Wanted (22 page)

“It ain’t just the past.” Violently he reached into his pocket and pulled out a small card of plastic. It took me a moment to realize it was the Wi-Fi receiver for the computer. He then stepped up to me, slowly and deliberately, each of his steps more heavy than the last. “I lied ‘bout not havin’ reception.” Every word slithered in my ear.

“This ship ain’t that old,” he continued. “Only the real older ones can’t get the satellite signals…”

My insides recoiled, my intestines welded to the sides of my body and pulsed to be released. I cupped my hand to my mouth to prevent the sickness from coming and closed my eyes. Though I begged them not to, the tears began to fall freely. He had lied to me the entire time, let me lie in worry about my family without any contact with them for days. Had I been so very wrong about him, about who he was?

He threw the card at the ground and stomped on it until it was no more than a few pieces of plastic and bits of shiny metal.

Those moments of dark that were always lingering were no longer threatening anything. They worked their way over him freely now, making Charlie pace back and forth along the panel, tearing at his hair, raging at me, himself, and no one.

“Ya know what I was thinkin’ ‘bout when I tossed you in the back of that SUV?”

I stood motionless and silent.

“I was wonderin’ how much money a pretty little thing like you mighta made over here.”

I backed away. The crowded compartment was closing in and my tears were suffocating me from the inside out. What he was saying wasn’t true, it couldn’t be.

“Alotta money in girls anymore.” His steps began following mine as I backed out of the hold. I needed to get away from there, away from these lies he was telling me.

“Been thinkin’ ‘bout it for ’while. Lot more profit and fewer trips every year. Could retire in less than a year or two if we did it right…course we couldn’t take girls like you, we’d have to get runaways or junkies. But there’s a lot of ‘em out there who don’t have nobody lookin’ for ‘em. The only reason you ain’t disappeared is ‘cause you get us so much Gawddamn attention!”

I reached the end of the aisle and turned the door desperately. By now I was sobbing, panicking openly, but I couldn’t keep myself from looking at him—the exterior of his handsome face was cold and glazed over with a cruelty I had let myself believe was only crucial for when called for. Yet I had been fooled, duped by a thin layer of charm and humor.

I fell into the hall and even tripped over myself as I tried to get back up. On the way down, my ankle became caught under my weight and twisted at a funny angle, sending a twinge of pain up my leg, but I ignored it and bolted for the direction of the crew cabins. I ran as quickly as my body and blinding tears allowed. He didn’t bother to run after me as I feared, but I did hear jarring noises, one after the other echoing behind me. I ran faster, terrified with the sudden notion that he was now throwing things at me. I didn’t stop to look—I only pushed my body harder, not stopping until I reached the safety of Charlie’s cabin.

After I locked the door, I pushed the crate in front of it so it was leaning against the knob. It was stupid to even be in that cabin when Charlie was probably the most dangerous person I could encounter. But I was also relatively unfamiliar with the ship and didn’t know where else to go. The terrible things he had said to me were ricocheting in my head. I detested how much sense it all made. I knew just from watching the news that horrific things happened to young women every day and I had had enough sense to worry about this earlier, so how could I have been so stupid? I wasn’t safe here. I had never been safe here. And I must have been out of my mind to have thought otherwise.

With all of my frustration and grief, I tried pushing the makeshift bed and mattress up against the door barricade, but only ended up causing further strain on my already sore ankle. Whatever kind of wooden boards were being used as support beams were much too steady for me to even budge, much less move across the room. I compromised by dragging the mattress to the barricade and sliding myself against it. In reality, however, I knew it was useless. If someone really wanted to get in here it wouldn’t be too difficult. All I had really done was maybe buy myself some time.

I tossed my head against the mattress, letting the tears flow freely. More than anything I felt like the world’s greatest idiot for simply believing him when he told me there would no longer be an Internet connection when we got to a certain point. Why hadn’t I pestered him about it further? Why didn’t I try to think of something to get the Wi-Fi card?

Because I had been stupid, that’s why. I had let myself fall and get wrapped up in something that was so far off from reality I hadn’t even realized what was really going on.

Charlie had admitted the only reason I was alive at this point was because of the awareness of my abduction in the media. In that I wanted to be grateful—I had read that the media knew who he and Ben were, and Charlie had revealed Dad was making a lot of fuss about my kidnapping. In the face of all of his lies that one held the most potential truth—Dad and Robbie would never stop looking for me, even if they thought they had to find Charlie himself.

I almost wish they wouldn’t.

I wished no one was looking for me and I would quite literally fall off the face of the planet and never be seen again. While I was far from perfect, nothing had made me feel less intelligent than trusting in Charlie. It was almost unfathomable that I could spend a lifetime relying on my intelligence as a main source of my identity when clearly I was so daft. I felt like he had taken a bulk of me away from myself, leaving the remaining pieces filled with charred holes and burned ends.

I recklessly paced the room. I felt like a caged zoo animal. Really, a better description would be to say that I was a bird that was never meant to fly, practical and intelligent like a penguin or fowl. So even though all of my parts were there, from an evolutionary standpoint I was defective. That’s why it had been really quite silly of me to think someone like Charlie could ever love me. He was an untamed beast in the wilderness who needed his pack. Meanwhile, I was designed to function in solitude as I always had.

This was my fault, I decided. I should have known better.

A light tapping sounded somewhere outside the cabin. At first I thought it was the rapping of someone outside the door and panic clutched at me. But the tapping was more widespread than that, and I remembered how erratic the waves had been and what Charlie had said about the impending storm.

At least he hadn’t seemed to be lying about that.

The tapping increased into a steady sheet of rain that I could hear bouncing from the ship’s sides like they were flimsy pieces of scrap. Every few minutes, I could hear a thunder clap in the distance as well, but it sounded too far away to do any damage. I was glad the storm had come when it did. I still didn’t know anything about being on a ship, but I imagined there wouldn’t be a whole lot of time for a crew to kill and dismember its stowaway when the weather was disagreeable. Hopefully, Charlie was far away from the cabin, doing something productive to keep the ship and its cargo safe.

I looked down at my swollen ankle and grimaced. It looked worse than it probably was, but it still hurt. The ball of the joint had become swollen and gained an abnormal crimson color. I should have been putting ice on the sprain, but that wasn’t an option now. I could only hope it would be okay in case I had to run. Odds were I would have to do a lot of running.

I listened to the rain, a constant pummeling on the outskirts of the ship. I became somewhat concerned at the intensity of the storm. The ship would be capable of handling this sort of weather, right? I began pacing again and considered my options. Concentrating on the sharp pain above my foot helped to keep me centered, helped to keep the fear away.

When the storm passed, there was a very real chance they would come for me. Then again, it was still possible that they wouldn’t. It could only be just one more day until the ship landed somewhere where I could find an American embassy, or at least someone to help me. But what would I do until then? These guys had to know I was in here by this point; I could give them that much credit.

What was my best move here? Once they considered their options and realized I would probably repeat everything I saw and heard to the first law enforcement official I came into contact with, they would probably cut their losses and toss me overboard, laughing as I struggled for breath.

I shuddered at the notion.

Okay, so what to do? If I stayed bunkered, at least I was familiar with my surroundings and could hold out here for a day or so if need be. On the other hand, I was a sitting duck. I had turned myself into a prisoner that they had access to anytime they wanted, and that could only mean their advantage over mine.

I was going to have to get out. If I was smart about this, I could hide quietly somewhere and then sneak off during what I hoped would be the chaos of getting to port. With any luck, my new talent of being invisible would pay off here, and maybe I could just slip off without much trouble.

I put my brush back in my bag and secured it tightly to my back. I was just trying to psych myself up when an idea occurred to me. I glanced over at Charlie’s stack of sketchbooks and picked one up. This one was unfamiliar to me—the one he never let me look through. Without looking at it, I put it in my bag. I decided I wanted to take a piece of him with me, even if it was only something as inconsequential as a couple of drawings. It was a souvenir, I told myself. Besides, the F.B.I might want it to profile him or something.

It didn’t take much for me to justify myself.

It took longer to slide the mattress back over than it did to move it in the first place. But once I did, I was particularly careful to put my ear to the door to listen for voices or footsteps. If someone was waiting to intercept me, I at least wanted to be prepared. The only thing I could really hear, though, was the sound of my heart beating in my ears and the rain pounding on the deck above. After a few agonizingly long minutes, I decided it was safe to remove the crate and unlock the door.

As I hoped, the door opened without any issues and I slipped out quietly, closing it behind me. I hobbled out into the narrow hall, not failing to realize how much my ankle hurt now. Still, I tried to be as cautious as possible. I noticed some tool boxes and cables hanging from the pipes and rafters, which concerned me a little, but I tried not to focus on them and kept my senses on the direction I had come from last. I distinctly remembered what Polo had mentioned to me about Hold 6 and how it was the last place to get unloaded. I anticipated that even if someone tried to find me there, I could hide away amongst the containers and then run out when an ideal opportunity presented.

I heard some voices charging down a stairwell to my right as I descended a corridor, but I slid behind a large metal frame where I managed to squish myself up enough against the wall so the group didn’t see me. At what felt like two hundred miles a minute, I was certain my pounding heart was a GPS of my location—beeping me away to everyone. But they jogged past and headed in a completely different direction, not having seen me.

I entered the hold, which was still unlocked. Although it was dark and the rain poured through the webs of the crates, it still felt safer than Charlie’s cabin. My eyes took more than a few minutes to adjust, however, as soon as they did, I began hobbling on the planks and used both hands to hold onto the sides of the railing. My hands shook as the planks squeaked from the rain and the motion, but relief still welled within me. If nothing else, I had gotten somewhere I could buy myself some time. I felt proud of my resourcefulness and began thinking that maybe I could get through this after all.

I had to pause every few steps and rest my weight on my good leg. It was frustrating, grueling work, but I kept telling myself it was necessary and I had to be practical. The daunting part was at least relieved by the rain coming through the ceiling. I opened my mouth and let it fill with the freezing water. Within a matter of minutes, however, I was drenched. I briefly considered going back, but knew that being already halfway across the hold and in the midst of the maze of containers, it wasn’t very smart. Besides, I didn’t have anywhere else to go.

I stopped once more, a few steps before the final edge of the passage. The wind was crisp and roared against the metal containers, making them echo in a song I didn’t understand the lyrics to. In another circumstance, I might have liked the noise, I might have thought it was nice, but it only gave me a headache now. I looked up at the wall of the great ship and saw an anomaly in the metal flanking. I reached my hand up to touch the abnormality. It was as though a hole had been made in the wall, only it hadn’t come through all of the way. I pulled myself closer and examined the deformity in an attempt to figure out what it was. Strangely enough, it was misshapen in its center and squared at its ends. I hadn’t noticed it my first time here. As I squinted, I thought I saw smeared red blotches in the center of its core. When I realized what the red was, I was almost in a full-on run to get to the platform.