The Water Keeper(49)

The only help I had was the fast-forward feature or the 4x scan. I began scanning through the videos, which were a wealth of information. The traders—the guys who ran this ship of flesh—cycled the men through the girls at one-, two-, or three-hour intervals. Depending on how much time they bought. For one girl they would charge fifteen hundred to three thousand an hour. Sometimes more. And the girls worked round the clock. Often twelve to fifteen hours a day. Or longer. Multiply that by a dozen or more girls and it’s easy math. And that doesn’t include the fee just to get on the ship. The buy-in was often several thousand. Ships like this were cash cows. As a result, video quality was high and the length varied.

With each video, Summer’s face became more disgusted. Fortunately, Angel’s face did not appear in the bedroom videos. We did find her in the hot tub, on the pool deck, on the jet skis, and in the common areas. Upon first glimpse, Summer sucked in a deep breath and covered her mouth. The transformation in her daughter was striking. Angel was noticeably skinnier, the circles beneath her eyes darker. She was living the high life, but for some reason she didn’t appear in any of the hourly videos, which meant she hadn’t been sold as of yet. Or they were saving her because she had been bought on the black web, and they were waiting for transfer at a safer location. Like a dock in Cuba. Or the Bahamas. Or some other vessel in international waters.

I rummaged through each room, each screen, but found no thumb or hard drives or laptops left behind. In terms of electronic evidence, the boat had been bleached. I climbed down into the engine room, finding nothing of interest there except a lot of cables and wires, including ethernet, routed from the different levels above us into another small room just outside the engine room. The door was locked.

I lifted an ax from the engine room but hesitated. I knew breaking this door meant an alarm would sound, and whoever placed these cameras would probably begin looking at us on a live-feed screen somewhere around the world. I also thought through the process of covering our faces with pillowcases like Casper the ghost, but they’d had us from the moment we’d stepped foot on the aft deck. It was too late for that. Summer, and maybe more importantly Summer and I were now on somebody’s radar. Breaking down this door did little to affect that. The only advantage I had was that they didn’t know who I was and wouldn’t be able to figure that out apart from high-level security clearance. What they would know was that I’d done this before and I was nobody’s dummy. They’d be less inclined to leave the boat unattended in the future, which meant life was about to become more difficult.

I swung through the door, splintering the area around the knob. Two more swings and I’d loosened it from its hinges. A few more and it swung open. The electronics room was ventilated and cooled and humming with expensive and sophisticated equipment. This was no weekly rental. Two computer processors and four hard drives were hardwired and mounted to a frame that traveled from floor to ceiling. They were not large but they were bolted in, which meant they’d survive rough seas or somebody wanting to steal them. Which I did. Fortunately, I’d seen tools in the engine room that allowed me to unscrew the mounting hardware and place the drives into the tool bag.

It took five minutes.

The moment I finished, footsteps sounded above us. Followed by voices. I turned to Summer. “Stay behind me. Do what I do. And don’t hesitate.”

She nodded, but the fear had crept in.

I climbed the stairwell and was met by a smaller man with a loud mouth and a lot of hand motions. He was screaming at me. Behind him, two more men appeared. They were not small. Nor were they loud. Bears wearing suits. If he was the brains, they were the wrecking crew.

I smiled and played the idiot card. “You guys are all finished up, but you might think about replacing it in the next year. Salt water and satellites don’t really mix.” I kept walking toward the aft deck while Summer followed me. Little Man stepped in front of me, and I continued the ruse by handing the tool bag to Summer. “Put that in the truck and I’ll finish the paperwork.” She walked through the sliding-glass door, where a fourth man stood. She skirted around him, but he put a hand on her arm.

Time was short now. Measured in seconds. The chances that one or all four had weaponry were near one hundred percent. Chances they knew how to use it were higher. With no desire to be a hero, I raised a finger to the fourth guy, who was looking at me through the glass.

Flesh is serious business, and Summer was about to learn. Fights are never fun and seldom does anyone win. Even when you win. I would have the element of surprise, but that was about it.

I stepped around Little Man, who didn’t like me dissing him—but the fourth man had one hand inside his jacket. I slid out the door with an ear-to-ear smile on my face and said with a stutter, “H-h-h-hey, you s-s-sign this paperwork for me?”

A Glock 17 is not a fancy or flashy weapon, but it is effective. Maybe one of the most effective. Ever. Somewhere around sixty percent of all law enforcement agencies on the planet use it. And while the 9x19mm Parabellum projectile is a deterrent in its own right, so is looking down the barrel. Of any weapon. Especially if you’ve been shot by one.

He aimed it at me but he still had one hand on Summer, so his grip was weak. I broke his elbow and then his wrist. The pain of that breaking caused an accidental discharge, sending the chambered round through the floor and into the engine room. Whether it continued through the hull and into the water was anybody’s guess, but I doubted it. With a broken wing, the goon wasn’t much of a threat, so I took the Glock and beat him in the face with it.