Chapter One
Attention. Attention. This is Captain Conger. The ship is under attack by pirates. This is not a drill. Repeat, not a drill. Do what you can to hide, but do nothing to put yourself or anyone else in danger. The authorities have been notified. If you have access to a radio, and it’s safe to do so, use the emergency frequency to talk to anyone who might be listening and can help. We know this ship better than they do. Hunker down and if you’re the praying sort…pray.
Elodie Winters, known to the crew on the Asaka Express as Rachel Walters—or simply Chef—was moving before the captain had finished his announcement over the loudspeaker. The entire crew had been briefed a few days ago that they were entering the dangerous waters of the Gulf of Aden, near Somalia and Yemen. She’d been scared enough to wear her clothes to bed. But deep down, Elodie hadn’t thought it would truly be a concern.
The cargo ship she was working on had hoses on the deck that could spray an insane amount of water down on anyone dumb enough to try to approach, and it had been years since she’d heard of any large ship like theirs being taken hostage. She had no idea if the hoses had malfunctioned or how the pirates had gotten onboard.
But here they were.
Her heart pounded a million miles an hour as she moved around her room in the bowels of the ship. The engineers and higher-ranking officers had rooms on the upper floors, but Elodie hadn’t minded being lower down in the ship. She liked being near her kitchen.
When she’d come aboard, she’d been surprised to learn that everyone had their own room; she’d been expecting to share. But then again, there were only twenty-two workers on this ship, unlike cruise ships, which had hundreds of crew and thousands of guests.
In theory, Elodie knew why pirates attacked the large ships that went through the Gulf of Aden, but the reality seemed impossible. She’d seen the movie on the takeover of the cargo ship, the Maersk Alabama, and had been surprised at how easy it seemed to be for the pirates to get aboard. The Asaka Express was about the same size as the Maersk Alabama, but Captain Conger had reassured everyone that the safety measures put into place since that hijacking were much improved.
It seemed there was room for even more improvement.
Elodie took time to put on the boots she had by the side of her bed and grabbed her emergency radio. All the employees had been issued one. She could talk to the bridge with it, and access additional frequencies if needed.
Gripping the radio like a lifeline, she quickly opened her door—and let out a small shriek in fright when she almost ran into someone in the hallway.
“I was just coming to make sure you were awake,” Manuel said, the terror easy to hear in his tone.
Elodie was the chief cook onboard. She had one assistant, the second cook. Manuel reported to her and was responsible for the pastries and serving the crew and officers. The rest of the employees hired by the shipping company were engineers and officers. She was the only female onboard, and she’d thought that might be weird at first, but most of the men were respectful and didn’t pay her much attention.
There was one officer, Valentino, who thought she’d jump at the chance to join him in his bed, and when she’d politely declined, he’d gotten offended. She’d learned to avoid him.
“Rachel?” Manuel asked, and Elodie shook her head, trying to concentrate on the disaster at hand. “What should we do?”
“What we’ve been trained to,” she told him. She regretted not choosing a name closer to her own, but then again, she hadn’t exactly had a choice. She’d had to settle for the identity on the fake documents she’d bought.
The reason why she was using a pseudonym was a concern for another day. Right now, she needed to get somewhere safe, and her room definitely wasn’t. They’d been warned in safety-training sessions that pirates would most likely ransack the individual rooms looking for valuables and money. And the last thing she wanted was to be found. She felt relatively safe amongst the men on the ship, but she had no idea what pirates would do if they found a woman onboard.
“Go down to the engine room,” Elodie told Manuel.
“What about you?” he asked.
“I’m headed to the galley. I can fit inside many of the cabinets if I need to. You can’t. Besides, with the vegetable room, the freezers, and cold room, there are plenty of places for me to hole up. We also don’t know how long this will last. You guys will need food if the pirates decide to stay. I can use the dumbwaiter to send food down to the engine room if necessary. It’s safer if we aren’t wandering all over the ship while the pirates are onboard.”
“But if those pirates are here for very long, they’re gonna come down here. They’re gonna need food and water too,” Manuel said reasonably.
Elodie knew he was right, but the place where she felt the safest was her kitchen. Besides, the captain said he’d gotten ahold of the authorities. She didn’t know who he’d managed to contact, but she had confidence that the hijacking wouldn’t last for weeks.
“They’ll be busy elsewhere for a while,” Elodie told her assistant.
Manuel looked like he wanted to protest. Wanted to insist she come with him, but the sound of a door closing from the stairwell nearby clanged loudly in the hallway, and Manuel looked over his shoulder, his eyes wide with terror.
“Go,” Elodie ordered.
He moved without any more prodding, running in the opposite direction from where they’d heard the noise. Elodie had no idea if the pirates were already running around the ship or how many there might be, but she wasn’t going to stand in the hallway and wait for them to find her.
She hadn’t come all this way, escaped what she had in New York City, only to fall prey to a random pirate now. Still gripping the radio, she jogged for the stairwell. The engine room was four decks high, and there was an entrance on this level, but the galley was two floors above where her room was located. She needed to move.
“Manuel will be fine,” she said softly. She’d always had a tendency to talk to herself, had tried to break it, to no avail. Because much of her life had been spent alone, she’d started talking to herself to break the monotony.
“Walter has this under control,” she muttered as she cautiously opened the stairwell door. The captain had asked everyone to call him by his first name, and while it seemed weird at first, she’d gotten used to it. He was in his early fifties, had gray hair, and was always smiling. He was down-to-earth and treated everyone with the utmost respect. She respected him back and felt safe with him at the helm.
John and Troy appeared in the stairwell above her and raced past with barely a glance. They were engineers and obviously headed down to the engine room.
She heard other footsteps heading toward the upper decks and assumed it was officers going to the bridge. Elodie ran as fast as she could to the floor where the galley was located.
She hadn’t lied to Manuel, there were lots of places to hide in the kitchen complex. She’d already scoped them out, but not because she was afraid of pirates.
She was scared of Paul Columbus.
The man had said more than once that the only way out of his employ was in a pine box, and she believed him. She hadn’t known he was the leader of one of the most dangerous mob families in New York when she’d accepted a job as his personal chef. She’d just been excited for the opportunity to get out of the restaurant business. The money had been hard to turn down too.