“I have to admit, Sicily might not have been a good idea,” I replied and winced more at the pain than her next question.
“But you’re not going to apologize for kidnapping me?” she scoffed.
“Because I’m not sorry I kidnapped you.” I tried to laugh through my next wince as I bent my injured leg. “I never would have had a chance to get to know you if I didn’t.”
She huffed. A kaleidoscope of emotions flashed through her eyes. They narrowed with anger before her brows knitted. Eyes widened and she pressed her lips together, shaking her head. The trigger finger twitched but remained straight.
“If you had just approached like any other…” Her hissed words died and her eyes dropped to my wound. “You got hit!”
She tossed the gun over the balcony and fell to her knees next to me. She hissed. A chunk of the safety glass must have bit into her knee. Her hands covered the hole in my wetsuit.
“Why didn’t you tell me you got shot? Can you walk?” Her words came in a babble. “I hope you brought a boat, security’s already after me.”
Before I responded, alarms rang throughout the ship. The ship’s horn blasted several staccato notes followed by a long blast. The ringing alarms filled the silence after as the horn echoed in my head.
I pulled myself up using the guard rail. Gianna hopped to her feet and stood at my side, ready to support my injured leg. Thankfully, I didn’t have far to walk. There really was only one easy way off the ship.
“Do you trust me?” I asked and held my hand out to her.
“Do I trust you?” she hissed then bit her lip, head shaking. “You kidnapped me!”
“I didn’t ask about that, I asked if you trusted me,” I replied.
She frowned at my hand. Muffled yelling sounded through the cabin door. Her eyes darted between the noise and me. She sighed.
“God help me, I do trust you,” she said and grasped my hand.
I pulled her close and grabbed the guardrail with my other hand. The glass support gone, it bent when I pulled myself up with it. A twist of my wrist snapped it apart. The rest bent easily over us.
“You want to jump?” Gianna went rigid in my hold. “Are you crazy?”
“Do you have a better idea?” I asked.
“If you hadn’t gone all Batman with their grappling hook, we could have climbed down,” she replied, yelling over the alarms and the banging on the door. “We’d still be in the middle of the damn ocean.”
“Sea,” I corrected. Her glare after would have killed me if it could have. “Just stick with me. I have a transponder. Pavel will find us.”
Her reply came in a deafening scream as we plummeted down the side of the ship. Countdowns didn’t work. They only scared a person more. Best to rip off the band-aid quickly, or toss yourself off the cruise ship as it were.
Our feet slapped into the water and we plunged under. A plume of bubbles escaped Gianna’s lips. They tickled as they passed my nose. I kicked, straining past the burning pain in my thigh and foot. The salt water hadn’t helped the wounds, and in water this dark, knowing which way was up turned into a crapshoot.
We surfaced only a few meters from the ship. I’d expected to travel further. Alarms still rang aboard. They must have called an all stop. My fingers tapped the face of my watch three times. Time to find out if this worked.
“The ship’s stopping. They’re turning on the search lamps,” Gianna yelled as we treaded water together. “They’ll see us.”
“Don’t worry,” I replied and pointed to the scooter that bobbed in the water, creeping closer. “Our chariot approaches.”
“Some of us don’t have night vision goggles on,” she shot back but craned her neck when the scooter finally got close enough. Then she giggled. “Not much of a chariot.”
“She’ll get us to the boat,” I replied, not defensive at all.
When the scooter got close enough to grab, I let go of Gianna and snatched one of its handles. Her arms latched around me, legs kicking frantically. When I grabbed the other handle, I had to wiggle to get Gianna in place behind me.
“Hold on,” I yelled then twisted the throttle.
Her arm scrambled over my shoulder, the other latched around her wrist from under my arm. With her secure, I sped up. She squeezed tighter the faster I took it. And she had laughed at my favorite new toy.
Away from the ship, I turned toward its stern. A light blinked in the darkness. My yacht’s dinghy appeared through the sea foam. I blinked through the pain and made the course.
