Page 15 of Vicious Hearts

“Isn’t there anyone else on this boat?”

“There are about thirty staff and crew members,” he tells me, “Give or take a few.”

“Where are they?” I ask, looking around. I haven’t seen another soul aside from the chefs in the galley, and that was only because he took me there.

“They’re around. Present but unseen.”

The way he says this is ominous, probably meant to weave fear in me. And it does. Knowing that there are so many people here that can probably see me but who I can’t see. Thirty staff and crew. Thirty against one. I could die out here, be murdered and tossed to sea, and no one would see anything.

A slick shiver runs down the length of my spine. I don’t know that I’m hungry as much as I’m afraid.

12

CALEPH

“Why didn’t you just do the interview?” she asks, giving me an irritated look across the desk. She has a notepad and pen in front of her, but she hasn’t committed a single word to paper. I don’t know what her process is, but I’m assuming she knows what she’s doing if she was able to fluff her way through an article by mentioning, no less than four times, mind you, my unproven connection to the mafia.

“I don’t do interviews.”

“Yet here we are,” she snaps.

I regard her with steady eyes. I would’ve thought as a journalist that she’d be jumping to cover the scoop of a lifetime. Not this cookie. She’s fighting me at every turn.

When she’d argued she couldn’t just disappear for days while we conducted this exposé, I offered her a disposable phone to call her boss. Apparently, she’d just narrowly avoided getting fired before my article launched her into the stratosphere. Plus,MYarticle, the one she wrote to discredit me, I remind her, has opened a world of interviews with other publications, which she can’t just flake on.

“I read the work you did on that article with next tono information. What if I were to give you something so big, you’ll have publications bidding on you?”

Ariadne’s head snaps up in interest. She’s ambitious, if nothing else. And instinctively I understand that if there’s anyone that can convince the world of what I want to say, it’s her.

After she makes the call to her boss, we come back to my office and wait for dinner to arrive. I have every intention of completing this interview in as little time as possible, if only to be rid of her sooner rather than later. After she gets what she needs for a stellar interview and I hand her the evidence I need her to see, she’ll be on her merry way. She’ll publish the article and I’ll never have to deal with her again. For the time being, I have to treat her with kid gloves. She’s proving to be a handful with her petulance and snarky comebacks. It’s admirable for one reason only; I’ve never met a person who wasn’t terrified of me, but she seems to bend every rule as she gives as good as she gets.

“So… is there where you live?” she asks, looking around the office as she takes another bite of her pasta. The girl can eat.

“I live here and there.”

She gives me a look that tells me she’s fed up with my answers. I haven’t answered one single question straight; my answer is always vague and open-ended, and this seems to be annoying the hell out of her.

“What’s the point of me being here if you’re not going to answer my questions?” she asks. “I don’t want to be dissecting your words or guessing your truths."

She’s an angry little tyrant as she waves her fork around in the air, brandishing it like a weapon. Her angry grunt as she drops her fork with a clattering bang and sits back in her chair makes me smirk. The timid mouse is putting on a show for me, projecting her faux anger to show me she’s not afraid of me. I wait for her to pick up her fork again and watch her with unusual interest as she shovels another load of pasta into her mouth. When she lifts her head to look at me, her eyes are fire. They’re hazel and no matter her mood, they seem to always be ablaze with vitality.

“Why were you crying earlier?”

Her hand stops in midair and her lips part in surprise at my question. She’s surprised that I noticed, and even more shocked that I want to know.

“Because, asshole, your goons had kidnapped me off the street and stuffed me into a car…”

“You were crying before they picked you up. What happened today?”

I can’t even believe I’m asking this question. I’m usually not receptive to learning anything personal about others. Know no evil, fear no evil and all that.

“You’re the subject here, remember?”

* * *

When my phone rings,I excuse myself and stand in a corner away from her to take Seven’s call. We’ve made no progress on the interview, and I can feel the frustration seeping through her skin and pouring into the room around us.

“What have you got for me?” I ask him.

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