I watched them carefully as I said, “If I don’t come with you, you’ll kill Camden McQueen. It’s not a hard choice to make.” Out of the corner of my eye I saw Javier sneer, but none of the boys even blinked. They couldn’t have been much younger than me by a few years, but apparently they were already jaded and hardened to this life. Javier’s empire was a lot larger, and went a lot younger, than I had thought. It made me wonder what lives they must had led to get dragged into this kind of mess. Super yacht or not, I could only hope Javier paid them well.
“Then you’ve made your choice,” Javier said calmly, though I could see his temples going red. “So take my hand and come aboard.”
I ignored his hand and walked up the stairs to the deck.
The boat, as Javier soon explained, was a 187 ft, 550 tonne Royal Huisman Mega Ketch. Everything else went over my head as I got the grand tour. All I could gather was that it must have cost tens of millions of dollars, all filthy, bloody drug money. It had a flybridge in the middle of the boat, like a raised deck complete with outdoor dining, sofas and a damn barbeque. There was a private sitting area at the very back with a spiral staircase that led down to an office and Javier’s gigantic owner’s bedroom. There were three levels in total, with dining and living rooms, a theatre deck for movies, a copious amount of bedrooms and spacious bathrooms, and the rear of the boat even folded open with the hiss and whir of hydraulics to provide a sunbathing and diving platform. It was to be my prison for the next six days until we reached the city of Veracruz.
“What do you think?” Javier asked as my bags were placed in the room that was to be mine, conveniently right next door to his.
I looked him squarely in the eye. “I liked your other boat better.”
His lips twitched in amusement. “You always had simple tastes, Ellie. Except, perhaps, for me.”
He spun around and started to shut the door before he paused and said, “We set sail in an hour. You might want to get one last look at land. You won’t be seeing it for a while.”
The door closed with a sleek click, leaving me alone in my cabin. It was spacious enough but I could already feel the walls starting to come closer.
It turned out I missed the big farewell. After I’d unpacked a few items, I lay down on the bed to ponder my fate when exhaustion had taken over. The next thing I knew, I was very slowly rolling out of the bed and coming face to face with the upholstered cabin wall.
I sat up and blinked at the light that was streaming through what I thought was a shuttered window but was actually a well-disguised panel of lights meant to mimic daytime. I got up, finding my sea legs, and started fiddling with the lights, turning them from morning brightness to night. But they always sprung back, pre-programmed. The fact that Javier could even control the way his crew perceived the days was chilling.
I made my way out of the cabin and went down a narrow hallway lined with handrails. The boat was no longer heeling over, making walking seem painless. Aside from water making gentle sloshing sounds along the length of the boat, you couldn’t even tell you were on a ship. It was that big, like being on an airbus compared to a seaplane.
The hallway led me past three more cabin doors, all closed, before I came to a small set of stairs, flooded with natural light. The area I was in ended about mid-ship, which meant the crew’s quarters were at the front of the ship and had a separate entrance. I cautiously climbed the stairs until I recognized I was on the second deck, the main living area. The back was open, not fully enclosed, the sea breeze fluttering through. Past the elaborate dining table set-up, teak table and white high-backed chairs that could easily rival any house, I could see Raul and another man I hadn’t seen before sitting lazily on the couch, drinks in their hands, the wind ruffling their hair. They both looked at me sharply, unkindly, before turning back to each other, talking in Spanish. Behind them I could see the lower deck, all smooth wood, Javier’s private cockpit and the stern of the ship, the American flag waving in the breeze. The water here was green and a few islands dotted the horizon, slowly disappearing in our wake.
I went up another flight of stairs, holding onto the rail in case the boat decided to pitch and came up to the top deck, half covered like a pilothouse. Javier was there, sitting in a leather captain’s chair, hands on one of the two steering wheels, eyes focused ahead through the wide, tinted windshield. A large sail had billowed out from the mast, an immense noise that reminded me of happier times, but that didn’t make any sense to my brain, since the only time I’d ever been on a sailboat would have been with Javier.
“You’re up,” he said without turning to face me. His hair was waving slightly against the nape of his neck. I found it annoying how his longer hair still suited him. It shouldn’t have, it should have made him look more like a cheesy drug lord but instead it didn’t. My stomach twisted.
I turned my attention to the large cockpit, at the military-esque row of the glowing radar screens, GPS and weather charting systems at his fingertips, at the sofa and chairs in the open area behind me, another fantastic viewpoint. I took it all in yet it didn’t seem to stick. Nothing in this situation seemed to be real.