Page 97 of The Meaning Of You

Voices filtered down from above but they sounded relaxed. A clink of glasses accompanied by laughter.

I went to the door of the next cabin and pressed on the handle. It didn’t move. I tried again, adding my shoulder to force it open, but still nothing.

Shit.

“Who’s there?” a man whisper-shouted from inside the room.

“Madigan Church,” I whispered back, still working the handle.

“It’s locked,” he said.

I swore under my breath, then studied the door, but the hinges were on the inside. “Who are you?”

He hesitated before answering, “Lee Shepherd.”

I shuffled through the names in my head, figuring Lee had to be the new name, which meant the old name was—“Graham Cunningham?”

There was a long beat of silence followed by, “How in the hell do you know that?” He sounded frightened. He also had an Australian accent.

“Later. Let’s get out of here first. Hang on while I go look for something to open this door.”

“Do I have a choice?”

I smiled at the quip, then made my way up the short corridor toward what looked like a galley at the end. I’d no sooner stepped inside when footsteps hit the stairwell and the two men arrived back in the hall. I pressed flat against the wall, praying hard they weren’t coming for me cos there was nowhere to hide.

“...Bali instead,” the big guy said as the two men turned away from the kitchen toward the cabins. “Plenty of cheap villasand cheaper women.” He made a lewd sound, then laughed. “We fucking earned it after all these months.”

“And the rest,” the second man replied. “Remember that tiny hotel on the beach with the tittie bar next door? Best time of my life.”

They laughed, and just like that a name popped into my brain. Tobin. One of the nurses at Golden Oaks. What the actual fuck? I risked a peek and saw them standing outside Lee’s cabin. The larger man worked a key into the lock and they stepped inside.

Dammit.

I could only pray they hadn’t come to take Lee with them.

My prayer wasn’t answered.

After a lot of noise and kerfuffle—during which time I managed to find a knife and cut through the cable ties on my wrists—the men stepped back in the hallway. A soft hiccupping cry floated down the corridor and I recognised the tone. Lee. He was being pushed toward the stairs with his arms behind his back. With my back flat against the shadowed galley wall, I caught a glimpse of a slim man in his late twenties with dark shoulder-length hair, alabaster skin, and the fear of God in his eyes.

A rumble of shoes and bodies in the stairwell was followed by more footsteps on the floor above my head. The voices became distant, muffled, until they finally faded altogether.

And still, I didn’t move. Waiting. Waiting. But the inside of the boat remained silent.

It was time.

I sucked in a breath, left the relative safety of the galley, and carefully made my way up the stairs. I paused just before the top to get my bearings and check the saloon. It was empty. Through the windows, I could see it was night, which for some reason surprised me. Voices came from the stern of the boat, and whenI looked, I saw Tweedledum and Tweedledee talking to someone over the railing with their backs to me.

Keep moving. Keep moving.

I whipped across the saloon and through the open door onto the side deck. The boat was a good twenty or thirty metres and moored at the end of a jetty a long way from the cafés and service lights visible in the distance. The vessel moored alongside appeared empty, it’s cabin windows dark. Most of the others berthed along the jetty were the same, so there’d be no help there. Not to mention, it would be the first place they’d look. Not that the alternatives were any better. Jump in the water where I’d be a sitting duck or run for it down the well-lit jetty and also be a sitting duck.

I glanced over the side at the dark water, likely the best of a bad deal. The idea didn’t thrill me, but on the plus side, I’d be cooler than I’d been in days.

An engine fired up and I spun back toward the stern. A small craft was headed away from the boat and the man at the helm looked enormous. Instinct told me Lee was on board that craft which meant I needed to be gone as well.

I was making for the handrail to jump when a shout rang out from the back of the boat. The window next to my head exploded and,Jesus Christ, they were shooting at me. So much for swimming.

I circled around the bow to the other side and swung myself over the railing onto the pontoon. Shouts followed me over but I didn’t dare look. I sprinted toward the lights of the marina as fast as I could with my heart exploding in my chest.

---