“How often were the women sold?”
“Twice a year.”
“How many women usually?”
“Forty to fifty was ideal. More than that was too hard to travel with.”
“How would they be selected?”
“Pretty.” He just shrugged. “And, of course, that was a judgment in itself, but young,” he said suddenly. “The younger, the better.”
At that, the captain reached over and kicked him hard in the side of the head. The leader roared, but he could do nothing to get away from the kicks. Jerricho, knowing that the captain’s temper would take hold faster than anything, quickly asked as many questions as he could. But the pirate settled into a sullen mind-set and refused to answer more than monosyllabic answers.
“When is the next run?”
He shrugged again. “You killed everyone.”
“Not everyone.”
“Organizers,” he said. “They had the contacts …”
“Are the agents on the way?”
“They should have been but …” Then his voice broke off.
“How did you know the women had been rescued?”
“One of the men there called me.” He said, “I grabbed the ships, and we came. We didn’t know very much, but we had to get the women.” He glared at Jerricho and the captain. “Many of us take big risks to get these women. It’s our payoff. Enough to feed our families for an entire year.” And the pirate fell silent.
The captain looked down at him, but so much hate remained in his gaze. He looked at Jerricho. “Your call.”
“If it’s my call,” he said quietly, “we keep him alive, find out from him and his associates who the rest are involved in this nightmare.”
“Can your guys do that?”
Jerricho nodded. “They’ll track his laptop, all his communications, his bank accounts, all to see where the money is flowing, who the agents are, who the suppliers are, and, even more of an issue,” he said, “who the buyers are.”
At that, the captain stepped back. “In that case, we keep him alive,” he said. “I get that he shot my two guys, but I also know that my guys all have daughters. And to think that anything like this could happen to them is beyond belief.” At that, he said, “Can you take him down and put him in the storeroom? It’s got a hefty lock on it. And a bolt outside.”
“Will do.”
Grabbing the pirate, Jerricho helped him to his feet—even though he couldn’t walk due to the ropes on him—and bent down until the pirate pitched over his shoulders, and then Jerricho stood up, using the handrail. He slowly stepped below deck to the storeroom. As the captain had promised, the storeroom was solid with a solid steel door. And a great big deadbolt was on the outside.
He dropped the pirate inside and snapped it closed. The pirate called out, but Jerricho didn’t understand the language, so he ignored him and left. He poured another cup of coffee and went out to see the captain, standing out in the open, his hands on his hips, his sea legs easily handling the sway of the deck below his feet. “You okay?” Jerricho asked the captain.
He nodded slowly. “I really want to kill him,” he said. “Yet it’s just like you said. An awful lot of other perpetrators are out there we need to catch.”
“Exactly,” he said. “Based on the fact that we found him, I’ll do another search.”
The captain faced him, gave him a hard look, and said, “We’ve got one, and we need him for answers. If you get any more, pitch them overboard.”
And, with that, he headed back to his wheelhouse, leaving Jerricho alone to take care of the hunt. A hunt he didn’t mind doing in the least. He headed back down around the same side of the ship where he’d found the leader. If anybody else was on the ship, they didn’t belong, and Jerricho would find them.
Chapter 9
Brenna woke, groggy and sore, her body aching in places she didn’t expect. She didn’t quite understand why, and yet, as soon as her consciousness returned and her mind flooded with the memories of what she just been through, she understood perfectly. That hard run in the dark over rough terrain and then climbing down the cliff had been hard on her, and, if nothing else, the fear, the panic, the gripping nightmares, and climbing up the ladder to get aboard this ship had hurt. But she was here, and she was safe—at least she thought she was.
Opening her eyes, she saw Jerricho across from her. Sleeping soundly. She smiled. At least he’d gotten some sleep.
Just then, his voice whispered to her, “You look better.”
She shifted closer and said, “You’re supposed to be still sleeping.”
“I got a few hours,” he said. “This is my second nap.”
“Oh,” she said, confused. “Did you change places with Killian?”
“I did,” he said. He sat up, yawned, and then stood up and stretched from the waist up, reaching to the ceiling and dropping back down, so that his hands were on the floor. Then he did it a few more times.
“Does that help?” she asked.
He chuckled. “It sure does.”
“Good,” she said, “I’ll try it.” She slipped out and tried to stretch as high as he did, but, of course, he was much taller, being over six-two, maybe even six-four. She could barely even remember. The size of him was just so hard to judge, as he was broad as well. She stretched down to the floor, groaning as her body complained at the movements.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
“I am,” she said, “just sore, stiff, and tired.”
“Yep,” he said, with a bright grin. “Goes with a life on the run.”
“Oh, happy days.” She laughed. “However, I have lived to see another day. I’m no longer a captive. I’m not on that little rickety boat that you guys took us away in. We’re on a big one. I don’t even know what you call this thing,” she said, “but it feels a hell of a lot more durable and safer than what we were on. Not only that but we have taken out several of the enemy, so maybe it’ll be a straight run home,” she said hopefully, looking up at him.
“We actually found one more,” he said and filled her in on details.
“That’s very disturbing. Imagine if he’d found us in the night?” she murmured.
“You certainly wouldn’t have woken up,” Jerricho said, with a hard smile. “He’d likely have sliced everybody’s throat, moving from one to another silently.”
She gasped and stared at him in shock.
He shrugged. “No point in hiding the truth,” he said. “Because, if you see another one somewhere along the line, that’s all they’ll be intent on doing. We found out a lot of information about the group involved in the auction,” he said. “So we’ve kept the one we captured alive. We’ll pass him to the authorities, when we hit land.”
At the word land, she cried out, “How long?”
“We should be just about there,” he said. “I know we were running a bit behind, but we should be docking within the hour.”
She wanted to race outside. But she also wanted to stay with Jerricho. “Is Killian okay?”