by Matt Lincoln
26
Of course, it was locked. I tugged on the handle, and the door refused to budge. I frowned at it and tried again, as if that would somehow miraculously unlock it. It did not.
“What’s the problem?” Lex asked from behind me. She was watching one of the avenues of approach to make sure no one appeared and startled us, but she turned to look at me as the moment dragged on and the door didn’t open.
I pulled at the handle again to show her that it was locked, and she made a displeased face, gritting her teeth.
“Come on, let’s find a different way in,” I suggested. Smashing the glass would be the last resort since the sound would draw every goon on the boat to our location.
I looked to the left and the right, trying to decide which way would be best, but I figured it wouldn’t really make much of a difference and settled on the right-hand path for no real reason. I pointed to it, and Lex nodded, letting me take point as I stepped back from the door and headed for the corner.
I stopped, flattened my back against the wall, and poked my head around the corner, trying to scope out the deck. My night vision was shot from staring at the lights within the yacht for so long, and I breathed quietly while I waited for my eyes to adjust and for things to take shape within the darkness.
The glow from inside fell on the broad shoulders of a man standing about three-fourths of the way down the walkway, leaning against the railing. The light caught on him as he shifted, and it was the movement that drew my eye, finally allowing me to pick him out of the darkness. I pulled my head back and looked at Lex, holding up one finger and then tilting my head in the man’s direction.
I peeked around the corner at him again. From his position, he would probably spot us coming toward him, but maybe we could lure him toward us without catching the attention of anyone else as well.
I tapped the butt of my gun against the wall three times, each sound ringing hollowly, amplified slightly by the surrounding water. I didn’t dare poke my head out again, but I strained my ears to listen for the sound of the man’s approach. For a long moment, there was nothing, and I worried that he hadn’t heard, but then came the dull thump of approaching footsteps. I readied myself, knees slightly bent, limbs as loose as I was able to make them through the pounding of my pulse.
It was hard to judge how close the man was since the water warped all sound, so I waited with my heart in my throat, ready to move as soon as he came into sight. Lex stood just behind me, hidden from view, where she could provide backup if my assault went badly.
The man stepped into view, his gaze straight ahead for the moment, but it wouldn’t take him long to spot us out of the corner of his eye. I lunged forward before he had that chance. I caught his arm with one hand and yanked him toward me, my gun arm wrapping around his neck, seeking to cut off his air as I tightened my grip, but he was a good half a head taller than I was, and the angle was all wrong. His free hand flailed for his belt and the gun there as he began to pull out of my grip, so I kicked the back of his knee. He pitched to the ground, pulling free of my arms, still reaching for his gun even as he fell. Lex moved forward as I raised my own gun, preparing to bash him over the head with it, and she drove her knee right into his face, breaking his nose with a crunch and a spray of blood. His cry of pain was cut off by the thump of my gun against his skull. He wavered, eyes glazed but still conscious, so I hit him again, and this time, he fell, slumping to the deck face first.
I watched him for any sign of movement, breathing heavily from the sudden burst of exertion, and while I kept an eye on him, Lex checked up and down both sides of the sprawling deck, making sure no one had heard the fight.
“We’re good,” she whispered as she returned to me.
I crouched beside the man and patted him down, hoping he might have keys to the sliding glass door, but his pockets were empty except for a mostly full pack of gum. I confiscated his weapon, and we dumped him beside the other man we’d taken down, using the same piece of rope to bind his hands, tying the two of them together.
With the way cleared, we crept down the right side of the deck, checking every window as we went until we finally found one that slid open. We checked the room before we opened it, of course, but the inside was dark and seemingly silent.
I motioned for Lex to go first since she was slightly smaller than I was and would have an easier time climbing through quietly to make sure we were alone in the room. She pushed her gun into her belt, braced her hands on the sill, and hauled herself up while I kept watch to make sure we weren’t disturbed. Her legs flailed as she pulled herself through, nearly beaning me in the side of the head as I jerked out of the way just in time, and then she tumbled inside, hitting the floor with only a slight clatter of limbs and gear. I held my breath, waiting for someone to shout “intruder,” but then Lex’s head reappeared at the window, and she nodded.
“All clear,” she whispered.
I took one last look around and then secured my gun and hauled myself in the same way, the hard wood of the sill digging into me as I scraped my hips along it. My hands hit the floor, blood rushing to my head, and I awkwardly walked my torso forward until I could pull my legs inside and drop them down to meet my hands. They made a thud that was louder than I would have liked, but would hopefully be muffled by the surrounding walls.
There wasn’t much light to see by, other than that of the moon streaming through the window, but there was just enough to look around and make out the shapes of two empty bunk beds and a chest of drawers shoved against the wall. We were alone in the room, and I crossed quickly to the door, drawing my gun once again.
I placed my ear against the flimsy wood and listened, eyes shut in concentration. The door hummed against my cheek, and all I could hear was the drone of the engine. I eased the door open a crack and pressed my eye against it, peering out into the brightly lit hall. There was no one in the slice of corridor that I could see, so I cautiously pushed the door open a little further, sticking my head out to glance up and down the hallway.
It was empty and not far from the locked glass doors we’d first tried. I stepped out of the room with Lex close behind me. She shut the door behind us to hide our tracks some—not that it would matter if someone stumbled across the unconscious men we’d left on the deck.
“We should check every room,” Lex whispered. “We don’t know where Ward’s keeping Malia.”
Hopefully, somewhere comfortable and not that same dank, dark room from the blackmail video. I was already planning to kick his ass from here to kingdom come, but I’d add outer space to the itinerary if that was the case.
I nodded in agreement, and Lex backtracked to check the two doors behind us while I crept forward. There were only two more doors on the hall before it opened into a wide room at the far end, one on either wall. The first knob turned beneath my hand, and I opened it as quietly as I could, looking into another dark room, this one apparently used for storage.
The second had a slice of light peeking out from beneath the crack, and I stared down at it, trying to think what my best move was. I shifted my grip on my gun, transferring it to just one hand as I reached for the doorknob with the other. I shoved it open quickly and burst inside, gun raised, sweeping the room for its occupants.
There was just one—a woman, seated at a desk, rising half out of her chair until she spotted the gun in my hand. I noticed her weapon in an instant, lying in its holster on one side of the desk.
“Don’t make a sound,” I growled, motioning for her to stand and move away from the desk.
She did so carefully, watching my face. She didn’t once look at her gun, probably because she knew that would provoke me. She was young, probably in her twenties, her hair cut short and curling around her cheeks, and she didn’t look like she knew what to do in this situation. She kept her hands raised, waiting for me to speak.
“Where’s Simon Ward?” I demanded. “And Malia Bane?”
She hesitated, swallowing a lump in her thr
oat. “I—Who are you?”
“Answer the question,” I spat. I kept my voice low, praying that she wouldn’t think to start shouting.
“Jace,” Lex said to announce her presence as she appeared in the doorway behind me. I almost jerked around and swung a fist at her even with the warning, but I managed to keep myself steady and focused on the woman.
Her eyes flicked to Lex for a second and then focused back on my gun, and she licked her lips, sweat glistening across her forehead. “I’m sorry. I can’t tell you that.”
I took three quick strides toward her and brandished my weapon in her face, my sudden rush of anger making each motion sharp and jagged. “Do you want to rethink that?”
She shook her head, though she paled. “I’m sorry. You haven’t met him. You don’t understand. I can’t.”
I saw her hand go behind her back. It took me almost a second too long to realize what she was doing, and I barely managed to leap out of the way as she swung a baton at my face. It came so close that I felt the wind of its passing across my nose.
“Intru--!” she started to yell, but then Lex was there, cutting her off with a quick punch to the throat. The woman gurgled, dropping her baton, and I kicked it away, sending it skittering into the corner.
Lex grappled with the woman, slipping behind her and capturing her in a headlock. The woman thrashed against Lex, thumping her feet against the floor, clawing at Lex’s arms, making far too much noise for my liking.
“One more time,” I said, leaning in close so that I was right next to the woman’s reddening face. “Where’s Ward?”
But she shook her head wildly and clamped her lips shut. Who was Ward that he could frighten someone so much that she wouldn’t give him up even with a gun in her face? Because it was fear I saw in her eyes, something that ran deeper than the anxiety the silver glint of my gun provoked. She wasn’t going to tell us anything.
I shook my head at Lex, and she tightened her grip, cutting off the woman’s airflow. She fought harder, flailing and thrashing, seeking any avenue of escape, and I turned to the door to make sure we weren’t disturbed. The woman finally went silent and still, and Lex eased her down onto the narrow cot against the wall. Her chest rose and fell softly, and her head lolled to the side atop the pillow.
I flicked off the lights, and Lex and I slipped from the room, shutting the door behind us. A man appeared in the open space at the end of the hall, no doubt coming to investigate all the noise. He spotted us immediately.
“Hey!” he yelled and drew his gun.
We were rapidly losing the element of surprise. Any shred that remained shattered the moment he pulled the trigger. Lex and I flung ourselves backward, hitting the flimsy door and breaking the lock, tumbling back inside the room we’d just vacated. I cursed violently as I struggled to regain my footing, my legs tangling with Lex’s as we stumbled back. She pushed herself away from me, and I righted myself against the wall, keeping in constant motion as I flattened myself in the corner beside the door.
My heart thundered in my chest, the adrenaline coursing through my veins making everything a little clearer as I gripped my gun and ducked through the doorway, half in and half out of the room. The man was advancing toward us, gun raised, and as soon as my head appeared, he fired. I flinched back, firing in turn, but my aim was off since I’d pulled back into the room and could no longer see him. He would always have the advantage since he would see me the instant I came out from under cover, whereas I would have to sight his position each time.
“Cover me,” I said to Lex, voice low. She was pressed against the other side of the door, gun up by her chest.
She nodded and leaned out to point her gun down the hallway, firing as she moved, not trying to hit the man, just trying to scare him, making him duck away. I crouched down as I moved out into the corridor to take myself out of Lex’s line of fire and make myself a smaller target as I exposed myself.
The man had scampered back, seeking cover, his gun lowered as his multi-tasking skills failed him, and he couldn’t fire at us while also taking fire. He saw me appear in the open, and his eyes widened, the new threat spurring him to raise his weapon even as Lex’s third shot pinged off the wall above his head. I fired before he could, and the bullet pierced his chest, blood bursting across his white shirt in an instant. I flinched, watching the way his body hit the ground like a puppet whose strings had been cut. I’d been aiming for his shoulder.
Lex stepped carefully out of the room, gun raised as she looked up and down the hall, making sure we weren’t about to receive more company. “Did you get him?”
“Yes.” I would sort through my feelings over killing him later when there was time. For now, we had a mission to accomplish, and nothing could get in the way of that. “Let’s move.”
We jogged up the last bit of corridor, moving faster now that we had given ourselves away with the gunfire. We had to step over the dead man since he’d fallen across the width of the hall, one hand propped awkwardly up on one wall, one foot crooked at a steep angle against the other. The stain of blood across his shirt was still spreading, and his eyes were glassy, staring sightlessly up at the ceiling. I tried not to look down at him as I stepped over, but his unnatural stillness, his scattered limbs, drew the eye, and something sharp and painful crawled through my chest as if I’d been shot instead.
Lex tilted her head back to avoid looking at the man as she led the way, allowing me time to banish the incident from the front of my mind as best I could. The corridor opened up into a small room with windows that looked out on the front of the boat, which was empty and quiet, almost shockingly so after all the violence that had just occurred. There was a staircase to our left, branching to lead both up and down. We chose the upper arm, though I paused at the base to listen, trying to hear what was going on below. Were Rachel and Graham already down there, searching for Malia? Or had they gotten stalled in the water somewhere?
I fingered the radio while Lex stood three steps up and waited for me. Should I contact Rachel, check in with her? I didn’t want to risk distracting her or giving away her position with the radio’s crackle. Best to keep quiet unless there was an emergency.
I looked up, and Lex nodded, and we continued up the stairs. Where were the people rushing to investigate the sound of gunshots? I worried they were lying in wait for us, preparing ambushes up above. It would be what I would do if I didn’t know the nature and number of the attackers. The whole thing smelled rotten to me, but I couldn’t quite pinpoint what exactly was wrong aside from the obvious danger of wandering around a dark yacht with an unknown number of armed assailants in the shadows. The rotten smell was something deeper than that, a thread I couldn’t quite grasp at that moment.
The door at the top of the stairs was closed. Lex and I stopped four steps down from it so we could appraise it. No light came from beneath the crack, but at this point, that didn’t mean very much to me. Lex put her ear to the door but frowned as the engine’s drone coursed through her, making her eyelashes tremble. She looked back at me, shaking her head. No sign of life, which worried me more now that we’d given ourselves away.
I motioned for Lex to swap places with me, and she raised her gun to cover me as I gripped the door handle and prepared to turn it. My instincts screamed danger at me, and I tuned out the ones urging me to flee back down the staircase, focusing instead on the set tuned for a fight. I counted to three, mouthing the words for Lex’s benefit, and then twisted the knob and shoved, flinging the door open. I figured speed was going to be our better ally now, rather than stealth.
The hall beyond was dark, and I crouched as I entered, making sure the center of my mass was below where someone might fire blind. No guns went off like I expected. Instead, someone crashed into me from the side, and we pitched into the opposite wall, my head smacking off the unyielding material so that starbursts of color flashed across the darkness, my gun tumbling from my fingers.
Hands scrabbled at my face, nails digging
into the vulnerable flesh of my cheeks, and I lashed out with the butt of my palm, not wanting to fire, wishing I had my damn gun. My blow went wide, hitting nothing but air, as fingers found my throat and attempted to close around it. I drove my knee toward my chest, connecting with something fleshy. A whoosh of air exploded across my face, accompanied by a grunt of pain, though the questing fingers didn’t withdraw until they were torn away a few seconds later. There was just enough light to see a shape get thrown through the air and crash into the opposite wall a short distance away.
“Shield your eyes,” Lex hissed at me, and I had just enough time to bring my hand up and squint before she hit the light switch.
A harsh, white light flooded the hall, burning my eyes, half blinding me, but it blinded everyone else, too, and they’d had less time to prepare for the flash than I did. I staggered upright, still holding a hand in front of my eyes. I could feel hot lines of pain along my neck where fingernails had dug in as my assailant was pulled off, and my elbow throbbed dully where I’d smacked it against the floor during my fall. All easily ignored as my eyes adjusted.
There were three people in the corridor which mirrored the one on the floor below. Only one had a gun that I could quickly see—the one at the back, covering his face with his hand. The man who’d tackled me was still on the ground, dazed from where he’d smacked his head against the wall, and there was a woman in the middle, carrying a wooden baseball bat as she scrubbed at her eyes to clear them.
Lex and I needed to recover first if we were going to win this fight, and luckily, we’d had warning before the lights went on. There were still spots across my vision, but I could see enough of the picture to start moving, headed for the man with the gun since he was our greatest threat. My gun was somewhere out of sight, and unfortunately, there wasn’t time to hunt for it at that moment.
I shoved the woman out of my way to get to him, leaving her and the downed man to Lex until I could deal with the man with the gun, and she swung at me with the bat, still mostly blind. The corridor was too narrow for her to get a proper angle, and I was already past her by the time she completed the awkward arc.