by Cherry Adair
The man clutched his broken wrist against his belly, fumbling for his weapon. It was clearly his nondominant hand; the gun was awkwardly positioned for a quick draw.
Logan reached for the Glock tucked in the back of his shorts. Nothing. Fuck. The man was joined by a twin in a black wet suit—still dripping water, murder in his eyes.
Jed came out behind the second man, grabbing him with his arm across the man’s throat and grappling with him, while Logan scanned the deck for his gun, dropped in the scuffle.
He saw the Glock at his opponent’s feet. Damn it to hell. He dived across the deck, sliding into base. Grabbed up the Glock and rolled. The bad guy fumbled his gun into his meaty fist, trying to awkwardly adjust for a different angle.
“You snooze, you lose.” Logan rotated up on his shoulder, braced one hand under the other and fired. He wasn’t sure who was more fucking surprised, himself or the guy with a dark wet blotch on the front of his wet suit. The man’s eyes went wide, then he toppled to the deck, already slick with water and blood.
Nausea welled in the back of Logan’s throat. Jesus. He’d done that. Willfully, and without a second’s hesitation, taken a man’s life. How the fuck had he come to this? He’d never killed before. But he didn’t have time to think about it now as he jumped to his feet.
Pirates, or Stamps’s men? Whoever they were, bad guys were pouring over the rail like ants at a picnic. Where had they come from? His people were everywhere, watching, waiting. Professionals. How the fuck had they been caught unaware? And where the hell was everyone, on a fucking coffee break?
The clothing was so similar to that worn by the T-FLAC operatives that it was almost impossible to differentiate the good guys from the bad, even in the bright lighting that made the scene surreal.
Worse, the army who’d boarded seemed just as skilled, just as motivated as the men he had on board. And there appeared to be three times as many of them.
All around him was utter chaos and pandemonium. Earsplitting hails of shots were being fired from every direction.
These guys had serious firepower to counteract Sea Wolf’s serious firepower. They were clearly well-funded and extremely motivated.
Someone came up behind him, grabbed him around the throat with his forearm. Logan bent, throwing the man over his head. Well, over the rail. He cartwheeled over the side with a scream and a splash.
Another man was right behind him. They were like fucking Weebles. Knock one down, and six more popped up. Logan didn’t wait to ask questions, but spun, slamming the Glock at the guy’s nose. Crunch, grunt; the guy hit out blindly and got him with a painful jolt on his arm, which went numb from wrist to shoulder. Logan shot up his knee, hard, hit the man straight in the balls. He winced as the guy doubled over and fell to the deck screaming.
Fuck empathy pain; more were coming without end. He danced back to parry a man with a long-bladed knife, red with someone else’s blood. The man showed yellowed teeth. Close enough for Logan to get a whiff of chain-smoker. Logan’s feet shot out from under him as he slipped in God only knew what on the deck, and flew backward on his ass.
The guy jumped him while he was still sliding, sitting on his chest. Logan grunted as his good arm was pinned beneath both their weights. They were equal in strength, but the man was thirty pounds heavier, better trained, and sitting on him.
These bastards favored knives, and one was raised now, descending as if in slo-mo. Logan grabbed the guy’s wrist in his still numb hand, fought to bend the arm back. The knife got closer to his throat. He wrenched it back a few inches, repelling it with more determination than brute strength as he twisted and bucked.
Fuck it, he had no leverage.
He couldn’t drag in a breath because of the weight crushing his chest. He arched his back, hoping to get the guy off balance, or just—hell—off. Instead he ended up with a face full of crotch. That left his legs free. He tilted up, let his heels climb the guy’s back. The man twisted, slashed at his legs, but Logan wrapped his legs around the guy’s head, locking his ankles over his nose. And squeezed. Squeeze. Twist. Twist. Squeeze. The guy was gurgling, flailing. Logan wasn’t done. They twisted and rolled.
Someone fell over them with a curse, someone else stumbled, his boot striking Logan in the kidneys. They rolled like lovers until they came to a jarring halt, Logan’s spine hitting the rail with a thwack that jarred every bone in his body.
Grabbing the guy by the hair, he pounded the bastard’s head on the deck until he went slack. Chest heaving, Logan staggered to his feet, gripping the rail until he was sure he was steady enough to move. There were men everywhere. Fighting. Some dead. Some wounded badly enough that they lay where they’d fallen.
He helped up one of Wright’s men, with a quick yank on the hand he held up. “Thanks, man.” Then watched as the same man shot two men point-blank, on the run, without pausing.
Holy fuck.
The faint smell of cordite was joined by the metallic stink of blood and other body fluids. Men yelled, cursed, and grunted as fists and weapons slammed into bare flesh. Wood ripped and splintered. A liquid splash as someone else went overboard. Shit crashed and clanged in surround sound.
Pandemonium was all around him, but all Logan could think was Daniela.
He picked up his gun and ran, ignoring the crack and splinter of more wood breaking, glass shattering, shouts, and the pop of gunfire.
Galt was gone from the doorway, leaving behind a large bloody pool on the teak floor. Logan ran like his life depended on speed. Her life depended on his speed. He raced through the common room in seconds.
A man ran at him and Logan hit him in the face with his elbow, barely slowing down. He shot a second man who was squeezing the trigger on a semiauto. The guy’s face exploded in a spray of red. Logan didn’t hang around to see him drop.
He ignored the upturned furniture and shattered debris, ignored clumps of men at each other’s throats, ignored the wanton destruction all around him.
Daniela. Jesus …
* * *
Daniela couldn’t sleep. Even less so after Logan left the cabin. A lamp burned on the bedside table, and she was fully dressed, shorts, T-shirt, running shoes, bra. It made sense if Victor’s men came back. “But wearing shoes to bed isn’t exactly conducive to sleeping,” she told Dog, who lay snoring on her feet.
She was curled on her side on Logan’s big bed, her fingers under the pillow, but not gripping the butt of the loaded Glock she’d been sleeping with for the past several nights. Logan had given her a crash course in firing it for a couple of days on the helipad on the top deck. It would be impossible to hit anyone with her eyes squeezed shut. She had a better chance of hitting herself in the foot than shooting an intruder, which she’d tried telling him. He’d made her practice several times a day. She was a terrible shot every time. Thank God she was surrounded by a veritable army of men who looked as though they’d have no problem at all remaining steely-eyed as they pulled the trigger.
Standing outside the cabin door were two men in black. A few yards away, on the small balcony, stood the shadowy figure of the man stationed there to protect her. He and his big gun stood motionless in the shadows between her and the vastness of the night sky and the blackness of the ocean.
“I could go and talk to Wes. What do you think?” He was in her old cabin next door. But it was two in the morning, and he was probably sleeping. She could get up and go and peep in the open door …
Preternaturally awake, Daniela pulled the light blanket up around her shoulders, and willed herself to relax. Eyes gritty, she was too wired. Her heart pounded for absolutely no reason, and she had a jittery sensation in the pit of her stomach. The kind she’d had as a child when she had to get up to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night. That sliding-her-feet-to-the-floor-even-though-she-knew-a-monster-hid-under-the-bed bad feeling.
Victor was somewhere out there in the dark. Not literally—God, she prayed not—but symbolically. She could almost hear him b
reathing. “That’s just the air conditioner,” she told Dog, who was oblivious to her flights of fancy.
She felt foolish, lying there, frozen in place, held there by named and unnamed fears. She was the cause of her own anxieties. She had to stop it. She’d get up and turn on more lights. She’d take a cool shower. She’d jog in place. Write a novel. Compose a sonnet. God.
How girly and ridiculously, annoyingly codependent. She wanted Logan to come back. She wanted the feel of his hard, strong body hugging her close. This time, she swore, she wouldn’t be embarrassed that there was a man just a few feet away who might turn and glance through the closed slider and see them. This time, she’d savor the closeness and sleep.
The cabin was surprisingly quiet but for the faint throb of the generator deep in the bowels of the ship and the faint noise of the air conditioner.
Suddenly all the lights blazed on, and a siren split the quiet, the sharp sound reverberating in her ears and resonating through her bones. Daniela shot upright, her hand over her manic heart. Dog stood over her extended legs, lip curled back, ruff up, growling low in his throat, head down.
Dear God …
There was a loud thwack over her left shoulder, and when she swiveled her head to see what it was, she saw a small black hole in the upholstered headboard. Frantically, Daniela scrambled to get untangled from the blanket and Dog, and at the same time fumbled under the pillow for the gun.
“We—” she stared to scream for Wes, when the sliding door from the balcony was shoved aside with a bang, and the black-garbed man raced into the room. With the door open she could hear gunshots and running footsteps as he let in an assault of loud noises, and the smell of—she had no idea, but her nose wrinkled as she stared uncomprehendingly at him.
To make the noise worse, Dog went ballistic, barking and lunging. “It’s okay, it’s okay.” She was saying it more for herself then the animal. “What’s happening?”
“Ma’am, we’ve been breached,” the man yelled, leaning over the mattress to grab her wrist and violently yank her over the other edge of the bed. He cuffed Dog aside as the animal tried to grab his black jacket in his sharp teeth. “Gotta get you outa here! Come on! Hurry.”
There was something—in the chaos she couldn’t pinpoint what was off. But she resisted his inexorable pull on her wrist. “Logan said to stay here, no matter what!”
The siren was so loud they had to yell to be heard. Poor Dog, confused by the noise and yelling, was barking and trying to bite the guy. “You’re both taking care of me, boy. It’s okay. It’s okay.” But it wasn’t.
The security guy jerked her roughly, pulling her to her feet. His hold was painfully tight, and the angle at which he held her arm hurt; he was almost wrenching it from the socket.
Dog, who’d been knocked several feet away, came out of nowhere, flying at him across the rumpled bed. His teeth sank into the man’s shoulder. That was good enough for Daniela. She screamed blue bloody murder at the top of her lungs, struggling to get the man’s hand off her arm. She clawed at his fingers with her nails, and when that didn’t work, brought a knee up sharply to his groin. He turned quickly, and her strike deflected off his thigh. He cursed and slapped her so hard her head jerked back from the flat-handed blow.
She went for his eyes, but he was taller and much, much stronger. He planted his elbow in the middle of her chest to hold her back, and at the same time wrenched her arm behind her. She screamed out her rage as Dog came charging, yellow eyes feral, teeth bared.
The man’s leg shot out and he kicked Dog in the head with his heavy boot. “Noooo!” The dog dropped like a rock and lay still, out of sight at the foot of the bed.
Daniela’s body sagged, so he had to support her just by the cruel grip he had on her wrist. Red-hot pain shot up her arm, but she used the weight of her body and writhed and twisted until she broke his hold and fell on all fours to the carpet.
She was already on the floor, but the bed had drawers. No crawl space. She crawled until she managed to stumble to her feet. He had her blocked in. He was between her and—everything. She was between the bed and the open slider. The gun was still under the pillow.
“What the fuck—!” Wes came charging into Logan’s cabin, a gun in his hand, and took in everything at a glance, rage on his face. “Get down! Get down!” He fired several shots. One slammed into the sliding door several feet away. Glass shattered, showered the carpet with glittering shards.
He dropped to one knee, and his gun fell from his hand as blood poured from his shoulder. “Run!” he yelled, then toppled over on his side and lay still. Daniela jumped up on the bed and bolted across the mattress, only to be pulled back by a hard grip to the back of her shorts. She fell, and the man grabbed her by her hair, dragging her to his side of the bed. “On your feet.”
She dug her nails into the backs of his hands and screamed at the top of her lungs.
“You’re lucky I was told not to mess up your face.” His features distorted with fury, and he fumbled inside his jacket. For a gun? She went even colder. “Bitch, if you don’t shut the fuck up, there are other ways of making you cooperate.” He took a small bag out of an inner pocket, flipping it open on the bed.
“Then you better use all of them, you son of a bitch,” she yelled, fighting him. “I’m no … t go … in … anywh—mff!”
He slapped a soft cloth, hard, over her mouth and nose, held it there, cutting off her erratic breathing. Daniela held her breath until the room spun and her lungs burned. He twisted her arm behind her back between them, yanking her against him.
The desperate need for air compelled her aching lungs to suck in a breath. Just a small breath. She fought him like a wild woman, but her intent and fury wilted as the edges of the room, and the sounds of the siren and shouts rapidly imploded.
Logan …
Weightless. Darkness edged out light. Knees liquefying.
Help.
Body dissolving into shadows.
Dimly she heard boots crunch over broken glass. Felt the cool night air on her face. Had a sensation of flying. And then experienced nothing at all.
Sixteen
The clanging of the ship’s emergency alarm bells cut through the din like a blunt surgical blade. No one gave a second’s pause. Oblivious, the men kept going. Punches. The crack of gunshots. Screams and grunts. It was a fucking cage fight without the damn cage.
Sharp, rapid-fire barking carried across the din, catching Logan’s attention. Fear gripped him by the throat as he absorbed the facts. Dog’s bark was frantic.
Dog was supposed to be with Daniela.
Logan spun around just as Dog leapt from the dive platform, landing on the deck on all fours, soaking wet. How the hell had he gotten from the locked cabin into the water? His ruff was up, his lip curled to reveal white teeth as he continued to bark ferociously.
Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.
Daniela!
Logan called for Dog, who ate up the deck between them in long bounding strides. The animal leapt from six feet away, body slamming Logan so he had to stagger to maintain his balance. Clamping his hands around Dog’s neck, he eased him back on all fours. “Let’s go get her,” he yelled, because if Dog was out here, something had—
Fuck.
This bloodbath was nothing more than a goddamned diversion. A costly one.
He turned and ran like a wide receiver going for the end zone, Dog hard on his heels, barking as if warning everyone to get the fuck out of their way.
“Little help here?!” Jed yelled, arm twisted behind his back by some dude in a water-beaded wet suit as they scrabbled on the landing at the foot of the stairs. A second man pulled back his arm to punch Jed in the belly. Blood poured from Jed’s swollen nose, and he was trying to make eye contact from his one open eye.
Logan closed the gap, grabbed the puncher by the shoulder, spun him around and slammed his elbow up into his nose. Dog danced around them, barking and biting. Logan heard the satisfying crunch, then warm blood sp
lattered onto his bare chest as the man shrieked like a girl. As he doubled over, Logan jerked up his knee, and had the satisfaction of hearing bone and cartilage crunch. The man went down without a peep.
“You good?” he yelled at Jed, who now had the other guy in a headlock.
“Yeah. Go get her.” Daniela. Jesus. Daniela. He started running again, Dog glued to his side. Flat out, legs and lungs pumping. Heartbeat manic. Fear tasted metallic in his dry mouth. He jumped the sprawled, upside-down guy on the stairs whose throat was cut, then passed three men locked in hand-to-hand combat. Logan vaulted over the legs of a guy barely conscious and attempting to claw the smooth teak wall for purchase.
Three stairs at a time. One flight. Two. Heart pounding. Vision focused, legs pistoning. He saw more men up on the upper decks, some dead, some fighting. He passed those he could, and paused barely long enough to interact when he couldn’t. When he fought, Dog circled, barking and snapping, urging him to hurry.
As he ran, he prayed like never before.
At last they reached the long corridor to his cabin. Key card in hand, he saw that one of Wright’s men was sprawled across the doorway, facedown. A giant fucking hole in the back of his neck. Blood pooled obscenely on the floor around him. The other man was gone. Logan bent to grab the guy’s gun out of his cold dead hand. Dog was going ballistic, barking and body slamming the door.
Logan yelled her name even as he unlocked and wrenched open the door. Barking, Dog dashed inside, racing across the cabin.
Logan took in the room at a glance. The shattered door, the glass on the carpet, and the shredded sheer curtains blowing in the wind. “Daniela!”
