the stateroom. Cash Money, realizing he was about to burn to death, begged me to cut him loose. I did, lifted the unconscious girl off the bed, pointed my empty Sig in Cash Money’s face, and told him to move his expansive derriere. Coughing from the smoke and unaware that my nine-millimeter was empty, he did.
On the aft deck, Cash Money climbed down into the ranger’s boat. Whimpering. I stepped onto the deck, holding the unconscious girl, and asked again, “That all?”
They nodded in unison.
The ranger gunned it, and we had cleared only a hundred yards when the explosion sounded. Summer turned as the fireball engulfed Pluto and a zillion pieces of super-luxury yacht rained down on the Gulf of Mexico. I stood in the bow, smiling at the sight behind us, unaware that I was leaking from multiple holes. The ranger cut the wheel toward shore, gunned it, beached the keel on sand, killed the engine, and began helping each of us off the boat.
Still holding the girl, I asked, “You got an infirmary?”
Chapter 47
The ranger nodded. “Follow me.” Given that they’re sixty miles from Key West and even farther from medical care, the rangers had a well-supplied medical room. While his partner, whom I later learned was his wife, worked on the girl, I ripped off my vest and shirt. He took one look at me and started rifling through drawers and cabinets. Over my shoulder, his wife checked the girl’s pulse and then her pupils, stating, “She’ll be all right.”
My ranger wasn’t so optimistic. Seeing that I had pretty much blown a gasket, he kicked things into high gear. Within four minutes, George Stallworth, a fifty-eight-year-old park ranger who’d spent twenty years in the Coast Guard as a medic, plugged my holes while Summer assisted in stitching me up. Her hands were shaking and her face was puffy and swollen. She was trying to focus on me, but her lips whispered, “She wasn’t on the boat.”
I put my hand on hers. “It’s not over.” Once he’d stopped the bleeding, George started an IV and began putting physical pressure on the bag with his hands, forcing the contents into my blood supply in an attempt to raise my blood pressure, which had dropped dangerously low. Finally, he popped open a Coca-Cola and said, “Drink this. Quickly.”
It was the best Coke I’d ever had in my life.
Within seven minutes, he had patched me up and had me feeling more alive than dead. While life flowed back into my veins, I stared down at my vest and realized there was much I didn’t remember. All the magazines were gone. As in, I’d run through them all. My Sig rested in the holster attached to my vest but the slide was locked back, proclaiming even to the near blind that it was empty. Evidently Cash Money didn’t have much experience with weapons or he never would have been so compliant. My AR was gone and I had no recollection of where it and I had disconnected. My front and back plates had stopped at least six rounds.
I was lucky. Again.
We walked out of the infirmary to where the fifteen girls had surrounded Cash Money, who had dropped into a fetal ball and lay squealing on the ground. One of the girls was holding a piece of wood; three others were holding bricks. All of them were screaming at him.
I turned to George. “Can you hold him here ’til help arrives?”
“Gladly.” He looked at me. “You going somewhere?”
I waved my hand across the darkness that stretched between us and Key West. “Got one more to find.”
“Anything I can do to help you?”
“Get these girls some clothes and food. They’ve had a rough go. I’m afraid some of them have been on that boat for quite some time, and there’s no telling what manner of evil they’ve endured.”
“Got it.”
I stared down at Gunner’s body. I knew that when help arrived, he’d be last on their priority list, which meant he’d die if I left him on the island. I also knew that putting him in a boat with me and riding back to Key West would probably kill him. In the end, I couldn’t leave him. So I slid my arms beneath his limp body and lifted him, causing him to wince. He was having trouble breathing and a gurgle had set in.
I walked to the bulkhead, set Gunner on the back bench of Gone Fiction, wrapped him in a blanket, and was