to get hit again,” he told Rex, before he dived under the water, heading for the spot where he thought Teresa and her attacker would have landed.