Chapter 19

 

 

It took almost no time for the retrieval of the small safe that had been in the smallest cabin on the yacht. Krom had no problems with the rocks, except where one particularly sharp outcropping sliced cleanly through the left leg of his wetsuit. He was prying the fiberglass hull open enough to enter the wreck and pull the safe from its hidden spot under the bunk when that happened.

He didn’t bother attempting to open the box; his job was to find it and bring it to William Kelly. The beginning and end. The few jobs such as this one were lucrative, and most of the time were routine recovery operations. Today’s mission had been easy, but finding the skeletal remains of what appeared to be a woman, still held inside of the interior of the yacht had rattled him a bit.

The skeleton was probably a woman, not because he was an expert on skeletons, but due to the fact that the foot long ropes of hair that kept snaking around in the water were distracting while he dismantled the bunk in order to unbolt the safe from its hiding place. The dark strands and the similarity of a woman entombed inside this wreck reminded him of Trixie’s recent brush with death.

That’s what caused him to be so careless and neglect to look out for those jagged rocks. Women were so fragile and yet from the marks on the cabin door, he could tell that this woman, whoever she was, she was a fighter. He saw marks in the wood where it appeared that the unknown female had tried to break down the door to escape.

His mind had flashed back to that fucking basement. The dents in the wooden door frame, Trixie’s bloody fingertips from attempting to dig through substructure blocks… Neither woman had given up without a fight. Thankfully for him, Trixie was still alive when he found her.

He’d woken up stiff and cramped with Trixie’s warm body still in his arms. She had begun to shiver from the damp air, so he carried her down to his bunk to finish sleeping through the night. She had been plastered right against his side for the remainder of the night.

Sometimes he felt her little fingers moving through the hair on his chest and it was almost like she was petting him. Whatever she was doing in her sleep, he liked it, and knowing that she had turned to him for warmth and comfort in the night was as close to humbling as he could remember feeling.

She had every reason to be cautious, and maybe even hate him for the cruel things he had said, and the offhand way that he treated her obvious care for him. She had no reason to worry about her physical well-being when she was with him. The challenge for him would be to show her that her heart’s needs were safe too.

The question was how to gain her trust? He was determined to find a way.

*****

They’d begun the day snug in his small bunk. She hated to move from the warmth and comfort of using him as a pillow and prop for her leg over his thigh. He was six foot four inches of hard muscle and fur.

They shared a quick kiss before he rolled from the bed and told her that he had to get to work. His quick squeeze of the cheek of her ass and look of genuine regret went a long way to giving her hope for the two of them.

What would it be like to have a home and a man that had to leave the house to work every day while she worked with families at risk? Since she was fantasizing, why not add in a couple of little people that looked like their parents… A little boy that liked to play at being a tough guy until he got a scraped knee or black eye. Maybe a little girl with long ponytails and a mean right hook.

She felt the desperate smile on her face and had to distract herself from continuing to think about children. She often remembered her past experience with pregnancy and the loss of her little one. It wasn’t like she wanted to replace her child, that could never happen, but if she kept thinking about that loss, she would start crying.

There was little doubt in her mind that Krom would run the other way far and fast if she were to tell him that she wanted him to father her children. Just thinking about the look of horror on his face gave her a reason to smile as she made her way to the galley and poured herself a cup of coffee.

The young man that had given her a sneering smile yesterday was wolfing down a plate of food as if it was the last food on the planet, but she didn’t try to talk to him. The kid seemed to have a chip on his shoulder, and she wasn’t in the mood to deal with his attitude. Krom was pulling on a wetsuit, and she paused before opening the cabin door and stepping out onto the deck to join him and the man he called Sooner.

She propped her butt on the rail and held her mug in both hands for warmth. Krom noticed that she was watching him and he wiggled his ass at her and grinned.

She almost choked when he asked, “Does this suit make my ass look big?”

The ass batted his blue eyes at her, and she cracked up into laughter. All she could do was shake her head. By the time she had her laughter under control, he was waving goodbye and rolling over the side of the boat. He held a wrecking bar in his fist, and she ran over to the spot where he went under the water.

The next half of an hour was a long one. She paced back and forth continually watching the water for signs of him coming to the surface. That little pimple faced bastard watched her as she paced, but she didn’t bother with him. He could take his upper lip, wrap it over his nose and smother himself. Right now, her priority was Krom, and he was making her worry.

The hurried trip to the head was necessary, but the interruption on the return trip to the deck was a surprise.

Neil was waiting for her to come through the small space that was used for sitting around planning. She nodded to him, hoping that he would move away from the doorway. He just stood there propped with his back against the door jamb, and his ankles crossed.

She had wondered what his problem was earlier but had dismissed her concerns. Now he planned to force a showdown. Trixie sighed and gave him a ‘go ahead and speak’ gesture. He appeared to be ready to burst. What he didn’t know was that she had been worked over by men that held her focus and heart, nothing he could say was going to be worse than that.

“You obviously have something on your mind, so let’s hear it. I want to get back out on deck to watch for Krom.”

The sneered jumble of words all but spewed from the kid’s mouth, and she was ready to box his ears and then hug him and tell him that his life could change if he worked at it. Fuck, this kid was so angry that it was pissing her off on his behalf.

“You fucking women, you gotta ruin every fuckin’ aspect of a man’s life, don’t you? Krom is a good guy, and you had to follow him even to his boat. Why? You don’t trust him enough to take his word that he’s working when he leaves your bed? Fucking leeches; you damn women gotta have a man’s nuts hanging from your damn necks, or you aren’t fuckin’ happy.

“Sucking the life out of a good man, just like that fuckin’ whore my old man brought home to fuck in my mother’s bed while she was laying on that fucking slab waiting for him to pull his dick out of his fuck hole long enough to ride down and identify her body.”

He raised his hands towards her, and she back stepped far enough to keep some distance between them. She tried to reason with him, saying, “Look, Krom came and picked me up this morning. I didn’t follow him here; I had no idea where his boat was or even what he did for a living until today. All that I knew was he worked on a boat.”

Neil shook his head all the while that she was talking. Her retreat was stopped by the wall behind her back, so she braced herself for the inevitable fight that she would probably lose. The kid was big, not just heavy, he was taller than Sooner, and lacked about an inch in height to reach Krom’s six foot plus frame. She was medium height at five feet six inches, and he probably had her by a hundred pounds. She quickly closed her eyes and took in two deep breaths before opening them again and doubling her fists.

She regretted not wearing her boots in favor of wearing the cross trainers, but they were still in good condition. If she got the chance, at least she might out run him around the deck. The grim thought of shoving him over the side of the boat made her jaw clench, and she stepped right into his path as he swung his fist her way. She stepped inside of where his legs were set apart with a two-foot span between them.

When he swung, she crouched down, and head butted him just under his sternum and kept pushing his body towards the door as she got her legs up, and her hands grasped his sides. She used every bit of strength that she could find in her hands and fingers to dig in and pinch his flesh.

Krom came running as soon as he heard the yelling, but he wasn’t fast enough to jump back from the two bodies crashing through the doorframe and falling onto the deck onto his legs. He went down with them and cursed while he tried to untangle himself from the skinny ass covered in plaid cotton boxers with his jeans drawn down under the cheeks of his rear end.

“Get the fuck off of me, you little bastard, and stop crushing Trixie. She’s mean, but she just got on her feet, and I have plans for her later if you haven’t squished her.”

He shoved Neil over and saw that the kid had blood on his sides. He started to worry about Trixie and stopped being gentle as he pushed the kid away. He crawled over to the woman that was driving him insane and picked her head up with his hand behind her neck.

“Hey, pretty lady, you know that you shouldn’t be wrestling yet. Didn’t the doctor say that you needed to take it easy for a while longer?” He leaned down and kissed her forehead and sat back on his knees.

“Let’s get you upright if you’re ready, and then you can tell me what happened here. Okay?”

She nodded, and he got them both on their feet before turning her back into the doorway. He guided her to the small table and chairs and asked if she was alright before stalking outside. She just shrugged and replied, “The boy has issues, and I’m not his favorite person right now,” when he asked her what happened, so he decided to kill Neil.

He found the kid curled around a post that was a part of the railing, and as he drew closer, he heard the muffled sobs that the boy was attempting to hold back.

He had no experience with this kind of thing. What the fuck. He unzipped the wetsuit that he hadn’t had a chance to remove once he came topside and heard the yelling. He sat with his back against the railing and waited for the boy to say something.

Neil looked his way once and leaned towards him. Fuck, the kid was a miserable mess, and whatever had set him off, the kid was breaking down. Krom pulled the young man’s shoulders toward himself, and it took nothing else. Skinny arms came around his shoulders, and Neil was crying with his head laying on Krom’s chest.

It wasn’t the first time a man had wept on his shoulder, but the heat of battle and sitting on his boat in the Atlantic Ocean… Well, they were two different things for certain.

Sooner walked to the side and saw them sitting together and nodded his head before he turned back to where he came from. Krom didn’t say a word. He nodded in return, and just let the kid spend his misery in the privacy of their circumstance.

When the sobs quieted, Neil slowly pulled away and pulled up his t-shirt to wipe his face and nose. He kept his head down and finally started to talk.

“I’m sorry, man; things got to me. I felt my chest tighten every time I saw the girl strolling around the deck like she owned it and I lost my shit.” He pulled deep breaths of air into his lungs and shook his head.

“You know that my mother died last week, right?”

That was news to Krom. No one had told him. He hadn’t even known that the woman was sick. He’d been busy for the past few weeks, but normally when a family member passed, someone told him. He shrugged his shoulders and told the brokenhearted boy, “No, man, I had no idea. I’m sorry about that. She was a nice woman.

“I’ve been busier than hell running around looking for Trixie for almost two weeks. A fucker kidnapped her, and I almost lost her. I guess I must have missed the phone call.”

Neil licked his lips and nodded his lowered head. “Mom didn’t know; no one did. They said it was a blood clot.” He shifted his legs and drew up a knee to rest his head on. “She was at work when it happened, and the old man wasn’t at home when they called to have him come down. Her purse was locked up in some closet, and they needed him to identify her body.

“I got home and heard something in their bedroom, but I didn’t think much about it. I saw the answering machine blinking, so I hit the button.” He got quiet for a few minutes while he swallowed back more tears.

“I heard this man asking for a family member to come down to the hospital. He said that they had a ‘Caucasian female, approximately fifty years old.’ They said more, but I ran back to yell for the old man, and when I opened the door-” He swallowed, again and again, to keep the vomit from completely ruining his composure.

“He was fucking some whore from town. I told him to get her out of the house, and he told me to get the hell out and leave him alone.” Neil looked at Krom with the oddest look of bewilderment.

“I told him about the call, and he said that he would take care of it when he was done. His whore was smiling and fucking him while I was telling him that my mother, his wife, might be dead, and he- he told me that if I stuck around, I could have her when he was finished.”

Neil barely stuck his head over the side of the boat as he emptied his guts into the ocean. Krom stood up and started to go into the cabin to get the kid some water. Trixie was standing there with tears rolling down her face, and she shook her head at his outstretched hand. She took the bottle of water to the railing and waited for Neil to have a break from the dry heaves that were producing nothing but a small amount of phlegm.

She didn’t try to stop crying for the boy. She’d heard the story, and her heart broke. Men were so tough, but there were times that they couldn’t be anymore. Experiences like what this kid had been through would affect anyone’s life. She rubbed his shoulder and handed him the bottle.

She leaned over his skinny shoulders and gave him a quick squeeze. “I understand what you’ve gone through, and I’m so sorry for your loss.” She took the hand that Krom held out to her, and allowed him to pull her to her feet.

She looked down at Neil and nudged her toe into his thigh slightly. “Next time you have a problem, just tell me what’s on your mind, okay?”