Defy (Brothers of Ink and Steel Book 3)

by Allie Juliette Mousseau

  I don’t have a spare ten seconds.

  She doesn’t understand what’s happening, though, and begins to thrash as best as she can. I’m thankful for the bandana across her mouth, muffling her screams.

  The goddamn dogs are closing. We probably only got a jump on the distance because of their out-of-shape handlers.

  It’s still too dangerous to speak, so I put a knee into her backbone—to hold her still, for Christ’s sake—and get the lock opened.

  Carefully but hastily, I free her arms. She moans softly with the pain of having them mobile after such a lengthy incarceration behind her back.

  When I take hold of her this time, I put her back to my front and use my left hand to keep her chin above the waterline, while my right hand keeps my Glock trained into the night, ready to disable man or beast.

  Fucking gators and water moccasins—I fucking hate those things! Who the fuck would want to live in fucking swampland Texas?

  Gently, I slip us into the water.

  Of course Farrington has other ideas. As if her life depends on it, she starts thrashing.

  “Stop! You’ll attract every bad guy and man-eating creature in a ten mile radius,” I rage whisper.

  She’s not stopping. I wrap the arm I was going to use to hold her mouth around her already weak arms, pinning them to her chest. Her legs are another matter altogether—they’re stronger now, and she kicks and bucks against me fiercely.

  Get comfortable being uncomfortable. The SEAL motto is more than applicable in this situation.

  Taking a full deep breath, I fill my lungs with air to keep us afloat and secure both her legs with one of mine. I launch us into the swamp’s slow current.

  The dogs will still be able to follow us—all they need to do is chase down the dead skin cells—however, I’m banking on the commotion the war is wreaking to cause them a little confusion. And if we can survive reptilian jaws of death, I have a few more diversionary tactics to keep them from regaining our scent too easily.

  We meander under the cover of dark, past the estate’s perimeter. The sounds of the dogs and battle seemingly float into the distance.

  “Your name is Rachel Farrington. You’re the only witness to the murder of Drew Anderson at Tulane University. Eduardo Miguel kidnapped you to keep you quiet,” I tell her. Although I don’t understand why he didn’t just kill you. I leave that part out for now.

  “My name is Ryder Axton. I’m a Navy SEAL trained bounty hunter. I found you and am taking you home,” I say. “Do you understand me?”

  She doesn’t make a move.

  “I’m the good guy here—you know, the dashing hero—so you’d do us both a big favor if you stopped fighting me tooth and nail every step of the way!” That last bit came out more impassioned than I planned for it to, as my hand is now throbbing. I continue, “If you promise not to scream, I’ll remove the gag.”

  She still doesn’t make a move.

  “Nod if you understand me.”

  She does.

  “Nod if you’ll comply.”

  She does again.

  “If you scream, you’ll give our location away.”

  She nods a third time.

  I decide I’m not going to untie it. I just pull it out of her mouth and let it drop around her neck. That way it’ll be there if I need to use it quickly.

  When she doesn’t yell, I say, “If you’ll be calm, you can help us tread water.”

  “There are alligators in here.” Her voice is shaking.

  “Yes, there are, so let’s not be in here longer than we have to be.” That’s just to help her morale. Truth is, we’ll have to be in here longer than anyone would want to be. It’s deep and murky. The Neches River will be even worse—the fucking thing is a deep water pathway for ships—seventy-six feet deep, to be exact. But the water is our fastest mode of travel until we can get somewhere safer.

  I continue scanning the shoreline for boats—especially canoes or two man kayaks.

  When the fighting is over and Farrington’s nowhere to be found, if Miguel’s still alive, they’ll comb for miles and use the dogs to keep tracking her scent. They can’t allow her to make it out alive.

  By my calculations, we’ve traveled about two miles downstream when she asks, “Where are you taking me?” Her tone is full of mistrust.

  “I told you, home.”

  “I don’t believe you,” she challenges quietly.

  “Why the fuck wouldn’t you believe me?” I croak. “The fuck, lady! I just saved your life—so many times now, I quit counting!”

  “Because this isn’t the first time I’ve heard your voice.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “You work for Miguel,” she accuses me. “You were there, outside my door, but you spoke in a southern accent. So which is the real you?”

  “That’s one hell of an ability for voice recognition.” I’m impressed.

  “So you’re not denying it?”

  “Why would I? I was getting the layout of the house.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “I was posing as an EPA official, claiming that Miguel had toxic gasses being emitted through his basement.”

  “Posing?”

  “Yeah. You know, undercover.”

  “Undercover bounty hunter?” she quips, disbelieving.

  “You don’t know much about my business.”

  “Then explain why you pulled me away from the police rescue?”

  “I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about. The only one around here doing any rescuing is me.”

  Just then, we drift into a sandbar. The moment Farrington gets a foothold she throws her bent elbow back, driving it forcefully into my nose.

  “Fuck!” I hiss under my breath, pulling the night vision goggles off my eyes and onto my head.

  She finds her legs and tries running into the trees that are scattered like patches in the swamp refuge. But my fingers snag the hem of her dress and pull her back to me. She falls against me.

  “Don’t do that again,” I warn, getting a secure grip on her arm. As she struggles, the muddy water splashes up between us. “Farrington, STOP!” Both of her wrists are now locked in my fists. “Try to think clearly. I haven’t hurt you. I got you out of there.”

  Her dark eyes catch a hint of moonlight and flash angrily at me. I make my mannerism gentler. “I get it, you’re confused and terrified. What you’ve been through is indescribable.”

  Her brow presses down over her forehead in a scowl as her head tilts suspiciously—and I have terribly fucked timing, but I can’t help but notice just how beautiful she is.

  My thumb grazes against her cheek to wipe the soil that’s streaked across her fair skin, ready to sting her eye.

  “I promise I’m going to get you somewhere safe. And failure is not an option for me.”

  After a deep breath, her body seems to relax a bit.

  “Look.” I crook my head to the left and point with my eyes. “There’s a rowboat at our nine o’clock. We can get to the river much faster, and not being gator bait would be an added bonus.”

  “I can’t see a boat. How can you?” She leans back away from me.

  “Night vision.” I give a sign of trust by letting her wrist go and tapping the goggles now resting on top of my head. “You can hear Miguel’s dogs in the distance. We don’t have much time.”

  “Let me see the boat.” She indicates the goggles.

  I hesitate. If she throws them away, we’re both fucked. “If I hold them.”

  She nods, and I position them over her eyes and rotate her head in the correct direction.

  “See it now?”

  “Yes.”

  “Okay then, we’re going to move nice and slow together.” I realign the glasses over my face. “I’ll hold you.” I can’t trust her not to run.

  I keep her secured to me in the bend of my arm. After a scan of our surroundings, I push us into the deeper water.

  Tha
t’s when the head of a huge alligator bursts up from under the dense muck. His wide open jaws and crooked row of jagged, spear-pointed teeth barely miss her foot, and I realize he must have been stalking us and decided to strike while we were in the shallows.

  I shove Farrington out of its path and put myself between her and the creature.

  “GET TO THE BOAT AND GET OUT OF HERE!” As I say it, the alligator lunges at me.

  I counterattack; sliding around behind the behemoth, I grab hold of its body. It’s fucking hard, heavy and massive with a wide girth. I have a second to deduce that it’s got to be a male that weighs somewhere in the vicinity of five hundred pounds. Squeezing my legs around him, my first priority is to grab hold of his mouth to keep it shut. With a few proper moves I can prove to him I’m a foe he doesn’t want to mess with, and I might be able to fend him off and survive this.

  If he opens his mouth and gets any piece of me between those massive hinged jaws with five thousand tons of biting torque, I’m severely fucked! If he gets a good grip on me, he’ll go into his death-roll, dragging me under the water while spinning over and over, disorienting me until I either bleed out or drown. Son of bitch can also hold his breath for two hours if he’d like, so either way, if he gets me under the water, I don’t have a fucking chance of surviving.

  Farrington reaching the boat is the last thing I see before the alligator flips over and takes us both under.

  Chapter Six

  Rachel

  Any normal man being dragged to his death would be screaming and crying out for help. Any normal man wouldn’t have attempted to fend off an alligator.

  My assailant—or rescuer, or whoever he is—isn’t a normal man.

  I spy a couple of oars resting in the bottom of the old, battered boat. I grab one and thrust it in the water, ready to row away . . .

  And hesitate.

  Is he really who he says he is?

  Is it all a ploy? Some tactic to keep me in line? The knife guy was just another interim tactic to terrorize me. He never really cut me. So is this part of the brainwashing? Will it turn into something like Stockholm syndrome?

  He jumped in front of a freaking alligator to save me and told me to get to the boat and get out of here!

  Do I help him?

  Shit, shit, shit!

  I paddle urgently over to the place where the two went down and brandish the heavy oar over my shoulder like a baseball bat, ready to strike.

  It must have dragged him into deeper waters, because I can’t see any sign of either of them. I turn my head frantically in every direction, hoping to catch a glimpse, but there is no movement in the water, no thrashing, no air bubbles . . .

  No air bubbles.

  My heart falls into my stomach. How long has he been under? How long did it take me to get over here? Two minutes? Three minutes?

  Damn it, show yourself! I will him to come back up . . . alive.

  The longer my eyes glide over the surface of the water, the more I realize the man is dead.

  Why? Why would he do that? Why would he die for me?

  Miguel’s dogs’ noisy approach cutting through the silence of the late night hour ignites my adrenaline—I have to run!

  I know I have to run. I want to run! But I hold myself—force myself—to keep still and rock solid.

  Wait just a few more seconds.

  Still nothing.

  I lower my eyes, distraught and despairing, waiting for his headless or armless body to come floating to the surface like they do in movies.

  HOLY FUCK! The two bust up the through the sheet of nearly black water so close they slam into the side of the weathered wooden rowboat I’m standing in.

  The blow throws me back, and I fall hard to my ass in the bottom of the old boat. The entire thing rocks, and I’m terrified it’s going to capsize in their wake.

  I scramble up to my knees and peer over the edge. The two of them are embroiled in a death match.

  Water sprays as the gator thrashes and throws the weight of his body against the man, who gets knocked to the gator’s side. It opens its massive mouth, and a primordial, growling hiss that sends chills coursing over my flesh rolls through its lungs—a warning and a promise.

  The man swims backward, as if to give the gator space. Space and room to swim away, maybe?

  It doesn’t work—the gator cuts through the water with a snakelike slither—Jesus, it’s fast! His mammoth jaws open wide as he charges.

  The guy cocks his fist back, surges his body to the left and drives the punch to the side of the gator’s eye.

  It pulls away from him and twists its tail ferociously, shoving the guy backwards. That’s when I reach out and jab the creature in the back with the end of the oar.

  The guy looks up from the gator for just a second, an expression of shocked disbelief painted on his face.

  I hit the gator again before it slides away from me and back towards the guy.

  Was that for nothing!? I was trying to help him, and all I did was succeed in making the thing madder!

  That’s when the guy smiles over at me. Literally!! Like he’s not fighting a thirteen foot alligator in deep muddy water. It’s almost like . . . he’s flirting!

  THEN HE WINKS! As he slips back down under the mud, he lets the water swallow him whole.

  My heart is palpitating as the animal slides over the spot where the man was and should be.

  I can’t breathe. He’s going to die. He’s going to die! Why the FUCK was he smiling and winking before he went to go die!?

  Panicked, I row closer. Maybe if I can get right on top of it, I can hit it harder. Or maybe it’ll take a bite of this decrepit hundred-year-old rowboat then eat me.

  But I have to try.

  They both spring up at the same time, but this time the guy has his right hand in the crease at the bottom of the alligator’s jaw. He holds it up and away from him as his left hand reaches over and clamps over the top of the gator’s snout to actually hold its mouth closed! If that isn’t enough, he leaps onto the thing’s back and deftly wraps the black bandana that had been on his neck around the alligator’s muzzle, then just holds the head back and floats there calmly—like it’s a fucking magic trick.

  “You okay now?” he says to the creature. “I’m going to let you go now, nice and easy, but you’ve got to stop being an asshole.”

  I feel my jaw drop and eyes widen at the scene in front of me.

  He pushes the creature, which looks like a freaking dinosaur, gently out of his way before swimming over to me and carefully climbing over the side onto the boat.

  “Are you alright?” he asks me. Like he was worried about me while tackling a man-eating reptile.

  Why would he even care?

  “Farrington?” he presses when I don’t respond the first time.

  “Why did you push me out of the way? Why? Why would you put yourself at death’s door to keep me alive?”

  “Why wouldn’t I?” he asks, all serious. Then, before I can answer, he smiles cockily and asks, “Why did you come back to help me?”

  I don’t know what to say.

  Waiting impatiently, he prods, “Well?”

  “I don’t know . . . and, oh my God . . . you were flirting with me!”

  The smile broadens across his face and he wears it proudly. “Hell yes, ma’am, it was a badass moment.”

  I shake my head in disbelief. “So that’s what you do, go around defying death and rescuing women in distress.”

  “Someone’s got to do it.”

  I size him up. He’s a really big man—all muscle and might. He stands close to six feet two inches, anyway. His dark brown hair is cut military-style, and his green eyes seem to hold more laughter than violence. He has boyish good looks with a rugged man’s charm, and there’s a hint of tattoo showing on his neck where the bandana had been.

  I need to change the subject. “Will the alligator die?”

  “Why would he die?”

  “You tied his mout
h shut.” I still don’t know how he managed that feat.

  “I tied it in a slipknot. He’ll get it undone soon enough.” He reaches down and grabs the oar before taking a seat. “Sit, we still have to get the hell out of Dodge.”

  He starts to row and I peer off behind us. The light of the moon is brighter and lower than when we were first running. And with the turns, bends and land islands (for lack of the correct term), I can’t see any flashlight beams cutting through the shadows. But I can still hear the dogs. Their barks echo across the swamp.

  I turn back decisively to try and figure out my . . . companion.

  His powerful arms row the shoddy boat swiftly. On the downstroke, I notice streams of blood pressing out and escaping the cuffs of his shirt.

  “You’re bleeding!” I exclaim.

  “Yeah, Godzilla got a pretty good mouthful.”

  “Oh my God, you were bit?” I freak. “We need to look at it!”

  His features pinch in a look that says, don’t be ridiculous. “Why would we need to do that?”

  The blood follows the direction of the woodgrain on the oar.

  “I think you’re bleeding more than you want to admit.”

  “I’ve bled worse, trust me,” he quips as if all of this is nothing. “Don’t look at me like that—I’d look at it just for you, but we don’t have time yet. Later,” he promises, and that’s the end of that.

  “So, you really are a bounty hunter?”

  “Tried and true.”

  “Tell me your name again.”

  “Ryder. Ryder Axton,” he reiterates. “And you are Rachel Farrington.”

  “What were you doing there? In the house.”

  “I was taking in Eduardo Miguel, who’s a fugitive wanted in connection with the murder of Drew Jameson and the disappearance of federal witness Rachel Farrington.”

  “How did you know I was in there? Could you see me?”

  “No, ma’am.” He goes serious. “I heard chains.”

  “Oh.” I drop my head and automatically massage my wrists where the cuff had held me.

  “My original plan was to capture Miguel. But rescuing you became my mission instead.”