Page 14 of The Girl Beneath the Sea

This is the biggest news I’ve seen in years. And I—Roan Dumbass Kessler—am right in the worst of it.

Fuck.

I keep scrolling, seeing the governor on the courthouse steps. The White House press secretary taking questions. They have traffic-camera footage of the car that took him — my chest goes tight — but the trail dies at the river two miles south of the towers, where the plates got swapped in a parking structure with no cameras.

They’re professionals. I knew that already.

There are checkpoints on the interstates going out.

Then the number. The Royal Kingdom of Monteverra is offering two million dollars for information leading to the safe recovery of His Royal Highness.

Two million. I sit in my own car in the dark and look at it until the screen dims.

They bought me for thirty.

The flip phone in my pocket has one number in it. Call me if the boat’s on fire, Sully said.

Sully knows what the cargo is. Me not liking the job is not an emergency. Getting out is not an option.

There’s video from an afternoon press conference. A silver-haired man at a podium, a flag with mountains on it behind him. Prime Minister Reinhardt, the caption says. He speaks beautiful, careful English. He asks America for its prayers. He says the prince is a gentle soul who has never in his life harmed anyone, and his voice catches once when he says it. Maybe he cares. Maybe he doesn’t.

The guy’s a politician. I doubt he really gives a shit. He’ll just play it for whatever it’s worth to him.

Apparently, no ransom has been demanded yet. Either that or the feds are keeping it close.

I put the phone face-down against my leg and sit with it.

Here’s the play, if I want it. I go back aboard and stack the whole supply pile inside that box — every bottle, every carton, the lantern and the batteries with it. I tell him to make it last.

Then I get in this car and I drive. I have cash in a lockbox two states from here and fifteen grand in my duffel.

By the time the two weeks is up, I don’t exist. Whoever opens that container in two weeks finds the cargo alive, fed, watered, worth every cent. Maybe a bit filthy, but he’ll be alive.

The only thing missing is the guard.

I get as far as the key in the ignition.

I take it back out.

I said yes to these people. Half their money is in my duffel and my name is in their book. Running doesn’t take me off the list of loose ends. It moves me to the top of it, and it puts Sully up there beside me.

And if they notice I vanish, then they put another man on this boat on no notice, with the whole country howling. Whoever they dig up won’t have the same rules about cargo.

I think about other hands opening that door twice a day. They might touch him. No one touches him.

No one. He’s mine.

I grit my teeth. No, he’s not. That’s just some weird alpha blood chemistry. I have more than enough control to ignore it.

I need to get out of this alive. That means keeping the prince alive. And somehow making sure that whoever took him knows that I am no loose end.

I wipe the phone, bag it, tape it back over the spare, and lock the car.

I go back up the gangway in the drizzle. The river is black and empty. Below my feet, through half an inch of deck steel and forty feet of dark, I can feel where he is.

I take the bunk in the aft cabin, boots on, jacket for a pillow. A man sleeps when he can. That’s rule one of guard work, and I’ve kept it in worse places than this.

I don’t sleep.