As Gage’s mind perused all the horrors they’d surely endured—horrors so devastating they couldn’t even find the courage to run for their lives—he released the door and sank his free hand into his jet-black hair. He tangled his fingers around the strands and nearly pulled them from the scalp.
Their cries grew, and Gage had half a mind to reassure them that he wasn’t there to hurt them. But he knew it would be a reassurance made in vain. He knew they’d been so utterly betrayed, so utterly broken, that every promise spoken from his lips would land with a dull thud. Every promise, empty. Only action—genuine compassion—would resonate here.
And abandonment wasn’t compassion.
“Don’t call the police?” Gage finally managed to respond to Linc, his voice just as manic as his eyes as they dashed all over the container. Every wide pair of eyes that met his—all in varying hues, with varying ethic distinctions, and showing a different emotion—sent the nausea in his stomach curling to an unbearable degree. The sound of their hushed cries, the sight of their tiny, trembling bones, and even more so the sight of them scooting away from him, shredded his heart. Making it pound so ferociously his eardrums were reduced to a hum. His wide eyes fell to the tip of his black leather dress shoe, where the small arm that had come tumbling out of the container the moment he’d opened the doors was still slung, motionless, across the pointed leather tip. The little boy’s fingernails were jet-black, caked with dirt. The tips of his fingers were dark blue, a direct contrast to his deathly white skin. As Gage’s eyes climbed the boy’s body, his teeth began to chatter when they landed on his face—his tightly sealed eyes—just as blue as his fingertips. The young Asian girl who cradled the boy looked up at Gage with more courage in her gaze than the others—most of whom were still squirming away from him. She also appeared to be the oldest—a pre-teen. But in the deepest depths of her hard eyes, Gage saw the same fear he felt lighting his own body on fire.
He held her eyes, and his voice rose as he spoke into the phone. “Maybe you didn’t hear me—“
“No, maybe you didn’t hear me,” Linc spat. “Get the hell off that ship—right now!”
Gage couldn’t help his voice rising even more. “They’re stuffed in a metal coffin that reeks of shit and urine. Half of them look drugged. One looks like he isn’t even breathing. I can’t—” Gage held the young girl’s eyes. “I can’t leave them.”
“If you want the rest of them to be breathing come morning, you can. If you want you to be breathing come morning, you will. Put everything back the way you found it and Get. Off. The ship. I’ll handle the rest.”
“Gage, I don’t know what the hell is going on, but you have a child that needs you. Listen to Linc and get off the damn boat.”
Gage jolted at the unexpected voice that rang through the phone, much softer and more feminine than the behemoth that had been barking seconds earlier. It was a voice he recognized in an instant. The only voice with the power to ease the darkness in his heart at that moment.
“Veda,” he breathed, his heart skipping a beat. Emotion instantly prickled his eyes at the thought of her being in that container. As the victim of the failed abduction that had driven him into that hold in the first place, she almost had been. He thought of the child she was carrying—their second child. He thought of that child being born into a world where the crate before him could exist.
The very thought killed him, and before Gage could tell Veda what he’d just told Linc—that he wasn’t leaving—a rustle came through from the other end of the line, indicating that a struggle had commenced between Veda and Linc for control of the phone.
Linc won out, and the barking behemoth returned. “Get out now.”
Gage sucked in a deep breath through his nostrils, taking in a mountain of the dust floating through the hold’s air, their speckles illuminated under the moonlight beaming in. “I’m not leaving these kids without calling someone.”
Linc sighed heavily. “Look, take a photo with your phone, a’ight? That way you’ll have proof.”
“I can’t. It’s a pay as you go. Doesn’t even have a camera. I left my real phone at the house.”
“Forget it then. No time. Just get off the ship.”
“No.”
Gage could hear the moment Linc clenched his teeth. “Gage. You’re an informant.” Linc paused, clearly attempting to keep his voice calm. “You’re the only person who can testify to what you’ve just seen. But if they catch you down there right now—if they trace an emergency call back to you—they’ll kill you before you get the chance.”
Veda’s cry floated in from the background. “Damn it, Gage, listen to him!”
“I’ll call it in,” Linc said. “I’m on my way to the docks right now,” Linc spoke again, but this time his voice was muffled, and his words had no bearing on Gage’s current situation, indicating he was speaking to Veda. “Stay here. Lock the door. Everything’s fine.”
Veda’s response was profane, calling Linc out on his bullshit because, clearly, everything wasn’t fine.
“Lock the door!” Linc spoke over her in a roar, and in the next instant, Veda’s voice was gone, replaced with the crunch of Linc’s boots on gravel and, eventually, the sound of his truck’s engine roaring to life.
“Call me the second you’re off the ship.” Linc hung up without another word.
Shaking his head with a huff, Gage leaned down so that he was eye-to-eye with the Asian girl. Again, she didn’t appear afraid, her gaze unwavering as she cuddled the young boy closer. Gage reached out and cupped her cheek, instantly alarmed at how cold it was. Her eyes filled with tears the moment he touched her.
Every bone in his body tightened, begged, screamed for him to stay.
But he knew Linc was right.
If Gage was caught down there by Kevin Brady, the security guard he’d evaded earlier that night, it would mean his life.
It could very well mean theirs.
If he was going to do something about this, he had to leave them for now.
With a deep breath, he tried to promise her that this wasn’t over. That he was going to help her. But nothing came. Nothing but a soft croak. Realizing that piecing together a coherent sentence was impossible at that moment, Gage went to stand with his heart in his throat.
The girl grabbed hold of his wrist before he was all the way up, squeezing as tightly as she could.
Gage froze in mid-stand, bent at the spine, looking down at her. Her hands, clenched tight around his wrist, were just as cold as her cheek. They trembled. When he met her eyes, she shook her head ever so softly.
It took everything he had to take his arm away, shaking his own head in silent apology before grabbing hold of one of the container’s tall doors, then the other. Just before he swung the double doors closed, his eyes fell to the little boy’s arm, still hanging outside the container, a tiny hand resting on the concrete floor. Gage bent down to slip his arm back in, but the girl beat him to it, taking the boy’s arm and slinging it across his chest, snuggling his body deeper into hers.
Gage’s eyes rose back up to hers, and his heart hit his feet when her gaze wasn’t there to catch his. Her eyes were now lowered, avoiding his. Whatever fight, whatever courage—whatever fire—he’d seen in her eyes a moment earlier, was long gone.
He ground his teeth and broke his eyes away from her, unable to stand the sight of her fight floating away. After making a silent vow that his tattered throat couldn’t form into words, he took a deep breath and swung the doors of the container closed. His hands shook wildly as he tried to lock it back in place, and it took several tries before he did.
Then, he stood tall.
Silence.
Sniffling back the emotion that tried to race from his eyes and his nose, Gage turned away from the royal blue container and, on wobbly legs, made his way toward the long staircase that led to the door of the cargo hold, thirty feet up. The young girl didn’t call after him. She didn’t bang on the closed doors of the conta
iner. She didn’t scream or beg for help.
But she didn’t have to.
Her eyes had said everything she couldn’t.
Those eyes stayed with Gage as he moved across the cargo hold, passing the long line of multicolored shipping containers and wooden crates in his hurry toward the industrial staircase. The staircase’s steel body was coming unhinged from the walls, so it wobbled as he climbed, almost as uneven as every bone in his body.
As a kid, he’d always had a strong stomach. Always the first in line for the tallest roller coasters at the amusement parks and the most dizzying rides at the carnival, so when his stomach went deathly sick in that moment, he knew it wasn’t because of the uneven stairs.
Halfway up, he had to stop, taking hold of the stair railing, bending over at the waist, and emptying his stomach over the edge. He watched the bile spill from his throat and splash down onto the concrete floor, unable to control it, unable to stop until he was dry heaving, his body begging to get rid of the rest of the darkness. A darkness that wasn’t yet ready to leave him completely.
Swallowing back the acid still stinging his tongue, hand over his heaving stomach, Gage began sluggishly back up the stairs, gasping as he ascended, holding the railing for leverage.
He didn’t look back.
He knew if he did, he wouldn’t have the strength to leave.
Just as he made it to the door at the top of the staircase, peering out of the small window built into it, ensuring the hallway on the other side was clear, his phone buzzed.
Looking down at the screen, he saw that it was Scarlett Covington calling, his “future wife” and his partner in crime. The only other person in the world who understood the horrors of being forced into an arranged marriage by her own parents because he was the one she’d been forced to marry. It was Scarlett’s determination to end their sham of an engagement that had driven her to help Gage sneak into that cargo hold, luring Kevin Brady away from the door with the promise of sex in one of the cruise ship’s suites upstairs. Once upon a time, Gage had been skeptical of Scarlett’s plan to seduce Kevin Brady, but it had proved nothing short of brilliant.
Now he had to get the hell out of that hold before it all proved to be in vain.
He decided to answer her call before leaving the hold, not wanting to risk making any noise in the hallway.
“Please tell me you still have Brady upstairs,” Gage answered. If Kevin Brady was already on his way back down, Gage was officially a dead man.
“He just got in the shower,” Scarlett whispered. “You don’t have a lot of time.”
“I’m on my way out. Meet me at the car as quickly as you can.”
“Shouldn’t I say goodbye first—”
“No, get off the ship as quickly as possible and meet me at the car like I said.”
A silence passed. He could almost sense the moment a chill went down Scarlett’s spine as her voice came softer. “What did you find down there?”
Gage hung up without answering, realizing they could have this conversation in the car. Once again, he didn’t—he couldn’t—look back. Feeling that young girl’s eyes as if they were burning into his back from inside that cold, dark container, it took everything he had to throw open the door of the cargo hold and step out into the gloomy hallway, promising himself that he’d avenge whoever had locked her inside that container in the first place.
He’d do it for that little girl.
For every other child locked in there with her.
Even more than that, he’d do it for Veda, and the child she carried.
The child he could only pray he’d live long enough to meet.
3
She’d been caught red-handed for the ball-slicing savage she was, but amazingly, being found out was the last thing on Veda’s mind as she frowned into the darkness, curled up on her living room couch.
What a fool she’d been to believe giving up on revenge would be enough to save her, to save the people around her, to free her from the chains that had been locked around her ankles ten years earlier, and allow her to experience real happiness. Real love. Real peace.
What a fool.
Just because she’d quit didn’t mean the darkness was gone.
No.
It was still hard at work destroying anything and everything she loved. Linc clearly wasn’t going to turn her in. Still protecting her—since the moment he’d first laid eyes on her. Too bad protecting her meant losing out on everything he ever wanted. If she’d never weaseled her way into his life, he’d have surely thrown her in jail by now. He’d be in the middle of his promotion ceremony, accepting his shiny silver badge and a long coveted elevation in the ranks of Shadow Rock PD.
Veda’s heart skipped a beat. Not just because she’d screwed up Linc’s life, but also because she still couldn’t shake the change she’d seen in him that night. The evidence that he’d been crying, probably hysterically, had been clear as day on his swollen face and in his distressed eyes. She still didn’t know what had caused him to fall apart that day, but she had an inkling it was probably all her fault.
Everything was her fault.
Just because she’d quit didn’t mean she was free from blame.
Just because she’d quit didn’t mean Gage hadn’t just gotten himself into a world of danger—which she still didn’t know the full details of—to prove his worth as a man and a father. To prove his worth to a child he might never meet.
Her stomach did a somersault, and Veda buried her head in her hands. The moonlight humming in through the window blinds painted white lines across her beige carpeting. Every breath she took came slower, heavier until she worried the next might not come at all.
That the guilt might eat her alive.
Yes, she’d quit, but the clouds hadn’t gone. They’d simply relocated. If they couldn’t hurt her directly, they’d find the people she loved most and hurt them instead. Finding a way to get back to her in any way they could. She wondered if there was anything that would drown them out for good.
Perhaps pure, unadulterated happiness really was just a pipe dream. Out of her element. In another stratosphere. A galaxy her arms would never be long enough to reach.
Unable to accept it, Veda reached forward with a gasp and snatched up her cell phone. The cool plastic nearly tumbled from her fingers as she dialed Linc’s number. She clapped the phone to her ear, her wide eyes dancing across the evidence he’d been gathering over the months, still laid out in Ziploc bags on her glass coffee table.
He answered on the first ring, the engine of his pickup truck growling in the background. “Veda, I can’t do this right now. If you’re not dead or bleeding, don’t call me, I’ll call you. Stay in the apartment and keep the doors locked.”
“Not until you tell me what the hell’s going on.” She fired off the questions that had been driving her crazy since the moment Linc had blazed out of her apartment. “What did Gage see? Why were you so adamant he get off the ship? You said that if he didn’t get off, he might not live to see morning. I can’t just sit here after hearing something like that. I’m pregnant and hormonal, and I need answers before I tear my hair out.”
A long pause fell in, probably because she’d just inadvertently told him that she was pregnant again, but her words seemed to move something in him because he didn’t hang up on her like she expected him to.
“The less you know, the safer you are,” he said. “I want him safe, but I want you safe too.”
Veda frowned. Linc wanted Gage safe? Since when? Confusion tried to set in. Her thoughts, however, were running too wildly to enquire about his sudden change of heart toward Gage.
Linc went on. “His family still thinks the two of you are broken up, and it needs to stay that way. Sometimes ignorance really is bliss, Vandyke. I don’t want you getting tangled up in this.”
“Just tell me he’s gonna be okay. Even if it’s not true. Lie to me.” Her voice rose as tears stung her eyes. “Tell me he’s gonna be okay, Linc.”
“I gotta go.”
He hung up without another word, and Veda threw her phone down on the couch with a huff. Less than two weeks pregnant, with the emotional upheaval that came along with it already settling in nicely, she nearly exploded into tears. Realizing that wouldn’t solve anything, she leaned forward on her knees—which were bopping furiously—gnawed her bottom lip and stared into space with a deep line between her brows. Her eyes dashed across the room for several moments before they landed on the remote control on her coffee table. She leaned forward and picked it up.
If Linc wouldn’t tell her what was going on, maybe the evening news would. She clicked on the TV, drowning the dark living room in a dull glow.
A blonde newscaster greeted her the moment the TV was on, her face and voice grim, in the middle of a segment about The Shadow Rock Chopper.
“Of course,” Veda grumbled, falling back onto the couch. The Chopper had been the top news story on that sleepy island for months. Little did they know, Shadow Rock Island wasn’t so sleepy at all. Little did they know, a much bigger story was exploding around the island’s precious cruise line. A cruise line whose profits had singlehandedly kept that the island afloat for decades. “I guess a madwoman castrating people makes better news.”
The newscaster raised her blonde eyebrows. “An urgent manhunt is still underway to find the serial castrator—” She paused in mid-sentence and turned to her male co-host. “—it’s still so weird for me to say those two words.”
“It’s weird for us all, Sally.” Her co-host chuckled.
The blonde recovered, continuing. “The city is still on edge as the hunt continues for The Shadow Rock Chopper, who police now believe is specifically targeting the wealthiest residents of Shadow Rock. Wealthy residents who all, in some way or another, are attached to Blackwater Cruises.” The newscaster raised her eyebrows again. “Vice-President of Blackwater Cruises, Todd Lockwood, Chief of Security, Eugene Masterson, and shareholders, Brock Nailer and Liam O’Dair, are just four of The Chopper’s victims with connections to the largest cruise line in the country, and police believe, there are many more to come…”
Rouse (Revenge Book 7) Page 2
