Chapter 23

Time passed as a monolithic black hole. She went from being sleepy to hungry to thirsty to angry and then sad without anything delineating any one period. One day on the water, or six, she didn’t know. She suspected she would never see freedom again. This was her life now.

At some point, she woke and realized the ship wasn’t moving. Fear whipped through her. Where had they taken her? How long would she last in this prison?

She waited, and nothing happened. Time dragged, driving her crazy. She needed action, needed someone to come in and either end her life or set her free. Maybe they wouldn’t set her free. Maybe she would just be moved to another prison. She wanted to fight back, but how could she fight anything?

Metal clanked, freaking her out, and then whatever she was in moved suddenly. She might have let out a shriek, or maybe not. There was no way to know what was happening. If the room she was in was moving, the space she’d been held in was smaller than she’d first thought .

What would move like this? A container? Had she been on a container ship? How far had they shipped her?

The days had come and gone, and since she had birth control that stopped her periods, her body didn’t remind her how long it had been. There’d been nothing marking time the days or weeks. Good lord, had it been a month?

Time moved slowly again as she waited for the door to open. Whatever eventuality she was walking into, she wanted to know. There was no way she would be prepared, but she wanted to find out so she could mentally brace herself.

While she waited, her thoughts drifted to Harry. Sadness filled her. She wanted to go back and make the decision to stay at his place. She no longer cared about regulations and what the Marines wanted. Her life was over because she’d found evidence of crimes, and when she’d taken that evidence to her superiors, they told her it wasn’t worth them looking at. She got that people were busy with their jobs, and they had strict guidelines working for the military about what they could and couldn’t do, but it didn’t change the fact that no one cared. She’d shown evidence of wrongdoing, and her superiors hadn’t cared.

It was that attitude that had allowed multiple serial killers to destroy lives on other military bases. Too many questionable deaths had been attributed to suicide even when there was evidence the person hadn’t killed themselves.

Now she was sitting in a dark container, preparing for God only knew what, scared out of her wits. How many others had died because the information was ignored? She hated how her thoughts were turning, but she had no way to escape the pain that was surely coming for her.

Metal scraped metal, and then a loud screech echoed in the container. The light was dim at first, then a flashlight turned on, hitting the back of her eyes like a pickaxe. She gasped as her heart thundered. This was it. The end of her life as she’d known it. There was no escaping this terrible destiny.