She looked around anxiously, clearly not sure what she was supposed to do. She repeated her question. “What are you doing here?”
“I was just looking for somewhere quiet to sleep.” I looked around the room. Where the hell is Lazzo?
“Where’s your ID tag?”
“ID tag?” As soon as I asked the question, I knew I shouldn’t have. If I belonged on the carrier, I would have known what that was.
My response confirmed her suspicions. “Stand up.”
“How old are you?” I slowly did as she’d told me.
The girl’s voice cracked when she responded. “Don’t talk.”
I actually felt bad for her, and she was the one holding the gun. I couldn’t miss her finger twitching near the trigger though. She was scared and maybe had never fired a gun before. “Listen to me. Please… I can explain.” She didn’t object, so I continued. “I wanted to go fight too, but my parents wouldn’t let me—”
Her laughter cut me off. “You wanted to go fight?” She was shaking her head. “Who says that? Who wants to go fight?”
“You don’t?”
“Hell no,” she replied firmly. “I don’t. But I have to.”
“Why?” I tried to keep her undivided attention as I glimpsed Lazzo creeping up behind her. “Why do you have to go fight?”
“My dad—”
“Your dad is making you fight?” In surprise I watched her nod. “What kind of dad—”
“The captain kind of dad.”
“The cap—” Holy shit! Captain Baker—the guy Danny and Blake both hate? That guy has a kid? “You’re—”
“Yes.” She paused. “I’m the captain’s daughter.”
“Baker?” I had to ask, just to be sure. And Lazzo was almost close enough to grab her.
“Of course,” the girl almost snorted. “You think boy wonder has a kid?”
Boy Wonder? Did she mean Danny? Lazzo reached her at that moment and grabbed the gun, wrenching it out of her hands before she could react. He brought it up into her face, knocking her to the floor, and stood over her with the barrel pointing at the girl’s head. “No… he doesn’t.” I smiled. She had to mean Danny. “But he has a sister.” I patted my chest twice.
“We must kill her.”
“No, Lazzo.” Though it didn’t sound like the worst idea.
“It’s not your decision,” Lazzo muttered in a near growl. “If we don’t kill her, she’ll tell her dad we’re here.”
“Lazzo—”
“Shut up, Hayley. If we don’t kill her, this place will be full of guns.”
“If we do shoot her this place will be full of guns.” I stepped between the barrel of the rifle and the girl lying trembling on the floor. She had a split lip and tears in her eyes, but she was impressively quiet. “Now is not the time to be stupid, Lazzo. No more than you’ve already been anyway.” I stared him down.
Anger flashed in his eyes. “Don’t push me Hayley. I’ll shoot you—”
“Go for it.” I challenged him with my expression as much as my words. I doubted he’d throw his whole plan away now. I shook my head. “Danny should have let them kill you.”
“Hayley—” His eyes betrayed a faint trace of hurt.
“No, Lazzo. You killed my boyfriend tonight. You’re not killing this girl too. It just doesn’t make any sense.”
“Hayley, think about it. You think you can trust this kid—the captain’s daughter—to not go directly to her dad?”
“I won’t…” the girl stammered.
We both told her to be quiet in extremely different tones. Lazzo took a step towards her. “Then everyone on this boat will be looking for us.”
“I can help you,” the captain’s daughter volunteered quietly.
Lazzo’s sarcastic laugh didn’t keep me from asking, “How?”
“We can’t trust you.” Lazzo laughed again.
“Yes, you can. I promise I won’t say a word about this to my dad. I won’t tell anyone but—”
“Lazzo, think about it.” Before he could argue, I explained my train of thought. “What if she’s telling the truth? What if she could help us somehow? Maybe at some point we’d need that.”
“Why would she—”
“I hate my father,” the girl spoke up boldly. “My brother and I both do.”
That psycho has two kids? How does a man like that get two chances at fatherhood? “Your brother?” I asked in surprise.
“Yes. My twin brother, Chase, is here too. My mother left my dad when I was ten, and then she died before the attacks. The judge made us move back in with Dad. I… we… didn’t have a choice—then or now. But we definitely don’t want to be here.”
Lazzo clearly wasn’t buying it, but he didn’t say anything right away. I wanted to believe her, but Lazzo was right. Trusting her was risking everything before we even made it to the mainland.
“How do we know—”
“He used to beat us.” She clearly sensed this could be her only chance to present her case. “All the time. There were weeks when we couldn’t go to school because of the bruises. He used to beat Mom, too. She would protect us as much as she could, but he would beat her down. He was—”
“That’s not enough.” Lazzo was shaking his head.
“Lazzo…” I stopped myself. I didn’t know what to think. It all made sense, but maybe too much sense—if that was possible.
The girl jumped back in then. “Look, you want proof? I’ll even leave the gun with you. I’ll tell my dad I dropped it overboard. He’ll yell at me, call me names, maybe hit me a few times, and that will be it. You’ll have a gun. No one will even—”
“Girl, you don’t have the gun.” Lazzo waved the rifle in front of her. “I have it. Neither of you has a choice here. This is my—”
“We’re letting her go.” Keeping my eyes on Lazzo, I lowered my hand down to the girl and she took it. I helped her up and continued to stand between her and Lazzo.
Suddenly I felt a knife blade pressed up against my throat, and the girl’s other hand gripped my left arm with surprising strength.
“Damn it, Hayley.” Lazzo pointed the gun at the girl’s head.
“Easy,” I whispered back to the girl.
“You’re letting me go.”
I knew she was talking to Lazzo, and I watched him shake his head. “Lazzo—”
“Hayley, this is wrong.”
Then we heard a voice calling down the hallway. “Flynn, where are you?” I didn’t dare move. Her name is Flynn?
“I’m leaving now,” Flynn whispered in my ear. “That’s Chase.”
I nodded slowly. “Go.”
“Hayley—” Lazzo objected. The girl didn’t move.
“Go,” I repeated. This time she obeyed, removing the blade from my throat and slipping quickly from the room. I spun and listened to her run off down the hall.
Lazzo stomped his foot but didn’t say anything when I held a finger to my lips. I was listening to Flynn’s conversation with Chase.
“Where were—what the hell happened to your face? And where’s your gun?” her brother asked.
“I was stupid. I was standing on a rail and slipped. I hit my face and dropped the gun over the side. It’s gone.”
Not bad. She hadn’t given us up yet, at least. The last voice I heard was Chase’s. “Dad is going to kill you.”
I listened to their voices and footsteps fade away and turned back to Lazzo, who was pacing and scratching his head. He kicked the steel frame of a bed. “That was stupid.” He glared at me.