The Hunted Girls by Jenna Kernan (best book club books for discussion txt) 📕

Now Nadine stood at the start of a journey that included using this blade to attack or kill Lionel. She paused at the ice that crystalized along her spine. If she plunged this blade into his body, what irrevocable damage would she be doing to herself?

She pressed her back to the rail and shivered, paralyzed with indecision. Suddenly she was afraid for herself in a whole different way. She wasn’t a killer. But was she prepared to kill if forced? Was she prepared to live with the scars to her soul that came with taking a human life?

If she were not prepared to defend herself, was she prepared to die?

A worse possibility dawned. What if there was no damage to her soul? What if she felt nothing at all after killing a man, or what if she enjoyed it?

She dropped the blade.

Nadine considered returning to the cabin. She did not want to kill Lionel. Nor did she want to die. What she wanted was to live to see Clint and tell him what she should have told him from the start, that she loved him and wanted to share her life with him.

She retrieved the blade.

Her bare foot slipped onto the next step, creeping toward this showdown with a slow deliberate tread of a gunfighter at high noon.

The boat lurched, throwing her violently back down the stairs. The crash and shudder told her that they’d struck something, or been struck.

Nadine fell, her shoulder slamming into the door, throwing it farther askew.

Out here, what could they hit? There was nothing but water… and other boats?

The shout from above brought her scrambling to her feet.

She gripped the knife and dashed up the stairs, pausing like a gopher to glance about from her burrow. Lionel leapt down from the wheelhouse, charging past her.

Nadine emerged to the deck to see Demko airborne as a sports fishing boat scraped along their side behind him, heading in the opposite direction. He landed hard as the vessels detached, sending their craft tilting. The rolling deck threw him against the winch.

Nadine stumbled and the knife skidded away back down the stairs.

Lionel regained his footing first, shouldering the shotgun. Nadine saw her future flash before her eyes as she rushed forward, lifting a metal rake and howling like a banshee.

Lionel turned, swinging the barrel away from Demko and spotting her too late. She brought the rake down on his arm. The long handle struck the weapon as the metal teeth of the rake-head sank into his shoulder.

He roared and used the barrel of the shotgun to knock away her rake, then seized the head in his opposite hand. He thrust and she toppled, striking the gunwales and sliding to the deck.

Lionel glanced back to Demko, lifting his shotgun.

She flinched at the rapid pop, pop, pop of Demko’s weapon. Lionel staggered, the barrel floating upward as he fired.

Nadine screamed at the blast, scrambling forward in time to see Demko fall.

Thirty-Two

Three bloodstains bloomed on Decristofaro’s shirt. The shotgun clattered to the deck as he swayed. Demko saw his spread of bullets. Each one had struck the center of the man’s chest. His opponent had minutes left before death.

The pain in his shoulder took a moment to register. Seeing blood on his shirt shocked him. The blast had been high. He was certain.

Where was Nadine?

There she was, pausing at Decristofaro as he reached for her, his hand grasping. She stepped back, clear of his grip. He said something, but the ringing in his ears from the shotgun blast made it impossible for him to hear.

Her lips moved, but there was no sound, and then she was past the bleeding man, running to him, falling beside him, her arms around him, clinging, sobbing.

He held her tight, closing his eyes to savor the feel of her, the smell of her and the familiar silk of her hair.

“Got you,” he said.

“Clint, I’m so sorry.”

“No need.”

“I never should have dragged you along.”

“You stopped him, Nadine. We stopped him.”

There was a bump as the two boats scraped against each other again.

Demko lifted his gaze to the fishing craft and her captain, high above the deck, at the wheel as Juliette threw a rope over to them.

“Nadine!”

She lifted her head and then hurried to grab the line, tying it awkwardly to the winch, allowing the two boats to touch.

Juliette scrambled from the sleek fiberglass hull over the wooden gunwales of the shrimp boat. She rushed to Nadine and hugged her, and the second in command headed to the wheelhouse. A moment later, the engine cut. The two women rocked back and forth, reunited sisters as the waves lapped the side of the boat.

Demko smiled. When he sat up, the twinge of pain made him gasp. He tugged at the sleeve of his shirt and located the cause of the shooting agony ripping through his muscle. A shard of wood stuck through his skin like the plug in a cork.

He lifted his opposite hand.

“Don’t do that!” shouted Juliette as he tugged the sliver free and blood poured from the wound.

Nadine sat up in the hospital bed, clear-eyed and rested from the night’s sleep. She’d survived it. Somehow Jack had gotten her message to Demko and he had found her out there amid hundreds of commercial boats.

Demko had been here last night when she’d finally tumbled into sleep, holding his hand as he assured her that she was safe. Juliette had stanched his wound. A sliver of the winch system had been blown away by the shotgun blast and punctured his shoulder. His treatment had involved antibiotics and several stitches.

She’d thought she had been fine until Clint brought her aboard the second vessel and she began experiencing what she thought was a stress reaction. It turned out she also had a fever and was dehydrated.

Part of her felt lucky. Decristofaro was dead, sparing them the trauma of a trial. The