Page 108 of Golden Burn

I grab her shoulders. “Think harder!”

Dom intervenes, pushing me away. “She’s injured, Odin. Just back off.”

“Fuck!”I roar.

One of the crew strides past me. I grab his shoulder and hurl him toward me.

“Who was driving the rescue boats?”

He immediately starts jerking. “Bro. What the fuck. Let me go.”

I grab the gun from behind my back, the one I always bring with me when Etta and I are in public. I press it to his abdomen. “Tell me right now.” He peers down at the weapon I’ve got pointed at his belly. His face pales, eyes widening to saucers. As long as he answers me, he can vomit all he wants.

“Ah—ah. Terry, Ricko, Jeremy and the new guy. I don’t know his name. Today was his first shift. I didn’t even speak to him.”

“What did he look like?”

He closes his eyes, trying to remember. “Big guy. Black hair. He had a birthmark, no—a scar on his neck. Something bad. Black eyes. Mean looking. Terry said he was a bit of an asshole—”

I toss him aside, my mind reeling. Dom mutters apologies to the man while Ford comes to my side.

It can’t be real.

It can’t bereal.

Cerbera has taken Etta.

“You were right,” Ford says, his voice completely flat. Dejected.

I want to collapse to my knees.

Etta. Etta. Etta.

It’s happening again. My wife is in danger, and it’s all because of me.

Etta’s been missing for seven hours. Every second without her is harder than the last. I’m so close to setting fire to my skin in the hopes that the pain of the burn will dull the pain of imagining what Cerbera is doing to her.

Dom, Ford, and I are currently out at sea, hunkering down on the yacht Etta and I took to get to the island. I can’t go anywhere near the lounge where she fell asleep in my arms, wrapped in my suit jacket and her wedding dress. If I do, I’ll lose it.

We know for sure Cerbera took Etta. One eye witness remembered seeing a woman with short black hair slumped in a man’s arms. It appeared as though she had fainted and he was helping her, but he was wearing the crew’s uniform, so they didn’t question it.

Thankfully, Ford had been the one to find that piece of information. If it had been me, I would have crushed their necks for letting Etta out of their sight.

The camera footage from the night is so blurry it would take weeks to come through it all piece by piece. Dom is trying, anyway. But when all of our searching, questioning, hacking seem pointless, I decide we have to seek outside help.

“This isn’t a good time,” Martin says by way of answering my call.

“Neither was talking to me on my wedding day and calling me on my honeymoon, yet you did it, anyway.”

“Look, I can’t talk for long. I’ve been flagged. I need to lie low.”

“I don’t give a fuck. Cerbera has Etta, he’s taken her,” I say, my patience non-existent.

Martin sighs heavily. “I know.”

“You piece of shit,” I growl. “Tell me where she is.”

“I can’t give you the location because we are on the move. I’ll give you the boat’s identification number and you can track us from there.”

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