“Please,” I hear Eric beg. “She won’t wake up. Please help her.”

“Fuck, I told you to give her water,” Hendrix barks.

“I did, Cap.”

“I meant enough to fuckin’ make sure she didn’t end up like this. Did you fuckers even give them anything the past few days, like I instructed?” he bellows.

Silence fills the room.

Hendrix wanted them to feed us? He wasn’t trying to kill us slowly. My chest swells with hope.

“Sorry Cap, I thought…I thought Jess gave it to them and…”

“Fuck, incompetent idiots!”

I hear the cell door open, and a moment later I feel arms go around my body and lift me. I keep myself as floppy as I possibly can.

“Get Senny and Jess, they need to see to her.”

There are women on the ship? My heart flutters. Women could mean hope. They might help me.

Hendrix carries me out, and I hear him order the pirate to get Eric water and food, and I’m thankful for that. More than anything, I want to make sure he’s okay. When we get up and out into the halls, I crack my eyes open, frantically trying to take in my surrounds. Some doors are open, and in one I can see a window. A window is good. I see inside the dining room, with its long tables and chairs scattered about everywhere. We pass a small kitchen; knives…knives could be good.

“I know what you’re doin’,” Hendrix suddenly says.

I quickly peer up at him to see he’s looking down at me. Shit. He busted me scoping out his ship. He busted me pretending to be passed out. God, I am so stupid. I didn’t even fool him for a minute, not even a damned minute. How am I supposed to escape when I can’t even make him believe I’ve passed out for five minutes?

“Can’t blame me for trying,” I croak.

“What were you plannin’ on doin’?” He smirks. “Overpowering me with your impressive strength, then running off with a knife and jumping overboard?”

Okay, well now that he puts it like that I feel stupid. I frown, and turn my eyes away from his.

“It wouldn’t have worked for more than one reason, but the main being that we are in the middle of the ocean, a long way away from anything civil. You’d be dead in a day.”

Asshole.

“I could have gotten overboard. It has to be better than just sitting here and waiting for you to sell me as some sort of sex slave,” I snap.

He suddenly drops me to my feet. My knees buckle and it’s only because of his tight grip around my arm that I don’t crumble to the floor. I’m so weak. He begins to drag me, his pace angry and determined. He leads me down the hall, and up the stairs onto the deck.

It’s late afternoon, and the sun is just beginning to lower on the horizon. I squint, even though the sun isn’t high in the sky. I’ve been in a dark cell for days, and it burns. He pulls me toward the railing and shoves me against it, pressing a hand to the back of my neck and pushing my face over the side.

What the hell?

“W…w…what are you doing?” I cry, struggling as much as my weak body will allow.

“Watch,” he snarls, and then he turns his head. “Drake, get out here and throw some bait over!”

A minute passes, and then a chunk of thick meat is flung over the side of the ship. It lands in the water, making a small splash. Hendrix keeps his grip on the back of my head, and my chest begins to constrict. Then I see them. My vision blurs a moment, and my bottom lip trembles. At least six sharks, big ones, come up to the surface. One of them launches out of the water, snapping up the piece of meat as if it was no more than a bite sized snack. I begin to cry. My entire body shakes, and panic fills me. Even if I find a way off, those sharks are deadly. I’d likely never get far.

“Do you see that?” Hendrix barks. “Do you fucking see it? That’s what is in these waters, that is what happens if you try and leap over the side.”

“I…I…I get it,” I cry.

He shoves my head down further, and I scream. “You want to be shark bait?”

“No,” I scream, squirming.

“You want them to tear you to pieces, slowly?”

“Goddammit, no!”

He hurls me back up, and my body slams into his chest. My knees do buckle now, and he lets me fall. I hit the deck. My hands splay out on the damp wood, and I begin to pant. I’m done for. I have no way out. How do you escape something like this? The ocean has suddenly become a deadly place, filled with far more danger than I ever could have imagined.

“My suggestion to you is to stop trying. There is no way off this ship, girl. Not without causing your own death.”

I shake. I am doing this wrong. I am trying to escape when, really, my best chance at escape is when he attempts to make the deal. I imagine whoever he is selling me to will be on land, and therefore I will have a small window of opportunity to run. If I’m dead, I won’t get that chance.

Hendrix might have scared me, but I’m not about to give up.

Not yet.

Hendrix lets me sit on the deck for a moment after the shark incident while he speaks to a group of pirates in the corner. He’s deep in conversation, so I decide to take the risk. He is so sure he’s scared me enough that I won’t try and figure something out. My mind goes to the knives in the kitchen—hell, there’s probably even a gun or two lying around. A shock attack, and I’d have to be careful, but I might be able to get Eric and get into the small boat at the back of the ship. The small boat he doesn’t know I saw while I was sitting here, recovering from the shock scare. It’s there, though, right at the back, just visible. I stand slowly, and very carefully I tiptoe toward the door that leads down to the second level.