by Linda Ladd
Once he got closer, the boat’s name became legible, painted across the stern escutcheon in big black letters: Orion’s Trident. Cancun, Mexico. He motored to the port side of the vessel where she’d gone overboard. He cut the engines. He grabbed the laser spotlight and swept it back and forth across the water’s surface. The killer’s boat was now just a speck of light, heading away as fast as he could make it go. He wasn’t coming back. Not now, in any case. It took Novak several more minutes to find the girl—way too long, he feared, but then a big wave crested over her, and he caught sight of her head bobbing in the water. Looked like she might still be alive. Yes, weak as hell, but now she was flailing her arms, trying to keep her face above water. Maybe twenty yards out from him. He focused the spotlight on her. Blood was all over her face. The head injuries were bad—he could tell that from where he stood. She wasn’t going to last much longer. He brought the Sweet Sarah up as close to her as he safely could, cut the engines, and then tossed out a roped life buoy. She just bobbed up and down and seemed oblivious to it.
“Pull it down over your head!” he shouted to her, his voice reverberating out over the water. He was pretty sure he was going to have to go in and get her. He kicked off his canvas boat shoes, but then, somehow, she seemed to come out of her stupor enough to grab the life ring. She clung to it with both arms for dear life. Relieved, Novak slowly started towing her in, hand over hand on the rope, careful not to jerk it out of her grasp. She was too weak to hold on much longer. When he got her up against the hull, he dropped to his stomach and reached down as far as he could. He managed to grab her shirt, then got up on his knees and hauled her bodily up out of the water and onto his deck. She was conscious, but barely. She was groaning and strangling and coughing and choking. Novak laid her out flat on her back and knelt down beside her. She was bleeding heavily. He found two deep gouges, one at the top of her forehead, the other on her right temple. Her nose was bleeding, too, and the blood kept running down into her mouth and causing her to choke. She kept gasping for air and groaning, but that lasted only seconds before her eyes rolled back into her head, and she was out for the count.
Novak quickly turned her onto her side so she could breathe better. He put his mouth down close to her ear. “I’m not gonna hurt you. I’m trying to help you. Can you hear me? You’re safe now. He’s gone.”
She must have heard his voice because her eyelids fluttered slightly in response. Then they closed again, and she didn’t move. Out like a light. Novak stood up and scanned the surrounding water for the killer. He didn’t want the guy turning around and flanking him. The guy who beat her up had shown a modicum of smarts. But as far as Novak could tell, the boat was gone for good, completely out of sight now. Her assailant had left her to drown, all right. His plan had been to kill her and the man who had been with her, and dump their bodies out in the middle of the ocean, with nowhere to go but down. No witnesses. Then sail away on a nice new hijacked yacht. But this time, the killer had hit a snag he hadn’t expected. He didn’t get the yacht he’d boarded or whatever booty was inside. But he probably wasn’t acting alone. He probably had cohorts somewhere in the area. Armed men he was calling together right now.
Once Novak was sure the woman’s airways were open, he positioned her head so that the blood was draining onto the deck and not down her throat. She was a small girl, looked pretty young, didn’t weigh much—really skinny, in fact. Probably not much over a hundred pounds, if that. A buck ten at most. She was bruised up pretty bad, too, and not just from the blows he’d seen her take. There were other bruises, some old, some new, some black and blue and pretty damn awful. She had been beaten, no doubt about that.
Her hair appeared to be dark brown under the dim deck lights, black maybe, and she wore it in a long braid that hung down her back, almost to her waist. Lots of strands had pulled loose during the struggle and were plastered against her cheeks and neck. She had on a white oversize oxford shirt, a man’s shirt, it looked like, long sleeves rolled up, dirty, bloody, ripped and torn, most of the buttons gone. She had on tight black nylon shorts and black boat shoes similar to his. She was a lot younger than he had first thought. Just a kid. Maybe even a teenager.
Novak pulled his T-shirt off over his head and wrapped it around her wounds, and then he slid an arm under her shoulders and another under her knees. He scooped her up, and she felt as limp as a boiled egg noodle. He carried her belowdecks to the fore cabin and laid her down on her side. Fetching his first-aid kit from the head, he brought it and a wet cloth back to the bed. She was sopping wet, and blood was still oozing out of the two-inch gash at her hairline. Both wounds were deep and ugly. He cleaned them out with some Betadine, pulled them together with butterfly bandages, and covered them with sterile white gauze. Then he washed a lot of the blood off her face and neck. She did not move a muscle the whole time. Her eyelashes did not twitch. She was not going to wake up anytime soon.
Leaving her lying on the bunk, he climbed the companionway to the aft deck. He took a few minutes to search the horizon with the night scope. Nothing anywhere. No lights. No roaring motors. Just the endless rocking of the boat on the cresting waves. The night was quiet, stars still glittering in their icy white splendor. They were alone. The two of them, two complete strangers, out in the middle of nowhere. He had no idea who she was, why she was with those guys, what the hell was going on. Great, that was just great, damn it. Exactly what he needed. Some helpless girl to worry about.
Once Novak was certain that the killer wasn’t coming back, he went below and stood in the threshold and stared at the young woman for a few minutes. Then he went inside, leaned down close, and tried to shake her awake. She did not move. A long slender gold chain hung around her neck. He pulled it out. A beautiful gold crucifix gleamed in the overhead light. Appeared that she might be a Catholic. He picked up her wrist and felt for a pulse. He found one, slow, but halfway steady. Her skin felt like ice.
So Novak stripped off her wet clothes, down to her underwear, and wrapped her up in some warm blankets. Her body looked wasted, impossibly thin, and sported bruises just about everywhere. After she was settled, he walked to the head and washed his hands and splashed cold water on his face. He was almost completely sober now, the dregs of the booze chased away by the adrenaline of the armed encounter. He needed to shake off the rest of it in a hurry, just in case her captor came back to claim her boat. The spike in his blood pressure was coming down, too, slowly but surely, his heartbeat returning to its normal pace. He stared at his reflection in the mirror. God, he looked like crap. He looked worse than crap. Two weeks of dark beard, bloodshot eyes from the booze, face and chest sunburned from weeks spent alone at sea. He looked like a bum.
Novak was a big man, six inches over six feet, with wide shoulders and thick muscles and a tendency to intimidate most people who met up with him. He was a scary looking guy at the best of times, and he knew it. The girl lying unconscious in that bunk was sure as hell going to wake up and panic when she saw him looking as unkempt and dangerous as he looked right now. That would not be good. Not after what she’d just gone through. On the other hand, she had already been in some very bad company before Novak had come along and saved the day, which might act to make him come off a mite better once she got the story straight.
The big white-and-black yacht was still bobbing nearby, and he went back top decks and brought the Sweet Sarah up close, sent a grappling hook across the bow, and tied in to her. He looked at the yacht’s name again. Orion’s Trident. He ought to be able to find its owner on the registry in Cancun. The dead guy was still where he’d breathed his last, on his back, his face and most of his head pretty much gone. Novak sidestepped the blood and brain matter, took a knee, and searched the guy for ID. No luck with that. No driver’s license, no wallet, no nothing. After that, Novak went below and tossed the boat slowly and methodically, searching for proof of ownership, a name, mail addressed to the owner, anything, but could find no
identifying papers, not even a ship’s log.
All of which was highly irregular. That told him that there had probably been some kind of illegal operation going on aboard the Orion’s Trident. Drug smuggling, maybe. Or something worse. Then he found a torture chamber located down in the bilge and knew it was something worse. Inside, he found steel rings attached to the wall and heavy chains lying unlocked in the shallow water covering the bottom of the hull. The girl had been a captive, all right, and so had the guy who had tried to protect her, it looked like. They must have gotten loose somehow and attempted to run for it, a decision that had turned out badly for both of them.
Novak was careful not to touch anything that he didn’t have to. He wiped off his prints when he did touch something. He didn’t want any of this illegal operation to come back on him. He found some women’s clothes and tennis shoes that looked like they might fit the skinny girl he’d rescued, so he stuffed them into a plastic bag. After that, he took some medical supplies and pain medications he’d found in the head, and then he went topside and leaped back aboard his own boat. He stopped again, carefully searching a full 360 degrees around the horizon. The guy was long gone. On the other hand, hijackers were not wont to give up an expensive boat they’d captured, not without a fight. That was fine by Novak. They could have the Orion’s Trident and the murdered guy on its deck. They could bring on a fight with him, too, but he wasn’t going to hang around and wait for it.
Novak took the controls of the Sweet Sarah, maneuvered her away from the yacht’s hull, and took off back to the reef where he’d been anchored. He considered heading directly to the nearest hospital but nixed that idea almost at once. They were out in the middle of nowhere. The closest ER would probably be a three- or four-day sail, at the very least. He could call in help on the sat phone, but it would be too long a distance to ask a medical chopper to fly, even if they would even consider coming so far out to sea to pick up one girl with relatively minor injuries. She was in bad shape at the moment, but her wounds were nowhere near catastrophic. The worst-case scenario might be a concussion from the blows to her head. Novak had the training and medical supplies to doctor her himself for a day or two and wait for her to regain consciousness and tell him what had happened, who had attacked her, and where she lived. After that, he could take her home and let her family deal with her. On top of all that, he had a feeling she was involved in something criminal, and he didn’t want to get pulled into a legal mess because of her. His course of action now decided, Novak swung the boat east and headed for a protected cove that he had used a couple of nights before. It could act as a temporary stop until she came to and could tell him what the hell had gone on aboard that yacht.
The anchorage he sought was on the far edge of a protected coral reef where nobody could sneak up on him. He had learned to be careful the hard way. He had been a Navy SEAL, and that training had paid off in lots of ways. He was fairly certain that he had stepped into something pretty damn ugly and something that could decrease his chances of living a long and healthy life. Oh yeah, something dark was gonna come back and bite him in the ass for this little Good Samaritan act. Time would tell, but that time was gonna be spent a good long way away from that abandoned yacht. Once Novak brought the injured girl aboard, the die had been cast, whether he liked it or not. And he didn’t like it.
On the other hand, Will Novak had never been a man to turn his back on trouble, or on standing up for people who couldn’t fight for themselves. Truth was, he liked to fight—especially with dirtbags who deserved to die and die hard. He liked to win too, even better. And he usually did win. That guy who had fled and left the woman to drown was apparently a murderer, a torturer, and a kidnapper. He had turned tail and run like hell when somebody with equal firepower had challenged him. Novak wouldn’t mind teaching him a lesson. In fact, he’d get off on it. Maybe he’d go after him when the time was right, hunt him down and let him go up against a man, instead of a weak and injured woman. Right now, he had the unconscious girl to worry about, and that was plenty.
About the Author
Linda Ladd is the bestselling author of over a dozen novels, including the Claire Morgan series and the Will Novak novels. Linda makes her home in Missouri, where she lives with her husband and beloved beagle named Banjo. She loves traveling and spending time with her two adult children, their spouses, and her two grandsons. In addition to writing, Linda enjoys target shooting and is a good markswoman with a Glock 19 similar to Claire Morgan’s. She loves to read good books, play tennis and board games, and watch fast-paced action movies. She is currently at work on her next novel. Learn more at lindaladd.com.
BAD MEMORIES
Not many people know their way through the bayous well enough to find Will Novak’s crumbling mansion outside New Orleans. Not that Novak wants to talk to anyone. He keeps his guns close and his guard always up.
BAD SISTER
Mariah Murray is one selfish, reckless, manipulative woman, the kind Novak would never want to get tangled up with. But he can’t say no to his dead wife’s sister.
BAD VIBES
When Mariah tells him she wants to rescue a childhood friend, another Aussie girl gone conveniently missing in north Georgia, Novak can’t turn her down. She’s hiding something. But the pretty little town she’s targeted screams trouble, too. Novak knows there’s a trap waiting. But until he springs it, there’s no telling who to trust…
ONE WRONG MOVE
Private detective Claire Morgan has come home from her honeymoon just in time for Christmas at Lake of the Ozarks. And for the sheriff’s department, laid low with flu, to hand her a case guaranteed to chill her to the bone.
ONE CHANCE TO DIE
One of the homes in the local Christmas On the Lake House tour—the mansion of an aging rock star trying to turn his life around—has been “decorated” with the body of a young woman, arranged as a bloody angel on the balcony above his Christmas tree. There’s a piece from a board game, gift wrapped and left under the tree, a hint that connects this murder to other deaths. With evidence of a gruesome pattern appearing, Claire suspects she’s on the hunt for a serial killer.
IN A GAME WITH NO RULES
But the closer she comes, the more certain she is that the killer is playing his game with her, just waiting his turn. The next move might be on Claire herself—or worse, the people she loves…