Her heart felt as if it would explode in her chest by the time she reached the other side of the bridge. Following Chase’s instructions, she veered right and took the crumbling steps to an old wooden pier. Exhausted, her back aching with renewed fervor, she dropped to her knees and gulped great lungfuls of air.
Vaguely, she was aware of the rumble of a boat’s engine as it pulled up to the dock. It crossed her mind that the men had once again found her. Fear gave her the strength to raise her head. A quiver of uncertainty went through her when she saw a man tie off the boat and approach her.
A little voice inside her head warned her to run. But she was too damn tired and in too much pain to move. She didn’t have much fight left in her. Heart pounding, she watched the man approach, realizing belatedly his form was familiar. One she would know anywhere, even in the dark of night.
“Hey, it’s me.”
Chase’s voice washed over her with the comfort of warm waves lapping sun-washed sand. Setting his strong hands beneath her arms, he lifted her to her feet. “Easy. You’re going to be okay. I’ve got you.”
“Where did you get the boat?” she asked, getting her legs beneath her.
“Let’s just say I borrowed it and leave it at that, shall we?”
But Lily knew that wasn’t the case. He’d stolen it. He’d jumped from the bridge onto the boat’s deck and commandeered it from some hapless boater. But she was too tired to argue with him about any of it. Chase might like living on the edge, but she knew him well enough to know that in the end he’d make things right.
“We’ve got to get out of here.” Taking her arm, he started toward the boat.
For the first time, Lily got a good look at the vessel. It was a small Bertram Yacht about twenty-five feet long with an inboard engine and a flying bridge. The name painted on the fiberglass hull almost made her laugh.
The Sea Escape.
Chase helped her onto the boat and dashed to the helm. Reaching down, he flipped several switches then turned a key. The engine choked out a groan and rumbled to life.
Spinning the wheel, he glanced over his shoulder at her. “Get below deck.”
Lily didn’t argue. She tugged open the door to the main cabin. Her back spasmed as she went down the steep steps, and pain gripped her midsection hard enough to make her double over, but it passed quickly.
Below deck, the air was warm and smelled pleasantly of eucalyptus. A tiny kitchen lined the port side. Aft, a small cubbyhole-like bedroom replete with fluffy pillows and several nautical blankets beckoned.
Weak with exhaustion, back pain and the aftereffects of adrenaline, Lily kicked off her uniform shoes and took the single step up to the sleeping quarters. Just for a little while, she assured herself and crawled onto the mattress.
Within minutes of closing her eyes, she drifted into darkness.
THE HAIRS ON CHASE’S NECK prickled uncomfortably as he steered the small Bertram Yacht between the piers beneath the Summer Street Bridge. From above he could hear the two gunmen arguing. He couldn’t make out their words above the rumble of the engines and the wind that had kicked up off the ocean to the east, sending the dark clouds skidding across the sky, but he knew they were ticked off because their prey had gotten away.
Sweat trickled between his shoulder blades as he idled beneath the Congress Street Bridge, hopeful the jacket and hat he’d found on the boat shielded him from detection.
The water grew choppy as he steered the vessel beneath the Evelyn Moakley Bridge. Normally, the high-rise buildings of Boston’s financial district would be waking up shortly, the lights, computers and machines coming to life, the traffic snarled, the pedestrians harried. Today, the buildings would stand vacant. It was as if, despite the daylight, the entire world was still trapped in a never-ending blackout.
Keeping his eyes on the bridges and the sidewalks that ran across the channel at city-block-sized intervals, Chase took the Bertram past the John Joseph Moakley Courthouse and headed southeast toward the World Trade Center. More than anything, he wanted to find a safe place for Lily. A place where they could park the boat and he could make some calls and figure out what was going on.
Easier said than done with a blackout to contend with, armed gunmen shooting at them at every turn—and a very pregnant and exhausted woman in tow. But Chase admitted Lily Garrett was not just any pregnant woman. She was the woman he’d once loved more than his own life. The woman who carried his child. The only woman who’d ever gotten to him. The one woman capable of tying his gut into knots.
Spinning the wheel, he made a sharp left into a small marina where fishing boats, a popular Boston dinner cruise ship and a few sailboats bobbed in their slips. Flipping a switch on the control panel, he idled as quietly as possible into the marina.