Page 8 of Beneath Still Waters

“I’ll be right there.” The line went dead.

SEVEN

“Don’t move.” Duke lowered to a crouch at her side. “I think I can get you out of there, but I still think you’ll need to go to the hospital. There’s a lot of blood.”

Nope. Not another hospital. “I went straight down. I should be able to come straight back out.” She gritted her teeth and focused on holding in a persistent scream.

Connor would never understand this. He would feel like this was somehow his fault for letting her out of his sight. This would push him over the edge. “Any chance Connor won’t notice?”

Duke gave a sharp laugh. “No. Not a chance. As to pulling you out. I’m making sure the wood just scratched you. If you’re impaled, then we need an ambulance here before you can move.”

“Duke!” she wanted out. Now.

“I’m looking. You’re demanding, you know that.” He chuckled as he lowered to his knees and got close to her leg with his flashlight.

“Distract me.” She gripped his shoulder, holding on tight, but it didn’t ease the pressure on her leg or help divert her attention.

“See, more demands.” He snorted as he set down the flashlight, then wrapped both hands just above her knee. She had a few seconds to prepare before he inched her leg up.

Pain sliced from her knee to her ankle. She clenched her jaw and threw her head back. Mom always said words like that should never come out of her mouth. Her head pounded as the scent ofthatday returned. Blood. Dirt. A concrete floor.No.She wasn’t there. She was here.

“There. No way you can get out of here without help. I can’t carry you down that ladder.”

“Guess it’s a good thing you came.” Her voice trembled and she swallowed back tears.

“Well, you told me to.” He helped her hobble to a bench built into the far wall. “What were you doing here?”

Her cheeks heated and she focused on her hands in her lap. “I wanted to see if I could find anything.”

“Are you saying my team isn’t capable?” His tone sounded almost offended. “Because that sounds like what you’re saying.”

That wasn’t what she meant to do. “I never said that. You’re the one asking for my help.”

He sighed at her side. “Touché.” He stood and strode back over to the hole she’d made in the floor. “Wait . . .” He crouched then reached for his flashlight once again. “Well . . . that changes everything.”

“What?”Is he intentionally dragging this on?She tried to sit up straighter to see.

Duke glanced up at her and smirked. “If you hadn’t come out here, we wouldn’t have found the motive.”

“For the love of chocolate, will you please tell me what you’re looking at?” Her leg throbbed. “I feel the temp shifting. A gust front is going to blow through soon. We need to get off this boat or we’ll be soaked.”

Duke shook his head. “Can’t. I have to call in a team to pull this out. There’s probably over a hundred pounds of powder down here.”

That was unexpected. “Cocaine? In Piper’s Ridge?” She hadn’t lived here all her life, but for the few she had, drugs weren’t prevalent, especially the hard stuff.

“Probably not meant to stay here. I’ve been hearing that small towns are getting these big shipments. They move them through towns like ours because nobody expects them. Sometimes they're broken up here. Sometimes they're just passing through.”

“Path of least resistance.” Someone had decided to take the closest thing she’d ever thought of as home and turn it into a trafficking pipeline.

“Unfortunately. If we knew where it was headed or where it came from, we could put a plug in the pipeline, but this is the first big bust we’ve had. I’d gotten hints that there was traffic but hadn’t actually seen any proof until now. I didnotexpect to find this in Bailey’s boat.”

He reached for his phone and called dispatch.

The longer she stayed on this case, the more likely that the Cody force would find out she was actively working, and not for them. She closed her eyes and tilted her head so that when she opened them, she’d be forced to look at the damage the floor had done to her leg.

Without sight, she focused on the throbbing with each heartbeat. The heat as the blood ran down her leg. Spikes of pain tore across her leg as the breeze from the broken windows brushed over the torn skin.

“Don’t pass out.”