Page 75 of The Sailor

Relief almost made Zach fall to his knees. “Do it. Call them. Call everyone.”

“On it,” Jonah said, already walking to the cockpit and picking up the mouthpiece to the radio.

As he listened to Marit’s friend and fellow lobsterman put out the request to be on the lookout for Pearson’s boat, and explain why, Zach swallowed hard. Marit was out there somewhere. She had to be all right. She simply had to be. The alternative was unacceptable.

Marit came back to consciousness in a flash. One second she was out, and the next she was fully aware of the sounds and smells around her. But she was smart enough to stay still, exactly as she was. To keep her eyes closed. She needed intel.

All the information she’d learned from the countless self-defense classes came back to her in a rush. Be smart. Think. Get away. Those were the tenets. She couldn’t do that last one, not at the moment, but she could definitely do the others.

She was lying on her stomach and obviously on a boat. The rocking motion and the smell of the sea were so deeply ingrained in her brain and blood, she knew in a heartbeat that she wasn’t on dry land.

Her head hurt, and her muscles felt as if she’d been lifting weights forty pounds too heavy for her frame.

Fucking Lucas. He’d tased her. Then rendered her unconscious. Had he stolen the Wave Rider? Hurt Eliot and Jonah? Panicked, she took a risk and opened her eyes a fraction of an inch. She saw worn and weathered boards in front of her face. Boards that had splinters.

So she wasn’t on the Wave Rider. No way would Eliot let his boat deteriorate to this condition. Which meant she had to be on Lucas’s boat, the Men At Work. He’d freaking kidnapped her. But where was he taking her? And what did he intend to do with her once they arrived at their destination?

Immediately, Marit’s mind ran through scenarios. It seemed most likely he was going to throw her overboard. The water this time of year was frigid. She wouldn’t last long if he did leave her in the water. She could swim very well, but her body would be no match for fifty-degree temperatures.

She couldn’t think of any other reason why he’d have taken her on his boat other than to throw her into the sea. She had to prevent that at all costs. The water meant death and no future with Zach. No Thanksgiving at his house. No first Christmas or birthdays or seeing Britt and Chad’s baby being born. She wouldn’t be able to see how Linc and Harper’s relationship played out. Because there was definitely something between those two, even if no one wanted to admit it.

She wasn’t going out at the hands of Lucas fucking Pearson. She’d have to wait to make her move. She was building the kind of life she’d always wanted, and she was going to fight for it. Do whatever it took to survive.

It was eerily quiet as they moved through the water. She couldn’t see where they were or where they were heading from her prone position on the bottom of the boat, but she wasn’t going to risk him knowing she was conscious.

The longer it took for them to get to wherever they were going, the angrier Marit became. She hadn’t done one damn thing for Lucas to feel as if he had the right to kidnap her. She worked hard, didn’t bother anyone. She should’ve let the Young brothers have free rein to do whatever they wanted to the man instead of insisting they back off.

Well, hindsight was twenty-twenty, as they always said. Marit wondered who “they” were. Who came up with these sayings?

Aware that her mind was wandering, she struggled to concentrate on the here and now. She needed to be ready for whatever Lucas had planned for her. For a moment, she worried that maybe he was going to meet up with Thorne, or another one of their buddies who had a thing against women working in the lobster industry. But she’d deal with that if and when it happened.

She had no idea how long she lay on the bottom of Lucas’s boat, pretending to still be unconscious, but when the vessel began to slow, she decided it was time to “wake up.” The last thing she wanted was to still be pretending to be unconscious when Lucas decided to make his move. She wasn’t going to make whatever he had planned easy for him.

Groaning, she rolled to her back. She wasn’t acting with that part. She was extremely sore from the jolts of electricity Lucas had shot through her body. It was also painful to swallow, most likely from where he’d wrapped his hand around her throat.

Pushing her aches and pains down, Marit opened her eyes fully as she sat up and looked around as if in a daze, trying to see if she recognized where they were, but also hoping to spot something she could use as a weapon in her immediate vicinity. She didn’t see anything . . . but then she mentally smacked her head. She had a weapon on her own tool belt. She always carried a knife in case she needed to quickly cut a rope that may have gotten tangled around her feet.

She didn’t dare reach for it; she didn’t want to bring Lucas’s attention to the fact that she had a weapon. But knowing she wasn’t completely defenseless was a huge relief. Gave her a little more confidence.

“What . . . ? Where am I!?” she muttered dramatically.

“Oh, good timing,” Lucas said with a sneer, as he stared down at her from his place behind the wheel of the vessel. “Have a good nap?”

What an asshole.

“Lucas? What happened?” Marit was doing her best to put on a show. To pretend she didn’t even recall that Lucas had attacked her. Maybe if he didn’t think she remembered what happened, it would give her a bit of time before he did whatever came next.

Lucas had steered his boat toward a small island. One Marit didn’t recognize. Not that she knew the names of every island off the coast of Maine, there were way too many, but if it was one she passed every day, she would’ve recognized it. There was no telling how far away Lucas had taken them from Rockville. She didn’t know how long she’d been unconscious, so it was impossible to know exactly where they were.

Marit’s body lurched as Lucas ran his boat aground, jamming the front of his boat into the soft sand of the island. There was a tiny little beach of sorts. Just enough sand to serve as a kind of dock.

Lucas jumped out and grabbed a rope. He splashed through the shallow water toward shore, obviously planning on tying up the Men At Work so it wouldn’t float away.

This was her chance! Marit quickly stood—and found she was surprisingly, irritatingly wobbly on her feet. She stumbled toward the controls of the boat, but to her dismay, Lucas had taken the key with him. Damn it! She’d been hoping to steal his boat right out from under him.

The next thing she tried was calling for help.

Marit grabbed for the radio and keyed the mike. But nothing happened. She frantically pushed buttons on the front of the radio, to no avail.