“Damnit!” Bran cursed, taking his eye away from his target just long enough to yank her back down.
They watched breathlessly as Gene kicked away Tony’s body and staggered to a stand. Blood stained the front of his pearl-snap shirt, but it wasn’t his. It was Tony’s. Gene raised his face to the bridge house’s windows again, his expression still one of regret and determination. Ripping off the duct tape, he flung it aside, and his throat sounded like it’d been scoured by steel wool when he yelled, “I’m so sorry, Maddy!”
“It’s not your fault, Uncle Gene!” she called back.
“It’s like they say,” Gene said, his voice dropping to a more conversational level, making them strain to hear him. “When you choose the lesser of two evils, you’re still choosin’ evil. But I swear to you…” He raised his voice, pain and regret flowing like twin rivers through his words. “I swear it, Maddy! No one was supposed to get hurt!”
Maddy sucked in a wheezy breath, one that was filled with the horror of dawning understanding. “Are…are you tellin’ me you—” she began, but Gene cut her off.
“Tony’s guys were supposed to grab you and the girls and call in a ransom to Gerry!” Bran knew they were talking about Maddy’s father, Gerald R. Powers. “Once the money was paid, they’d have set you free, no worse for wear! But then everything went wrong and Tony wouldn’t stop! He wouldn’t stop, Maddy!” Her uncle’s voice broke on a hard edge.
“Howcouldyou?” The fear, the betrayal in Maddy’s eyes cut into Bran’s heart like a ragged piece of metal. “How could youdothis to Daddy? To me?”
“It was for the greater good!” Gene swore. “Once we got the business up and runnin’, all U.S. oil companies would profit, includin’ Powers Petroleum. They’d stop havin’ to sign foreign contracts. They’d stop havin’ to kowtow to OPEC. He just didn’t see and I couldn’t make him!”
Maddy choked on a sob, and Bran wanted nothing more than to make this all go away. He’d barter his own sorry soul if he could somehow make this all go away.
Gene must’ve heard her, even through the narrow opening of the window, because he dropped his head, his shoulders shaking, and said something that didn’t travel up to the bridge house. Bran could feel Maddy start to stand, and he reached out and grabbed her wrist, shaking his head. “Don’t, Maddy. You can’t go out there.”
“But—”
“I wasn’t a perfect man, Maddy,” Gene said, lifting his head. Tears flowed freely down his lined face. “But before this night…” He looked around at the bodies splayed across the decks of both boats and shook his head, his shoulders sagging. “Before this I was a good man. I don’t know how to live any other way. Ican’tlive any other way. Tell Gerry I’m sorry.”
Bran knew what Gene was up to a split second before he did it. “Don’t do—”
But that was all he managed before Gene lifted the pistol and put a bullet through his right temple.
“No! No!No!” Maddy screamed, and Bran had to throw one arm around her shoulders to keep her from bolting.
He turned her away from the sight of her uncle collapsing onto the yacht’s deck, head open like a melon, mouth wide in one last soundless scream. And then something on the horizon caught his eye and forced him to let her go so he could swing his scope in that direction. Moonlight caught the white water kicked up by the trawler beelining for them, making it glisten. Good thing, or Bran would have missed it in the dark.
“Get these engines running,” he barked at Captain Webber. “Now!”
“What?” The captain glanced over at him, eyes wide with shock. “I can’t leave without my men’s bodies, and—”
“Normally, I would agree with you,” Bran said. “But that fishing trawler you saw on the radar is coming our way fast. And I don’t get the impression they’re responding to your Mayday.”
“What?” The captain peered over the console in the direction of the approaching boat.
“That’s why Mr. Slick…uh…Tony was being so chatty. He was stalling. Buying time and waiting on backup.”
I shoulda known. I shoulda—
“How can you be sure?” Webber asked.
Bran looked away from his sights to pin his stare on the captain. “’Cause I got a sixth sense when it comes to this shit.” He didn’t have to sayRemember what happened the last time I got this feeling?It was there in his eyes. And the evidence that his sixth sense was on the money was scattered all over the decks of the two ships or floating around them in the sea.
Captain Webber nodded. “Right.”
Bran turned to find Maddy down on her knees, crying into her hands. He wanted to hold her more than anything else in the world, but there was still work to be done. He crouch-ran to the opposite wall of windows and threw open the nearest one. “Mason!” he yelled down. “Cut us loose while I cover you!”
He scrambled back across the bridge and scanned the deck of the yacht as Mason appeared below, knife in hand, ready to saw through the nylon cords tethering the two ships together.
“Captain!” he yelled. “We hafta get the hell outta—”
He didn’t need to finish his sentence because the engines rumbled to life. He saw Mason cut through the last rope and hollered down, “Mason! Hold tight!” To the captain, he roared, “Punch it!”
The cutter was a fine piece of American-made machinery. It exploded away from the yacht, cutting across the tops of the waves and picking up speed with every second. Through his scope, Bran watched the trawler turn to give chase. His attention settled not on the man he could see on deck, but on the long shiny tube that caught the starlight above and glimmered.
