Libby squeaked in surprise and looked at Reese.
Reese glanced over his shoulder, spotted Tony pulling up to the end of the dock, and whispered out of the corner of his mouth for Libby to get in the boat. She scurried toward the end of the dock.
Reese stepped away from the pillar and took two steps back.
"Don't think you can outrun me!” Mayo said. He raised a hand and an unseen sniper fired. A chunk of concrete exploded at Reese's feet. "You're not going anywhere!”
Reese took a step back, paused half a heartbeat, then dodged quickly to the right. Another shot fired, and this time he saw a puff of dust emerge from the sniper's position in a second-floor window of the building behind Mayo. The concrete jumped up and stung his face from the impact, but the ploy worked—he knew where the sniper was.
"Libby, run!” Reese said over his shoulder.
"Hurry! Jump down!” Tony begged from below the dock.
Reese raised his pistol as Mayo started to say something else and squeezed the trigger to silence the wannabe warlord. The pistol barked, but Reese didn't wait to see the results of his shot. He turned and sprinted down the dock and hoped the sniper had ducked from his return fire.
"Get going!" Reese yelled before he reached the end of the dock. Gunshots erupted behind him from the top of the hill and a line of fire stitched his left arm. He dropped the pistol in surprise, horrified that it clattered off the dock and splashed into Boston Harbor below.
Out of sight, Reese heard Libby scream and the outboard engine roared to life. He turned as he approached the edge of the dock and saw two men flat out sprint down the dock toward his position. They raised weapons, but when they fired, the bullets went wide.
Reese turned and launched himself off the end of the dock. Below him Tony and Libby moved in time with him. He hit the water on his bad shoulder and screamed through the mouthful of seawater. He flung out his left arm and felt a strong hand grip his. The tug of the dinghy nearly dislocated his good shoulder, but Reese exploded from the water and gasped for air as he was pulled alongside the dinghy. “Don’t slow down,” he sputtered as the water along the side of the boat splashed over him. "Go, go, go!"
"They're shooting at us! Go faster!” Libby screamed.
“Shoot back, Auntie!” Tony cried as bullets peppered the water’s surface around them and sparked off of the flotsam.
Reese winced and cursed every time a piece of wood or buoyant plastic smacked into his already injured shoulder, but he hung on to the dinghy’s gunwale for dear life. Tony zigzagged through the debris field as they inched closer and closer to the sailboats, but the people on the dock continued to fire. A bullet punched through the dinghy’s wooden hull just inches from Reese's head, which caused Libby to scream again. She pulled out the shotgun and fired back at the dock. Two of the people on the dock fell into the water.
Tony hollered as the noise and recoil from the shotgun nearly capsized the dinghy, but managed to keep control over the little vessel and pulled them out of range of the pistols of the attackers on the dock. He opened the throttle and made a beeline for the boats.
It was perhaps the longest five minutes of Reese's life—and one of the coldest—but they managed to pull up safely alongside the sailboat christened Tiberia. Libby and Tony pulled Reese aboard the boat like a tuna. He rolled from the railing and flopped on the deck, then gasped for air on his back. Water and blood pooled from the reopened knife wound on his shoulder.
"What happened?" Jo cried as she rushed to his side from her other patient. "Did you get shot?"
Reese nodded and displayed his left arm. "And my stitches are out I think…”
Jo slapped him in the face, hard. "I thought I told you not to break them stitches!" The anger that flashed in her eyes evaporated like a morning fog. "It doesn't matter I suppose, the saltwater will at least disinfect it for us—unless, of course, you happened to drive through some medical waste floating out there on the water…” She looked pensive for a moment, then squeezed the wound which caused Reese to groan in pain. "Probably have to give you another dose of antibiotics just to make sure.”
"You guys have antibiotics?" Tony asked.
“You can have it if you want," Reese said as he tried to sit up.
Jo laughed. “He's just mad because he has to get a shot in his butt again.”
"You guys can argue about medicine later. I want to know two things, and I want to know them now," Libby said. She fairly trembled with fright and rage at the sailboats wheel. "Is my husband going to die?"
"No." Jo looked down at Byron, put her hands on her hips and looked back at Libby. "I ain’t a doctor, but I don't think he's dying. His heart’s nice and steady, so's his breathing. I cleaned up that gunshot wound in his side and gave him a dose of Reese's antibiotics. We’ll have to let it drain for a few days, but as long as it doesn't get infected, that shouldn't be any problem. Now, his head?" Jo shrugged. "We'll just have to wait and see…but he ain't dying today."
Libby nodded curtly. “Then will someone please get us away from this godforsaken place? My skin is already crawling with the thought of those cretins onshore finding
