Omega (Alpha #3) (18 page)

And then I heard a rumble in the distance, the heavy growl of mammoth diesel engines. The tone of the outboard motor lessened and our speed slackened. The diesel clatter increased in volume until it was directly overhead, and then Cement Mixer cut off our motor and I felt us coast and halt with a bump against the large vessel.

The boat shifted as Cement Mixer—Yuri, I think he was called—as Yuri leaned over to me and snatched the bag off my head.
 

Jesus shits, he was fucking ugly. Thick brows, heavy forehead, high cheekbones, fleshy lips, beady eyes, pox scars dotting his face. But he’d stopped the dead guy from raping me, so I owed him one.
 

I glanced up, and saw the other boat. It was a fishing boat, high prow, low stern, cockpit just big enough for one or two people, boom arms and nets and lines hung off the sides. There was a rope ladder tossed over the side, and a number of figures milled around on the deck, several carrying machine guns. Or maybe they were assault rifles. I didn’t know the difference, and for real, who the hell cared? Not me, that was for damn sure.
 

Yuri moved to sit beside me, reaching down to his waist and producing a long, wicked-looking knife. I tensed, but he moved slowly, watching me.

“I cut you free,” he said in his guttural voice. “Do not move.”
 

I leaned forward and stretched my arms out behind me, tried to open my wrists as far as the zip-ties would allow. There was a momentary tightening of pressure as he pressed in with the knife, and then the plastic parted and my wrists were free. I kept still, knowing my best plan was to cooperate and wait for an opportunity. Mostly naked on a boat in the middle of the Caribbean, hours before dawn, surrounded by men with machine guns? Not the best time to be stubborn lunatic Layla.

That time would come, but it wasn’t now.

Yuri gestured with the knife, stabbing the tip at the rope ladder. “Climb up. No bullshit, or you die.”
 

I put my arms through the openings of the vest and then slid across the bench to the rope ladder, grabbed a rung, and hauled myself up. Can I just take a moment and point out that this maneuver is not as easy as they make it seem on TV? The fishing boat was riding up and down on the waves, and so was the little black rubber boat I was on, and neither were going up or down at the same time. Plus, I was shaky with fear, and had guns pointed at me. Also, I’ve never climbed a rope ladder before, and they’re not easy to use either.
 

And I had to pee.

So yeah, it was a difficult operation, getting a good grip on the rope ladder, getting a foot on the ladder and not losing my balance. If I fell, I’d probably end up in the water under the boat, which sounded like even less fun than I was having already. But I managed it, and climbed up, up, up, swung a leg over onto the deck, and straightened to face a group of men so hardened, rough-looking, and heavily armed that I almost peed myself. Seriously, each one had a machine gun on his shoulder and most had a pistol too. Several had lit cigarettes hanging from the corners of their mouths.
 

They all just stared at me like I was a fish that had sprouted arms and legs and decided to forgo the net and just climb aboard for the slaughter.
 

One of the men snarled something I couldn’t understand, and Yuri—climbing up behind me—answered with a shrug and few quiet words. The first speaker gestured at me, and Yuri waved out at the water, pointed at me. Explaining what happened with the other guy, I guessed.

The first speaker, a tall man with a black beard and a red bandana tied over his skull like an actual pirate, stalked over to me and ripped the bulletproof vest off me, and then smirked as he realized I was essentially naked underneath. My shirt was cut open from top to bottom, leaving my front bare for their leisurely perusal. Feigning calm I didn’t feel, I slipped my arms out of the arm-holes and rotated the shirt, stuffed my arms back through so I was at least a little less naked in front of a bunch of hard-as-fuck criminals.

They’d all gotten a gander at my goods, so they were all probably hoping Bandana would take the remnants of my shirt away.

Bandana held the vest and stared down at me, dark eyes narrowed. “Make no trouble, and I will not let the men molest you. Cause problems, and I will not be so strict with them, you understand me?”

“What are you going to do with me?” I asked.

“Take you to the boss.”

“Am I going to be killed?”

Bandana shrugged. “Probably, but not until he has made his use of you.”

“Do I get clothes?”
 

“No. Shut up with the questions.” He gestured at Yuri and then to the deck hands, barking an order in their language.
 

Yuri grabbed me by the arm and hauled me toward the cabin, then pointed at a ladder leading below the deck. I climbed down, and Yuri followed, jerked open a thick steel door, and shoved me through.
 

The room was tiny, barely wide enough to let me stretch out my arms in any direction. It was cold, dark, featureless, and stank of fish. There was nothing in it at all, not even a prison cot.
 

And I had to pee.

Super.

Kidnapping is fun!

10

SÃO PAULO

You really don’t know boredom until you’ve spent countless hours in a featureless ten-by-ten room in the dark, without so much as a fucking bed to sit on. Did I mention it stank like fish? Well, it did. It stank very,
very
badly of fish. It sure as shit wasn’t me stinking like that, because I keep my snatch clean. I mean, you can’t let a guy go down on you if you don’t keep your shit so fresh and so clean-clean.

But I digress.

I’M FUCKING BORED
.
 

That was my mantra for so long I lost the capacity to think of anything else. There wasn’t room to pace, except for maybe a step in either direction. It was pitch black. It was cold. The boat didn’t toss me around too badly, but once in while the boat would angle up, sending me sliding backward, and then it would pitch down, sending me forward…over and over and over. There was nothing to hold on to, nothing to brace myself with or against. I tried sitting in each of the four corners, but a pitch or a roll of the boat and I’d be sliding all over the place anyway.

I was hungry. Thirsty.

Tired.

And bored.

Did I mention bored?

I’m an active girl. I’m busy from six in the morning to past midnight most days—or I used to be. I’d worked two jobs and gone to school full time, plus I usually found time to swim for an hour every day between classes, and between shifts on the weekends. That was my dirty little secret, that hour of swimming every day. I scheduled my life around it, to be totally honest. I ate horribly, regularly pigging out on bacon cheeseburgers and milkshakes and pizza and boozing it up as often as I could. But, to keep myself from ballooning into a walrus, I swam. Hard. Every day for an hour, I’d do laps at the local pool, back and forth, as hard and fast as I could without stopping. I’d change my stroke every four laps: crawl, breast, back, butterfly. Fuck, those four butterfly laps were a bitch. But they kept me relatively fit. I mean, I’d never be a size four, much less a zero, but I had a pretty firm body for a woman with my build. Genetics did not bless me with anything approaching skinny, which is fine. I’m built like a brick shithouse, and an hour of swimming every day meant great muscle tone, low BMI, and provided a hell of a cardio workout. I just wasn’t skinny.
 

Again, I digress.

What was I thinking about?

Oh yeah, being busy. I never had down time. If I wasn’t working, or at school, I was studying, drinking, or fucking.
 

And yes, fucking counts as a workout too, especially if you do it right.
 

So to go from that to sitting around on Roth’s boat all day long, not doing dick? That was a hard adjustment. Fortunately, Roth made sure there was a killer gym on that Caribbean cruise liner he called a “yacht”, which I took regular advantage of. No pool, but plenty of exercise equipment, including a rowing machine. I avoid any exercise that involves excessive jostling: I just bounce too much. Running in particular is a special hell for me, so I avoid that. Stair steppers, treadmills, even exercise bikes are things I stay away from. I’ll lift weights, row, swim, anything with low or zero impact. No bouncing means no lower back problems from hauling the girls around. No bullshit.
 

God, I was so bored I was thinking about exercise? What the fuck?

Eventually the door scraped open, blinding me with sudden light. I cowered in the corner and hissed, shielding my eyes as a silhouetted figure leaned in, set a tray on the floor, and backed out, closing the door once again.

I smelled food.

My stomach went crazy, growling like crazy as I scrambled across the floor toward the tray. I smelled garlic, meat, onions…a gyro, maybe? I did my best blind-person impression, touching everything carefully in an attempt to figure out what was in front of me. Definitely a gyro, plus a bag of chips, and a can of something cold. Really? Was this a prison, or a shopping mall food court? Not that I was complaining. I cracked open the can and sipped at it, tasting cola of some kind. Diet; blech. I normally stayed away from diet soda because the stupid aspartame gave me headaches and diet cola was generally worse for you than regular soda. But beggars can’t be choosers, and I was very definitely in a beggar sort of scenario, so I drank the diet. The gyro, now…that shit was delicious. Roasted lamb cut thin, cucumber sauce, some crunchy red onions, tomatoes. I devoured that thing so fast I barely tasted it. The chips were kettle cooked, too.
 

A much better meal than I had been expecting as a kidnappee. I was honestly expecting to either not get anything at all, or moldy bread and smelly water. The fucking gyro basket tasted like it was from Athens Coney Island.

Turns out stuffing yourself that fast after not eating for who knows how long isn’t the greatest idea. Talk about sitting heavy in my stomach. It sat like a goddamned gut-bomb.

Also, I still had to pee.

* * *

After banging on the door for what felt like an hour straight, it jerked open, revealing a very pissed off Yuri.
 

“What the fuck you want?” he growled.

“I have to pee.”

He gestured at the floor. “So pee.”
 

I scowled at him. “Really, Yuri? I know I’m a prisoner but come on. Let me use a toilet. We’re on a fucking boat, where the hell am I going to go?”

He stared at me in silence. “Fine.” He jerked his head and I followed him around the corner and along a low, narrow corridor to a tiny bathroom. “Door open.”
 

I shrugged, shucked my thong and lifted my shirt, staring at him as I pissed. “You want to watch, then watch. I don’t give a shit. I’m warning you, though, it’s gonna be a long one. Like, you might need a book.”
 

The corner of his mouth twitched ever so slightly, and he grunted in irritation. He didn’t want to like me, but he did. Hell, he couldn’t help it; I’m a funny gal. But he shut the door, so I decided to take care of some other business while I had the opportunity. Gut-bombs away!
 

And as a bonus, I saw a blue Papermate ballpoint pen on the floor in the corner under the sink, long forgotten. The pen is mightier than the sword, right? I mean, I’ve seen pens used as weapons on TV a bunch of times. Better than nothing.

Where to hide it, though?
 

It wasn’t exactly like I had any pockets, so you figure it out.
 

And, yes, I rinsed it off first.

You want to talk about uncomfortable? Jesus. I’ve now got mad respect for those crazy druggie bitches who smuggle bags of coke up their shit, that’s for sure.

I walked funny on the way back to my cell, but Yuri didn’t notice. Or if he did, he didn’t think anything of it.
 

The strangest part was, the length of the pen made me think about the various guys I’d been with, and how they measured up to my new boyfriend, Mr. Papermate. A few did not measure up so well. Others…well, that’s a different kind of walking funny. But then, as we all know, it’s not the size of the cock that’s important when it comes right down to it; it’s how well he uses it. Girth can be pretty important, but foreplay trumps everything.
 

Mr. Papermate didn’t really do it for me, but at least I now had a weapon.

Once I was returned to my cell my first instinct was to take it out, but then I got to thinking. I knew I was gonna need it at some point, but not when that would be. Probably not on the boat—that would be a waste. I’d probably need it when we got where we were going, wherever that was. Or maybe when Harris showed up I could help him effect my escape by stabbing some of these assholes in the throat with Mr. Papermate the Pussy Pen? That seemed like a more likely scenario.
 

So in it stayed. I really didn’t like the idea of having a foreign object up there for any longer than I had to because that was just begging for an infection, but I’d take the fiery agony of a vaginal infection over being raped and killed any day of the week. I mean, I’d really rather not have either, but no one was asking me what I wanted.
 

And the sensation also gave me something else to think about, and at that point in my boredom, something to think about was welcome, even if it was strange to have a ballpoint pen lodged up my cooter.

* * *

Eventually we stopped, but I had no clue as to how much time had passed. I had no way to measure that. Days? Weeks? I was fed on a regular schedule, but with no point of reference, it could have been once a day or three times a day…When you’re in a black hole, shit gets relative real fucking fast. And by relative, I mean you go batshit, arm-flapping, hoot-like-an-owl crazy. Or at least, I did.
 

When Yuri opened the door and gestured for me to come out, I literally crawled out on my hands and knees, blinking, hissing, and generally acting like a looney toon.