Gellman laughed. “Oh, most certainly.”
“Why the fuck do you keep turning up like bad breath?” Mason’s grip tightened on the tiller. “Did my team do something to piss you off at some point?”
The merc snorted. “Please. I didn’t even know you cocksuckers existed before that bad business that went down on Garden Key. I was hired to do a job there. A job that ended in the deaths of my entire crew and left me without a way to earn a living.”
“So that’s why you fell in with the commodore? For greed and revenge?”
“Don’t give yourself so much credit,” Gellman scoffed. “I had no idea when I answered Bagheri’s ad on the dark web that I’d run into you dickholes again. But low and behold, the men responsible for the deaths of his sons also happened to be the men responsible for the deaths of my guys. I guess it was fate.” He shrugged. “Or dumb luck that brought us back together.”
Mason shook his head as the little dinghy continued to skip across the surface of the sea toward the waiting vessel. The closer they got to the boat, the closer he knew Gellman was to making his move.
“Fucking mercs,” he growled.
“Oh, come on,” Gellman sneered. “You’re no different. You hide behind the facade of valor and patriotism, but you were paid to kill just like I’m paid to kill. The only difference is that my employers pony up a lot more cash than old Uncle Sam.”
The merc’s words hit too close to home. Played too much into Mason’s 2 percent theory. And yet he was quick to draw a distinction between them.
“But you’re leaving out the part where youlikeit.”
“Big talk from a guy speeding away from an island strewn with dead bodies.”
A muscle twitched in Mason’s jaw as the dinghy hit a wave and salt water sprayed over the side. Both men wore the mist on their faces. Neither of them lifted a hand to wipe it away.
Tension pulsed in the air, making it feel electric. Mason would swear the wind around them smelled of burned ozone. The second one of them moved, it would be on.
“You tell yourself whatever story you hafta to make your life choices set right in your mind,” Mason managed despite his clenched jaw. “But I know when you get still and quiet on a cold, dark night, you think about the lines you were never supposed to cross.”
Gellman’s nostrils flared, proving Mason had scored a direct hit. Still, the merc argued, “You delude yourself by standing on imaginary principles. Nothing truly matters in this world but doing what you need to do to make your time on it as comfortable as possible. And speaking of time…” Mason saw the muscles in Gellman’s gun hand bunch. “Yours is up.”
Orange fire blinked out of the end of the merc’s pistol, but Mason was already lunging to the side. Despite his catlike reflexes, it was still a close thing. The round passed so close to his cheek that he felt the air it displaced.
Snagging the towel in the bottom of the boat with his toes, Mason kicked it into Gellman’s face at the same time he brought the hard edge of his palm down on the bundle of nerves in Gellman’s gun wrist. Involuntarily, the merc’s grip went lax. The pistol slipped from his grasp to land in the quarter inch of water wetting the bottom of the dinghy.
Gellman ripped the towel away from his face and flung it at Mason before lunging for the weapon. Because the merc was closer to the pistol, he was able to get his hands around it first.
It was instinct more than anything that had Mason quickly grabbing the ends of the towel and twirling it into a rope that he used to wrap around Gellman’s forearm. One hard twist and the bones in the merc’s wrist snapped like dry twigs under combat boots.
As he howled in pain, Gellman’s hand relaxed helplessly. Only this time, instead of the pistol landing in the bottom of the boat, it hit the side of the rubber dinghy and bounced overboard.
Mason leapt, but before he could tackle the merc, Gellman tossed himself overboard too.
After the pistol? Is he crazy? He’ll never find it in the water.
Mason glanced around and quickly realized what had prompted the bastard to abandon ship. The dingy was barely ten yards from the bobbing speedboat, and the distance was closing fast.
Fuck!
Mason dove for the tiller and was able to whip it hard left. The rubber boat banged a tight U-ey, its engine showering the speedboat in propeller wash as it passed within inches of the other vessel’s hull.
“Come on, you cocksucker!” Mason throttled down, slowing the dinghy to a crawl so he could search the water for Gellman. “Show yourself!”
But he barely had time to do one quick scan of the sea around the speedboat before Doc yelled from the bank. “Mason! We need that damned dinghy! Now!”
“Fuck!” he hissed, taking another second to scan the drink for the injured merc. Then he laid on the gas and sped to shore.
It rankled to let Gellman escape. But the desperation in Doc’s call was impossible to miss. Wolf was running out of time.
Chapter 28
