Unlucky 13 (16 page)

I SAW YOU WATCHING FOR ME, CINDY.

MAYBE YOU’RE STILL PISSED OFF BECAUSE RICH FELL FOR ME. HE IS SO HOT, ISN’T HE? I COULD TEACH YOU HOW TO CATCH AND LAND A MAN. BUT,
AND DON’T TAKE THIS THE WRONG WAY, IT WOULD BE A WASTE OF TIME. YOU DON’T HAVE WHAT IT TAKES. SO HERE’S MY ADVICE. GO FUCK YOURSELF. AND STAY OUT OF MY WAY. MM

Cindy felt numb, absolutely frozen stiff, but her mind was flashing like a Fourth of July sparkler.

MM was Mackie Morales.

Mackie had made her. In cop jargon, it meant that she’d been seen and identified. Cindy flashed on the other night.
While she was parked outside Mackie’s mother’s
house, a dark sedan had driven toward her. It had slowed, hesitated, then sped up and kept going.

That had been Mackie.

And not only had Mackie identified her staked out on the street, she’d also made her as a broken woman, a woman she had trumped.

Cindy’s nose smarted and tears welled up. She grabbed a tissue and pressed it to her eyes, willing
herself not to cry.

But she cried anyway.

When she got hold of herself, Cindy left her office and made it to the ladies’ room without anyone seeing her. She washed her face and put on fresh makeup. Then she went back to her desk with a newborn and promising idea.

She hit the reply key and typed a return e-mail to Morales.

Subject heading: “Mackie’s back in town.”

Hi, Mackie,

I wasn’t sure
where you were, so thanks for letting me know. Let’s meet. No tricks. I have a big idea to discuss with you.

Cindy

Before she could change her mind, Cindy hit the send key.

There. Done. She hoped she would hear back from Mackie very soon. If Mackie would meet with her, she might get her interview, and Mackie might get the kind of notoriety she might actually crave.

Her computer pinged.

There
was mail in her inbox marked undeliverable. It was the message that she had just sent to Morales. Morales must have written to her from public internet access or a boost phone, so Cindy’s sketchy connection to her no longer existed.

Cindy exhaled a breath she hadn’t known she was holding.

Morales had made her, cut her, dropped her, and every bit of that hurt like a hot poker had been thrust
through her heart.

What are you going to do now, Cindy?

What are you going to do?

YUKI HAD BEEN
huddling against a bulkhead on the Pool Deck for a long time, terrified for Brady, having no sense of what these terrorists wanted in exchange for releasing the passengers of the
FinStar
.

And if they didn’t get what they wanted, what then?

Start shooting?

Blow up the ship?

She was very aware that she was wearing a see-through nightgown under the short ship-provided
terry-cloth robe. She tucked the hem of the robe under and around her, then interlaced her fingers in front of her life preserver as if it could actually save her life.

These were the questions going around and around in her head on an endless loop:
Where was Brady? Had they done something to him?

About six hours before, Yuki had been savagely woken by an unimaginably loud air-cracking boom.
Her bed had pitched sideways, throwing her to the floor.

She had grabbed the floor as the ship rolled in the other direction, and she had fallen head-first hard against the bed frame. She’d screamed, “Brady! What’s happening?”

Glass crashed and doors swung open and slammed closed while the echo of the concussion rumbled long and low below her and the ship rolled again. Light flashed where light
should not be—outside the windows, below their balcony.

Yuki got to her knees, grabbed the side of the bed, and pulled herself to her feet. Although the bed had been tumbled, Brady’s side of it was still neatly made.

She turned to the bathroom and screamed “Brady!” expecting him to come out, saying, “What the hell?” or “Get
down!
”

But he hadn’t been there.

Just then, there had been another
loud boom—a bomb going off, for sure. This boom was more muffled than the first, coming from across the hall or maybe the other side of the ship.

Sirens sounded in the hallway, and then a man’s voice came over the public address system, saying, “Crew to emergency stations.” It was repeated several times.

Yuki’s mother would say, “Find your
husband
, Yuki-eh. Go to your
husband
.”

No kidding.
Where was he?

Yuki had pulled on a robe and gone to the windows. She’d spotted a number of small boats, visible in the still-light
night sky of Alaska. The boats were motoring at high speed toward the ship.

Yuki remembered feeling pure gratitude.

Thank God. Help was coming.

Help was on the way.

AS YUKI SAT
on the Pool Deck with hundreds of other passengers, shivering in her thin nightclothes, and not just from the cold night air, she remembered how right after she had seen the boats through her window, the public-address system had come to life again, this time squealing as if it were in pain.

Then she’d heard the uninflected voice of the captain.

“Dear guests, this is Captain
Berlinghoff. As you have noticed, there has been a disturbance, but there is nothing to worry about, I assure you we are getting everything under control. We will be escorting you to public rooms. Please cooperate with your cabin stewards and stay calm. We are safe, absolutely safe. I repeat…”

What
kind
of disturbance?

The small boats had been closing on the flank of the
ship. From her windows,
forty feet above the waterline, she hadn’t seen any faces. But then she’d seen guns.

Was the Navy coming to investigate the explosions? A sharp pang of fear had shot through her mind like a bullet.
Pirates!
Maybe those men were pirates!

But that couldn’t be. There were no pirates in this part of the world. This was the United States.

About then, smoke had begun curling through the air-conditioning
vents.

Was the ship on fire? Was it even safe to leave?

Oh, God, what was happening? Where was Brady?

She had looked for her cell phone and finally found it wedged under the night stand, but before she could turn it on, there had been a loud knock at the door.

“Mr. and Mrs. Brady. It’s Lyle.”

Yuki had looked through the peephole and seen their cabin steward, his eyes so round that there was
a circle of white all the way around his irises. She’d opened the door.

“Mrs. Brady. You have to go to the Veranda Lounge.”

She had asked, “Have you seen my husband?”

“No ma’am. When did you see him last?”

She’d had a lot to drink last night, and Brady had tucked her in early.

Behind Lyle, people wearing life vests filled the corridor, streaming toward the stairs, their faces wrinkled with
sleep and naked with fear.

“What’s happening?” she’d asked. “Is the ship on fire? Are we under attack?”

“I don’t know anything, Mrs. Brady. Put on your life
vest,” said Lyle, “and hurry to the Veranda Deck. Take the stairs.”

“No,
wait
.”

Lyle had snapped at her, “Put on your vest and go upstairs, Mrs. Brady.
Go now
.”

Yuki had dialed Brady’s number, and when his outgoing message came on, she
had left a message of her own.

“I’m going to the Veranda Deck,” she said. “Look for me.”

Panting, her hands shaking uncontrollably, Yuki had found her deck shoes on the floor of the closet. Her life vest was under the bed—and so was Brady’s.

She had put the vest around her and then had taken a last look around the cabin. Opening the drawer of the night stand, she had found her new coral necklace,
her wedding gift from Brady. Clutching it, she joined the throng heading for the stairs.

THERE HAD BEEN
four armed men at the top of the stairs. They wore camouflage and ski masks, black with slits for the eyes and mouth. They had held serious assault weapons, and that was when Yuki understood that the captain had nothing under control. He had lied trying to keep order.

Her blood had rushed to her feet.

Lightheaded, close to fainting, she’d grasped the banister and began
to climb. Terror had squeezed out any hope in her mind that this evacuation was about engine failure.

This was an attack.

Where was Brady? Was he even alive?

The men—pirates, as she thought of them—had directed the passengers at the top landing, sending the elderly and the women and children to the left. Men were
sent to the right. Anyone who hesitated was shoved or poked with a gun.

Yuki
and the rest of those sent to the left were herded into the Veranda Lounge, the pirates deliberately terrorizing the passengers who were as vulnerable as baby birds on a high window ledge. Then all the lights had gone out and Yuki had heard muffled gunfire.

What was happening?

A woman in a red kimono-like robe, her hair in a topknot, leapt up from the floor and shouted at the closest gunman.

“I need my medication. I need water. I need to use the toilet. I’m sixty-seven years old. Let me go back to my cabin. I’m not a flight risk.”

The gunman told her to shut up and sit down and then gave her a shove.

There was shrieking, and people shrank from the armed men, but another woman shouted, “You can’t keep us here like this. We are human beings.”

A gunman raised the muzzle of his gun
and fired into the air, sending a shower of glass and plaster down on their heads.

The screaming that followed was cold, sheer horror transmuted into sound. It had been a building panic with nowhere to go.

Yuki had taken her phone out of her robe and pushed the button to record. She had narrated her video in a whisper but a gunman had seen what she was doing. As he was coming toward her, Yuki
had quickly sent the video to Lindsay.

The gunman had grabbed her phone, dropped it, and crushed it under his boot.

“You’re crazy sending pictures,” he had shouted into her face. “And crazy has to pay.”

He had backhanded her across the face. Yuki staggered back, but due to the sheer density of people surrounding her, she didn’t fall. She’d never in her life been struck in the face. The pain
was excruciating, and she’d heard herself moan.

She wished she could take that moan back.

She wished she hadn’t shown that she was afraid.

Another big man appeared in the doorway, at least six feet and maybe two hundred pounds, also wearing fatigues and mask.

He had shouted, “Everyone shut up! Sorry to be blunt, but everyone just shut the fuck up, okay?”

A restive quiet came over the lounge
as the passengers muffled their fear and waited to hear what was coming.

YUKI DIDN’T REMEMBER
every word but close to it.

She had a very good memory for the spoken word and was known around the DA’s Office for being able to recall depositions and court testimony verbatim.

The big man in the mask and fatigues, who had told all of the passengers crammed into the Veranda Lounge to shut up, had stepped up onto a chair.

“My name is…well, you can call me Jackhammer.
And this is your orientation session. In a few minutes you’ll know everything you need to know in order to survive. We are in charge.

“‘We’ is me and my squad, and I mean we are
completely
in charge. The ship’s crew can’t help you. They are locked up, in chains, under guard. And their lives depend on—you. More on this later.

“To continue, the engine room and the communications deck have also
been disabled, but if anyone feels like taking a swim, you’re welcome to try. No one will stop jumpers. We are twenty-five miles from land. You will suffer shock the moment you hit the water. It will take about ten to twenty minutes for hypothermia to set in, and even if you make it to shore, which no one can, there’s nothing out there.

“So, here’s the business end. We’ve made a demand of the
Finlandia Line and assured them that we will shoot a passenger every hour until our money has been wired to our bank account in Zurich. We’re caught up now for the first three hours in advance. A few passengers made bad decisions. So.

“So if Finlandia gets moving, if everyone behaves, you can go back to your vacation and we will get out of your lives. And your cooperation will ensure that the
crew will also survive.

“Now we are moving you upstairs to the Pool Deck. As you go through the door, drop your cell phone into the box provided. Keep cool. That’s my advice. Oh. We are looking for a volunteer. Who is the one who took pictures?” Jackhammer asked.

“This one,” said the gunman standing so close to Yuki that she could smell his sweat. He grabbed her arm roughly and shoved her forward.
She had lost her footing and fallen to Jackhammer’s feet, her robe swinging open and her nightgown hiking up to her hips.

Yuki had experienced fear before. But this was an order of horror beyond her nightmares. She expected a gun in her face, a bullet to her head.

Jackhammer glared at her through slits in his mask. “Thank you for volunteering. You are the next to be shot,” he said.

Yuki struggled
to her feet and backed into the crowd. And she turned her back on Jackhammer, closing her eyes as the tears sheeted down her cheeks.

If nothing else, she was going to stand up for herself as she always had.

Where was Brady?

Was he one of the passengers who had made a bad decision?

Yuki found it hard to even breathe.

COLD SALT AIR
blew the smell of sweat across the several hundred passengers who were packed on the Pool Deck. Yuki shivered as she sat with her back against a bulkhead. She was jammed against that wall, jammed tight.

Yuki scanned the terror-stricken faces of the passengers, who, like her, had been ripped from their sleep and told that they could be murdered at random at any time, pirate’s
choice.