by Katee Robert
“You know what I don’t understand?” He crossed his arms over his chest. “Why him?” Elliott nodded at Frank, who watched the whole thing with cold, dark eyes.
Waiting for his moment.
Journey gave her head a small shake when Frank looked at her. If he tried to jump her father, Elliott would grab the gun and shoot him. At that range, there was no way he’d miss, and a couple of rounds to the chest might not be fatal, but she wouldn’t risk it. She refused to let him risk it.
Elliott snorted. “He’s not going to listen to you, sweetheart. The fool loves you. He’ll jump in front of an entire clip’s worth of bullets if he thinks it’ll save you. Honestly, it’s sickening. Love makes you weak.”
“No, it doesn’t.” Without love, she wouldn’t be here. Even if it ended in disaster, Journey was here. She wasn’t waiting for someone else to save her. She was facing her own goddamn monsters. “On your knees, Elliott.”
“If you insist, I—” He moved. Her father lunged for the gun, just like she’d known he was waiting to do. His hand closed around the weapon.
Journey pulled the trigger.
Her gun bucked in her hands, but she was expecting it. She pulled the trigger twice more in quick succession, her mother’s voice in her head. If you have to pull the trigger, you make damn sure they’re not going to get back up again.
Red bloomed on her father’s white shirt in a cluster in the center of his chest. His gun fell from nerveless fingers and he hit his knees. He blinked at her as if he’d never seen her before. “You shot me.”
“Yes, I did.” She kept the gun trained on him as she slid a step closer to Frank. Her shoulders ached from the effort, but she wasn’t about to let her guard down now.
“You…” He touched his chest and looked at his red-stained fingers. “I didn’t think you would.”
“You don’t know me anymore.” She cast a quick look around, but there was nothing sharp sitting conveniently close. She stalked to Elliott as he collapsed onto his back. Journey kicked the gun farther from him. I shot him. I shot my father. She took a shaking breath and went to her knees next to him. A quick pat down found a knife in his pocket. A fancy switchblade that probably cost a small fortune.
Elliott’s hand closed around her wrist, but there was no strength in his grip. Blood flecked his lips, and his blue eyes were glassy. “You’ll never be rid of me.”
“I’m already rid of you.” She hurried to Frank.
He shook his head as if waking from a dream. “You came for me.”
“Of course I came for you, you ass. I wasn’t going to let him kill you.” Journey touched his head gingerly. The wound was still bleeding, though not freely. No telling if he had a concussion until they got him into the hospital. She sawed through his zip ties and sat back on her heels. “I don’t suppose you know how to drive a yacht?”
“Journey.” He rubbed his wrists and then took her by her shoulders. “You came for me.”
She cupped his face gently. “I’ll always come for you, Frank. I love you.”
* * *
Frank pulled her into his arms and hugged her tightly, not sure if she was shaking or if he was. “Don’t ever do that again, Duchess. I swear to fucking God, if you scare me like that again, I’ll put you over my knee and paddle your ass.”
She laughed against his chest. “I hate to be the one to tell you, Frank, but that’s not exactly a deterrent from where I’m sitting.”
“You won’t be sitting for a fucking week when I’m through with you.”
Another of those intoxicating laughs, though it faded far too fast. She twisted to look at her old man. “He’s dead.”
“Yeah, he is.” Frank would have spared her pulling the trigger if he could have. He’d held his fucking breath until he went light-headed while she faced off with her father, waiting for his opportunity to leap at the man.
It never came.
Journey didn’t need him to save her. She saved herself, and him in the bargain.
It wasn’t over yet, though.
He forced himself to let go of Journey. “We need to get the hell back to Houston.”
“Yeah.” She wiped the back of her hand across her forehead. “Anderson and your men are coming—and probably the cops or Coast Guard or whoever handles crimes on the water.”
He looked back at the spot where Houston had disappeared on the horizon. She’d had backup, which was more than he could say. She’d covered all the bases. “I love you.”
“I know.” Journey’s breath hitched. “Let’s get off this fucking boat.”
“Took the words right out of my mouth.” Frank started for the navigation system when the yacht lurched hard enough to throw both him and Journey to their knees. “What the fuck?”
She scrambled to her feet and ran to the railing to look over. “Uh, Frank?”
“Yeah?” He climbed to his feet again.
“I think we have bigger problems.” She pointed to a plume of smoke curling from the rapidly tilting yacht.
Frank grabbed the railing to steady himself and cursed at the sight. The yacht gave another lurch, and his palms went clammy when he realized they were much, much closer to the surface of the bay than they had been a few seconds ago. “Who the hell blew a hole in the yacht?”
“Uh, now might be a good time to mention that my brother was really insistent I get off this boat. I don’t think he meant like this, though.” She gulped. “I’m not exactly a great swimmer, Frank.”
Fuck.
They did not survive this long to drown before help could get to them. Frank grabbed her hand. “I need you to jump, Duchess.”
“Jump?”
“If we don’t get off this fucking ship, it will suck us down when it goes under. We have to get clear.” He started searching the area, yanking the cushions from the bench seat and testing them. They weren’t life jackets, but they would float. It’ll have to do. He thrust one at Journey. “Come on.” He hauled her down the stairs to the main deck. Their best chance lay in jumping from the bow and swimming like hell. He climbed over the railing and waited for her to do the same. After the slightest hesitation, Journey followed him to the edge.
“Jump, Duchess.” Frank didn’t give her the chance to change her mind.
He pushed her.
Frank kicked off his shoes and followed her into the water. He hit and went under for several precious seconds before he swam to the surface. Journey sputtered a few feet away and shoved her wet hair from her face. “You pushed me!”
“Yep.” He snagged the pair of cushions and shoved one at her. “We have to swim. Now.”
Journey nodded and fought her way through the water in the opposite direction from the yacht sinking beneath the surface. Too slow. Frank followed her, muttering encouraging words when she flagged, all of his focus on getting them as far away from that fucking boat as possible. He wasn’t sure of the radius of the drag—only that it existed—and he was taking no chances with Journey’s safety.
She came for me.
He’d never seen anything so beautiful or terrifying as his woman stepping out with a gun in her hand and fury and determination written across her features as she faced down the man who had spent far too many years terrorizing her. She did it for him. For herself, too, but the only reason she was there today was because of Frank.
“Frank,” Journey gasped. “I’m so tired.”
“Keep going, Duchess. We’re almost far enough.” He paced her. “Then you can rest.”
“Can’t believe you pushed me,” she muttered, picking up her pace again.
He glanced back to see the last few feet of the yacht disappear. The slightest of tugs pulled at him, but that was it. Far enough. Thank fuck. “We made it.” He stopped her with a hand on her shoulder. “Float on your back. Keep the cushion at chest level and cross your arms through the strap.”
She obeyed and gave a short laugh. “You experience much in the way of shipwrecks, Frank?”
“My f
irst one.” He waited to make sure she was secure and then mirrored her position. “Help is coming.”
“If they were tracking my phone—if that’s even something you can do over open water with no cell towers around—then we’re in trouble. It’s at the bottom of Trinity Bay.”
“They’ll find us.” Pieces of wreckage floated around them, and if the Coast Guard got involved, there would be helicopters. Even in a boat, it would be possible to spot them.
They just had to survive long enough for help to get to them.
“Hang on, Duchess. Help is coming.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
The cushions weren’t really meant to act as flotation devices. Journey held hers in a death grip and did her best to lie on her back in a dead man’s float…and not think about the dead man currently occupying the waters of the bay somewhere near them. Frank floated next to her, the soft splashes of his kicks somehow making their isolation worse. They weren’t that far from the coast—less than ten miles, for sure—but it might as well have been on the moon for her ability to swim there.
She looked to where the yacht had been up until a few short minutes ago. After they’d jumped, it disappeared beneath the waves terrifyingly fast, taking her father with it.
Hopefully.
Journey jerked her gaze to the sky, still a perfect blue. “I was going to jump,” she said again.
“I know. I just sped up the process.”
The vast space beneath her made her skin crawl. She’d swum in Trinity Bay more times than she could count, even out this far and farther on party boats when she was younger. It had never bothered her before. If she thought too hard, she could almost picture Elliott’s lifeless body rising through the water below them and…“Talk to me, Frank.” When he didn’t immediately start, she bit her bottom lip hard. “I’m starting to freak out and I’m pretty sure if I freak out, we’re both going to drown, so I need you to talk to me.”
His shoulder bumped hers as they floated closer together. “We’re getting out of this, Duchess. Help is coming.” A variation of the same thing he’d been saying since they hit the water.
She wasn’t sure if he believed that any more than she did. Time ceased to have meaning once she jumped onto the yacht, but she was relatively sure that they’d barely been in the water an hour. If someone hadn’t shown up yet, maybe they weren’t showing up at all. She closed her eyes against the burning there that had nothing to do with the sun. “I killed him.” She waited for guilt to cripple her, to seep through every part of her until nothing remained untainted.
It didn’t come.
“Do you regret it?”
“Not in the way you mean.” She pressed her lips together, tasting salt that she could almost convince herself came from the sea around her instead of the tears trickling from her closed eyes. “I should regret it. Murder is a big deal—the biggest deal, even—but the only thing I regret is that he didn’t live long enough to be prosecuted and spend time in prison. To experience even the smallest slice of suffering that he dealt out over his lifetime.”
Easy enough to speak this awful truth. It was only the two of them here in this moment, the endless sky overhead and unknowing deep beneath. “I’m not sorry. I would do it again.”
Frank’s hand found hers in the water. “You have nothing to be sorry for.” His fingers clasped hers long enough to give a comforting squeeze before he released her. “I would have spared you that if I could have.”
“I know. Just like I know if you’d tried, he would have killed you.” Journey shook her head, her hair a strange weight in the water. “No, this was the only way. I know this was the only way.”
“I’m here, Journey.” He spoke quietly, his words blending with the soft sounds of water around them. “Not just right now. For always.”
Journey kicked lightly until she bumped Frank again. “I want to go on a real date. Not a fake one because we’re keeping up appearances. Not a weekend away because we’re in danger and we need to wait it out. A real date with two people who are into each other.”
“Who love each other.”
She smiled, tasting salt. “Who love each other.”
“Saturday.”
She blinked. “What?”
“I’ll pick you up at seven on Saturday. Pack a bag.”
“Frank, real dates don’t include needing a bag packed.” Her arms started to slip from the cushion, and she spent several painful seconds trying to readjust. Desperate to ignore the fact that she most certainly wouldn’t be able to hold on to it indefinitely, she focused on their conversation. “Real dates are the traditional dinner and maybe something afterward, then you drive me home and we make out on my front porch while I try to pretend like I’m not sure if I want you to come up. Eventually, I get over my bullshit and drag you to my apartment and we spend the rest of the night banging like it’s going out of style.”
His dry laugh lingered in the air above them. “We’ve already established that nothing about this is traditional or expected. Why would a real date be?”
A valid point. She shivered. Her skin felt clammy. Losing heat. It wasn’t that cold in the water, but it was colder than her body, which was enough to fuck her up over time. “So what happens on this nontraditional, unexpected real date?”
“That, Duchess, you’ll have to wait and see.” He went still. “Do you hear that?”
“Don’t toy with my emotions, Frank.” But then she heard it, too.
A boat’s motor.
Journey twisted and kicked, trying to get her head high enough out of the water to see. A rapidly growing black dot appeared, heading their way. “Friend or foe?” Her gun was long gone. They were both tired and waterlogged, and if the boat was filled with Elliott’s men coming to finish the job, they would just have to drive right over Journey and Frank a few times to make it work.
You are just a little ray of sunshine, aren’t you?
“Frank?”
He lifted a hand to shield his eyes as he trod water. He didn’t seem to have the same difficulty that she did, which meant he probably could have started swimming the second the yacht went down and been halfway back to the coast by now. He hadn’t. He’d floated next to her and talked her down even though there was no way he was any surer of rescue than she was. His expression cleared. “They’re mine.”
“Thank fuck.” She couldn’t make herself let go of the cushion as the boat approached and coasted to a spot next to them. She recognized Ethan and José among the half dozen men leaning over the side to help them.
Frank jerked his chin at her. “Journey first.”
She went under as she let go of the cushion, but strong hands grabbed her shoulders and hauled her up. Her legs went out the second she hit the deck, and she slumped into a boneless heap in the middle of the boat. One of the men—a rough-looking guy with a sunny smile—wrapped a solar blanket around her while two more helped Frank into the boat. He knelt next to her and cupped her cheek. “You good?”
“Yeah.” She would be.
He apparently didn’t have the same weak legs thing going on that she did, because Frank stood and addressed the man at the wheel. “Dylan, get the Coast Guard on the line. We have to get ahead of this.” He turned back and crouched in front of Journey. “We play this my way, Duchess. Your father kidnapped me and I shot him in self-defense.”
She shivered and pulled her blanket more firmly around her. “That’s not what happened.”
“I know that. You know that. But I’m not letting you take the rap for this if things go badly.”
It was on the tip of her tongue to ask why they didn’t just turn around and drive away and leave Elliott to his watery grave. She knew the answer. There would be questions. A Bancroft son, even a shitty one like her father, didn’t just disappear without Esther whipping the entire city into a frenzy in her efforts to find him. With her reach, she might even be able to manage to get both the state and feds involved. Eventually, they’d find the yacht, and they�
��d find what was left of Elliott.
Maybe they’d realize Journey and Frank were involved. Maybe they wouldn’t.
But it wasn’t a risk either of them was willing to take.
That made sense. Letting Frank potentially take the fall didn’t. She knew what would happen if he confessed to shooting her father. Esther would jump at the chance to bury him. The self-defense plea would be overturned and he’d be prosecuted for murder. He’d be convicted.
Just like his father was.
She wouldn’t allow it. This was her mess, and she’d dragged him into it from the start. Journey wouldn’t let him suffer the consequences that were hers to bear. She reached up and grabbed his hand, forcing as much strength into her grip as she could. “The gun was mine and if they recover the body and do a ballistics test, they’ll figure that out. We play this straight, Frank. Promise me.”
He hesitated, and finally nodded. “If that’s what you want.”
“It is.” Journey pulled him down until he was even with her. “Besides, I have Frank Evans in my corner. How could I not come out on top of this shit show?”
“I’m in your corner and you’re in mine.” He pressed a quick kiss to her lips. “Call your brother and update him. I’m going to take care of this, Duchess. I promise.”
* * *
“Tell me what happened.”
Frank pinched the bridge of his nose and bit back a sigh. He hadn’t really expected the cops to believe his and Journey’s story, for all that it was true, but he’d overestimated his patience—and how long it would take his attorney to show up. All he could think about was how shaken and exhausted Journey looked when they’d led her to a separate room for her own version of this particular hell. She needed him, and he was stuck talking to this fucking detective. “I’m not saying a damn thing without my lawyer—which I’ve mentioned several times at this point.”
The detective ignored that, musing aloud, “Seems you and Elliott Bancroft had some bad blood. A man like you dating his girl. Father’s not going to be too keen on that.”
