“I think there’s a good reason for that, Mel. Would ya just cover up for my tender sensibilities?”
“Here hun,” he heard Clarice’s voice say to him. “Here’s a robe. He’ll learn eventually.”
Behind him, he could hear Mel wrapping the robe around himself and plopping back into the captain’s chair.
“All right, it’s safe ya lily livered fraidy cat.”
Troy peeked with one eye and was happy to find that Mel had indeed covered himself up.
“Thank you,” he said.
Mel just grunted.
“And thanks for comin’ to get me,” he added.
“Lucky for you we heard that distress call. If it weren’t for that, you’d be a hangin’ out with Davy Jones.”
“That’s true.”
“What in the gods’ names brought ya out here in this squall anyway?”
“I’m tryin’ to find two women.”
“Now yer talkin’, brother.”
“No.” He shook his head. “It’s not like that. This is serious, Mel. My friend, Meira, and her daughter, Riley, have been kidnapped. Jack’s got them, and his son…who apparently is the guy who’s been choppin’ the heads off of people around here.”
“What the…Jack? As in Jamaica Jack?”
“That’s the one. And his son. I think they’re headed out to his favorite sharkin’ grounds to…well, to get rid of ‘em.”
“Well, I’ll be a monkey’s uncle. I always hated that bastard. Braggin’ ‘bout how great he is at sea. He’s just a hack, that guy. Did I ever tell ya ‘bout the time he—”
“Mel, please,” Troy interrupted. “You can tell me all about it once we get out there and…hopefully, stop them from feeding these two women to the sharks.”
Mel raised one eyebrow. “I suppose we can grab my boat on the way back in, yeah?”
Troy nodded his head and took a deep breath. Clarice laid a hand on Mel’s shoulder.
“Don’t worry, hun. We’ll get you a new boat,” she said softly to the robed seaman.
For the first time, Troy realized she’d been naked the whole time standing there. He looked away quickly. He heard a smile creep into her voice.
“It’s okay, Troy. I’ve got another robe,” she said. “Now, let’s go get these two girls. They must be something special to have caught your heart.”
Troy swallowed and realized how true that was. He could only hope it wasn’t too late. He put his hand in his pocket to check his phone and realized it wasn’t there. It was probably at the bottom of the ocean with his boat. He wondered if Meira had gotten any more messages through. Probably not. He’d been too late to save Harry Nedman back in Afghanistan and it was looking like the same thing was going to happen here.
“Which way, boy?” Mel snapped him out of his thoughts.
Troy pointed out the window to the northeast, out into the dark ocean.
“That way.”
Riley saw Barry’s red hair silhouetted against the gray light coming from outside the hatch. She hunched back away from the opening and tried to conceal the two-foot piece of jagged pipe she’d torn from the floor with her mother’s help and the fact that the cool water had helped her slip out of the chains holding her to the wall. Her heart pounded in her chest as the boy’s figure grew larger coming toward her.
“Get your ass up here,” he said through a grin that was bordering on maniacal.
“Screw you!” she yelled trying as hard as she could to sound brave.
She glanced back at Meira and her mother nodded.
“She’s not coming up,” Meira said. “I’m coming up. You can do whatever you want to me, but you will not hurt my child.”
“Beeyotch,” Barry laughed. “I’ll do whatever the hell I want. You’re both gonna get a change of scenery today.”
Riley squeezed the pipe tighter and leaned forward. Her mother grabbed her arm and mouthed the words not yet to her. Riley’s grip relaxed a little and she took one step toward the hatch.
“If I come up and let you…do whatever it is you want to do to me…will you let my mom go?”
“Riley, no!”
Barry considered this for a second. He licked his lips and inhaled slowly.
“Anything?”
Riley shuddered. She was old enough to know what this likely meant, but still young enough to be completely and utterly terrified at the unknown debauchery Barry might actually want to do. She knew him for what he was now—a murderer. She suspected he was repressed sexually and was taking it out on whatever girls were unlucky enough to cross his path.
“Yes,” she said clearing the anxiety from her throat. “But you have to promise you’ll let her go.”
“Oh, I’ll let her go all right. Now get yer ass up here.”
Riley shot one glance back at her mom. She had tears in her eyes, but she clenched her jaw and turned back to Barry.
“Back up and let me climb out.”
Barry moved a couple of steps backward and held out his hand with a mock flourish the way a prince might do to invite a princess into his carriage. What an asshole, Riley thought. As she took the first steps up out of the dark hold, she pretended to slip to give her eyes a few extra seconds to adjust to the light.
“God your such an idiot,” Barry said as he lunged down at her.
He grabbed a handful of her hair and jerked her upward. She skinned her knee on the last step and saw blood begin to ooze from it. Swallowing the yelp that wanted to come from her throat, she tried desperately to calm her breathing and focus on where she was going to hit him.
His head. The gross matted orange hair was going to be her target. She felt her nostrils flair as she found her balance on the deck. A quick glance around told her they were far out to sea under gray, rumbling, storm clouds. That part was depressing, but she was momentarily excited to see that no one else was around…just her and Barry. No sign of the guy he’d called his dad.
“Yup,” he said, apparently seeing her scan the deck. “It’s just you and me, sweet tits. Now, let’s get you out of those wet clothes.”
He reached out and grabbed the neck of her shirt. Riley heard it tear in his grip and suddenly the scene went into slow motion. Her vision narrowed and all she could see was his freckled face grinning at her under his mop of red hair. She reached up and pushed him backward and her shirt tore down the front and fell off, but she wasn’t embarrassed to be standing topless in front of him. She wasn’t a thirteen-year-old girl anymore, she was a warrior princess and he was an orc…and her mission was to remove this orc’s head.
When her shirt fell free, he fell backward from the sudden release of tension. As he fell, she swung the pipe up and grabbed it with both hands like a sword. With speed she didn’t know she had, she swung it hard at her target—that ugly hair.
The jagged end of the pipe sang through the air toward him, but his fall was his good fortune. He fell down onto the deck and the pipe narrowly missed his head. His eyes went wide with surprise, but then settled back into the smiling madness that she had seen before. He fell back to his elbows, but quickly scooted backward on his butt away from her.
She took a step toward him, but he backed into a storage box against the boat’s cabin. He reached inside and to her horror he produced an ugly, menacing looking sword. She looked down at her pipe and realized she had lost. She’d make a mistake and now she was going to pay for it.
He stood up slowly and propped one hand on the tall hilt of the Dadao sword, the dirty blade pointing toward the sky. With his other hand, he jerked his own shirt off and tossed it to the side.
“So you want to challenge Tyron the Tyrannical, do you?”
His voice sounded strange, as if it wasn’t his. Riley realized he had gone full game mode crazy. He was his Bladehammer game character—the massive orc who had never been beaten. She took a deep breath. Two can play at this game, she thought. She had the training of a blade master in the game and she knew the moves by heart. At least I’ll do enough
damage to keep him from hurting Mom.
She held her hand out, palm up, and flicked her fingers toward her.
“Come get some,” she said softly.
His grin faltered for a second, but he didn’t waste any time gathering his composure. He jerked the blade off the ground and swung it with impossible speed toward her. She dove backward and felt the air of his sword whoosh past her chin. That was close, she thought and rolled to her feet.
“No one fights Tyron the Tyrannical and lives to tell about it, bitch!”
He lunged at her again, but this time she was farther away. She leaned back slightly, jumped to his left, and brought her pipe up in an arc over his exposed shoulder. He was insanely quick and for a second, she thought she might not be able to hit him. But his face went pale. He must have realized he’d left his neck was vulnerable. He allowed his body to drop to the deck, but he wasn’t fast enough to completely dodge the ragged end of the pipe.
Riley saw it dig into the pale, freckled flesh of his neck, and blood exploded out of his skin in a fountain high above them. It rained down, sticky and hot on her head. He dropped his sword and clutched at his throat to try and stop the bleeding. He opened his mouth to try to say something, but only a strange gurgle came out.
Riley stared at the gore and watched with something close to pity as he scrambled away from her on his back. She raised the pipe to hit him again. She swung down hard, but he was still fighting. He rolled away and lurched to his feet, but she wasn’t about to let up. This was going to end right now.
She swung the pipe at him again and he let go of his throat to catch it. Blood poured from the gaping wound in his throat and pulsed every few seconds. I’ve hit his jugular, Riley thought. If I can just stay alive for another minute, he’ll bleed out. He’s a dead man walking.
And suddenly, the pipe was wrenched from her hands. He had it now and was tossing it aside, over into the water. She was defenseless. But he was still dying. She turned around and ran. But he was still incredibly fast. His leg flew out and tripped her. She crashed hard onto the deck and felt pain flair up into her chest. He’d knocked the wind out of her. She rolled over to see him standing over her. He had his blade back and had it held high over his head. His face was contorted in rage as blood flung all over her from his neck.
All she could do was wait for him to bring down his sword and kill her.
21
Crash Into Me
Visibility was maybe twenty to thirty feet at best through the drizzling rain that had started pelting down on Mel’s tugboat. Troy stood staring out the window with a pair of ancient binoculars perched on his face. Clarice hung onto the old sea captain’s shoulder, squinting into the gray rolling waves ahead.
“This ain’t gonna work,” Troy muttered.
“Don’t give up so fast, boy,” Mel said. “We’ll find ‘em if the sea ain’t ate ‘em yet.”
Troy turned to look at him and saw the old man was far from sure about that fact. Clarice stood next to him, still naked, but he’d become desensitized to seeing her bare and quite shapely figure. He thought maybe there was something to the whole nudism thing and maybe he’d try it out one day. But for now, he turned back to the blank canvas of windshield.
“You sure we’re in the right place?” he asked as he peered through the binoculars again.
Mel tapped a digital GPS unit on the dashboard. “Right where you told me to go.”
Troy inhaled deeply. “Maybe I was wrong. Maybe Jack wasn’t taking them out here. I mean, the ocean is an infinitely massive haystack to hide his needle in. Hell, it’s probably too late any—”
“There!” Clarice shouted, interrupting him.
“Huh?”
He looked back at her. She was jumping up and down and pointing to their port side—north of the line Mel’s boat was cutting in the water. Troy followed her gaze and was met by a similarly gray and dismal view of what at first looked like nothing. He lifted his binoculars and scanned the waves. He was just about to put them down and tell her she was crazy and had seen some sort of ocean mirage when he saw it.
In the distance—he saw the shape. In the distance, a sharp bow began to emerge from the spray. Troy knew it was them. Mel started turning toward it and throttled up.
“Faster,” Troy yelped.
“I’m givin’ her all she’s got!”
Troy flung the field glasses down and hobbled out toward the deck. Clarice grabbed the edge of his shirt.
“Hey!” she protested. “Where do you think you’re going? You just going to jump in and swim over?”
Troy looked back at her and tried to hide the pain on his face, but he knew she saw it. Her gaze softened.
“It’s going to be okay.” She gripped his shoulder. “They’re going to be fine. But now is not the time to be impetuous.”
He took a deep breath and the tension in his body eased a little. He nodded.
“We need a plan,” she started. “It’s not likely that they know we’re coming.”
“Right,” Troy said. “So, sneak attack? Creep up on ‘em and—”
“That shit ain’t gonna work,” Mel said, cutting him off. “They’ll hear us coming like a herd of wild elephants wearin’ jingle bells.”
Troy almost laughed at the bizarre metaphor the old man had apparently created on the spot. Almost.
“Okay, then.” He shrugged his shoulders. “What do we do?”
Mel’s face split into a grin that seemed to grow and grow across his face. Troy noticed that the old guy was missing more teeth than he still had. I had to ask, Troy thought.
“Same thing I did to them guerilla fighters down in Panama. See we was comin’ through the canal and they jumped in front of us in their damn old-school German U-boats. Tough little boats, to be sure, but they weren’t no match for the hull o’ my icebreaker. I say we ram the bastards before they get a chance to get up to speed.”
Troy opened his mouth to respond, but then closed it. It wasn’t a bad plan at all. Even if they heard them coming, they’d be going too fast for them to do anything about it.
“But Meira and Riley. If they’re still alive…”
“I’m just gonna clip the back of the boat. Sheer off their motor and the engine. They’ll be dead in the water and we’ll just mop up the mess.”
Troy looked back through the windshield. He was surprised to see that Jamaica Jack’s boat was startlingly close.
“Clarice,” he said over his shoulder. “Why don’t you hunker down in the cabin. I reckon there’s gonna be a bit of a jerk when we hit this thing.”
“But—”
“Clarice,” Mel said. “It’s for the best. Let me and the boy do the dirty business.”
For a second, Troy thought she might resist, but she finally sniffed and walked out. Troy watched her go and was hard pressed to decide which side of her body was her best side. All of them looked pretty dang—.
“Might want to hang on ta somethin’!” Mel blurted out and rammed the throttle all the way forward.
The tug lurched and jerked forward at a speed that surprised Troy. He stumbled backward and fell into the chair next to Mel, knocking the old man off his seat. His hand grabbed wildly at the dashboard and his fingers caught hold of the key and managed to turn it in the ignition. They both tumbled to the floor. Troy pulled himself up to see that they were still moving along toward Jack’s boat, but they were slowing. The engine had sputtered and quit and Mel’s tug was losing speed fast.
“Dangit,” Troy muttered.
He was no physics expert, but he was guessing they weren’t going to do much damage to the boat. And then Troy saw him. Barry was standing on the deck holding a sword over his head. He was covered in blood and looked like…well, like a madman. Without thinking, Troy jerked the cockpit door open and started running toward the bow of the tugboat.
“Hey!” Mel yelled behind him, but Troy didn’t stop to explain.
Barry screamed in such a way that Riley was sure she’d cut
his vocal chords with her pipe. It was a ragged, gurgling sound and she could see the gore and tendons hanging down on his neck. Blood pulsed from the wound and she was sure he would pass out soon…but not before he brought his blade down and killed her. Then she saw the shape behind him.
Oh, God, she thought, his dad is here to join in the fun. But as the figure resolved, she was shocked to see Meira standing just behind Barry. She realized that their entire struggle had only taken a few seconds and her mom had climbed the ladder right behind her. She was clutching her arm to her side and Riley saw the blood and what must be the bone sticking out. She had broken her arm much worse than she had let on. A sob escaped Riley’s throat as she saw Barry tense and start the blade swinging down toward her. With all the effort she could muster, she rolled hard to the side. His sword slammed into the deck an inch from her head. Barry tugged on it, but it was stuck. He’d driven it three inches into the wood. Without thinking, she reached out and grabbed hold of the handle. Heaving her feet up, she thrust them into his chest and kicked as hard as she could, using the sword for leverage. He was shocked at her sudden kick and flew backward, but he had the presence of mind to hang on to his Dadao. The sword jerked free and slid through her grasp, it’s blade slicing both of her palms.
She cried out as she watched him fall. His momentum carried him stumbling across the deck toward Meira, who had grabbed the jagged pipe and was holding it like a spear out in front of her. Riley watched in horror as he twisted to catch himself, saw Meira there and raised his own blade. They impaled each other, her pipe in his stomach and his sword in hers.
Riley screamed as she saw both of their eyes widen at the sudden simultaneous lancing. Unbelievably, Barry laughed—cruel, wretched, hoarse sound. Riley thought it sounded like a demon from the Bladehammer game laughing when it had caught its prey.
“No mortal can kill Tyron the Tyrannical,” he cried, tilting his head back.
The Complete Troy Bodean Tropical Thriller Collection Page 107