Hey, everybody! It's been a while! This chapter got stuck in editing for a while before I felt like I was satisfied with it, but the good news is that the next chapter is almost done! That's because it was going to be the end of THIS chapter, but then both this and that got to be so long I decided it was better to separate them! So I'll probably be putting that out pretty soon too. Thanks to everyone who's reading and patiently waiting on me to get my act together!
"Alright, I don't know how they do things in Jamaica, but where I come from that is not standard lifeguard equipment!" Cassie quipped, her voice cracking a bit with nerves as she nodded at the AK-47 being jabbed in their direction.
The thug sneered and opened his mouth to respond, but was stopped when the radio on his belt squawked and a voice came through. "Hold them- I'm on my way."
Raising the device without ever taking his eyes off the two treasure hunters, the goon answered, "Roger. I'm keeping them here."
"Can you ask him to bring drinks when he comes?" Foster asked casually, nodding to the radio.
The thug just glowered at him in reply.
Shrugging, Foster cast a glance at Cassie. "Worth a shot."
An armored truck came crashing over the hill and barrelled toward them, skidding to a stop in the sand just a few yards away. Instantly the driver's door flung open, and out stepped the heavily-tattooed Hispanic man Cassie had seen on top of the building in Lisbon, followed by a few other henchman. Her eyes widened as the hard-edged young man angrily stalked their way, and Cass breathed, "Tristan..."
Stopping next to his subordinate, a Para-9 brandished in his hand, Tristan glared first at Ian and then at Cassie, and his frigid blue eyes were as unforgiving as steel. Seeing him up close like this, Cassie could now make out his tattoos better, and she noted that most of them were part of an image of a jaguar's head that covered the better part of his face. The jaguar's mouth was agape, its top fangs on Tristan's temples next to his eyes, its bottom fangs near the corners of his lips, and various Aztec-style motifs were incorporated into the design.
Cassie's attention was drawn from the ominous facial markings when Tristan demanded harshly, "Where are they?" The Ocelotl leader's mouth snapped like a bear trap as he spoke.
Out of the corner of her eye, a cloud of dust steadily making its way down the beach caught Cassie's attention, and she could just make out the front of Charlie's rental jeep at the leading edge of it. Her heart was pounding as she fought to keep the relief from showing and spoiling the element of surprise, and her eyes flicked back to the dangerous cult leader that was staring her down. As she swallowed hard, she inwardly blessed the fact that her acting skills came from her mom, and not her dad. "What, the coins?" Cassie asked. "I dunno, we didn't find anything-"
"You know what I'm looking for!" Tristan barked back, interrupting her as he raised his pistol to point in her face. "Where are they?"
Cassie's eyebrows scrunched in confusion. "Hey, hey!", she cried as he shifted the gun between her and Ian. "If we could just be reasonable about this, then we could all just-" she glanced at the dust cloud in her peripheral vision, "-JUMP!" Leaping suddenly backward, she pulled Foster with her just as Charlie and Solange came crashing through in the rental jeep. Tristan narrowly dodged out of the way along with the three henchman that had come with him, but the thug who had held Cassie and Foster at gunpoint was struck by the front of the jeep, and his AK-47 went spinning across the sand while the jeep screeched to a halt after running him over. "Beach body," Cassie deadpanned as she pulled herself to her feet alongside Foster, who snagged the machine gun as he stood.
Charlie looked over the wheel and urgently called out, "Well lovelies, don't just stand there- get in!"
Cassie and Ian ducked their heads as gunshots rang out. Running towards the jeep, they jumped over the side and into the back while Solange huddled in the passenger's seat and provided cover fire, looking scared but determined as she did. Tristan and his crew aggressively fought back while taking refuge behind their truck, and before Cass and Ian had even fully landed Cutter pegged the accelerator to the floor, inertia pinning them against the seat back as the tires flung sand out and the jeep tore off down the beach. The engine note spiked as Cutter shifted gears and sped up, then the Englishman glanced into the back seat. "I oughtta know better than to leave you two alone!" he shouted jokingly over the wind and the roar of the engine. "Can't go more than an hour without causing some kind of commotion!"
Cassie leaned forward between the two front seats. "We found the coin!" she said with excitement, producing the small bronze talisman from her pocket and watching Solange's eyebrows shoot up in delight. The olive-skinned girl opened her mouth to say something, but a loud crash made them all look behind.
Tristan's armored truck was bearing down on them, the massive tires churning up the sand beneath it as it closed the gap between them at a rapid rate. From the bed of the truck, a goon fired an RPG over the cab, and the rocket exploded against the beach just a few yards away. "And then they found us," Foster added dryly, jerking his head in that direction.
"Here!" Solange yelled, throwing a .45 Defender to Cassie. "You're going to need it!"
Cassie caught the weapon and strapped the holster to her thigh. "Thanks," she said dryly as she turned to fire at the enemy vehicle.
Another rocket exploded behind them, causing an eruption of sand and salt water to rain down on their heads. "Sod off, mate!" Charlie shouted at the truck. "This is a rental!"
"I'm not sure he cares!" Cassie groaned.
Bracing the machine gun in the crook of his arm, Ian turned and open-fired on the truck, spraying the front of it with a onslaught of bullets that bounced harmlessly off the armor-plating, though he did succeed in making the goon in the back duck down for cover. "Cutter!" he called as he jammed a fresh magazine into the weapon. "We've gotta lose these guys- now!"
"Oi!" the Englishman called back. "Don't get your pants all up in a bunch, mate- I'm working on it!" Cutter jerked the wheel, guiding the jeep into a sharp S curve in the beach that had a bank on the inland side of it. As they drifted in the loose sand, Charlie immediately cut the wheel back the other way, the lightweight little vehicle again oversteering significantly as it struggled to maintain traction. For the longer, less-maneuverable truck behind them, the bend proved to be too tight, forcing it up onto the bank and out of sight for the moment.
"Whew!" Cass exclaimed, wiping her brow as they came out onto a straight stretch on the other side. "That's a relief to get those guys off our- oh GOD!"
With mighty roar, the bullet-proof juggernaut suddenly flew over the bank, going airborne for a moment, and descended on them with a vengeance, side-swiping the jeep with jarring force and bashing it toward the sea. Charlie gritted his teeth and fought the wheel as the vehicle bucked and swerved crazily from the attack, and saltwater swirled over the floorboards as the jeep was forced into the surf up to the top of its tires. Spray from off the wheels filled the air in a blinding, briny mist as the engine tone spiked, whining in protest to Cutter downshifting suddenly to combat the drag from the water. Swiping at her eyes, Cassie blinked the salt from her vision just as the truck took another swipe at them. Cutter downshifted again and slammed on the brakes, managing to slip far enough back that only the front corner was clipped in the assault. The impact still had them fishtailing, though, and the truck was slowing down to match their speed and try to ram them again. In a moment of equal parts insanity and courage, Cassie's body moved to protect her friends almost without thinking as she rose from her seat and placed a foot up on the door of the jeep, then launched herself forward toward their assailants.
"CASSIE!"
Ian's cry was lost on her as she grabbed the rough wooden slats that sided the bed of the truck, dangling precariously as the armored behemoth juddered and bounced along the uneven sand below them. Looking forward, Cass met Tristan's steely, glowering eyes in the side mirror and gave him a withering scowl of her own. With one hand she drew her gun and shot out the glass from the mirror, then tried to shoot in to the cab through the open window. The bad angle foiled her attempts, but the action did make Tristan swerve away from Charlie and the others, and the gap between the two vehicles increased even more as Cutter pulled in behind the truck. "Alright, Cass-" she encouraged herself. "It's just like being back in Louisiana, riding down the beach in the back of dad's beater pickup to get ice cream." She clambered up the side of the truck as she muttered, "Just with more guns, and the ice cream vendor is a crazy cult leader..."
As she climbed the slats, the rocket launcher suddenly appeared above her, jutting out over the side to take another shot at the jeep. Quickly Cassie threw herself upward, vaulting the side as the thug was taking aim, and rammed her fist into his face just as he was pulling the trigger. The man staggered backward and the rocket flew well above its intended target, coming down in the sea instead and blasting water into the air. "Hey there!" Cassie chirped as she raised her fists to meet her opponent. "Double serving of Rocky Road?" she said, punching him again and sending him into the side wall of the bed.
The man cursed in Spanish and threw himself across the bed of the truck, swinging a punch that Cassie deflected. He recovered quickly, though, surprising her by driving an elbow hard into her stomach, and she let out a cry of pain as she doubled over. C'mon, Cass, get going! she chided herself.
As she shakily raised herself up again a thick, hairy arm was suddenly clamped around her neck, squeezing painfully on her throat, and the thug leaned back, lifting her bodily from the ground. "Alright," Cassie wheezed, laboring to breath as he threatened to choke the life out of her. "I'll agree- that whole Rocky Road thing sounded way less cool out loud then it did in my head!" Stars were clouding her vision as the man increased the pressure on her neck, and in an act of desperation Cass jabbed her thumb into the man's eye. The thug growled in pain and his arm loosened just a little, giving Cassie a much-needed gulp of air. Swinging her legs forward and kicking off the side of the bed, Cass shoved the man up against the slats on the opposite side. He dropped her as his head struck the wood, and she fell, landing hard on the metal bed. Immediately Cassie rolled to put distance between her and her attacker, then came up swinging a punch to the thug's chin. "Also, to be fair-" Cassie brought her knee up sharply into his gut, "I was always more of a chocolate peanut butter-swirl type." Grabbing the man by his collar, she punched him repeatedly, then grabbed his shirt with both fists and swung him into the side. The sudden chatter of machine gun fire strafing the cab of the truck made Cassie duck instinctively, and she looked over to see Ian standing in the back of the jeep and trying to shoot Tristan through the window. Tristan swerved in response, throwing Cassie off balance and allowing her opponent to scramble away. As the huge armored vehicle roared up the bank toward a wooden platform surrounded by a collection of thatched-roof gazebos, Cass' eyes went wide, her voice tremulous as she gulped, "Ohhh, crap!"
Foster clenched his teeth and growled as he watched Cassie struggling to free herself while the goon she was fighting held her off the ground in a headlock. "God dammit!" he cursed, jamming a new magazine in his AK-47. "We've gotta help her, Charlie!" he yelled into the front seat.
"Any suggestions as to exactly how we should do that?" Cutter bit out.
Ian rolled the tip of his tongue across cracked lips as he weighed the options. "Get me up alongside this thing!" he called.
Cutter floored the accelerator, the jeep's engine shrieking in protest as he cut around the back corner of the armored truck and sped up along the driver's side. Foster watched as Tristan's scowling face came into view in the front window, and he felt filled by a sudden, overwhelming rage toward this man whose minions were currently trying to kill Cassie Drake. In a moment of anger-fueled impulsiveness, Ian leveled the machine gun at Tristan as the cult leader was turning the wheel to swerve their direction, and he squeezed the trigger, unleashing a torrent of gunfire on the side of the cab. In a knee-jerk reaction, the Ocelotl leader swerved the other direction and sped up a hill toward some sort of party deck, and Foster growled in frustration.
"Shit! Cutter, can you-"
Ian was stopped by the sound of an RPG firing from the back of the truck, and then the sound of the grenade exploding against the base of an enormous palm tree. As the towering trunk leaned over and fell, Solange shrieked "Charlie!"
Cutter spun the wheel hard, putting the jeep into a slide and narrowly avoiding being crushed by the massive palm as it slammed into the beach between them and Tristan's truck. Foster sprung to his feet and stared after the other vehicle as it crashed through the wooden structures, carrying Cassie and her attacker with it. "Damn it!" he cursed.
Cutter glanced quickly up and down the length of the tree. It had completely cut them off, spanning the entire beach from the thick border of vegetation on the one side and well into the ocean on the other. "Bloody hell..." he complained, throwing the shifter into reverse. "We'll have to find another way around. Just have to-"
Ian leaped from the back seat of the jeep, clearing the fallen palm, and took off sprinting down the beach without a word. Charlie watched for a moment, then shook his head in resignation. "Some people's kids..." he muttered, then promptly backed up and flung sand as he tore off down the beach the other direction.
Cassie screamed as the truck barreled onto the platform amidst the deafening sound of popping and cracking wooden posts, bashing beach tables and umbrellas aside as it went. Her stomach lurched sickeningly as the weight of the vehicle broke through the planking and the truck slammed into the ground below while splintered boards buckled up around them. Shielding their faces from debris, Cass and the thug huddled in opposite corners of the truck bed while Tristan smashed his way through the deck, wantonly laying waste to the tropical, island-themed arrangement. The truck was fishtailing violently as it caromed off of various objects, and the back corner decimated the supports for one of the thatched roofs which- to Cassie's horror- toppled and crashed down on top of them.
The next few moments were a confusion of tangled rafters and leaves as the structure slid along the top of the stake sides until a fragment of a post caught on the back corner of the bed and the whole arrangement was suddenly being drug along behind them. "Who taught you how to drive, Tris!" Cass shouted, struggling to free herself from the mess as it bumped along. She emerged, spitting straw-like pieces of dried palm fronds from her mouth, and burst out onto the top of the roof a split-second before the goon across from her did likewise.
Wasting no time, the thug growled, pulled out a knife, and lunged. Cassie yelped in surprise and narrowly dodged away, the knife instead lodging in a rafter with a dull thud. Scrambling to get her footing on the trembling structure, Cassie felt dry leaves and splintery wood scratching at her skin as she swung her fist into the man's temple, then she cried out in pain as the goon kicked the top of her knee.
The two of them continued to battle each other atop the roof as it jolted and shuddered along, the framing gradually being pulled apart by friction as it dragged along the beach behind the speeding truck. Every now and then, a section of the thatching would fly off or a rafter would come detached, and Cassie and her opponent would duck out of the way as it flipped into the air and bounced haphazardly down the sand. It was after nearly getting her head knocked off by one of these rogue beams that Cassie seized the thug by the collar and pulled back to load up a punch that she hoped would break his nose and end the fight. She was interrupted by a stomach-wrenching jolt that made her knees buckle under her and was immediately followed by a pop like a firecracker, then suddenly everything that remained of the roof structure flipped upward and rolled like a runaway Ferris wheel, carrying Cass and her opponent with it as it lazily twisted around and flopped into the ocean.
With barely enough time to take a gasp of air, Cassie was plunged beneath the surface along with the disintegrating gazebo roof. In a swirl of water and debris and light and dark, she sank, slammed into the sandy bottom, then suddenly surfaced again, spluttering and coughing up salt water. "Ughh..." she groaned as she swiped strings of wet hair from her face. Surrounded by a mangled trellis of ruined framework and sagging thatch that rolled with every surge of the ocean, Cassie began to slog her way through the mayhem when she suddenly saw a flash of movement nearby. Ducking instinctively, she avoided the thug's knife by such a small margin she felt the displaced air as it passed over her head. Leaping forward, Cassie rammed her shoulder into the goon's gut and slammed him into a broken beam behind him, then quickly followed up with an elbow to the underside of his chin.
Fighting in waist-deep water was a special kind of challenge, Cass quickly realized. Not only due to the drag, but also from the fact that every movement sent up vision-obscuring splashes of water that made it difficult both to defend and to aim her attacks. In the muddled flurry, Cassie more than once threw a punch at where she thought the goon was, only to have her knuckles collide painfully with a board or miss altogether. The fight quickly devolved into a wild and frenzied scuffle, with only brief flashes of clarity as her reference while the salt stung her eyes and every breath she inhaled made her choke on spray. Growling angrily as she grew more desperate, Cassie swung but the thug caught her fist and attempted to stab her with the knife. She twisted her body and caught his wrist, and as the two combatants locked together in a struggle for dominance they stumbled against the ruined timbers of the roof. The goon spun Cassie around, and suddenly she found her back against the rough wood of a beam as the knife came ever closer to her chest. Gritting her teeth, she headbutted the thug and knocked him backward, but he pulled her down with him when he fell.
Tumbling along the sand underwater, Cassie and the thug continued to grapple for control in the shimmering shallows of the bay, and eventually landed with her pinned down under her opponent's weight in knee-deep water. Cassie swallowed hard as the thug's knee pressed down on her stomach, her diaphragm starting to convulse for want of oxygen, and the knife point gleaming just inches above her. Summoning all of her strength, she ripped her other hand out of his grasp and used it to double-up on the knife, driving the back of the goon's hand into the splintered end of a board. She heard the man cry out in pain, the sound muffled by the water, and she saw the knife drop to the sand next to her. At the same time, the weight on her stomach was allayed for the briefest of moments, and she immediately took advantage of the opportunity to flip him off of her, reversing their position as she came up for air and pushed him under instead. Teeth clenched with grim determination, Cassie gripped the thug's collar and held his head under while trying to also subdue his limbs as they flailed against her. In a surge of panic-fueled adrenaline, the thug shoved her off of him and burst out of the water as Cass fell back against a rafter. The man drew a ragged gasp of air and lunged for her throat, but fell lifelessly into the shallows as a gunshot ripped through him.
Heart pounding and hands shaking with nerves, Cassie looked from the smoking muzzle of her pistol to the dark red cloud that was blooming in the water at her feet. Breathing deep, slow breaths through pursed lips, she carefully and deliberately holstered the gun and picked her way out of the tangled remains of the gazebo roof until she was back on clear, sandy beach. She pressed a hand to her chest over top of her heart, which currently felt like it was working on bursting through her rib cage. Spying an AK-47 in the sand that had probably fallen off the thug's person as he was yanked from the back of Tristan's truck, she picked it up and began walking down the beach in the direction they had been traveling. The sand was plowed up with deep ruts, and rubble was everywhere, strewn across the waterfront in a trail of litter bearing witness to the chaotic motorcade that was underway. As she labored to put one foot in front of the other, Cassie tried to shake herself out of the daze that had settled over her, and suddenly she became aware of the sounds of another vehicle approaching. "Charlie?" she wondered hopefully, turning around.
It was not Charlie. What it was was a group of Ocelotl goons, storming down the water's edge in a jeep, coming her way with clear intentions of running her over. "Shit! Not good!" Cassie said. Quickly slinging the machine gun into position with the butt braced in the crook of her arm, she narrowed her eyes and took aim at the rapidly-approaching vehicle, and squeezed the trigger.
The kickback was startling- stronger than she remembered- and Cassie was knocked backwards off her feet before she even knew what had happened. Landing heavily in one of the deep trenches dug by the gazebo roof as it was towed down the beach, she squeezed her eyes shut in terror as the roar of the engine crescendoed and something flashed directly over her. Then the noise receded down the beach, and Cass tentatively opened first one eye and then the other as she realized that, by virtue of underestimating the power of an AK-47 as well as a massive stroke of the Drake's legendary dumb luck, she had somehow survived a close encounter with the front end of a speeding jeep. High above her was the brilliant blue sky, the warm sun shining down as cheerily as if the whole battle had just been a figment of her imagination. Groaning wearily, she pushed herself up on her elbows just as a shadow fell over her and a warm, familiar voice noted, "Mind the recoil- it's a bitch."
Squinting up at Ian Foster as he smirked down at her, Cassie took his hand and he pulled her up. "Thanks," she said ruefully. She tried to brush the sand off her wet clothes to no avail, then the sounds of another car approaching made them both turn. Cass and Ian both raised their guns, but the sight of Cutter and Solange rattling over the churned-up dunes in their rental jeep brought a sigh of relief from both of them.
"Oh, thank god!" Cassie huffed. "I did not want to see any more of those jaguar creeps!"
As if on cue, another jeep suddenly roared around the bend a few hundred yards behind them, giving chase while an Ocelotl thug manning a turret on the back tried to line up a shot. Charlie squealed in for a stop next to them, and hurriedly waved his arm. "You know the drill, move your arse!"
Cassie and Foster pulled themselves in as the jeep was already accelerating, Cutter driving hard and weaving back and forth to try to evade the gunfire coming their way. Pulling themselves out of the disorderly pile they had fallen into the backseat in, Cass and Ian joined Solange in returning fire on the Ocelotl, while also trying to brace themselves so as not to be thrown from the vehicle as Charlie guided it through a series of crazy maneuvers. Cassie's machine gun spat bullets, the stock juddering against her as she aimed it at the turret gunner, and quickly took him out. The goon in the passenger's seat of the enemy jeep threw a grenade, and the resulting cloud of grit and debris rained down on the four treasure hunters, momentarily blinding them.
"Mierda!" Solange exclaimed, ducking down behind her seat back to cough and rub at her eye. "I got sand in my eye!"
Jamming another magazine into her AK-47, Cassie snorted. "I've got sand in my-" she stopped. "Uh, you don't even wanna know..."
The engine note of their jeep rose suddenly, and she felt the vehicle go airborne for a moment. Whirling around to face the front, Cass saw that they had blown through a row of hedges and emerged onto a narrow road with concrete barricades on one side, and a frail-looking metal railing on the other, the clear blue sea beyond. She heard Charlie cursing, and then saw that they were quickly approaching a tight curve- too sharp to safely navigate at the speeds they were going, with a rickety-looking wood fishing pier jutting out from the apex of the bend. "Ooohhh, shit!" Cassie quavered.
Charlie tried to cut the wheel, but the thugs rammed them from behind right as they were reaching the turn, forcing them out onto the old pier. The impact knocked Cassie forward, and she tumbled over the front seat as the pulsing thrum of tires on uneven wood planks was followed by the sickening crack of weathered decking buckling beneath them. The jeep fell, hitting the back corner on the edge of the dock as it did, which caused the rear of the jeep to flip up and throw Cassie from the vehicle. Screaming as she hurtled through a confusion of splintering, breaking lumber and shifting framework, she blindly reached out and caught on to a board with one hand.
A terrific splash came from below her, and she looked down to see that Charlie's jeep had landed upright in the water and her three partners were scrambling off of the sinking vehicle onto a flotilla of small fishing boats tied up at the foot of a wood staircase that led down to the water. "Everybody okay down there?" she yelled.
"Oh, just positively ace, luv," Cutter's sarcasm drifted up to her as he half-fell into a rowboat. "Thanks for asking. Cheers."
Cassie felt the pier sway, and she saw that the crash had all but divided the structure into two halves, with a twelve foot gap yawning between them. The few supports that had survived the plummeting vehicle creaked and groaned as the free-standing end of the pier tottered unsteadily in the breeze, threatening to fall at any moment. "I'd better get out of here," Cassie muttered, reaching up to grab on with her other hand.
It was at that moment that several of the Ocelotl goons appeared on the other edge of the break. Shouting animatedly in Spanish, the men raised their guns at her. "Oh, shit!" Cassie cursed, letting go with one hand again so she could pull out her own pistol. She quickly squeezed off a few shots from her .45 Defender, hitting two of the thugs easily. "Thanks for dropping by!" she yelled as they fell past her into the water.
Cass turned to take aim at the third and final thug, but he ducked out of sight behind a crate. "You slimy piece of-" Cassie's tirade was cut short by a loud pop and the sudden movement of her side of the pier as the last of the bracing below buckled, and the structure pitched forward. "Whooo-oah!" As the deck crashed into the pilings behind her, Cassie lost her precarious hold on the edge and fell against a cross brace, throwing her arm over the rough timbers to catch herself as broken boards, wrenched free by the impact, clattered down around her. Cass groaned, and the toe of her shoes scuffed against wood as she searched for a purchase on the ruined pier. Pushing away from the cross brace, she climbed the now-slanted deck using missing slats and the gaps between boards for handholds until she reached the top, then cautiously set off down the first flight of stairs which now hung nearly parallel to the water. "Alright, where are you?" she breathed as she turned to look for the remaining goon, her gun held at the ready.
The goon suddenly appeared as he lunged towards her over the edge, and before she had a chance to react he had tackled her to the ground. Cassie grunted in surprise as they both tumbled down the almost-horizontal stairs and crashed into what was once a landing at the end. The two of them leaped to their feet and met with blows, continuing to grapple with each other until their struggling caused them to slip off the edge of the stairs. Screaming and still locked in combat, Cassie and the goon plummeted into one of the small rowboats boats below, landing in a heap. Immediately, Cass rolled off and raised a fist to strike, but stopped when she saw that the thug had cracked his skull on the bulwark of the craft as he fell and was knocked unconscious. Relieved, she instead slumped against the side of the boat with her arms draped over the edge, groaning as she let her head flop backwards.
"Cassie!" Ian exclaimed. "Cass- are you alright?"
She opened her eyes to see that Ian had nearly upset the boat he was in in his haste to make his way over to her. "No, I'm not alright!" she said. "I landed in a pile of dead fish!" To prove her point, she picked one of the slimy creatures up and waved it in the air before tossing it over her shoulder into the water. "The smell is just horrendous!"
A smile cracked Ian's worried countenance, and he chuckled as he shook his head. "You are one crazy treasure hunter," he said with warmth in his voice.
"Alright, kids," Cutter spoke up from the boat he and Solange had ended up in. "I think it's about time to cut and run, if you get my drift."
Foster nodded, and offered a hand to Cassie as they both made their way over. "Speaking of which, I don't think you're getting your deposit back on that rental, Charlie," he said, gesturing to the place the jeep had sunk.
"Oh, god- don't bloody remind me..." Cutter grumbled. He turned and yanked the pull cord to start the outboard motor on the boat. "We'll have to 'borrow' this old jalopy to get back to the motel so we can get our things together and make a plan."
"And let's keep our eyes peeled until we get out of Jamaica," Solange chimed in, brushing her hair from her face as the wind caught it. "Now that the Ocelotl know where we are, it will be easy for them to attack again. We're the prey, they're the hunters."
"Right," Cutter agreed as he pushed the throttle forward and guided the boat away from the wrecked pier. "Until we're on the move again, we'll be like shooting fish in a barrel for Tristan and the boys."
Cassie sat down heavily in the bottom of the boat. "Can we not mention fish until I have time to take a shower? Please?"
Ian looked at her with a twinkle in his eye. "Oh, so what you're trying to say is that- right now- you need piscium references like a fish needs a bicycle?"
"Oh, I hate you..." Cassie said with a groan.