At least now the men were firing at him and Matt, two people who could fire back.
Brett rolled and got to his feet, sloshing in water as he made his way toward the cabin. Blackwood was still firing in the direction where he’d been. All he had to do was circle around behind Blackwood and take him by surprise.
The boat was listing heavily. Brett had nearly made it all the way around the cabin when a wave sloshed over the side and the boat began to capsize. He tried to catch himself, but he was thrown into the water, and his Glock went flying.
He pitched downward and instinctively scissored his legs hard to head back to the surface.
Blackwood had been thrown into the salty waves just as he had—but Blackwood still had his gun.
The man smiled at him and aimed.
He never fired.
It was as if a gray torpedo rammed the man, hard and sure. Blackwood seemed to fly through the water, his mouth opened in a scream of pain.
A dolphin!
Cocoa was there, saving his life.
He shot up to the surface for a breath. Twenty feet away, he saw Blackwood surface, gurgling and screaming in pain, thrashing desperately to stay afloat.
He would go after Blackwood. But not until...
“Brett!”
It was Lara, just a few feet away, swimming strongly toward him. He drove toward her and threw his arms around her, and they both began to sink as he caught her to him for a fierce, salty kiss, then kicked hard, propelling them both back up.
“Meg?” he asked anxiously.
“Fine,” she assured him. “Blackwood?”
“Still alive. I’ll go get him,” Brett said. “I’d like to kill him.”
“Don’t do that,” Lara said. “He got involved because he’s dying from something neurological, too. Let him rot away with it. Serves him right for thinking he could kill others to cure himself.”
He left Lara treading water by the ruins of the two boats and made his way to Blackwood. The man bellowed and tried to move away, but he was clearly in pain and finding it hard to breathe; Cocoa had evidently broken several of his ribs.
As Brett shook his head and closed in on the man, he saw that the Coast Guard cutter, with Diego and Lieutenant Gunderson at the bow, had nearly reached them.
“Grant Blackwood, you are under arrest,” he said, and gripped the man in a lifesaving hold.
Blackwood truly deserved to live until he met the agony of his natural end.
Epilogue
Brett had never really thought of his house as a home, but in the weeks since the arrests of Blackwood and Tomas Barillo, Lara had taken to staying at his place.
And since Grady had insisted that she take a short break from work, she had been able to make it something like her own home, too.
Little things changed the place.
Like the flowers she liked to have in the house, the pictures of the parents she’d lost and the aunt who had raised her, pictures of her and Meg and more. There was also the scent of her soap and shampoo and perfume, lingering lightly and teasingly on the air.
And major things changed it.
Like waking up to find that she was beside him. And realizing why he’d cared so much about Miguel and Maria. They’d had what he’d always wanted: the knowledge that you wanted to wake up that way every single day for the rest of your life.
Because his house had become a home, he had Grady, Rick and Adrianna over, along with Diego, Meg and Matt, on the day that Adrianna and Dr. Amory were released from the hospital. He felt they deserved the best explanation he and his fellow agents could give.
They had a barbecue with fish and meat, salads, corn on the cob and key lime pie for dessert. And afterward they sat in the back and watched the sun set and the moon rise as they talked.
Grady shook his head in puzzlement. “How on earth did Grant Blackwood meet up with Tomas Barillo?”
“At the hospital,” Brett said. “Grant was in the process of discovering that he was going to rot away for the next few years and then die. Tomas Barillo was there with Anthony, learning that his brother might not have long to live and stewing in the knowledge that he himself didn’t command enough respect from the rank and file to take control once his brother was dead. It would be nice to think that Tomas just wanted his brother to live. He didn’t. He was afraid that when Anthony died, the ‘family’ would fall apart, leaving him with nothing.