Susan Cliff - Stranded With The Navy Seal

The man didn’t let go underwater. He clung to Logan like a goddamned octopus. He was trying to drown Logan, and it was working. As soon as Logan broke through the surface, the European dunked him again. Logan’s movements were clumsy from fatigue, but his instincts were still sharp. So was the knife in his right hand. Making a strangled sound, he buried the blade in the man’s belly. Then he twisted it.

The arms around him loosened, and the weight fell away. Logan treaded water, gasping for breath. Cadence was there, in the raft. She’d managed to push it overboard and get inside. He swam toward her and handed her the knife before hauling himself out of the water. Once he was safely inside, he rested on his back for a moment, one hand over his thundering heart. He was nauseous and light-headed. As soon as his stomach settled, he straightened and searched the water for a body.

He didn’t see one.

The cabin cruiser continued on its journey, oblivious. Their escape would be noticed at some point, but now they had a chance. They had to put as much distance between the raft and the cruiser as possible.

The paddles weren’t inside the raft. They must have been left on the deck. He explored the motor with wet hands, looking for a pull cord. What he discovered made his blood run cold. There was a key ignition.

Without a motor or paddles, they were sitting ducks. The kidnappers would circle back and recapture them.

Or recapture her, rather. He had no value to them. If they knew she wasn’t Maya O’Brien, she was equally worthless. Logan didn’t doubt that these men had firearms at their disposal. They hadn’t used them on the cruise ship in the interest of stealth. There was no reason to be quiet now.

“Can you start it?” she asked.

“Not without a key.”

She stared at him in dismay.

“I might be able to hot-wire it at first light.”

“What do we do until then?”

“We wait,” he said grimly. “And hope they don’t come back for us.”

Chapter 4

One of the best nights of her life turned into the worst.

The absolute worst.

She survived it, somehow. So did Logan. They waited in silence for the boat to double back for them, but it never did. Logan said the kidnappers must not have realized they were gone right away. He also said the raft would be difficult to spot in the dark, like a needle in a haystack. The ocean was immense, and frightening. The raft rose and fell with every swell, traveling on a swift current.

What followed them wasn’t a boat. It was the body of the man Logan had killed. He floated on the surface, facedown, his white T-shirt bobbing. It was almost as if the corpse was swimming after them. She watched in horror as his body jerked suddenly. He flailed back and forth, reanimated. Tail fins thrashed on the surface as sharks tore him apart. First one, then two, then a half dozen.

Cady threw up over the side of the raft.

When she leaned too far out, Logan grabbed her by the arm and yanked her back. She wiped her mouth, shuddering.

The night dragged on, never ending. She was cold and miserable. Logan stripped off his wet clothes and wrapped his arms around her, but she didn’t stop shivering. Her mind replayed violent images. Black masks. Glinting knives. Sharks circling.

She couldn’t believe they were in this situation. She couldn’t believe they’d escaped. When Logan had entered the doorway, his face pale and his clothes wet, she’d screamed into her gag. She’d thought he was a ghost, for good reason. She’d seen him get knocked unconscious and thrown overboard. No normal person could survive that. He’d appeared out of nowhere and fought like a man possessed.

One minute, she’d been weeping silently, frozen with fear. The next, she was watching Jason Bourne attack his enemies.

She didn’t understand why she’d been targeted, or how Logan had arrived on the scene. The whole thing was surreal. And sinister. He’d incapacitated one of her captors and gutted another like a fish. She knew he was a Navy SEAL, trained to kill. She also knew he’d acted in self-defense, and he wasn’t a danger to her. Even so, her first reaction to his daring rescue wasn’t relief. It was terror.

The brutality of his actions, and the ease with which he’d executed them, still disturbed her. She hadn’t signed on for this. She wasn’t equipped for it. She was a chef on a cruise ship, sailing toward an uncertain future. She’d been in a slump, personally and professionally. Her idea of adventure was using new spices in a recipe. Leaving the bar with Logan was the wildest thing she’d ever done.

Now she was stranded on a raft in the middle of the ocean.

She shouldn’t have gone back to his cabin. She should have listened to her instincts, instead of her hormones. She couldn’t have predicted this outcome, of course, but she’d known what kind of man he was. He was an elite soldier. He had hero written all over him, along with heartbreaker and risk taker.

She’d only wanted a single night of excitement with a man whose gaze had warmed her from the inside out. Instead she got this stone-cold warrior who watched sharks feed on a corpse without flinching.

Her stomach lurched at the memory. She rolled over and dry-heaved quietly.

Logan kept his hand on her back like an anchor. His touch felt reassuring, despite the fraught circumstances. She didn’t want to be here, but she was glad she wasn’t alone. She was glad they were alive, and relatively unharmed. When her stomach settled, he pulled her into his arms and held her close. Little by little, her tremors subsided.

At dawn, he put on his damp clothes. She sat up and stared at the rising sun. Its reflection glinted across the ocean, illuminating their plight. There was no pirate boat on the horizon. There was nothing. No cruise ship, no commercial barges, no airplanes, no islands. No drinking water. It might as well have been the Sahara Desert.

Her gaze met his. His features were rough-hewn in the harsh daylight. There was a big lump on his temple, and dried blood clumped to his eyebrow.

“Are you hurt?” he asked.

She didn’t think she was, but she felt numb. She slowly took stock of her condition. Her mouth was still sore from the gag. She rubbed her wrists, which bore rope burns. Other than those minor discomforts, she was fine. “I’m okay.”

“Did you understand what they were saying?”

Cady spoke a smattering of French. She hadn’t caught every word. “They thought I was someone else.”

“Maya O’Brien.”

“The president’s daughter?”

“I was supposed to be guarding her.”

Now it made sense. The kidnappers had made a mistake. They weren’t targeting her. Cadence Crenshaw was nobody. Maya O’Brien was America’s daughter, rich and famous. “Were they terrorists?”

“I don’t know,” he said, frowning. “French Polynesia isn’t a hot spot for terrorism. Their motivations might have been financial.”

“When will they start looking for us?”

“The kidnappers?”

“The rescuers.”

He studied the clear blue sky above them. “Today, with any luck. They’ll know something is wrong when you don’t show up to work. Employees will see the signs of a struggle in the cabin next to mine. Then they’ll launch a search party with air support.”

“Do you think they’ll find us?”

“Yes.”

She hoped he was telling the truth. His expression revealed nothing, and she didn’t know him well enough to judge. Maybe he was honest to a fault. Maybe he was a strategic liar. Maybe that head injury had rattled his brain. He’d already said that the raft would be difficult to spot on the open sea.

“I thought you were dead,” she said in a hushed voice. She still couldn’t quite believe he was real.