Page 49 of Guarded By the SEAL
He acted as if she hadn’t spoken. “I couldn’t get your mother sober. I tried so hard. My parents wouldn’t let me marry a drug addict, no matter if she was pregnant with my child.”
“Stop it!”
“Get in the boat, Teslyn. I can prove to you that I’m your father. I have photos, documents. But I’m not going to show you here. You have to understand that. Please.”
Photos? Were there pictures of Marilyn and Will, maybe herself as a baby, tucked cozily in between? Or was he trying to trick her, play on her emotions to make her do something she would regret? She’d never known her father, had assumed Marilyn didn’t know herself. But what if she had? What if she’d always known?
She shook her head firmly. “I’m not going anywhere with you. You killed her, or you had her killed. She was blackmailing you and you couldn’t stand it anymore. You used to be the sheriff in town. You had the police in your pocket. She told me so herself.”
“I was happy to give her money, everything I had. She was the mother of my girls. You think that didn’t matter to me? You think I didn’t care about you? Get in the boat, Teslyn, and I’ll show you the truth. I’ll show you everything you ever wanted to know.”
“Admit it. Admit you killed my mother.”
He whipped off his sunglasses and glared at her. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“You showed up at her trailer that night and you set the place on fire. You killed her, and you tried to kill Ivy, too.”
“I did no such thing.” He placed himself between her and the dock back to the shore. The next thing she knew, he had a gun in his hand. “Now get in the boat, Teslyn.”
Her eyes went wide. “Sunshine,” she said, her voice coming out as a squeak.
“Get in that boat!”
She stepped over the side. “Sunshine!”
He kicked her in the back, and she went tumbling into the boat. Fear surrounded her like electrified wire.Why the hellhad she told him she couldn’t swim?
“Your friends can’t help you now,” he said, getting in and moving to the driver’s seat. He kept the weapon trained on her as he turned the ignition, the engine roaring to life.
Teslyn squinted against the sun. Did Wyatt and the men hear her? Were they on their way to help her? Then she saw them, three figures running down the dock as Pritchard backed out of the slip.
“Wyatt!” she yelled, but her voice was lost in the roar of the motor as they took off down the river, toward the open ocean.
CHAPTER24
Logan wore a headset, a laptop computer on his thighs. “Something’s wrong with the wireless signal. It just cut out.”
The men stood in the marina parking lot. Wyatt held a pair of binoculars to his eyes, his Glock at his side, and his heart in his throat. Teslyn was stepping toward the side of the boat. “Don’t do it. Don’t do it, Teslyn.” Pritchard’s back was to Wyatt. “Don’t get in the goddamn boat!” Wyatt cursed.
Pritchard kicked her back, sending her headfirst into the boat. “God fucking damn it!” Wyatt hollered to the others. “She’s in the fucking boat!” He took off at a sprint, his feet pounding the gravel lot beneath him as he raced to intercept the boat before it could get into open water. Jax and Logan were on his six, but they could have been a goddamn army and it wouldn’t have made a damn bit of difference.
The boat took off at a high rate of speed. The other men came to a stop behind him. “What the hell was she thinking?” barked Jax.
“She doesn’t know how to swim,” said Wyatt. “She doesn’t fucking know how to swim!”
Jax turned to Logan. “Get the Coast Guard on the horn, stat. Get them after that boat.”
Wyatt couldn’t wait that long. He raced back down the dock to a couple who were readying a fifty-foot yacht for a ride. A boat like that was capable of catching Pritchard. “I need your boat. This is an emergency.” The couple looked at each other. “A woman was just taken against her will. I need to go after them.”
“What do we do?” the woman asked the man.
“No way,” said the man, his face incredulous as he turned to the woman. “They’re going to steal it.”
Wyatt turned to the woman. “I’m a former Navy SEAL. There’s a woman in danger and we need your boat to help her.”
Logan jogged back to them. “The Coast Guard’s on their way.”
The woman looked from Logan to Wyatt to the man in the boat. “Just let them have it. We have insurance if they’re thieves, but what if they’re telling the truth, Jim?”
