Chapter 70 - The Iron Hold
I scooped Emma into my left arm, keeping my right hand free to draw my sidearm. "Evelyn, get up!" I yelled, kicking at my mother’s trembling form. "To the swim platform! Move!"
Evelyn scrambled to her hands and knees, terror giving her old body a sudden surge of adrenaline. She clawed her way across the slick deck toward the boarding ladder where Marcus was keeping our boat pinned against the *Vanguard*’s stern.
Smoke was rolling thick and black from the companionway now, choking our lungs and blinding us. Through the haze, a towering shadow lunged directly at me.
It was Harlan.
His face was blackened with soot, his eyes wide and bloodshot with insane fury. He didn't use the gun; he threw his entire weight into me, driving me back against the heavy steel railing. The impact knocked the wind from my lungs, and my sidearm went skittering across the wet fiberglass, sliding over the edge into the black water below.
Emma tumbled from my grip, rolling safely behind a storage locker, but Harlan had his massive hands clamped around my throat.
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"You took forty years of my life!" he screamed, his spittle flying into my eyes as he forced my head and shoulders backward over the railing. Forty feet below, the churning twin screws of the yacht tore the ocean into a deadly vortex of white foam. "You and your mother die here! In the cold! Just like I did!"
I couldn't breathe. My vision was tunneling, dark spots dancing across my eyes as his thumbs crushed my windpipe. The heat from the burning deck beneath us was searing through the soles of my boots.
