AUBREY LEANED BACK AGAINST the side of the boat, working to loosen her hands while her captor steered the boat through the narrow inlet. Her head pounded, and she’d sliced her leg on something, but at least she was still alive. She couldn’t say that about Papps. If his family hadn’t found him by now, she knew he would have already bled out.
A sick feeling snaked through her as her mind continued to replay what had happened and what she could have done differently. But they’d been ambushed by a sniper. She’d done what she’d been trained to do—try and neutralize the threat. Having failed that, the only thing she could do now was pray that Papps’s sons had heard her scream. But her captor had timed his dirty deed well. Duck hunting wasn’t like deer hunting, which was more of a solitary pursuit. And for the McKenna family, it had always been a social event. It had been the same every year for as long as she could remember.
She knew exactly what had been going on at the blind. Until the birds landed, there would be no shortage of conversation. They’d watch the sunrise break through the morning fog while Mitchell and Ryan told jokes and started breakfast. Any activity that combined guns, water, and the cold included an element of danger, but they wouldn’t have been listening for the deadly shot of a sniper.
She continued to work to untie the twine securing her wrists as she formulated a plan. They’d been gone at least forty-five minutes, winding their way through the grass flats and channels. She’d spent time in these wetlands, but before long, the scenery began to look the same. Miles of water and vegetation with no idea where they were going. Memories of days spent on the water with Papps teaching her about the ecosystem of where the water met the land flooded through her. A place filled with cattails and other grasses, along with birds, fish, and sea turtles, where she could momentarily forget about the stresses of her work.
But today, she’d walked into a nightmare, and what she didn’t understand was what the objective had been. Papps had been shot, but if he was the target, why grab her? The twine cut at her wrists as she continued to slowly loosen it. Nothing made sense, but she didn’t have to understand the motivation to realize her life was in danger. The only way she was going to survive this was to escape. A search party had probably been assembled by now, but with no clues to know where to look, she couldn’t expect rescue anytime soon. And in the meantime, she needed to get as much information as she could.
“Where are we going?” She shouted above the noise of the motor, making sure she memorized the features of the man who’d taken her. He was Asian—probably Chinese—short and thin, yet muscular, with a one-inch scar running across his temple.
“You’ll find out soon enough. We’re almost there.”
“Where? Are we meeting someone?”
He frowned at her. “Stop with all the questions.”
“I will, if you tell me why you shot the senator. You could have just grabbed me and left him alone. Unless he was the target all along.” She paused, praying for some feedback, but the man said nothing.
“Nico paid you to snatch me, didn’t he?” she asked.
The man didn’t answer.
“Or was the senator the target? If they weren’t able to get him to a hospital, there’s no way he could have made it. And if you’re convicted of capital murder, you could easily be looking at life in prison without parole.”
He caught her gaze. “I told you to stop talking.”
He turned away from her again, but she wasn’t ready to stop probing.
“What I don’t understand is—assuming the senator was the target—why grab me? Who are you working for?”
“Did you not hear me?” He stepped away from the steering wheel and backhanded her across her cheek. “I said shut up!”
She bit back the sharp sting of pain from the blow, irritated that she’d allowed herself to push him too far. Put him across the table from her in an interrogation room where she was in charge of the situation, and she knew she could pull the truth out of him, but she wasn’t going to get anything out of him. Not now. She studied the coastal waterway surrounding her. The truth wasn’t what mattered right now. What mattered right now was getting out of here alive.
She twisted her wrists. She needed a few more minutes to undo the loosened twine, but then she would have to find her way out of the miles and miles of swampy waters without him catching her.
If that was even possible.
More memories flooded her of time spent in the marshlands with Papps and his family and growing up with Adam and Jack Shannon. So much had changed over the past decade. Adam had a family now and worked as a game warden. Jack had moved away years ago. She’d made peace with Adam after their breakup, and while it had stung at the time, looking back she knew it was the right decision. They never would have been a good match. Thankfully they’d finally realized it, and in the end, they both moved on. Adam found the perfect woman, got married, and had two adorable girls.
But Jack . . . Jack was a different story.
She kept working at the loosening cords, ignoring the cramping in her wrists. Something had hurt him, she knew that, but to this day she wasn’t sure why he’d left so unexpectedly. Maybe it was nothing more than a career move, but at the time she’d been convinced there was something else.
Her eyes swept the boat for signs of the rifle. No sign of it, but the man had a handgun holstered on his side. Her captor’s phone rang, and he picked it up off the console in front of him.
She listened in on the conversation, still working on getting loose, as he and the caller tried to communicate with an apparent weak signal. She caught the name Rudy, and after some muffled conversation, him confirming that he’d meet them. But for what? That was the question she couldn’t answer.
Yet.
She shifted in her seat, almost free now, planning her next move because she was only going to have one chance. Her heart raced, knowing that the odds were against her. He was armed and she wasn’t, plus he had at least thirty pounds on her. Which meant she was going to have to outsmart him.
The cord slipped off her wrist.
He dropped the phone into the storage console in front of him, clearly distracted. It was now or never.
She lunged at him from behind. Her left hand covered his face and pulled back on his head while her right hand gripped his right arm. A fraction of a second later, she slammed her knee into the back of one of his legs, shifting her weight into him and forcing him to collapse. He stumbled, momentarily disoriented, then sprang back to his feet. His elbow rammed into her jaw, throwing her back against the metal railing of the boat.
Aubrey ignored the pain and threw her weight into her next move, sending him over the edge and into the water. Knowing she had only seconds at the most to press her advantage, she glanced around the bottom of the boat for his weapon, hoping it had fallen during the attack. But he must have managed to keep it with him when he went overboard.
She could hear him flailing in the water and shouting at her as she rushed to start the motor that had died. A shot rang out, hitting the console, just missing her. She ducked and tried a second time to start the boat. Nothing. She could barely feel the panic, so strong was the adrenaline pumping through her. Much of the Texas marsh was like a spiderweb, connecting grasslands with areas of open water that spread out all the way to the Louisiana border. All she needed was to get out of here and disappear.
Seconds later, he was pulling himself back onto the boat, trying to keep his gun aimed at her. This time she had to win, which meant she had to disarm him. She charged at him and grabbed his wrist, then quickly spun the gun away from him, breaking one of his fingers in the process. He cried out in pain and tried to regroup, but it was too late. She now had control of the gun, and him. She moved quickly again, tackling him and pinning him to the bottom of the boat with the gun aimed at his head.
“I wouldn’t move if I were you. Turn over onto your stomach. Now.”
A second later he complied. She pressed her knee into his back, unwilling to take any chances as she tied his wrists securely behind him with the same twine he’d used to secure her, then sat him down and secured his hands to the metal handle on the other side of the console.
“This isn’t over,” he said, still struggling against her. “You need me. You’ll never find your way out of here.”
“I grew up around here, so I think I can manage,” she said, trying to start the boat.
“Maybe, but you won’t make it far. And how are you going to manage when my boss shows up?”
“So the plan was for you to take me to your boss?” She didn’t buy that lie. She’d heard him say he’d meet them, but what if they could track him if he didn’t show up? She tried to work through what she knew, but it wasn’t enough. Who were they and why did they want her? If this didn’t have to do with Nico, then maybe they were planning to use her as leverage for some reason, but again, why? She wasn’t worth anything financially, and if they were looking for a ransom payout from the McKennas, it would have made more sense to take a family member.
“Why were you supposed to grab me?”
“Don’t know. Don’t care. I just did what I was told.”
So he’d been hired to do the dirty work. But there was no more time for questions. She needed to get the boat going and out of here, because if he was right, it wouldn’t be long until “they” found her.
She tried to start the engine again. The boat emitted a loud grinding noise, then nothing. Seconds dragged past. Her heart hammered inside her chest. Papps had taught her how to drive these shallow-bottom boats, but dealing with a bullet embedded in the controls had never been in the instruction manual. And, on top of that, there was another problem she had to deal with. Someone out there wanted her, and she needed to make sure she avoided them at all costs. If she couldn’t get out of here now, what was she supposed to do?
She glanced around. To the right was an endless field of marshy wetlands. To the left she could see the ocean. If they had found Papps, the authorities would be looking for her by now, but what if the men after her found her first? Here in the open she felt like a sitting duck.
She grabbed his phone and tried to place a call to 911, but there was no signal. If she couldn’t use the phone to her advantage, she needed to make sure it wasn’t used against her as a tracking device. She ripped off the back, pulled out the battery, to ensure the phone couldn’t be traced, then put them both on the console in front of her, still trying to plan her next move. She could wade a few feet to a small island and wait there. One of her fears was that the phone wasn’t the only thing that could be tracked. More than likely the boat had its own GPS tracker as well, often mandated by insurance companies. Which meant that staying with the boat was just as risky as leaving it.
She caught the flash of sun reflecting on metal and felt her stomach clench. The familiar sound of a motor roared as it sped across the water toward her. She didn’t know whether it was friend or foe behind the wheel. She needed to see them before they saw her. She stuffed a gag into her captive’s mouth to keep him quiet, then used the fiberglass push pole to move the boat deeper into the thick reeds.
Seconds later, she slid out of the boat into the cold water that was almost waist high and started for the embankment, still needing to know if it was a local patrol boat or someone else before she caught anyone’s attention. The drawback of leaving the bad guy in the boat was that there was always the possibility he could eventually get away and she’d lose him as a bargaining chip, but that couldn’t be helped. She held the gun tightly in her fingers, praying that whoever was driving the boat was someone who would help her and not someone who wanted her dead.