I wish I could say Cam put a curse on me when he predicted I’d be sicker than a dog, but it’s the natural order of things. This time, I’m able to at least swallow it down until in the privacy of my own suite. The boat’s not even moving yet, there’s no rolling sensation of bumping over the Mediterranean. Just the idea of being on the water is all it takes, and my imagination convinces me the floor is slipping out from under my feet, my body ragdolled against the walls in a fictitious storm. The nausea is instant and debilitating.
I’m not sure how long I’m crumpled on the floor in front of the toilet, but it’s long enough to doze off a few times. I wouldn’t say it’s my lowest point, but it’s down there. Sweat sticks me to the linoleum, the fluorescents I forgot to shut off are like the rapture burning through my eyelids. A wretch like me left behind to suffer the consequences of gluttony. It’s a vicious cycle of passing out, then jerking into consciousness long enough to put my face in the bowl. My mouth tastes like the back end of a diseased dog subsisting off dumpsters. Eventually, a shower feels like the filamentlike line between life and death.
I scrub down, dry off, pop a Xanax, and paper my arms with enough patches to give myself acute poisoning. By all accounts, I should be dead in the morning.
Maybe I’ve not been totally abandoned by the divine. A guardian angel, or it’s just not my time as pre–recorded in the scroll of fate.
By all accounts, it’s crazy that I’d wake through the hangover and Xanax with an urge to piss. But, bleary and functioning on autopilot, I fumble from the bed and cross the room at 2:17 in the ungodly AM. I’m afraid the light will burn out my retinas, so I operate off the sliver of moon that sneaks through the curtains. For the most part, my head’s an empty container. No thoughts beyond holy shit, it’s a miracle I didn’t piss the bed.
Forearm pressed against the bulkhead, brow sliding against my arm, I do my business. Flush, wash my hands because I’m not an animal–
Be-beep–!
Suddenly, activity explodes in the blank vacuum behind my eyes, because that was definitely my motherfucking door unlocking via keycard.
I lock up, frozen with tension. The bathroom door is cracked, and there’s a splinter’s field of view into the room. My first real, fully fleshed thought: ‘did…Zakhar come find me for sex after killing a dude?’
But, I dismiss it, because he seems the type to knock whether in possession of a keycard or not. Freakishly polite in the weirdest times. The only other person that comes to mind is Henry, but that doesn’t make a lick of sense. Henry wasn’t emotionally distraught enough to let himself into my room at two in the morning, let alone so…quietly. So sneakily. My gut is screaming at me to stay put. Don’t move, don’t breathe, don’t make a fuckin’ sound. Whoever it is, they’ll have to pass by the bathroom and turn a corner to the bed where I’m presumed to be knocked out and unaware.
Taking painstakingly slow breaths through my nose, there’s that rush of adrenaline I’m familiar with. Fight or flight, overcoming an obstacle that will leave me splattered on the ground if I step wrong. If it’s Zakhar who’s come through my door with any intention other than fucking me, I’m…well, fucked. In the dead way. There’s nothing I can do against him. Run, maybe, but I don’t think I’d make it three steps out the door.
The figure that whispers by the bathroom is about a head and a half shorter than Zakhar. My height, maybe an inch or two less. The glimpse I catch is enough to recognize who’s come into my room unannounced, and the implication is obvious.
One of the goons…?
“Hah?! Oh–” Clearing my throat, I work to reclaim a sense of nonchalance. He must’ve wrapped up their discussion, as his companion is already several steps ahead, headed towards the security line. “Ah, if you’ve got something to do…?”
“No. Borislav has his own matters to attend to.”
“Right, right.”
Borislav. That’s his name, and if he’s here to do anything other than slit my throat in my sleep, christen me the fucking Queen. Now, this bald–headed twat? If I can’t pull his card, I deserve what’s coming. He’s quiet, I’ll give him that. Other than the keycard registering with the lock, I didn’t even hear the door unlatch. His clothes aren’t whispering across his body, and his feet don’t catch on any creaky spots. I’d have never heard him.
He’s hamfisting something, but I can’t discern whether it’s a gun or knife. Both are a big problem in close contact. Setting my jaw, I tease the door open as soon as he breezes by. I might not assassinate people for a living, but I can sneak with the best of ’em. It was nothing short of an Olympic event the first fifteen years of my life. Slipping through the narrow crevice, Borislav still gives his back as he approaches the corner. Gun tipped with a silencer, not a knife. Great. He wasn’t going to torture me, at least.
Once he gets a good gander at the bed, he’ll know I’m not in it. It’s a matter of seconds before he whips back the way he came, and my window of opportunity is gone. Flexing my fingers in and out of nervous fists, I put myself right behind him. He’s lifting the gun, safety snicked off, index massaging the trigger. My heart pounds in my face, and a cold sweat tickles in some uncomfortable places.
A lot happens in the following five seconds.
Borislav peers around the corner, only to find a big, empty bed strewn with twisted blankets and haphazard pillows. I catch the beginnings of a hissed curse before snapping my arm around his throat, pinching his Adam’s apple in the crux of my elbow. My left hand palms the back of his shiny head to keep an occipital from smashing my nose in.
Snarling in his ear, “Ищете меня?”
Unfortunately, Borislav does assassinate people for a living.
His elbow slingshots into my gut, and my body momentarily forgets how to catch and keep a breath. My arm loosens just enough for him to rip out of it, and oh, shit, gun.
He’s halfway turned, pistol snapping up from his hip. If all it took to incapacitate me was a solid gut shot, my face wouldn’t be this pretty. I fling myself at him with as much force as can be gathered in two steps, and we tumble to the bed in a gangly heap. He loses his grip on the gun, and the sound of it clattering between the bed and wall is so, so sweet. It’s in an impossible-to-reach place now, but that’s not to say he isn’t strapped with contingency weapons.
If you’ve ever fought on a bed, you’d know it’s hard to get traction. Hits don’t land quite as hard, and it’s difficult to block those that come raining down. Borislav’s quick to get the upright position, and I lock my legs around his thick midsection. His hammerlike punches threaten to shatter the bone in my forearms, but I’m done if I take one of those directly to the face. Unclenching my legs, I draw my knees towards my chest and launch both soles into his sternum. He flies off the edge of the bed, landing on the floor like a Costco-sized sack of flour. I follow him down gracelessly, because there’s not a second to waste.