He screamed in pain and toppled forward, his leg useless. His gun began to fire as I moved back under cover. I heard his body thud against the wall at the bottom and his gun stopped shooting. The other man yelled out but retreated upstairs.
I was out and on the first guy in half a second. He was sitting up and bringing his rifle steady when I kicked it to the side. I plunged my knife into his neck without thinking, and then I ripped the gun from his hands, leaving the knife in his throat.
I didn't have time to think or react as I fired some rounds at the second man with my newly-stolen rifle, forcing him back away from the door. I quickly followed up, firing at him as he retreated back onto the deck.
He was clearly an amateur, sloppy and terrified. He wasn't at all the practiced professional I thought he was when I first saw them board. He was moving from cover to cover, but he moved slowly, and he was clearly scared. His shots were missing wildly, and there was no thought to tactics or strategy, just an obvious animal fear.
I was the opposite. This was my element. Even half naked with a borrowed gun, I was a deadly killing machine. I had been beaten down and broken by the Navy SEALs and rebuilt into a real man. They had drilled every bit of training and deadly force into me, and now I could use it at will.
But I didn't want to kill the second guy. I wanted to wound him so that I could potentially find out who the hell they were. He was more useful to me that way.
As he fell back, my shots forcing him toward their ropes, he decided to be brave and make a jump for it into their ride.
Before he could make it, I put a targeted shot right into his calf. He screamed in pain as he toppled forward. Before I could get to him, though, his momentum carried him forward and he tipped over the railing, disappearing into the water.
Cursing my bad luck, I looked over the edge but couldn't see him. He wasn't in the boat and he wasn't coming back up for air. I watched and waited for another minute, but there was nothing. The sea had swallowed him whole.
I moved back downstairs and checked the first man. He was dead; there was no question about it. Frustrated, I wiped my bloody hands on his clothes.
Claire looked out from the back room. "Nate?"
"Get back inside," I snapped at her.
Her eyes were wide as she stared at the dead man at my feet.
"Is he . . .?" she asked, trailing off.
"These men were pirates."
"I heard gunshots."
I nodded gravely. "They're gone now, though."
"You killed him," she said softly.
"I did what I had to do. Now get back in that room and stay there while I take care of this."
She obeyed, hesitating, her eyes full of fear. I was sure it was the first dead man she'd ever seen.
I pulled my knife from his body and wiped the blood on his shirt. I yanked off the mask, but I didn't recognize him. He was young, possibly Latino, but I wasn't positive.
With a sigh, I began to drag his body up the steps. Dead bodies weighed a lot, and so it was a bit of a struggle, but I managed. Once there, I lifted him up and perched him on the railing.
Before I could let him go, I caught sight of a tattoo on his wrist: a red heart with a dagger in it. I didn't think much of it as I tossed him over the side.
The sea reclaimed him, too.
I sat down on the deck, breathing deeply. The rain had finally given up. My battle calmness was slowly beginning to fade away.
What a fucked up day. I knew we should never have gone out. There was only one last problem: their boat. I forced myself to my feet, because a SEAL never left a job unfinished, and walked over to the lines. I cut the ropes and decided to let the boat drift free. There might have been something useful on board, but I didn't want to risk the climb.
Besides, I couldn't leave Claire down below much longer. She was likely freaking out. Civilians weren't trained for the sort of thing that had just happened. They couldn't handle the violent and sudden realities of life. That's why SEALs existed. We were the men that protected people from the bad shit in the world.
I didn't know what I'd say to her. I didn't know what the right thing was. Talking down scared girls wasn't exactly my kind of shit.
But I was going to have to figure it out.
The last few minutes had been a blur of violence and danger. It all had come out of nowhere, but I was always ready, always prepared to do what I had to do.
Claire, however, was probably going to be a little fucked up from it, at least for a little while.
Still, I'd take care of her, because that's what I did.
CLAIRE
I was shivering by the time Nathan pulled the boat back into the harbor.
The face of the dead man kept coming back to me, over and over. Everything had happened so suddenly and so brutally. I didn't have a second to really understand until the guns started going off.
Then there was Nate. The way he had reacted, so swiftly and seriously, was both terrifying and incredible. I couldn't believe that he was able to take out those two guys when he had only a knife. Without him, I had no clue where I would be, probably tied to the bottom of a boat on my way to sex traffickers or something equally horrifying.
What had those men wanted? Did they just want to rob us? We didn't have anything worth taking, as far as I knew. I couldn't fathom what had happened because it felt too fake, too surreal.
The rain began to slowly stop and Nate gave me a look.
"Come on," he said, "we need to get you home."
I followed him in a daze as he tied the boat off to the dock. Normally I would have helped, but it was like my body didn't want to respond to the commands of my mind. I stood there on the dock watching him, wrapped in a blanket he had found below deck for me, staring vacantly out into space.
"We're okay," he whispered in my ear as he wrapped his arm around me and steered me away from the boat and toward the house. "We're going to be okay."
"The police," I said suddenly. "We have to call the police."
"No cops," he growled. "I killed those men. I can't risk getting the cops involved."
"But you defended us."
"Yeah, you're right, but trust me on this."
I stayed silent. Nate was right. We couldn't involve the police. He had taken care of me so far, and he would continue to do so.
I found myself trusting him more than I thought possible. Where he was a crude and rude asshole before, suddenly he was the man that risked his life to keep us both safe.
As we moved back toward the house, walking down the path, he kept whispering comforting things in my ear. He kept telling me that we were safe, that nobody was going to come for us, but it was like his words just slipped from my mind as soon as he said them.
I could barely concentrate. I could only see the man's face, the knife in his neck.
Finally, we made it back to the house. Nate pushed open the back doors and ushered me inside.
"Hello?" he yelled out. Silence greeted us. "Good," he mumbled, "the assholes aren't home."
"Where's my dad?" I asked him.
"Business deal or some shit, probably. Don't worry." He led me upstairs toward our bathroom. I didn't bother trying to resist. I didn't think I could even if I wanted to.
He pushed open the bathroom door and started the shower. The room quickly filled with steam.
"You're shaking," he said softly. "Get in and take a nice hot shower."
"Okay," I said automatically. I stripped my shirt off, not caring that he was standing right there. He stared at me for a second until I reached back to untie my bikini top. He quickly turned around. I barely registered that uncharacteristic action.
I undressed and stepped into the shower, letting the warm water cover me. It felt good. I hadn't even realized how freezing I really was, but he must have noticed. Immediately I began to feel better as warmth came back into my cold and stiff limbs.
"You need to eat something," Nate said.
"Okay," I replied.
"Come downstairs when you're done."
"Wait," I said quickly without thinking about it. "Stay in here with me."
He was silent for a second. "Okay, babe. Whatever you want."
I stood there and let the water run down my body, not caring that Nate was barely a foot away from my soaking wet, naked body. I could barely form a coherent sentence, let alone articulate why it was bad to have him in the bathroom with me while I showered.
I just kept seeing him, that guy. And Nate's face, serious and emotionless, like he was taking out the garbage. I knew he was a SEAL and was trained to fight men like them, but seeing it was a totally different thing.
"You okay in there?" Nate grunted at me.
"Oh, fine," I said.
"You've been in there a while."
"Really?" I blinked, coming back to myself.
"Ten minutes, at least."
"Sorry. I lost track of time." I reached forward and turned off the water, and then I opened the shower curtain.
Nate's eyes widened as I stood in front of him, naked and dripping. It took me a second to realize what I was doing. Until that moment, everything had been on autopilot, like someone else was running my body and mind. But seeing Nate staring at my body like that made me come back to myself. I yanked the shower curtain back over me.