Baker's Dozen

by Amey Zeigler

  Andy nodded in agreement. “That is true.”

  He glanced sideways at her, then slid down the wall, sitting on the floor. “And she said we’re through.” Andy gloated a bit. He glanced up at her through his hands covering his face. “Don’t be too pleased.”

  But Andy still kept her smug expression.

  “You’re still pleased with yourself.”

  She joined him on the floor. “But you said yourself, we don’t need Carmen anymore. I already got the information we needed.”

  “You said ‘we.’ ”

  “Oh, I guess I did.”

  “So are we a team?”

  “You better kiss me some more.”

  Moving to kneeling, he tenderly kissed her upper lip, then kissed her shoulders. His hands graced her thighs, as he leaned her back onto the chaise. Her hands found his neck, drawing him closer. His hands crossed the bare shoulders of her costume, caressing the skin above her collar bone.

  Finally, all barriers down, alone in the Pacific Ocean, Andy could let her heart be free. With all the intensity of her pent-up passion, she hungered for his breath, the poofiness of the skirt a barrier.

  “Hey, get a room,” a man yelled across the deck.

  Breaking from the embrace, Andy’s whole body pulsed. “Do you have a room?”

  Christiaan’s eyes lit up.

  ****

  Christiaan guided her to his room. “It was better we stopped,” he whispered as he nuzzled into her neck. Andy nodded, her body radiating pleasure.

  He opened the door to a spacious room colored in pastels and grays. A balcony faced her. On the wall to the right a large screen TV, a softly patterned couch, a bouquet of flowers overflowing on a bureau, and romantic lighting.

  “You can freshen up in there,” he said pointing to the small bathroom. Andy barely had enough time to return to her room and grab her bag and clothes where Carmen had dumped them outside their room before coming here.

  In the bathroom, she changed into her pajamas—micro shorts and a tank top. When she entered the room, only the half-light of the moon shone through the thin balcony sheers.

  Christiaan, standing at the edge of the couch, had stripped down to his white undershirt, the definition of his triceps and biceps bulging from the sleeves. Andy swallowed hard.

  “Tomorrow we can plan about where to go to find Juan Martinez,” he said, staring at her, as she crawled on the king-sized bed. Desire crackled in the air.

  “Yup.”

  Andy shivered under his intense stare, every sense awakened. She knelt there on the bed. He dropped his shirt.

  “I made some phone calls. I think I know where Martinez lives.” He sauntered to the foot of the bed.

  “That’ll make it easier.” Andy’s heartbeat strangled her breath. Her exaggerated breathing loud in the stillness. She slowed it down by closing her eyes and focusing on her breath, like in meditation. With a rustle, she opened her eyes. He stood near her, and stroked a strand of hair out of her face. Her breath blew out low and slow. He bent and kissed her collar bone, her neck, the jaw line. Andy’s body flushed.

  “I wasn’t lying when I said I couldn’t go all the way,” he said, sliding a strap off her shoulder, kissing the whiteness. Christiaan was sending intensely mixed messages. Andy held him close, her lips parted, he rubbed his cheek against hers.

  “Why not?” she asked through quickened breath.

  “Excellent question.”

  A shrill sound pierced the air.

  Andy leapt up as Christiaan threw himself into action. He flew to the door, opening it a crack to peek into the hall. Passengers pooled there.

  Andy threw on her pants and a shirt. “What’s going on?”

  “Fire alarm.” He shut the door. “How have you been paying for things?”

  Andy panicked. “Credit card.”

  His face contorted. “Amateur. If Tyrone does have the FBI on his payroll, we’re screwed. You need a ghost account.” He grabbed her hand and hauled her to the window, but not before she plucked up her bag and slung it over her shoulder. Christiaan glared at the bag.

  “What?” she asked, breaking from his hand. “It’s got my passport. And my stuff. Trust me, you’ll be glad I have it.”

  He smirked, pulling back the curtains to the balcony window. “Were you planning on using your passport once we dock?”

  Frowning, Andy bit her lip. “It’s the only one I have.”

  “We’ll have to change that, too.”

  Andy halted before the window to the balcony. “Are you saying someone is after me?”

  “Me or you. But I don’t make mistakes.” He unleashed the sashes.

  “A fire alarm goes off and you assume the world is out to get you? How do you sleep at night?”

  “Sleeping—another amateur mistake.” Christiaan slipped out to the balcony and climbed onto the rail to his escape route. “I booked this room because it has at least two exits.”

  “Why would they set fire to the whole boat?” Andy asked.

  “Your innocence is endearing. I honestly can’t remember being so green.” He peered up the side of the boat. “The first night, I tied a rope with a rolling hitch to the railing in the upper deck.” He yanked on the rope to test its security. “Diversion, distraction, and chaos are a hired gun’s friend.” He mounted the rope, hand-over-hand, leaving Andy staring up at him. “Start climbing!” he shouted over the wind.

  Andy climbed up the rope after Christiaan, grateful her martial arts training helped her maintain upper-body strength.

  “Why not just pick the lock and kill us?” Andy asked, the spray made her hands slip, making it difficult to retain a grip. Her hands ached. She grasped with her legs, but still slipped.

  Christiaan called down. “It’s sloppy. Too much media attention. You need chaos. Accidents are poetry.”

  “The rope?” she asked hand over painful hand, gaining on him. The wind tugged at her clothes.

  “Tied it myself. As a secondary escape route.”

  “What if someone cut it?”

  Christiaan climbed to the top. “We’d be going with the tertiary.”

  “What was the third one?” Andy asked as she followed him to the top.

  “Down.”

  Hair blowing, Andy glanced down to the dark and cold spray churning around the boat nearly a hundred feet below.

  “Open water?” Andy asked in disbelief. “We were going to take our chances on swimming in open water?”

  “I didn’t know you were going to be here. I was hoping I didn’t get too desperate.”

  “Do you always do this?”

  He was already taking in his surrounds. Lifeboats lashed to the sides, people flooding the passageways. Charging forward, he ran up the next flight of stairs. “Only if I think I might be followed.”

  Andy followed. “So, someone on the ship is hunting us?”

  “For you. Most likely.”

  “We can’t go back to our cabin?”

  He motioned forward, and they rushed forward to the main deck. “Only if you want to wake up dead. Come on, we need to find a place to hide.”

  When Christiaan opened the door to the main deck, he stopped short. Passengers in pajamas, panicked, yelling, wearing life jackets packed the main deck. Smoke billowed from the bow of the boat.

  A scene flashed in his eyes. Different time. Different place. People screaming, blood, smoke. He could taste vomit in his mouth, and fear. Everyone speaking Russian.

  Christiaan shook the image from his head. Focus.

  “I don’t like crowds,” he muttered, elbowing through shoulders of swaying passengers. He’d been in tighter situations before. Tumaco, Tripoli, Dakar. “Let’s go.”

  They maneuvered through a crush of people. “Why don’t you like crowds? It’s easier to blend in,” Andy said.

  Christiaan’s gaze flitted to each face.

  “Easier for our hitmen, too.” He shook fear from him, pressing through the crowd toward the stern, graspi
ng the door to a covered gangway. Through the hallway, passengers shouldered Christiaan and Andy in their haste to reach the bow. Not the lady in her bathrobe. Not the balding man with a gut. Not the twenty-something with a hangover. His mind did a quick filter.

  A familiar man in a suit. No fear in his eyes.

  Alarmed, Christiaan’s head followed him as he passed.

  The man opened his coat pocket. Andy, on the alert, anticipated the threat, swiveled grabbing him by the neck. The hitman reacted fast by lashing out a front kick. Christiaan stepped back in surprise.

  Andy spun, crashing the man against the Plexiglas windows, a nickel-plated Kimber with a suppressor clattered to the ground. Christiaan kicked it, a scraping sound echoing in the metallic gangway. The man rose attacking Christiaan by grabbing his back.

  Christiaan, using the small confines of the gangway, thrust him against the steel walls, kicking him in the chest.

  Picking him up by the collar, Christiaan questioned him. “Who sent you?”

  The man stared through swollen eyes. “Why, hello, Wayne.”

  “Wayne?” Christiaan whispered the name he hadn’t heard in a long time. Fear constricting his throat. They’d found him.

  Christiaan slammed his knee into his head. The man fell backward, incapacitated from the blows.

  “Let’s go.” Christiaan yanked Andy’s arm.

  “Who was he?”

  “I can’t say.”

  “Who is Wayne?”

  Christiaan didn’t answer.

  “Was he one of Tyrone’s men?”

  As they approached the door, another man opened it. With adrenaline rushing, Christiaan instinctively grabbed his collar and pulled him between the door and frame, slamming the door on him, sending him reeling.

  “What the—” the man said from the ground where he fell. “Why’d you hit me?”

  Christiaan stepped over the man. “Sorry, thought you were someone else.”

  Outside, fresh and cool air greeted them. They raced along the outdoor gangway.

  “Are we safe now?” Andy asked.

  “Can’t be sure. There’s always the law of redundancy.”

  “Huh?”

  “Always send at least two people to get the job done. We’re not safe until we’re off the boat.”

  “Let’s hide.”

  “Where?”

  Andy motioned to the life boats. “In here.”

  “Too cliché. People hide there in the movies.”

  “A reason why he won’t search here. He’ll think we’re smarter than scriptwriters.”

  Christiaan couldn’t argue with her logic. He unbuttoned the tarpaulin and heaved her inside, careful not to attract attention.

  A voice sounded over the speaker. “The emergency has been resolved. Thank you for your patience. You may all return to your cabins. The bar will be open…”

  When he was sure no one was around, he jumped in, flipped the tarp over and buttoned it back on the locks as best he could from the inside.

  The speaker continued. “…Anyone who needs to speak to a licensed professional about tonight’s events, meet in the Emerald lounge.”

  A couple outside was talking.

  “There was no fire. Just smoke bombs,” the man said.

  A woman replied, “They said the kitchen caught fire.”

  “But why all the smoke out here?”

  Christiaan, still tense from the fight, waited until it was quiet again. The thickness of the tarp made it hard to discern anything more than Andy’s dark outline. It was hot. And stuffy. And cramped. He longed for fresh air. Christiaan didn’t like being closed in. Reminded him of a tent in Sri Lanka.

  In the quiet, his stomach growled. Andy dug around in her bag and retrieved something crinkly and placed it in his hand. A granola bar.

  “Thanks,” he uttered. He tore at the package and bit into the bar.

  “When we get back, I’m going to order room service.”

  “It’s not safe to go back. Until we dock, we’ll have to spend the rest of the night here.”

  “What’s left of it.” Andy was seated at the bottom of the boat and laid her head back against the bench seat, her knees against her chest. Several minutes passed. She tried different positions.

  “Here.” Christiaan stretched his legs across the boat parallel to the benches. He motioned to his chest. “Come lay down here.”

  Andy pivoted her head to be next to his. “Place the bag behind you,” she said. “I promise it’s more comfortable than a bench to lean against.”

  “Thanks.” He slid the bag behind him. “Okay, so the bag has its pluses. Now if only there was something in your bag to help us get off without being seen, that would be something.”

  “How did Tyrone find us?”

  “He wasn’t one of Tyrone’s men.”

  “He wasn’t? Then who was it?”

  “My past catching up to me.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  Christiaan woke up to a hot and bright tarp. And Andy was gone. Even her bag. Then, the tarp flipped back, and he was in the full sun. Christiaan jumped, blinking against the sudden light change.

  “You must’ve been pretty tired,” Andy said already dressed and refreshed.

  “Where have you been?”

  “I had to go pee. And I brought breakfast.” Andy tossed him warm breakfast burritos.

  Christiaan rubbed his eyes, opening a foil wrapped burrito, taking a bite.

  “They’re disembarking.”

  After finishing, Christiaan jumped up from the boat, following Andy down to the main deck. Passengers streamed off the gangplank, holding cameras, maps, sun hats. Despite the ocean breeze, it was hot. Andy had wrapped her bag in a shopping plastic bag, hiding its tell-tale color.

  Andy and Christiaan followed the crowd. Christiaan continued to scan for any irregularities. A man in a floral shirt and hat caught his eye. “Notice the man in a short-sleeved shirt, open at the neck?”

  Andy nodded.

  Something was different about him. Christiaan continued to stare as he held the railing, descending the gangplank. His instincts told him something was off.

  “He has a white neck,” Andy said. “He’s not a tourist.”

  Christiaan and Andy halted on the gangplank, allowing the elderly couple to go ahead of them. “Time for plan C.”

  “What’s plan C?”

  “Jump!”

  He stood up on the railing.

  Without hesitation, Andy followed him into the water. Bag and all. Gasps and shouts of the crowd sounded before the sea swallowed every other sound. Christiaan swam underwater until his lungs almost burst. When he broke the water, Andy was close behind.

  Swimming to shore without being spotted left both out of breath. Andy hauled herself up the cement wall, water cascading around her, clothes hugging tight around her shapely body.

  “What’s next?” Christiaan asked her.

  “Find Juan.” Her bag had now been immersed in sea water, leaving its contents intact but soggy, only mildly protected by the bag. But she didn’t have time for self-pity, police searched the cement bank. “Follow me.”

  ****

  Christiaan knocked on the door of the flat. From an open door above the stairwell a hot breeze blew in, and with it, a rancid smell. Chipped paint flakes dusted the floor like the dandruff on the shoulders of the kids playing in the streets. Their dark shirts, smudged, ill fitting. Yet they smiled. Reminded him of home.

  Christiaan knocked again, a sharp, impatient rap. The breeze wafted in and out again, blowing in or taking away some smell he couldn’t put his finger on, while Andy blocked the stench with her hand.

  “What do we do?” she asked.

  “Ask one of the neighbors, I guess.”

  “Let me try one more time,” Andy said and pounded slightly harder. Timidity was never her strength. The door popped open a crack as it slid out of the lock.

  “Real secure here, huh?” Christiaan said, opening the door. Timid
ity wasn’t one of his strengths, either.

  Andy entered the scarcely furnished room. A lamp with exposed wires clung to the unpainted brick. A soiled pillow sat in a corner under an open window. “I guess when you haven’t got much, you don’t have to protect it.”

  But when she closed the door, she found the inside covered with a smattering of locks, some of them brand new. “Or not.”

  Small noises rustled inside the room, movement or music maybe. Hope rose in her heart. Perhaps someone was home. The wind shifted, and Andy’s nose caught a whiff of stench, like rotting meat.

  In the kitchen, the linoleum floor was covered with a tar-like substance, pooling in the low spots, sludge oozing from the small dorm-sized refrigerator which hung slightly ajar. Christiaan called out Juan’s name. Andy couldn’t imagine anyone living in this apartment. Christiaan slid open the door to a bedroom. A rat, almost the size of a cat, ran from the room across her toes. She muffled her scream with her hands.

  After a glance in the room, Christiaan recoiled, backing away from the door, his face contorted in disgust.

  “What is it?” Andy asked, heart still beating from the surprise rat. She attempted to squeeze past him, wondering what could repulse this man. But he stopped her with his hand.

  “Don’t go in there,” Christiaan said.

  Andy almost vomited from the fetid stench, the heat of the apartment making it unbearable.

  Christiaan sighed. “I think it’s Juan.”

  “No.” Andy’s throat roiled with acid. “The smell.”

  “The rats got to him.”

  Acid forced its way up. She ran to the window and hurled onto the muddied streets two stories below. Feeling better, she sat back. But Christiaan entered the room, and she caught sight of a foot, the heel gnawed to hamburger, bone exposed. She swiveled and dry heaved, holding on to the splintery wooden sash to keep her body from lurching out the window. Andy trembled.

  She’d seen death before, but not like this. The indignity of human life haunted her. “Tyrone’s men have been here,” Christiaan called, his voice sounding tinny and far away in her ears.

  Clammy, thirsty, a bitter taste of bile, she wiped her mouth on her sleeve. “How do you know?” She breathed the moist, but fresh air from outside, her heart still pounding, her body shaking, trying to erase the single image from her mind, quieting her body’s reflexes.