Cautiously, Aiden dropped to the deck and waddled along the starboard side of the wheelhouse. Each step was a challenge as the boat pitched beneath him. He crouched as he approached the glass, adjusting his stance to compensate for the rolling beneath his boots. The window was too small to dive through. But a perfect fit for a rifle barrel. He only had one dart though.
This shot had to count.
Squatting beneath the window, he unholstered his Sig and cradled the rifle. A quick up and down peek showed his target watching the door with his back to the starboard window. Perfect. He pulled his side arm, using the butt of the weapon to break the glass, then quickly shoved the rifle barrel through the opening.
The target was already swinging around when Aiden lifted his head, looked through the glass, and squeezed the trigger. The dart sank into the dude’s beefy shoulder. Aiden dropped and rolled. Then kept rolling as the deck pitched beneath him.
Boom...
The rifle blast was much louder, this close to the barrel. Glass sprayed everywhere.
Boom.
He braced his hands against the deck to stop the rolling and pushed himself back into a crouch.
“He’s out the door.” Wolf’s voice broke the silence. “Headed for starboard.”
Fuck. Was the bastard going to ditch the boat and jump overboard? Aiden launched himself forward, but the boat was having none of that and rolled hard, sending him stumbling back instead.
Crack...crack...crack...crack.
Cosky and company were laying down fire, trying to pin the dude before he bailed on the boat.
Aiden staggered around the corner of the wheelhouse, the pitching deck fucking with every damn step. At least the captain wasn’t handling the waves any better than Aiden was. He’d abandoned the rifle and was crawling toward the starboard hull on his hands and knees.
A wave broke over the railing as Aiden passed by, crashing over him in a waterfall of freezing, salty water and soaking every inch of him. His target was still crawling toward starboard, dogged and desperate, as though his life depended on making it off the boat.
It didn’t. His life depended on what the captain had in his hold.
Aiden threw every ounce of strength and coordination into his staggering steps before launching himself at his target in a final hail Mary. He slammed into the target from the side, pinning him against the streaming deck. As his captive thrashed beneath him, Aiden fumbled for one of the flex cuffs stuffed in the back pocket of his soaked pants.
“Son of a motherfucking bastard, you have no right—”
Aiden wrestled his furious target’s hands behind his back, knelt on his shoulders, and zip-tied his wrists together. Just in time too. The captain suddenly exploded. Twisting and turning. Then thrusting his body up. When neither of those tactics won his freedom, he threw his head back, slamming it into Aiden’s forehead.
His ears ringing and head throbbing, Aiden slammed the target back down to the deck. When was the tranquilizer going to kick in? Between the roll of the boat and this asshole’s antics, he was getting queasy.
“Play fucking nice,” he ground out. “We could have spattered you all over the deck instead of putting you to sleep. But there’s still time to change my mind.”
“You have no motherfucking right to board my boat,” the target spat, his voice as grizzled as his face and hair. “I’m a citizen of the United States. I have rights!”
There was a familiarity to the ranting that Aiden couldn’t quite place. It took a few seconds of listening to the guy’s profanity-laced tirade for the familiarity to snap into place. Mackenzie. The captain’s profanity-laced cadence was pure Mackenzie at his most furious.
Finally, the drug kicked in. The target’s twisting and turning faded. His breathing calmed. Aiden waited until the dude was limp before scooting down to secure his ankles with another pair of flex cuffs.
“Brother…” Cosky sarcastic voice filled the comm. “You need to hit the weights and obstacle course harder. That take down was embarrassing to watch. You barely kept that old fart pinned to the ground.”
Aiden paused long enough to glance up and offer his brother-in-law a fuck you finger. “How ‘bout you could focus on watching our sleeping beauties, rather than running your mouth?”
As soon as he’d secured the captain’s ankles, he climbed—or more like staggered—to his feet. When the hell had he lost his sea legs? He’d been in much crankier weather than this without losing his balance and stride.
Every instinct he possessed urged him to head directly for the hold and find out how fucked he was. He headed for the closest deckhand instead, checked his vitals, then secured his wrists and ankles. He did the same for deckhands two through four.
By the time he’d finished handcuffing the four captives, the Chinook hovered above the hold, a cable dangling next to the magical O-ring. As he stumbled toward it, a single thunderous question echoed through his brain.
Was the hold full of fish?
Was he screwed?
