The van finally stopped. A fresh wave of fear washed over Meghan. Stopping meant facing this Roman person. She shuddered. “Please, Lord, deliver me, us, from this horror,” she whispered.
Through the back window Meghan saw large metal crates stacked two or three high, creating a barrier between the road and the ocean. Commercial freighters and cargo ships lined the docks while several barges and tugboats squeezed between the large vessels, looking like toys. A shipping yard.
The three men climbed out, leaving Meghan and the children unwatched for the moment. This was her chance. Her heart beat in her throat. She bent forward and brought the phone closer. Static. The call had ended. Or maybe never connected in the first place. Praying for another chance, she pressed Redial.
The back double doors of the van jerked open. The briny scent of the ocean swirled around Meghan’s head. She straightened with a start, tucking the phone between her knees.
“Hey, what are you doing?” one of the thugs yelled from the doorway.
She held up the pacifier she’d found on the floor.
The guy grunted. “Get out.”
“What about the babies?” she asked, not about to leave them unattended.
“We’ll get ’em,” he said with impatience lacing his words.
Needing time to slip the phone back in her pocket unobserved, she purposely made a clumsy attempt at climbing over the seat. She managed to pocket the phone just as the big beefy guy who’d manhandled her earlier grabbed her by the upper arms and dragged her through the back of the van. The kids were hauled out with more care. Meghan scooped up Georgina. Immediately, her little arms went around Meghan’s neck, her dimpled hands fisting in Meghan’s hair. A stab of love pierced through the fear choking her.
The driver of the van grabbed her by the arm and pulled her toward a midsize cargo ship wedged in between a flat-bottomed barge and a massive freighter. The rusted metal and chipped paint showed years out on the sea. Overhead a gull cried. The brackish smells filling the air turned Meghan’s stomach.
Practically jogging to keep pace with the man dragging her closer to her fate, Meghan clutched Georgina in a tight grip.
They were taken to a hold below the deck of a black-and-red cargo ship. A hard shove pushed her inside a dank room, barren except for a large cabinet in one corner. The thug stood guard at the door. A moment later the two other babies still strapped into their carriers were brought in by one of the goons. The room filled with the stench of soiled diapers.
“These children need attending to,” she told the thug.
One of the men went to the cabinet and opened the doors. “Here you go.”
Inside the cabinet were diapers, extra clothes, bottles, cans of formula, jugs of water and blankets. Her heart squeezed tight at the evidence that having babies aboard the vessel wasn’t an unusual occurrence.
How many more children had ended up locked in this room? Who had tended to them, surely not these rough men?
The door banged shut behind the thugs, the noise echoing off the metal walls. The lock sliding into place sounded like a death knell, making Meghan shiver with dread and apprehension. Frantic, she grabbed her cell phone. Her fingers fumbled on the keys. The static beep of the phone shuddered through her. No service.
She dropped on her knees and gathered Georgina close and prayed for protection and rescue. The cry of the infants tugged at her heart. They needed her, too.
Taking care of the babies gave her something to concentrate on besides their dire predicament. The babies, one boy and one girl, couldn’t have been more than six months old. Their dimpled cheeks and chubby little bodies looked well fed and cared for. Who did they belong to? Why were they in the hands of these monsters?
The questions threatened to tear down Meghan’s defenses. But she would not cry or despair, not when she had these little souls depending on her.
At nearly two years old, Georgina was a big help, handing Meghan the diapers. Love for the little girl swelled in Meghan’s chest. How could Christina have given her over to these awful men?
As soon as she had the babies clean and content on a blanket she’d laid out, she checked the cell again. Still no signal. She let out a frustrated growl and tucked the phone back into her pocket. It would take a miracle of God for Ryan to find her.
Thankfully, Meghan believed in miracles of God.
After a while the babies fell asleep sprawled out on the blanket. Meghan rocked a sleepy Georgina, softly singing an Irish lullaby Meghan’s mother used to sing to her. Only, when her mother had sung the song, she’d had the lilting cadence of her native tongue, which made the song so much more meaningful. Meghan couldn’t roll her
She relished this moment of peace and quiet. The fear hovered, but for the time being they were alive and safe. She wished Ryan would walk through the door. Only then would she feel secure. She’d give anything to hear his voice, to see him. To have him hold her close and tell her everything would work out.
She want him to kiss her again. She wanted to kiss him back.
Silent tears slipped from the corners of her eyes. She cared deeply for Ryan Fitzgerald. And she may never get to see him again. She sent up a gut-wrenching plea that he’d find her and she’d have a chance to tell him.
The lock on the door slid open, the noise grating in the quiet of the room. Alarm seized her heart, making the muscle stall as the door swung open. Blessedly the children slept undisturbed by the noise. Their crying had tuckered them out.
One of the thugs stepped in. Wirier with blond hair and beady eyes, he was the man she’d thought seemed familiar. Now looking at him, she flashed back to when Christina had burst through the stairwell door. This man had been with her. So much for her saying she didn’t know him.
He motioned for her to come with him.
Grateful for his silence, she gently laid Georgina on the blanket between the sleeping infants. Meghan’s heart pitched to think what torment the child would feel if she awoke and Meghan were gone. She didn’t want to leave her little charges. “Please,” she whispered. “Please let us go.”
In response, the man roughly grasped her upper arm and yanked her out of the room. He then dragged her down the narrow hall. They entered what appeared to be a dining hall. Four tables with benches sat in the middle of the room. Meghan’s stomach rumbled at the smell of greasy food.
Another man sat at one end of the farthest table, eating a hamburger purchased from a popular fast-food joint. He had a narrow face and dull gray eyes that studied her as if she were a tasty dessert to his dinner out of a bag. She flinched, wanting nothing more than to hide from his greasy, probing gaze.
“You’ve cost me time and money,” he said in a heavy guttural accent. “I don’t like when people cost me time and money. Especially a woman.”
This must be the man Mr. Sharp was so afraid of. The man Christina called Roman. He had soulless eyes and angular features that bordered on ugly. He made a twirling motion with his index finger, which Meghan interpreted meant he wanted her to turn around.
Indignation warred with fear until she thought she might explode. She wasn’t going to put on a show.
“Who are you?” she demanded, the indignation edging past the fear. If she was going to die, she was going out with a fight.
“Spirit,” Roman said through a hamburger patty, special sauce… “That will be good. Fun to break.” He said something else in a language she recognized as Russian. The other thug laughed, a raucous sound that sent a shiver of distaste down her spine.
“You have no right to hold me here. I demand you let me and the children go.”
He shook his head. “Now why would I do that when I can make money instead?”
Meghan swallowed the panic tightening her throat. “You’re making a mistake, mister. You won’t get away with this,” she said with more bravado than she felt.
“I already have.” He rose from the table, his movements fluid, making her think of a cobra rising up ready to strike.
“There’s no one to pay a ransom for me. You won’t gain anything by holding me,” she said, despairing the truth of her words. She had no family save Georgina left in this world. Ryan’s image rose. Her heart ached for him.
