Sea Haven 01 - Water Bound

you die on me. You were breathing a minute ago.”
    She rolled him onto his side and lifted his middle, trying to clear his lungs, and then she began CPR in earnest, using her regulator to push air into his lungs, just as she had in the water. Twice she thumped his chest hard, trying to kick-start his heart.
    “Come on, come back,” she hissed, and kept working his heart. She was determined. He’d been sharing her air, looking at her. “You are not doing this.”
    She put her ear to his chest again. There! Faint. Fluttering. “That’s it.
    You’re fighting,” she encouraged. “You want to live.”
    She really looked at him then. He was all muscle. Total muscle. His chest and ribs were covered in scars. Bullet wounds. Knife punctures and slices. Burns. She sank back on her heels gasping. Torture . This man had 34

    been tortured methodically over time. He’d been wounded repeatedly. Who was he? Where had he come from? She looked around. There was nothing in sight, no boats, no ships, nothing at all, and she hadn’t seen anything before she’d gone down the first time.
    “Hold on,” she said aloud, “I’ll put out a Mayday and we’ll get you out of here fast.”
    She turned her back on him and hurried over to the VHF radio. As she reached for it, a hand shot past hers and yanked the cable out of its socket, before whipping around her neck and jerking her backward against a hard chest. His forearm was nearly choking her.
    She dug her fingers into his pressure points and turned into his arm, applying enough weight to spin out, although he caught her by her hair and jerked her back into him. She clamped both hands over his, dropping straight down and spinning, coming back up, nearly breaking his wrist before he let her go. He closed in on her fast, too fast to avoid.
    Outraged, Rikki erupted into a fury of fists, feet and head butting. She was slight, but she had honed her skills on the street, in foster homes, in state-run homes, even in gyms. She knew how to hit in order to do the most damage, and when she was attacked, she fought back with everything in her.
    The man was obviously badly injured, but he was enormously strong. He seemed to know which pressure point would do the maximum amount of damage, and he was a big man, very muscular.
    Not one of her blows rocked him, but twice she kicked his thigh dangerously close to his groin. He closed in on her quickly, wrapping his arms around her and taking her down hard. She hit the deck, facedown, his knee digging into the small of her back, his sheer size pinning her so it was impossible to move. He spat something at her in a language that sounded like Russian. She couldn’t understand the words, but the razor-sharp edge of the knife against her neck said it all for him. She froze, her breath hissing out in a long exhale of sheer anger.
    He must have known she was more angry than scared. In spite of his injuries, the knife never wavered. He spoke in a foreign language, obviously asking her something. His voice was intimidating, commanding, authoritative.
    That only added fuel to her rage. She forgot the knife for a moment and kicked back at him. “Speak English or kill me, but do something soon or I’m going to shove that knife down your throat.” Because in spite of everything, she was getting a little claustrophobic with him on top of her and her face pressed into the deck of her boat. She had a bad habit of losing control when 35

    she was pushed this far and she didn’t trust herself, not with a knife against her throat.
    There was a short silence. “Who are you? What did you do to me?”
    Her heart jumped. He spoke English with an accent. Certain tones appealed to her, and his voice had something rich that settled inside of her—
    that sent her temperature up another notch. “I’m the person who saved your sorry ass, and believe me, I’m sorry I bothered. I dropped two full nets of spines to save your sorry dead ass. I’m the captain, so you can just get the hell off my boat. And while you’re at it, get the hell off of me.”
    She didn’t dare move again because the knife didn’t, but sooner or later, he was bound to pass out again. She couldn’t imagine that he wouldn’t, and then she’d throw his ungrateful ass back to the sharks.
    Lev Prakenskii kept his weight solidly on the little hellcat spitting and snarling beneath him. He was sick, disoriented and his head hurt like a son of a bitch. He had no idea where he was or what was