Page 26 of Mayflower

“Is the port an option?” Ali asks during one of our conversations about the possible escape from Port Mrei.

“I don’t think so. It’s under lockdown. Probably more under Butcher’s surveillance than Ayana’s.”

“We can leave the way we came,” Ali suggests. “Or at least try.”

I mull over the idea. “Try is a bad option. We don’t have any weapons. That’s taking a fifty-fifty chance of being shot.”

“What else?”

“Get a satellite phone.”

“Where?”

“Right. Where… With you shooting those guys, we might’ve put ourselves on the top of Port Mrei’s most wanted.”

I chuckle as I catch the small ball one of the girls throws me and toss it to another.

Ali stares at me with a clear indication there’s something bothering him.

I give him a backward nod. “Spill.”

“About those men,” he says. “I got there a little late when they got you and Maddy. And I couldn’t take a chance of being spotted. So, I didn’t get in the trees. I stayed in the bushes.”

“Okay?”

“I don’t usually miss. But I think I shot Skiba in the shoulder. I think he was moving when we were leaving.”

There’s nothing worse than knowing that your worst enemy got away. No, it’s not Butcher anymore. It’s fucking Skiba, the guy who dared touch my Maddy. Who set his filthy eyes on her and dared even imagine a sick scenario of doing things to her in his head.

Hatred takes root in my mind, then spreads like thick tar through my entire body, making me want to claw at myself from the inability to do anything about him.

If my main goal a week ago was to return to Ayana, it has changed.

Ali sees it on my face. I’m not even trying to hide the spite for the guy who once was my trusted man.

“I’m sorry,” Ali says. “It’s unfortunate.”

“It is. And I have to finish it.”

“Bad idea.”

“Dangerous.”

“It can wait.”

I shake my head. “It can’t.”

“You can’t do anything without weapons.”

“True. So, I need weapons.”

And that’s one of the agendas when Candy comes in later tonight. She brings another book for the girls. There’s another young woman with her, in her mid-twenties, wearing jeans and a long-sleeved button up, hair tied in a ponytail. Young, pretty, but seemingly exhausted.

“One of the little ones is hers,” Candy says, then notices my suspicious stare. “She is good. Won’t say a word.”

It’s only a little reassuring, because no one is safe, and everyone talks under pressure.

The woman sinks onto the floor where the girls sit together reading and cuddles one of the girls, then all of them, and reads a book to them while we have a conversation with Candy.

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