Pulling the radio out of her pocket once more, Elodie saw that she’d somehow bumped the dial off of channel ten. She turned it slightly and heard the pirates speaking in their own language. Knowing she wouldn’t be able to understand anything they were saying, she turned it to the channel she’d used to reach the US Naval ship.
“…Mustang, come in. Damn it, Rachel, where are you?”
Elodie had never been so happy to hear anyone’s voice in her life as she was Scott’s. “I’m here,” she said softly.
“Thank fuck,” Scott breathed. “I’ve been trying to reach you for at least twenty minutes. There have been some updates to your situation.”
“I know,” she admitted. “I know you told me not to, but I had to find out what was going on. They shot Walter. And some of the others.”
“I’m so sorry.”
“They were good men,” Elodie told Scott. “A little rough around the edges, and some of the officers were a little conceited, but they didn’t deserve what happened to them.”
“No, they didn’t,” Scott agreed. “But now we’ve got bigger problems.”
“Yeah, they don’t know how to drive this thing, and now they want to kill all of us on sight.”
“Exactly. I need you to hunker down and stay put.”
“The watertight doors just closed,” Elodie told him.
“What?”
“The watertight doors. Are we sinking? Or was that the guys downstairs?” she asked.
“You aren’t sinking,” Scott told her.
Elodie let out a breath of relief. “Okay.”
“But things are gonna get dicey when they attempt to navigate that strait.”
“Are you still coming?” she couldn’t help but ask.
“Yes. But it’s too dangerous to do so in the daylight.”
“Shit!” Elodie said.
“You’re going to be all right,” Scott told her.
She appreciated him trying to comfort her, but she didn’t feel very reassured right about now. “The engineers cut off the lights too. So it’s really dark in here.”
“We’ll handle it.”
“Okay. Scott?”
“Yeah, Rachel?”
Damn. She’d forgotten again that everyone thought Rachel was her name. “If something happens to me…there’s no one to contact. Just give me a burial at sea and be done with it. Okay?” She wasn’t sure how well her fake identification would hold up…and she didn’t have a family to contact anyway.
“You’re going to be okay,” Scott told her firmly.
“But still—” she started.
“I need you to think positive. The worst thing you can do in a situation like this is give up.”
“I’m not giving up,” she told him. “Right now, I’m mad. Pissed that Walter and the others were killed unnecessarily. Many of those guys had wives and kids. This sucks.”
“It does,” Scott agreed.
“Do you?”
“Do I what?” Scott asked.
Elodie knew she should get off the radio. She was risking her life by continuing to talk to him. Besides, he probably had other things he could be doing…like planning how he was going to get onto this ship and kill the bad guys. But she couldn’t bring herself to break the connection. Scott was literally a voice in the darkness, and he made her feel not quite so alone. “Have a wife and kids,” she said.
“No to either.”
“That’s good, I guess.”
“Yeah. Hang in there, Rachel. You’re doing a good job.”
“I hid the knives,” she blurted.
“What?”
“I thought about breaking a bunch of shit and creating obstacles here in the galley, but then I figured they’d know someone was here and would turn everything upside down looking for me. So I decided it was better to keep everything as it was the last time they were here. Maybe then they wouldn’t stay very long and wouldn’t try as hard to search for anyone. But I didn’t want them to get any more weapons, so I hid all the knives.”
“Smart.”
Elodie wasn’t sure about that. “I kept one though. It fits through the belt loop on my pants.”
“Be careful. You can’t win a gunfight with a knife,” Scott told her.
Amazingly, Elodie chuckled. “Is that some ancient saying or something?”
“No, common sense,” he answered.
Elodie could hear the humor in his tone. And for just a second, she felt…normal. As if she and Scott were two people who’d met online or something and were getting to know each other. But then his next words snapped her back to reality.
“Do what you need to do to stay hidden,” Scott told her. “Do not let them find you, Rachel. Okay?”
“Okay,” she whispered.
“This is gonna be over soon.”
“I hope so.”
“I know so.”
“I’d always heard you guys were cocky, but I have to say, it’s kind of refreshing right about now.”
“It’s not being cocky if it’s true.” Then his voice lowered. “I’m sorry about your friends.”
“Thanks.”
“I’ll talk to you soon—and see you soon, as well. Just try not to shank me or anyone on my team, would ya?”
Amazingly, Elodie chuckled. “I’ll try.”
“Mustang out.”
Elodie put the radio back in her pocket and listened for any sign of the pirates coming down into her area. When she heard only that same eerie nothingness of the engines silenced, she headed back into the hallway with the storage rooms. She had the perfect hiding place. She’d thought of it a few weeks ago but had forgotten it until now.
She went into the smallest of the pantries and took a deep breath before reaching a hand toward the shelving units. She carefully climbed up to the top shelf, a good eight feet off the floor and at least three feet deep. She moved boxes from the back to the front and shimmied herself behind them. It was a good defensive position if she was spotted, although the wooden shelves wouldn’t stop a bullet. But hopefully the pirates would never know she was there, hiding in the dark, even if they searched the room.
Putting her head down on her hands, Elodie closed her eyes and prayed for the day to pass quickly. The sooner night fell, the better, because that meant help would arrive.
Chapter Three
Mustang reviewed the list of employees on the Asaka Express. Slate had marked those men he believed had been on the bridge, and thus had likely been killed, leaving just two officers and all of the engineers unaccounted for. Along with Rachel Walters.
They’d received a list of relatives of everyone onboard, as well as copies of the rudimentary background checks that had been done on everyone. Everything looked copasetic…except for Rachel’s.
“There’s nothing in her background beyond three years ago,” Pid said.
Mustang nodded.
Everything listed was pretty generic. Her college graduation year, the fact that her parents were both deceased and she had no siblings. She’d been working at a restaurant in Los Angeles before taking the job aboard the Asaka Express. There was a glowing letter of recommendation, supposedly from the owner of the restaurant where she’d worked, but when Pid had run that man’s name, he’d not been able to find any record of him owning any kind of restaurant anywhere in the country.