by Milly Taiden
The man whirled around and glared at her. His eyes glowed for quick second. She froze, staring at him. What the hell was that? He stepped forward; she hopped back twice and smacked against the light pole. In an instant, he stood over her, his face inches from hers. Air caught in her throat.
With a sly grin, he gazed down at her. She felt his radiating heat. He tilted his head to her ear. Hot breath warmed her neck and other parts. He took a deep breath. She thought he was going to nuzzle against her. And holy shit, she wanted him to. It was official, all these years on the run and she’d lost her mind.
Her body tingled. It took a second before she realized the feeling came from his body, like a deep growl vibrating within his chest transferring to her. Images of her and him naked scrolled through her mind. Oh, my. All that nakedness sent her thoughts straight to the gutter.
She hadn’t visited the idea of sex in so long, she’d practically forgotten how it could make her feel. At that moment, it made her want to get even closer to Blondie. What the hell was wrong with her? Well, at least he didn’t look gay. That was a step in the right direction.
“You don’t know how much trouble your luscious mouth will get you into.” He rubbed a thumb over her bottom lip. Holy hell, her body screamed for this stranger. Electrical currents had come to life in her blood with the sound of his voice and his nearness. She’d never experienced anything like this. It was both scary and fascinating. He took another deep breath, then mumbled a word she couldn’t make out—maybe mate?
She needed to get away from this guy. Leah pasted on a grin. “Sorry. I already figured out what my mouth can do.” She cringed, realizing her thoughts were still in the gutter.
Throwing his head back, he burst into a bray of laughter. She frowned, eyes searching the shadows for lurkers and a particular hunter as she pushed away from the light pole. “I’m glad you’re amused, but we are leav--”
In front of her, the boy screeched, slammed against the metal container behind the crate, and slumped onto his side. A gunshot reverberated from the distant warehouses.
FOUR
On Cleveland’s seaport dock, a strong floodlight above Leah kept the night at bay. Beyond that, darkness refused to give up its held secrets. The gunshot echoed in her ears nonstop. Was it one rifle, playing over and over in her head, or several bullets, one after another?
She barely felt the cold stinging her ears as she ran toward the container stacks. In one swift movement, she grabbed the boy’s prone body under the arms and dragged him into the shadowy aisle.
She plunged to the ground, resting Ivan’s head in her lap. Blood covered his face, flowing from his thickly covered scalp. Placing two fingers on his neck, she felt his pulse. Strong. A relieved whimper escaped her. She pulled her coat off and bundled it under his head. Her shaking hands wiped blood from his closed eyes.
“Ivan, wake up. Please, wake up.” A hitch caught in her throat. She slid her hand down his arm and immediately felt warm wetness. Memories from a survival training class she studied online years ago focused her mind.
She ripped apart the boy’s muddy sleeve along the seam up to the gushing wound on his bicep. The skin was covered in blood and the light too dim for her to see the true damage. She rolled the torn sleeve into three-inch folds, making a thick rectangular compress and covered the wound. She whipped off her leather-braided belt and wrapped it around the makeshift bandage, cinching tightly, but careful not to stop the blood flow to the rest of his arm.
She released a breath she didn’t realize she held. Her hands rubbed over the rest of his dirty shirt and other arm. All dry.
Footsteps sounded in the aisle. Blondie? Coward was running. To think she almost mistook him for a nice guy.
The steps quickly grew louder. Leah swallowed hard. Maybe it wasn’t Blondie. She couldn’t leave Ivan, but she wouldn’t be much help dead. Sprinting toward the outside of the row, Leah heard Spanish words float around the corner. It’s him, the hunter. After skidding to a stop, her legs backpedaled, carrying her toward the center passageway.
Who was this second person speaking a foreign language? Which was the bounty hunter? In the dark inner aisle in front of her, the footfalls and their owner stopped. Even in ambient light, his dark moustache gave him away. Her heart exploded.
Leah screamed and slid on the moist ground. Directly in his line of fire. No place to hide. Scrambling back the other way, she waited for the bullet’s searing sting. Diesel fumes burned in her nose. A few more steps and she’d clear the mountainous containers. Why didn’t he shoot her? At the end, rounding the corner in front of her, the blond man stepped into her path.
Side stepping him, she grabbed onto his coat and pulled him around. “Run! He’s a killer!”
He yelled at her, but her mind registered only escape. He reached out and snagged her flailing arm. Leah tugged on his arms. “Run!”
He grasped her wrist and yanked her to him. “Calm down, lady!”
Was he crazy? Leah furrowed her brows and fought the restraints, panic rising fast.
“Lady!” He held her jerking shoulders. “Look at me!” He squeezed her against him, gaining her full attention and silence. Her body reacted instantly to his closeness, heating her core, calming her fears. She could only stare into his eyes. “There’s no one here but you and me.”
What was he talking about? Her brain kicked in--the bounty hunter. Leah snapped her head around. The passage stood empty.
Blondie leaned to the side and looked down the aisle. “Where’s the boy?”
Leah tore from his hold and ran to Ivan’s body. “Please, help him. He’s bleeding badly. I’ll call 911. You stay until an ambulance arrives.”
“No. You stay with him.”
She sat back, speechless from his abrupt refusal. “I-I can’t. Please. It won’t take long.”
“Why can’t you.” His apparent disregard for the kid’s life set a fire in her stomach.
“Because I can’t, dammit!” Her hands fisted, fighting the helplessness growing inside her.
“The medical facility on the ship is the best I can do.”
She glared up at him and restrained the urge to slap the arrogance from his face. Fine. She’d leave the unconscious boy with the doctor, telling where to find his mother. Ivan would be stitched up and on his way back home before she reached the city limits. Leah popped to her feet. “Let’s go.” Grabbing under the boy’s arms, Leah grunted, lifting his shoulders.
The blonde stared at her. “You’re going to drag him all the way?”
Clenching her jaw, she said, “Normally I would expect the gentleman to carry him. But seeing there’s none here, I’ll do it myself.”
He scowled, scooped the limp body from her hands, tossed the boy over his shoulder, and strode away. “Wait!” Leah snatched her bloodied coat off the concrete. “Someone’s going to see us and call the police.”
“The crew is momentarily inside. We’ll have no interference. Stay in the shadows.” He glanced at his watch.
She scanned the port for a security station. “We’ll get shot out here.”
“Don’t worry about that.”
Leah stopped. Why not? Blondie kept walking, growing the expanse between them. Leah caught up and followed closely, occasionally looking over her shoulder to search the darkness. What happened to the hunter?
Crossing the gangplank onto the deck, Leah saw hundreds of metal containers identical to those she and Ivan hid among neatly stacked in the vessel’s central hull. Heavy ropes lay looped on tarps and wood crates neatly lined the bow. Worry seeped into her stomach. This cargo ship was packed to sail. She needed to secure Ivan and get off quickly.
The light-haired escort skittered down stairs, around corners, and down a long hall. He pushed on a door with a red cross painted on the front. Inside, the room smelled like antiseptic. Sudden blinding light made Leah jerk her head down and cover her eyes.
He laid Ivan on a stainless steel table, shrugged off his coat, and gathered swabs, gauze, a sur
gical knife and other supplies onto a small stainless steel tray. Leah stood in the far corner, eyes squinted. She closed her heart, preparing for the worst, but tears sprang nonetheless. She hid her face from his view.
He slipped on latex gloves then searched through the boy’s curly hair. Plucking tweezers from the metal tray, he moved with the skill and precision of a surgeon.
Transfixed, she watched. “Are you a doctor?”
“No.” His curt answer registered on her thin nerves.
“You don’t have to be rude. I don’t like this any better than you.”
The man glanced at her and then laid a blood soaked cotton ball on the tray. “I learned from necessity.” His nimble fingers pinched-up a gauze pad from the stack. “There’s a gash above his forehead. He hit the container hard. He’ll have a bump for a while, but nothing serious.”
He removed the belt wrapped around the boy’s arm and pulled up the saturated sleeve. “Your field dressing is well done. Very creative.”
“Thanks. My first one.” She watched him clean and redress the injury. Ivan moaned and rolled his head to the side. Leah sprang toward the table. “Hey, don’t move. You’re hurt.”
The boy’s eyes fluttered. “I’ve given ya all she’s got, Cap’ain.” He flopped his uninjured wrist onto his forehead. “It’s time. I see the light.”
Leah rolled her eyes. “That’s the worst Scotty impression I’ve ever heard. And the light is the overhead lamp, Mr. Drama.”
Ivan squinted open one eye. “It hurts my head. Turn it off.”
Blondie set the metal tray on the counter, pulled off the gloves and tossed them into the hazardous waste bag by the door. “The bullet grazed your arm, only splitting skin and a small amount of muscle.” He flipped down two of three switches, dimming the front of the room. “Your head is worse than the arm.”
“Where are we?” Ivan moved to sit up, but Leah pushed him down.
“We’re on one of the docked ships.” She tucked her coat under his head. “Just relax for a minute.” Leah motioned for the man to meet her by door. Shadows from the knit hat pulled low on his forehead hid his eyes from her. His closeness set her stomach into a tailspin. She stared down at her twiddling hands. “I’m not good with asking others for help. So thank you for saving him. He’s not in any immediate danger, right?”
“He is not.”
She glanced at the resting boy. “After removing the metal grate, take him up to the train station. I’m sure his mom’s in a panic with a hundred police on their way.”
“You take him.”
She gritted her teeth. They’d already been through this. “I can’t.”
“Why not?”
“Because I can’t, dammit.” Leah pressed the heel of her cold hands against her closed eyes. Why was he making this so difficult?
“Stay here. I’ll get with the captain to delay departure and find something to cut the iron.” He walked out, closing the door behind him. Leah sighed and paced between the metal table and cabinets. She hated not being in control, having to wait or depend on somebody else before going her merry way. Her foot rolled out a stool from under the counter. She plopped on the cushy leather top, rested her elbows on her knees and let her head fall into her hands.
“What’s up with the guy in the car? He wanted you dead.”
Dread filled her mind. “Not really, he only gets paid if I’m alive.”
“What does that mean?”
She sighed. “You don’t want to know.”
“Please tell me. I won’t tell anyone. I swear.”
Damn, he could be persistent. She wasn’t getting into it now. “Why were you at the train station?”
The boy stared at the ceiling. “I’m not really sure.”
“How can you not know?”
“Mom got a phone call then suddenly we were on the way to the train station.”
“She didn’t tell you why?”
The boy raised onto an elbow. “That’s the weird part. She bought me the video game to bribe me for something. She told me to stay in the hotel room and play the game until she got back. She’s never done that before.”
Leah chewed on lip. “Where do you think she went?”
“I don’t know, but when she got back, I could tell she’d been crying. Her face looked all puffy like when Dad died.” He laid back on the hard bed.
Leah didn’t know what to say. She knew how he felt, living without a parent, living without both parents. “Why did she take you along only to stay in the hotel?”
“I’m sure Mom didn’t want me hanging out with my new friends, so I had to go with her.”
Leah raised her brow. “What’s wrong with your new friends?” She scanned his gothic outfit down to red sneakers with untied shoestrings.
“After Dad died, me, Mom and my little sister moved in with our grandparents, outside of Cincy. My new friends were the only ones who’d talk to me at first at the new school. She doesn’t like them, I think.”
She studied his pierced eyebrow and lip. “Do they dress like you?”
His face lit up. “They showed me all this cool stuff I had to buy to be in the group. We even went to a tattoo shop for my piercings.” He lifted his hair away from his ears. “Do you like them? Pretty cool, huh?”
She stared at the kid. His laid-back demeanor and bubbly personality conflicted with the menacing message his swastika-covered shirt and ripped pants sent. “You’ve been ‘hanging out’ with these friends how long?”
“Since I enrolled in school a few weeks ago, not even that long.”
That explained the mixed signals. His need to be accepted by others could be from low self-esteem. She knew how lonely and awkward it felt with no friends; how embarrassing it was to walk into class as everyone stared at the “new kid.” The loss of his father hurt more than he let on. She knew that ploy well.
Ivan sat up and swung his feet off the table. “Who’s the guy that bandaged my arm?”
“No clue. Somebody who works on the boat.” But how many deckhands worked with the skill and precision of a surgeon? Her stomach anxiously churned and her legs felt antsy.
Ivan dropped off the bed and onto his uninjured foot. “Let’s get out of here.”
That’s all Leah needed to hear. She’d sneak him into the train parking lot, then disappear. She grabbed her coat and looked for her backpack. Oh, shit! It was on the dock. If anyone got a hold of her laptop…
Ivan stepped forward and dragged his heavy foot. Leah kicked the stool toward him. “Put your leg on the stool and push with the other.” She opened the door and peeked out. Behind her, the boy rolled into her leg. She looked at him and grimaced.
“Sorry, haven’t figured out the brakes yet.”
Hurrying down the corridor, Leah racked her brain for the pathway out. Everything looked the same: white walls, white pipes, gray floors. Corner after corner led to heavy metal doors heading every way but out. After passing the laundry room twice, Leah leaned against the wall and hung her head. “I don’t know how to get out of here.”
A deep vibration passed through her body, throwing her heart into her stomach. Enveloping her, a bone-chilling groan of bending metal filled her head. Gravity pulled her body away from the wall.
Ivan let out a squeal and rolled into the wall. With a terrified face, he looked at Leah. “We’re undocking."
FIVE
Leah was living a nightmare: running through an ethereal corridor, seeing only a labyrinth of bright passageways before her. No sign of life—no way out. Ivan’s shouts faded with every intersecting aisle she dashed past. Find the door. Stop the boat. She raced up steps two at a time. Shoving open another steel door, she saw the wooden deck in the widening gap. She staggered toward a squat man pulling a rope over the side.
Heaving for air, she choked out, “Stop the ship! We have to get off!”
The man stared at her with blank eyes. “No English.”
A crane and loading platform “floated by.” Vertigo sw
ung her vision. She grabbed the rail and closed her eyes. Recognizable words with a heavy accent drifted to her. She darted past the deckhouse, onto the boat’s topside lounge housing tables with umbrellas in the center and reclining chairs. The only thing missing was the cabana.
By the starboard railing, a tall bald man hollered at people farther down the side catwalk. Dressed in normal street clothes, he didn’t look like the other deckhands, but he spoke English. Shuffling around folded recliners and closed umbrellas, Leah yelled, “Help me stop the boat! Please. Stop the boat!”
The big man whirled around. His thick unibrow rose high, his eyes narrowed, and a smirk grew across his face. Leah froze. Instincts screamed back away. With two paces, he was to her. His hand clamped on her shoulder. “Hmm. Aren’t you delicious.” His eyes raked down her body. “What’s the problem, my morsel?”
Leah pushed the hand holding her in place; his grip tightened. “We have to get off the ship. We’re not supposed to be here.”
The bald man stared at her. “Follow me.” He released her shoulder and tromped toward the front deckhouse door. Leah hesitated, but saw no choice except to follow. Inside, the behemoth’s body filled half the wide corridor. Leah trailed him through another maze of halls and stairs. She thought they would be going up to the bridge, not dredging through the bowels. Her escort stopped at a metal door and raised the locking lever arm out of its cradle. Quickly, he moved inside.
Leah stepped in behind him. The twenty-foot room smelled like a musty, decaying house. The only light came from a grimy bulb dangling next to the steel reinforced door. Her fingertips brushed over scratchy rust splotches peeking from seams in the wall. Before she questioned him, he grabbed her wrist, slapped a handcuff around it, and snapped the other cuff around a pipe entering through the ceiling and exiting through the floor.
“What are you doing? Let me out.”
He laughed. “Guests shouldn’t be roaming by themselves.” His eyes slowly moved down her body. “We heard about you sneaking onto the ship. We don’t take kindly to stow-a-ways. The commander is interested in you, as am I.”