Lucas.
He had discovered I was gone.
“Check the suite!”
Footsteps thundered above us.
Valery released the raft.
It dropped into the black ocean.
“Go!”
I climbed down.
Then a gunshot cracked through the storm.
We jumped.
The raft slammed into the waves.
Behind us, Marcus Abernathy appeared on the deck.
He pointed toward us.
“GET BACK HERE!”
A second vessel launched from the yacht.
It came after us.
Valery grabbed the emergency motor.
“Hold on!”
The tiny raft disappeared into the darkness.
For hours, the ocean tried to kill us.
Waves swallowed us.
Rain blinded us.
The motor died twice.
At one point, I thought I was going to disappear beneath the water.
But just before sunrise, the storm finally weakened.
A wave threw our raft onto a beach.
We crawled onto the sand.
Neither of us could stand.
I looked at Valery.
“Are we alive?”
She laughed weakly.
