Chapter 7 - THE RECKONING ON THE RAFT
The boat hit the water with an agonizing slam.
A wall of black brine erupted over the gunwales, blinding both of them. Evelyn ducked beneath Flynn’s initial slash, the serrated tip catching the shoulder of her silk gown, ripping the fabric and slicing a clean, burning line across her collarbone.
The tender surged forward on the engine’s idle, spinning in the vicious downdraft of the burning yacht. Behind them, fifty feet above, flames poured from the salon windows, painting the black ocean in horrific shades of crimson and orange.
Aidan lunged from the passenger bench, trying to pin Evelyn’s legs, but the elderly man was disoriented from Nora’s blow. Evelyn brought her heel down hard onto Aidan’s broken nose. He shrieked, collapsing back against the stern seats, clutching his face as blood welled between his fingers.
“Flynn, kill her!” Fiona screamed, clinging to the roll bar as the tender rode the crest of a massive wave.
Flynn tackled Evelyn into the center well of the boat.
His weight slammed the breath from her lungs. His hand clamped around her throat, cutting off her air, pinning her head against the composite floorboards. Rain lashed them, mixing with the salt water pooling around their shoulders.
“You think your father is innocent?” Flynn snarled into her ear, his face twisted into an unrecognizable mask of hatred. “He sent my uncle to the bottom of the sea for quarterly profits! He bought your Ivy League education with blood money! You’re nothing but the daughter of a murderer!”
Evelyn couldn't breathe. Black spots danced across her vision. Her fingers clawed at Flynn’s wrists, feeling the expensive gold wedding band she had placed on his finger six days ago.
“Keep something in reserve.”
Her father’s voice echoed through the roaring gale.
Evelyn stopped clawing at his hands.
Instead, she slid her left hand down, searching the pocket of her ripped nightgown where she had shoved the brass key and the heavy titanium marine shackle she had grabbed from the sundeck railing during her descent.
She wrapped her fingers around the iron pin.
With the last remaining ounce of oxygen in her brain, Evelyn drove the pointed metal pin straight into Flynn’s right eye.
Flynn shrieked—a sound of pure, unadulterated agony that rose above the howl of the storm.
His grip broke. He staggered backward, clutching his face, blood pouring over his fingers.
Evelyn rolled to her hands and knees, gasping for air, the cold ocean rain filling her lungs like sweet wine.
She didn’t give him time to recover.
She grabbed the emergency boat hook from the side deck bracket, spun on the slick decking, and drove the blunt wooden shaft into Flynn’s solar plexus.
He folded forward with a wet gasp.
The boat climbed the face of a fifteen-foot breaker. For a single, weightless moment, the tender was vertical, suspended between the sky and the abyss.
Flynn lost his footing on the bloody deck.
He slipped backward toward the low, open transom.
He reached out, his bloody hands catching the top of the gunwale, his single good eye staring at her with desperate, terrified pleading.
“Evie... please,” he choked out. “Evie, I loved you... please pull me up!”
Evelyn stood over him, the boat hook held firm in her hands, her drenched hair plastered against her skull.
“You called me your sleepy girl,” she whispered.
She raised the boat hook and pushed the metal tip against his fingers.
Flynn’s grip slipped.
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He fell backward into the black foam of the wake.
The Atlantic swallowed him whole. One second his pale face was visible beneath the churning surface; the next, the massive twin propellers of the burning yacht’s drift line swept past, and Flynn Mercer was gone.
