The Catch: A Novel

by Taylor Stevens

  She danced again, dodged again, ran farther down the beach into the dark space between hotels, where heightened instinct would work to her advantage. Couldn’t outrun them forever.

  Backed up against a retaining wall, she cut their advantage in half, and this time willed them closer. Searched for the leader, the one that she could take down first to cause the others to weaken, but there was nothing in their posture or formation to point to one who gave the orders. Another stick came at her in the dark and the pressure inside her chest tore free. History became the present, the nights of the past the now, and the first rush of the fight bled from her chest into her fingertips. She struck with the speed of survival, speed carved into her psyche one knife slice at a time, speed that had kept her alive, speed born from the refusal to quit or be conquered; she moved faster than the nearest man had time to react.

  Knife plunged into trachea. Yelp choked into gurgle. Blood spread over her hands, warm and sticky, sending her soul into the ecstasy of a crack addict’s high. A blow fell from the side and connected with her shoulder. Landed hard enough to drop her to one knee and she laughed with the pain.

  They struck fast in the moonlight, blows crashing down, wildly crashing down. She spun and connected, dodged and slashed, and the pain built, intensifying with each blinding hit. She struck and dipped, lunged and parried, and the bludgeoning came again and again, unrelenting, maddening, blows to her chest, her back, her head, and finally brought her fully to her knees.

  Sand to their eyes, she bought time and bought fighting space. Rose again and was struck down again, and knew then that the fight was unwinnable. She would die tonight. And still she fought. With each plunge and slice of the knife, regret welled up from a place deep and buried, rose from the secret place where thoughts that shouldn’t be felt were locked away for safekeeping. Like Sami, there would be no way for those she loved to know; like Sami, she would be a man gone to sea and never returned while those who mattered ever waited for her to come home.

  Sight failed and darkness descended and the knife in her hand, alive with its own passion, struck and struck again until consciousness faded and it was over.

  CHAPTER 20

  Suffocating. Drowning in sand. Drowning in blood.

  Munroe struggled for air.

  Couldn’t find air. Move. Had to move. Turn from the blockage.

  No arms. No legs. She fought for air. Found only sand. Only blood.

  Suffocating.

  Something seared into her side. Pushed. Rolled her over and her face was free and she found air.

  Air.

  She gasped. Sucked oxygen.

  Pain reached into her chest and ripped out her organs.

  A scream ricocheted through her body.

  Hand to the knife. The knife.

  There was no knife.

  A shadow, a face, a body above her against the night.

  She struggled for the knife, but there was no knife, and darkness washed over her and she was gone again.

  WORDS. MAYBE WORDS. English words. Reaching to her, calling to her.

  We are friend. We are friend. We are Sami friend.

  Sifting. Rising. Falling. Hands reaching.

  She fought to keep the hands away. Feeble attempts from arms no longer connected to her body.

  She couldn’t move.

  The knife, where was the knife? Couldn’t find her hands.

  Try to crawl. Try to turn.

  The night sky screamed again, rained acid tears, burned.

  All of her burned.

  We are friend. We help you.

  HANDS ON HER hands. Vises on her wrists. Fingers prying against fingers and she knew then that they took from her the knife that she clung to yet couldn’t feel or find. They pried fingers that she couldn’t move, couldn’t control, and gradually the weapon was no longer hers.

  Somewhere out in the darkness she could taste and smell blood.

  Her blood. Their blood. Someone’s blood.

  She didn’t know, didn’t remember.

  The hands lifted her and she screamed. Or perhaps the scream was only in her head, while pain racked her body beyond the point of bearable. She fought to see but the night swirled on in circles that made her stomach retch and perhaps she vomited, or perhaps it was the motion of the boat. Yes, a boat, a small boat that carried her away from the place of death—death that nobody had seen—or maybe it had been seen the way Sami’s death had been seen.

  The police would come. They would look for her.

  Would they look for her?

  AIR. MORE AIR. More pain. No sound. No sight. Movement. Hands grabbed hold and took her shoulders. The night sky screamed again; stars shed blood. Inside her head the chaos came, darkness and voices from the past, chanting, calling for action, propelling her toward bloodshed.

  She reached for the knife again, but there was no knife.

  There was no reaching.

  Only in her head.

  There was water. Water on her feet. Her fingers.

  Hands, rough and gentle, transferred her from the boat, and the sting of salt water touched her and her feet trailed, splashing behind, and darkness descended and there was nothing.

  MUNROE’S EYES OPENED to light streaming through vertical slats, woke to piercing pain inside her head, a pain that filled her so completely that she didn’t know where the hurt began or ended, pain that pushed her toward the edge of insanity and said that someone had died in the act of inflicting it.

  Waves of blackness rolled in and enveloped her with dizzy nausea.

  In place of memory she had only fog, darkness, and pounding, so much pounding inside her head. Her eyes shut of their own accord and her hand fumbled for the side of the bed, to feel what she didn’t have the energy to try to see. She touched dirt for the floor and on the dirt a pile of rags or material, and beside it the knife. Her fingers drew it closer and her fist wrapped around the handle. She pulled the blade toward her and rested it, clenched within her hand, upon her chest and fell back into the oblivion where pain only licked at the edges of awareness.

  HER EYES OPENED again. The light was not as bright and her thoughts were a little clearer. That meant time had passed, and the urge to get up, to move, ordered out from inside her chest, but her muscles wouldn’t respond. Her body shook and each breath brought the primeval urge to scream, screams that she held back while they rattled and ricocheted around her head. She had no recollection of how she’d come to be here, only the sensation of kindness, of favor, and that somehow she was safe.

  Her head turned right, toward the slats again, and she squinted against the light, trying to focus, to find some solid image among the blur of shapes and shadows, until gradually the edges sharpened and it wasn’t slats that the light streamed through but the spaces between the sticks that formed the outer walls of the room. Above her, thatch-worked fronds were the ceiling.

  Her eyes rolled from ceiling to wall and back, and then shut. It took a moment to draw the connections, but they were there, threads of meaning, and then they tied together and she recognized in the walls and the ceiling the same wattle and daub of the houses and little villages that had fronted the Mombasa–Malindi road.

  Her fingers felt for the mattress, old, thin, and lumpy, covered with a threadbare sheet and permeated with the smell of age and mildew, and she struggled to open her eyes again, to focus. Could see from the colors, knew from the scent, that the clothes she wore were not her own, understood that except for the knife, everything she’d had when she’d gone into the hotel, including the money in her boots, was missing.

  She no longer had a way to pay for pain medication, and in the agony of that realization, despair and defeat crept toward the corners of her soul. Tears of desperation seeped out and she shoved them away; would have swiped an angry hand against her cheek if she could have found the strength to move it.

  She would push through.

  Despair was a mind killer.

  Pain was temporary.

  F
or two years she’d fought through the nights in the jungle, fought to kill before she was killed, fought the torment and the hopelessness; she had become faster, keener, and she had won. The enemy today was not stronger or smarter than the ones she’d already destroyed. She would win again.

  Talking seeped into her awareness and she turned her head. There was a half-wall and an empty space where a door would have been if this had been the type of house to have doors, and from the other side the low voices passed through. She listened; focused on the sound and drew into it until gradually she could separate syllables from white noise: Swahili spoken by two men in the room next door.

  Eyes closed, Munroe worked her fingers, her toes, each movement made in screaming rebellion, but nothing was so broken she couldn’t force it into submission.

  Slid her legs over the mattress to the floor.

  Managed to roll over and get to her knees before the darkness overtook her. She woke again with her face in the dirt.

  She pulled back to her knees and, in a slow crawl, one painful limb movement at a time, got to the half-wall, and with the wall as support, pulled herself to her feet. Made it upright and into a stand before two shadows filled the doorway.

  One caught her before she blacked out again. One of the beach boys that Sami had befriended, one who’d been there after the killing and who had fought in the circle of bystanders. “What you do? What you do?” he said. “You sleep. You no money, no go doctor. You rest. You drink. You eat. You sleep.”

  “I need to go to the hotel,” she whispered. “Please help me?”

  He and the other man tried to take her back to the bed. She fought them and then went dark again. Woke on the mattress with the two men standing over her.

  She whispered her request again. Had to get to the hotel. Had to find out what was left behind when the room was ransacked. Was the only way to get to a weapon and cash—if anything had survived—the only way to get pain medication and medical care. She couldn’t wait until new guests had taken over the room. Had to try the hotel first before she broke down and called Dallas to beg for help from the man she hadn’t spoken to in nearly a year.

  The energy between the men shifted. She understood pieces of their conversation: true concern for her condition. She would die trying to get back if they didn’t help her, it would be better to take her.

  In English the one she didn’t recognize said, “Gabriel go get car. You wait. You sleep,” and she let go again, and it was dark when she next opened her eyes.

  SOUND IN THE front room drew her around again. A man and a woman were talking, and though it seemed as if she imagined it, a car’s engine rattled somewhere outside. Sami’s friend returned and she struggled off the bed. Hand to her elbow, he helped her up and her body screamed in protest and darkness returned and she passed out.

  He must have caught her. She came to with her feet still on the ground and her back against his chest. Just to the car, she could hear the engine outside, she only had to get that far.

  The other man opened the rear door. Sami’s friend, Gabriel, supported her, walked her from the room to the outside. She bent to get into the backseat and a scream escaped her head, shattered the relative silence. She lay on the cushion with her face to the car roof, panting past the pain.

  Gabriel shifted gears. The car moved. They were on the highway. She didn’t give directions. Didn’t know where she was. They knew where to take her. How they knew she wasn’t sure exactly—from where they’d found her on the beach, or from Sami—the sense of it was out there somewhere in the fog, and with each lurch of the car with its worn shocks and struts as it dipped in and out of potholes, she screamed inside her head.

  And then there was nothing.

  Gabriel helped her from the car to the lobby, where she found her voice in a faint whisper, and he explained to the front desk what she could not. Munroe gave her name and room number, and with no strength to stand, collapsed again.

  Gabriel propped her up. Was careful to use his chest to support her and didn’t touch her with his hands, as if afraid to hurt her, afraid she would scream. She bit back the tumult and the shrieks; clung to him for balance.

  The manager gave Gabriel a key.

  The darkness descended and Munroe began to fall. Gabriel was there. And somehow she was in front of the room. He unlocked the door. The manager peered inside and confirmed what Munroe had described. The room was trashed, as she’d last seen through the curtains, the bed tossed and the lamp atop the dresser smashed. Damage that she shouldn’t be held responsible for, but might.

  Gabriel closed the door behind them and Munroe slid to the floor. Through half-shut eyelids, she took stock of the damage. Her backpack missing, everything gone.

  She dragged herself to the foot of the bed and turned to Gabriel for help. “Please,” she said, and tapped the frame. “Please lift the bed.”

  He knelt beside her, lifted the frame up high enough that she could run her fingers beneath the base of the bamboo bedposts. Felt the tug of plastic stuffed up inside the hollow footing, and with the plastic, relief. Her passport had been left undisturbed, as had the pictures in the ziplock, and with one bag secured she pulled herself to the opposite leg while the screams of agony chased each other in circles inside her chest. Or maybe out of her mouth.

  She didn’t know. Was delirious. Couldn’t breathe.

  She motioned to Gabriel again and he lifted again and Munroe tugged out the several thousand dollars she’d stashed. Gripped the money tight in one hand and pushed from the floor to her knees, and from her knees to her feet. Made the few steps to the bathroom and, hand to the wall for balance and support, fought the ever-present dizziness and the need to vomit.

  Slid to the floor beside the toilet and, head tipped back against the wall, tapped the tank lid, and Gabriel lifted it off and his eyes grew wide when he peeked inside. The handgun and ammunition were still waterproofed in their bag. Munroe pushed to her knees to collect them, and woke with her face on the tiles and Gabriel beside her with a hotel washcloth in his hand and water from it dripping into her hair and down her face. Weapon retrieved, cash gripped tightly, she found Gabriel’s face and whispered, “Thank you. I’m finished here. Please take me away.”

  Somewhere in between spells of darkness were flashes of clarity: They’d returned to the car, she’d been brought back to the place with the dirt floor and was on the mattress again. During one of the brief moments when she was fully cognizant, she tugged a fifty-dollar bill off the wad she’d shoved inside her pants and handed it to the woman of the house, who’d come to check on her. Asked for Kapanol—morphine sulfate—she’d seen it on the shelf at the pharmacy in Lamu, and if it was available there, so far away from civilization, it would be easy to find here, even without a prescription. And ibuprofen. They called it Hedex here. She’d seen that, too.

  “Everything is closed,” the woman said. “When morning is come, we get.”

  CHAPTER 21

  Munroe woke to a hand behind her head and plastic to her lips, and the instinct to strike died before she could give birth to it. She struggled to lift her hands and fought against motionless limbs. Understanding gradually replaced violence, and she grasped that in kindness someone meant to give her water.

  Lips pressed together, she turned her head to refuse, and the plastic went away. Without knowing the source, it was too dangerous to drink. Fingers returned with a tablet and pressed it up against her mouth, and when Munroe struggled to keep free of this thing, a woman’s voice said, “It is what you ask for, take it to help you pain.”

  Munroe winced and dry swallowed; strained to open her eyes. The face of the woman blurred into a halo of orange and purple, a cloth that wrapped her hair. Her eyes and the lines of concern etched across her forehead came into focus, and when Munroe’s eyes opened fully and connected with hers, the woman nodded approval; she sat back on her heels, attentive nurse hovering over her patient, and beamed a smile.

  She was possibly late twenti
es, skin soft and cared for, wore a knee-length skirt and button-down shirt, but was barefoot and held a dirty plastic cup. She put the cup to Munroe’s face offering water again, and Munroe pressed fingertips to the cup and nudged it away, as gently as possible to avoid giving offense.

  The woman stood and left and Munroe lifted a hand, studied her fingers, struggled to control joints and muscles, stretching one tight limb after another until she had some control over movement, and finally found a way to shift up onto an elbow. Her thoughts were a little clearer than the last time she’d been awake and the headache a little less nausea-inducing. How long had it been?

  The woman returned with a sealed bottle of water, held it toward Munroe, another offer of a drink. Munroe reached for it, cried out from the stab that went through her, and the woman knelt and placed a hand behind her head again, helped her sit, and with water dribbling down her chin Munroe drank until the bottle was nearly empty and she could hold no more.

  The woman smiled, satisfied, set the bottle beside the mattress, and sat back on her heels again. The house was quiet. Traffic sounds filtered in faintly from the outside. Lengthening shadows converged with light and streamed in through cracks in walls made from wood and woven switches.

  “What time is it?” Munroe said.

  “It is afternoon,” the woman answered, as if that were all that mattered.

  “What day?” Munroe whispered, and from the woman’s response she pieced together the timing.

  Frustrated and working against a body that hurt everywhere, Munroe attempted to sit. The seventy-two hours for retrieving the captain had expired and she needed to get back to the hospital before they turned him loose and she lost him forever—assuming he hadn’t been hauled off and beaten to death at the same time that she’d been accosted.