Saving an Angel

By Jefferson Merrick

Review of 'Saving an Angel'.

Chance Chastenet on Google+ wrote; I wanted to give it 4.5 stars but it won't do halfs. So 5 it is. 4 is too stingy. Book three in this series is a thrill on every page. The action is tight and fast paced. There are no red herrings or pointless characters in the story. I liked Charlie’s attitude to sex now that she’s broken her way out of her bubble. She really is a hot and independent woman. One or two scenes showing how powerful and fit Charlie was seemed added just for filling space but were so well written that I didn’t mind them at all. I even cheered when she broke the rowing machine! If you want something different with great sex scenes and well thought dialogue, you will enjoy this ride across the Atlantic to Miami and beyond.

It began with a chance in a million meeting in the open ocean and ended with dozens of convictions for child trafficking, prostitution and worse. Charlie Edwards knows the danger she might face but she forges ahead anyway, without regards for the consequences. Her father taught Charlie many things, that was one of them. She did what was right, she did what was good and she did it without fear or favour. Given the chance to avenge an earlier wrong, Charlie seizes the opportunity to extract her own form of justice. The help from a handsome family friend is most welcome, as is his company in her bed.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Jefferson Merrick
• Release date: Nov 15, 2013
• ISBN: 9781310763694

Jefferson Merrick

I am a retired airline pilot. I ran an exclusive yacht charter business in my spare time for many years. I am now living and teaching in Thailand. My spare time is busily occupied with writing. Eight books so far, more to follow.

Book preview

Prologue

Life hangs by such a slender thread, for all of us. For most of us, death is slow, agonizingly so on many occasions. We deteriorate with age and begin the slow spiral to our inevitable fate. Often, this gives us time to prepare for our demise and we leave peacefully, quietly, into the long, good, night. Others, less fortunate, die earlier than their allotted life-span, ether by accident or design. Being thrown off a boat, hundreds of miles from the nearest land, is one sure way of succumbing to an early death.

Chapter One

‘Saving Grace’ Dawn, Friday morning

If the person in the broiling dark-green water had been calling for help, Charlie would not have heard the calls above the noise from the storm raging overhead. The lashing wind howled like a banshee, around fifty knots, down from the ninety or more a few hours earlier. The driving rain had stopped around an hour ago but the stinging spindrift screeched across the turbulent waves, pricking Charlie’s face when she turned her head into the wind. As it was, she almost ran over the body in the pale morning light as her yacht, ‘Saving Grace’, drifted slowly backwards with two drogue parachutes submerged on long lines in front of her, slowing the drift of the seven ton boat to a crawling pace.

Charlie caught a glimpse of a white balloon of cloth in the corner of her eye. She studied it as it approached; she saw an upturned face, barely above the water’s surface, almost fully submerged. The adrenalin charged through her body; she had seconds to react, maybe not enough seconds. Her mind raced. The boat speed would take her away from the balloon in moments. Charlie fired up the engine and put the boat in gear. She needed almost full power to counter the steady drift and the wind. Added dangers were the two lines out in front of the boat. They would slacken and drift back to the boat. Charlie calculated that she had about ten seconds before the lines wrapped themselves around her propeller shaft. It might be enough time. She steered ‘Saving Grace’ to a point in front of the body, centred the rudder and cut the engine back to idle, stopping the propeller. She turned and studied the body in the water. Her position looked about right, directly in front of it and now slowly moving backwards, towards the face some twenty feet off her stern rail. She steered in reverse to aim the port rail to come above the body, almost under the hull. Charlie unclipped her harness and flung her bulky waterproof jacket onto the cockpit floor. She needed freedom to move her upper body. She locked the steering wheel with a rapid turn of the friction screw then leapt to the port side-rail. She lay on the deck facing the body in the water and extended her right arm. This would be a one-chance manoeuvre. It had to work.

Charlie shouted as loud as she could.

Hey, over here!

The person in the water heard the yell. The head turned slightly towards ‘Saving Grace’. As the distance decreased between them, the body turned a quarter turn in the water, facing the oncoming boat. With ten feet to go, a thin right hand came up out of the water, letting go of the white balloon. It whipped away behind them in an instant. Charlie opened her fingers, slid as far off the boat as she dared and prayed. Her left hand held firmly on the stanchion supporting the safety-rail around the boat. Her left knee hooked around the adjacent stanchion. Her right foot trailed in the water. Closer, closer, the distance decreased. Charlie dipped her body as far as she could and swung her right arm forwards. The hand in the water dipped, disappeared and with it Charlie’s heart sank.

Noooo! Come back!

Just as she passed overhead the sinking body, the hand reappeared, high enough. Charlie grabbed the upraised wrist, hard, strong, unmoving, vice-like. Charlie barely registered the grip on her own wrist. Charlie felt the drag of the sodden body, pulling her down to the dark, broken sea. Charlie did not intend to drown out in the middle of nowhere, even if the person she clung to seemed hell bent on doing that. Charlie felt the hand pulling her, dragging her down off the boat. The body did not want to die alone. It wanted company and right now, Charlie was it.

Charlie held on, the upturned face belonged to a young woman. Charlie clung on in desperation, increasing the tension in her fingers until she felt she would crush the delicate bones in the girl’s wrist. Better that than lose her altogether, she thought. She waited for ‘Saving Grace’ to slow and stop her movement when the drogues out front filled with water once again. Charlie waited three seconds; it seemed a lot longer. Charlie hoped the girl would grip her with her other hand. As ‘Saving Grace’ came to a stop, she saw why she had not used her left hand to help hold on; her left hand was not there, she had a stump where her wrist should be. Charlie grimaced; she pulled, bending her powerful arm until the girl’s face came clear of the water. She was very weak. Charlie took a series of deep breaths and began to apply tension to her arms and her left leg muscles. She concentrated all her efforts to move, inch by inch, back over the toe-rail of the boat. The drag on the girl was immense, the water sluicing slowly past her upper body, increasing her apparent weight two-fold.

Charlie was about to bench curl her own weight, plus the weight of the sodden girl and all with one arm. Every muscle in Charlie’s body tightened with effort, bunched and strained, her breath seized in her throat. She heaved, the girl moved; her shoulders dragged free of the ocean. Charlie felt for a moment as if she had used all her energy and had little to show for it. She felt a spasm of panic as her grip slipped; the girl responded, at last, by tightening her own grip on Charlie’s wrist. Re-invigorated by the desire of the girl to survive, Charlie gasped another breath, another heave; she came out to her waist. Charlie gulped the wet air into her lungs; she needed oxygen, and lots of it. Another tremendous heave and her legs came clear, the drag reduced. The girl’s face was close to Charlie’s, less than an inch away; she looked into the pale grey eyes of a young woman beyond despair. The eyes stared back at her, pleading but oh so dim. She kissed her on the lips, so cold, so blue. Yet there burned a tiny glimmer of fire in those eyes, a small spark of longing, perhaps. Charlie felt a surge of emotion. Adrenalin surged through her again, doubling her strength.

"We will do this! We will fucking do this, now!"

Charlie adjusted the position of her left leg, getting her foot behind the stanchion. She raised her left hip a few inches, clipping the bone inside the rail. She turned her head away from the girl, jamming her chin inside the rail. Now, she had five points of leverage; her left hand and elbow, her chin, her left hip-bone, her left knee and her foot. She applied a further huge effort. Her muscles screamed, her head felt as if it would burst with some inhuman pressure building up inside. She had to keep the momentum going; if she relaxed now, Charlie knew it was all over for the woman. She applied one last effort, exerting all her strength; she heaved once more, one final muscle-tearing-gut-wrenching heave and rolled away from the edge of the boat. Charlie lay on her back, gasping for breath, the young woman sprawled across her body, limp, apparently lifeless.

Charlie pushed the dead-weight of the woman off her chest. She knelt for a moment, dragging life-giving air into her screaming lungs. Charlie trembled with exhaustion and the adrenalin coursing through her body. Her muscles took a few moments to adjust to their relaxed state. She did not have time to recover; she had things to do. Charlie gripped the woman’s arm and dragged her unceremoniously across the narrow deck, into the cockpit, sliding her roughly down onto the bench on the port side of the cockpit. She wore knee length jeans and a black bra. Her shirt, the white balloon, had blown away when she let go of it to grasp Charlie’s wrist. Her dark, chocolate brown skin had a grey tinge, Charlie rolled her lower lip down; inside was blue. She was cold; she had probably been in the water for several hours, thought Charlie. Charlie checked her pulse, slow and weak but regular; her breathing, shallow but even, good signs.

Charlie scanned around ‘Saving Grace’, making sure the drogues were still in place. She turned the engine off and stripped off the woman’s sodden clothes. She used her Swiss Army knife to cut the bra, jeans and pants from her body. She flung them overboard. Charlie opened the sliding hatch and the louvred doors to the saloon. She heaved the slender girl onto her shoulder, fire-fighter style. Taking her down the seven steps to the saloon posed a few problems, not least of which was the rolling of the boat and the narrow space at the top of the stairs. A few bumps to her head and shoulders on the way down were the least of her concerns right now.

Charlie struggled to get her into her forward cabin. She sat her on the floor, dashed back into the saloon, and closed the doors and hatch out to the cockpit. She grabbed a large towel and roughly dried her naked body. She unceremoniously heaved her up onto the bed and rolled her to one side. Charlie stripped off her waterproof trousers and threw them to join the jacket on the saloon floor. She returned to her cabin, took off her clothes, save her panties, dried her hair and pulled a warm duvet from the locker underneath her bed. She jumped on the bed, slid next to the cold body and wrapped them both in the duvet, head to toe. Charlie hugged her close, her arms around her slim stomach and tiny breasts, her leg over the girl’s thigh, and clutched her to her warm body. She was freezing!

Charlie felt as if she was in bed with an ice cube. This was the only way she knew how to raise the girl’s body temperature. She did not react to Charlie’s questions; she was in a cold induced slumber, something she might not waken from if left without any help. About twenty minutes later, the young woman began to shiver. This went on, sporadically, for around twenty-five minutes. The intensity increased for a further thirty minutes as her body warmed. Charlie stroked her hands all over the girl’s body, using the slight friction to raise her temperature. Her smooth skin slowly responded, remaining warm after she left it to move onto a new spot. Slowly, after nearly two hours of cuddling, the shivering reduced, slowed, and then eventually stopped. Charlie could feel the slow, regular breathing and the beating of her heart under the palm of her right hand. The beat felt strong and regular.

Charlie knew that warming her extremities was not always the best solution; it can draw heat from the body’s core. She needed internal heat. Charlie slipped out of bed and made some chicken broth using a Knorr stock cube. She returned to the bed and climbed back in beside the girl. Charlie was unsure of her age, she thought around twenty or so. When the broth had cooled a little, she raised the girl’s head and got her to take a sip from the baby-topped cup. Charlie used it in stormy or rough weather when she needed her cups of tea while she was sailing. They are spill-proof. It was what they needed under these circumstances. The girl sipped, a little at a time, gripping Charlie’s wrist as she did so. Charlie stuffed a few pillows behind her head and let her drink all the soup.

Charlie opened her First-Aid kit. She took the girls temperature under her arm, 95.8. She was no longer in the grip of Hypothermia. Charlie estimated that her core body temperature had been down below 90F, potentially lethal, when she dragged her from the water. Charlie felt herself shiver, a reflex probably. She dressed in her jeans and a long-sleeved rugby shirt. The girl collapsed back on the pillow and slept, shivering intermittently but much less violently than before. Charlie could do nothing more for her right now. She wedged her in the bed with cushions from the saloon, making a cocoon of quilted warmth around her frail body. Charlie made an improvised hot-water bottle, wrapping a water filled storage jar in several towels. She tucked the bundle between her thighs and left her to sleep. She made some tea for herself. Mister Lucky seemed like a suitable mug to choose under the circumstances. She peered out through the portholes in every direction, nothing. She checked the radar, nothing within twenty miles. She relaxed and sat at the navigator’s station, all the other cushions were in her cabin, surrounding her very mysterious and very lucky guest.

"I wonder how that happened."

Chapter Two

The storm that had been battering 'Saving Grace' seemed determined to test her endurance to the limit. The wind careened at around force eight or nine, sometimes ten. The swell, broken and confused, rose and fell through twenty to thirty feet. 'Saving Grace' twisted and turned, rolled and pitched in the violence of the late tropical storm. Charlie had sailed eight days before from The British Virgin Islands en-route to Bermuda. She had a date with family friends, her father’s friends, who went to Bermuda every year for a one-month vacation. The Mendelson's had known her parents since her father’s time in the Army.

Charlie allowed 'Saving Grace' to drift in the storm, letting the wind blow her ever west, away from danger. The storm had begun brewing a week ago. Her Furuno Fax 30, plugged into her laptop computer, had warned her of the incoming storm several days ago. It had been tracking well south of her position but on Tuesday, it changed direction and set off to the north, directly over Charlie’s track to Bermuda. She did some calculations and decided the safest bet would be to stay away from land until she had ridden out the storm. If she carried on to Bermuda, the edge of the storm would hit her when she still had about sixty miles to run to reach safety. The margin was too small. She opted for the safer, albeit the more uncomfortable and much longer option.

Charlie had no qualms about the ability of 'Saving Grace’ to weather the storm; she had endured worse two years previously when she was caught in a full-blown hurricane, Oscar, late in the season down in the middle of the Caribbean. 'Saving Grace' carried a storm trysail, her almost fully furled mainsail. The small triangle of Kevlar reinforced cloth kept her nose into the wind. The current and wind blew 'Saving Grace' backwards, north-west, at around one to two knots. Streaming from the bow were the two long lines with six feet diameter parachutes attached, drogues, to slow her progress. Charlie had been sitting in her accustomed position, to the right of the steering wheel, her life jacket zipped firmly around her torso and her safety harness clipped to the stout post on the side of the binnacle. She was watching the sunrise on the distant horizon, hoping to catch a glimpse of sunshine below the scudding cloud. These sunrises when the weather was bad were often the most memorable. She had a huge grin on her face; she loved every minute of it when she was interrupted by the white balloon.

She checked her current position on the hand-held Garmin Navigator; she had over five hundred and fifty miles to the nearest land, Cape Hatteras in North Carolina. The storm was travelling north and west at around fourteen knots. The storm diameter was about one hundred and sixty miles. It would take around twelve hours to pass by. Charlie estimated she would be around 180 miles southwest of Bermuda by then. Her planned arrival time would only be a few hours later than she first planned. She had been ahead of schedule until late last night when the storm hit. Soon, it should have passed by, leaving her to get on with completing the trip.

Picking up the girl had been an almost impossible encounter. They say it is a small world but the odds of finding someone in the sea during a storm are one in several million. That the girl had encountered Charlie, was simply a fluke beyond imagination. Charlie’s physical condition was no fluke, however; she expended a lot of time and energy to attain and maintain her shape and her ridged six-pack. She practised her martial arts routines every day. She set aside time every morning on the foredeck; half an hour of isometric exercises, followed by thirty minutes of kicking and punching a heavy bag she hauled up from her cabin through the escape hatch. She followed that with half an hour of yoga two or three times a week, depending on the weather. Her body was in fantastic shape for her age, thirty-five in a few weeks.

Charlie possessed skills few women had mastered. Her father, an ex-Army Colonel in the SAS, taught her from an early age all the moves she needed to defeat larger, stronger opponents. She infrequently entered martial arts tournaments, but when she did, she often won, as a two hundred and thirty pound ex-US Marine Corps Sergeant discovered in Miami only last year. She had many tricks in her repertoire that she had learned from her father, an instructor in all things clandestine and illegal. One or two tricks she had learned for herself over the years.

Charlie lived aboard her beautiful wooden yacht, 'Saving Grace'. She had become a gypsy of the seas, a wanderer. She wrote novels to make money, not that she needed more; she had several million dollars, pounds and euros in the bank together with a portfolio of properties around Oxford in the UK and a collection of blue chip stocks. She had a million dollars in cash together with a few dozen precious stones aboard the boat, recovered from a rogue policeman in Curaçao some months ago. Her husband had died over five years ago, plunging Charlie into a trough of despair. She recovered, in large part, thanks to her husband’s brother, Gary, who stayed with her for three months and got her back on the straight and narrow once again.

She fulfilled her and Graham’s dream when she bought 'Saving Grace' from an Egyptian boat trader in Malta. She had altered her slightly to allow single-handed sailing and extended the capacity of the water tanks. Charlie liked to keep her long, ash-blonde hair in good condition. Rinsing the salt water and soap out was important to her. 'Saving Grace', built almost a hundred years ago in the Fairlie shipyard in Glasgow, had been her only home for the past three years. Her classic lines and royal blue hull attracted admiring glances wherever she went.

Charlie had abandoned her old series of books after ten volumes of best-selling historical romances. She had just recently embarked on a new genre, adult, erotic adventure stories. Her hero was a police officer called Monique who battled misogynist male colleagues, bureaucracy and criminals, not necessarily in that order. The inspiration for Monique came from an intimate encounter with a young woman police officer in Curaçao several months earlier. She had sent her first book in the new series to her secretary a few days earlier. This trip to Bermuda was a break from writing and research. This was to be a holiday, visiting some old family friends. She had seen them only once since her wedding to Graham ten years ago.

She went to look in on the visitor; she slept quietly, her temperature slowly crept ever upwards. Charlie had no idea how this had happened but wherever it led her, Charlie would follow. She sat and made a note in her Ship’s Log, writing down everything that had occurred in the last hour. Charlie looked in the mirror above the navigators table; she touched the two-inch long bruise on the right side of her chin. Her left hip showed a three inch long welt, a deep red bruise, where she had levered her body away from the clutch of the unforgiving ocean. The back of her left knee ached, reminders of the incredibly close shave the girl had with the grim reaper just a few hours ago. She tidied her wet clothes away, placing them in the shower stall in her bathroom. She hung her waterproof jacket and trousers in the locker over the engine; they would soon dry out. She checked the volume on the radar alarm for the tenth time, making sure it was on maximum. She scanned outside the windows in the coach-roof and the hull, peering in every direction. She saw nothing. She checked the time; about another hour or so, she estimated, before the edge of the storm passed over her position. She made another cup of tea and ate some biscuits.

Chapter Three 'Saving Grace'

As