Immediately Buck signaled to Spencer, and together they began unwrapping the explosive rope from around the box.
Several twists later, they lifted the lid.
They peered inside.
Tabitha lay within, her eyes wide open. But her body was completely still.
Spencer almost panicked. Was she alive?
Buck clearly wasn’t as easily spooked. He signaled to Tabitha using universal sign language that everything was under control, and she should feel free to move.
Tabitha grinned around her regulator, raised a hand, and gave them an okay signal with her thumb and forefinger.
It was the most beautiful thing Spencer had ever seen.
CHAPTER 33
“I’m okay,”Tabitha kept telling Spencer, once they made it to shore. His arms were wrapped tightly around her as they sat on the tailgate of the SUV, and she didn’t think the embrace was going to end any time soon.
That was okay with her.
Spencer’s brothers had Ghillie on the ground, ten feet away, and every time he turned his head toward her to sneer, one of them would—not so gently—nudge it the other way with their boot.
Tabitha had the urge to go kick the bastard herself, but she was too comfortable in Spencer’s overly-protective embrace to bother.
Screw Ghillie.
Her attention was more focused on getting Spencer to believe her when she said that everything was actually fine inside her head. She had to make him understand that her brain wasn’t fried from being shut in a box.
“Spencer. I’m good. Really. Was I freaked out? Of course. But claustrophobic? No way. Would I work in small subs if I had that propensity? Never.” She answered her own, rhetorical questions. “Idid notpanic.” There was a little bit of a lie to that.When she hadn’t known whether or not Ghillie would knock her out, she’d suffered a few moments of alarm that, passed out, she’d lose her regulator and immediately drown. That concern had been mitigated when, still conscious, he’d secured the lid over her.
“I knew you’d come get me,” she continued. “Any anxiety I suffered came solely from not knowing what the asshole had done with Sheila. And now that you’ve told me she’s okay…” She choked up.
Yeah.Tabitha couldn’t get any more words out. Everything had seemed so tenuous, but despite all odds, her sister had somehow found the Bangor Police Department; had pranced in like they’d all know exactly who she was, and that they’d take care of everything from there.
Which of course, they had.
Tears of relief slid down Tabitha’s cheeks.
Spencer kissed them away.
“As soon as the police get here,” he soothed, “we’ll answer their questions as quickly as possible, then I’ll take you home.”
“Home meaning…?”
“My parents’ house. My mother would kill me if I didn’t bring you back there for some ‘mollycoddling’, as she would put it.”
“But Sheila?—”
Spencer placed a gentle finger over her lips. “I’ve already been told that she’s having a great time at the station; which means they’ll eventually bring her to my parents’ house. But right now it seems that she’s absolutely enamored with the Duck of Justice.”
Did Tabitha even want to know what that was? Before she could ask, Spencer was speaking again.
“The desk sergeant isn’t sure they’ll be able to tear Sheila away from the DOJ until she’s heard every story there is about the iconic mascot.”
Tabitha snickered.A mascot. A duck.“That sounds like Sheila.”
She sobered. “When Idosee her… I’m not sure exactly how to approach things. Do I get angry because she’s worried everyone so much, or do I congratulate her for making it from freaking Florida to Maine on her own.”
