Page 34 of The Primary Pest (Iphicles Security #1)

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

Ajax

The sea rushed at Ajax. When he hit, it was like falling on concrete.

The frigid water made his breath rush out, instantaneous and reflexive.

Already he knew this was going to be like nothing he’d ever experienced.

For one thing, he couldn’t see. Debris from the sinking boat, papers and rags, oil and fuel fouled the water as the sea seemed to boil up around them.

Giving his body the chance to acknowledge the chill, he pumped as hard as he could to the surface for a deep breath, and then dove again lower, making wide, frantic arcs with his arms. Just when he felt like he couldn’t hold his breath a second longer, he brushed Dmytro’s arm, made a grab for it, and kicked as hard as he could to the surface.

Dmytro was a rock. A fucking mountain. Once they were at the surface, it took all Ajax’s strength to pull his head up and out of the water.

He dragged Dmytro into a rescue hold, keeping Dmytro’s head on his shoulder, praying he wasn’t too late.

It took every ounce of his strength to keep him afloat.

He had three, maybe four minutes like this. No more.

Dmytro lay limply while Ajax kicked hard to keep them on the surface. He was too pale and still. Ajax wanted to cry, to scream.

He couldn’t do both—hold Dmytro’s head above water and perform CPR.

He resorted to desperation and rage at the world, slapping Dmytro’s face as best he could from that angle. Once. Twice. Nothing happened.

Then he wrapped both arms around Dmytro’s belly and compressed them as if to administer the Heimlich.

On the third try, Dmytro coughed. He vomited water. He gagged and gasped for breath. Dmytro showed no other signs of consciousness.

Ajax could not allow himself to panic. The boat was going down absurdly fast. As it did, flotsam came up all around them. Ajax was a geek who’d grown up watching MythBusters , and they’d proven sinking boats don’t pull a swimmer under. But he did have other things to worry about.

He had no rescue tube. And he had no hope of keeping both of them alive for any length of time without some kind of flotation. Against every ancient fear, he swam toward the wreck, looking for something he could use.

Already the sea was a wasteland of plastic water bottles, aluminum cans, rags, and paper, and now he hoped there might be more. Something he could use as makeshift flotation until rescue came.

If rescue came.

Shit. Shit, shit, there . The ship’s life ring buoy was still looped over the hook outside the bridge, and if he could get both of them over there before the ship sank beneath the surface, he could get it.

Maybe there were other things? Had there been flotation vests on the bridge?

The ship gave another violent shudder.

Shit, shit, she was going down fast. He had to go now. He put his arm across Dmytro’s chest and swam for his life. Air from the sinking vessel caused the water to foam around him. It burbled and eddied, pulling at their bodies, dragging at their clothes.

He let his deck shoes fall off and kept swimming. He was close. So close. He’d just reached for the buoy when the ship gave another horrible groan and a shudder. It heaved again, but this time the bridge sank under water and the buoyant ring floated free.

With a prayer of gratitude, Ajax grabbed for it.

Seconds later, the entire boat slid below the water’s surface, and with painful dismay, Ajax realized he’d lost the chance to get life vests, water, a flare gun. He’d never had a chance as long as he had to keep Dmytro’s inert body above water. Still…

As he’d been trained to do, he got his arms beneath Dmytro’s shoulders and dragged his upper body onto the buoy between them, which placed Dmytro’s head above water.

In that position, the device took some of Dmytro’s weight, and Ajax was able to maneuver better.

He could also see the furrow Peter’s bullet—had Peter, or Chet, been the sniper?

He could see a furrow in Dmytro’s skin, plowed by someone’s bullet.

Thank God, the bullet had only grazed him. But also…

Ajax was no stranger to these waters, and he didn’t ever want to bleed in them. Not with global warming bringing sharks closer to the West Coast every year.

Now that the ship was gone, he searched the litter it left behind and tried to come up with a plan.

First things first, he made a sweep of the debris, looking for useful items. A bit of rag, washed as well as he could in sea water, was useful to put pressure on Dmytro’s wound.

Bits of paper came in handy as makeshift sunblock to protect his skin.

He found a few water bottles with small amounts of water still in them.

They might contain enough precious liquid to stave off dehydration for a few hours.

How long would it take to be found? They were somewhere among the Channel Islands. Surely someone would find them. Didn’t the Coast Guard, the DEA, and ICE make sweeps looking for smugglers and drug traffickers and illegal entries all the time?

Ajax tried to be positive. He was still able to swim. He could keep going for a long time, given the alternative. Dmytro shifted, pressing his face into Ajax’s neck—probably an unconscious effort to avoid the bright light and biting wind. His touch made Ajax more determined than ever.

Dmytro’s girls needed their father.

Dmytro needed him.

An orange speck in the distance drew his eye. He towed Dmytro toward it, delighted to discover it was a life vest. It must have floated free from the bridge as the vessel sank. He looked around, but if there had been others, he couldn’t see them.

Holding Dmytro on the buoy with one hand, Ajax slipped the life vest around his body and secured the fasteners with the other. Relief poured through him.

A vest like this could buy him time and help him stay afloat a whole lot longer, even if he had to keep Dmytro with him. Thank Christ, thank Christ , something was going his way for a change.

Now all he had to worry about was hypothermia.

He held the damp pad of fabric to Dmytro’s wound and kicked as economically as he could, relishing the soft warm puffs of breath against his neck as proof Dmytro was still among the living. Maybe they could come out of this alive yet.

But already the few minutes he’d been forced to spend in the water felt like hours. The heat from the sun was merciless, the light blinding wherever it hit the waves.

He took his own counsel and covered his head and face with paper debris. He did the same for Dmytro, who had yet to come to.

Every time he thought he was near the end in the past few hours, he’d been thrown out of one nightmare only to be blasted into another, more serious, more dangerous one.

Was this the end at last?

If it was, he’d run an awesome race. He’d told his parents he loved them. That he was proud to be their son. He hadn’t told Dmytro how he felt about him, but surely, if there was someone up there looking out for him, he’d get the chance.

At least he knew. At least he had the opportunity to take his love and transform it into action. To hold Dmytro close and keep him safe, even if it was their final hour on earth.

Absurdly, he lifted his arm to check the time on his expensive dive watch.

Stupid thing. It had cost a fortune and the second had had stopped.

There was no way to tell the time or where he was.

No GPS function, no compass, even. Thank God he had the good old sun.

He could make his way east, toward the coast, though the currents would most likely drag them south…

but there was the wreck to consider. The field of debris from the sunken boat made him think he’d be better off staying put.

It would be hard to miss that during a flyover.

Hard not to extrapolate that a boat had gone down.

Would they look for survivors?

Of course they would.

And with his orange life vest and Dmytro in his arms, it would be difficult to miss them.

He kicked around, collecting anything with bright colors—bits of paper, rags, empty aluminum cans.

Anything that might shine or glitter or show well against the backdrop of the sea.

He placed what he could on Dmytro’s flotation device without sinking him and waited.

As time passed, he found himself talking to Dmytro.

“You have to wake up, man. I’m doing everything I can, but I can’t do it alone…

Your daughters need you, Dmytro. If you don’t come home, who will read them stories?

Who will protect them from bad boyfriends and bullies at school? Who will sing that ridiculous lullaby?”

It helped, talking out loud. And God knew he could keep going for hours.

“This is another of my superpowers, you know,” he offered. “I can keep talking forever. Don’t think you’re going to get me to shut up by refusing to answer. Many have tried. No one has ever prevailed…”

He changed arms and kicked, treading water as best he could.

“I hate a conversational vacuum,” he admitted when he assumed Dmytro couldn’t hear.

“I guess that’s what it is. My parents are the quiet type, plus they weren’t around.

When they got home at the end of the day, they spent their time reading or going through mail.

They put on soft music. That’s when I learned I had to engage them, to entertain them, if I wanted their attention.

“One of my exes called me a gaping black hole of emotional need. And before you ask, yeah, I threw him out. I like attention, but I have standards.

“I’ve also had a lot of boyfriends.” Ajax worried Dmytro would think it was too many. “Boyfriends and hookups. I’ve had lots and lots of those. But I’ve practiced safe sex. Okay, maybe I played the odds, but I’m negative.”

Dmytro seemed like the kind of guy who found someone and stayed with them. Maybe he went for both women and men, but Ajax doubted he’d strayed as long as Yulia had been alive.

“Just so you know, I’m perfectly capable of monogamy. In fact, I always wanted to fall in love, and God, I fell so hard for you. No one else could take your place, Dmytro. I am so in love with you.

“I’ve never felt anything like this in my life. Not for anyone. Please, please come back to me so I can tell you.”

He kicked his way around an oil slick as best he could. It saturated their clothes, though, and made him feel filthy from the inside out.

His arm burned, so he switched again, hoisting the inert Dmytro back onto the ring to keep him from slipping into the greasy water.

Despite the device, the weight of Dmytro’s body, his clothes, and his saturated boots were a constant drag on Ajax, pulling him down, threatening their safety with each swell of waves in the sea that cradled them.

“My parents sent me to a special hands-on course where I learned to be a lifeguard. But I worked in a lake, Dmytro. You would pull this out on the ocean. You are such a goddamn pest .”

“ Me? ” At the junction of his neck, he felt a burst of laughter. “I’m a pest? That’s rich, coming from you.”

Ajax pushed away to look at Dmytro’s face. “Are you… You’re… My God, Dmytro. I thought you were in a coma or something. Jesus, you scared me. Oh my God!”

“What happened?” Dmytro lifted pale fingers to his face and felt the paper Ajax had pasted there. “And what is all over my face?”

Ajax brushed his hand away. “Improvised sunblock. What do you remember?”

“It was Peter. All along it was Peter driving us into a trap. Peter and that sick bastard Chet. Zhenya is going to combust.” Dmytro slurred his words but held on to the ring. He started moving his legs, which gave Ajax some much-needed relief from treading water for both of them.

“They tied us to the railing of the Charioteer and sank it. Oh, also, they grazed your head with a bullet. How do you feel?”

“Like I was shot in the head. How do you think? I’ve got a blinding headache. Also, I need to puke.”

“Go ahead.”

“I’ll wait until it’s impossible to avoid, thank you.”

“Maybe we can find aspirin floating around somewhere. You won’t believe what’s drifted by.”

Dmytro paled. “I can imagine.”

Heat crept up Ajax’s neck. “Um. How much did you just hear?”

“Some.” Dmytro’s voice still sounded weak. “Well. All of it. I hope you told that ex of yours to fuck off and die.”

“I did. But, er. Do you have anything you want to tell me?”

Dmytro gave him a sloppy smile. “We’ve got a lifetime to talk about love, little mink. Even if now is all we have.”

Ajax wrapped both arms around him. Given their respective flotation devices, the kiss only drowned him in sensation. Desire. Tenderness. A kind of happiness he never thought he’d find.

Dmytro placed a dozen tiny kisses over Ajax’s forehead, temples, cheeks, and jaw. “I don’t know when it happened. One minute you were a thorn in my side, and the next you’d dug your way into my heart.”

“Oh, Dmytro.” The hopelessness of their situation receded behind the brilliant ice of his eyes. Evident at last was everything Dmytro had always tried to hide from him: his raw emotions, the things he yearned for, and all the things he didn’t want to say.

They probably didn’t stand a chance, but everything might still be all right.

Things had to be all right.

They must, if only because now he and Dmytro had each other.