CAPTURE — Wrecked Innocent (The Billionaires Club Book 5)

by Q. Zayne

  Contents

  Title

  Around the World

  A Special Doctor's Exam

  Billionaire's Perverted Proposition

  Tracked in the Jungle

  Excerpt: OWNED

  More Hughes Empire Edgy Ebooks

  Copyright

  CAPTURE Description

  About the Author

  Title

  CAPTURE —

  Wrecked Innocent

  A Big, Black Surprise for Angie

  The Billionaires Club

  By Q. Zayne

  For T

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  Around the World

  The supply chopper receded into a speck. The pilot’s wave and wink slid into memory, the last human contact I’d have for days. Shading my eyes and looking out to sea with nothing surrounding The Chameleon but deep green swells, I felt a contentment like nothing I’d ever known. Even the deep shadow of my father’s illness receded, made bearable by the vast sky and sea, the tender rocking of my sailboat.

  My objective: to sail around the world and beat the world’s record. A solo effort, and Chameleon’s maiden voyage. I’d just turned 19. It took me three years to raise the money to buy her. I couldn’t still smell the kitchen grease from the ocean-front diner where I waited tables to raise the money.

  I’d always wanted to do this. And I had a life or death reason to fulfill my dream. Dad’s whiskery kiss on my cheek was still with me. If there was truly any force for good in the universe, I’d make it.

  The sunset cast deep red across the waters. Clouds that had been the exact shade of raspberry sherbet turned blood-blister dark red.

  The wind came up in a rush. I lunged for the supplies. The boat pitched and I slammed against the mast with bruising force. The fresh supplies slid overboard. Damn. The wind came without warning. I knew better than to take calm conditions for granted, I’d been sailing as long as I could walk. I should have stowed everything as soon as the chopper made the drop. Several days worth of food and fresh water gone.

  I imagined Dad’s disappointment. But no, he’d forgive me that mistake. It was done. I pushed my hair into my anorak and raised my hood to keep the whipping strands out of my eyes.

  My radio sputtered. I grabbed the handset and pushed the button.

  “May day, may day. Coast guard, do you read? Anyone, this is Chameleon, do you read? Last known position… “ I tried to pull the latitude and longitude out of my numbed brain but I couldn’t and I knew it was no good. The light was off.

  The radio died, the transmission didn’t send. No one knew where I was. No one got that May day.

  The coast guard would know my last position, but that was hours ago. I’d been blown miles off course.

  The rigging snapped. I held the mast, grabbing for the rope to control the main sail but the wind whipped it out of my hand, burning my palm.

  I fought the storm gripping the last sail.

  The belly of the most massive wave I’d ever seen came at me. Oh, hell. The Chameleon couldn’t take that. I took a deep breath. There was no time to grab a life vest or my air tanks, even if I dared let go of the mast.

  The wall of water hit me, ripped me loose of the The Chameleon, slammed me under the sea, and down, and down.

  I fought my way to the surface through the heaviest water I’d ever swam in. My arms and legs felt like saturated tree trunks. I could barely move and my lungs burned. Colors burst in dark blotches behind my eyes. Was I going to die? No, no way. It doesn’t end like this.

  I surfaced gasping, eyes and mouth stinging with saltwater. A big mass blocked the setting sun. I swam for it. My Chameleon, bottom-up, bobbing like a buoy. At least she wasn’t sunk. I grabbed on and another wave crashed into us, drove us like driftwood or like a kid’s toy in a rushing creek. The water moved impossibly fast. I couldn’t see, couldn’t swim, could only cling to my broken craft.

  Chameleon ran aground with a crunch. I felt the destructive force as though it tore my body instead of hers.

  “No, no!” She took the brunt of the violent landing, saving my far more vulnerable prow from jagged rocks.

  But she was everything to me, all my hopes rode on her and now she’d been gashed by huge, horrible fangs. I let go and dropped to the hard-packed sound. My ankles stung from the shock.

  The damage looked even worse than it sounded. Light showed through the gaping hole in the prow. The jagged hole looked like a megalodon took a bite. Nothing remained to repair it, only splinters where once there’d been a sleek, wave-slicing hull. I collapsed to my knees on the beach and covered my face in my hands. My hair blew over my shoulders, the wet, sea-soaked strands whipped my fingers and back. It was long when I started sailing weeks ago and grew longer.

  This was bad. This was super bad.

  This could be the end. I’d put everything into this trip. All my savings from waitressing, all my skills and hopes and dreams.

  I’d lost my stores and wrecked my boat.

  Think, think, Angie, think.

  I squared my shoulders. I wouldn’t quit. If Dad survived the cancer, he’d be proud I won. Even if I couldn’t beat the record, I could at least finish the trip, make it around the world solo. That was the plan, the only plan. Maybe if I did that much I could at least get some endorsements to pay for his treatment. I’d wear any brand of sneakers, drink any sports drink, whatever they wanted, to pay for the treatments that might save Dad’s life.

  Getting to my feet made me groan. Now I knew how Dad felt getting out of a chair when he sat a long time. Unfolding my knees hurt. No doubt from fighting the storm, and maybe the impact of the crash. My body felt thrashed. I pressed my palms against my thighs and stretched my back. I straightened slowly and took a look around. Palm trees, jungle, a long white-sand beach with lots of huge boulders like the ones I crashed into. No signs of habitation, but that didn’t mean there weren’t any inhabitants.

  I’d heard rumors of pristine places that remained out of reach of the Western plagues of consumerism and processed food. Sounded like paradise to me. And darker stories, of exclusive places owned by eccentrics, where interlopers disappeared.

  I brushed the scary thought away, it was like a campfire story, told to thrill kids. Every region of the world had its store of scary stories.

  Stores. That reminded me, the fresh supplies sank.

  Eying the thrashing sea, I hobbled to The Chameleon and clambered up the rocks to get to her. I tried to lift her, hoping to get her up the beach to safety. Every sinew of my body screamed with the effort.

  She was too heavy for me to move, and stuck tight on a huge, fang-shaped boulder in any case. I tied her off, using extra rope and her anchor to secure her, just to be sure a monster wave wouldn’t wash her away. I didn’t have much hope of repairing her, and if I did, it would take a miracle to get her in the water. But maybe I could do something to get her seaworthy. People had made and repaired boats without modern materials and tools for hundreds of years. Maybe I could manage something with bark and pitch, seal the hull well enough to get to a populated place for more supplies.

  Otherwise — I shaded my eyes and looked up at the sun and out along the horizon line. Otherwise I could die.

  I shook my head, releasing sand from my hair. Not an option. Dad wasn’t a quitter, and neither was I.

  There was a solution. There had to be. At least I hadn’t drowned. At least I reached land. How I could possibly still beat the world record was beyond me, but I’d deal with first things first. Bre
ak it down, do the most important thing next, stay in action.

  I searched her to salvage what I could. I’d been reading seafaring stories all my life, entranced by castaways. In real life, the smallest thing could mean survival. I breathed through my nose to a slow count of 10, mastering my horror at what had happened to my boat, to me. I was shipwrecked. This was real.

  I dug through the wreck with a lump in my throat. The Chameleon cost me all the money I’d saved from three years of waitressing. She was everything to me.

  I found my pack. I’d lashed it down, a trick Dad taught me. It contained a flashlight, a waterproof packet of matches and a sodden sweatshirt. That was a win. Salvaged more rope, soggy jeans, one sandal, a can of chili I’d saved for emergency because I didn’t like chili.

  I searched every inch of her that I could get to: no bottled water. No sleeping gear. No other shoes but the squishy deck shoes I wore, not the best things for scrambling over sharp rocks — and with the sea still whipped up, I didn’t want to risk trying to climb them to get at The Chameleon from the other side. Where we lived in Santa Cruz, including the coast in each direction, every year people got swept off beach rocks and drowned, usually in conditions quieter than these. The sea was a rough dance partner.

  Odds weren’t good of finding much more I could use. I longed for some shelter and something soft to sleep on, but sand wasn’t bad. I’d spent a lot of nights on sand. I might find some big, resilient jungle leaves.

  That’s it. Be resilient.

  I took one last look at my wrecked boat and the raging waves beyond her. No heel-dragging. I had to leave her behind. I’d done everything I could. The ropes strained when a big wave hit her stern and pulled back, but they held. The anchor wedged in the rocks should hold, unless all the ropes snapped. Huge white caps kept coming. Waves pummeled the beach. It was a violent night.

  I might never see her again. A tear ran down my face and I wiped it away. Nothing more I could do for her.

  Time to move inland. If I got swept off the beach, all of this would be for nothing. And my loss would break Dad’s heart. I was all he had left, and me, him.

  I shoved the gear in my pack, shouldered it and hauled ass up the beach. At the tree line I scanned for an opening. No point bush-whacking if I didn’t have to. My machete dropped toward Davy Jones’ locker along with everything else.

  But I’m alive, I reminded myself. That’s how Dad would look at it. I had the best role model in the world for surviving tough odds. He’d been through chemo and all kinds of hell and still had the best smile, best attitude, most loving heart a person could have. He didn’t raise a quitter. Whatever happened, I wanted to do him proud.

  My patience with scouting the shoreline paid off. I rounded another mass of jagged boulders, keeping a tight watch on the waves, and found a stream.

  I followed it into the jungle. Huge relief. With the stream to follow, I had a source of fresh water and cut out the risk of getting lost in there. I’d read too many stories of people who got disoriented and went around in circles, who died not knowing they were near a way out.

  Okay. No more grim thoughts.

  I readjusted my pack. The jungle provided welcome relief from the sun. The smell of rotting vegetation surrounded me. A warm breeze kept the sea’s salty scent dominant. A few feet in, far enough to reduce the risk of back flow of ocean water, I crouched down and caught water in my cupped hands. I hesitated. I had no purification tablets, no gear for boiling it. Castaway without even a cook pot. I could imagine the reality series. Such crap.

  I tasted it. The water tasted sweet. It rushed over lots of stones. It was as clean as it would get. I dug through my pack. Eureka! My eco-friendly habits paid off. I’d stashed a re-usable water bottle. I filled it.

  Putting that full water bottle in my pack made things better. I could get the things I needed to survive. I didn’t want to think about food yet. I’d never killed an animal in my life and I wasn’t going to start. Even fishing mortified me, sort of an embarrassing thing for a world sailer, but there you go. If I had to, I’d cut a vine and rig something for a hook. But first I’d see if anything edible grew in the jungle.

  I stretched my back and pushed on.

  I felt like Robinson Crusoe. After a few minutes, I got into my walking rhythm. The little stream widened into a creek. By staying on its bank, I moved freely, ducking under vines and watching my footing, but unimpeded by the thick jungle around me. The thick growth cut a lot of the last light, so I moved slower than I wanted to, in the interest of making sure none of the vines were snakes and keeping an eye out for predators. Journey by land came with a whole different set of hazards than sailing.

  A loud caw made me jump and I grabbed a palm trunk to keep from falling into the creek. A coconut fell and almost brained me. Two inches to the left and I would have had a concussion.

  I set down the pack. Time to rest. A long pull on the bottle helped to restore me and calm my stomach. It rumbled in protest at the lack of food. I’d lost weight since I started the trip, and despite all the sick conditioning that girls can never be too thin, I knew I didn’t have much weight to spare. My shorts hung on my hips and I could play my ribs like a xylophone. I read skinny models became the rage in the 19th century because clothing makers didn’t want the women’s bodies to distract from the clothes. They wanted stick figures to hang fashions on, like living hangers. To this day, long live the ectomorph.

  For the first time in my life, I qualified. I’d never bought into the BS that a size 12 was big or “fat.” It was my size, big deal, and with a round ass and big breasts to push me toward what the thread pushers called plus size. Plus-size my fist, morons. Anyway, now I was no longer near that. I looked weirdly wasted, like I was trying to qualify for Miss Underfed America. My legs stuck out of my shorts looking super skinny and I had that weird-ass “thigh gap” made so popular by certain top models and the media that loads of girls and women were trooping to plastic surgeons to get that hot look! Gag. How could people be so stupid? Well, lots of media brainwashing to hate your body to keep people sucked into mindless consumerism didn’t help. Fuckers.

  Okay. I took a deep breath. I was alone in the jungle. Going off on a rant about America’s idiotic woman-hating consumer culture wouldn’t help matters. Although it had distracted me from the more immediate issues of the fear of death, or tripping on something and getting a green-stick fracture which would amount to a slow and painful way to reach that same end. My stomach grumbled louder. And the little matter of feeding myself. What in hell in this over-sized terrarium counted as food?

  I got up, positioned the pack and headed on. I forced myself to move with caution. The coconut bomb taught me a lesson. Things were dire enough. Injuries were not an option.

  The rain stopped. I sluiced water off my face with my fingers and squeezed sea water and rain out of my hair. I smelled like sushi. My eyelashes were wet. My panties were soaked, and not in a fun way. I pulled my shorts out of my crack.

  I scented the wind. Something smelled good, like cooking. Maybe that was a hallucination, an olfactory hallucination I thought that was called, like a mirage for the nose. I giggled.

  My legs ached. And my butt and hips screamed at me from the strain of slogging through the mud with every muscle already feeling wasted from fighting the sea for my life. The pack of water-logged gear felt heavier than when I started.

  I set it down on a rock to avoid bending. My body didn’t want to move much more. Going to sleep without dinner wouldn’t kill me. I scanned in all directions and up in the trees. But this jungle no doubt served as home to many things that could kill me, from spiders and snakes to predatory mammals. Wild boar goring, anyone? Hell, I did not want to think about all the ways I could die in this remote place. Tears brimmed. I dug my nails into my palms. No crying. That wouldn’t help. And a sob fest could distract me from sounds of danger.

  Do something, do anything. Don’t panic.

  The pack, check everything in the
pack.

  I dug my stuff out of it and arranged everything on the rock. There. Jungle Jane has table, I told myself in a cave-person voice.

  Oh, duh. How about wringing out all the wet stuff to cut the pack weight? Too much. Well, I was shipwrecked, guess that slowed my brain. Kind of a shock. All my thoughts were focused on sailing around the world, then a storm like the fist of God slammed me. Not giving up.

  I put all my anger into wringing out my jeans, sweatshirt and ropes. I hung them over a branch in the sun. The light faded to gold. Fast as a snap of the fingers. Now you have a hope of drying stuff, now you don’t. I made a face. Felt weird and crazy to make faces by myself in the middle of nowhere. Is this how people go crazy? I flashed on the movie with that guy getting to know his soccer ball. I expected them to make it. Slash a hole in it, use a little coconut oil . . . . I understood guy jokes about lunch meat, knot holes and everything else.

  Okay, enough psycho stuff. I hung the pack on a bush. Maybe it would drip dry. Darker by the minute. Damn it. What I wouldn’t give for a blanket. Think, think. I turned on my flashlight and checked the undergrowth for any big leaves. The ground looked damp even under the thickest undergrowth. That had been a hell of a rainstorm.

  Hind site: I should have scouted for a camping spot before it got dark. What was I doing, trying for the castaway doofus award? All my life people told me I was smart. But I didn’t feel smart at all. I was lonely and if I thought about anything much I’d be scared. This sucked.

  No world record, no reunion with Dad, no expensive-assed, hope-giving cancer treatments for him, just … hell. Possible death on some unknown freaking island, damn it to hell.

  I flashed on The Chameleon lying wrecked on the fang rocks with a huge bite out of her prow and the tears fell. Thunder in my ears and the flood fell down my face. Fuck it, so I’d have a cry. Then I’d lay on the mud and have a sleep. In the morning, I’d search for food. I could do this. I had to.