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Now she looked worried. And shaken. Oh, maybe she had seen—
She pushed the door open and shoved past him.
Then she stood at the end of the bed, her hands on her hips. Took a breath, her voice low. “I knew it. I can’t believe it, but I knew it.”
Hudson closed the door. Turned. “There’s an easy explanation—”
She rounded on him. “Really? There’s an easy explanation for how my hotshot, trouble-making cousin Tate ended up bleeding in your hotel room?”
* * *
She refused to cry.
No matter what they dished out…no crying.
Shae gritted her teeth as she clung to the wall of the shower, her eyes closed as the spray hit her, brutally cold, designed, probably, to shake her to her bones.
It did. And it wasn’t just her nakedness—she simply disembodied herself from the fact that a couple of Russian women had barked at her, practically ripping her clothes from her.
It was the bleakness of it all. The ping of the water against the hull of the ship, the bare metal floor, the rusty drain, the darkness that pervaded this lower level of the cargo ship.
The entire place bespoke despair, and this pelleting of her body with icy water only drove it through her skin to her soul.
She hung her head and tried not to shake.
The water stopped suddenly, and someone barked at her. She looked up, and the female guard—stout, with colorless eyes and short brown hair cut in a bowl, wearing a pair of black pants, jackboots, and a white shirt—circled her finger.
Turn around.
Shae folded her arms and turned, kept her head down and held her breath as the spray hit her.
Don’t cry.
In a moment, the woman with the hose—a sharp looking blonde who wore her hair so short it looked like a buzz cut and who had also stuffed her body into a pair of black pants and a white shirt—shut off the spray and threw Shae a towel about the size of a napkin. But she used it to dry off as best she could and then ran it over her hair. It was probably depositing things into her scalp, but who knew with the dim light and the smells that emanated from the room. Not a big room—three showers with showerheads, and why they couldn’t have let her take a normal shower…well, again, it was probably a psychological tool.
Meant to destroy her.
Not. Gonna. Happen.
She tossed the towel back at the short-haired, plump guard and walked over to the table where sat a gray jumpsuit. No underclothes, but whatever. She picked it up and noted that a number was painted in red on the back. Twenty-three. It seemed a little big for her, but she shook so hard from the cold that she didn’t care, unzipped it and pulled it on. The material rubbed against her skin like canvas, or maybe burlap, but at least it was clean. The number twenty-three was also painted on the upper breast. So, that’s who she was. Bloody number twenty-three.
No. She was Shae Johnson, formerly Esme Shaw, and she wasn’t lost. Ned would find her. Or Uncle Ian would ransom her.
Don’t cry.
They tossed her some fabric shoes—boots, really, formed out of thick wool—and she slipped her feet in, the warmth immediately finding her iceberg toes.
“Udi tooda,” the brunette said. “Go there.” Shae dubbed her Natasha and followed her, still shaking.
She’d gotten a good look at the ship as Lukka and his ilk had led her from his private car to a tugboat moored at one of the long deep-water docks in the shipyard and given her a ride out to the massive rusty container ship.
For a long moment, she considered just losing herself over the side of the boat. But the air spoke of chill, and the few splashes of water seemed frigid, so until she came up with a plan…
Don’t cry.
She held herself together as they hauled her off the tugboat onto a massive staircase that climbed the side of the ship. Then she was on deck and surrounded by cables and old machinery and a line of shipping containers lined up next to each other, windows cut into the doors, covered by bars. A massive, thirteen-story superstructure rose from the aft of the ship, and she spotted a couple guards standing at the rails armed with AK-47s.
Not that she knew what kind of gun it was, but suddenly she was in a Bond movie, so she fully expected some rogue general to appear with plans to take over the world.
