My phone was ringing, and I fumbled to grab it from the radio shelf.
“Hollis?” I said automatically.
“No, it’s Wren. Were you asleep?”
I blinked at my watch. In the pitch black of the speedboat cabin, its hands refused to resolve into anything more than a slim luminous triangle. “What time is it?”
“About six-thirty. I texted earlier.”
I pulled my phone away from my ear to look. Two unread messages. I’d slept for nearly twelve hours.
“Shit,” I said.
Wren laughed. “Well, I get now why you didn’t message me back. You sound really out of it.”
“Feels that way.” I rubbed my face, trying to massage some sharpness back into my senses, and hissed at the sudden pain. The burn on my cheek had scabbed over during my hours of oblivion. The first rub cracked the scab wide open.
Then my brain finally kicked in to remind me why Wren was calling. “It’s Sunday. We were supposed to get together.”
“But that’s not happening. Hey, another time.”
“Wait,” I said.
“You’re not going to try to talk me into still hanging tonight.”
“No. Just . . .” What was I doing? “Just hold on with me for a minute. At least until I can apologize like somebody normal.”
She didn’t say anything. During the pause I opened the cabin doors and slid back the hatch. Any warmth that had accumulated in the cabin from my body heat fled in a rush, replaced instantly by frigid evening air accentuated by the lightest possible drizzle, barely more than a fog. Welcome goose bumps popped to life on every inch of me.
“Okay,” she said at last. “I’ll ride along. Are you all right?”
“Getting there. I wasn’t thinking I would sleep so long, and—” I paused for a second, even though I’d already made the decision to come clean. “And I spaced our date. Last night wasn’t good.”
“You want to tell me about it?”
I had my face raised to the sky. Could practically feel my parched skin soaking in the water.
“We don’t know each other, not yet,” I said. “I’d like to get there. Loading you down with a lot of my baggage might not be the way to start.”
There was another pause. “I can stop just by hanging up. Hard to get safer than that.”
“You know about me tracing my mother, Moira. I found a guy, here in Seattle, who might be my father.”
“Oh. That’s loaded.”
“Yeah. He denies it, barely admits he ever knew Moira, but . . . it feels right. Which is the shitty part of the whole situation.”
“How?”
“He’s not one of the good guys. I don’t know what to call him; he might be a full-on psychopath. Last night was violent. He wasn’t coming after me but I saw up close what he was capable of. Sorry. I don’t know why I’m telling you this.”
“Because you need to tell somebody, and I’m almost a stranger. It’s easier,” she said, like the answer was obvious. “So now you know. What he is. And you never have to get near him again.”
I didn’t say anything.
“What?” Wren asked.
“I know him, yeah. I know part of him real well. The killing. Hard to keep him completely out of my life when that instinct is also a part of me.”
“Do you mean what you did in the Army?”
I was sharing a lot with Wren. More than I’d thought I could. But there had to be a line.
“Right,” I said, and I hated myself a little for it.
“Is . . . Is there somebody you talk to about that? Your time overseas? I know just enough to know when I’m over my head.”
“There’s a shrink I saw for a while. And I’ve talked with brothers from the regiment. But this—” I wasn’t finding the right words. Maybe there weren’t any, if I couldn’t go all the way. “This is just new to me.”
“You noticed what you and this man had in common. You must have differences, too.”
“Yes. Hey, I learned something about Moira. She was taking college classes. In social work, maybe toward a job with kids in juvie or foster care.”
“That’s great.” She sounded enthused. Or relieved that our conversation was on a more positive beat. “Did you know she had an interest in that?”
“I didn’t know anything about her as an adult.” And this might be all I’d ever learn. “It seems to fit. She was stubborn enough for the job.”
“A trait she clearly passed on.” I could hear Wren’s smile.
“Thanks for not hanging up. If I can push my luck, can we try again?”
“I’m free Tuesday.”
“I’ll set an alarm this time.”
“Damn right.”
I kept the speedboat stocked with spare clothes and other essentials. Including ammunition of various calibers and a Colt Commander automatic I’d taken off a guy less trained and less restrained in proper handgun usage than me.
Liashko thought I was dead. That didn’t mean I was safe. I clipped the holster to the back of my waistband and wore a heavy flannel shirt like a coat to conceal the weapon.
I was starved. The diner on Seaview might still be open, or I could hit Oaxaca in Ballard. My appetite could conquer an entire platter of pork with mole sauce, and beer.
But the cabin lights of the Francesca beckoned first. I wolfed a protein bar to keep my stomach from eating my liver and jogged over.
“Any word on the ship?” I said to Hollis from the dock.
“Ukrainian, you told me. I’ve checked with two different fellows who might know. They say the same: there are no Ukrainian vessels currently at port anywhere in Seattle.”
“Dammit.”
“Hold on, now. I’m warming up. There’s a Moldovan freighter traveling under a Belize flag of convenience moored on the same stretch of shore you indicated. The Oxana M.”
“Moldova is next to the Ukraine.”
“That much I knew. The name of the home port is beyond my ken. Gweer-goo-lesti?”
“Giurgiulești.”
“Impressive. I expect the Army briefed you lads on all manner of fun places you might see. The ship sailed from Jeer-whatever the long way, out through the Black Sea and the Mediterranean, across the Atlantic, through the Canal, and back up again. Taking short-hop jobs as they went, as most of these small cargo freighters do.”
“Any chance you can get your hands on the Oxana M’s cargo manifest?”
“A good chance, but that will be a long list. She’s not a big ship, as they go. A hundred meters or so in length, no more than thirty thousand deadweight tonnes in her belly.”
“All right, I get your point.” It would take me half a week to search the Oxana M’s holds, even if I could do it in broad daylight. “Let’s look at the manifest. Maybe lightning will strike.”
As if in answer, my phone buzzed on Hollis’s table. An incoming video call from a blocked number. An instant later, Aura Nath’s face appeared on the screen.
We both stared at it. How the hell—?
I stopped my own thought; the answer was obvious: Aura and Bilal had an unsettling amount of tech wizardry. Of course they might be able to jack my phone’s controls.
“Are you there?” she said, looking into the lens. From our side, all she might see was the ceiling of the Francesca’s cabin.
“What is it?” I said, picking up the phone.
“Thank God.” Aura spoke softly. “I don’t have much time. Saleem is missing. I think he might be coming after you.”
Hollis and I exchanged a look.
“Why would your man do that,” I said, “unless Bilal ordered him to?”
“No. Just the opposite.” Aura’s words came rushing one upon another. “Bilal and Saleem argued on our flight back to Miami. We told Saleem that we had what we needed now. Our time in Seattle is done. But Saleem insisted that you were an unacceptable risk, that you knew too much about us. He wanted to return. Bilal refused. Saleem became furious. I’ve never seen him like this. He’s never challenged Bilal this way.”
I remembered Saleem’s maddened eyes when I dropped his hog-tied body onto the deck outside Ceres.
“And he left?” Hollis asked.
“Sometime during the night. He took Juwad’s gun and some clothes.”
Neither Hollis nor I said anything. I was wondering whether this could be some ploy. But even if Bilal and Aura had decided to renege on our deal, and risk their secrets coming to light, why warn me that their vicious servant was on his way to kill me?
Aura spoke again, maybe thinking we were still unconvinced. “Saleem left his phone behind. He probably expects we might track him that way.”
“If he took the gun,” I said, half to myself, “he must not be planning to fly. Does Saleem have a car?”
“Not one of his own. I suppose he could steal one.”
A foreign visitor driving a stolen car across the continental U.S. I suspected Saleem was smarter than to try that.
“Does he know anyone in the States? Someone who could provide him with transport?”
Aura considered it. “He has relatives in New Jersey. Middlesex, I think.”
Too far to drive down and pick up Saleem in Florida. But it was a place to start.
“Check them,” I said. “Their accounts, their phones, whatever you can hack into. Do it fast. And anyone else Saleem might rely on.”
She hesitated. “Bilal doesn’t know I’m telling you this. He would—are you still there?”
My image had disappeared because I’d switched to a different app, to send something to Aura. I heard her phone beep as it arrived.
“What’s this?” she asked.
“Who,” I corrected. “Cyndra. She’s one of the people Bilal threatened the first night I met you.”
Aura was quiet. I switched back to the phone app and saw her staring, absorbed in the short clip Cyn had taken of herself, lifting weights and waving at the camera with that half-abashed, half-cocky grin on her face.
I leaned closer to the camera. “Saleem knows where this girl lives. She’s what’s at stake.”
“I understand,” Aura said.
“Find a way to find Saleem or everyone loses.”
“Yes,” she said again. “I’ll make it happen.”
She ended the call.
“We’re a long way from Miami,” Hollis said. “You sure Saleem is coming?”
I nodded. His eyes had told me. Too many humiliations for the volatile gunman. First his boss marrying Aura and having to take orders from her. Then Bilal choosing me to break into the biotech firm instead of trusting the job to his right-hand man. And the cherry on top: my knocking him cold and tying him like a rodeo calf in the cryobank. I could imagine all of those events fueling Saleem’s resentful fire.
What did he know about me, besides where Addy’s house was? He’d seen the Francesca, though without access to Aura’s magic tablet he likely didn’t know where it was moored. He may have seen the address of Bully Betty’s where I worked. But Addy was the likeliest tack. Even if Saleem didn’t find me there, he could still make good use of a hostage or two.
“That was a nice trick,” Hollis said, tapping my phone and the video playing on repeat. The clip of Cyn deadlifting the barbell, setting it down, saluting ironically, over and over. “Showing her the girl. The soft touch, instead of pressuring her.”
“It wasn’t a trick,” I said.
Aura understood my desperation to protect Cyn. She’d lived with that feeling for weeks while her unborn children had been used as collateral. First by her ex-husband and then by me. Now that our fortunes had reversed, an appeal to her empathy was my best shot at stopping Saleem.
And in case that went sideways, I had to get Addy and Cyn out of the line of fire. For the second time in a week.
Shit, Addy was going to eviscerate me.