AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Okay, Billy,” Doyle was saying. “I had to try. You’re a warrior, and I need warriors.” He shook his head with a friendly smile. “Besides, it’s a shame that this has to happen to you twice.”
Before I could figure that one out Doyle stood and took me by the arm. His fingers felt like what Captain Spaulding’s grip would have been if the captain had been really strong.
“I could have forgiven a lot for a soldier like you,” he said, dragging me towards the door of the forward cabin. “Even your moment of weakness with that black slut.” He unlocked the door and frog-marched me in. “It’s just too bad.”
Someone was lying on the bunk inside the cabin. And as Doyle’s words sank in and a cold knot rose up in my throat she looked up. “Billy?” she said.
It was Nancy.
“Just too bad,” said Doyle happily.
For a moment I couldn’t see, couldn’t hear. I could only think, Not again.
I turned on Doyle as fast as a human being can turn. He was wearing that same friendly grin. I got one good shot into that happy face, a hard right hand with everything I had behind it.
Doyle took a half-step backwards from the force of the punch. I had the satisfaction of seeing his lip split open. Then he clubbed me with a right hand so fast I barely saw it.
I started to fall towards the bunk, but I never got there.
Chapter Thirty-Three
I was pretty sure I’d been here before. The throbbing darkness was the same, and the cool hand on my forehead. The voice that was speaking my name softly had been there the last time, too.
“Billy,” it said with a warm rum-and-honey tone. “Billy.” The hand moved gently across my forehead. “Wake up now, Billy.”
I floated up towards the voice—and towards a whole collection of pounding pains.
One of the oddest was the back of my head. It was throbbing, but I could feel that throb in my nose, as if the two places were connected.
My hands were pounding too. They felt like somebody had stuck them in large and awkward mittens.
“Come on, Billy,” urged the voice. I swam up; I liked the voice, even though it was up there where everything hurt.
I got an eye open at last. My head was in Nancy Hoffman’s lap. It seemed like a good place to be. I was just starting to enjoy it a little when she shook me out of it.
“You’ve got to get up, Billy. I think this is our only chance.”
I thought it was good that we had a chance, but that only part bothered me. It was so hard to put it all together. “What…?”
She slapped my face. It stung. That didn’t seem right. I shook my head and a few cobwebs fell away. “Why are you here?” I managed.
“I came out of work and they were waiting for me. Just threw me in a car. I think they used chloroform. I woke up once in a small airplane, and then I was on this boat. Doyle thinks he can get back at you and my brother at the same time by killing me.”
“The spectacle,” I said. Nancy looked at me like she was going to slap me again. “Something Doyle said. He’s going to make a circus out of killing us. Show the tape to the brotherhood as a lesson.”
She bit her lip. “That doesn’t sound like very much fun. I think we better get you on your feet fast. How are your hands?”
I looked
at them. They really were too big, puffed up out of shape. I flexed them a little. They worked, but not perfectly.
“They were wired together. I got the wire off, but it may be a while before you get full use back. Can you stand?”
I tried. I managed to sit on the edge of the bunk. The room was heaving violently and I shook my head again to clear it.
But then I realized the room really was pitching. The boat, in what should have been a calm anchorage, was rolling frantically.
I looked at Nancy. “A storm came up,” she said. “I heard them talking. They were planning to take us out into the Gulf Stream and drop us over after they kill us.”
