Chapter 91

91

"Die, die, die!" Shaw chanted through clenched teeth as he throttled me with surprising strength.

My throat burned as my eyes bulged. From my training, I knew there was a grappling trick to break an opponent's grip while being strangled. But with my concussion reeling through my already half-shut-off mind and 270 crushing pounds sitting on my chest, I couldn't quite remember it.

After a moment I began to gray out.

No, no, no. Not like this , I thought as I began to flail with my hands out to my sides to maybe push off the deck or the rail.

When my left hand found the thin curve of cold hard metal on the wood of the deck by my left leg, at first, I didn't know what it was.

Then my eyes lit up.

Water was coming in over the sinking yacht's rail onto my back as I reached up and clicked Olivia's dropped handcuff cinch tight around Shaw's left wrist.

The cold sea was suddenly there rolling over the rail, rolling over the deck, rolling over the both of us.

Then I slid to my right and clicked the other end of the cuff to the sinking ship's steel rail.

I snorted stinging salt water down the back of my already gagging throat as the sea closed over my face.

As we both became completely submerged a second later, I felt Shaw's grip on my neck slip.

I finally managed to snake my right hand up in between Shaw's forearms and I felt the grip loosen some more as I hammer-punched Shaw once and then twice in the chest.

It was only when I stiff-armed the bastard hard in the soft of his throat with the edge of my palm that he finally let go of me completely.

Then I was sliding out from underneath him, moving away to my left.

I quickly found the deck rail and had just put my foot on the top of it to kick myself free of the sinking vessel when I felt something seize my ankle.

I looked down.

With one outstretched hand cuffed to the rail of the huge sinking ship and the other outstretched one clutched onto my ankle, Shaw looked like a man playing an extremely desperate game of electricity tag.

My eyes narrowed as I brought up my free leg hard and aimed it and then I brought it down even harder.

I felt Shaw's grip break simultaneously with his nose as I smashed my heel into his smug face with everything I had.

Finally free, I looked up toward the surface now twenty feet above me and began to breast-stroke.

Even though my lungs were bursting, just as I was about to break the surface, I turned and looked down into the water one final time.

In all my life, I would never forget that ghostly image of Shaw and the now completely submerged multimillion-dollar steel yacht he was handcuffed to sliding away slowly, deeper and deeper down into the bottomless Atlantic.

It looked surreal, I thought, otherworldly.

Especially Shaw.

Because in that last moment, the mercenary no longer appeared to be a drowning psycho killer.

Instead, he suddenly seemed to be a legendary captain from a children's story, a happy, intrepid, magical nautical adventurer, frantically bon voyaging as he set underwater sail toward new lands twenty thousand leagues under the sea.