Finding Carly (SEAL Team Hawaii #5)(89)

And quickly, another terrifying realization hit.

Now that she’d stopped moving…her limbs felt uncoordinated. And she was dizzy.

Not only did she have a head wound, and probably a concussion, but the dart Gideon had shot actually hit her.

She had to assume it had only nicked her. Otherwise, Carly knew she’d be dead right now. If it fully sank into her skin, she’d have felt it, and she would have been knocked out long before now. But enough of the drug had gotten into her system that she felt woozy, and yes…tired as hell.

Determination filled her. She wasn’t going to give Gideon the satisfaction of failing. No. She needed to get back to Oahu so she could tell the detective, and Baker, and everyone else that it had been Gideon who’d kidnapped her.

She wasn’t going to die. No fucking way. She’d made it this far, all she had to do was swim to shore. Piece of cake.

Carly did her best to stay positive as minutes ticked by, but the longer she swam, the more thoughts of defeat tried to sneak into her psyche. The rain stopped, which was good, but darkness fell. She had no way of knowing if she was even swimming in the right direction. For all she knew, she was headed out to sea instead of toward safety.

But she didn’t stop. Just kept moving her arms and kicking her feet.

Just when she didn’t think she could go another inch, when the desire to close her eyes and let sleep overtake her had become too much to resist…Carly’s knees scraped against something in the water.

Even through the pants she was wearing, whatever she’d run into hurt. She cried out in pain and reached for her knee. She promptly scraped her hand next, clearly on whatever had cut her knees. Coral? No…rocks.

Black lava rocks.

Looking around, Carly spotted the outline of a dark shape to her left. An island! It wasn’t Oahu, but at that moment, Carly didn’t care if it was freaking Russia.

Moving carefully so she didn’t cut herself any more than she already had, Carly managed to drag herself onto the rocks at the edge of the island. They were sharp, and she was thankful she was wearing khakis, even though they’d felt like they weighed a hundred pounds in the water. She collapsed onto her stomach, with no strength to go farther.

It didn’t matter. She was out of the water and had escaped from Gideon. When the sun came up, someone would come, maybe a fisherman, and she could get their attention and finally go home. The waters around Oahu were normally filled with boaters at all hours, but the storm had sent them all for cover.

But tomorrow…tomorrow would be different.

Now that she was safe, as safe as she could be for now, Carly allowed the tranquilizer to finally take effect. She was unconscious in less than a minute.

She didn’t hear the birds who lived on the island, squawking to each other, warning the others of an intruder on their territory. She didn’t feel the occasional crab walking over her body as they searched for food in the crevices between the rocks.

And she didn’t hear the faint motor of a lone boat in the distance, riding back and forth through the water as its operator desperately searched for his escaped pray.





CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO





Jag followed Mustang out of the police station to his friend’s pickup. He remembered Elodie had named the piece-of-shit vehicle Ben, but that little detail couldn’t make him smile right now. Nothing could.

As soon as they realized no one knew where Carly was, they’d gone to the police station to meet with Detective Lee. He’d been concerned about Carly’s disappearance, but without knowing who Keyes’s accomplice was, he had nothing to go on as far as finding her. He was as much in the dark as Jag and his team. He’d put out a BOLO for her car and reassured Jag and the rest of the team that every officer would be on the lookout for either her or her car.

Gritting his teeth, Jag looked up at the sky through the truck’s window. It was pouring rain. Lightning lit the darkening sky every now and then and he couldn’t help but wonder where Carly was. What she was thinking. If she was all right…

He shook his head. No. She was all right. She had to be. The alternative was unthinkable.

“We’ll head back to your place. Slate’s not as good with electronics as you are, but maybe he’s found something on the security cameras,” Mustang said. “We’ll check in with Baker, he said he was on his way down from the North Shore. We’ll also keep calling Alani. I know Lee said he would stop by Duke’s himself, but Carly said she was doing a favor for the woman, so she’s definitely who we need to start with.”

Jag nodded, but he was having a hard time concentrating. He was ninety-nine percent certain they wouldn’t find anything useful on the security footage. Whatever had happened to Carly had gone down somewhere other than at their apartment. He didn’t know how he knew that, it was just a gut feeling. And her boss wasn’t at work, and so far hadn’t answered her cell.

They needed to find her car, that would at least give them a starting place. The detective would check the parking garages around Duke’s and Waikiki, but that would take time. Even though Oahu was small in terms of actual square milage, there were still almost a million registered vehicles on the island. And finding Carly’s among them was akin to trying to find a needle in a needle stack.

They needed a miracle.

As they drove back to his apartment complex in silence, Jag thought about a conversation he’d had with Carly. She’d told him that no matter what happened, she wouldn’t ever give up. That she’d fight to the death if need be, because she now had something to fight for…him.