Page 89 of The Devil's Daughter

“I know what we need to do,” Ben says. “Drake, help me get the body downstairs to the swim deck. This is going to be bloody, and we don’t want to have to do much cleanup. Elle, you get Baz to the med bay and stitch him up. Captain, can you find us some sharks? His isn’t the only body we need to dispose of.”

Theo nods sagely, then tilts his head toward the window and the other yacht moored alongside us. “What about the other boat? We leave it anchored out here, someone’s bound to find it and start asking questions.”

I usher Baz out before I can hear the gritty details of their plans for the corpses littering the boat. But not everyone is dead; we pass at least one unconscious man on the way to the med bay who still looks like he’s breathing.

My nerves are shot when we enter the med bay and shut the door behind us, wishing I could shut out the knowledge of what the guys are about to do. Rifling through the cabinets to find the suture kits, I realize my hands are shaking. Soon my vision goes blurry too. When Baz wraps his big hands around mine, I nearly lose it.

“Hey. Come here,” he says, pulling me close. “It’s okay now. We’re all okay.”

“No it isn’t! We’re killing people!”

“People who would’ve killed us without a thought. Like it or not, this is our life, Elle. But Ben and I are going to do everything in our power to protect you from the worst of it, I promise.”

He tugs me across the room, where he pulls me down onto the sole exam table and wraps his arms around me.

“I was afraid I lost you,” I say, sniffling into his chest as I slide my arm around his torso. He winces, and I pull back. “You need to be stitched.”

I try to rise again, but he holds me tight. “What I need is to hold you right now. I was afraid I lost you too. And Ben. And hell, even Drake. The guy has kind of grown on me.”

“We survived.”

“That we did.”

We lie there for several minutes, and he strokes my back until the shaking subsides and I feel like my hands are steady enough to stitch his wound. I find the suture kit and generously cleanse his wound with hydrogen peroxide, then begin to stitch it closed.

When I’m finished and taping a fresh bandage over the wound, I ask, “What do you think they’re going to do with the bodies? And the other boat?”

“If it were me, I’d kill two birds with one stone—put the bodies on the boat and blow it up.”

Sure enough, when we emerge onto the main deck again, we find Drake and Ben carrying bodies over a gangway between the two boats. The chef and his wife look on, neither one batting an eye, though both look like they’ve been through the wringer, despite having no visible marks on them.

Theo emerges from somewhere inside the other boat with a thumbs up. “Engines are rigged to blow when they overheat. There’s enough fuel down there to keep things burning good and hot for a while. Whatever bodies aren’t burnt to a crisp, the sharks’ll take care of.”

I can’t quite believe what I’m witnessing, but I’m also relieved Ben and Baz know what they’re doing, and that Drake’s crew doesn’t seem to care.

With the bodies finally cleared out, the last step is for Theo to drive the boat several miles out to sea, then set a course to keep it going with the engines pushing into the red so they’re hot enough to ignite the fuel. We remain on deck, waiting, while he does what he needs to do. We catch sight of him in the little inflated lifeboat heading our way when the rumble of an explosion echoes across the water, followed by a flash of bright orange fire. It’s still pitch black out, so we can’t see the smoke, but the flames burn brightly for about an hour before they start to fade.

The seven of us watch the macabre sight for several minutes before the chef—whose name I finally learned is Henry, and whose wife’s name is Patrice—slaps his hands on the rail and announces he’s going to go start breakfast.

Both Baz and Ben try to stop him, but he’s insistent, and we wind up trailing after him when the twins give chase, issuing with more vague warnings about not going into the kitchen just yet.

I can’t imagine he’d be squeamish about a little blood after watching bodies being disposed of for an hour, so I don’t know why Ben and Baz are so adamant. Not until we get to the kitchen and he opens the fridge.

He stares inside for a beat at the disembodied head wrapped in plastic resting on the top shelf. Miles Sitnik’s dead eyes stare back at us, and I cover my mouth.

“Oh my god,” I whisper. “You didn’t…”

Henry takes a deep breath through his nose, tuts softly, and reaches for the head. “This won’t do. It must befrozen,if you want it to keep.”

46

Drake

Despite the possibilityof Gustavo retaliating, we feel freer than we have in ages. We dock in Seattle for a couple days to do some minor repairs, refuel, and restock. Ben also takes the opportunity to mail his special package to its rightful owners. We had to bring Elle’s brother Mason in on the plan, since he’s the one with ties to the intelligence community, and he managed to get us a viable address, and since I own the shipping company we’re using to send the package, we’ll have no issues with customs.

So Miles’ remains thatweren’tburned on the boat… that is to say, his head … is now packed in dry ice and wrapped up tight in a cooler flying express all the way to Serbia. There’s no note, but we figure the row of tiny skull-shaped indentations Delgado left on the man’s temple will speak for themselves. Any medical examiner worth his degree will be able to tell the cause of death without seeing the rest of his body.

Mason also informs us that with Gustavo cutting ties to Amador, there’s no longer any danger to Elle or her sisters. Gustavo was only a threat to them while he worked for Amador, and Amador’s next in command is on our side, so even if he was ordered to go after any of Arturo’s daughters, he would never actually follow through.

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