Close Reach (16 page)

Lena went into the cage first. She put the blanket over herself and huddled, shivering. Kelly looked at Lena and then at the man. Before she ducked into the cage again, she knew she
had to test him. To condition him for what would come later. She came up to him and put her left hand on his shoulder and quickly leaned up to kiss the corner of his mouth. She pulled back and went into the cage before he could put his arms around her, and she felt as if she’d gotten away with kissing a pit viper.

If she could charm this snake, she could kill it.

Lena hadn’t seen the kiss, and she was glad for that. She didn’t want to explain.

* * *

Later, while Lena slept, Kelly took one of the chicken leg bones from the empty pot and began to work on it with a shard of rock that she pried through the wire floor of the cage. When she was finished, it hardly looked like a human tool. It was like something an archaeologist might sift from the rubble of a dig to hold in his palm and wonder how men could fall so low. What desperation, what poverty, would drive a man to make such a thing? She drew her dark hair into a ponytail and knotted it around the bone to hide it. Finally, she curled herself behind Lena and went to sleep.

In the brief darkness near midnight, Kelly heard the Zodiac shuttling back and forth from the shore. She heard footsteps over the rocks and the heavy thumps of crates falling into the small boat and the creak of a block and tackle as the men raised cargo aboard
La Araña.
She heard more arguing and then the deep rumble of
La Araña
’s engines as the mechanic tested them and let them idle up to running temperature. The engines cut, and she heard one more Zodiac run and footsteps crunching from the shore to the other hut. The door slammed, and there was silence again.

Their first hour at the island, the men had argued about who would make a delivery. They must have decided, because they were ready for it now. The boat was loaded, the engines tuned.

Lena was awake and also had listened. She wiped the tears from her eyes and lay down again, covering her head with the blanket. She shuddered as she cried, and Kelly held her close.

What the girl suspected, Kelly knew.

Everything these men did had a purpose. They wouldn’t have given Lena the Eldoncard test for nothing, wouldn’t have transmitted her heartbeat through a satellite phone unless the man on the other end of the line had demanded it. If David had found Lena’s CHI number before he kidnapped her, he’d been watching her from afar, monitoring her movements south every time she updated her online journal.

Lena was carrying his prize, and everything else was just bycatch. Beneath her shaking palms Kelly could feel Lena’s heart racing.

It would all begin in the morning.

The men, all five of them, stood around the trap.

“It’s time,” David said. “For your call.”

She looked up at him. He was wearing another set of new clothes, fresh out of whatever box he’d stolen them from. The other men around him were carrying pipes and lengths of rusty chain.

“I’ll have time to clean up—put on some clothes? They’ll see me.”

“Sure. You’ll get some time.”

He looked at the man next to him, Sour Breath, the weak link, and nodded at the trapdoor. The man squatted and brought out the key; a minute later, Kelly pulled her blanket tight and came out. She met his eyes, and he looked away quickly. It would be different if the other men were gone. She was sure of that, counting on it. They had a few secrets between them, and that would make him comfortable.

David took her arm and started pulling her away, but she didn’t take her eyes off Lena.

The girl was past tears. She was on her knees with her hands wound into the chain-link wall. Her eyes were bruised-looking from the crying, from the days without sleep. Sour Breath left the cage unlocked and stood, following David as he pulled Kelly away. The other three men were opening the trapdoor again when David yanked Kelly out of the building.

Lena’s screaming started while they were on the rocky beach, walking to the Zodiac, which lay half in the water. Kelly tried to stop and turn back, but David’s grip on her arm tightened as if his fingers were made of iron. He jerked her forward.

“Lena’s not your problem.”

“Please don’t let them hurt her. Let her come with me. She can sit on
Freefall
while I make the call.”

David didn’t answer but marched her toward the Zodiac. She tripped and fell on her knees, but David didn’t stop. He dragged her for ten paces until she staggered up, wrenching her arm against his grip and trying to look back at the building.

Sour Breath was already at the Zodiac.

He held its bow steady as David led Kelly in and sat her on the wooden bench. Sour Breath shoved them off and climbed in. He started the outboard and backed them in a half circle until the bow faced
Freefall.
Then he threw the engine into forward, and the bow lifted off the glassy water of the inner harbor as they raced away from the beach. David let go of her arm and
turned to speak in Spanish with the other man. Sour Breath took something wrapped in a scrap of oil-soaked chamois leather and gave it to David, who took the pistol from its wrapping and put it in the cargo pocket on the side of his khaki pants.

Of course she’d known they’d have guns. What frightened her was that she’d never seen them until now. These men were so comfortable with their power that they didn’t need guns to back them up. But now David was carrying a pistol. He’d come this far without carrying one, but he wanted one now. Something was changing.

Sour Breath cut the throttle. The Zodiac lurched and slowed as it settled in the water and ate its own bow wave. They slowed to a halt at
Freefall
’s side, and the man stood on the Zodiac’s inflated tube and held fast to the yacht’s toe rail. He didn’t kill the engine and he made no move to bring a rope and tie the Zodiac off. He wasn’t coming aboard. She’d be alone with David.

She could feel the chicken bone, tight in the dark knot of her hair. If she and David were alone together on the boat, she might have a chance to use it. Gun or no gun. He might not see it coming if he forgot to keep his distance, if he was distracted somehow. But the other four men would still be on the island with Dean and Lena.

“Hey!”

She looked up. David had already climbed aboard
Freefall.
He stood on the side deck, looking down at her.

“Get up here.”

She nodded. To get aboard, she had to take the blanket off her shoulders and toss it to the deck. Then she bounced on the balls of her feet from the Zodiac’s side tube and hoisted herself on the toe rail, rolling onto the deck on her side. She picked up the blanket and put it on again as she stood.

David pointed the pistol at the flat of her stomach. It was a snub-nosed black thing. She didn’t know anything about guns. This one looked as deadly as anything she’d ever seen, like a scarred-up fighting dog. She thought of what the bullets would do if he pulled the trigger, the holes he could tear through her with just the flex of one finger. She thought of what she’d do with the gun if she could get it.

“Let’s go inside,” David said.

She nodded and turned her back to him, walking to the cockpit. She heard the Zodiac motoring away, back to the island. More faintly, she could hear Lena screaming. They must have dragged her out of the building and to the beach. She didn’t dare turn back and look. She ducked into the open pilothouse and bent to the companionway doors. David was right behind her, his hand on her hip.

“Forget Lena,” David said. “Worry about yourself. And Dean.”

She felt the barrel of the gun press into the cleft of her buttocks. She swallowed hard to stop any crying before it started. Then she opened the door.

* * *

The salon and galley were both disasters. The man who had brought
Freefall
to the island had been bleeding from his ankle and clearly hadn’t bandaged it well. There was blood all over the teak and holly cabin sole, dried and frozen like black mud. He’d ripped open the cupboards looking for things to eat and drink and had let boxes and wrappers and empty cans get tossed from one side of the boat to the other in each roll of the waves.

“Start by cleaning it up,” David said. He came down the companionway and shut the doors behind him.

Kelly turned on the diesel heater in the salon and then looked at David and the gun.

“Let me get dressed first. What time’s the call?”

He looked at Dean’s watch.

“Ten minutes. You better hurry.”

He followed her into the master stateroom, leaning in the doorway and watching as she dressed in panties and a bra, then jeans and a cashmere sweater. She pulled on wool socks, then sat at the vanity by the hanging locker and used a wet washcloth to clean the grime from her face. She put on makeup to hide the bruises and found a silk scarf to hide her badly swollen throat.

Then she stood and pushed past David to go into the salon. She tidied it quickly, throwing things into lockers and out of sight, running a wet paper towel over the worst of the bloodstains. Finally she sat at the navigation table and booted the laptop. From where she sat, she could see the main breaker panel and the backup engine gauge panel.
Freefall
’s batteries were fully charged; she held twenty gallons of fuel in the main tank and two hundred gallons of fresh water. The man had treated her badly while bringing her to the island, but she wasn’t the worse for any of it. She was a strong boat, ready to go out again.

David handed her a slip of paper with the log-in instructions for the call. She bent underneath the navigation table and powered up the printer and the scanner. Then she turned on the Inmarsat, waited for it to connect to a satellite, and took a long, wavering breath. From outside, she heard the heavy rumble of diesel engines starting.
La Araña
was ready. She looked at David.

“You’re on.”

She nodded and made the call. The world receded as she fell into her role. The game was
simple: to sell away her life. She was good at it. She always had been.

* * *

Afterward, she sat on the gunwale, her feet over the side tapping an unsettled rhythm on the frozen aluminum hull. She leaned against the stainless steel mast shrouds to keep from falling. She was naked again, the blanket wrapped around her, her skin missing the feel of her own clothes, the warmth of the cabin’s heater. David was standing above her with the gun in his hand. They were waiting for Sour Breath to come with the Zodiac. When she’d finished the call and David had told her to strip off her clothes, she thought she wouldn’t be able to stand it if he wanted more. That she’d have no choice but to use the tool hidden in her hair, come what may. But he’d been too hurried, not interested in rape. Or maybe too afraid to try when it was just the two of them. She rolled that around in her mind and liked the way it felt. He was in charge of the older men, but he didn’t feel safe unless they were close.

La Araña
was gone, its wake long washed out and smoothed over.

“Just stay put,” David said. “We’ll wait.”

She sat and tapped her feet against the hull and thought about
La Araña.
Things would have to go quickly now or not at all.

“Look down there,” David said. She turned and looked up at him, but he was pointing down, over the side and into the water.

She leaned and looked down. The water was dark but clear. Thirty feet down she could see encrusted stones and orange starfish. Sea urchins in purple clusters on the boulders. Then she saw what David was pointing at. A man and a woman were down there, naked except for the chains that bound them together. The woman’s hair floated away in a gentle current. They were surrounded by things that had crept up to eat them. Starfish and urchins, hard-bodied crabs. Other life she couldn’t name.

“Got them three, maybe four weeks ago. They wandered off from a shore excursion on a cruise ship, down on the peninsula. Didn’t make it back.”

Kelly didn’t say anything. She didn’t have to.

“We thought the man might work out,” David said. He sat beside her, leaving a good distance between them. The gun was resting on his lap, pointed at her kidney. He shrugged.