Page 94 of The SEAL's Duchess
“That’s more like it.” Jack’s grin was fierce, teeth bright against blood and grime.
Ivy straightened, wiping blood from her hands onto her ruined coat.
Not invisible anymore.
She started for the door. “Let’s give them a light show they can’t ignore.”
35
“Emergency flares.”Jack’s voice was hoarse. She pointed diagonally across the deck. “Port side, near the crane—base of the helipad. We’ll have to go around.”
Ivy exhaled through her nose. Other side of the rig? Might as well have been a mile.
She met Jack’s gaze. “Can you make it?”
Jack pushed off the wall, one arm clamped around her ribs. “Can I breathe? No. Can I sit here and freeze to death? Also, no. Let’s go.”
They trudged back out into the storm. The wind punched through Ivy, stealing the air from her lungs. Sleet came sideways—needles of ice finding every gap in her soaked clothes as the deck heaved beneath her boots. And all around them—the sustained death rattle of a structure tearing itself apart.
She locked an arm around Jack’s waist. Jack’s breathing was labored, a wheeze dragged through pain.
“Talk to me,” Ivy shouted over the wind.
“Straight on. Passageway through, up ahead.” Jack’s words merged, her body sagging under the relentless onslaught. Her head drooped.
“Think he was BlackRock?” Ivy yelled.
Jack jerked. “Who?”
“The man who attacked us.”
Ivy’s legs threatened to buckle, and pain ground through her arms. Salty sleet froze her lashes. She blinked hard, fixing on the dark shape of the crane ahead.
“Yeah.” Jack’s laugh was breathless, edged with hysteria. She waved one hand vaguely, encompassing the dying rig. “Wasted his time, didn’t he? Hardly investable now.”
Ivy swallowed a wild laugh of her own. “No kidding.”
The deck bucked and Ivy slipped, catching hold of a safety rail as Jack’s weight nearly pulled them both down. Jack cried out, the sound small and pained.
“Jack?”
“I’m okay.” Her mouth was a determined slash in the yellow light. “Keep going.”
They stumbled down the narrow walkway, following the little red helicopter signs. When they rounded an equipment stack, the helipad rose above them—and at its base, the red emergency locker.
Safety gear. Flares. Life jackets.Hope.
Ivy stopped dead.
No.
The deck had ripped apart where the two modules joined. Not a crack—a jagged gap, three feet wide. Emergency lights from the deck below turned the edges the color of old bone. Water surged and crashed somewhere down there, the sound battling with the wind.
They couldn’t go around. The break ran from the container wall to the safety rail—only one way left.
Across.
“Fuck,” Jack breathed, clinging to her. “I can’t jump that. Not with these ribs.”
