Caribbean Rescue (Coastal Fury Book 16), Matt Lincoln [best book recommendations .txt] 📗

were two men. I instantly recognized one of them as the man who had managed to escape from the Oasis Lounge earlier in the day. The scar on his cheek was too distinctive for me to forget it.

Standing just beside him was a hunched man with graying hair who looked like he was about the same age as Richard, the antique store owner who had shot at us earlier in the week. This time, he was the one holding one of the women hostage while the man with the scar pointed a gun at us.

“Don’t come any closer,” the old man warned as he pressed a knife to the girl’s neck.

“Don’t be stupid,” I snapped at him. “What do you think is going to happen here, huh? We’re in the middle of the ocean, on a boat. You can’t run anywhere.”

“You’re right,” the man with the scar sneered as he took a step forward. “Which is why we’re going to kill you right here.”

For a few painstaking moments, nobody moved. We were at a complete standoff. Holm and I couldn’t shoot while the girl was still in danger, and the man with the scar knew that the moment he shot at either of us, the other one would take him out.

I gritted my teeth as I thought about what to do when I noticed one of the women slowly getting to her feet at the back of the room. I tried not to make it obvious that I had noticed her so I wouldn’t alert the two men.

For just a second, the woman made eye contact with me, and I watched as she silently raised a finger to her lips. She crept soundlessly across the carpeted floor behind the desk the two men were standing in front of. I wasn’t sure what she was doing, but I needed to keep their focus on me before they noticed her.

“There’s still a way out of this,” I blurted out the first thing that came to mind as the woman reached forward to pick up a heavy binder that was sitting on the top of the desk. “No one has to get hurt.”

“Shut up!” the man with the scar roared.

The old man said something too, but I was too focused on the woman behind him to pay attention to what it was. She held the binder over her head, a mixture of fury and fear and hatred burning in her eyes.

She suddenly let out a scream of anger as she brought the heavy thing down over the old man’s head.

Then several things happened at once. The old man let out a cry of pain as he fell forward, the girl shrieked as the knife he was holding cut into her neck, and the man with the scar spun around at the unexpected scream.

“Samuel!” the man snarled as he watched the old man crumple to the ground. He turned his fury onto the girl and spun around to point his gun at her instead of us.

I moved the moment the opportunity presented itself.

“Hey!” I yelled to distract him from shooting at her. He spun around to look at me, his face colliding directly with my fist as he did.

He roared in a mixture of pain and anger as he swung his own fist at me. I blocked him with my arm and punched him again. This time he fell backward onto the desk.

As he did, I turned around to check on the girl he’d cut. Holm was with her now, so I turned back to the suspect. He’d recovered more quickly than I’d expected, and I was just a split second too slow to block his next blow.

I hissed with pain as his fist struck the side of my chin. He grinned, clearly pleased that he’d managed to land a punch, and pulled his fist back to hit me again.

As he did, I swung around to punch him in the stomach. His eyes bugged out as he coughed and sputtered from the strength of the blow. I followed that hit up with another directly to his face. He fell backward again, this time slamming his elbow against the edge of the desk as he fell onto the ground.

He growled at me as he attempted to kick me from his position on the floor, but I returned his efforts with my own kick to his side. He groaned with pain, but I didn’t let up. I crouched down to deliver one final punch to his face, rendering him unconscious.

“Hey,” I called to Holm as I slowly regained my breath. “You got any more handcuffs? I used my last set on that idiot in the hallway.”

“Yeah,” he replied. “I’ll be right there. She’s bleeding a lot.”

I looked up and saw him still kneeling next to the girl. She was kneeling on the ground, rocking back and forth and clutching at her neck as blood trickled down from the wound.

I got up and walked over to where they were.

“Let me see,” I said gently as I tried to examine the wound without scaring or jostling her too much. It didn’t look very deep. The knife must have just nicked her as she fell. She might need stitches, but her life wasn’t in danger.

I looked around for something I could use to staunch the blood flow before settling on a thin curtain slung over one of the windows. A dirty old curtain wasn’t ideal, but it would have to do. I tore it off of the rod and shook it out to clear it of as much dirt as dust as possible before returning to the girl’s side.

“Press this against your neck, okay?” I instructed her as I placed the wad of fabric into her hand. “We’re going to get you all back to shore as quickly as possible.”

I looked up at the woman who had bashed the old man over the head. She was still standing in the exact same spot, her eyes wide and blank, as