Chapter 3
three
The Merciless
“Can’t we leave her tied up in here while we got grab a few beers?” asks one of the men in the van. We’ve been driving all day, and my shoulder hurts so bad it’s all I can do not to whimper. It takes every ounce of willpower to stay still, not give anything away.
“You don’t stop running when you’re one step from the finish line, do you?” says Mr. Sincero—or Julian, as I’ve decided to call him. That’s his name, after all. He deserves no title of respect.
“Fine, but I’m coming back across as soon as we drop her off,” mutters the younger Sincero, the one they call Leo. He climbs out of the van and slams the passenger door unnecessarily hard.
The last guy, Curtis, grumbles under his breath, but he doesn’t dare stand up to the two Sincero brothers.
He sits in the back, guarding me, and on occasion, feeding me pills that make me so drowsy I can’t physically keep my eyes open.
Apparently they didn’t like the side effects of whatever Julian gave me, which made me so dizzy I instantly vomited all over the floor the moment I woke up.
Since then, they’ve decided that pills sedate me well enough.
That works for me, since I was able to spit out the last one Curtis gave me without him noticing, hence being awake right now.
I’m not sure where we are or how much time has passed.
I woke in a groggy fever dream at least half a dozen times, so I’m guessing it’s been a few days, but I have no way to know.
They haven’t taken me out of the van except to drag me into sketchy motel rooms each night, and to use outdoor restrooms on the back of gas stations, something I rarely see at home, but that they seem to find with ease.
Now that my head is clear, the reason behind their knowledge chills me to the bone.
They’ve either mapped out and heavily researched the route ahead of time, or more likely, this is a familiar journey for them.
After all, one of the Sincero boys told me as much himself when I confronted him.
I can’t be the first—or second—girl they’ve taken.
But I can be the last.
I’m so startled when the van door rolls open that I flinch when evening sunlight hits me straight in the face.
They’ve never woken me before. Only when I wake and beg for a restroom do they reluctantly stop at the next sketchy outdoor restroom.
Once, they even made me pee in the bushes beside the road when they didn’t have a favorite stop close.
But I haven’t drank enough water to make frequent stops a problem.
I haven’t eaten, either, which is a big problem.
There are three of them, and one of me, and I’m hardly in prime fighting condition. Still, I have my wits about me. I sit up, blinking sleepily, playing into the weakness by letting my arm shake badly when I prop myself up.
“Where are we?” I ask, wiping at my cheek with the back of my hand and squinting up at Leo, who stands silhouetted in the doorway by the long rays of sunlight.
“We’re in Havoc Harbor,” he says. “Almost to your new home, sweetheart.”
“Don’t tell her that,” Julian snaps, appearing behind him.
“Why, you think she’s going to be writing postcards home to mommy?” Leo asks, his tone mocking. “She’s never leaving. Salem said her parents don’t even want her.”
The gut-punch only reminds me of my gnawing hunger. I try to calculate my chances. Adrenaline can give me a burst, but I can’t run far before weakness will take over. I need to find a place to hide. And eat.
I squint into the sun, looking around at the shabby buildings that stretch along an unlined, narrow road with more potholes and patches than the original asphalt that shows through.
On the other side of the road, besides the large parking area where we’ve joined a few dozen other vehicles, a bunch of docks sit in the water, most with boats bobbing in the water next to them.
The air is cold but thick with moisture and the salty scent of rotting fish and sea.
“Havoc Harbor?” I ask, shaking my head in confusion. “Where’s that?”
“Don’t worry about it,” Julian says. “Get out of the van. Act normal, or you’ll pay for it when we get there.”
“Where are we going?” I ask, climbing clumsily from the van. My muscles are knotted, my neck is stiff, and my whole body hurts from lying on the floor for most of the past few days, or however long it’s been.
“Just walk,” Julian orders, nodding toward the boats.
Leo’s words roll back into my mind. “I’m coming back over as soon as we drop her off.”
They must be taking me somewhere in the boat, though I can’t see anything when I look out over the endless water.
The sun is going down over the land side, not the ocean, and it’s too cold to be Mexico, so I’m guessing we’re somewhere on the east coast. They couldn’t have taken me into Canada without going through customs, and I’m sure seeing a girl passed out on the floor of the van would have raised suspicions, so I think we’re still in the U.S.
My heart is hammering, my legs trembling as we start across the parking lot, crushed oyster shells crunching underfoot.
Julian walks in front, and Leo walks behind.
Curtis leaves the van and catches up with us at the edge of the lot.
I glance around, searching for help, but the only people I see are a couple fishermen in waders pulling up their catch from a fishing boat at the far end of the docks.
I doubt they could even hear me over the small waves jostling the boats, making them rock, the edges slapping down on the water with a hollow sound each time.
Across the road, I spot a few rough-looking men smoking outside a tavern.
I shiver, remembering what I found online when I started searching for information about trafficking after we talked to Maverick.
It said rates are highest in locations where the demographic is almost entirely men—places like truck stops, hunting camps, oil fields, motorcycle rallies.
Is that what this is? A town of rough, godless fishermen who view sex as a right and women not as wives but as objects upon which to expel their lust?
Please, God, be with me.
“Walk,” Leo growls behind me, giving me a little shove. I must have slowed, trying to find a way out before they get me on the boat. That seems like a very bad place to be. Once I’m on that, there’s no escape except the ocean. Just looking at it, I can tell its hypothermia-inducing.
Julian turns onto the wooden dock and starts out along it. My heart is hammering wildly, but I’m out of time. If I bolt right now, they’ll catch me. If I hit Julian from behind, Leo will hit me. I doubt anyone out here would do anything about it, if they even saw us. No one is paying us any mind.
Leo pushes me again, and then I’m on the wooden dock too, my feet moving along obediently.
My limbs are shaking wildly, though. I feel like I’m walking the plank, about to be dropped to my death.
We stop at a speedboat, and it roars to life before we’ve even stepped aboard.
Julian grips one of the creosote-stained posts on the edge of the dock and hops down into the small white boat.
The deck is narrow, the cabin dark inside.
I can just make out the guy at the helm behind the glass, a hulking, dark shape at the wheel.
Julian holds out a hand to help me down. He may have done this plenty, have his sea legs or whatever people say, but I haven’t. Jumping down from a dock into a boat doesn’t come natural to me. It’s my only chance.
I jump.
My body slams into Julian’s, knocking him backwards.
I wrap a leg around his, kicking the back of his knee so his leg folds.
When he starts to tumble backwards, his face frozen in surprise, I slam his head against the railing at the edge of the cabin as hard as I can.
He rolls away, groaning. I barely hear the shouts of the two on the dock, but then Leo lands in front of me, knees bent, absorbing the rocking of the boat while I sway clumsily.
“I’m sorry,” I blurt. “It was an accident. I thought he’d catch me. Please don’t hurt me!”
I blubber helplessly, motioning at the body like I’m horrified by the sight.
“Get inside,” Leo barks. “I’ll deal with it.”
“Okay,” I say, nodding tearfully. “I’m so sorry.”
I turn away like I’ll go into the cabin, then spin back just as Leo turns to check on his brother.
I slam the ball of my foot solidly into the back of his knee, making it buckle.
He crashes to his knees with a curse, and I dart forward, gripping my fist in my palm before bringing my elbow down in one sharp blow to the back of his neck.
He flops forward, his forehead bouncing off the edge of the boat before he crumples on top of his brother.
“What the fuck?” Curtis asks, backing away on the dock, looking freaked out.
I grab the edge of the dock, trying to heave myself up, but my strength is already flagging.
My arms shake wildly, and it takes three or four attempts before I scramble gracelessly onto the wooden planks.
I keep expecting Curtis to stomp my fingers or kick me in the face, knocking me back into the boat, but he’s turned and is hurrying away.
Out of breath, I stand and run down the dock, shoving him hard from behind.
He turns around, raising his hands. “Now, listen,” he says, backing up a step.
“I’ve never hit a girl, so don’t make me start now. ”
“But you have no problem with selling them?” I challenge, advancing.
When he steps back again, I see my way out.
“I’m just the delivery driver,” he says. “You don’t blame the post office for delivering bad news in the mail, do you?”
I keep backing him up the dock toward the road, steering him slightly with each step, not enough for him to notice, but enough to get him to the edge of the sturdy construction.
I’d rather he was going out toward deeper water, but there’s no way I could steer him in a circle.
He obviously wants to hightail it back to the van, not jump in the ocean.
He may be relatively unimportant to the Disciples and infuriatingly stubborn about seeing his part in the trafficking operation, but he’s not that stupid.
He finally glances back, seeing how close he is to the edge of the dock, though.
In that moment, I lunge. He starts to fall backwards, but instead of pinwheeling his arms and giving me a chance to take his feet out from under him, he throws his arms around me in a bearhug, like I’m one of the support posts.
Even on my strongest day, I couldn’t counterbalance his weight, and my energy has been sapped already.
We both tumble into the debris at the edge of the lapping water—sticks and seafoam and seaweed and a few pieces of trash.
The water is shockingly cold, even colder than I expected.
I land on top of the sizeable guy with his arms around me, which keeps me from being completely submerged, but he doesn’t get so lucky.
His eyes and mouth open wide with shock a split second before they disappear under the water.
I grab his neck, shoving him deeper, trying not to gag when I see a dead fish bobbing in the cloudy water around us.
Curtis thrashes for a minute, his arms churning in the water, trying to find purchase, to come up.
My brain seems to recede like a tide, and all I can focus on is avoiding his arms. I know he’s stronger than me, that he’ll grab me any moment and dunk me under, hold me down until I’m forced to inhale water and drown.
My only hope is to make him do it first.
I remember distantly my horror that the girl who stabbed me at the Slaughterpen was killed. It seemed so barbaric at the time. But now, it seems like the only choice—me or him.
His body scissors, and his head pops up, water streaming from it, his eyes huge and his beard soaked and his lips already turning blue.
He’s choking, having inhaled water. But not enough.
I see that, see that there’s no way I’m going to be able to wrestle his head back underwater, hold him long enough to drown.
In one flash, I realize I’m about to die.
Then something sharp pierces the back of my neck.
I reach back and swat it automatically, as if it’s a wasp stinging me.
My fingers knock a dart free. I look up and see a huge, muscled bald man crouching on the dock above us.
He grins, his mouth full of gold teeth. That’s the last thing I see before I fall forward into the water.
A sliver of consciousness remains, though, feels him catch my hair and drag me up.
The dull pain throbs through me when he lifts me, and then the world swims sickeningly as he throws me over his shoulder and starts walking.