HER STEPMOTHER THREW A 3-YEAR-OLD GIRL OFF A PRIVATE ISLAND INTO THE OCEAN! Her father jumped into the raging waves to save her, but when they reached shore, the little girl pointed at a fleeing speedboat and whispered something that made his blood run cold. What she revealed next exposed a terrifying secret about her dead mother! / Chapter 2 / 40

Chapter 2 - The Ambush at Sea

"Kill the deck lights!" I roared, lunging for the throttle.

Owen hit the switch. The cabin plunged into darkness, illuminated only by the rhythmic pulse of Lily’s heart monitor: *beep... beep... beep.*

Through the salt-streaked glass, a twin-hull black interceptor surged out of the fog, riding our wake like a predator. Twin fifty-caliber spotlights suddenly flared from its bow, blinding us in searing white glare.

"Daniel, that's not the Coast Guard!" Owen yelled, ducking as a heavy metallic *thwack* echoed against our fiberglass hull.

A bullet.

"Get Lily on the deck!" I shoved Owen down, shielding my daughter with my own body. The second shot blew through the cabin window, spraying tempered glass across my back.

I cut the wheel hard to port. Our launch heaved violently, riding the crest of an eight-foot swell. The interceptor overshot us by twenty yards, its twin outboards screaming. In that brief window, the spotlight swung across the attacker’s cockpit.

Behind the wheel wasn't a stranger. It was Keller—my own head of private estate security. The man who had cleared the terrace railing that very afternoon as "structurally sound."

"Daddy!" Lily wailed into the oxygen mask.

"I’m right here, sweetheart! Cover your ears!"

I reached beneath the captain’s console, ripping open the locked emergency compartment. My fingers wrapped around the rubberized grip of a flare gun, along with a vintage Mossberg 12-gauge marine shotgun I kept loaded with deer slugs.

"Hold the wheel!" I barked at Owen.

"I’m a doctor, Daniel, not a—"

"Drive or she dies!"

Owen grabbed the wheel with white knuckles. I kicked the cabin door open, greeted by howling wind and saltwater spray. The interceptor had banked hard and was coming back around to ram our port side, Keller's rifle barrel leveling at our windshield.

I didn't aim at Keller. I aimed the shotgun at the interceptor's exposed fuel bladders strapped along its aft deck.

*BOOM.*

The heavy slug tore through the rubberized fuel tank. I pumped and fired again. A spray of high-octane gasoline atomized into the air.

Then I leveled the flare gun and pulled the trigger.

The magnesium phosphorus flare exploded into the gas cloud. A wall of orange flame erupted across the Atlantic, engulfing the interceptor's stern in an ear-splitting fireball. The black boat spun out of control, dead in the water, blazing against the night sky.

I slammed the cabin door shut, panting, blood dripping from my knuckles where the glass had cut me deep.

Owen stared at me, eyes wild with terror. "My God, Daniel... they're trying to exterminate your entire family."

"Not my family," I said, checking Lily’s pulse. "Just the witnesses. Change course. We don't go to St. Jude’s."

"What? She needs an ICU!"

"Keller has contacts at St. Jude’s," I growled, looking out at the burning wreck behind us. "If we go to the hospital, Lily won't survive the night."

My satellite phone vibrated on the dash. A text from Marcus: