“I should know the name of my abductor.” I add a steely edge to my voice, hoping to evoke a reaction from him.
“No,” he says, his voice clipped. “You’re not in a position to make demands.”
“I’m sorry, but…I don’t…I don’t understand.”
“You’re not supposed to.” He cocks his head. “Isn’t that the way this works?”
“Maybe…yes?” My voice breaks. I try hard to keep the tears locked in. “But don’t you get it? This…this is wrong. I shouldn’t be here in this filthy place. This is all just one big misunderstanding. I don’t even know you. I don’t know why I’m here.”
“You saw something you shouldn’t have.”
I try to laugh, but it comes out sounding like a strangled cough. “The docks? Seagulls? A line of yachts in a quiet night? Are those the things you’re referring to? If not, I saw nothing. Your secret is safe with me.”
His eyes grow hard and his gaze narrows. “Tell me, who sent you?”
I nearly choke on my words. “Whosentme? Who sent me to dowhat?”
“Don’t play dumb, girl. TheMona.Who sent you? How did you know we were going to be there at that exact time?”
“I swear, I didn’t know.” I don’t bother hiding the fear in my voice. It finds its way out, as well as the tears dropping down my cheeks. “This is a misunderstanding.”
“Lies!” His voice thunders off the walls as he leans forward, his eyes burning with irritation. “Tell me, was it Vasili?”
The switch of his tone throws me off guard, and I’m shaking like a leaf when I clasp my hands together before him. But he doesn’t seem fazed, even in the slightest.
“I don’t…” I heave, sniffling through tears. “I swear I don’t know who that is. No one sent me. I work there, at the Miami Marina. My name’s Elena Clark, and I’m a yacht charter manager. You can run my name through any database. I promise it’ll check out.”
“Doesn’t mean shit,” he clips out icily. “You could be a spy. A terrible one, at that.”
I try to speak again, but I’m fighting to breathe between sobs. I sneak one hand across my chest, clutching the knitted sweater tightly. It’s the only reminder I have right now of home, and the thought makes the tightness in my chest a thousand times worse.
By the time I look back up, my face is drenched in tears. “I don’t know what to say. I’ve lost everything, including my phone and the tablet. I don’t have any other evidence to prove that I wasn’t sent there as a spy.”
“Then what do you want me to believe? That you just happened to be taking a stroll down the dock at almost midnight? What a coincidence.”
“No.” I shake my head frantically. “I have a colleague. His name is Henry. He received a call from the office requesting an urgent inspection at the docks. He couldn’t make it because of an emergency, so he called in a favor from me. That’s the truth.”
He strokes his jaw, eyes going from hot to cold with a scary precision. “Very convenient story, if you ask me. And it doesn’t change anything.”
I bite down hard on my lip. It doesn’t help that the man is built like a wall of bricks, tough and impenetrable. If emotions won’t help, perhaps logic might.
“I have a family,” I start. “Parents and friends who’ll be out there looking for me. I need to leave this place. I can’t stay here.”
“You weren’t given an option.”
Monster!I want to yell.
I want to claw at his chest and punch hard him until he’s out of breath like I am. I want to pull at something,anything,until I’m no longer wallowing in this dreadful feeling.
The words rip from my throat before I can stop them, raw and scraping, sounding like a stranger’s voice. “Please, I won’t say anything,” I sob, my hands shaking so violently I have to press them against my knees just to keep from falling apart. “I swear to God, I won’t tell anyone. The docks, the crates, the packages…I didn’t see anything. I was never there.”
I just want to go home.
I want the mundane, boring safety of my bedroom. I want the morning light filtering through my blinds, the smell of burnt toast in the kitchen, the stupid, beautiful simplicity of my life before I went to work last night. I just want to wake up from this nightmare.
“Please,” I beg, the word catching on a jagged breath as I look up at him through a blur of stinging tears. “Please, just let me go. I’ll forget everything and disappear.”
“One of my men thinks you deserve two bullets for snooping around.”
