“I was posing as an EPA official, claiming that Miguel had toxic gasses being emitted through his basement.”
“Posing?”
“Yeah. You know, undercover.”
“Undercover bounty hunter?” she quips, disbelieving.
“You don’t know much about my business.”
“Then explain why you pulled me away from the police rescue?”
“I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about. The only one around here doing any rescuing is me.”
Just then, we drift into a sandbar. The moment Farrington gets a foothold she throws her bent elbow back, driving it forcefully into my nose.
“Fuck!” I hiss under my breath, pulling the night vision goggles off my eyes and onto my head.
She finds her legs and tries running into the trees that are scattered like patches in the swamp refuge. But my fingers snag the hem of her dress and pull her back to me. She falls against me.
“Don’t do that again,” I warn, getting a secure grip on her arm. As she struggles, the muddy water splashes up between us. “Farrington, STOP!” Both of her wrists are now locked in my fists. “Try to think clearly. I haven’t hurt you. I got you out of there.”
Her dark eyes catch a hint of moonlight and flash angrily at me. I make my mannerism gentler. “I get it, you’re confused and terrified. What you’ve been through is indescribable.”
Her brow presses down over her forehead in a scowl as her head tilts suspiciously—and I have terribly fucked timing, but I can’t help but notice just how beautiful she is.
My thumb grazes against her cheek to wipe the soil that’s streaked across her fair skin, ready to sting her eye.
“I promise I’m going to get you somewhere safe. And failure is not an option for me.”
After a deep breath, her body seems to relax a bit.
“Look.” I crook my head to the left and point with my eyes. “There’s a rowboat at our nine o’clock. We can get to the river much faster, and not being gator bait would be an added bonus.”
“I can’t see a boat. How can you?” She leans back away from me.
“Night vision.” I give a sign of trust by letting her wrist go and tapping the goggles now resting on top of my head. “You can hear Miguel’s dogs in the distance. We don’t have much time.”
“Let me see the boat.” She indicates the goggles.
I hesitate. If she throws them away, we’re both fucked. “If I hold them.”
She nods, and I position them over her eyes and rotate her head in the correct direction.
“See it now?”
“Yes.”
“Okay then, we’re going to move nice and slow together.” I realign the glasses over my face. “I’ll hold you.” I can’t trust her not to run.
I keep her secured to me in the bend of my arm. After a scan of our surroundings, I push us into the deeper water.
That’s when the head of a huge alligator bursts up from under the dense muck. His wide open jaws and crooked row of jagged, spear-pointed teeth barely miss her foot, and I realize he must have been stalking us and decided to strike while we were in the shallows.
I shove Farrington out of its path and put myself between her and the creature.
“GET TO THE BOAT AND GET OUT OF HERE!” As I say it, the alligator lunges at me.
I counterattack; sliding around behind the behemoth, I grab hold of its body. It’s fucking hard, heavy and massive with a wide girth. I have a second to deduce that it’s got to be a male that weighs somewhere in the vicinity of five hundred pounds. Squeezing my legs around him, my first priority is to grab hold of his mouth to keep it shut. With a few proper moves I can prove to him I’m a foe he doesn’t want to mess with, and I might be able to fend him off and survive this.
If he opens his mouth and gets any piece of me between those massive hinged jaws with five thousand tons of biting torque, I’m severely fucked! If he gets a good grip on me, he’ll go into his death-roll, dragging me under the water while spinning over and over, disorienting me until I either bleed out or drown. Son of bitch can also hold his breath for two hours if he’d like, so either way, if he gets me under the water, I don’t have a fucking chance of surviving.
Farrington reaching the boat is the last thing I see before the alligator flips over and takes us both under.
Chapter Six
Rachel
Any normal man being dragged to his death would be screaming and crying out for help. Any normal man wouldn’t have attempted to fend off an alligator.
My assailant—or rescuer, or whoever he is—isn’t a normal man.
I spy a couple of oars resting in the bottom of the old, battered boat. I grab one and thrust it in the water, ready to row away . . .
And hesitate.
Is he really who he says he is?
Is it all a ploy? Some tactic to keep me in line? The knife guy was just another interim tactic to terrorize me. He never really cut me. So is this part of the brainwashing? Will it turn into something like Stockholm syndrome?
He jumped in front of a freaking alligator to save me and told me to get to the boat and get out of here!
Do I help him?