Engrossing.
I don’t know how long it is before the door opens and I jump, startled. It’s one of the card-playing crew members. I’ve seen him around, swabbing the decks or whatever it is that they do, and I’ve never seen a crew hand so wobbly on his feet as this guy has been the last few days, only now he seems to have finally got his sea legs.
He looks at me. I look at him.
“Whatchoo doin’ in here?” he grouses.
“Looking out the window. What are you doing in here?”
He stares at me for a second, his big dumb cow eyes playing over my face and then down my body, like he’s checking me out. But he’s not checking me out, or at least, I don’t get that frisson I usually do when a man is eyeballing me.
He’s still holding one hand behind his back, and I stand, alarm bells sounding in my head. “What are you doing?” I demand.
Slowly, he brings out the hand from behind his back, and I hold my breath as he does. This might be it. The moment all my problems stop with a bullet to the face, a slash to the throat.
But in his hand it’s not a gun or a knife; it’s a fucking ginormous spliff and a lighter. I laugh, too loud and too long as usual, and the guy looks disconcerted.
“Boss said no drugs,” he says, and it takes a second for me to realize he means Luca. “So I came down here to make sure we’re cool. Peace offering from the crew?” He holds out the spliff to me.
“Boss ain’t here right now, and I won’t tell,” I purr. It’s exactly what I need, a nice mellow high—something natural, not like that prescription shit that makes my memories fragment. I can handle myself on weed. Luca will never even notice I’ve smoked up.
I know I promised to ditch the drugs, but this isn’t the same thing at all, right? This is natural. Just like having a drink at the end of a hard day.
“What’s your name?” I ask the guy.
“Tommy.”
“Tommy, I think you’re my new best friend. Pull up a chair.” I sit back down on the lower bunk and he sits on the opposite one.
Tommy seems obliging enough. He pushes me to have as many drags as I like, and soon enough the thrill is spreading through my body. I like weed; I like the kind of buzz it gives me. Tommy doesn’t have any, even when I press him. But that only occurs to me halfway through the damn thing.
“I’m done for now,” I say, when he urges me to keep going. “Any more and I’ll green out, buddy.”
He gives me the once-over and carefully presses out the glowing end of the spliff on the metal bar holding up the upper bunk bed. “What’s he like?” he asks. There’s something in his tone that makes me open my eyes again. I was going to lie down, get comfy, let the weed work its magic, but I can’t, not with a guy sounding like this.
“Who?”
“Luca D’Amato.”
“Stone cold asshole.”
“No. I meant, what’s he like in bed?”
Definitely something wrong here. “You ask all the passengers what their men are like in bed?”
Tommy gives me a long, hard look, and I know what it means. It means it’s time to get the hell out of here before things escalate. I stand up, clunking my head on the bunk as I do, and I’m swaying slightly.
Whatever I smoked was laced with something.
“You know what, I think it’s time I go pretty myself up for my husband. He’s due back any second now.” I try to slide past him, but Tommy is faster than me. He’s built like a goddamn tank but he moves like a viper to shove me back and slam the door shut.
“How about we enjoy ourselves right here?” he asks, and then he loses the dumb act and gives me the grin that shows who he really is, and who he really is is someone I don’t want to be around.
Even high as fuck I can see that.
“You know what, Tommy, I think I’m just gonna—”
He takes out a kitchen knife from where he had it stashed in his pocket and chuckles at the look on my face when I see it.
It’s not large, but it’ll do the job.
Chapter Nineteen
FINCH
“You know what,” I slur, the drugs making my vision blur now, “I really think I should—” I try to push past Tommy again, and the guy totally bitch-slaps me, hard, so my teeth slice open my lip, a spray of spittle-blood hits the sheets, and I go flying. Only there’s nowhere to fly, not in this tiny room, so I just slam into the wall with the one window I was happily staring out of till Tommy showed up, and I crumple to the floor.
The next thing I hear is an almighty fucking crash as the door Tommy was standing against explodes open. Tommy stumbles towards me, and I make myself as small and as invisible as I can, because in the doorway is my husband.
Only he’s not my husband, or not as I’ve seen him. His eyes are stone, and he has a gun in his hand. I don’t know anything about guns, but I can see that this one, whatever it is, is as much a part of him as the hand at the end of his arm; it’s just a further extension of his being.
And as I think that, it fires.
It’s fucking loud, loud enough to make me think I’m going deaf, and it cracks again and again, I lose count, my
