In Rides Trouble Read Online Free PDF Page B

comforting hand on Eve’s shoulder. When it became obvious Sharif was not there to rescue them, her poor friend deflated like a popped birthday balloon.
    “I don’t care what you think of me, Miss Reichert,” Sharif replied, dropping the t on the end of her name. “All I care about is that you know how to repair engines.”
    “Yeah, so?”
    “So we’re putting off your trip to Somalia,” he declared, and her heart filled with hope and started floating somewhere above her head. The Knights, many of them ex–Navy SEALs, were straight-up badasses when it came to work in the water. The longer she kept herself off dry land, the easier it would be for her guys to facilitate a rescue.
    “Aw, shucks,” she feigned dejection, “and I was so looking forward to it.” Eve shoved a pointy elbow into her rib cage.
    Sharif tilted his head and smiled. Unlike Ghedi, his teeth were large and even and brilliantly white against the darkness of his face. “You have a very insolent tongue, Miss Reichert. What is that expression you Americans love so much? Ah, yes, you had better make sure it is not writing checks your ass cannot cash. Such a wonderfully colorful turn of phrase, don’t you think?”
    “I think I’d feel a lot better if we kept my tongue and my ass out of the conversation completely.”
    Another sharp elbow crashed into Becky’s side, and she turned to glare at her friend. The look Eve gave her clearly stated the woman was seriously questioning her intelligence. And yepper, when she swung her attention back to Sharif, his dark scowl pretty much telegraphed his intention to kill her, slowly, if ever the opportunity arose.
    “I have little patience with mouthy women,” he growled, his musky smelling cologne sticking in her nose until she wanted to puke. “Breaking every little bone in your body would gratify me greatly, not to mention the fact that your diminished health would likely only expedite your ransom. So you see, it’s a win-win situation for me. It would behoove you to remember that.”
    She could almost hear Billy in her head, S squared, Becky. S squared. Which was his way of telling her to sit down and shut up.
    With difficulty, she clamped her lips together and satisfied herself by glowering.
    Sharif turned his back on her and informed Ghedi of their course change, while two other members of the crew captained the extra skiffs back to the safety of the Somali coast.
    Which is how she now found herself stuck on her own catamaran about to become a pirate …
    The crew onboard the BP Hamilton hadn’t a clue they were being attacked until the first volley of bullets burst across the hull.
    This was a nightmare. A really, really scary one where Becky held on for dear life to the Serendipity ’s rail as the pirates threw down the throttle on the catamaran’s two big outboard engines until they were blasting across the choppy seas, hurtling like an uneven cannon shot toward the Hamilton as waves crashed over the railing.
    Four red flares suddenly streaked from the tanker’s bridge, turning the bright sky above the football field-sized ship an angry orange. The people on board were no longer under the mistaken impression the Serendipity was a simple pleasure cruiser.
    Was the spray of bullets your first clue? Becky thought sardonically, using her free hand to grab Eve as the woman’s fingers slipped from the rail, and she started sliding across the watery deck. Becky strained to keep them both from bouncing right out of the boat.
    Going overboard would be a case of falling out of the frying pan and into the fire. In this instance, the fire was thousands of miles of endless, shark-infested waters where trying to locate them would be akin to locating a needle in a haystack.
    On second thought, that analogy didn’t quite cut it.
    It was more like, if they managed to separate themselves from the boats and wind up adrift, locating them would be like trying to locate a protozoan in a haystack.
    So yepper, it