Flood Rising (Jenna Flood #1)

Sand cushioned Jenna’s fall, but before she could even begin thinking about what to do, she felt a weight settle onto her chest. In the faint glow of the starlight, she could see the silhouetted form of her attacker sitting astride her chest, pinning her body and left arm beneath his straddled legs.

Noah’s voice flashed through her mind, an ancient movie commentary that seemed grossly inappropriate at the time, but came to her now as welcome knowledge. Three good punches to the kidneys will put a man down and make him piss blood for a week.

Her free hand sprang to action before the memory faded. She struck hard and fast, delivering two solid punches to Raul’s back, just below the ribs, sending a pulse of pressure through the kidneys. Raul shouted in pain. “Bitch!” He caught her arm before the third punch could connect.

She struggled to buck him off, but the effort ended with a blow to the side of her head that nearly knocked her senseless. There was a flash of blue across her vision, like the inside of a lightning bolt. Her ears rang, and the taste of blood filled her mouth.

She knew she could not stop fighting. To give up was to surrender the rest of her life to a fate that seemed like the stuff of bad dreams.

I’d rather die than let them put me on that plane.

The thought of dying snapped her out of her despair. Maybe she had misjudged the brothers, but they were still just a couple of small-time thugs. Jenna had survived more than one attempt on her life this night, from people a lot tougher and a lot smarter than Carlos and Raul, and she was not about to let these assholes stop her from figuring out who was after her and why.

As the ringing in her ears relented, she realized that Raul was almost face to face with her, shouting threats and obscenities, showering her face with spittle.

“Okay!” she shouted, or rather tried to. Blood and saliva had gathered at the back of her throat, and when she opened her mouth, it triggered her gag reflex. She turned her head, spat and then tried again. “Okay. I give up.”

Like hell I do.

Raul seemed to hit the pause button on his rage. “I warned you what would happen.”

“I know you did. I’m sorry.” It was another lie, but she didn’t care if he believed it or not. What mattered was his reaction to what came next. “I didn’t tell you the truth about Noah. About my father.”

“You think I care about that?”

“You should,” she said, choking on another mouthful of blood. Her tongue probed the inside of one cheek where Raul’s blow had shredded it against her teeth. “He’s dead.”

All the fight went out of Raul, but he did not move, did not release her. “Dead?”

“Someone killed him. Some very bad, very connected people, and they’re after me now. That’s why I came to you.” Jenna paused, partly to let the words sink in, and partly because she wasn’t sure exactly how to play this wild card.

The pressure at her chest abruptly vanished, but before she could think about trying to turn it to her advantage, Raul knotted his hand in her hair and hauled her erect. A whimper of pain escaped her lips, the motion aggravating all of her injuries all at once. He yanked her forward, striding away. She had no choice but to follow, jogging to keep up, a dog on a leash.

She had run much further than she realized. The Corvette’s headlamps were just pinpricks of light, far down the landing strip, a beacon guiding them onward. The trek was an excruciating ordeal. Raul kept tugging the handful of hair in his fist. But Jenna used the time to concentrate on what she would say next. If she got this wrong, she would have very few options left, and all of them were of a very final nature.

I won’t die without knowing why Noah was killed, she promised herself.

Carlos met them halfway, and even in the darkness, Jenna could see the laughter in his eyes. “This one’s a tiger. She almost got away from you, hermanito.”

“Maybe I need to tame her,” Raul answered. His words were clipped, his breathing rapid, whether from the exertion of the chase or from anticipation, Jenna could not say.

“Better not,” Carlos answered. “She’s worth a lot more if she’s still got her cherry.” He pushed his face close to Jenna. “How ‘bout it, girl? You still a virgin?”

Jenna almost spat in his cold, calculating face, but stopped herself. Angry people were easy to manipulate but only if the anger wasn’t directed at the person trying to do the manipulating.

“She says her old man is dead,” Raul intoned. “Someone offed him.”

“Yeah? Damn, all of a sudden it’s like Christmas. I’ll send a ‘thank you’ card to whoever did it.”

“You don’t want to mess with the people who did it,” Jenna managed to say. She hoped she had judged the brothers correctly. A taunt like that might very well push them away from the thing she planned to use as bait.

“Oh?” Carlos made a clucking noise. “The captain made some very bad friends, did he? I’ll bet he wishes he’d done business with us instead.”