Page 49 of Cruel Dreams

“You know her?” I ask.

“Yeah. She works in Ash’s escort service. I danced at the club, and she was always hanging around. She’s the mayor’s favorite whore, and she was Zane’s number one after you took off.”

“I know.” It breaks my heart Zane started sleeping with her, but it helps knowing she had no choice. Ash was probably using her to keep tabs on Zane...to keep him in line, distracted him so he wouldn’t visit Zarah.

Maybe Nathalie didn’t love Zane. I would like that very much.

“No one has to put up with her anymore.” Quinn speaks for the first time. “She’s dead.”

“Good riddance,” a young girl says. It sounds like she has a cold, but it’s no mystery why. Her nose is broken and blood is crusted above her lip. Her eyes have turned a deep purple that matches the cocktail dress she’s wearing.

I want to ask what happened to her, but the blonde holding the flashlight says, “Ash took a chance dumping you in here. Noone cares about any of us. We’ve been hooking and dancing for years, but you’ll have someone looking for you.”

I shake my head, and the fire, the hope, dies in the blonde’s eyes.

“I’m sorry,” I say softly. “Nathalie was with us, and she fixed it so no one will know we’re missing until morning. Maybe later.”

The blonde latches on to that. “But someonewilllook for you.”

“We have people,” Quinn says, tightening her grip on me, “but Stella’s right. They might not realize we didn’t come back until morning, and Zane won’t have anyone to ask what happened to us. There’s no way Ash would say anything, and Nathalie’s dead.”

The blonde lets out a sigh. “It’s more than any of us had ten minutes ago. I’m Tana, and that’s Hazel,” she says, gesturing to the girl whose nose is broken. “I wish we were meeting under better circumstances.”

Quinn and I fill Tana in on what we’ve dug up on Ash and Clayton, all the way back to the plane crash. By the time we’re done, I’m wiggling in discomfort. “How do you go to the bathroom?”

Tana shines the light on a row of buckets. Toilet seats are attached to the tops. “These were already in here. I don’t know what we’ll do after they fill up or we use all the toilet paper.”

The odors plug up my nose. Urine, feces, and fear. Ash is selling us. God knows how many days we’ll be on the water.

My ankle aches, and Quinn helps me hobble to the makeshift toilets. I don’t care I have to pee in front of everyone. This is no time for modesty. She tugs my panties down because I think my wrist is broken and I can’t do it myself.

Dirt cakes the bottom of the container, but there’s no indication what was stored in here before. Maybe more girls, more women who were no longer of use to Ash. I sit next toQuinn, our backs against the wall. I can’t undo the buckles of my heels, and I ask her to take them off. Immediately, my feet feel better, but it’s a small consolation.

Some of the girls crowd around us, but there are a few who are too sick or injured to care. One woman has a split lip and it won’t stop bleeding without stitches. Another is sick with the flu, and she has a dangerously high fever. A younger girl who’s pregnant is suffering from severe morning sickness, and in the corner, she lays on her side, her body wrapped around an ice cream pail someone so courteously gave her to throw up in. She moans, and my heart aches for her and her baby.

No one has fed them or given them water.

“We’re going to get out of this,” Quinn says, smoothing her hand up and down my arm. “Zane loves you so much. The minute he realizes you didn’t go back to the hotel, he’ll search for you. He’ll move heaven and earth to find you, Stella.”

I’m about to say I hope so, but we lurch ever so slightly and Tana gasps.

We’re moving.

I doze against Quinn.

There’s an expectation in the air, like we’ll be rescued soon. They need something to hang on to, and I don’t say anything to dampen their spirits.

It’s impossible to keep track of the hours that go by. No one has a phone. The only indication of time passing is watching the sun through a small, rusted hole in the wall. There’s a light glimmer in the sky—the sun will rise soon. The last thing I told Zane was to bring Zarah back to the penthouse. They could sleep late and have brunch. Read the paper. He could even go to workfor a couple of hours. It will be late afternoon before anyone realizes Quinn and I aren’t in our room at the Crowne. Then what? We’re on a cargo ship that looks like a million others.

Maybe other containers hold more girls.

I’ve gotten used to the lack of light, but there’s nowhere to go and nothing to see. As long as Quinn doesn’t leave me, I’ll feel safe. Tana guards the only flashlight, and she rarely turns on the beam. They weren’t given extra batteries, and the only time she flicks it on is when someone needs to use the toilet.

A teenaged girl scoots close to us, and she explains she’s a runaway. Ash helped her, giving her a job waiting tables at Ladies and Gentlemen, but he turned nasty when he wanted her to start working in his escort service because one of the wealthy regulars had grown attached to her and she said no.

She threatened to go to the cops and ended up here.

“You’re lucky nothing else happened,” I murmur. “Ash knows how to make people disappear, for good.”

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