by Vivi Paige
Fear knotted in my gut. I’d heard things about the Olafs, how each of their muscle men carried a set of dental equipment on their person at all times, with one addition—a metal file. The idea of having a file on my teeth sent me into a near panic. I found myself wishing the Olaf bodyguards carried guns so I could grab one and shoot myself before the torture started.
“I guess you get your jollies off watching women bleed,” I snapped as they herded me into what seemed like a locker room for the yacht staff. Blue painted metal doors stood half open, some of them with clothing hanging from the hooks.
“No, Miss Barrie, my desires are far more conventional.” Crocodile gestured at one of the few closed lockers. “Open it.”
“Is it going to blow up?” I asked even as I swung it open. If it was, maybe it would take Croc with me.
“Of course not, don’t be silly,” Crocodile rumbled with laughter. I examined the interior of the locker and found a pair of boxing shorts in my size, the tag still dangling from the waistband. There were also fingerless gloves and a Spandex sports bra as well as a curious eighties-style tracksuit jacket.
“What is this, your fetish?” I held the shorts up. “Why not just shoot me in the head and get it over with?”
“It’s not my fetish, as you so quaintly put it.” Crocodile leaned his massive bulk against the wall and extracted a cigar from his breast pocket. Eschewing a cutter, he used his teeth—which I noticed had been filed into points—to snip the end right off. He spat it to tumble into the darkness. “Ms. Barrie, I’ve decided your valor has earned you a fighting chance. Trial by combat, as it were.”
“You want me to fight you?” I shrank back. I couldn’t imagine trying to harm such a monster. Not without a chunk of concrete. While he was unconscious. And tied up.
“No, of course not,” he laughed heartily. “No, your opponents will be three of my men who have disappointed me of late. One of them is the man whose life you spared. I’m going to put you through the Maroon Cap Challenge.”
“That doesn’t sound like an internet meme.”
“No, it is not an internet meme. It’s a Spetznaz thing.” He grinned, showing off those wicked teeth. A bit of tobacco had stuck between his incisor and canine. “To earn a maroon cap in the Spetznaz, one must fend off the attacks of three fully trained soldiers.”
“That’s not a fight. It’s an execution,” I snapped.
“Indeed. But out of respect for you being the weaker sex, we will only force you to face them one at a time, yes?” His smile faded. “Get dressed, and if you have any gods… make peace with them.”
I put on the ridiculous outfit, surprised when the Olafs turned their backs out of respect for my modesty. I bet Crocodile told them to do so because they sure didn’t seem very gentlemanly. Part of my mind toyed with the idea of trying to sneak attack them when they weren’t looking, but I quickly abandoned the idea.
My best bet was to play along and look for an opportunity to escape. All I had to do was get my hands on a cell phone and call the Coast Guard, and Hook would be up to his gills in trouble.
The goons actually helped me put on the fingerless gloves, wrapping them tightly, and then zipped up my jacket.
“Is sambo jacket,” one of them said in a thick accent. “Russian jacket submission wrestling.”
“The only word I like in that sentence is submission,” I murmured. “But not in this context.”
He didn’t get the joke, and I wasn’t much in the mood for laughing either. They each took me by the arm and led me back to the main deck. Once there I discovered two things: one, the full-sized pool on the main deck had been completely drained of water. Two, the seats had been arranged in a staggered tier formation. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to realize where the Maroon Cap Challenge would take place.
Looking across the pool, I saw three big, burly men in trunks and jackets, much like my own guise. One of them I recognized from Club Lost, but the others were a mystery to me. They stood at the demarcation of the shallow end, just behind the red line.
They didn’t seem to be worried, and why should they? Their faces stretched with conceited smiles, and their laughter echoed across the hard fiberglass walls of the pool.
“Get in,” one of the Olafs commanded, shoving me toward the ladder that would set me down in the deep end. Without water, I had to drop the last four feet to the floor.
As soon as I landed, people made bets. The odds were right there, written on a dry erase board. Most of the betting wasn’t on whether I would win or lose. My losing was a foregone conclusion. They were betting on things like first blood and whether I would even last through the first opponent.
I looked at the overconfident goons, and my teeth clenched. All of a sudden, my fear fled in the face of anger. This was bullshit. All of it. Hook, Crocodile, Peter’s fucked-up family, everything. I suffered through so much to find the love of my life, and now I couldn’t be with him because of everyone else sticking their dicks into a situation that’d been fucked enough.
No more. I resolved then and there that I was done with my defeatist attitude. Life sucked. So what? That didn’t mean you laid down and let it have its way with you. You made it fight for every ounce it drew out of you, bleed for every inch of ground it gained.
I slammed my hands together, and Crocodile grew silent, his eyes crafty. He gave me a subtle nod and whispered to one of his cronies.
He placed a bet—the only bet under the column marked for my victory. Crocodile bet on me.
Was he just fucking with me? Or was there some kind of purpose to his act? I took in my surroundings. The pool had been drained, but the floor was still slick in many spots. There was a sloping section where the pool dropped off into deeper waters, and several drains jutted up from the fiberglass bottom.
Hook mockingly rang a bell for the battle to begin, mostly eliciting laughter from the auction patrons. The man I’d spared at Lost was the first one down the slope into the deep section. He stumbled a bit as he slid down the ramp and sprawled to his belly.
Laughter echoed out again as he rolled over onto his butt and flipped off the crowd. This resulted in even more laughter. But through it all, he had taken his eyes completely off me.
I ran hard, bare feet slapping on the slick surface. Years of dance training had honed my balance and fast-twitch muscle response to elite levels. I didn’t stumble or slip one iota as I launched at him, leading with my knee.
He was facing away from me when my knee struck, driving into the back of his head with a sound akin to dropping a coconut on a hardwood floor. Being a large man of over two hundred pounds, he didn’t pass out, but he was definitely dazed.
I pressed my advantage, lashing out with my gloved hands at his unprotected face. He went down under the barrage, his face bloody as I vented my rage. I hooked my legs over his feebly flailing arms and pounded him right in the mush, bouncing his head off the bottom of the pool over and over again until he stopped moving.
“Enough,” Hook shouted. He whipped out his pistol and fired a shot in the air, which startled the auction patrons into silence. “Get off of him, Belle. Just kindly die as intended.”
I stood up from the beaten man, panting hard, and flipped him double birds. “You first.”
The betting surged to life again, and more people were taking a gamble on me making it until at least the third round. A couple of brave souls bet on me winning, but even I wouldn’t have taken that wager.
A couple of goons leaped into the pool to drag off the loser. The heavy splash that followed after they dragged him out of sight was not lost on me, not at all.
The next brute slid down the slope with a great deal more caution. His eyes gleamed with menace as he approached me. I backed away, and he increased speed as he pursued.
I had taken the last man by surprise, resulting in a total crushing victory, but this man was warier. He adopted a fighting stance, inching forward like a combat expert. I’d had dance lessons and about a ye
ar and a half of karate. When I was a kid.
My back slapped against the curved fiberglass wall, and he grinned wickedly. I was out of places to flee. He moved in with sadistic intent in his eyes. This man intended to enjoy the act of beating me to death.
Panicking, I remembered the ladder above. I coiled my body like a spring and leaped, my hands snagging on one of the upper rungs. My opponent was momentarily taken off guard and dropped his hands, looking up toward me in bewilderment—
Just in time for me to land on his face with both feet. The impact jarred me, sending a shockwave from my heels up my legs and through my spine. But it was far worse for him. My bare feet grew wet with his blood before he even toppled over. I rode him down the whole way, kicking into a somersault to eat up my momentum when he finally cracked onto the floor.
Amazingly, he wasn’t done. He stood up, his face a mask of blood and one eye swollen shut, with multiple teeth missing from his grill. The man kept trying to advance on me, but I’d rattled him badly. I moved to his left, circling toward his blind side. A grunt of frustration escaped his lips as he tried to counter. Angry, he threw one of those fancy, incredibly powerful spinning martial arts kicks, but he forgot we were on a wet floor.
His ankle rolled with a wet pop and he went down in a heap. I looked at him, writhing and clutching his ankle, and knew I’d gotten lucky, again.
The third man slid down immediately and charged in, trying to take me off guard. I noticed he had a bit of a limp, his left leg not quite flexing as well as it should.
I ran right for him, which took the man by surprise. He quickly adopted a fighting stance with his eyes narrow and crafty.
When I was about six feet away, I dove into a feet-first slide, using my momentum and the slick surface to my advantage. My feet impacted his bad leg, and he was forced to do a massive, involuntary split. Whether his pants had ripped, or some ligaments, I didn’t know. All I knew was he went down clutching his groin and moaning in agony.
I climbed up the ladder to the edge of the pool and pointed at Crocodile. “I win. I’m going home.”
I turned around and ran right into the barrel of Hook’s pistol. “You’re not going anywhere.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
As soon as Will took his leave of Club Lost, I got to my feet, swaying unsteadily, and headed back to the kitchen area for some coffee. Since I almost never go back there, the staff gave me weird looks, but whatever.
When I messed with the espresso machine, I was hastily, if politely, assisted lest I break the device. In my drunk and dejected state, I just might have. Soon enough I had a steaming little cup of Italian goodness in my hand, along with some hazelnut biscotti that were the perfect match for the espresso.
Two cups of espresso and four biscotti later, I was sober enough to march right over to the Jolly Roger and demand to see Belle. I wasn’t taking no for an answer this time, and if her goon squad wanted to stop me, they were going to find out I was a New York State Golden Gloves Champion.
I checked Lost, but the Boyz had departed. Will had that effect on some folks—okay, most folks. We didn’t call him the Big Bad Wolf for nothing. Homeboy actually stood toe to toe with Navajo Joe and lived. That’s no mean feat.
I decided I didn’t really need the Boyz. This was a solo mission of the heart, not an invasion of Crenshaw’s property. So, I headed out into the street, deciding not to even take a weapon with me. Like I said, it was a mission of the heart.
As I walked across the street, my mind raced with more hopeful scenarios than it had in some time. We could handle Belle’s excision from Hook’s organization several ways. We could always pay him off, if nothing else. Uncle Lucian wouldn’t like it, but we could call it a talent exchange.
Then there was the possibility of Hook finally deciding to sell the Roger to us. But I knew that was a remote possibility—very remote. Everyone knew Hook’s ego had always been bigger than Manhattan. Even a Mayne knew you couldn’t win all the time. Hook saw it as a personal affront inflicted upon him by the universe when he lost. He was not going to take a deal where he even slightly seemed to have been made out to be a punk.
The Jolly Roger’s façade loomed over me. For a moment I got cold feet, pausing on the sidewalk to look at the big pirate mural painted on the sign. Just because I’d decided I wanted to be with Belle no matter what didn’t mean she would feel the same.
Was I being an idiot, thinking her love for me was so strong she’d throw away everything she ever worked for? Or maybe I wasn’t so much an idiot as a jerk? Belle had told me in no uncertain terms that we were through before we even got started. Circumstances were what they were, and me trying to push her seemed wrong somehow.
But what stopped me from turning around and calling the whole thing off? Belle’s eyes, and not just the tears that had flowed out of them. The pain, the anguish, the lament had stuck with me. That was not the expression of someone who wasn’t head over heels in love. I know, because I’ve seen the same look on my own face. I know I’m in love with Belle. Truly, deeply, profoundly.
I squared my shoulders and marched right to the front door. It was locked. I stood there for a moment, feeling stupid, and then knocked. It had started off as far less dramatic than the entrance I’d had planned.
A moment later, Gentleman Starkey appeared, quite dapper in his sleekly tailored Dolce & Gabbana suit. His nose twitched slightly, and he sighed. “I’m sorry, sir, but I’m afraid Ms. Barrie isn’t in.”
“Bullshit. We’ve been over this before, I’m looking at her damn car in the lot. I want to talk to Belle, Starkey.”
“I’m afraid that won’t be possible,” Starkey crossed his arms over his chest and jutted his chin out defiantly. “She did not leave of her own volition…” Starkey grimaced, shaking his head as if to clear it. “…That is, of her own locomotion. Mr. Hook sent a car for her.”
“Hook?” My face twisted into a worried frown. “Is he… is he pissed at her, Starkey? Come on, play it straight with me, man. I really care about Belle, all right? And unless I miss my guess and I’m a way worse judge of character than anybody thought, you care about her a lot, too.”
Starkey deflated, shoulders slumping, arms hanging limply at his sides. “I do care for her. She is a shining jewel in an otherwise bleak world.” Starkey sighed. “Unfortunately, I don’t know where Hook took her, Peter. I truly do not. I wish I did.”
“I see.” My mind raced with possibilities. Where would Hook take her? The guy owns property all over the tri-state area. There was just no good way to narrow it down. “Starkey, you know anybody who might know where she was taken?”
“Perhaps Miss Wendy,” Starkey offered. “But I don’t believe she would be much inclined to help us. She’s grown… indignant toward Ms. Barrie recently.”
“Indignant? Why?”
“I believe the timing coincided with your and Ms. Barrie’s, er, entanglement.” Well, that’s one way to say we bumped uglies. “For obvious reasons.”
He glared at me, and I got the impression he figured I should feel guilty about something, but I had no idea what exactly. “Sorry, Stark, the reasons aren’t so obvious to me. I’m kinda slow. Could you spell it out for me, please?”
Starkey sighed and rolled his eyes to the ceiling. “You have the maturity of a mayfly. Do you not recall having a dalliance with Miss Wendy some years ago?”
“What? Dalliance…” My jaw dropped open. “Oh fuck, I do remember now. We, ah…”
“Yes.”
“And it wasn’t bad, just… not like it is with Belle, you know?”
“Quite, but Wendy still hasn’t gotten over the fact that you never called her.”
“Damn,” I said. “Starkey, can I talk to Wendy? Maybe I can smooth this whole thing out.”
Starkey nodded and stood aside to allow me entry. This was my third time in the club. I really hoped it wouldn’t end with me being thrown outside. Again. I’m not scared of the flying part, just the crashing that comes at
the end. Capisce?
He led me back behind the bar into a little utility area and then into Belle’s office. Wendy wasn’t there, which seemed to surprise Starkey. We headed upstairs after that, and we finally found her working her way through a bottle of wine and crying her eyes out.
“Miss Wendy?” Starkey said after clearing his throat politely. “There’s someone here to see you.”
“I don’t want to see anyone,” she said, sniffling. “Wait! Is it Crenshaw?”
“No, it’s Peter Mayne.”
Her head whipped around, shock crossing her face. Wendy shook her head and started bawling again. “You’re too late,” she sobbed, her voice so thick with her misery I almost couldn’t make out what she said. “Hook’s going to kill her, and it’s my fault for ratting her out.”
“Then tell me where Hook is, and I’ll stop him,” I ordered. “Come on, Wendy. I know I was a total dick for not calling you after our hookup, but please don’t take out your anger on Belle. She’s innocent in all of this.”
Wendy hid her face in her hands. “Oh my god…I don’t know what to believe any more. Fine, Hook has her on his yacht. There’s a big auction this morning.”
“Where does he keep his boat docked?” I demanded.
“He doesn’t hold auctions when it’s docked. They have a spot near the New England Seamounts. The coordinates are written down on a Post-it in the top center drawer of Belle’s desk.”
“Thanks, Wendy.” I bowed my head. “Thanks so much.”
“Just promise me she’ll be okay,” Wendy said tearfully.
“I promise.”
Then I took off down the stairs, jumped right over the bar and dashed into the office. Once I had the Post-it, I beat feat for Lost.
Before I was even inside, I had Nibs on the line. “Nibs, get the Boyz and meet me at the pier. You know the one.”
“Yeah, I do,” Nibs sounded cheerful and upbeat. “Good for you, Pete. You’re going to do some yachting to get Belle off your mind.”
