The Fearless King (The Kings #2)(86)

He pushed her.

Frank kicked off his shoes and followed her into the water. He hit and went under for several precious seconds before he swam to the surface. Journey sputtered a few feet away and shoved her wet hair from her face. “You pushed me!”

“Yep.” He snagged the pair of cushions and shoved one at her. “We have to swim. Now.”

Journey nodded and fought her way through the water in the opposite direction from the yacht sinking beneath the surface. Too slow. Frank followed her, muttering encouraging words when she flagged, all of his focus on getting them as far away from that fucking boat as possible. He wasn’t sure of the radius of the drag—only that it existed—and he was taking no chances with Journey’s safety.

She came for me.

He’d never seen anything so beautiful or terrifying as his woman stepping out with a gun in her hand and fury and determination written across her features as she faced down the man who had spent far too many years terrorizing her. She did it for him. For herself, too, but the only reason she was there today was because of Frank.

“Frank,” Journey gasped. “I’m so tired.”

“Keep going, Duchess. We’re almost far enough.” He paced her. “Then you can rest.”

“Can’t believe you pushed me,” she muttered, picking up her pace again.

He glanced back to see the last few feet of the yacht disappear. The slightest of tugs pulled at him, but that was it. Far enough. Thank fuck. “We made it.” He stopped her with a hand on her shoulder. “Float on your back. Keep the cushion at chest level and cross your arms through the strap.”

She obeyed and gave a short laugh. “You experience much in the way of shipwrecks, Frank?”

“My first one.” He waited to make sure she was secure and then mirrored her position. “Help is coming.”

“If they were tracking my phone—if that’s even something you can do over open water with no cell towers around—then we’re in trouble. It’s at the bottom of Trinity Bay.”

“They’ll find us.” Pieces of wreckage floated around them, and if the Coast Guard got involved, there would be helicopters. Even in a boat, it would be possible to spot them.

They just had to survive long enough for help to get to them.

“Hang on, Duchess. Help is coming.”





Chapter Twenty-Four



The cushions weren’t really meant to act as flotation devices. Journey held hers in a death grip and did her best to lie on her back in a dead man’s float…and not think about the dead man currently occupying the waters of the bay somewhere near them. Frank floated next to her, the soft splashes of his kicks somehow making their isolation worse. They weren’t that far from the coast—less than ten miles, for sure—but it might as well have been on the moon for her ability to swim there.

She looked to where the yacht had been up until a few short minutes ago. After they’d jumped, it disappeared beneath the waves terrifyingly fast, taking her father with it.

Hopefully.

Journey jerked her gaze to the sky, still a perfect blue. “I was going to jump,” she said again.

“I know. I just sped up the process.”

The vast space beneath her made her skin crawl. She’d swum in Trinity Bay more times than she could count, even out this far and farther on party boats when she was younger. It had never bothered her before. If she thought too hard, she could almost picture Elliott’s lifeless body rising through the water below them and…“Talk to me, Frank.” When he didn’t immediately start, she bit her bottom lip hard. “I’m starting to freak out and I’m pretty sure if I freak out, we’re both going to drown, so I need you to talk to me.”

His shoulder bumped hers as they floated closer together. “We’re getting out of this, Duchess. Help is coming.” A variation of the same thing he’d been saying since they hit the water.

She wasn’t sure if he believed that any more than she did. Time ceased to have meaning once she jumped onto the yacht, but she was relatively sure that they’d barely been in the water an hour. If someone hadn’t shown up yet, maybe they weren’t showing up at all. She closed her eyes against the burning there that had nothing to do with the sun. “I killed him.” She waited for guilt to cripple her, to seep through every part of her until nothing remained untainted.

It didn’t come.

“Do you regret it?”

“Not in the way you mean.” She pressed her lips together, tasting salt that she could almost convince herself came from the sea around her instead of the tears trickling from her closed eyes. “I should regret it. Murder is a big deal—the biggest deal, even—but the only thing I regret is that he didn’t live long enough to be prosecuted and spend time in prison. To experience even the smallest slice of suffering that he dealt out over his lifetime.”

Easy enough to speak this awful truth. It was only the two of them here in this moment, the endless sky overhead and unknowing deep beneath. “I’m not sorry. I would do it again.”

Frank’s hand found hers in the water. “You have nothing to be sorry for.” His fingers clasped hers long enough to give a comforting squeeze before he released her. “I would have spared you that if I could have.”