by Nicole Fox
I nod. “Keep that phone on you and charged. I’ll call you when I need you.”
He sighs but shoves the phone in his pocket. “Let me come with you. I can help. With just the two of us, we can keep a low profile and—”
I shake my head. “I go in alone. I need you here waiting for my call. You’re the person I trust to help me when I need it.”
I can tell Pasha doesn’t agree, but he is honored by my admission. I mean it, too. I trust Pasha. He has always been loyal. Even when he was just a recruit, he was eager to learn and advance. Now, he is one of my most trusted lieutenants, and he earns that honor every day.
“Are you leaving tonight?” he asks.
“Right now,” I say. “The ship leaves tonight.”
He looks down at the floor and shakes his head. “I don’t like you going in alone.”
“You don’t have to like it. You just have to respect it.”
Pasha nods and crosses the room in a few steps. He lays his hand on my shoulder. “Be careful.”
I can’t make any promises. I’ll do whatever I have to do to save my family. I’ll throw myself in front of danger one hundred times over to save them.
“Wait for my call,” I remind him. I shrug away from his touch and leave.
There is a lot of movement around the ship in the hours after midnight, but I never see any women being herded up the gangplank.
That’s probably a good thing. I’m not sure I’d be able to control myself if I saw my family being dragged on board.
Around dawn, the movement begins to slow, with only a few crew members moving on and off the ship. Finally, when one lone crew member walks down the gangplank to grab a few suitcases on the dock, I make my move.
He doesn’t see me coming as I approach from behind, so by the time he is fighting against me, my hand is over his mouth, keeping him from screaming for help.
I clamp one arm around his chest and hurl him to the side, smashing his head against the wooden railing. His body goes limp immediately, and I lower him to the ground.
The man is smaller than he looked from far away, and I’m worried I won’t be able to fit into his uniform as I strip him of his black pants, T-shirt, and three-quarter zip jacket. However, the pants are elastic around the waist and the shirt is a stretchable cotton. The jacket is much tighter in the arms than I’d like, but I manage to pull it on fine enough.
I don’t want to kill the man. He is mostly innocent—aside from the fact he’s moving human cargo in the middle of the night—but I don’t want to risk him waking up and alerting the ship to an unauthorized crew member. So, I slide him off the dock and into the water.
His body floats for only a second before sinking down into the inky darkness.
I walk calmly back towards the luggage the man was holding and walk it up the gangplank, looking as confident as I can, despite not knowing whose luggage it is or where to deliver it. Luckily, as soon as I make it to the main deck, there is a pile of luggage in the middle with people picking through it the way they do at the baggage claim of airports. I add the luggage in my hands to the pile and then walk down the left side of the ship. Port, maybe. Or starboard.
I make a note to learn the names of the sides of the boat as soon as possible.
There is a lot I should know about working on a ship that I don’t. I’ve never been much for the water. I flew with my father often for business, but we never had a reason to be on the water. He owned a yacht that he liked to take out, but that was always a kid-free zone, and as I grew older, I didn’t want to spend more time with him than necessary. So, I’m far out of my depth here—literally and figuratively.
“You lost?”
I stiffen at the deep voice and turn to see an old man with a thick white beard looking at me, eyes narrowed. He has on a suit, but the sleeves are slightly too long and his shoes are scuffed.
“Perhaps,” I admit, trying to determine who the man could be. Considering he’s in a suit—no matter how ill-fitted—I must assume he ranks higher than the man I killed and replaced.
“Kitchen is below deck,” he says, one bushy eyebrow raised. “The boss wanted breakfast served immediately. If he sees you up here, you’ll be overboard before we even set sail.”
“It’s a little early for breakfast,” I say, looking up at the still-dark sky.
The old man pulls back in surprise and then cracks the smallest smile. “Be sure to tell him that if you want to be a eunuch.”
“Let him fucking try.” I should keep my mouth shut. I know that. But I also am not used to being ordered around. Clearly, I need to get used to it. Fast.
The man stares at me for a stunned second and then laughs. “Keep your sense of humor to yourself if you want to survive the voyage. The door you need is that way.”
He points to a door halfway down the walkway I just came from, and I feel his gaze on me as I walk away. Two minutes on board and I’m already drawing eyes on me. I need to keep a much lower profile if I want to avoid detection.
I go through the door the man indicated and find myself in a maze of metal hallways. It takes me a few minutes of stumbling around and avoiding other crew members—none of whom stop to pay any attention to me—before I walk through the right door and into the kitchen.
Galley, I quickly learn, is the proper term.
One of the other cooks, a middle-aged man with a thick mustache looks me up and down and then shrugs as if he doesn’t care if I belong there or not. Then, he points to a pot of oatmeal. “Stir that and then wash and chop that fruit,” he says, pointing to a pile of strawberries in the sink.
I want to ask if he’s the chef, but I suspect I should already know that. So, instead, I do what I am told.
If I’d ever cooked anything before, this would be easier. My entire life, I’ve had my own cook. I’ve watched her make enough meals that I can pretend, but I’m nowhere near the same level of skill as an actual cook. The strawberries I chop are misshapen and not uniform, but I throw them in the pot of oatmeal before anyone can notice.
The mustachioed man nods approvingly and begins dumping the oatmeal into bowls. “Enjoy the fruit. It will only last a few days and then we’ll be using frozen.”
“Is this food for us?” I ask.
He puts filled bowls on a silver tray and nods for a waitress to carry them out of the kitchen. “The scraps are for us. We cook the food, but we only eat what’s left. Normally there is enough.”
A tray of croissants and two coffee carafes follow a few moments later, and I wonder if any of it will make it to Courtney and the girls. What are they eating if even the cooks only get what’s left?
I wash the giant stockpot used for the oatmeal and scrub the baking sheets in scalding water until my hands are red and raw. Then, when the trays come back, I eat a cold croissant with a bowl of overcooked, lukewarm oatmeal.
“So, are you the chef?” I finally ask the man with the mustache eating across from me.
He chuckles. “No. The chef is sleeping. You won’t see him until lunch. I’m the sous chef, I guess you could say. Really, I’m just the idiot who gets paid less and wakes up earlier than the chef.”
“If you’re an idiot, what does that make me?” I ask. He has no idea I’m not getting paid at all.
“Poor,” he says, wagging his eyebrows. “Don’t worry, we can make it up tonight in poker.”
“We can play poker?”
“Below deck,” he explains. “You brought cash, right?”
I spent the last of my money on the burner phone and the taxi. I’m fresh out. “Shit.”
“I’ll spot you,” he says with a dismissive wave. “Pay me back when you get your first paycheck. With interest.”
“Thanks. What’s your name?”
“Jake. You?”
I hesitate for a minute and can’t believe I didn’t come up with a fake name or try to figure out the name of the cook I killed before I killed him. Then, Jake points to my shirt. “Sorry, I guess I should try readi
ng first.”
I follow his finger and see “Andrew” written on a metal pin and stuck to the jacket I’m wearing. I laugh in both relief and surprise and nod. “That’s me. Andrew.”
“Well, Andrew,” Jake says, handing me his empty oatmeal bowl to wash. “Hopefully you have a good poker face. Otherwise, I’ll take you for everything you’re worth.”
I walk away from the poker game one hundred dollars richer than when I walked in, so I pay Jake back immediately and find my bunk.
It’s a top bunk, which is something. I share the small room with an overweight pastry chef who doesn’t speak a word of English. I honestly don’t mind. That way, we don’t even have to pretend to talk.
The ship pulls away from the shore just before sunrise, and I watch from a porthole as the city grows smaller and further away. My ability to back out of this absurd plan fades into the horizon.
Now, we are too far out for the city to be visible, and I’m feeling ever so slightly nauseous.
I wonder about Tati. Is she seasick? She sometimes gets motion sick in the car if she’s reading a book while we drive. Does anyone have any medicine for her? Is Courtney able to help her?
I want to see them so badly. Knowing they are on the ship with me is harder than not knowing where they are. I want to search every crevice of the place until I find them.
I tried to bring up the topic casually during poker, but a man with a large tiger tattooed on his arm shut down the line of questioning, assuring me there was no illegal cargo aboard the ship. Everyone there knew the man was full of shit, but I backed down and feigned disinterest. “Just a rumor I heard. Doesn’t matter to me either way as long as I get paid for my work.”
Jake told me when we left not to mess with the man. “He’s higher ranking than both of us. You don’t want to get on his bad side.”
Does his bad side look anything like mine? Is he willing to kill to get what he wants? If the man with the tiger tattoo really is the one in charge, I’m sure I’ll find out answers to those questions soon enough.
I drift to sleep with thoughts of Courtney in my head, so it’s no surprise when she finds me in my dreams.
We’re in our room, though our mattress has been replaced with a waterbed. Courtney shifts over me, her knees on either side of my hips, and we rock back and forth as though we’re on a small boat in the middle of a storm.
Courtney drags her hands down my chest and dips her fingers beneath the waistband of my underwear. “Are you sure you don’t feel well?”
“I’m fine,” I say quickly, ignoring the lurch of my stomach. My attention has been suddenly shifted to another body part and the matter is very pressing. “I’ve never been better.”
Her hand shifts lower, disappearing beneath the fabric and wrapping around my length. I groan.
“Never been better?” she whispers, stroking me. “Are you sure?”
I shake my head. “I’m getting better every second.”
She smiles and licks her lower lip, tugging it between her teeth. “Let’s set a new record.”
Our clothes are gone in an instant, and she’s on top of me, her hips circling in a delicious way that pulls sounds out of me I’ve never heard before. I grip her hips and hold her against me, thrusting upward.
“Courtney …” I rasp.
She plants her hands on my chest and grinds down into me until I have to close my eyes. Until I tip my head back and let her have complete control.
When I open them again, the ceiling is two feet from my face and the bed is shaking.
It takes me a moment to recognize where I am, and then I feel another kick to the underside of my bed.
My roommate is saying something I presume is “stop moaning in your sleep,” but I can’t be certain, since he’s speaking Japanese.
“Sorry,” I mumble, annoyed with him for pulling me away from Courtney. Even if it was only in my sleep, it was something. For a second, I could feel her body on mine. I could forget where she is and where I am, and we were together.
I roll onto my side and try to conjure the dream again, but it doesn’t come. Sleep doesn’t come, either. I lie there, thoughts of my family circling in my head, until I have to go back to the kitchen to start another day.
Hopefully, it will be a day that brings me closer to my family.
6
Courtney
The food is barely edible.
Somehow, though, the rotten scraps and slimy leftovers are better than the endless bags of processed junk food they were giving us in the holding cell.
Sadie and I give as much as we can to Tati. Her headache has been unending since we got on board the ship, and her seasickness isn’t helping things. The first night, she was up sick all night, dry heaving because there was nothing in her stomach.
Now, she’s keeping things down, but she’s too weak to sign more than a few words at a time. Not that I can see much of anything anyway. The shipping container is dark. During the day, there is a little light that leaks through the holes and cracks around the door, but at night, we have to use the flashlight the Tiger gave us, and we’re doing our best to save the batteries, should we need it to escape.
Escape to where, I don’t know. We’re at sea, so there isn’t anywhere to go, but thinking there is no way to escape is too bleak to consider.
He brings our food at least once a day, throwing it through the door like he’s feeding a pack of wild dogs and doesn’t want to get too close. The other guard—the quiet one with inky black hair—replaces the bucket we’re all using as a restroom. That in and of itself is a small luxury. At least we’re not forced to live with the constant odor of our own waste. I’ve tried to thank him, hoping he might be swayed to care about us and do something to assist us, but he’s aggressively dismissive. He won’t even look me in the eye when I try to speak to him.
I wish the Tiger would ignore us.
He ignores me, mostly, but Sadie receives the brunt of his backlash. I don’t know if Devon told him who Sadie was, if there is some reason he zeroes in on her, but every time he comes into the shipping container, he torments her.
“Beg,” he says, holding half of a sandwich in the air, dangling it like a carrot. “Beg for it.”
Sadie crosses her arms and stares up at him. “No.”
“Please,” one of the other women says, falling on her knees. “I’ll beg. I’ll do it.”
The Tiger shakes his head. “I want her to beg. Beg me.”
Sadie shakes her head again. “I’m not hungry.”
Before the words are even out of her mouth, the sandwich slaps her across the face. A streak of mayo splatters across her cheek and bread goes flying into the grimy corners of the container. If the entire situation wasn’t so miserable, it would almost be funny, if only because of how ridiculous it was. Hitting someone with a sandwich.
“Bitch,” the Tiger spits, following the sandwich slap with a kick in the leg. Sadie winces but tries to hide it, which only makes him angrier. He leans down, lip curled back to reveal yellowed teeth. “Starve for all I care.”
As soon as he’s gone, Annika scoots forward and hands Sadie half of an apple. “The core is soft, but you can have it.”
Sadie tries to refuse, but Annika presses it into her hand. “We are all in this together, remember? Besides,” she says, sliding over to pick up a piece of bread. “I’ve eaten worse things than a piece of bread from the floor. I don’t mind.”
Annika tears it in half and hands it back to a young girl only a few years older than Tati. We’ve figured out she’s the daughter of the quiet woman who was shot on the docks. Like her mother, the girl is quiet, but she has told us the men kept her in a separate holding cell upstairs, next to a room with a baby.
My baby.
Larissa is the girl’s name, and Annika has taken her under her wing.
“You dated a psychopath, so I know how you got here,” Annika says, pointing to Sadie. Then, she turns to me. “But how did you end up in here?”
> “Crazy boyfriend,” Sadie explains before I can answer.
I glare at her. “Husband, actually. And he isn’t crazy. He didn’t lock me in here.”
Sadie snorts her disagreement. “Either way, he’s absolutely the reason you are here.”
I want to argue with her, but I can’t. Dmitry told me early on that his lifestyle was dangerous. I knew going in that there could be threats to my safety. Though, I never expected it would go this far.
I don’t blame him, but his position within the Bratva must be at least partially to blame.
“What about you?” I ask, tired of considering my own situation. Tired of thinking about Dmitry when I might never see him again.
“Behind every tragic story is a man,” Annika sighs. “I planned to leave this city and take off for California. I wanted to live somewhere warm, but then … I met a man.”
“Did he sell you?” Sadie asks.
“No,” Annika says, but then she wavers. “Well, he didn’t sell me to these blowholes. He was my pimp.”
“You dated your pimp?” I try not to sound judgmental, but it’s hard. Annika narrows her eyes at me.
“He wasn’t always my pimp,” she explains harshly. “We dated for a few months when he convinced me to—” she pauses to check that Larissa is asleep before she continues—“have a three-way. Then, he wanted to watch me with someone else. Next thing I know, I’m standing on a corner six nights a week and giving him the money.”
Annika runs her tongue over her teeth and shakes her head. “It’s a long, bullshit story. The son of a bitch beat me down, made me feel worthless, and then bought me pretty things when I brought in a lot of extra money. But even that stopped after a few months. Then, I was just another whore on the street to him. One of the many.”
“How did you get here if he didn’t sell you?” Sadie asks.
“He died,” she says flatly. “I wish I could have been the one to kill him, but it was the head of the Tsezar Bratva who gunned him down. Cold bastard, that one. That’s what they say, anyhow.”
