Page 75 of Keeping Zita

“Shut up,” Silas growled, shaking Zita so hard her head throbbed anew. Nausea hit her suddenly, and she couldn’t stop the puke from exploding from deep down in her gut once more.

“Fucking gross!” Silas cried, as she barely missed throwing up on him.

Vomiting made her throat hurt even more. And her head. And her face. Tears once more streamed down her cheeks and snot leaked from her nose. It was as if her body was attempting to expel anything and everything it had taken in recently.

“You’re lucky I’m in a good mood,” Silas said almost conversationally, as he force-marched her toward an absolutely massive hulk of a ship. It towered over them like a creature from a horror movie. Emerging from the water and ready to devour anyone who came close. And Silas was dragging her straight toward a rickety-looking plank of wood that led from the dock—if the rotted boards held together precariously could be called a dock—into an open metal hatch on the side of the ship. “Carmen wanted me to get rid of you permanently, you know. Said it would serve you right. Stealing the man she wanted.”

“I didn’t steal him!” Zita couldn’t help but exclaim. Her gaze was glued to the ship. What was Silas’s plan? She didn’t even want to guess at this point.

“Doesn’t matter. She wants you gone, so you’ll be gone. I’m no killer, but I am going to stick you somewhere you can’t escape and will never be found.”

As if leaving her to die wasn’t the same as killing her himself. He was the lowest of the low. A bottom-feeder. A parasite.

“What’s getting rid of me going to do? Sage still won’t want her,” Zita pointed out.

“Once word gets out that you’re missing, she’ll race back to Norfolk. Throw money at the investigation. Hire searchers. Be there for Obi-Wan. Be his rock. He’ll turn to her in his grief, and she’ll get her chance to fuck him.”

“That’s all she wants?!” Zita asked, both pissed off and incredulous at the same time.

Her captor shrugged. “Carmen gets what Carmen wants. And if she wants hotshot Night Stalker dick, she’ll get it. One way or another.”

Zita was living in another dimension. This was unbelievable. People like Silas and Carmen should only exist in stories and nightmares. And yet, here she was, smack dab in the middle of this insane plot.

“Make things easy for yourself and walk across on your own. You don’t want me to knock you out again.”

No, she didn’t. She really didn’t. Zita was shaking from head to toe, but she somehow managed to walk across the board and through the hatch in the side of the huge ship without slipping and falling into the water below. She was no expert, but she guessed they were in a large drydock facility. The ship was obviously decommissioned and likely going to be dismantled for scrap or something. But given all the rust, it had obviously been sitting there for who knew how long, waiting for its fate…much as she was.

Silas might not be willing to kill her, but she wasn’t going to let her guard down, because he could change his mind any second. The feel of his hands around her throat as he held her down in the trunk flashed into her mind. It would be extremely easy for him to strangle her if he wanted to.

With his free hand, Silas clicked on a flashlight he must’ve had in one of the pockets of his black cargo pants. The interior of the ship was pitch dark and eerie as hell. Creaks and groans echoed around them as they walked. Zita was soon completely lost in all the long corridors and passageways. But once again, Silas seemed to know exactly where he was going.

“Have you been here before?”

“Yup. Used to be a security guard here. My buddies and I would play hide-and-go-seek inside the empty boats and ships. I was always the winner.”

Good God, the man was bragging about winning a kids’ game. Zita’s head spun.

“There are lots of good places to bring women, to do whatever you want with them. It’s not as if anyone can hear them scream.”

He chuckled darkly at his own words, and horror once more rose within Zita. Was he going to sexually assault her too?

She’d thought her situation couldn’t get worse; she’d been wrong.

“This is the biggest ship here. It’s an old aircraft carrier. Has thousands of rooms, hundreds of nooks and crannies. It’s the perfect place to stash you. And it’s slated to be towed out to sea next week. To be sunk and made into an artificial reef or some bullshit.”

Zita closed her eyes as he dragged her down yet another narrow set of metal stairs. Silas was a monster. He might tell himself that he wasn’t a killer, but everything he’d done, from stalking, to hitting her, to kidnapping, to choking her, to working with Carmen, and now this…was clearly evidence that he was a psychopath.

The plan to leave her in this abandoned ship to drown when it sank at sea was simply icing on the shit cake he was serving her.

After what she guessed was about twenty minutes, Silas stopped in front of a door. One of many that looked just like it in the long hallway. He pushed it open and abruptly shoved Zita inside. She went sprawling on the hard metal floor, but forced herself to immediately get up and face her captor.

Except he wasn’t coming into the room after her. He slammed the door with a loud bang.

Zita ran toward it and grabbed the handle. It didn’t budge.

She pulled with all her might, then pushed. Nothing.

“Silas! Don’t do this! Let me out!”