I couldn’t handle her sweet forgiveness. “Next time, you sleep alone.”
She reached out and grabbed my hand. “I’m okay. It was the only way I would have slept.”
I pulled my hand out of her grasp. “I’m going to check on Skipper.”
“What time is it?”
“Almost 4 a.m.”
She scrambled to get off the bed. “Wait for me.”
“Don’t you want to sleep some more?”
She violently shook her head. “I want to be where you are.”
After all of that, she still felt safer with me than alone. I didn’t deserve her fucking trust, and I hated that I had hurt her. If someone else marred her skin like that, I wouldn’t hesitate to knock them out. That it had been me was completely unacceptable.
My guilt made my voice hard. “Hustle, Blaire.”
Though it was early morning, there was no breeze, and it felt oppressively hot and humid.
We found Skipper sleepily steering the boat. I ushered Blaire into the boathouse but stayed outside, needing a few moments to process my dream.
It had been a long time since I had thought of Fyodor in Beirut. I thought I had successfully buried that part of my past for good, but there he was, reappearing to haunt me. I swore. Lack of sleep and being on high alert were bringing my demons much closer to the surface.
I took a deep breath. I need to pull my shit together. Through the glass, I watched as Blaire easily chatted with Skipper. I hated that I had accosted her in my sleep, and it killed me that she had assumed the worst of me. Not that I deserved any better.
Stay focused. Work the problem at hand. I forced myself to step into the boathouse.
Blaire looked over her shoulder at me. “Guess what.”
“Tell me.”
She pointed at the radar. “See this cluster of cells? Apparently that’s heading straight for Vietnam.”
Skipper looked over at me. “A lot of alerts have been coming through.”
“A storm?”
He nodded. “A severe typhoon.”
Blaire chimed in. “This is the storm that the saleslady said would hit the Philippines, but now it’s going to hit Vietnam instead.”
“Where is it heading?” Please don’t say Ho Chi Minh.
Skipper answered. “Right now they’re predicting the south central coast of Vietnam, around Da Nang.”
Thank fuck. That was hours from where we were heading. I looked at Skipper. “How long until we reach the border?”
“About an hour?”
“Could you make us some coffee?”
“I’ve got a nice Columbian, and I also have a Sumatra—your choice.”
“Black.”
Blaire tried to suppress her amusement and failed. “I’ll take a Sumatra if it’s not too much trouble.”
“You want the wheel?” he offered her.
She glanced back at me, not moving until she saw me nod. It was her subtle way of letting me know she had put me in charge. I had no issue with her piloting the boat. She was a great sailor.
She took the wheel from Skipper and waited until he disappeared downstairs. “Are you worried about the storm?”
“Nope.”
“They said it could take off rooftops and uproot big trees.”
“Are we going to the south-central coast?”
“No.”
I gave her a look.
“I was just making conversation,” she protested. “It’s a good idea to pay attention to the weather. Skipper said this storm could bring in a massive storm surge.”
“Out of all the things we need to worry about, that one is at the bottom of my list.”
“It pays to be prepared.”
“Not for that.”
She shrugged, looking cheerful despite the early hour.
I knew I needed to tell her how sorry I was about what had happened below, but I didn’t know how to even begin to address it. I stood there for a few moments, but all the words that came into my head sounded idiotic.
I decided to just start. “Blaire.”
She looked over her shoulder at me, assessing me. As if she knew what I was trying to say, her expression softened and she gave me a gentle smile. “It’s okay.”
I didn’t deserve her forgiveness that easily. “No, it’s not.”
“You know, when I was a kid, I used to have these night terrors where I would wake up the entire house with my screams. One night I even ran outside in the snow, in my bare feet—that’s how scared I was. They got so bad that my grandmother had to sleep in the same room as me for over a year.”
It was always stories about her grandparents. “Where were your parents?”
She paused and then said in a pragmatic voice, “They were the ones I was having nightmares about.”
The door banged open, and Skipper interrupted with two cups of coffee. It took all of me not to shove him back outside.
“You’re the best, Skipper. That smells amazing,” she exclaimed as she took the mug.
“You know, once I was in southern Africa and I took part in a coffee roasting competition.”
I took my coffee and disappeared down to the lower deck. I needed to repack my bag and get my head on straight. What did her parents do to her? I should have been focused on getting us to Singapore, but Blaire so willingly shared pieces of herself with me that it was impossible to resist wanting to know more.
But one of the reasons I was so good at my job was because of my ability to hyper-focus on the task at hand.
My goal was to get us all through this in one piece. Stay focused on the task at hand.
An hour later, after two cups of coffee and three energy bars, I was starting to feel more human. I stood in the boathouse, watchful of the changing landscape and the Cambodian border signs.
Skipper took over the wheel from Blaire. “We’re approaching the border, so I should probably steer.”
“What happens now?”
He looked nervous. “They usually ask me to pull over. My contact always gets me through, but I don’t know if he’ll be here because we’re so late.”
“What do you want from us?”
“Wait downstairs until we start moving again.”
Blaire and I returned to the bunk room. This time, she sat crossed-legged on the bed and I stood, leaning against the wall near the small window. I watched as Skipper steered the boat off the Mekong, down a small canal.
This was the moment of truth—our fate lay in the hands of one of the most inexperienced smugglers I had ever met. Skipper was the type of guy who got killed for getting in too deep. One day, he would meet the wrong person, who would dispose of him and take what he owned.
Blaire’s voice interrupted my thoughts. “What happens if his contact isn’t there? What happens if we get caught?”
Then you’ll go home, I’ll go to jail for a really long time, and the people we love will die. I could feel the motor slow down, and then we cut hard to the left. I read an English boat sign that indicated we were on the Bassam River. Skipper slowly drove alongside the floating houses that lined the shore. I could hear faint shouting from those who lived in the area, but it had nothing to do with us.