Alan opened his eyes. The bastard was gone.

Chloroform. He’d breathed in some of it, but he’d managed to block his airway with the back of his tongue before he took in too much. And Michael had been in a hurry — hadn’t held the rag in place long enough to force him to take more breaths. Had failed to completely knock Alan out.

Somewhere outside the yacht, something had gone just a little wrong in Michael’s meticulous plan, and Michael had been in a hurry to correct it.

He’d made one tiny mistake.

Had created one feeble chance for Alan to do something.

Alan took stock of his situation. He lay with his hands numb and bound, his good hand injured, the yacht heaving beneath him, in a chamber of horrors that if he didn’t do something fast was going to be the last place he ever saw. And Michael was either on his way to get Phoebe or he already had her. Alan couldn’t just lie there and die. He had to fight.

He had this one chance.

Alan looked around the walls. Michael had a collection of knives on one set of pegboards, and Alan rolled over until he was beneath them, then managed to get to his knees. His feet wouldn’t hold him. He tried to stand, and fell. But on his knees he couldn’t reach the knives.

He slammed the pegboard in frustration, and it bounced.

Right. No one made expensive luxury yachts with peg-board walls. Michael had added the pegboard, nailed to furring strips of some sort. If Alan hit the board rhythmically, between the strips, he might be able to get one of the knives to bounce off. He might also be able to get one to drop point-down onto his head and punch a hole in his skull. But he was going to have to chance that.

Alan thumped the wall. One AND two AND three AND four, and the blades were all bouncing, but nothing was shaking loose.

Harder. ONE and TWO and THREE and...

A couple of blades bounced free at the same time. One hit the floor and stuck point down in the teak. The other sliced a line across Alan’s left forearm that burned like white-hot hell, but he bit back his scream. If Michael was on the ship, Alan didn’t dare alert him that the chloroform had worn off.

He grabbed the knife with the smaller handle with his mouth, jammed the point of it into one of the holes in the pegboard to keep it steady, and began sawing at the tape around his wrists.

He couldn’t feel his hands. Managed to slice himself a couple of times on both hands, a fact he only discovered once the ropes fell away and blood ran back into his wrists and hands and fingers and started pouring out the holes he’d made in himself.

His hands screamed and burned as life came back to them. He pushed the left one against the pegboard wall, forcing his fingers to straighten until he was actually able to make them move by will and intent. The right one he could flex a little, but with the damage he’d done to himself the day before, it was going to be mostly useless. He fought to get his left hand working, and considered his desperate situation and cursed every second that fled. He staggered to the door of the torture chamber, trying to find his sea legs. Opened it.

Looked left and right. Right looked like it led deeper into the ship. Not the way Alan wanted to go. Left, he thought, would take him back up the stairs and out onto the aft deck.

And from there, maybe he could get some idea of what he could do to save Phoebe.

He could, he thought, take a goddamned weapon with him for starters. The torture chamber was full of them.

He went back, fighting just to maintain his balance, and grabbed a knife that looked sharp enough to use for surgery.

And then, knife handle clamped between his teeth as if he were a pirate, he grabbed walls and doorways with his one working hand and made his way through the corridor. Still no sign of Michael, nor any sound of him. Good. Maybe Michael was having a hard time finding Phoebe. Maybe she’d gotten away. Maybe... just maybe... she’d shot the monster and this whole nightmare was over.

But Alan kept the knife, because he wasn’t a big believer in miracles.

He reached the stairs at the end of the narrow passageway and went up them, still staggering, and poked his head carefully out of the hatch at the end, and looked around. He was in the middle of a sea of masts and riggings, of furled sails and polished teak and brass fittings beneath dark sides, beneath bursts of lashing rain. Hundreds of ships were moored around him, all of them cross-tied against the storm, all of them rocking and bucking against the battering chop of the bay.

Alan had never liked boats, never cared for the ocean, never dreamed of living a sailor’s life. He didn’t find anything in this place that resonated with him except for a deep desire to set Michael’s fucking yacht on fire and watch it burn to the waterline and sink.

Simple wish, but not one he’d be able to carry out.

No sign of Michael. No sign of Phoebe. What was Alan supposed to do? In all directions he could see only yachts and sailboats. He couldn’t wander randomly, hoping to find them and stop them. He didn’t want to leave this damnable boat and have them get back to it while he was somewhere else. If he picked a direction and it was the wrong one, Michael could be gone forever, taking Phoebe with him, before Alan could correct the error.

Nor could he take Michael in a straight fight. Michael had a gun. But even if he didn’t choose to use it, Alan was hurt, and Michael was not only unhurt, but he was bigger and in extraordinarily good shape. Michael had been putting a lot of effort into his physical therapy since waking up from his coma.

Alan could not let himself sink into despair, though despair was certainly the most tempting direction at the moment.

Then inspiration hit. Hit hard. Alan grinned a little, found the gangplank, and made his way onto the dock.

Michael had cross-tied the yacht between two finger piers to keep it from slamming around during the storm.

Alan ran to the first mooring and cast off the line. Then to the aft one on the same side. The boat and gangplank pulled away from the dock, suddenly loose in the rough water.

And still no sign of Phoebe or Michael.

God. What if Michael had lost his temper and just killed her as soon as he found her?

No. Alan couldn’t let himself think that; Michael had been planning his sick reunion fantasy for nearly two years, and he had been obsessive in every detail so far. Nothing Michael had done made Alan think he would deviate an inch from the plan.

Unless someone changed it for him.

Which was where Alan came in.

Alan ran along the dock, around to the other finger pier, and cast the fore and aft moorings there loose as well.

The rough chop of the waves in the marina dragged Michael’s yacht forward, out of its slip, into the open waterway.

“Rule change,” Alan whispered, watching it go.

And then he realized that Michael would still be coming with Phoebe and that, thwarted in his first plan of taking her into his torture chamber to kill her, he was going to do something unpredictable.

Alan had to be in the right place to save Phoebe when he did.

But what was the right place? And how did Alan get there?