THE MIDNIGHT TIDE TURNS AGAINST US

Mateo had abandoned her.

The thought struck Naomi like a physical blow as cold rain drenched her to the bone. The empty cables flapped wildly in the gale, their steel hooks clanging violently against the hull. The engineer had taken his revenge files and his escape route, leaving her to drown in the burning shell of the yacht.

Smoke was now billowing out of the bridge doors, whipped into black spirals by the thirty-knot squall. Beneath her feet, the yacht groaned as another massive wave slammed the dead ship broadside, tilting the deck at a terrifying thirty-degree angle.

A shadow separated itself from the smoke billowing out of the aft doorway.

Julian emerged, drenched, his face blackened with soot and blood running down his collar. In his hand, he held a stainless steel flare gun taken from the bridge emergency kit. The heavy orange plastic frame looked absurdly lethal in the lightning flash.

""He's gone, Naomi,"" Julian yelled over the roar of the wind. ""Your little mechanic took the liferaft ten minutes ago. It's just you, me, and the Atlantic.""

""You killed Elena Rossi!"" Naomi shouted back, leveling her pistol at his chest with both hands, her feet wedged against the safety rail for balance. ""Her family knows! The authorities know!""

Julian laughed, a hysterical sound swallowed by the storm. ""Elena was weak. She thought love meant sharing power. You were smarter, Naomi. But you trusted me with your money, and that makes you just as stupid as she was.""

He raised the flare gun, aiming it straight at her face.

Behind Julian, the saloon hatch flew open. Marcus stumbled out, coughing blood, his shirt singed from the expanding electrical fire inside.