She looked at him gratefully. “Good. Because the last thing I want to happen is him opening his mouth again.”
“Third-world countries have a very different system.”
“But it’s still the same, isn’t it?” she said passionately. “Women are at the bottom of the list, treated like nothing more than chattel. Used and abused and tossed to the side when no longer wanted. I wanted to be a lawyer for the longest time as well, particularly being in law enforcement. It just always felt like nobody cared. I do.”
“It’s not always like that,” he said. “It’s just, right now, with everything else going on, you’re feeling very victimized.”
“Yeah, you could say that,” she said. She picked up one of the food containers, opened it, and had several more bites, before putting it down.
“You haven’t eaten at all.”
“I will soon.”
He checked his watch, and then a buzz came on his phone. He pulled it out, checked it, and nodded. He walked to the door and waited for a rap three times. He opened it up, and four men walked in, took one look, and the kid was quickly lifted and carried out, and, just like that, they were gone. She slowly put her hand to her heart. She looked over at Diesel. “You can’t just kill him, can you?”
“They won’t kill him. But they will find out who’s on the rest of his team, so they can stop what they’re doing. The cops here aren’t too bad, since the new president took over. He’s a hard-ass, and he’s got rules that most of the Western world wouldn’t agree with, but he doesn’t have any truck with these crimes either.”
She nodded slowly. “Well, I’m just glad the kid’s gone,” she said.
“And our flights have been moved up, so that’s good. I was afraid we wouldn’t get out until tomorrow.”
“Good, I can’t wait to be back in the US.”
“Except we’re heading to Australia first.”
She stopped, thought about it, nodded, and said, “That makes sense. And I don’t really care. That’s one step closer to home, and it’s a good place to be too.”
“Exactly,” he said. “We have to be at the airport in two hours. Before you know it, we’ll be at the airport, taking off.”
“You still expect it to be dangerous?” she asked.
“It’s not that we expect it to be dangerous,” he said, “but we’re always keeping an eye out for danger.”
“Right,” she said. “A small but significant difference.”
“Very significant,” he said. “What you’re really asking is, do we have any intel that tells us if we’re still in danger. And the answer is, no, we don’t, but, because of what happened to Marge, we can’t ever rest. Not until we get you home.”
She smiled, nodded, and said, “Thank you.” And, with that, she looked at her food and said, “I really can’t do much more damage to this.”
“Go rest,” he said. “The food will still be here when you wake up.”
“Fine.” She rose, and, as she went past him, she stopped, looked up, smiled, and said, “Thank you again.”
He just chuckled, gave her a hug, and said, “Go lie down.”
And, with that, she headed to the bed. She turned her back to them, as she laid down on the bed, stretched out fully, and closed her eyes. And, if nothing else, it was just nice to know that she was safe.
Even as she closed her eyes, her thoughts still horrified her. Just coming out of captivity, the thought of going into another was mind-boggling. And the punk had said it so casually, as if it made absolutely no difference to him what happened to the women around him. Didn’t he have mothers, daughters, or sisters? She hoped that one day he learned the value of females. Even if only as a very best friend.
The world needed to change. She just didn’t think it would happen fast enough for her liking. At that last thought she pulled her knees up higher, punched the pillow under her, and closed her eyes to help fall asleep. If she were lucky, she’d wake up, and they’d be at the airport, already heading for the security clearance. And finally, with that drifting through her mind, she smiled ever-so-slightly and let herself sink under the waves of sleep.
Diesel checked in on Eva, but she was sleeping soundly. He walked back to Jerricho. “I don’t like anything about this.”
“Do you want to move?”
Diesel stood, thinking for three seconds, and then nodded. “I absolutely do.”
Surprised, Jerricho looked at him. “Do you think the kid’s really connected?”
“No,” he said, “but anything that brings attention to us is bad news.”
“Yes, I agree with you there,” he said. “We can get another safe place.”
“We’re supposed to be flying out though,” he murmured.
“Let me check in to make sure everything’s running fine.” Two seconds later Jerricho looked up and shook his head. “No,” he said, “it’s not.”
“What’s not?”
“The Manila airport’s been temporarily shut down.”
“Shit!” he said. “Seriously?”
“Yes.”
They stared at each other, both trying to figure out whether it was connected to them or not. In the end, Diesel shook his head and said, “We can’t take a chance.”
“I agree,” he said.
“If the airport is shut down, we could do a small plane, seaplane, or we end up taking a ship out.” He said, “Other than that, we don’t have too many options. We should have gone in the other direction. Shit! Shit! Shit!”
“Don’t go there,” Jerricho said. “We can deal with this.”
“I don’t want to fly back to China, and I don’t want to go in any other direction except toward North America.”
“We might have to backtrack in order to go forward.”
“Let’s see what our options are.” He sat down and checked the airport and agreed. Everything was shut down temporarily. “And there’s no sign of when it’ll reopen,” he murmured.
“Of course not. And then we have the additional problem that we don’t know what security measures they’ll have in place, as soon as it does
