And for a while, it doesn’t. Sol begins to relax, tension easing from his shoulders. He cracks a beer and offers me one, but instinct has me waving it away.
Not yet.
Shore lights start to twinkle in the distance. I check my boots are tied and pull a shemagh I’ve had since I was a teenager higher on my face, no longer using it to shield me from the wind. I scan the tools I’ve amassed for defensive manoeuvres.
Hooks. Gaffs. Poles. Weighted ropes.
No munitions. I shouldn’t need them. Ican’tneed them, not in this life. But it feels weird to prepare for a fight without a loaded weapon, even a fight I can’t be sure is coming. Without Vinnie heckling my choices. Without Raven frowning at the mess Moth and Orion have left on purpose to wind him up. I’ve never been a one-man show before and I don’t fucking like it. Who knew?
I did.
Fuck off, Vin.
I flip a bird to my dead friend, but I still feel his weight pressed against me, his fat head lolling on my shoulder for a nap in the sun before that last jump. I hear the gunfire. The explosion. I smell his blood as the rescue aircraft roars above?—
Engine noise rips me back to reality. I blink away an unseeing haze and turn my head towards it, keeping low as I creep out of the cabin.
A dark-hulled boat speeds towards us, cutting through the choppy water fast and wide, bearing down on Sol’s smaller vessel at an angle that tells me it’s no fucking accident.
Sol sees it too, and tightens his grip on the tiller as the approaching boat swerves, aiming a broadside hit to the hull of theSirona.
“Hold steady,” I warn Sol, cold focus descending.
There’s no other choice as the vessels collide, a ram that jolts me sideways, and sends Sol careening backwards into the same rail he bashed his ribs on before.
He swears.
Don’t blame him. It’s a hard hit, but not a full ram. That’s coming if I can’t dissuade the other boat in time, and I’m fucking here for it.
The other boat swings around, circling back for another try.
I surge into motion, grabbing a hook and the flare gun with sure hands, adrenaline barely flowing yet.
“Holdsteady,” I tell Sol again.
He nods, mouth set in a grim line, but he eyes the hook in my hand. “What the fuck are you going to do with that?”
I grin. “Dunno yet.”
There’s no time for him to respond. The other boat bears down and I tighten my grip on the boat hook. It’s short-handled, double-pronged, and I’ve spent the last hour sharpening it enough to do serious damage to whatever it hits.
The other boat surges. I move with intent. Fast. No hesitation. I pick my target of the two men piloting the vessel. Ithrow, and the boat hook soars through the night air, grazing the first man’s head before it embeds in the wooden door behind him.
A clean hit I made dirty on purpose. The boat veers, its wake crashing into us, but Sol holds theSironasteady, gripping the tiller with the stoicism of a man who’s faced bigger waves and survived.
We take the impact. TheSironarocks with wild force. But I don’t stumble. I’m ready for round two as the other boat skates to a standstill close enough that I see the faces of the men who want to dance.
One of them, the older Couch brother, maybe, is bleeding, claret oozing from his grazed temple. Through his fingers as he presses a hand to the wound, eyes wide with shock. The other smick is either jacked on adrenaline or too dense to realise what just happened. Whatcould’vehappened if I’d truly chosen violence today.
Or maybe he just doesn’t see me.
But I see him. I track him.Stalkhim as he reaches for a coil of rope and a baseball bat with every intention of boarding theSirona.
To do what, we’ll never know. I grip the flare gun and fire before he sets a hand to his own gunnel, and I don’t aim for the fucking sky.
Acracksounds as I pull the trigger. A microsecond of nothing. Then the flare explodes from the barrel, screaming for freedom in a blaze of savage light, tearing through the night air towards the face of a man whose shit-eating grin is fading fast.
Spitting sparks mark the flare’s trajectory. A warning hiss sounds, ignited phosphorous tainting the sky, and the man hasnowhere to go. Like Sol when they came at him like budget brand demons from hell.
