“Miss, we’re going to open the door if you do not respond,” the voice boomed into the silence.
It was now or never.
With hands grasped around the guard rail as hard as possible, I kicked my leg over it. My shoe brushed the small lip twice before catching it. I brought my other leg over and gripped even harder.
Lights illuminated the balcony to my left. I flinched but kept my hold. The wind on the wrong side of the balcony whipped my dress around my legs. Hair covered my face but my hands stayed on the railing.
“Last warning, Miss,” said the security officer. “If you don’t open the door in fifteen seconds, we are coming in.”
Had they been less generous, they would have caught me. I used every millisecond of that inching to the barrier at the right. A deep breath steeled my resolve before I moved my hand to the other side. Another deep breath and I skittered the whole way. The moment I was able, I rolled over to the balcony next to my cabin.
Two lumps laid on the bunk inside the darkened room but I couldn’t make them out. They didn’t move so they hadn’t noticed me or the security officers. I needed a little luck coming my way, especially since a single cabin over wasn’t anywhere near far enough away.
The second time I swung my legs over the balcony and shuffled to the next one came easier than the first. A television screen lit the next cabin. A couple reclined on their bunk, asleep against each other’s shoulders. Instead of jumping back over, I kept shuffling to the next balcony.
By now, the lights in my stolen cabin had been turned on. I leaped over the balcony edge. They might look past the barriers, see my Spiderwoman routine. Until those lights went off, I remained pressed against the barrier two balconies away from Ms. De Luca’s cabin.
The five minutes it took before the cabin went dark seemed like an hour. Just in case the security team posted someone there, I moved back to the balcony’s edge and shuffled to the next cabin. After the third or fourth one, I had the routine down.
As I continued on my way, passing my ninth cabin and almost to the tenth, my fingers brushed against something before the next barrier. My fingers squeezed over the rail when it had me flinching.
I blinked and leaned closer to see what I’d hit. A three-pronged grappling hook hung from the railing. The rope tied to it dropped at an angle toward the rear of the ship. Dark as it was, I couldn’t see what it was connected to below. Not that I had the time to.
A hand grabbed me under my arm. The world spun. I froze, expecting a splash but the fall only took a moment and I landed on the next balcony. A man loomed over me, a black ski mask covered his face. He slapped his hand over my lips.
I really should have stayed with Alexei.
Two more men stepped out from inside the cabin, each wearing the same ski mask with dark tactical gear below. They all had handguns and knives on their belts. Only one had his out, pointed my way.
“Were we in the right cabin all along?” one of them asked another in Italian. “We couldn’t have missed her out here.”
“No, she came over the balcony,” the other replied.
“Looks to be our lucky night, boys,” the first said.
His eyes, all I could see under the ski mask he wore, examined me. They lingered where I expected, given the dress I wore. When I’d got to my stolen cabin, I’d considered changing into something of Nicola’s, but the envelope already had enough money in it and it wasn’t like she’d packed anything modest.
“Bring her inside, we don’t need to leave just yet,” the leader said.
“The boss wants her bad, man,” the guy holding his hand over my face said. “Shouldn’t we get back to the boat?”
“Maybe she jumped?” the leader replied, eyes still on me. “Maybe we couldn’t get to her in time. What the boss doesn’t know won’t hurt him. Look at the trouble she caused already. It’s going to be a pain to get her to the boat anyway.”
“She’s the boss’s niece, man,” said the third thug, shaking his head.
Even with the sudden danger and everything at stake, I wouldn’t miss a nugget of info that big. My uncle was the boss. Given one of his men had referred to me by my mother’s maiden name, he must be her brother. I knew next to nothing about her why would I care about a woman who loved the needle more than me? Still, it gave me options.
“My uncle?” I asked after I shook free of the hand muffling me. “You should have said something earlier. I’m sure he will reward you greatly if you bring me to him unharmed.”
“Shut up, Marciano,” hissed the leader. His sneer exposed his upper gums. “You’re your father’s daughter. Your uncle doesn’t want a tearful family reunion but I guess he can use you against your father.”
Join the club. Alexei had the same idea, though he’d never considered outright killing me, or what the leader of these men wanted to do before I ended up floating face down in the Mediterranean. The life or death stakes hadn’t stopped me from discovering who these men worked for, it couldn’t stop me from again realizing how much better off I’d have been if I’d never run.
“The boss will reward us well,” said the man who squatted over me. He’d withdrawn his hand after I jerked my head away but remained close. “Well enough that you can hire a girl back home. We bring her in unharmed and unmolested. Unless you’d like to use that pretty little mouth of yours to thank us for our mercy.”
He stood up and leaned back against the balcony’s guard rail. His hand slipped to his belt. I glared up at him and I wasn’t alone. The thug without his gun drawn shook his head and muttered something.
“Stop fooling around, man,” he said, stepping closer to the first. His hands shook and rose to his sides before he pointed at the idiot. “One word to her uncle and our big reward becomes a swift death.”
“That’s why we should have our fun and get rid of her,” argued the leader, his gun still on me.
I would have glared at the man to hide my fear but I never moved my eyes from the one who held his hand over his belt buckle behind him actually. In the darkness beyond the balcony, something moved. Just a dark blur in front of a pitch black background. It shifted toward the front of the boat where these thugs had latched their hook to the guardrail the next cabin over. Was someone coming up the rope?
“But then we wouldn’t get the re-” The man who stood nearest the balcony’s edge froze when a line flew over his shoulder.
Every eye fell on the dark cord. The equally black grappling hook on the end weighed it down. He stared at the prongs where it landed on his chest. His eyes shot wide, but he responded too late.
The line tightened over his shoulder. One of the sharp prongs sank into his collarbone. His feet kicked up, almost connecting with the nearest man but he jumped away. The scream faded as he fell, ending in a dull splash.
Two glowing green circles the size of eyes appeared on the far side of the glass. Between the night vision and his Batman-like dispatch of one of the men, our newcomer had to be Alexei. Such a showoff, but the welcome lesser of two evils I’d happily choose over the men deciding between raping and killing me or selling me off to an uncle I never met.
The leader between the two remaining recovered before his underling. The gun trained on me darted toward my savior. Still on my back, I had few options. My leg lashed out at his. His foot slipped and he teetered to the side.
A gunshot sounded. My ears rang and the glass shattered.