Page 34 of A Princess, Stolen
“How did you do it? How did you get free?” Nathan looked at me challengingly and I knew that his word counted the most.
“There was something in the wall, something hard! I cut the rope on it.”
“She lie,” Pan growled again.
“I no lie!” I said, and in my panic, I accidentally used his twisted grammar.
He immediately raised his fist threateningly. “You no make fun of my speech, prinsessa.”
Voices broke over me, literally flooding me. “We can’t let her go, boss!” “You have to tell Isaac!” “Pan is right, she’s lying, she’ll betray us as soon as she sets foot on land!” “Radio Isaac!”
I felt like the words were pushing me around like a punching bag even though I stood there stiffly with my arms raised.
“Throw overboard. She want go to trawler, she go to trawler. Cold like sea.”
“That’s not your decision,” Nathan snapped at Pan. He looked at me skeptically for a long, long time as if he wanted to find out something about me that had remained hidden from him until now. “If what you say is true, the room will no longer function as a cell. Okay…Pan and Troy—tie her directly to the bars until we figure out what to do with her.”
They silently took me to the cell and tied my hands to the bars with cable ties so that I stood there as if I was being crucified. I could see the corridor, but only one of the staircases. Obviously, I couldn’t get my ring bound in this manner and I was exhausted and dead tired because I had hardly slept for nights. Hungry, my stomach growled but I couldn’t have eaten anything. I felt like I did two years ago in the early stages of the worst flu. Sensitive to noise, light, and pain. My limbs were ponderous as if I had lead in my veins instead of blood. I was definitely in shock.
Reluctantly, I rested my forehead against the bars as scraps of words wafted down to me like a newspaper in a draft.Danger. Hampton’s daughter. Isaac. Plan. Biller-Miller-The-Killer.
Whoever that was, his nickname made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. I wondered why I hadn’t heard the men before, but I suspected it was because they were now standing near the stairs.
I felt as if I was waiting in a doctor’s office for a diagnosis of a potentially terminal illness. In my isolated life in New York, I had never felt real fear. My days consisted of flowers, painting, and movie nights with Penelope, and operas and concerts with Dad. None of it, aside from my nightmares, had been particularly exciting or stressful, so, at times, it had seemed as if my life lay behind a dreamy veil that separated good from evil. Dad had always protected me from the brutality of the world, but now I had landed in the middle of my—and his—personal hell.
The cutter’s engine hummed beneath my heavy feet, and every now and then, I heard the waves slapping against the hull, a sound that tormented me even more in my current state than before.
Realistically, they had three options. Option one was to kill me if Dad met their demands. Option two was that they did nothing, hoping I wouldn’t betray them, which was obviously an unlikely option. Option three was not to kill me, but not to release me either. But for how long?
The other problem was that they might say they would let me go in the end and then, one night, I would wake up with a cold gun barrel pressed against my temple just in time to hear the shot before my brain splattered against the walls like a splatter film.
What you did was basically suicide.
I swallowed the rising tears. Would Nathan recall that summer in Louisiana as he was deciding? About our danceamong the colorful shards. Or did he not care at all? Had I acted so carelessly because I naively believed that he would spare me because of our past no matter what I did? Obviously, I never meant the same to him as he did to me. While I associated him with freedom, he might have been busy planning my abduction. How paradoxical that was!
Footsteps on the stairs interrupted my thoughts and I tugged senselessly at my bonds, a silly, stupid survival reflex. But it wasn’t Nathan as I thought but Pan. And he was alone.
My pulse raced. I was certain he wouldn’t tell me what would happen to me. Nathan would whether he wanted to or not. Or had they sent Pan to do it right away? Was he the firing squad?
With my knees shaking, I watched him approach. He stopped in front of the bars, legs apart and arms crossed. My goodness, the man must have been nearly seven feet tall!
“Are you going to do it?” I could hardly breathe, I felt weak with fear, and even my bladder felt like it was about to fail me.
Pan stared at me with a disturbing intensity and then slowly shook his head. “The captain defend you like shot dog. What you do to him?”
I wondered if he meantgundogby shot dog, but didn’t ask because he might have strangled me with his bandana. He would have used everything I said against me anyway, so I kept quiet. But naturally, a murderous type like him wouldn’t let up.
He leaned down so close that his nose almost touched mine. I retreated as far as I could, but I still noticed the large pores on the bridge of his nose and his lower eyelashes, which were surprisingly thick. “What you do to him? I not know him like this. He always full of hatred for you, now all gone.”
The smell of onions and cheap tobacco would probably have knocked me over if I hadn’t been tied up. “How can you hate someone you don’t know?” I asked, perhaps because the feeling that Nathan was on my side gave me courage. Everyone herelistened to him and he didn’t need mountains of muscles like Pan to be authoritative.
“I know you; I see your eyes and see Hampton!”
I fought hard to suppress my disgust at the smell of onions. It was pointless to tell him that I looked like Mom and Grandma. We were generations of clones. Pan, however, probably meant my innermost being and merely expressed himself incorrectly. I thought about Dad and my heart grew so heavy that I wanted to cry. Everyone fears their own death, but I also feared Dad’s grief the moment he found out about me. It would pull the rug out from under him. It would break him once and for all. His life would be over, just like mine. My only consolation was that I wouldn’t have to witness it.
“My father is a good man,” I said even though I was afraid Pan might hit me simply for saying it. “He doesn’t deserve this hatred.”
“Hampton, corrupt scumbag.” Pan’s jaw clenched as if he was chewing the other explanations he wanted to spit in my face but couldn’t because he didn’t want to reveal what they were up to.
