Somehow, Broderick McClintock had managed to find a piece of wood floating in the sea, as if a broken desk had been discarded overboard. Chloe knew that the cruise line was adamant about their recycling, their treatment of any kind of water that was discharged, incineration of some waste, and their respect for the ocean and the seven seas.
But they were in the Caribbean where pleasure vessels of all kinds roamed about from a multitude of islands and countries.
Someone had tossed something broken overboard and Broderick McClintock had found it. He was kicking away,using his float, trying to veer to the starboard and aft of the ship as fast as he could.
As Chloe and Wes swam hard to catch up with the closest of the lifeboats, the lifeguard aboard it dove in after the man.
Broderick slammed him in the head with his makeshift wooden float.
Wes swore softly, hurrying forward with swift, fluid strokes to reach the injured man, to bring him to the second crew member in the lifeboat, there to retrieve his coworker and friend.
As they worked, Chloe moved on ahead.
Forewarned.
She didn’t swim straight at the man. She dove deep and came up beneath his feet, grabbing his ankles and dragging him downward.
As she had hoped, he was unprepared, and he came down into the water, expelling a savage cough.
But he had fury in his eyes as he reached for her.
She kicked back, leaving him desperate for breath and flailing at the water.
And as he shot up to grab a mouthful of air, Wes shot past her, dragging him down again.
He wouldn’t drown the man, Chloe knew.
He was just making him as weak and desperate as he could before grappling with the man in the water.
Wes let him up; Broderick inhaled on a shaking, ragged gasp.
He grabbed for his lost bit of wooden float; Wes threw it far away from him and stared at him.
The man lunged at Wes through the water.
It was then that Chloe saw that he was still bearing the knife he’d threated to stick into Edward Thompson’s rib cage.
“Knife!” Chloe screamed, lunging forward herself, kicking as hard as she could and almost managing to leap from the water.
To her relief, she did get herself high enough to knock his arm.
And Wes was able to grab the man by the elbow, twist it hard and force him to drop the knife.
It went down...
Down to the far depths below.
“Let me go, you bastard!” Broderick raged.
There was, of course, no way in hell that Wes was letting him go. As the man continued to struggle, Wes told him, “You know, I really was a lifeguard, but keep it up and you’re going to die!”
But he wasn’t going to die.
Another of the lifeboats had reached them and two men were pulling Broderick out of the water, one of them prepared with cuffs and in no mood to take anything from the man. As Broderick tried to fight him and unbalance the lifeboat, the officer got the cuffs on him and gave him a hard shove that sent him flying to a back seat on his rear.
Another man on the boat had a chain that he attached to Broderick and the rail on the lifeboat as the first turned to help Chloe out of the water and then Wes.
“Thanks!” he said simply. He had a radio on the boat; he used it to tell the captain that they had their man and were headed back.
