“My… room?” I shook my head. “I think there’s been some kind of mistake. I’m not here to stay. I’m here to ask questions.”
He smirked. “Questions?”
“Yes, questions,” I said. “About the website, about some girls who have gone missing.”
Maybe it was dumb to just come out with it, but I wasn’t exactly prepared to go undercover.
“I see,” he said. “Perhaps you can ask your… questions, later this evening, once you’ve settled in.”
I wasn’t going to lie, I was pretty thrown by how casually he dropped the bomb that he expected me to stay on the boat.
“I don’t think you’re understanding me. I’m not going to ‘settle in.’ Either someone will answer my questions or you can take me back to the island.”
“I’m afraid neither of those things are possible at the moment,” he said. “Now, shall I show you to your room?”
“Yeah, no thanks. I guess this is all some kind of misunderstanding.” I turned toward the stairs leading to the deck and stopped cold.
While I’d been talking to the butler (or whoever the British guy was) another man had moved into position, standing on the bottom step leading to the yacht’s deck.
And this guy was no maître d’. He was huge and menacing, his head shaved, thick neck and arms covered in tattoos, his hand on a very large gun slung around his neck.
I tried to stand taller. “Excuse me,” I said to the new guy, hoping that would be enough to move him.
“I think you’re right,” the British guy said. “There has been a misunderstanding.”
“Good,” I said. “I’ll wait for the driver on deck.”
“My offer to show you to your room wasn’t actually an offer,” he continued. “It was an order.”
“An order?” I forced a laugh, mostly because I was starting to get really fucking scared and I didn’t want to let it show. “I don’t take orders from you.”
“You do now,” the guy in the doorway said, hand still on his gun. He had an accent too, but not British, more like Eastern European.
I reached behind me and under my hoodie and withdrew my knife, then held it out in front of me. “I’m going to leave.” I spread my legs a little, getting into a fighting stance, just in case. “All you have to do is let me leave.”
The big man in the doorway looked over my shoulder. “I like this one. She’s a fighter.”
It took me a second too long to realize that he wasn’t talking to me — he was talking to a man behind me.
Strong arms came around my upper body, locking my arms at my side, lifting me off my feet while the British guy watched like all of this was perfectly normal.
I struggled to free myself, fighting panic, but there was no hope of that: the guy’s inked arms were like tree trunks made of iron.
I did, however, still have my knife.
I pointed it behind me and drove it hard, hoping it would land somewhere for maximum damage, then heard a scream of pain when it connected with the man’s flesh. His hold on me loosened long enough for me to stomp on his foot, and I turned in his ams and kneed him in the balls, then pulled my knife out of his thigh as he staggered backwards.
Except now the other guy, the one who’d been blocking the exit to the deck, was moving toward me.
My mind cleared, my panic receding. I’d been training for this since I was seventeen.
I could do this.
I lifted my knife, threw it, and watched it embed itself in the man’s shoulder, then prepared to run, throw myself overboard, and swim like hell.
He stopped his forward motion, looking down at the knife with surprise, like he couldn’t quite believe it had hit him.
I had about two seconds to feel accomplished, to believe I might actually make it off the boat alive.