Lola Carlyle Reveals All

This wasn’t real. This wasn’t happening to her. She was Lola Carlyle and this wasn’t her life. She was on mental health vacation. In fact, she was leaving tomorrow to go home. She had to get home.

This was crazy and had to be a dream. Yes, that had to be it. Earlier, she’d boarded one last “snack and swizzle” tour of Nassau and had fallen asleep in the yacht’s stateroom, and now she was having a nightmare starring a demented madman. Any moment she would awake and thank God that it was all just a dream.

Through the darkness, the empty fire extinguisher sailed through the air and hit the helm. It bounced, then got stuck in the burned hole.

“What’s next? Napalm hidden in your underwear?” asked the all-too-real madman behind her, the anger in his voice slicing through the night air that separated them.

Lola looked over her shoulder at the moonlight touching his bruised and battered face. She’d expected to be murdered and turned into fish bait. When he’d tied her up, she’d been more afraid than she’d ever been in her life. Fear had sat on her chest and squeezed the breath from her lungs. She’d been so certain that he’d hurt her then kill her. Now she was too numb to feel anything at all.

“If I did have napalm, you’d be barbeque,” she said before she thought better of it. Then her self-preservation kicked in and she took a few steps back.

“Oh, I don’t doubt that, sweetheart.” He moved toward her and reached behind his back. “Here.” He pulled out a knife encased in a fawn leather scabbard and grabbed her free hand. She flinched when he slapped it in her palm. “If you want to put me out of my misery,” he said, “use this. It’ll be quicker and less painful.” Slowly he moved to what until a few minutes ago had been the doorway, but now was just a metal frame and a bit of burned canvas flapping in the breeze. She heard him suck in a breath before he continued down the stairs.

At the first hint of flames, Baby had tucked his stubby tail between his stubby legs and headed for safer quarters. She’d run for cover too, or rather crawled across the floor and down the stairs. She’d stood on the aft deck below as the madman named Max had battled the flames. She’d watched, incredulous, as pieces of burning canvas floated away on the breeze.

The galley door slammed and echoed into the night. Then all was silent again, the soft lapping of waves against the side of the boat the only sound in the absolute stillness. She looked about her, out at the darkness. Out at nothing, feeling like one of those hurricane survivors she always saw on the news. Wild-haired, vacant-eyed, and numb. Her mind hardly grasping the reality of her situation, that she stood somewhere in the Atlantic Ocean, aboard a disabled boat, wearing nothing but her underwear and white blouse, while a clearly deranged man slept below her feet.

Lola turned for the doorway and made her way down the stairs. The whole evening was surreal, like being trapped in a Salvador Dali painting. Warped and twisted and leaving her looking around and thinking, What is this? She shone her light on the aft deck, and her footsteps slowed as she moved into the galley.

“Baby,” she whispered, and found him on the bench seat behind the table, awake and frightened and curled up on the pashmina she’d discarded earlier that day. By degrees, as if she expected the bogeyman to jump out at her, she shone the small beam of light down the galley and salon. Through the doorway to the stateroom, the beam moved across the thick blue carpet to the edge of the striped bedspread. She shone the flashlight up the spread and stopped it on the soles of a pair of black boots. At the sight of them, the fear she’d felt all evening rushed across her flesh, and she snapped the light off.

“Baby,” she whispered once again, and leaning forward, she felt around on the bench seat. She switched the knife she held to the same hand gripping the flashlight. Her fingers brushed the pashmina, and she scooped it up, along with her dog wrapped inside. Through the black galley, she walked as silently as possible until she once again stood on the aft deck. She moved to the same spot where she’d sat hours before, sipping wine with the other passengers of the yacht and listening to the owner’s pirate stories. The cool vinyl of the wraparound seat chilled the backs of her thighs as she sat, and she tucked her feet beneath her.

Baby licked her cheek as she fought back tears and tried not to cry. Lola hated crying. She hated being afraid and feeling helpless, but the tears leaked from her eyes before she could stop them.

Baby hadn’t been afraid. He’d been brave and fierce, but for the first time since she’d picked him up from the breeder’s a year ago, she wished him to be a rottweiler. A big mean rottweiler that could tear off a man’s arms. Or balls.

Lola brushed her tears away and thought of the box of aerial flares she’d found in the stateroom. They were useless now. The gun melted in the fire. But even if the gun hadn’t melted, she wasn’t brave enough to walk in that room and recover them. Not with Mad Max lying on the bed beside them.

He’d said he was a lieutenant commander, but she didn’t really believe him. He could have made it up. More than likely he was one of those modern-day pirates the owner of the yacht, Mel Thatch, had told them all about.

Lola unfolded the pashmina and wrapped it around herself and her dog. She stared up at the burned remains of the bridge and the stars dotting the sky, so compact in some places they appeared crammed one on top of another.

Her hand tightened around the knife he’d given her. For a criminal, it seemed like a stupid thing to do, but he obviously didn’t consider her a threat. He didn’t think she’d use it on him, and he was probably right. It was one thing to shoot a man with a flare gun or defend yourself while in the heat of battle, quite another to sneak into his bed and cut his throat while he slept.

More than likely, he’d slapped the knife in her palm because he knew he could overpower her as he had all night. She could still almost feel his grasp on her wrists and the solid wall of him pressed against her back. The man was hard muscles and brute strength and she was no match for him. The second he’d grasped her wrists and held her against his chest, she’d known that he could do anything he wanted to her, and there was absolutely nothing she could do to stop him.

After he’d let her go the first time, she’d stood in the shadows, waiting for him to come after her. To subject her to every woman’s nightmare. To come after her and tear at her clothes and hold her down and rape her. There had never been any question that she would fight him. Never a question that she would defend herself and protect Baby.

She hadn’t gotten where she was in life by being passive. She hadn’t survived a business that fed off the bodies of young starry-eyed girls by submitting to men. And she hadn’t left that business to start her own mail order lingerie company by sitting on her hands. For most of her life, she’d battled demons of one sort or another, but when Max had held her down and tied her up with her own skirt, she’d thought for sure she would not survive this time. She’d been certain he would rape her and kill her and throw her and poor Baby overboard as he’d threatened. But he hadn’t. She was still alive long after she’d expected to be dead. A sob passed her lips and she pressed shaky fingers to her mouth.

Her gaze lowered from the stars overhead to the burned-out bridge. She’d realized when he’d first grabbed her that if she were to survive the night, she needed a weapon. Preferably a.357 magnum, just like her granddaddy Milton’s. She’d had to make do with the flare gun, and now that it was over, she wondered if she really would have shot him like Nicole Kidman had shot Billy Zane in the movie Dead Calm.

Now that the worst was over, her hands shook and images rushed at her. Pieces of this and splices of that. Of she and Baby boarding the yacht for one last “snack and swizzle” and perhaps doing a bit too much swizzling and not enough snacking. Lying down and waking up a bit disoriented and then finding a crazy man at the captain’s helm. The sight of him standing at the controls, Baby barking furiously at his feet. Being tied up with her own skirt. Finding the flare gun. The shock of his beaten face.

Lola stretched out on her side on the bench seat and hugged Baby to her chest. Her wineglass still rested on the deck from where she’d set it earlier, before she’d slipped into the stateroom to rest. She wondered if the Thatches had yet discovered that their yacht was missing. She doubted it, because although this nightmare felt as if it had already lasted several lifetimes, it was probably only now approaching one a.m. The Thatches wouldn’t even return to the harbor for another hour. She wondered how long it would take before they realized that she was missing, too. Before anyone started to look for her. Before her family was told she was missing.

If no one at her company-Lola Wear, Inc.- heard from her, they wouldn’t really think much about it. They’d just think she was taking a longer-than-anticipated break. For a while, they’d just continue as usual with the business she’d started two years ago. They’d probably carry on just fine without her, but none of that mattered as the reality