by Kate Johnson
“Well? Can you swim well?”
She seemed to find that funny, but she nodded again. He took her cold, trembling hands and sliced through the cable ties. Her eyes went huge with surprise.
“When I say, follow me to the back of the boat. Jump over the side. Not the back, the side, do you understand?” If she went over the back the propellor might well tear her to shreds.
She tore off the duct tape over her mouth and Xavier’s hand replaced it before she could speak.
“Quiet! If they get the slightest hint you’re not tied up in here we’re both dead.”
She glared at him, but didn’t speak as he led the way to the ladder. She nudged at the rope on her ankle with her other foot, fidgeting as if she’d pull it off, when he needed it to keep hold of her. There was no point in rescuing her if she was going to disappear in the water.
Xavier glanced out of the hatch, then back at the girl, who looked like she was planning a runner. She didn’t trust him, and he couldn’t blame her.
“Come with me and you’ll live,” he said simply. “Take that rope off and you’re lost at sea. Understand?”
“Who are you?” she breathed.
“Someone who’s trying to help. Come on.”
She seemed to get the message and nodded, squaring her shoulders. Scrappy little thing. Xavier thumbed open the holster at his hip as he led her to the hatch, looked around, then motioned her to follow him. He pointed to the side of the boat and she suddenly quailed as she caught sight of the dark waves. Rain flattened her hair to her head and her clothes to her body. She shivered.
Christ, don’t back out now! “Jump or die here,” he snarled, and gave her a shove, just as Luis rounded the corner from the cockpit. She ran, and vanished so suddenly he had no idea what had happened to her. All his attention was on Luis as the younger man stared and yelled, “Hey, she’s getting away!”
Xavier could have shot him, but that would have alerted Jorge. Instead he punched Luis in the gut and then in the jaw as he doubled over, then shoved him down the hatch and kicked the bolt shut just as the bungee cord clipped to his belt jerked.
Then he said a quick prayer, and jumped overboard.
Chapter Three
The water welcomed her like an old friend. Eliza had been terrified of its dark, unfathomable depths, but now she was in it she knew it couldn’t hurt her. Everything else probably could, but in this, her favourite element, she was safe.
Should she keep swimming or wait for her captor—rescuer?—to catch up with her? The cord on her ankle had jerked as she swum underwater, and she hoped to God that was because he’d followed her and not because some underwater creature had got hold of it.
The cord jerked again and she jerked back, looking around in panic as she trod water. She had no flotation device, and it had been a long time since she’d tested her endurance in the water. How long could she keep this up? How long would she have to? She had no idea where they were. The Caribbean was a surprisingly big place.
Would the boat continue away? Did they know she was missing? They had to. Someone had shouted.
She’d just decided to start swimming when a shape came towards her. Oh God, not a shark, not a shark, please—
“There you are.”
It was the man whose face had been covered by the bandana. Something floated beside him, the bag he’d been so careful to keep safe.
“Are you okay?”
Eliza stared at him in disbelief. “Am I okay? I’ve just been drugged and kidnapped and thrown overboard in the middle of the ocean—”
“Technically, it’s a sea—”
“Oh sure, like that makes any difference.” She’d been taught boat safety, years ago. Fat lot of good it did her now. “I’ve got no life jacket, no light or whistle—”
“Why, do you want to attract the attention of the boat you just escaped from?”
She glared at him.
“How good a swimmer are you?” he asked, and Eliza huffed out a laugh.
“Better than you are.” That was more or less certain.
“Oh really?” She couldn’t see his face in the darkness but she could hear his tone of voice. Cocky as anything. “Okay then. Show me. Let’s swim. We need to get far away from that boat before we can set up the life raft.”
“Life raft?” Her gaze flew to the floating bag, hope surging in her.
“You think I’m dumb enough to just jump in the sea without one?”
Eliza looked at it, not much more than a floating pillow. “I don’t think we’ll both fit on it,” she said, and he just looked exasperated.
“It inflates! Go on, swim.”
Eliza took a breath, and swam. She didn’t sprint; she wasn’t showing off. She swam as she used to swim during her training sessions, for strength and endurance. Pacing herself, breathing evenly, letting her mind go blank of everything but the next stroke, the next breath, and the next, and the next…
The cord tugged again, and she was broken from her reverie. Looking out of breath, the man with the life raft popped up behind her. Quite some distance behind her.
“Okay, you weren’t kidding,” he wheezed. “Jeez. Twenty minutes at that pace?”
Eliza was out of breath too, now she stopped to think about it. “You said to swim,” she said. “Can we have the life raft now?”
He nodded, and unslung the bag.
The life raft appeared to be packed in an ordinary-looking holdall. He threw it as far as he could from treading water, then clipped a line from it to his belt and swam a bit further. Yanking on the cord once did nothing, and he looked a bit panicked.
“Any time you’re ready,” said Eliza, who was beginning to find that the Caribbean wasn’t as warm as it seemed this far out.
“Just…” he yanked again, hard, “they’re not really meant to be launched like—whoa, okay, there we go,” he said, as the bag suddenly unfurled and out popped a little floating tent. It was bright orange, which explained why he hadn’t wanted to launch it anywhere the boat could see them.
Eliza climbed gratefully inside, which was harder than it looked and damn inelegant. She was beyond caring. Now she’d stopped swimming and the cold had started to seep in, adrenaline seemed to be running out.
He followed, and for a moment they both sprawled, exhausted, inside.
Eliza looked around. A small tent, bobbing alarmingly on the open sea, and a quite large man filled her vision. If she looked outside it was only darkness.
Could she trust him? He’d saved her life, or at least he seemed to have. For all she knew this was an elaborate plan to steal her from one set of miscreants and sell her to another.
“So what happens now?” she said warily.
“Now,” he said, opening his eyes, “we wait. Until it gets light or we approach a shore, whichever comes first. In daylight a boat will certainly see us.”
“But not before then?” She chewed her lip, which already felt dry. “How far away do you think the boat is?”
“I don’t know. But they’d have to be damn lucky to find the exact direction we swam in. I don’t even know what it was. Or how far we went.”
Eliza tilted her head. “Twenty minutes? A thousand metres, maybe.” Realising she was talking to an American, she amended, “Just over half a mile. Not far, really.” Then realising what she’d just realised, “Hey, you’re speaking English now.” Speaking it perfectly, in fact, with no hint of that heavy accent he’d had before.
He didn’t look up from the plastic bag whose contents he was examining. “Si, señorita.”
“What was all that,” she put on a terrible Spanish accent, “‘eet would go bedder for youuu’ stuff?”
He shrugged, and she thought he might be smiling in the darkness. “I was in character.”
“Character? Who are you?”
He did look up then, and seemed to take stock of her. “I’m not a kidnapper or a drug smuggler. Those guys were not my friends.”
“Good, because if they w
ere you’d need new ones.”
He hesitated. “I’m a cop.”
She snorted.
He looked at her steadily.
“Oh wait, seriously? You’re a cop?” This was good, wasn’t it? This was perfect! “Does that mean you can get into contact with the authorities, get us rescued?”
“Oh, sure, just let me get out my iPhone,” he said, patting his soaking wet pockets and glaring at her.
“You don’t have a radio?”
“Lady, I don’t even have a smoke signal.” He sorted through the paltry amount of supplies that appeared to have been stored in the raft. “Although we do have flares.”
She wanted to tell him to use them, but that was a stupid idea with her kidnappers so close.
She watched him pick up a few things and peer at them. A compass, which he added to the collection of things on his belt. A torch, which he covered with his hand before testing. A plastic jug and some sponges, which she thought was weird until she saw him soak up some water from the floor and squeeze it outside. A whistle and a little flashy disc, which she supposed might be used for attracting attention. A tiny puncture kit which didn’t look as if it would do any good at all. A small flip knife on a cord, which to her surprise he handed over.
“You’re arming me?” She had no idea what to do with a knife, but she supposed she appreciated the show of trust.
“I have a knife.” He also had a gun, clear as day in a shoulder brace. “Here, take these.”
He handed her some pills in a blister pack. Eliza, who’d seen him spiking his crewmates’ drinks, recoiled.
“They’re seasickness pills. This thing is rocking like crazy. I don’t want to be sharing this with you filled with vomit.”
He had a point, but Eliza still didn’t trust him. He rolled his eyes and popped a couple out, swallowing them before she consented to do the same.
“Okay. We have a couple sachets of water each. Enough to keep us alive for twenty four hours. Forty eight at a stretch. It won’t be that long,” he assured her. “The Caribbean’s a busy place.”
“Are you sure we’re still in the Caribbean?” Eliza asked, because the raft really was rocking alarmingly.
“Well, we’re not in the Atlantic, honey.”
“Don’t call me honey.” She wrapped her arms around herself and shivered.
“Sure thing, Princess.”
He reached over to close the entrance flap then, and so didn’t see her face. Her heart pounded. He’d figured her out! She’d been terrified of the men on the boat finding out, because if they knew they had an actual princess as a captive her value to them would have risen so much that they’d probably never have set her free.
She’d wanted to not be a princess for a day. She hadn’t imagined it would become a life-or-death choice. Could she trust this man?
But when he sat back down again, he wasn’t really looking at her. He was stowing their goods in the waterproof bag he’d kept the raft in, and muttering about a lack of provisions.
“Could use a blanket,” he said, sighing, and began to shrug out of his gun brace. He looked her over. The night wasn’t cold, but she was soaking through and her skin was covered in goosebumps. “You’re gonna stay cold if you keep your wet clothes on.”
Eliza scoffed. “I’ve heard some terrible come-ons in my time but that’s pretty dire,” she said.
He grinned, a flash of whiteness in the dark, and began to peel off his t-shirt.
“I mean it,” Eliza stuttered, panicking, but all he did was squeeze it out into the little jug and empty the contents outside the raft. He did the same with his shoes and shorts, which alarmed her, but at least he was wearing respectable underwear. No different from seeing a man in swimming trunks, she reminded herself, trying not to look too much.
“Next you’re going to tell me we can make a sail out of them,” she said.
“The good ship t-shirt, sure. Come on. I swear to God I won’t leer or grope or rape or do any of the stuff those guys on the boat wanted to do. I will suggest we huddle together to share body warmth, but that’s it. I’ll treat you just like I’d treat my mother.”
Eliza narrowed her eyes. “Do you like your mother?”
“I’m Puerto Rican, I worship my mother.”
She gave him a distrustful look, but it was true she was freezing and besides, she’d been wandering around in a bikini for weeks now. It would dry much faster than her clothes.
She sighed and stripped off her neon t-shirt and denim shorts, tugging off her chunky-soled trainers and socks too. Thank God it had been a 90s themed rave and not some period costume party involving corsets or high heels. At least the water seemed to have cleared up most of the vomit.
“There,” he said, keeping his gaze resolutely above her collarbone. Not that he could probably see much in this darkness. She could just make out him holding his arm wide, and with some reluctance, she moved to sit next to him. He cuddled her close, and while his skin was cold, it didn’t take long at all for warmth to begin seeping in.
Eliza realised she was stiff as a doll against him, and no wonder. When was the last time someone had held her like this? Had anyone ever held her like this? They were both nearly naked, and Eliza just wasn’t used to having this much skin contact with anyone.
She forced her muscles to relax, because clenching them would only lead to cramp and misery. His body was quite hard and muscular, she noticed, in a purely objective way. That was good. For survival.
“How long until daylight?” she asked, and he looked at his watch, which was one of those chunky hard-wearing ones.
“Long enough to get some sleep,” he said. “You must be exhausted.”
She was. Terrified, confused, freezing cold and exhausted. If the gossipy old ladies of the Palace could see her now…
That stiffened her resolve a bit. She was a princess, after all. “I don’t even know your name,” she said.
“Xavier.” He said it the Spanish way. “Xavier Rivera.”
“And you’re a police officer?”
“Detective. Narcotics.”
“Oh. They were drug dealers?”
“Yeah.” He sighed. “Yeah, and they probably still will be. What’s your name?” he asked, before she could think about what he meant by that.
“Eliza.” That wasn’t a lie. It was just about a quarter of the truth.
“Eliza what?”
She yawned and rested her head on his shoulder. He was so warm. “Just Eliza.”
Xavier realised he’d dozed off only when the raft gave a sudden jolt, and his first thought on waking was, Oh shit, we’ve been shot.
But there were no holes in the canopy, and beside him Eliza seemed unhurt, if a little alarmed as she woke up blearily.
“The floor is… should it be deflating?”
God dammit, she was right. Xavier grabbed his gun brace and slipped into it, drawing his Glock as he unzipped the door of the canopy and looked out into daylight.
There was no boat. There was no shooter. What there was, was a lot of small breaking waves and, about fifty yards beyond them, an empty beach. To the left and right, the breaking waves continued in a jagged curve.
“We hit a reef,” he said. “Coral. Boat’s punctured.” At her look of alarm, he quickly added, “But there’s land about fifty yards away, if you can still swim.”
“Land? Oh my God, are there people?”
He hadn’t seen any, but that wasn’t important right now. He started grabbing anything that was loose and shoving it into the dry bag. “Everything in here now. Got it?” He glanced around. Everything but an empty water sachet was in the bag. He quickly sealed it. “Careful as you jump out. Don’t know how deep the water is. For the love of God try to miss the coral.”
He watched her crouch, then perform the most extraordinary dive that had her clearing the reef and sort of curling into the water before turning upright, facing back at him.
Xavier shook himself and threw her the bag as she tr
od water, then leapt out much less elegantly, making a huge splash. Eliza was already away, and even with the bag hampering her stroke she was at the beach before him, rising from the water like Ursula Andress in Dr No.
He made it to the shallows, said a prayer as his feet touched the sand, then waded ashore as Eliza threw herself down and appeared to kiss the ground.
“Hah,” he said weakly, and did the same.
He rolled onto his back, and she did the same, staring up at the sky which was back to its usual faultless blue after last night’s rain.
“We survived the night,” she said eventually.
“I guess we did.”
She hauled herself into a sitting position and shaded her eyes, looking around at the beach. There was no sign of habitation, just a bank of scrubby bushes and trees bordering the land.
“The raft might be salvageable. There was a puncture kit.”
Xavier snorted. “Yeah, that wouldn’t fix a bicycle.” He sat up too, and looked out at the orange tent bobbing around off shore. The longer it was there, the more coral would puncture it.
“At any rate, it’s a shelter. A tent. We should retrieve it.”
He nodded. She was blonde and fair skinned and even in spring, the sun could be pretty fierce out here. “We should.”
Neither of them moved.
“Oh God, I’m so glad to be back on land,” Eliza moaned, flopping down against the sand again.
It was still early in the morning, and the sand hadn’t had chance to heat up to burning temperatures. Xavier looked around, trying to find a clue as to their whereabouts. A curve of white sandy beach, about half of which appeared to be above the tide line. Behind it rose low hills, higher on one side, swampier on the other. There were palms and mangroves, their skeletal roots arching up out of the wet sand, and the pine forest that covered a lot of the northern Caribbean islands.
No signs of habitation. Nothing at all. Xavier strained to see as far as he could into the distance, but there were no paths distinguishable among the trees and bushes of the hills. No structures, no overhead lines, no firepits in the sand, no signs telling them it was a private beach or warning about the reef.