Vegan Baked Alaska (Auntie Clem's Bakery Book 9)

by P. D. Workman

  “Here you go.”

  Erin hesitated, then selected the scissors. “I’ll start at his face. You use the blade to free his legs.”

  Vic nodded her agreement, kneeling down to start slicing the tape between Terry’s leg and the chair leg. Erin tried to work the pointed scissor blade between the tape and the skin of Terry’s face. She knew she was risking cutting him. His eyes were on her face and he was obviously keeping his head as still as possible as she tried to get under the tape to free him. Terry flinched away a couple of times when the sharp blade bit into his skin instead of sliding smoothly in between his skin and the tape, but he held as still as possible.

  Vic looked up from her slow progress. “What can I do to help Willie? I could give him the boxcutter? The duct tape?”

  Erin shook her head. She looked away from her scissors momentarily to look around the room. There were no obvious weapons Vic could use to help Willie. If Vic gave Willie the boxcutter, Erin was worried that the killer might be able to wrestle it away, and he wouldn’t be trying to get Willie under control, but to kill him.

  “See if you can tape up the one that K9 took down,” Erin suggested. “Then K9 can help Willie with the other one.”

  Vic’s face cleared. She nodded and picked up the big roll of tape, placing the boxcutter by Terry’s feet so that Erin could continue the job once she was finished freeing his mouth and head. Erin continued the work of cutting the tape away, pulling Terry’s skin around to try to avoid cutting him as she inched the scissors under the tape, a tiny bit at a time. She cut what she could and continued forward. Terry made a noise, and she stopped. He worked his jaw, which had obviously been held in the same uncomfortable position for too long. Erin waited until he was finished and blinked at her, then continued cutting. She could hear Vic yelling at K9’s detainee, and then eventually, telling K9 to “break.” It took several times before he was apparently willing to do so, not having been trained to take orders from Vic. Then Vic pointed him toward the husky-voiced killer and ordered him to attack. In a few seconds, they could hear the man protesting as K9 and Willie held him down to tie him up.

  By the time Willie and Vic came back into the captain’s quarters, Erin was removing the layers of tape from Terry’s mouth and face, jerking the tape away from the skin an inch or so at a time, leaving an angry red stripe where layers of skin were pulled away.

  Willie knelt down to pick up the boxcutter and swiftly sawed through the layers of tape binding Terry’s ankles, and then his arms. Terry moved, massaging his limbs and licking his lips.

  “Thanks. You didn’t… catch them all…?”

  Erin shook her head. “The first mate got away. Do you know anyone else who was involved? Was it just those three and the dead man, or are there others?”

  “I don’t know how many others may know what’s going on, either because they were involved or because they guessed.” Terry frowned at Erin. “How much did you figure out?”

  “Just what the maid and her son said. That the immigrants were being used as slave labor. We went down below and found one of the storage units they were being kept in…” Erin shook her head, her throat getting hot even just thinking about it. “Sleeping on mats on the floor with buckets for toilets and no other facilities. It’s no wonder they were so desperate to do what they were told.”

  “That’s not all of it.”

  Willie retracted the blade on the box cutter and put it down on the captain’s desk. “What else?” he asked, studying Terry.

  “That girl who disappeared…? It sounds like they are not just trafficking slaves, but girls too. Some they can coax into relationships and then pimp out much like they would in the city. Same type of conversion. And others they have drugged, like with Mackay, and then threatened to turn them in—to their parents or boyfriends or whoever they are close to. Blackmailed them into doing what they say. It’s not a new story… but I had no idea that was going on on cruise ships. You would think they would be too obvious, too easy to catch. But girls go on a cruise for their first taste of independence, or they come on vacation with their families and get lured away or outright kidnapped. Disappearances are not investigated. Parents are told that the girls have just run away. And they never know what really happened.”

  Erin felt sick. “We need to go after him. Even if we don’t know all of the crew who are involved… that can be sorted out later. But the first mate—we know he’s the ringleader.”

  Terry grunted and got unsteadily to his feet. K9 was immediately at his side, whining and pushing his snout into Terry’s hand. Terry scratched his ears.

  “It’s okay, K9. I’m just fine. You did a good job out there, didn’t you? Good job! Good boy.”

  K9 panted, lapping up the attention.

  “He really did good,” Vic agreed, nodding. “I don’t think we could have taken down two of the three without him. And I don’t think the first mate would have run if it weren’t for K9. He would have stayed to fight.”

  Willie and Erin nodded in agreement.

  Terry rubbed his wrists and gingerly felt the red strip on his face. “Let’s go, then. He can’t be anywhere but on the ship, and it’s pretty hard to hide the first mate.”

  “Everyone stay together,” Erin warned. Terry looked at her and opened his mouth to answer, then thought better of it. He led them out of the captain’s quarters, pulling the door shut behind him. They stepped over the tape-bound men in the hallway and kept going without comment.

  Terry headed for the dining room, the place most likely to be busy as people were getting back from their tours and either heading back to their cabins for naps, or looking for something to eat, or drinking as they relaxed. They immediately spread out, asking both passengers and crew if they had seen the friendly first mate.

  One of the crewmen Erin approached smiled obligingly and keyed his radio. “Looking for Little,” he said into it, “anyone seen him?”

  There were a couple of responses. Erin made a wide motion to the others. “Deck fifteen!” she shouted.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  A

  s they hurried for the elevator and pressed the buttons, Erin jiggled nervously. Deck fifteen included the children’s and teens’ areas. The last thing they needed was the first mate taking hostages. She could just picture him standing by the railing, smiling, threatening to throw someone overboard. They needed to get to him before he could.

  They arrived on deck fifteen and got off the elevator, looking around. Erin tried to slow her breathing and to convince herself that they would find him, and everybody else would be safe and well. Everything was going to be fine.

  “Spread out and look for him,” Terry said in a whisper. “Try not to alert him. He’s on the run. He already knows he’s caught; we just need to find him and persuade him that the best outcome for him would be to turn himself in instead of running any farther. Throw himself on the mercy of the court. If you see him, try to signal whoever is closest to you. Try to keep each other in sight.”

  Of course, there was no way on the huge ship that they were going to be able to keep each other in sight. Erin thought it was even pushing it to think that they could find the man himself on the ship. But with some luck and the help of the other crewmen…

  Erin went her own way, looking around for him. There were a lot of teens around, mostly talking and playing on their phones. The older adults should be easy to see. The uniforms should make them easy to spot. But it was like playing a life-size game of Where’s Waldo? Erin just couldn’t find Waldo.

  And then she did. He was up another deck, in the balcony that overlooked the teen pool. Erin ducked back against the wall, hoping that he couldn’t see her from his angle or wouldn’t look in her direction. He had a good vantage point, which was exactly why he had chosen it. He wanted to see them before they could confront him.

  Erin waved in Terry’s direction, keeping the motion small so that it wouldn’t attract Little’s attention. Against all odds, Terry saw
her. Erin pointed up at the balcony and he saw their quarry. He motioned to Willie, who managed to get Vic’s attention. The four of them communicated the best they could with gestures, then each headed up toward the sixteenth deck from four different directions. For a few minutes, they would each be alone, none of them able to see the others. But then they would arrive on the sixteenth deck and could surround the first mate and take him down before he knew what was happening.

  Erin made her way up her assigned stairway, moving as quickly as she dared. She didn’t want to be completely out of breath by the time she got to the top, but even just walking normally was getting her out of breath because of the adrenaline dumped into her bloodstream. She waited for a few seconds when she got to the top, trying to quiet her breathing so that she wouldn’t be approaching him huffing and puffing like a steam engine, alerting Little. She took a deep breath and stepped out into the hallway behind the balcony. Straight into the chest of one of the other crew members.

  Erin excused herself and stepped back and made a motion to step around the man, hesitating for a moment to see who it was and if it was someone who would help them.

  That was when she realized it was Saville, the sneering crewman who had given Vic such a hard time.

  If anyone was part of Little’s ring, it had to be him. He was just the type of man who would have not only helped with the human trafficking rings, but would get a real kick out of doing it.

  The man reached for her, his hands closing around her upper arms.

  “What’s going on?” he demanded. “Where are you going in such a hurry?”

  Erin pulled away from him. “None of your business,” she snapped. She again tried to step around him, but he seemed oblivious to this fact and didn’t move away to give her personal space like a normal person would. Erin stepped forward as aggressively as she dared. She needed to get past him to be in place when Willie and Terry we ready to close in on the first mate. They had to be able to work together to get it down.

  “What’s wrong?” Saville questioned, looking into her face. “Something is obviously wrong. Where’s your friend?” He looked around. “Where are all of your friends? You’re usually joined at the hip, why would you be walking around alone like this?” He paused, chewing on his lip as he looked down at her. “It’s not safe,” he said.

  Erin sucked in her breath. She looked at him with new eyes. Had her impressions of him been wrong? Had she judged him just as unfairly as he had been prejudiced against Vic? She looked into his face, trying to read him. He looked concerned. He really did look as if he wanted to help her out. But it could all just be an act. She inched to the side again.

  “We need to talk to the first mate,” she said, motioning to the balcony. “He’s just over there. I need to talk to him…”

  The crewman shook his head. “First mate is busy. I can help you with whatever it is that you need. Why don’t we go back down to the teen deck or another place and discuss what it is you need?”

  Erin stared into his face. “Do you know what he’s up to?”

  “What do you mean?”

  They were both so reluctant to put it into words that they were in danger of refusing to talk to each other at all. Erin finally decided to chance it. If she talked to the wrong person and did the wrong thing, then that was all on her. But she needed to do her best and at least try to help the others to stop the first mate.

  “He’s been involved in human trafficking on this ship. Terry is trying to get to him to put him under arrest. We’re coming from different directions so that he can’t see us coming and run or take a hostage or do something stupid like that. We just want this to go down smoothly and for everyone to be safe.”

  The crewman’s jaw dropped open. He gaped at Erin. “Human trafficking?”

  “Do you have any idea of the condition that the immigrant labor on this boat are living in? Do you know how much money they’re making? Or that he threatens not to feed them if they don’t do the job to his standards? They are terrified of starving in the middle of a ship full of all kinds of food from all different cuisines. And that girl that disappeared? MacKay? He was the one who had her drugged, if he didn’t do it himself, so that he could get her involved in the sex trade.”

  “No!”

  Erin nodded. Though he protested, she thought from his expression that he actually did believe her. He was horrified, not disbelieving. Maybe he had seen things that now made sense when they hadn’t before. Maybe knowing about the human trafficking going on aboard the ship, all of the pieces were falling into place.

  “Yes. We need to get to him. So please let me past.”

  “Hold on…” He stopped her again and thought for a moment. “Let me tell him he’s needed. Get him off of the balcony. There are too many people around, and that railing… I’m just saying…”

  “He had one of the other crewmen throw someone overboard that first night, just like I said they did. It was all part of the human trafficking. The other guy didn’t want anything to do with whatever it was that they were asking him to do. They were afraid that he would spill the beans. So they killed him to keep him quiet. They will silence everyone they can. They kidnapped Terry and were going to kill him, but we managed to spring him. So now we need to do this. We need to get him out of the way before he does something else.”

  “I’ll call him,” the man repeated. He clicked his radio and spoke into it, calling Little away from his surveillance on the balcony.

  Erin had no way to signal to Terry and Willie and Vic that the plan was changing and Little was on the move. While she believed the shock she had seen in Saville’s face, she still wasn’t one hundred percent sure that she could believe him about not knowing what the first mate was up to or that there had been human trafficking going on right under his nose on the ship.

  The first mate looked irritated as he went through the door from the balcony, heading to whatever part of the ship the crewman had told him he was needed on. When he saw Saville and Erin standing there, his expression darkened even more, and he looked thunderous.

  “What is this?” he demanded. “What’s your game here? What is this woman doing here?”

  There was no reason Erin couldn’t be there. It wasn’t an area that was restricted to staff only. She was a passenger and it was a public area. He stalked toward her, jabbing toward her with an accusing finger.

  “You just couldn’t help making waves, could you?” he demanded. “You couldn’t just stay quiet and have a nice holiday like everyone else? I made some inquiries about you, and you’re always in the middle of things, making a bigger mess, trying to attract attention to yourself. Well, not on my ship; this is the last place that you’re going to try this. You have no idea what you’ve gotten yourself into, little lady. I am going to—”

  “Stop right there!” Terry’s shout came from the end of the gallery as he entered from the other end, having discovered the first mate to be missing from the balcony where he was expected to be. “Don’t move a muscle, Little.”

  The mate whirled around. He was apparently not worried about Terry being armed, firearms being prohibited on the ship. But he hadn’t counted on K9, even after seeing how he had attacked the guard at the captain’s quarters.

  “Attack!” Terry ordered, pointing at him.

  The mate only had time to put his hands out in front of him in protest, as if the gesture could stop K9’s approach. He yelled as K9 jumped on him, biting down on his forearm as he had been trained. Saville put his arm out automatically in front of Erin as if to shield her from attack. When Terry approached, looking threatening, Saville stepped between them. But it was Saville who Terry was focused on, not Erin.

  “What’s going on here? Did he block you, Erin? Keep you from coming in?”

  “Well, sort of,” Erin said. “But not like that. Not in a bad way. He said it was safer to get the mate out here, away from the balcony and the other people.”

  Terry looked at him and backed down a little o
n the aggression. “Yeah? So he helped you?”

  Erin nodded. “Yes. He was helping, not hindering.”

  “You don’t think he was part of this?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Okay.” Terry gave a little nod to Saville. “Thank you.”

  Then he turned his attention to Little, manacling his wrists with large zip-ties he just happened to have in his pocket. Willie and Vic raced in from different directions, ready to fight a dozen crewmen, but there was no one left to fight. Vic hugged Erin, looking at Saville warily. He gave an embarrassed shrug, his eyes sliding away from her.

  Willie bent over to help Terry, but there wasn’t anything for him to do. They lifted the first mate to his feet. The man spit curses at them. “There’s nothing you can do! You don’t have any authority here! I am in charge. I am the acting captain of this ship!”

  “Not now,” Terry responded. “And we’ll see what the FBI has to say about what’s been going on here. Human trafficking, kidnapping, murder, attempted murder, sexual assault… I think they’re going to have more than a passing interest in you, this ship, and the cruise line. You’re not getting away with this.”

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  E

  rin stared out into the water, which looked gray and cold, with wisps of fog hanging over it. She shivered and pulled her layers of sweaters and coats more tightly around her.

  “This is our last night on board the ship,” she told Terry, though of course, he knew that already.

  “Maybe tonight you’ll actually be able to get a good sleep.”

  Erin wondered. While they had detained the first mate and the few crewmen who they knew had been involved in the murder of the captain and the crewman, she wasn’t convinced that they had everyone who had known about or been involved in the enslavement of the immigrants or the sex trafficking that had been going on under their noses. Could they really work on the ship without knowing about everything that was going on? Or was it just a few people who had known, and the others were blissfully ignorant?