Bruce jammed a large scuffed shoe on David’s stomach to hold him down. David tried to shove the foot off, but Bruce stamped down harder and sat down on the bench over him. He placed his other foot on David’s throat, and then bore down on him with both feet, grinning while he sat there. The pain in David’s stomach was suddenly matched by his inability to breathe.
“We’ll just sit here for a while.” Bruce smiled down at him. “Until Thomas gets back. Or did you hide it in here, Mr Roth?” he asked, looking around the saloon. “Is it under a seat? Is it in a cupboard somewhere?”
David didn’t hear him. He was clawing at the shoe at his throat, while at the same time trying to suck air into his lungs.
“I found a cat when I was seven,” Bruce said in an almost conversational tone. “I tied it to a tree and threw firecrackers at it. It never came back.” He grinned down at David sadistically. “Speaking of cats, I see you’ve got a little minx.” He stomped harder on David’s stomach. David grunted and Bruce grinned in satisfaction. “If I catch that fucking cat,” he said, “I’m gonna feed her to the sharks.” He looked up as Thomas entered the saloon. “Well?” he asked, putting more pressure on David’s throat to keep him down. “Did you find it?”
Thomas looked at David trapped against the bench beneath Bruce’s legs and slowly shook his head. “Not yet,” he told his partner.
The foot on David’s stomach was pinning him down, the boot at his throat cutting off his air. One minute he was gasping for breath and then suddenly the pressure was gone. He was released from the bench, precious air gushing into his lungs. It didn’t last. He was hauled up by his arms, a hand gripping his hair, and shoved against the companionway steps with unceremonious force. The air was slammed from him again, and he sagged against the stairs, unable to fight, unable even to hold himself up.
“Mr Roth.” They had him up with his back against the stairs, the wood digging uncomfortably into his shoulders and legs.
“Mr Roth!”
Someone held David’s hair and banged his head against a wooden step behind him. David blinked through the tears of pain. Bruce’s face loomed at him menacingly. “Where is it?”
David coughed and gasped and tried to breathe normally. It was difficult, and Bruce’s bad breath only made things worse. “Where is … what?” he managed to say.
A fist slammed into his stomach. He would have collapsed had they not been holding him up. One on each arm. A hand still in his hair.
Thomas sniggered. “Our property, Mr Roth. Where is it?”
David tried to talk past the pain. “What … prop—?”
The fist slammed into him again. This time into the side of his face. He didn’t see it coming, didn’t anticipate the force of the blow as it caught him high on the cheekbone. He thought he was going to pass out, white stars swirling in his mind. He could feel something warm running down the side of his face; then he tasted blood.
“You better tell us where it is, Mr Roth. Because if you don’t things are going to get nasty.”
David barely had the strength to shake his head.
“He’s fucking with us,” came the angry growl from Thomas. “He has it. He knows where it is.” And then he slipped his hand behind his back and brought out a knife. It was a folding Kershaw, a wicked-looking blade with a rubberised handle. He brought it up to David’s chest, the blade cold against his skin. David held his breath and felt his whole body go numb. And then it turned to ice.
“David?” A woman’s voice, calling from the jetty. “David, are you there?”
Kathy.
The knife was against David’s chest, his arms pinned back and the hand still in his hair. He couldn’t move. He was thinking furiously, imagining what Bruce and Thomas would do to Kathy, how they would use her to make him talk. And because he couldn’t give them what they wanted, they wouldn’t stop. They would go on hurting her, doing God knows what to her.
“David?” she called again. Both Bruce and Thomas looked up as they heard the boarding steps knock against the side of the boat.
David moved. He didn’t have a choice really. It was now or never and he had to get away, had to get to Kathy before they did. He smashed his forehead into Thomas’s nose, feeling the bones in the man’s face break; then he pushed forward with all his might. The knife slid along his sternum. It was a chance he knew he had to take, but he also knew that the bones in his chest would deflect its edge, that no blade would penetrate any vital organs. He didn’t even feel the blade cutting him as he kicked his knee up into Bruce’s crotch. Both men went down.
David was faintly surprised that he’d had the strength to do either, but he didn’t dwell on his success. He turned and began pulling himself up the companionway. He managed to get the top half of his body out before someone grabbed his leg. It was Bruce. David supposed he should have been grateful that it wasn’t the knife-wielding Thomas who recovered first. Without thinking, he lashed out with his free foot and kicked Bruce in the face. The man cried out and went down again, and David scrambled out of the companionway and almost fell into the wheelhouse.
Kathy was there, standing just beside the main mast. She wore a black pencil skirt and was carrying a pair of high heels under her arm.
“David?” She stared at his face and chest in horror as he stumbled to his feet. “You’re bleeding!”
He heard swearing from below, heard Bruce start up the steps while Thomas lurched through the galley to get to the forward companionway to cut him off.
“Kathy!” David rasped. “Get off!”
Bruce’s head and arm appeared from the saloon, his bottom lip smeared red and a bloody gap where his gold-capped tooth had been. Then Thomas barged from the forward companionway, blood streaming from his nose.
“Kathy!” David yelled. “Run!”
She stayed stock-still, staring in horror as the two strangers emerged from below. David swore and lunged for her.
There was no way past Thomas, who was closest to the boarding steps, or past Bruce, who was now almost all the way out of the saloon. There was only one place left to go. David stumbled into Kathy and grabbed her by the arm. “Jump!” he shouted.
CHAPTER TEN
All David felt was water rising up to meet him, and the murky green of the marina smacking into him. He was underwater, drowning, the ocean gushing into his lungs. Suddenly, the nightmare was coming true.
There was no sound, just the hiss of his own escaping breath around him, the churning of the water above him. He couldn’t tell how deep he was, couldn’t tell which way was up or down. He was floating in the deep, somewhere between the surface and the floor of the ocean, an indeterminable depth. Was he dreaming? Had he hit his head falling from the boat?
Kathy. He looked down, or in the direction he thought was down, searching for her in the bottomless water below him. And then he saw it, something rising, reaching for him, rising up to drag him down, to pull him under. He tried to swim up, to get away, but he couldn’t. He was trapped in the nightmare, in the thick, suffocating ocean.
He broke the surface in a spray of gushing air, took half a breath and then promptly sank beneath the water again. The hands gripping him heaved him up once more.
“Mr Roth!” came the spluttered demand. “Come on, Mr Roth! Swim!”
Someone had him around the chest and was trying to tow him towards the jetty between two boats. David struggled feebly through the water.