Free Slow Burn: Bleed, Book 6 by Bobby Adair

when they are injured or sick. Do you think sending Steph out into the world with these yahoos is going to be best for her or us? She’ll just get killed. We’re going to value her, give her a safe place.”
    “You’re a lunatic.” Steph told him.
    “Maybe,” Jay answered. “But that’s irrelevant. Take her back inside.”
    The two men holding Steph pulled. She struggled, but couldn’t break away. She cursed at Jay, her captors, and everybody else. I was seething with anger and thirsting for revenge even before the door shut. But revenge would come later. First, I needed to be free.

Chapter 13
    We prisoners were crammed in below decks on the cabin cruiser. A padded bench wrapped around inside the bow, and it was clearly designed to convert to a bed. The space was cozy for a couple looking for romance out on a weekend cruise. For us, it was tight.
    On the fourth highest of five steps leading down from the outside deck, Freitag stood with a rifle in her hand pointed tensely at where we were seated on the benches. Jerry and two others were up on deck. A few small lights illuminated the darkness in the back of the boat, and I saw Jerry standing in the stern. One of the three was just outside the open door and one was at the helm.
    What were they going to do with us, I wondered. Were they really just going to free us? Run along now. Shoo. Don’t come back. It didn’t make sense. If they planned to let us go, really, why not just give us a boat and tell us to hit the road? There were plenty of boats moored around the island. They wouldn’t miss one.
    If they feared that giving us a boat would only give us a way to return to extract revenge for their kidnapping of Steph and Amy, then how would they keep us from finding one of the thousands of boats tied off around the lake and doing just that?
    The look in Jerry’s crazy eyes told me all I needed to know about what he wanted to do. He wanted to kill me and everybody else with me. Jay couldn’t do that with everyone looking on. But he could pretend to let us go, only to have us killed somewhere out of sight by his most loyal of thugs.
    That did make sense.
    The cabin cruiser bounced over a wave, and Freitag, in adjusting her balance, stepped down to the third step up from the bottom. I glared at her, telling myself for the hundredth time that I should have killed her when I had the chance. There was no depth to which she wouldn’t sink.
    For no apparent reason, Freitag slowly stepped down one more step closer to us.
    From the back of the boat, Jerry leaned over for a better angle into the cabin and called, “You all right there?”
    “Yes, sir.” Freitag called back without turning.
    Jerry stepped out of view toward the back corner of the boat.
    Freitag glanced back over her shoulder and quickly moved down to the last step.
    Being that close, she wasn’t far from where I sat on the end of one of the padded benches. I thought through a scenario to free us. I could wait until we hit the next big wave. Like all of us sitters did each time we hit a wave, I’d bounce up a bit. My motion would be natural, expected. But instead of being a victim of gravity and momentum, I’d use it to my advantage. I’d push with my legs and jump toward Freitag. She was five feet from me, and by the time she realized I was coming at her, she wouldn’t have time to react.
    I could plow into her stomach, shoulder first—my only available weapon—and knock the breath out of her. One of the others could take her gun. One of them could free me and Murphy. But that’s where the plan fell apart. Jerry and his thugs would hear the struggle below. Then we’d be trapped below deck with one weapon, trying to get our hands untied when three guns fired on us.
    I looked at my companions. How many of us would die when that happened?
    Did it really matter how many of us died? The question was how many would live? If we did nothing, we’d all be doomed. I looked around at my fellow prisoners,