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glance. “Come on! Come on! ” he yelled, punching the throttle as far as it would go and willing the sailboat to move faster.
    It wasn’t long, three seconds maybe, before he felt Mason’s bulk on the steps leading to the captain’s perch. Mason placed a hand on Bran’s shoulder and leaned over him to kill the running lights.
    Good idea. Don’t know why I didn’t think of it. Oh, right. Because all he’d been thinking was Get to Maddy! Get to Maddy!
    “You need to ease off, bro,” Mason said.
    “Screw you,” Bran grumbled, shrugging off Mason’s heavy palm. “Maddy’s on that island.”
    “I’m not trying to be a cocksucker here,” Mason said, the next-to-last word sounding more like cocksuckuh . “But we go in there full tilt and guns hot, and we’re likely to end up deader than fuckin’ doornails.”
    “But Maddy—”
    “I know, man.” Mason nodded. “But we need to do this the right way. The SEAL way.” Mason gave Bran’s shoulder a squeeze that conveyed a million things at once: Get your shit together. Don’t worry, I got your back. Once more unto the breach, dear friend…
    Roger that. The SEAL way.
    Bran managed a nod and throttled back the engines despite all his instincts screaming at him to do the opposite.
    “Good.” Mason said when the catamaran was no longer plowing hell-bent for leather toward Garden Key. “Now how do you want to play this?”
    “Don’t know,” Bran admitted, his scalp on fire like every single one of his hairs had ripped out of their follicles. His lungs attempted to crawl into his throat to join his heart— apparently it’s a party in there —and his mind was spinning out of control. “I don’t—”
    “Okay, okay.” Mason hit the side of his heavy fist against Bran’s shoulder. “So the way I see it, we got two options. Option one is we use the marine radio to call back to Wayfarer Island and tell LT there’s a situation on Garden Key. We should still be within hailing range.” His face said he wasn’t sure about that last part. Truth to tell, Bran wasn’t either. Marine radios weren’t built to carry signals over great distances. They were meant to be used for close ship-to-ship communication. “Then LT can use the satphone on the island to call the Coast Guard on Key West.”
    “And after that?” Bran demanded. Each second they sat flapping their lips felt like an eternity. “We wait out here and twiddle our dicks until the authorities show up while who knows what happens to Maddy? Hell no. Plus, there’s always a chance that they”—he punched a finger toward Garden Key and whoever the hell was firing off those weapons—“are monitoring the marine channels. If we use the marine radio to hail back to Wayfarer Island, they’ll know help is on the way, and they could…” He couldn’t even countenance the end of that sentence, much less voice it. If only they had a satphone onboard, they could make the call to Key West themselves and no one would be the wiser. I wish. But there was that old saying about wishing in one hand and shitting in the other and seeing which one filled up faster. “No way, paisano .” He adamantly shook his head. “We hafta maintain radio silence until we know what we’re dealing with.”
    “Hey!” Alex called from the deck. “What are you two talking about? Shouldn’t we be—”
    “Alex!” Mason bellowed, which was so unlike him that Bran actually flinched. “It would be wicked awesome if, for once in your life, you shut your chowderhole!”
    Alex wasn’t one to let something like that slide. But she was as taken aback by Mason’s outburst as Bran was. She snapped her mouth shut, blinking rapidly behind the lenses of her glasses.
    “Okay, so that leaves us with option two,” Mason continued as if they hadn’t been interrupted.
    “Which is?”
    “We need to get eyes and ears on that island. And I think I have a plan for how to do that.”
    “I’m listening” was what Bran said. What he