by Landon Beach
Jill forced a smile at the camera.
“Nothing will happen today, but if you don’t leave tonight, then it will start tomorrow and never stop,” she said. “C’mon, sell it. Lick those lips and look seductive.”
Jill obliged—her body shaking invisibly.
Madame continued. “You are going to be brought dinner soon. You will eat and drink everything. You’ll also shower in the corner and put on the shorts and shirt I leave behind.” Madame raised herself up and started to grind against Jill’s hips. She put her hands down on Jill’s breasts and squeezed them softly. Then, she was down over her other ear, which she kissed and continued whispering. “After you are dressed, you will come back over here and lie down again. The lights will go down and you should rest. I’ll be back here a few hours after that. When I show up, we’ll only have a few minutes to talk and then you’re getting out of here. Now, start to cry and try and push me off of you. Yell: ‘I won’t!’.”
Jill started to cry—there was no pretending needed—and she attempted to push Madame off of her. “I won’t!”
Madame pinned her arms down and started to grind faster, her head thrown back. She started to moan as if she were about to climax...
She stopped. “Tomorrow,” she said and climbed off. She looked at the crying girl, nodded up at the ceiling camera, and then covered Jill back up.
Madame walked toward the door and it opened. Jill wiped her eyes and watched as the freak took a tray with food and a large bottle of water off the floor—when she knelt down, Jill could see a small hallway with a stone wall behind her—and brought them over to the dresser. Madame walked back over to the door opening and returned with a bundle of clothing, a towel, and a shower caddy filled with soap, shampoo, and lotion, which she also set on the dresser next to the tray.
She met eyes with Jill for a second and then gave a smirk up to the corner camera as she walked across the room, exited, and closed the door behind her.
The lights dimmed, and Jill began to ease out of bed. I’ve got one chance at this. She willed herself to the dresser and started to eat.
✽✽✽
“What was she saying to her?” Sanders asked.
“Who knows,” Livingston said. “Hopefully, the program and her role.” He reclined in his leather office chair. “Whatever it was, it worked for a little while. Did you see her lick those soft lips?” He popped a cough drop in his mouth. After a few sucks, he swallowed and felt some relief in his throat, which was sore from vomiting again after last night’s session with Madame. He sucked again—not working fast enough. He bit into it, chewed fast, and swallowed the small bits.
They were seated behind a desk looking at two television monitors in a private den accessible only through a hidden door in the main residence’s master closet.
“I don’t trust her,” Sanders said.
He’s been in the game too long. Probably should have let him go years before. He put a reassuring hand on Sanders’s arm. “After tomorrow, we won’t have to worry about her anymore. And after your boat trip with her and Keach, you’ll be headed for the oasis down south.” He looked at the monitor and watched as the girl finished eating the food that had been provided.
Sanders relaxed and then leaned forward as the girl undressed and walked toward the shower. Using a joystick on the desk, he moved the camera into a better position to view—and then zoomed in.
The door behind them beeped and then opened. Eric Bannon entered the room with a man who could have been his twin. They walked over to Livingston, who was also watching the monitor.
“Madame is back in her room,” Bannon said.
Livingston swiveled around, acknowledged Bannon’s report, and then looked up at the other man. “Mr. Keach.”
Sanders broke his gaze from the screen.
“Mr. Livingston,” Keach said.
“I wanted to tell you both how pleased I am that the turnover is going well.”
Eric Bannon and Mason Keach eyed each other.
“It surprised me too, Mason. You were my choice to keep on here as head of operations, and I hate to see you go, but there are needs down south. When they say they need new personnel...well, we know how that conversation flows.”
“One way!” Sanders said while pointing with his arm like a football official saying first down. This was followed by his nervous laugh, which was beyond irritating. Sanders then started to hack. He pulled a handkerchief out of his pants’ pocket and spit up into it.
Keach raised an eyebrow at Sanders.
“Excuse me,” Sanders said to the group. He put the handkerchief back in his pocket and resumed watching the screen.
“What is our current staff right now?” Livingston asked Bannon.
“Beyond the yacht crew, we’re at our usual summer house staff level: cook, waiter, maid, groundskeeper, and front gate security guard. For narcotics,” he paused. “you’ve got me, Keach, Mr. Sanders, two security guards in the cave harbor, one outside of—” he looked at the monitor “—our guest’s suite, and four more who man the Bayliner for product transfer.”
Livingston tapped Sanders’s shoulder and gave him a questioning look that said: is he right?
Sanders nodded once, “That’s my count.”
Livingston searched Mason Keach’s eyes.
Keach replied, “Mine too.”
“Fine,” Livingston said, rubbing his hand on Sanders’s neck and smiling at the two men standing. “I told him the turnover would be seamless.”
Keach and Bannon glared at Sanders, who bit his nail and then said, “I knew it would be.”
Livingston unwrapped another cough drop and put it in his mouth. “The next shipment doesn’t arrive for another few weeks. I don’t plan on being here. I’m heading to Key West on the Hatteras and might even be taking my—” he pointed to the screen “—guest onboard with me depending on how she acclimates.”
No one said a word.
Then, Eric stepped forward. “Will you be needing anything else, sir?” He said.
“Not at this moment,” said Livingston. “I won’t keep you both from your turnover checklist any longer. Probably some odds and ends to still go over?”
Bannon and Keach nodded their heads in agreement and then departed.
After the door closed, Sanders said, “Are you sure you have to get rid of him?”
Livingston’s attention was on the screen. The girl toweled off and then put on the new pair of panties, shorts, and t-shirt that he had bought for her. She took a final swig of water from the water bottle on the dresser and then climbed into bed and covered up.
“Sir?” Sanders said and started coughing again.
“Yes,” Livingston said. “Don’t ask about it again.”
Sanders spit up into his handkerchief.
19
The burnt orange sun hung on the horizon off Levity’s stern as Robin Norris steered the boat toward the gigantic cliffs lining the Eastern shore of Lake Superior, north of Gargantua Harbor. Trist was still asleep below. Robin had taken down the jib an hour ago and the mainsail twenty minutes after that. The wind had lessened and he motored the sloop near idle through the water.
The weather had cooled and he now had on a sweater. Every ten minutes or so he would do ten squats to keep his legs warm as he stood behind the helm console. He looked over the binnacle at the depth finder and saw that he was now in 30 feet of water. It wasn’t the ideal place to anchor, but he wanted no part of testing Superior’s rocky shoreline. No, better to anchor here and enjoy a quiet evening with Trist. There was so much he wanted to say even though he had now completed a total of four journal entries. How many would he have by the time he passed away?
A final check of the depth finder revealed that Levity was in 33 feet of water. He carried 300 feet of chain rode aboard, so he figured at 5:1 he’d pay out approximately 165 feet of rode. He brought the engine to idle and pointed the sailboat into the little wind that there was. Dashing forward, he released the brake on the
windlass, and the anchor began to drop. As the chain rode continued to pay out, he went back to the helm and checked his depth. 60 feet?! He fiddled with the depth finder’s buttons, then hit the display. The reading didn’t change. Were they near a drop off? He didn’t remember seeing one this close on the chart. He sprinted back to the windlass and set the brake, checking the rode at around 45 feet. He pushed the up button on the windlass. The chain moved a few inches and then stopped as the windlass strained. He let go of the up button and then pressed the down button, paying out a foot of rode to take the strain off. Fouled on something? He tried to raise the anchor again but got the same result.
To remove more load off the windlass, he tied a short piece of line around the chain and then tied it off to a cleat. He walked out onto the pulpit and stared down. All he could see was the chain disappear after a few feet.
He returned to the cockpit and looked at his fish finder that gave him a pixelated arcade-like view of the bottom. There seemed to be a mass of something rising up unevenly below them. What in the hell? He checked his current latitude and longitude and went below to the nav table to check their position on the chart. There were no charted wrecks, underwater obstructions, or reefs, but the depth did change—and fast—where he was currently at. In one direction, they were close to over two-hundred feet of water. It was then that he noticed that he was off just a bit from where he thought he had anchored. He’d been distracted, thinking about yesterday.
Shit.
He mentally reviewed the options. On the long salon bench, Trist snored away. Robin went topside.
In the cockpit, he lifted up the starboard bench. Inside was his harness for going aloft. He grabbed it and closed the bench. The sun cast a warm glow on the hundred-foot cliffs off the bow. There were no signs of civilization, just towering trees on top of the cliff heights. He faced the sun. It continued to slip below the horizon—maybe half-an-hour of daylight left.
He went below and put on a pot of coffee.
Robin nudged Trist’s shoulder and Trist’s eyes popped open.
“We may be fouled, T. I’m going aloft to see what I can make of it. Bring up the dive gear,” he paused, “and that new compressor and Desco equipment. Might be time to use it.”
Trist rubbed his eyes. “Why?”
“Longer bottom time and two free hands to work on the anchor. Plus, if we’re both down there, I can yell instructions to you if you get close enough to me since the Desco mask covers my entire face.”
Trist pulled the blanket off of himself and sat up. “Okay. Sure you don’t need me to winch you up?”
“No, the block and tackle system I’ve got rigged gives me a four to one advantage; I’ll be fine.” He pointed to the coffee pot. “I’ve got the coffee started. Bring up two mugs after you’ve got the dive gear up.”
✽✽✽
Robin pulled on the 7/16-inch line as he continued to ascend. The top of the mast was over fifty-five feet above the water, which put the spreader over thirty feet above. He’d ditched his bosun’s chair last year after falling out of it at, thankfully, five feet above the deck. “You don’t fall out of a proper climbing harness,” the manager of West Marine had told him. He had ponied up the cash for one.
He reached the spreader and continued to pull until he was a few feet above it. This was another requirement he had when the mast was constructed: “Don’t tell me I can’t stand on the Goddamn spreader.” Holding the mast, he placed his feet squarely on top of the spreader, his toes and heels hanging over, and stood up.
Far below, he saw Trist come up the companionway steps with a scuba tank, which he set on the cockpit’s teak decking.
“You okay?” Trist yelled up to him.
“Yep!” Robin said back.
Trist vanished below and Robin looked down at the lake. The combination of calm water, a cloudless sky, and sun still gave him enough visibility to search the depths for what they might be tangled on. However, he knew the chances of a visual were almost non-existent because of the depth. His only chance was if there was something coming up from the bottom whose top was closer to the surface. He scanned the water in all directions.
No outline. No shadow. Nothing he could make out. He’d have to dive.
While he was up here, he might as well check on the antenna connection and wind vane mounting at the top of the mast. He looked down at the cockpit. Trist was putting another tank on deck along with two wetsuits that had been hanging over his shoulder.
“Anything?” Trist said.
“No,” said Robin. “Gonna check the top of the mast.”
Trist gave a thumbs up and headed below once again.
Robin heaved on the line and soon his hands reached the top of the mast. He inched up as far as he could and examined the antenna connection. It was secure. But when he checked the wind vane mount, there were two screws loose. Reaching down, he pulled out his Swiss Army knife and extended the Phillips head screwdriver. Using one hand as a guide, he fitted the grooves to the screw and guided the hand holding the screwdriver until the head sunk back into the slots. When he could no longer twist it, he repeated the procedure for the second loose screw.
He folded the knife and put it back in his pocket. What had been a warm glow on the cliff face above the shore had now faded to a cool gray as the sun began to disappear. He pulled the binoculars up from around his neck and traced the shoreline south and then north. Far away he thought he could make out a break in the trees at the top of the cliff. A house? Probably not. They were now on the Canadian side of the border and this area had not been lived in for almost fifty years. He remembered Gary Hawthorne telling him about how the sea lamprey had wiped out most commercial fishing in the community at Gargantua Harbor by the 1950s. Some lamprey control measures had been put in place, but in all likelihood the number of herring and lake trout would never return. All that remained of the fishing community were a handful of abandoned structures and the foundations of buildings long since collapsed. If the Great Lakes had a ghost town, Gargantua Harbor was it. He swept the binoculars south again. The empty feeling hit his stomach as he realized that this was yet another sight he would never witness again. Englishmen who had fought in World War II had said that they knew the war would be over when they saw the white cliffs of Dover again on their return trip home. These cliffs on Lake Superior seemed to mark an end too. He let his body swing side to side against the mast for a long moment as he looked out over the water and to the horizon beyond. The wind had completely died. He dropped the binoculars and began his descent.
After setting the compressor on the cockpit deck, Trist slid below and entered the galley where he filled two mugs with coffee. When he returned to the cockpit, Robin was back on deck amidships stepping out of his harness.
“Rig up a tank, T,” Robin said.
Trist took a mug to Robin and then headed aft.
Robin took a heavenly chug and set the mug on the deck. Free of the harness, he coiled the remainder of the 7/16-inch line and tied it off. It was getting darker out by the minute. He picked up the mug and joined Trist in the stern.
Trist had the tank ready to go and held out a wetsuit for Robin to put on.
“Keep it,” Robin said. “I’ll swim down with just mask, fins, knife, and a dive light to take a quick peek at what we’re dealing with. I might even be able to untangle it. There’s no wind and almost no current.”
Trist looked pissy. “Then why all the gear?”
Robin snickered. “Because we can get to work quicker if the anchor is mangled on something. Or, if I’m able to free it up, we can do a night dive and work up an appetite for some mammoth steaks your mom packed. I’m still full from the spaghetti. How about you?”
Trist nodded. “But the anchor is fouled on something in over thirty feet of water. Can you go that deep and make it back on one breath?”
“Son, if I don’t have the lungs to do that, I shouldn’t own a boat.”
Trist’s annoyance turned to concern.
“But, what about yester—”
Robin was firm. “I’m fine.”
“Okay, but I’m watching from the pulpit. If I don’t see you in one minute, I’m coming down to drag you up.”
“You’re as stubborn as your old man.”
They shared a laugh and then sucked down the rest of their coffee.
Robin took off his sweater and t-shirt and pulled his mask on; the rubber surrounding the faceplate took suction against his forehead. Trist grabbed the dive light and fins while Robin strapped a dive knife to his right calf. They walked up to the bow.
“I’m giving you a minute,” Trist said.
Robin put on the fins and jumped overboard.
He surfaced a few yards to starboard away from the pulpit where he took off his mask, spit into it, and rubbed the saliva all over the inside of the faceplate while treading water. He submerged the mask and then put it on.
Trist walked to the end of the pulpit where he could see the anchor chain disappear into the deep. Robin kicked over and grasped the chain with one hand and held up his long arm to receive the dive light. Trist leaned over the pulpit railing and dropped it down into Robin’s hand.
“Cold?” Trist said.
“I’m in no danger of falling asleep,” he said and turned the light on and started taking in deep breaths, hyperventilating.
“Be careful,” Trist said.
Robin took in one more breath, gave a thumbs up, and then dove for the bottom.
The water’s color went from a shade of blue-green to blue to navy to black as his light cut through the cold darkness that surrounded him. He paused a few times to equalize the pressure in his ears and then continued to follow the anchor chain down. The water’s temperature dropped as he went deeper.
He reached the end of the chain, no anchor. Below him, was—he kicked up a few feet and swept his light across the bottom—the crumpled wreckage of...not a boat, but a plane of some sort. The fuselage was a twisted mess with the entire tail section either missing or unrecognizable. He focused the light on the end of the anchor chain once more. There was the problem: the anchor had broken through the remains of the cockpit window and was stuck on something inside.
