Page 136 of Kai
Cece was right. Our lives depended on what I did in the next few minutes. “We need to move, but before we do—”
I cut out the piece of foam that concealed the tracker. Opening the spare anchor hatch, I pulled out a spare anchor and rigged the chunk that contained the tracker to it. I stepped to the edge of the deck. Swinging the anchor back and forth, leveraging it to fly as far away fromSerenityas I could, I tossed the anchor overboard.
Plunk.
The anchor sank into the water, taking the tracker with it. Unless retrieved, it would remain stationary at the bottom of the cove.
“Come and get it, assholes,” I muttered into the night.
The throw hurt as if Levine had stabbed me all over again. I’d probably ripped my stitches. As I moved, I grabbed a rashguard from where I’d left it to dry on the gunwales and put it on, flinching as I fitted my left arm into the sleeve.
No pain, no gain.
I didn’t have the luxury of taking it easy tonight. Detaching myself from the throbbing ache, I focused on the mission. I pushed aside the sliders and stalked into the cabin.
“Give me a gun,” Levine begged, wiggling in his restraints. “I can help.”
“Not a chance.” Marching across the cabin, I sideswept him with a glare. “I don’t trust you.”
“But I know how they think—”
“So do I,” I assured him.
“I can be useful,” the merc pleaded. “I want to protect Cersi.”
“You wanna protect her?” I scoffed, monitoring the screens and calculating distances and time. “Then you shouldn’t have taken the job, motherfucker. Or kept looking for her.”
“I don’t need your so-called protection,” Cece snapped.
“You heard her.” I paused at the forward cockpit and addressed her. “Eyes on him. He’s thinking this is his best opportunity to escape. If he attempts anything, shoot him.”
“Gladly.” The smirk she flung in Levine’s direction held a promise of death.
I opened the door to the bow, stepped to the mast, and tugged off the sails’ covers. Hooking the door ajar to eval the sounds of a quiet night, I braced at my steering station, turned off my defensive explosives, and after flipping on the switches, engaged the engines.Serenitypurred beneath my feet, quiet like a panther waking up from a nap and eager to pounce.
“Come on, baby,” I murmured to the boat. “We’ve got work to do.”
The shield held, but I didn’t wanna risk giving any visual cues to our foes, so I didn’t turn on my lights. I’d have to keep aneye out for friendlies. In the darkness, other watercraft—big and small—wouldn’t see us.
Spotlights were out of the question as well. They would be easy marks for aerial surveillance drones and anyone approaching from the sea. If we were gonna make it, we had to trick our foes into thinking we remained at anchor at the cove. In addition, spotlights would kill my night vision. I would have to rely on my chart annotations, memory, and instincts to make it out of the reef in one piece.
I cut off the cabin’s interior lights and turned on the red spectrum. On my console, my navigational chart came on, showing the reef standing between me and open water. I programmed my destination coordinates and set a course for rendezvous. The radar tracked the enemy boats. The island’s surveillance cameras captured the motion of the approaching RHBs. They were moving fast.
This was gonna be a tight one.
I glimpsed Cece, standing only a few feet away, dividing her attention between Levine and me, wearing her brave face.
“Won’t we lose stealth with the engines on?” she asked.
“It’s possible.” I pushed on the throttle, and turning the wheel, steered the boat around. “After we get out of the reef, we might be able to protect ourselves from thermal detection if we get underway on hoisted sails. We’ll see. Life jacket on,” I ordered as I headed for the narrow entrance to the reef.
She paled a little, but she grabbed a jacket from the hook in the corner and put it on. She kept an eye on Levine while she clicked on the straps, then came to stand beside me by the wheel, angling her body so she could watch both the merc and me.
“What about me?” the merc demanded. “I want a life jacket, too.”
“We either make it or you go down with the boat,Jack.” I approached the narrow channel. “Now, shut the fuck up and letme focus.”
The tension in the cabin hummed in my ears. I glidedSerenitysilently over the cove’s dark waters. In our wake, a gray cover of clouds clung to the dark outline of the peaks behind us. I was under no illusion that the weather was gonna cooperate with us. I’d checked the advisories. The rain earlier today had been part of a low-pressure system carried by the prevailing northeast trade winds. High winds and rough waters lay ahead.
