Page 4 of Rescuing Nathaniel

Until a dock worker spotted something that made him uncomfortable.

Now, Nathaniel was there, supposed to do no more than tag the boat and disappear, but curiosity had him adjusting his position toward the smaller boat. Wondering perhaps if it had been delivering supplies or possibly even a new victim. As he approached, he saw the boat was, in fact, a life raft.

Just like the ones hanging off the sides of the former cruise ship.

With curiosity definitely piqued, he knew there was no way he wasn't going to check out the boat first. It wasn't really defying the orders he had been given, it was more like taking a small detour along the way.

After all, someone in that boat could have intel that could be used to bring the trafficking ring down.

Anyway, he’d always been someone who had bent and even occasionally broken the rules. Not that there had been a whole lot of rules in his family growing up. Mostly just don’t provoke his father when he was drunk. Which was more often than not. And something that was almost impossible to achieve since he and his eleven siblings provoked the man simply by existing and there was nothing they could do about that.

Although three of his siblings had managed it. One by suicide, and another two with drug overdoses when they tried to find a way to numb the pain of their existence.

Now wasn't the time to worry about his past and the many emotional and physical scars it had left him with. He was there to do a job. A job he was actually good at, a job that had given him the found family he craved. A job that included the small lifeboat because there was every chance that answers were inside it.

Gliding through the water with the practiced ease of someone who had lived most of their life in the water, he quickly ate up the distance between him and the raft. Living near the beach in Miami meant Nathaniel had often escaped his abusive home life and traded it for the peacefulness that came with being surrounded by nothing but ocean. Joining the SEALs had been a no-brainer when he decided the only way out of the life his parents had set him up for was the military. Water was where he felt comfortable, and he was the best swimmer in his team, an achievement he was proud of because every one of those guys was basically part fish, they were that good in the water.

As he approached the small boat, he listened carefully for the sound of voices or movement. For signs of life.

But he couldn’t detect a single one.

Had the boat just fallen free?

It was unlikely but not impossible. Lifeboats were designed to stay right where you put them until you needed them, but there was always the chance that something had malfunctioned.

They were really too far from land for someone to use this raft to get to the ship. If someone was making a supply trip or one of the higher-ups was coming to check on their operation, they wouldn't travel this way. The helicopter that was visible on the ship attested to that fact.

So chances were this was nothing more than a dead end. But he was almost to the raft now so he may as well take a quick look at it and confirm it was empty before he continued on to plant the tracker.

Slowing his strokes so he didn't attract any attention should the raft be occupied, he reached the side and lifted himself up enough to look over it.

When he saw what was inside, his eyes almost bugged out of his head.

The raft wasn't empty, but it was no trafficker inside.

Lying in the bottom of the boat was a woman. A long tangle of blonde locks hung halfway down her back. She was dressed in a white hospital gown, and even in the dark he could see the dark patch on the front of it that could only be one thing.

Blood.

This woman was one of the victims of the trafficking ring. How the hell had she managed to get herself onto a life raft?

It should have been impossible to escape, in fact, Nathaniel would have sworn that it was. And yet here the woman was. There was no doubt that she was a victim, the hospital gown and blood confirmed it, unless she had volunteered to die at the hands of an organ ring that would take her apart piece by piece until there was nothing left and no sane person would do that.

Hoisting himself into the raft, he quickly leaned in and pressed his fingertips to the woman’s neck. She might have been alive when she managed to achieve the impossible and escape, but right now, she looked dead.

Once again, the woman proved him wrong. The slightest flutter against his fingers told him that she still had a pulse, was still breathing, her heart still beating. Still alive. For now.

But for how much longer?

Torn between doing what he’d been sent to do and tending to the unconscious woman, Nathaniel hesitated, still on his knees beside her. He should leave, plant the tracker, radio in what he’d found, and await orders on what to do with the woman.

The problem was, by the time he did that, the woman could be dead.

Besides, he had no other oxygen tank, and she was in no condition to swim, plus she was bleeding, so taking her back the way he’d come would be next to impossible. That would mean he would have to stay in the boat with her, and this way they were much more visible.

If he was caught, the entire mission would be a failure, and the ring would slip away under the radar again. This time taking more precautions to make sure no one was onto them.

Was it worth putting this one woman’s life above the lives of thousands of innocent people?

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