Lily swung open the door but didn’t go inside. There was no way she could hide out below deck and leave Chase to face this alone. At the very least she could keep watch. It would be only a matter of seconds before they were spotted.
A few feet away, Chase darted toward the bridge, where he slid behind the instrument panel. She could see the men walking the dock, eyeing each boat they passed. She knew the moment the taller man spotted them. He stopped dead in his tracks and pointed.
“They’ve seen us!” she said to Chase.
“Hang on.” The engines revved as he backed the boat from the slip. He glanced over his shoulder where the men had broken into a run toward them, then jammed the throttle forward.
Lily grasped the safety rail next to the control console just as Chase gunned the engine. The Bertram shot away from the slip like a racehorse out of the gate. Water spewed high into the air. Chase hit the trim with the heel of his hand and the vessel smoothed out.
A gunshot sounded over the roar of the engines. Lily glanced toward the newcomers, saw them stop at the edge of the dock, weapons raised. The boat was thirty feet out and moving rapidly away from the dock, but there was no way it could outrun a bullet.
One of the men fired off two shots in rapid succession, one of which ricocheted off the outrigger inches from her head. Clinging to the safety rail, Lily watched him line up for another shot while the other man spoke into his cell phone and gestured wildly.
Chase took the boat toward the channel, but Lily knew it was only a matter of time before the men came after them.
In moments the dock faded away. Just as she turned to go below deck, the unmistakable sound of an engine sounded behind them. Already, the men had found a boat.
“My God, they’re coming after us!” she shouted to Chase.
He glanced over his shoulder and cursed.
“How did they get a boat so quickly?” she asked.
“Same way we did,” he said. “Stole it.”
A high-pitched zing zipped past her ear.
“Get down!” Chase shouted.
Thwack! Thwack! Thwack!
A volley of bullets slammed into the starboard side of the cabin and the window. Plexiglas and fiberglass exploded, raining down shards on her. The boat lurched. Lily glanced up to see Chase cut the wheel hard to the right. She lost her balance, made a wild grab for the bridge ladder but missed. Terror arced through her like lightning as she reeled backward toward the gunwale. All she could think was that she was about to be flung overboard.
“Lily!”
Chase’s voice cut through the jumble of fear. A scream tore from her throat as she lunged toward the bridge ladder and grabbed the bottom rung with her right hand.
“I’m okay,” she called out.
“Hang tight!” he shouted. “Don’t move!”
Lily hung on for dear life as he swung the boat left in an effort to avoid another volley of bullets. Unable to make it below deck, she clung to the ladder and prayed they survived the ride.
CHASE TOOK the Bertram out of the marina and into the seaport channel, its hull slicing through the water at a dangerous speed. Channel traffic was heavy for this early-morning hour. It seemed more than one boater had taken to the water to ride out the massive power outage, where they had all the comforts of home thanks to engines and batteries.
Chase made the turn and entered the main harbor, but only a fraction of his attention was on outrunning the bastards behind them. He couldn’t get the image of Lily clinging to the ladder out of his head. She’d come very close to going into the water. She’d come even closer to getting shot. The thought of her being hurt, or worse, filled him with a cold, hard terror he’d never before experienced, even in all the years he’d been with the military and Eclipse.
He didn’t like what that told him about his frame of mind. The bottom line was he was letting his emotions get in the way. A mistake he’d seen many a good man make—and pay dearly for in the end, either with his own life, or someone else’s.
Chase wanted to blame his lack of clarity on fatigue or adrenaline or maybe even his lack of communication and tools. He wanted to blame it on anything but the truth: his feelings for Lily and the child she carried.
He tried not to think of that as he shoved the dual throttles forward as far as they would go and headed north. He could see Logan Airport to his right, the Water Transportation Terminal to his left. Twenty yards behind him, a fast-approaching vessel told him they weren’t making much headway.
He pushed the Bertram as hard as he dared, until the odometer needled well into the red zone. But the yacht was no match for the smaller vessel zigzagging through the water twenty yards away.
“They’re following us!”
He glanced to his left to see Lily standing at the bridge ladder, clinging to a rung. More than anything, he wanted to stop and make sure she was all right. He wanted to touch her, take her into his arms and promise her that he would keep her safe.