by Dale Mayer
“Oh,” she said, “I can’t imagine all of us trying to swim out there.”
“Exactly.”
And, with that, he walked to Killian and had a few words and then swiftly moved to the shore. There he stripped down to his boxers in the darkness, but she saw his gleaming skin. And then he was gone into the water.
The water was cold and refreshing. Having chucked off all the weight of his clothes and his weapons, swimming was a smooth and easy journey. Jerricho stroked out strongly, keeping the splashing to a minimum, as he moved through the water with ease. He was born for water, and joining the Navy SEALs had just been a cap on all that. He had taken to all the water exercises with joy, loving the sense of accomplishment in a medium that so many people didn’t do so well with.
Coming around to the side of the boat, he swam up and around to the far side, so nobody saw him, at least he hoped. As he slipped over the side and stood, giving himself a good shake, a blow slammed into the side of his head. He dropped to his knees, and another one slammed into his shoulders. He groaned, flopping onto his back, kicking up with his legs, as his opponent shoved a rifle toward him.
Taken off guard by Jerricho’s defense, the gunman slipped to the side, and his rifle too, which Jerricho grabbed and immediately slammed the butt of against his attacker. Bouncing to his feet, he gave two more sharp blows as the other man cried out. Everybody was a hero, when they held a gun in their hand. But much less so when they were expected to do full-on hand-to-hand combat.
With an upper right, Jerricho slammed his fist into the guy’s jaw, and he fell to his knees. Jerricho gave him two more hard shots, and down he went, face-first. Grabbing onto the side of the boat, Jerricho gave himself thirty seconds to reshift his energy, then gasped for fresh air, before doing a full search on the boat to make sure that this was the only intruder. Jerricho didn’t even know where he had come from.
His attacker was dry, so he must have come from another boat, but it was possible he had even been onboard for quite some time. Had he been hiding here the whole time? Jerricho grabbed the unconscious man and checked him. But he had no ID, no wallet, nothing. Deciding that the only answer was to leave him behind on the island, he picked him up and carried him off to the side, dumped him onto the ground, and then quickly pulled the lines and set the boat free from the shore.
He turned on the engine and slowly moved across to the opposing shore, where the women waited. It took a good twenty minutes to get there. And by the time he had the boat secured, it was twice that. As Jerricho dressed quickly, Killian started moving the women on board, one at a time. With Jessie and Brenna helping the injured woman up the long plank, he very quickly had them all on board.
And, with that, they set off from shore, with the women sitting down, so nobody saw their cargo. Knowing this cargo was something that men would likely steal, Jerricho took off up the coast instead of down.
Killian stepped forward, looked down at Jerricho’s knocked-up knuckles. “What happened?”
“Somebody was on the boat, waiting for me.”
“Jesus,” he said. “How?”
“It’s hard to say. I left him on the island anyway.”
“You should have killed him.”
“Maybe,” he said, “but I was really hoping to not kill any more people.”
“And that may be, but we don’t want him coming after us.”
“Do we have any way to get these women out?” he asked, looking around, changing the conversation. “I didn’t see anybody following us.”
“Shouldn’t there be though?”
“Depends on the auction time frame,” he murmured. “We took out everybody there at the corral. Although our one prisoner is still alive.”
“Yes, but we left him tied up, so I’m not sure if that’s a good thing or a bad thing.”
“Depends on how long until the rest of the human trafficking crew arrives,” he said. “He was bleeding steadily and too unconscious for us to get any information from. They could have put a bullet in him to make their lives easier.”
“I hope not for his sake. But long enough for us to get out of here.” He immediately texted a message to Diesel, sharing how they were all on the boat, thirty-eight women secured, and needed an airlift out. At that, Diesel questioned him on the numbers and then wrote We’re working on it.
He sent back a message. Work faster. We’re not safe.
Understood.
If they were looking for an airdrop, it would have to be military, and he didn’t know which military they would get for such a thing out here near the African coast. And Jerricho didn’t really care, as long as it got them out. He wanted to go across the ocean but wasn’t sure if this boat was seaworthy enough. And he didn’t want to make that trip if he had no guarantee of a pleasant welcome on the other side. He would take a helicopter, but they couldn’t land here. As he hesitated, he got a response.
Ship heading your way.
ETA?
Four hours.
He swore at that. He showed it to Killian.
Killian shrugged. “Hey, four hours is better than what I expected, which could have been four days. How are the women holding up?”
“Terrified, relieved, scared,” Jerricho said, “the whole gamut, I’m sure.”
“To be expected. I’ll go back to them,” Killian said. “I don’t like leaving them where they feel they are alone in this. Plus, I want to keep eyes behind us.”
“Good idea,” Jerricho said. “I’m moving forward. I’ll keep an eye on our GPS, so that we have our meet-up point locked in.”
And, with that, he turned to face forward, as Killian slipped to the back.
Chapter 6
“How’s it going?” Brenna asked Jerricho, from behind. He turned to look at her in surprise and then stepped to the side slightly, so she could join him at the helm.
“It’s okay,” Jerricho said. “We have another ship picking us up in about three hours now,” he said, checking his watch.
She looked at him in surprise. “All of us?”
He nodded. “Yes, all of us.”
“Wow. I’m really happy to hear that.”
“Happy, yes,” he said, “but we’re not out of trouble yet.”
She winced. “Right. And here I was hoping that we would be.”
“Not yet,” he said, “just too many unknowns happening.”
“I got it.” She stood at the bow with him. “It’s all so beautiful and yet so treacherous.”
“This area is very much that way,” he said, “as you found out. Is somebody waiting for you?”
“No,” she said quietly.
“Will you still continue as a journalist after this?”
She glanced at him, shrugged, and said, “I’m not sure. I don’t know if I’ll even be allowed. My company wasn’t too fond of the idea of me coming here in the first place.”
“I’m sorry,” he said.
“I’m not,” she murmured. “It seems like it’s time for a change anyway.”
“There’s a difference between times of change, … a change that is your own choice,” he said, “and a change that is forced on you.”
“In this case, it’s not likely to be forced on me as much as maybe staying home or doing more local news, so I’m not sent into war-torn areas, where I’ll be in danger.”
“And it’s possible that this has nothing to do with your job either.”
She nodded. “I’m more worried about Jessie.”
“Why? What’s wrong with her?”
She looked over and, in a low voice, said, “She’s pregnant.”
He nodded. “I’m sure that she’s not alone in this group.”
Brenna glanced around at the group of women huddled together in small groups. “That’s quite possible,” she said. “How absolutely distressing to think that those men didn’t care.”
“And I don’t even know,” he said, “whether they would have considered her condition a plus or a minus.”
He nodded. “Me too. Still, you’re not there anymore. It’s not an issue.”
She looked at him quietly. “You’re different.”
He looked at her in surprise and laughed. “Considering where we’re at and what we’ve just been through, it would make sense.”
“I guess,” she said, with a nod. “But it’s more than that.”
“I’m not a child or a green youth anymore,” he said. “I grew up, and life wasn’t exactly the easiest at that time.”
“No,” she said, “but you’ve obviously done really well with it.”
He looked at her and chuckled. “Young boys do grow up, if they’re given half a chance.”
“And young girls too,” she said, with a disgusted twist to her lips. “And, as I said, I’ve changed. I owe you an apology.”
“For being you?”
She laughed at that. “Yeah, I wasn’t very nice,” she said. “It took a long path through to find that out, and, once I saw it, I was pretty upset, but I made some changes, and I’ve moved on to being a better person.”
“And that’s all anybody can ask of you,” he said in surprise. “I wasn’t expecting even this conversation from you.”
“I know. I was pretty shallow back then, wasn’t I?”
“But, like you said, you’ve grown up, and I’m happy to hear that.”
“Thank you,” she said.
“Are you ready to tell me what happened?”
“Not a whole lot,” she said.
“And what happened to the marriage? Last I heard, you were getting married within forty-eight hours.”
“The marriage didn’t happen,” she said, “and that’s when the growing up did happen.”
He looked at her, with an eyebrow raised.
She hesitated and then shrugged. “Any research will probably tell you,” she said. “The internet’s full of that stuff, just to make our pain go on and on forever.” She sighed. “But I was left at the altar, and unfortunately he didn’t just quietly disappear, but he stood up and made a huge scene about what I was like as a person and how he needed to be free of the ball and chain, and he was sorry, blah, blah, blah, but there was absolutely no way in hell he would pin his life to mine.”
Jerricho stared at her in shock.
She shrugged, nodded, and said, “Yeah, you can say humiliating, but that’s too soft a description. It was unbelievably devastating. My parents were horribly embarrassed. I was too shocked to even be embarrassed at the time. But it was … it was rough.”
“Wow, that’s pretty ugly of him.”
“It was,” she said. “I became a recluse after that. I was sure that everybody was laughing at me, that I was some cosmic joke to the world, and that something was wrong with me. That, you know, nobody could love me. It didn’t take too long to see my behavior after he’d, of course, itemized everything that I had done. Apparently I had been quite the bridezilla over the whole process too,” she said sadly, “but …”
“But,” he said firmly, “nobody deserves that treatment. He could have just broken it off.”
“He could have,” she said, “but apparently that wasn’t half as much fun as watching me get annihilated by everybody around me. It was more important to him to hurt me and to show the world what I was like, rather than walk away and let me be me. The thing is, it’s what … that’s what it took for me to wake up and to become a better person.”
He stared at her, before shaking his head and looking outward.
“And yet you don’t say anything about that part.”
“I won’t say there wasn’t room for improvement because there certainly was room,” he said. “An awful lot of qualities were rough to be around.”
“Absolutely,” she said, “and I know it. At least now I do, and it’s not the easiest thing to recognize within yourself, but … I did spend a few years sorting out exactly what I would do with my life and with whom. I don’t even have a whole lot to do with my sister or my parents anymore.”
“That’s a surprise.”
“I think, since they thought I was a major failure, that I was not so much disowned but shuttered away a little bit. I actually went to the summer cottage on the lake for several months, became a recluse, while I licked my wounds.”
“And they didn’t want you to go back home again?”
“No. I think, in their minds, they thought that they’ve done everything right. I mean, I was the one who had failed, so they didn’t really want me back. Besides, it just brought up all the gossip again. They hated that I was an embarrassment to them.”
“So give it a few more years,” he said.
“Isn’t ten enough?”
He burst out laughing.
She grinned. “See?” she said. “Apparently it is enough for you.”
“It’s not the number of years that passed that make a difference,” he said. “It’s all about the quality of who you are now.”
“And I get that,” she said. “Finally I get that. The thing is, when you’re caught up in being you, you don’t realize how different or how unpleasant it is to be around you. Until him.”
“So maybe it was a good thing?”
“It was a good thing,” she admitted. “But it would have been nice to have learned that lesson in a much easier way.”
“And maybe that’s the only way that you could learn it,” he said. “And you know that I’m not trying to be mean, but at least you did learn it.”
“Doesn’t matter if you’re trying to be mean or not,” she said, with a heavy sigh. “As I look back on those years, I know I deserved everything I got. It still would have been nice not to have had those as my memories.”
“I’m sorry,” he said.
And there was such sincerity in his voice, she smiled. “I forgot how nice you always are,” she said. “Nothing ever seems to really faze you.”
“The meanness that people display always makes me stop and wonder,” he said. “But you know that people will be people, and then you move on.”
“And that’s exactly what I did.”
“Kudos to you for that,” he said. “And then you went into the media? That seems like an odd career choice for you.”
“I found myself doing so much digging for the truth that I found I really liked that type of thing, and eventually I ended up deciding that I wanted to become a journalist and show other people’s truths to the world,” she said, with half a laugh.
“Or were you just trying to get payback?” he asked in a teasing manner.
“I certainly haven’t uncovered anything quite so brutal as what I went through,” she said, with a smile. “And I hope … I honestly hope I never do.”
“Do you ever talk to him anymore?”
“When I got my head on straight, many years later, I did finally contact him, and I thanked him.”
He turned to her. “Wow.”
She shrugged. “As you said, it was probably the best thing that could have happened to me. Could I have wished it in a different method that wasn’t quite so horrible or so public or so painful? Yes. But I wasn’t given that option. He did hurt me terribly at the time, but I had to thank him for being honest enough to step up, so that I had changed, and I was sorry that being around me was such a terrible experience that he felt the need to do something like that to get back at me,” she said.
Such a painful honesty was in her tone that she knew she couldn’t hide, couldn’t ever hide anymore. And maybe it didn’t need to be hidden anymore either. She looked up at him. “As I said, I’ve changed.”
“Did he ever respond?”
“He did,” she said. “Apologized too.”
He burst out laughing. “You never know,” he said. “Sometimes things just happen … have to happen the way they have to happen.”
“Exactly. Anyway that’s why I apologized to you. I was a real shit to you before. You were right to leave. And I’m glad that that’s been said.”<
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“Water under the bridge,” he said comfortably.
And it was her turn to burst out laughing. “Given where we’re at now, absolutely. I certainly didn’t expect to see you here, but I was hoping,” she said. “I knew that you’d gone into the navy and that you were striving to become a Navy SEAL, and, if there was ever a group of men who would travel the world to help people like me,” she said, “it would be somebody like you.”
“In this case, I’m in a different division,” he said quietly, “but word did get out, and it was offered to me, so I took it.”
She slipped her arm through his and leaned in close. “Thank you,” she said. “We were looking at a pretty uncertain future.”
“Very,” he said, “and some of the women would not like what would have happened to them.”
“I don’t think any of us would,” she said. “Some would have been supposedly just for domestic help, but that doesn’t mean it stopped there. Others would have been for all kinds of things,” she said, with a shudder.
“Don’t think about it now,” he said, “and we’re still not out of danger, so I need you to stay focused.”
“I get it,” she said. “It’s still scary.”
“All this stuff is,” he murmured.
She nodded. “And you? You’re still in the military or in the navy obviously.”
“I am,” he said, with a bright smile. “You know that’s where my heart always was.”
“And I didn’t like that, did I?” she said, shaking her head. “Back to being selfish again.”
“You were who you were,” he said. “Stop being quite so rough on yourself.”
“Well …” And she fell silent.
He looked at her and said, “You know that you have to stop rehashing it. If you’re out here as a punishment for yourself to do something for others, you need to let that go.”
“Maybe,” she said, “but it’s hard. I do feel like I’m doing penance.”
“And when would the penance be over?” he asked curiously.
She looked at him, startled, and shrugged. “I’m not sure. Maybe never.”
“And how can you live like that?” he asked.
