Like a lioness fighting for her cub, was the thought that came to his mind. But he was stronger, and even if he wasn’t, he could summon help.
He started for the light of day, cigarette dangling, his fingertip rubbing across the silver Crossfire lighter that felt so good in his palm. He pushed open the hatch and a flood of cool evening light drifted toward his handsome face.
She was waiting for him as he emerged.
“Everything in the engine room all right, baby?” she said, her dark eyes full of a mix of worry and excitement.
“No problems I can’t fix after chow. Going back down there tonight. Be a late one.”
She smiled. “Need any help?”
He shook his head. “Got this one handled. Thanks, baby.”
Belowdecks, in the confines of the vessel’s lazarette, she woke once more. By then she’d figured out that she was not in a car trunk, as she first imagined. There would be no way she could fiddle with the emergency latch as she’d seen a young woman do on the Today Show when she reenacted her own escape from a rapist.
Or killer.
The diesel smell, the shaking of the floor, the slight bobbing, gave her an awareness that she was on a boat of some kind. Rolling on her side, she could better take in the smells—fish, water, fuel. Her eyes traced a pinprick of light that bore through the steel walls, weeping with condensation. The light led to a couple of fish scales on the floor.
A boat, yes, she was sure.
Amy wriggled some more, panting, pushing, trying to break the tape that kept her strong body constricted. She did not want to be raped. She wanted to get the hell out of there. She twisted with all of her strength and somehow rolled herself on her side, her hands still behind her back. She wanted to scream from the pain emanating from her shoulders, but it wouldn’t matter.
Her mouth was bound, too.
Again she followed the light. She could see better now, both eyes in play.
The boat’s engine’s roared.
If only she could scream. At no time in her life did she ever think she would die like this. Die, yes, die. No rape. No way out. Lying on the floor in the pool of light was the proof that she’d not been the first young woman in that space.
There were three of them in that small space on the wet steel floor, and they weren’t fish scales, after all. Again, she wished that she could scream. Tears rolled down her sticky cheeks. She needed to pull herself up and get out of there.
Fingernails, in a color different than her own. The entire nail. Not fake press-ons, but real nails, bloodied at the quick. Torn from fingers.
Fingers like her own.
The door swung open and a blast of light came at her all at once. A shadowy figure moved toward the cot where she’d pinned herself against the wall, screw tips clawing at her back. She pushed away from him as he moved forward. But there was nowhere to go.
“Please, God,” Amy said to herself. “Please don’t let him kill me.”