Chapter 11: Two O'Clock
The cabin clock clicked to 2:00 and the door opened without a knock.
I had been lying on my side with the phone flat against my chest, screen down, its charge light burning warm through my camisole. I kept my breathing slow the way I'd practiced for the last hour, in through my nose, out through my mouth, letting my eyelids stay heavy. The warm tungsten light from the corridor fell across the bed in a thin bar. I didn't move.
Adrian came in first. I smelled his cologne before I saw him, then the faint clink of his silver watch against the doorframe. A second set of footsteps followed, heavier, rubber soles on the wood. The accomplice. I kept my eyes cracked just enough to see.
"Today at 2:00 AM, we will take it out," Adrian said, his voice low and calm, like he was confirming a schedule. "Just like we planned. She's out."
He wasn't talking to me. The accomplice nodded. He was younger, in a dark crew shirt, a deckhand's cap pulled low. He didn't look at my face.
Adrian moved to the bed and pulled the blanket up around me, tucking it under my shoulders with careful, husband-like care. His hand brushed my hair back from my cheek. I stayed limp. I let my head loll when he lifted my shoulders, let my arm fall dead against his forearm. My heart was hammering so hard I was sure he could feel it through the blanket, but his hands were steady.
"Help me with her legs," he said.
The accomplice stepped to the foot of the bed and took the other end of the blanket, making a sling. They lifted together. My body rose a few inches off the mattress. The phone shifted between my chest and the blanket and I held my breath to keep it pinned.
I had set the alarm for 2:01 before I'd closed my eyes. I felt the first faint vibration against my ribs, a soft buzz I had muffled with a sock but left loud enough to carry in the quiet cabin.
Adrian frowned. "What was that?"
The vibration came again, then the screen lit. Even through the fabric and blanket, a green-white glow bled out across my chest. At the same instant the voice recorder I'd left running on the phone began to play back at full volume, his own voice from earlier that night repeating back at him from under the blanket.
"Drink it, my love, so you can sleep peacefully."
Adrian flinched. His grip loosened. The accomplice jerked back, blinking at the light coming from my chest.
I opened my eyes.
I didn't scream. I drove my elbow into Adrian's forearm and rolled hard off the blanket onto the bed, scrambling to my knees. The phone tumbled onto the sheets, screen bright, recording light solid red. I snatched it with one hand and with the other I opened my palm.
The two white scored pills were still there, a little damp from sweat, the line across each one clean in the cabin light.
"I never swallowed them," I said. My voice shook but I got it out. "I never did."
Adrian stared at my palm. His calm cracked for the first time that night. His jaw tightened and color rose up his neck.
"You were supposed to be asleep," he said. Then, louder, to the deckhand, "Grab her."
The deckhand lunged for my wrist. I twisted away and his fingers caught only the edge of the blanket. I hit the floor on my bare feet, camisole tangled around my knees, and bolted for the corridor door. Behind me I heard Adrian's chair scrape, the glass of water from the nightstand shattering against the wall as he knocked it aside.
The recording was still going. The phone on the bed caught everything.
"You're not taking me out there," I shouted, backing toward the hall. "You said you were going to take me out. For the money. I heard you."
Adrian came at me fast, hands up like he could still smooth it over, still control it. "Mara, you don't understand what you're doing. You're confused from the pills—"
"I didn't take the pills!" I held my hand higher, pills pinched between my thumb and finger. "These are yours. Look at them."
He dropped the pretense. His voice went cold and flat. "You should have taken them. You should have slept. Now you're going to make this harder."
He grabbed for my arm and I wrenched toward the deck door at the end of the narrow corridor. It was locked from the inside, a brass slide bolt I had seen him lock during my earlier attempt. I slammed my palm against it, fingers fumbling, while the accomplice crowded behind Adrian, blocking the way back to the cabin.
Adrian's hand closed around my wrist, the one holding the pills, and squeezed. "Give those to me."
I ground my teeth and shoved the phone on the bed behind me with my free hand, making sure its microphone faced us. The red light blinked.
May you like
"Say it again," I breathed. "Say what you were going to do at 2:00 AM. It's listening."
He didn't answer with words at first. He yanked me toward him, away from the deck door, trying to drag me back into the cabin. I dug my heels into the carpet, grabbed the door handle with my other hand, and held on. The metal bolt rattled but didn't give. We were locked in that narrow hallway, his watch glinting, my palm open with the two white tablets still visible, the phone recording every breath and threat between us, and the deck still just out of reach on the other side of the door.
