Flood Rising (Jenna Flood #1)

She got her hands up and caught the man’s arm once more. His superior strength began to overwhelm her defense. Her efforts barely slowed his thrust, but she managed to twist to the side as the blade rammed forward.

Something tugged at her left arm, preventing her from moving any further, and her entire arm, from shoulder to fingertips, swelled with what felt like an injection of liquid fire. A cry slipped past her lips, but with the pain came a strange clarity, as if time had slowed to a crawl. She saw the look of consternation on her assailant’s face. He wasn’t looking at her. His attention was on the knife buried to the hilt in Jenna’s left biceps—almost exactly the same spot where she had earlier caught a grazing bullet. The blade pierced her arm and pinned her to the seat back. She could see the rise and fall of his chest and feel his breath on her face. His eyes broadcast his intentions as he grasped the knife hilt, gathering his strength to pull it free like Excalibur from the stone.

No you don’t, Jenna thought, as she brought her knees up into man’s chest.

The blow, coupled with the sudden deceleration as Jenna’s foot came off the pedal, staggered him back. He recovered quickly and launched himself at her again.

Jenna jammed her foot down on the pedal and the engine revved again. As the boat lurched forward, she tried to pull back on the steering lever, but nothing happened. Her arm, still nailed in place by the blade, refused to grip the control handle. The man rocked with the sudden acceleration, but he kept his balance and took a menacing step toward her.

Something about his stance triggered a memory—or rather a muscle memory—and Jenna reacted exactly as she had learned in the dojo. She got her free hand up and grabbed a handful of the man’s shirt. She pulled him forward, adding her energy to his own, and brought her knee up hard.

Although he probably outweighed her by a hundred pounds, his momentum made him seem fifty pounds lighter. He flew past her, arms flailing. An unseen force seized hold of him, tearing him out of her grasp.

Even though she could not see what was happening behind her, Jenna knew with sickening certainty that the man had been pulled into the exposed propeller. There was a wet grinding noise as the fan blades pureed flesh and bones. The engine whined in protest for a moment, struggling against the sudden workload, and then idled down to an almost peaceful rumble.

Jenna forced the vision of the man’s grisly demise from her thoughts. She felt weak, stretched to her limits, almost numb with pain, but the battle was not over. Zack was out there, and the fight would not end until one of them was dead.

She saw Mercy, rising cautiously from her place of concealment, straining to find Jenna in the darkness. “Jenna? Are you okay?”

Jenna refused to admit the truth aloud but she didn’t have the strength to lie. With her free hand, she found the hilt of the knife that held her fixed in place like a bug on a pin. The blade had pierced the meaty part of her arm but had missed the bone. Blood oozed from the wound. She knew that removing a penetrating object from a puncture wound could cause a fatal hemorrhage, but under the circumstances, it was a risk she felt she had to take. She gripped the hilt and pulled, triggering a throb of agony, but the knife refused to budge. After a few seconds of struggling, she gave up and turned her attention back to the more immediate threat.

Reaching across her body, she worked the steering lever with her right hand, and brought the boat around until she found Zack’s boat. She was surprised to see that he wasn’t coming around to face her but was motoring away, as if fleeing a battlefield. For a fleeting moment, Jenna wondered if the demise of his comrades had broken his will to fight. Then she spied movement above him, and grasped the reason for his retreat.

The drone dropped out of the sky, swooping toward them like a hunting raptor. Jenna stared at it, almost hypnotized by its graceful motion.

Mercy made her way back to the pilot’s chair. “You’re hurt.”

Jenna barely heard. Her mind wrestled with this new tactic. When the UAV had buzzed them before, she had assumed it was to block their escape and give Zack and the others a chance to catch up. So why…?

The answer came in a premonition. Even though her first impulse was to reject it as unbelievable, there could be no other explanation. In some distant control room, a decision had been made: destroy Jenna Flood, no matter the cost.

“They’re going to kamikaze the drone.”

Mercy stared back as if she’d spoken in a foreign language. Jenna tore her gaze from the approaching aircraft and looked into Mercy’s eyes. “You have to jump.”

“Jump?”