Page 115 of Triple Threat

You’ll get it back when he returns to you,I swore to myself. Refusing to give up hope.

I got onto the boat, the stern readingRum Runnerin gilded script and dropped the heavy gun case, panting.

“Goddamnit,” Kyle grated, falling into the boat behind me.

“Where’s Conan!” I demanded as he dragged the ammunition for the launcher thing into the boat behind him.

“He’s not coming,” he grated. “And if we don’t go, we aren’t going to make it either.”

I felt my hand go to my mouth as I choked back vomit.

“This is insane, Kyle!” I hated the edge of hysteria in my tone.

Hold it together, girl. Hold it together or lose them both,I thought at myself savagely.

“Drive!” he said. “Just like driving a car!” He was already into the cases and assembling things, loading the goddamn rocket launcher and getting ready to shoulder it.

“Not just like driving a car!” I barked, but we’d taken the boat out just the other day…yesterday? God no,just hours ago!… to go into Indigo City by water for the crab feed, and Roan had let me take the controls. Had shown me how to drive.

He wanted you to know… he knew without knowing. Oh, God…

I turned the key, the boat’s powerful engines chugged to life. I nudged the throttle forward, and I looked back in time to catch Kyle severing the mooring line with a sharp hatchet.

“Go!” he screamed.

I punched the throttle. The water boiled turbulent behind us and the boat zipped away from the dock, crashing through the thin boathouse doors. We shot out into the bay faster than it seemed like a boat was capable of going.

“Kyle!” I screamed when I realized there was a blockade of at least three boats ahead of us, a chopper hovering over them.

“Just go! Straight ahead!” he screamed over the whipping wind, the boat smacking over the water’s surface.

I swear I heard him grunt, and he let the first rocket fly. The rocket made aFWOOMPnoise and looked like it was about to belly flop in the water and then vanished in a scream of fire and smoke. The thing made like a streak for the helicopter and hit it. The sound was awful and then there was fire and screaming metal everywhere. The burning wreckage fell and crashed into the front of the largest boat.

“Two birds, one stone motherfuckers!” he screamed in triumph.

“Yes!” I cried.

“Drive!” he shouted.

Oh, fuck!I realized I’d taken my attention off of the act of driving the boat, and I whipped the wheel to the right, veering around the rapidly approaching mess to a burst of gunfire from the boat that was to our right, I ducked and looked behind me. Kyle was on his knees, loading the next shot.

“Stay down!” he screamed, and I did, peeking to make sure that I wasn’t going to hit anything.

FWOOMP!

The second rocket went off and the boat in front of us was blasted sky high.

“Sadie!”

I screamed and over corrected. If we were a car, we would have spun out and I guess that’s what we did. Sort of, doing a complete three-hundred-and-sixty-degree turn on the water. Kyle fell sideways off balance, but thankfully I didn’t bounce him overboard.

“Shit!” he screamed, and I looked over. The last boat was almost on us, and I didn’t think. I kept the throttle up, I steered, and I pulled the stupid gun Roan had given me out of the back of my waistband. I pointed it and just started shooting.

Kyle looked up at me from where he was struggling to get the last rocket in place and I looked back. Something passed between us, time slowing, and he nodded and I corrected course. He popped up over the side of our boat, aimed andFWOOMP!

The world erupted in chaos on the water, the heat from the blast tickling my cheek, close – way close – but not close enough to burn us, thank God.

I screamed as Kyle’s weight crashed into the back of me, and his hand closed over mine on the throttle lever, keeping it pushed forward.

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