37. Caro

My head throbbed. My body prickled with pins and needles. I tried to open my eyes, then realised I'd already done that, and I was lying in the dark. Lying in the dark with my legs bound together and my hands tied in front of me.

Metal clinked, and I realised there was a chain involved somewhere.

How?

Why?

The room was spinning.

No, not spinning.

Swaying.

I was on a boat.

In the dark, on a boat.

My sludgy mind struggled to process the details. The horror.

Who did this boat belong to?

Gunfire. There had been gunfire. I remembered that part, or was I imagining it? Men with guns had come to the sanctuary. For Luna? She was the one in danger, she had the bodyguards, so why was I the one tied to…to what?

Body shaking, I worked my way along the chain, hand over hand, and found it secured around a pole by a padlock. I gave the pole a shake. Solid. And a strange texture. Like…like…metal covered in leather. I pulled myself to my feet. Followed the pole upward and found a mattress.

This was a cabin.

A cabin on a boat.

The lack of light, the not-so-muffled thrum of the engine, and the gentle rocking told me I was below decks in the crew quarters on a reasonable-sized yacht. Trying desperately not to throw up, I shuffled around the small room, bumping into things as I went, barely able to move my feet, feeling my way as best I could. Four beds, two up and two down, with a closet jutting out between them at the head end, plus a bathroom the size of a shoebox at the foot. Boxes. Wooden boxes piled on the bunks. I stubbed a toe before I found a light switch and flipped it on.

I saw what I'd expected to see, which was both a relief and a horror. Horror because I was trapped in a cabin. A tiny cabin decorated in shades of brown and beige. Relief because there wasn't a giant three-headed worm stuck in here with me, which wouldn't have been a total shock because this was hell on earth.

My legs had been wrapped in duct tape from knee to ankle, which was why I could only move my feet an inch at a time. Or hop. Or slither. A hysterical snort burst out of me—maybe I was the giant worm? Something dry yet slimy had been stuffed into my mouth, and there was more tape around my face. I tried to peel it away, but it was stuck to my hair, and every time I loosened an edge, my scalp screamed.

I took a closer look at my hands. My wrists had been bound with blue cord, and in case I got any ideas about picking the knot undone, the ends had been melted together into one hard plastic lump. The cord was attached to the chain, and I could just about reach the toilet if I stretched my hands out in front of me. At least there was toilet paper. The vaguest nod toward civility.

How long had I been on board? How long since these animals had snatched me from Valentine Cay? Another memory, another horror movie in my head: a behemoth of a man running toward me, arms outstretched, a gun tucked into his waistband. He'd pulled it out, aimed, but Tango had bitten his ankle. My plucky, brave little dog had done her best to defend me. The man had fired at her, and she'd run off into the forest, but the distraction gave me enough time to grab the nearest weapon to hand, which happened to be the speargun I occasionally used for hunting dinner. The behemoth had tried to pull the spear out of his chest, but not for long. He'd quickly lost strength. But before I could reload, one of his friends must have snuck up from behind, because I remembered holding the speargun against my chest and stretching back the elastic, and then everything went fuzzy for a moment. When my mind cleared, I was outside with two assholes dragging me across the sand toward a boat. I'd struggled, desperately trying to keep them from walking all over the hatchery, but my head hurt like hell, and my limbs wouldn't quite do what I wanted. More than human lives had been lost that day, but the others didn't matter to those monsters.

Then the man with the anchor tattoo had run over and jabbed a syringe of something nasty into my thigh.

Then darkness.

Then nothing.

And then I woke up here.

Wherever "here" was.

Knox! Where was Knox? Franklin? Luna? Franklin had been in his cabin, still sick, and Knox had been wherever Luna was. Probably in the dining room. Knox knew how to use a gun, but the noise… The peaceful sanctuary had turned into a war zone. Had they been injured? Or worse? If I'd been scared before, now I was terrified.

Heartbroken.

I'd told Knox that our relationship was purely physical, but it had evolved into…more. As much as I could offer. If I'd been free of Aiden, I'd have given Knox all of me.

Wait, maybe he was on the yacht too? In a different room? I wanted to believe that, I did, but I still feared the worst. Fingers shaking, I tried again with the tape, beyond caring whether I ripped my hair out. If I could shout, would someone answer?

The pitch of the engine changed, and before I could catch myself, I tumbled forward onto my knees. The yacht was slowing. Why? Where were we? Still in San Gallicano? We could have travelled to a different island, a different country.

How long would it take for anyone to realise I was missing? If Knox and Franklin and Luna were gone, then my hopes rested on Ryder and Jubilee. Hours could have passed before they returned from Malavilla. Jubilee had been excited to go shopping, and it wouldn't have surprised me if she stopped to browse in the stores near the harbour, the ones that sold overpriced souvenirs and trinkets and a hundred other things nobody needed.

For now at least, I was on my own.