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My skin starts to turn to ice as Nora continues her tale.
“As they were getting the boat ready to go, we were rather abruptly joined by two other, older guys. One looked like he belonged in the military, with a buzzcut and everything, and he wa
s clearly the one in charge. The other guy was fat and smelled awful. That’s all I really remember about him. Anyway, they showed up, and before we knew it, the guy with the buzzcut pulled out a knife, and we were shoved into the cargo area.”
Nora pauses for a minute, and I’m too horrified to speak.
“All four of them raped me,” she said quietly. “I was pretty sure they were going to kill me, and I would have happily accepted that at one point. I figured out pretty quickly that killing us wasn’t what they had in mind. They kept us there on that boat—still at the dock—for three days, trying to break us. It worked, too. I was broken. If it hadn’t been for Melissa, I’d probably be a sex slave at some drug lord’s compound right now.”
“My God, Nora.” It was all I could think of to say. I have no idea how to respond to a story like this. “I’m so sorry that happened to you. How did you get away?”
“After they decided we weren’t going to resist anymore, they started up the boat, headed to god knows where. Once we were on the water, they let us come up top again. We were traveling along the beach, running parallel to the shore, and I could see a lot of people not that far from us, but I knew they wouldn’t be able to hear us if we screamed. I was absolutely terrified and unable to act, which is just what they were expecting. Melissa wasn’t.
“She grabbed me by the arm and threw us both overboard. She started screaming for me to swim toward the beach, and that’s what we did. We had both been swimmers on the school team, and even though I was completely freaked out, the muscle memory took over, and I swam as fast as I could. The boat was flying along, and it took them a minute to get turned around and head back to us. By then, we were within earshot of other people. The boat came up close to us, but at that point, two guys on windsurfers were heading in our direction. They saw us out in the water and headed our way. The guys in the boat must have decided it was too risky to try to retrieve us, and we got away.
“We reported them immediately. There are a lot of grey areas when it comes to who has jurisdiction over searching for criminals in international waters, and it was a good twelve hours after we reported what had happened before anyone actually started looking. When we didn’t make it back to the cruise ship at the next port, a missing person’s report was filed, and my brothers had already been on the island a couple of days, looking for us. It only took a few hours before Micha and Nate joined us, but it felt like weeks. Eventually, the authorities tried to go out and look for the boat, but they didn’t find anything.”
“Wow!” It’s the only word I can manage. The whole story has made my skin crawl. “What did your brothers do?”
“Micha and Nate were both beyond furious and determined to find whoever had done it and get revenge in my name or whatever.” Nora lets out a long sigh. “I didn’t care about revenge. I just wanted to go home. Micha and Nate fought about it, but Nate is the one who brought me back to Ohio and stayed with me in the hospital. We were close before, but his staying there with me—night and day—until I felt ready to rejoin the rest of the world made us even closer.”
I try to wait patiently for Nora to go on, but when the silence lasts too long, I feel like I should say something.
“Did Micha find them?” I ask, clearing my throat. “I mean, did he find the men who…?”
“He tracked them for weeks, but they always seemed to be a step ahead of him. So, no. He never did find them, not as far as I know.” Nora gets a faraway look in her eye. “Want to hear a really weird thing?”
“Okay. I mean, if you want to tell me.” All of this is weird to me, not just unusual but positively bizarre.
“Two weeks after Micha came back, all four of those guys disappeared without a trace. Their boat was found, unoccupied, out in the middle of the Caribbean about a month later. They were never found—no bodies, nothing.”
“How do you know it was the same boat?”
“The FBI was involved by then, and they found our DNA all over it. They linked the guys to some human trafficking ring and made a few arrests but not the guys who actually raped us. Those guys were never seen again.”
A sinking feeling comes over me.
“Do you think Micha did something to them?” I ask in a low whisper.
Nora gives me a long look.
“He would have if he had found them,” she says with conviction, “but I don’t think he did. He was planning another trip back, taking Nate and Antony with him, but before they could finish the arrangements, the boat was found, and those fuckers were all presumed dead.”
“Wow.” Again, it’s the only word that seems to fit. “I’m so sorry you went through all of that.”
“I’m sorry to throw it all right there in front of you the first night we meet,” she says with a shrug, “but it’s all part of therapy for me. I’ve found it’s best to get it all out there in the open right away, so maybe you’ll understand my occasional bipolar behavior.”
“Thank you for telling me,” I say, placing my hand on top of hers. “I’ve never heard of something like that happening to anyone, but I’m glad that I heard it from you.”
“I try not to think about it,” Nora says, “but I’m not stupid. I know how much it fucked me up. If it weren’t for Nataniele, I’m sure I would have slit my wrists.”
I swallow hard, trying to come up with some words of encouragement or inspiration, but I have none.
“It terrified him to think of me doing something like that to myself,” Nora says. “Nate’s sure my soul would be damned to hell for suicide, so I promised him I wouldn’t do it. I take my meds, go to all my counseling and group therapy, and use him for a punching bag when nothing else works.”
I start to let out a laugh, assuming she’s making a joke, but quickly realize she means it. I’m even pretty sure she means a literal punching bag.
“You understand why we’re so close now,” Nora says. It’s a statement, not a question.
