Abjectly grateful for something to think about besides dying, her panicked brain kicked into overdrive. The sailor in her latched on to the problem his instructions posed. His orders were easier said than done. And frankly, she’d rather have the bastards shooting toward her pointed prow and the compact living quarters inside it than at her stern where the engines…and gas tanks…were housed.
The black boat slowed abruptly and turned hard to face them. Its engines roared a challenge. Coming in for a head-on pass, like a knight on a black charger. She dared not get into a contest of straight runs against the larger, faster boat. It would eat them alive. She had to keep them both going in circles. Use her more agile boat and tighter turn radius to her advantage. Keep speed out of the mix altogether.
The other boat accelerated. Coming straight at them. Her passenger grabbed the top of the short windshield to steady himself and his weapon.
“Don’t get comfortable,” she called. “I’m going to turn hard right just in front of him and you’ll get a better shot to your left. We’re going to send up a hell of a wake and it’s going to rock him violently, so time your shots accordingly.”
He spared her a startled glance. Then he grinned at her, a fleeting expression that passed across his face almost too fast to see. But she caught the flash of white, the sexy lift of the corner of his mouth. His eyes briefly glowed whiskey-warm—and then the smile was gone. He was gone. With a bunch and spring of powerful thighs, he’d leaped aft to crouch behind the seats.
The distance between the two boats closed shockingly fast. She made out the face of the other boat’s driver, a swarthy man with death in his eyes. A second man stood up in the passenger’s seat, brandishing some sort of machine gun over the windshield.
He wasn’t looking at her, though. He was searching the deck of her vessel for her passenger. The black boat’s engines roared even louder. Obviously the other driver expected to make a straight, high-speed pass and let the gunmen duke it out.
Wrongo, buckwheat. Just a few more seconds… almost…there! She yanked off the throttles and whipped the steering wheel over to the right, standing the Baby Doll up practically on her starboard side. As the port propeller came back down in the water, Kinsey jammed in the power. The boat leaped forward, up and over its own wake. Her prow slammed down and stabilized, giving her passenger a great look at the black boat.
Clearly stunned by her maneuver, the other driver slammed his throttles back and jerked right to avoid a collision. They’d have never hit…the Baby Doll had cut across his path too fast. But the guy’s sharp turn combined with her wake hitting him full broadside rocked the big cigarette violently.
The other gunman staggered, grabbing for his windshield and hanging on desperately to avoid getting dumped out of the boat altogether.
“Now!” she screamed.
Her companion popped up, firing hard and fast. The crackling sound of bullets ripping into fiberglass peppered the air. The other gunman lurched left to face them…just in time to clutch at his chest and topple over into the water. Swear to God, it looked like a stunt straight out of a Hollywood movie. Except that rapidly spreading scarlet in the water was no movie prop.
And then the Baby Doll danced away, arcing away behind the black cigarette. The other driver craned his neck around, trying to keep her in visual range. His engines roared and the chase was on again. The guy tried to cut off the angle of her curve and come straight at her again, but she hadn’t grown up on the water for nothing. She continued turning back and forth until the black cigarette was forced into following the same turning track behind her.
“Hang on,” she warned her passenger. “We’re about to zig right and hope he zags left!” She whipped her boat into a counterturn, arcing back into the path of the other boat. It was a maneuver an old Vietnam fighter pilot had shown her once. He called it a counterturn. Whatever it was called, it was highly effective. In a matter of seconds, her prow was pointed straight at the black boat’s starboard side. Her client jumped up in the passenger seat and raked the black boat with automatic gunfire. Fist-size holes abruptly marred the sleek black hull.
“Lower!” she called. “Down by the water line!”
He didn’t acknowledge her instruction. But, he must’ve changed his aim, for immediately a new line of fissures erupted along the black hull mere inches above the water. The fiberglass cracked and shattered under the relentless spray of lead. She peeled hard left, sending up a rooster tail of water that had to have drenched the other driver. If she was lucky, the other guy’s hull should be badly compromised and starting to take on water.
“Get down!” her companion shouted.
She ducked as popping noises burst all around her. The Baby Doll shuddered as something—a whole bunch of somethings—hit her. Not good. The other gunman was firing back. Kinsey slammed the throttles forward. The Baby Doll bounded away from the spray of lead. The sound of the other boat diminished. She looked over her shoulder. The black boat wasn’t giving chase. For that matter, it looked to be riding noticeably low in the water.
She guided the Baby Doll around a rocky point and the crippled black boat disappeared from view. They raced onward for another two minutes or so, flying down the coast of Tortola, the largest of the British Virgin Islands.
“I’ve got to slow down and check out my boat soon,” she called. Although the Baby Doll didn’t handle like it was taking on water, it was a half-million-dollar piece of equipment, and it wasn’t hers. Her father would kill her if she sank his favorite toy.
“Do it,” her passenger replied.
She powered back to idle, and the sudden quiet was a shock. “Take the wheel while I have a look at the hull.”
She stepped out of the cockpit and, balancing carefully, made her way out onto the forward hull. She stretched out on her stomach and leaned over the edge of the boat to have a look at the damage. A series of dents marred the cotton-candy-pink hull, but shockingly, it didn’t look like there were any holes. Stunned, she shifted over the other side of the boat. No hull breaches there, either. Thank God.
“How’s it looking?” the man asked.
“Fine,” she replied in disbelief. She pressed to her feet and made her way back to the deck.
He offered her a hand as she stepped over the windshield. Their palms met, his large and callused and impossibly gentle. An actual tremor passed through her. And she wasn’t a trembly kind of girl, thank you very much. Wow. She hopped down, still holding his hand. He waited a millisecond too long to release her fingers. But she noticed. And her stomach did a neat flip.
She cleared her throat nervously. “None of the bullets seem to have punctured the hull. Now that I think about it, I remember hearing something about this boat having a hybrid epoxy hull that uses layers of Kevlar instead of fiberglass or carbon cloth.”
Her passenger’s eyebrows shot straight up. “A bulletproof boat?”
“Sort of.” Belatedly, caution speared through her. “Who are you? And who were those guys chasing you?”
“It doesn’t matter. For what it’s worth, my employer will pay for any damage to the boat incurred while you saved my a—” he amended, “my behind.”
“Not to worry. Anyone who can afford
