Wolf by Madelaine Montague

seemed to struggle for words for a moment. “I know you’re scared. You don’t know me and you’ve got no reason to trust me—any of us—but we don’t make war on women and children. No one here is going to hurt you. I wouldn’t hurt you and I won’t allow anybody else to. You got that?”
    Sylvie swallowed convulsively and nodded.
    He lifted a hand and settled it along her cheek. “Good girl! Try to get some rest.
    I’ll have somebody right outside if you need anything. Alright?”
    Sylvie nodded again. “Thank you,” she said a little unsteadily.
    He smiled faintly, looked like he was considering saying more, and finally dismissed it. “You’re going to be ok, Sylvie—my word on it.”
    She curled up on the bunk when he’d left, listening to men moving around the boat, their low voiced conversations. The shock that had engulfed her from the time they’d taken over the boat gave way to a sense of unreality, almost like a dream where the sense of an unknown threat was woven in and out of a bizarre drama that didn’t really make any sense. She found that she didn’t want to think about what she was going to face if and when they did actually let her go. The images that did flicker through her mind weren’t comforting.
    After a while, she found herself drifting toward sleep in spite of the tension that still coiled through her, in spite of the questions and fears that kept tumbling through her mind. For a time, she would drop toward unconsciousness only to be jerked from it by some sound that alarmed her—a heavy tread above her head, a short spurt of laughter from a male throat.
    It flickered through her mind to wonder what Carl must have thought when he’d arrived at the rendezvous and found her gone. He was probably cursing her for being so unreliable, pissed off that he and the people they’d taken to Cuba for help were stranded.
    It was the least of her worries at the moment, though, and it was usurped fairly quickly by more immediate concerns.
    Eventually, she drifted closer to oblivion, but it seemed she’d barely lost touch with reality when she was jerked back again. Her eyes grainy from lack of sleep, she 28
    blinked up at the unfamiliar ceiling above her, listening intently, and trying to decide what had woken her.
    The boat had slowed, she realized as soon as it dawned on her that the sound of the engine wasn’t as loud. After straining for a few moments to see what else her hearing might tell her, she finally got up as quietly as she could and peered out of the small porthole the cabin boasted. Outside, it was brighter, but still dark enough that it took her a few moments to sort and identify the shadows. The thin ribbon of beach she could see in the distance finally identified the view as land mass and sea, although the black backdrop had seemed more like a bank of black clouds at first. A loud splash close by brought her focus from the land to the sea just beyond the porthole. Almost directly behind it was another loud splash, and then two more almost one upon the other.
    Bodies.
    Her heart skipped several beats before she saw movement and realized four men had gone overboard. She could see faint gleams of light among the shadows she finally identified as bodies cleaving through the water. Her gaze went immediately to the thin ribbon of beach that seemed so impossibly far away.
    The boat began to pick up speed again almost the moment the men went into the water. Sylvie stayed where she was for several moments more, straining to see if the men had made it to the beach, but she’d completely lost sight of them in the darkness.
    Settling on the bunk again, she tried to assure herself that they must not be as far from shore as it had seemed to her, but she couldn’t convince herself.
    They must know what they were doing, she told herself.
    She’d almost dozed off when the change in the sound of the engine alerted her that the boat was slowing again. She didn’t get up that time, instead