tried to talk past the pain. “What … prop—?”
The fist slammed into him again. This time into the side of his face. He didn’t see it coming, didn’t anticipate the force of the blow as it caught him high on the cheekbone. He thought he was going to pass out, white stars swirling in his mind. He could feel something warm running down the side of his face; then he tasted blood.
“You better tell us where it is, Mr Roth. Because if you don’t things are going to get nasty.”
David barely had the strength to shake his head.
“He’s fucking with us,” came the angry growl from Thomas. “He has it. He knows where it is.” And then he slipped his hand behind his back and brought out a knife. It was a folding Kershaw, a wicked-looking blade with a rubberised handle. He brought it up to David’s chest, the blade cold against his skin. David held his breath and felt his whole body go numb. And then it turned to ice.
“David?” A woman’s voice, calling from the jetty. “David, are you there?”
Kathy.
The knife was against David’s chest, his arms pinned back and the hand still in his hair. He couldn’t move. He was thinking furiously, imagining what Bruce and Thomas would do to Kathy, how they would use her to make him talk. And because he couldn’t give them what they wanted, they wouldn’t stop. They would go on hurting her, doing God knows what to her.
“David?” she called again. Both Bruce and Thomas looked up as they heard the boarding steps knock against the side of the boat.
David moved. He didn’t have a choice really. It was now or never and he had to get away, had to get to Kathy before they did. He smashed his forehead into Thomas’s nose, feeling the bones in the man’s face break; then he pushed forward with all his might. The knife slid along his sternum. It was a chance he knew he had to take, but he also knew that the bones in his chest would deflect its edge, that no blade would penetrate any vital organs. He didn’t even feel the blade cutting him as he kicked his knee up into Bruce’s crotch. Both men went down.
David was faintly surprised that he’d had the strength to do either, but he didn’t dwell on his success. He turned and began pulling himself up the companionway. He managed to get the top half of his body out before someone grabbed his leg. It was Bruce. David supposed he should have been grateful that it wasn’t the knife-wielding Thomas who recovered first. Without thinking, he lashed out with his free foot and kicked Bruce in the face. The man cried out and went down again, and David scrambled out of the companionway and almost fell into the wheelhouse.
Kathy was there, standing just beside the main mast. She wore a black pencil skirt and was carrying a pair of high heels under her arm.
“David?” She stared at his face and chest in horror as he stumbled to his feet. “You’re bleeding!”
He heard swearing from below, heard Bruce start up the steps while Thomas lurched through the galley to get to the forward companionway to cut him off.
“Kathy!” David rasped. “Get off!”
Bruce’s head and arm appeared from the saloon, his bottom lip smeared red and a bloody gap where his gold-capped tooth had been. Then Thomas barged from the forward companionway, blood streaming from his nose.
“Kathy!” David yelled. “Run!”
She stayed stock-still, staring in horror as the two strangers emerged from below. David swore and lunged for her.
There was no way past Thomas, who was closest to the boarding steps, or past Bruce, who was now almost all the way out of the saloon. There was only one place left to go. David stumbled into Kathy and grabbed her by the arm. “Jump!” he shouted.
CHAPTER TEN
All David felt was water rising up to meet him, and the murky green of the marina smacking into him. He was underwater, drowning, the ocean gushing into his lungs. Suddenly, the nightmare was coming true.
There was no sound, just the hiss of his own escaping breath around him, the churning of the water above him. He couldn’t tell how deep he was, couldn’t tell which way was up or down. He was floating in the deep, somewhere between the surface and the floor of the ocean, an indeterminable depth. Was he dreaming? Had he hit his head falling from the boat?
Kathy. He looked down, or in the direction he thought was down, searching for her in the bottomless water below him. And then he saw it, something rising, reaching for him, rising up to drag him down, to pull him under. He tried to swim up, to get away, but he couldn’t. He was trapped in the nightmare, in the thick, suffocating ocean.
He broke the surface in a spray of gushing air, took half a breath and then promptly sank beneath the water again. The hands gripping him heaved him up once more.
“Mr Roth!” came the spluttered demand. “Come on, Mr Roth! Swim!”
Someone had him around the chest and was trying to tow him towards the jetty between two boats. David struggled feebly through the water.
“That’s it,” came the gasped encouragement from the man behind him. “Keep going.”
Baumann.
David took several deeper breaths and then gasped for Kathy.
“She’s safe!” Baumann told him, pushing David towards the wharf. “She’s out.”
David could see her, kneeling on the jetty, her hair matted wetly to her head, her blouse almost transparent against her skin. There were others, a white man and a black man in uniform. Bernard King, the club’s commodore. And Blessing, the security guard.
It took all three of them and a great deal of pushing from Baumann to fish him out of the water. David ended up lying on his back on the jetty gasping for air, his feet still in the water, and Kathy hovering over him, anxiously wiping hair out of his eyes.
“David? David!”
Bernard King stared at David as he lay there, shocked at the watery blood smearing his chest and the side of his face; then Bernard looked at Baumann, who levered himself out of the water.
“Baumann? What the hell’s going on?” Bernard demanded.
Baumann shook his head, water spraying everywhere. “Don’t know, Mr King,” he said. “But I think we’d better make sure those two are gone.”
David hoped he was talking about Bruce and Thomas. “Be careful,” he managed to gasp at them. “One has a knife.”
Baumann and Bernard King glanced at each other; then Bernard motioned for Blessing to accompany them. They left David and Kathy on the side of the jetty and made for the security gate where the two thugs had escaped.
David put a hand over the gash on his chest. Kathy put a shaking hand over his. She pressed down hard. “You need a doctor,” she told him in a trembling voice.
David shook his head. “I’m fine,” he said, his voice husky.
Kathy tried to help as he slowly sat up. David groaned, pressing harder as he felt the first twinge of pain in his chest.
“David,
