Page 42 of Corrupted Lies

“One sec,” he told Alannah when she held the phone out to him and crouched down.

That’s when he saw it.

Tucked away out of sight unless you were looking directly for it. The only reason he could see it now was because it was night and dark out, meaning the tiny little light was just visible.

The little light was attached to a bomb that was promptly ticking down the seconds until their demise. Whatever the saboteur had done to mess with the yacht’s computer system was obviously set to have a delayed response so they would be out alone in the middle of the ocean with no way to stop whatever was going to happen.

Sensing his fear, Alannah leaned over to see what he was looking at. “What's wrong? Did you find something. Yeah, I think he found something,” she said into the phone.

Another violent shudder sent him crashing sideways.

Alannah screamed as she was also thrown about.

“Jake, the phone!” she yelled as she must have lost her grip on it.

That was the least of their concerns.

“Forget the phone.” Pushing back onto his feet, he reached over and grabbed her hand. She still had the life jackets in her arms, and he took one and quickly put it on her. Then he took the other and slipped it on.

“You're scaring me, grumpy.”

“We have to go,” he told her. As soon as they were both in the life jackets, he towed her down to the far end of the boat.

“Go? We can't go. We’re in the middle of the ocean.” Alannah pulled back against his hold on her, but he tightened his grip.

“There’s a bomb, Alannah. The entire computer system is down, and we have about sixty seconds to get as far away from this yacht as we can if we don’t want to die.”

“A b-bomb?”

“If you hadn't woken up and come out here when you did, we wouldn't have known.”

The shuddering would have woken them both, but the fact that she was already up and about had saved them the seconds they needed. Those sixty seconds would otherwise have been him going into her room to check on her.

It gave them a chance, but that was all.

No guarantee.

“Jump, Alannah,” he ordered.

When she gave a shaky nod, her eyes full of fear but also trust, together they leaped off the boat and into the freezing water.

October 18th

2:47 A.M.

No sooner was she encased in freezing water than the deafening sound of an explosion rocked through the otherwise quiet night.

Even though Jake had been holding her hand when they jumped off the boat—luckily since she wasn't sure she would have had the guts to do it alone—when the boat blew up, it tore her out of his grasp.

Alannah had been out on the ocean in rough seas before, knew how dangerous the water could be, how deadly, and she respected it as such.

But this was nothing like anything she’d experienced.

It was like in the Disney movie Moana, where the water was alive and it picked up things and people and moved them, putting them where it wanted them. That was exactly what this felt like. The water grabbed hold of her and threw her about, tossing her around like she was nothing.

With the dark of night and the ocean all around her, it was hard to figure out which way was up.

The water wasn't the only danger as she kicked and used her arms to try to find a way out and back to the surface, burning bits of debris from the boat were everywhere. They plowed through the water, and something slammed into her, knocking her about more and causing her to become even more disoriented.

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