Page 80 of A Princess, Stolen
With their weapons, they roughly drove Nathan’s crew to one side of the railing, including me and Pan. I thanked God that Nathan and the others weren’t playing the hero. I knew they had no weapons on board. Not one. Someone had mentioned it recently in connection with Sparta. Nathan had not wanted them on board for the protection of his men from each other and for my protection. Now his gaze found me and a fleeting expression of relief flashed across his face. He came to me and stood in front of me as if he wanted to protect me with his life if necessary. I only saw his back, breathed in his salty scent, foreign and remote, and yet felt the icy fear that stiffened my limbs. I could feel Isaac’s presence as if he had whispered a personal greeting in my ear.
Which one was he?
I cautiously peeked over Nathan’s shoulder. We were standing on the left near the tower by the railing. Two armed men with drawn Glocks had positioned themselves on the bollards so that they towered over everyone else. Two giantswith revolvers flanked the crew on the right and left. Another man with the face of a tough mercenary also held a Glock in his casually dangling hand, a black-and-brown rifle hanging from a strap over his shoulder. With a watchful gaze, he remained with an unarmed man.
My stomach turned. The unarmed man could only be Isaac.
He didn’t look like what I had imagined, not like a colonel who loved to torture prisoners of war. He looked more like someone who fit into my social class, someone like Lawrence if you ignored the overalls. He was tall, as tall as Nathan, and just as fit, but like Nathan, he wasn’t a colossus. His short, dark hair was wild and messy from the journey, falling almost over his eyes, but his finely cut features had something shockingly familiar about them. As if I had seen him somewhere before. Not in Baton Rouge, where he had been far away, another time. Maybe at a fundraising gala or the opera? I feverishly tried to recall where, but couldn’t think of it.
He now looked disparagingly at Nathan’s men, who stood at the railing like spoils of war, his gaze lingering on me even though he could barely see me.
“Good evening, little lady,” he said, pointing at me with two fingers. “I see you!” A sly expression appeared on his noble face. Behind Nathan, I made myself even smaller, but I still had the feeling that his gaze was slithering into me like a snake. It felt intimate as if I was standing stark naked in front of him.
Nathan promptly changed his position so that he covered me completely. “Leave her alone!” I heard him growl. I peered past his upper arm.
Isaac looked at him sharply. “Perhaps you’ll finally explain to me what this puppet show is all about. You secretly changed course as if we weren’t a cohesive unit. Not a team! What have you become? Willa Nevaeh Rae’s puppet?”
“I have…” Nathan began but Isaac immediately interrupted him.
“Did any of you seriously believe that Nicholas Garrett Hampton would hand himself over like a condemned man, voluntarily laying his head under the axe?” He looked around. “Where did you think this was all going? We’re not playing cops and robbers!”
“We all agreed to this plan,” Nathan replied now in a firm voice. “You too.”
Isaac didn’t respond. “You honestly thought you could impose your rules on one of the most powerful men in America by kidnapping his daughter, sailing down the coast with her on a fishing boat, and sending him a nice photo every now and then?”
It didn’t sound like he wanted a peaceful end to this encounter and that made me shudder. And what did he mean bynice photo? I had been in a sorry state.
In front of me, Nathan folded his arms but he was shaking with anger. “Why not?”
“Oh, yes, good question. Why not? Maybe because he’s a self-righteous asshole? Do you believe someone who calls themselfa god and benefactorwould go to jail for anyone? Let’s ask his little daughter?”
“She didn’t do anything to you, damn it!”
“Ah, listen to this!” Isaac laughed. “You of all people, are saying that? A few weeks ago, didn’t you say that you wanted to teach Hampton’s little daughter to fear?Youwanted to hold her hostage, didn’t you? Bread, water, and shackles so she would learn what deprivation meant?”
Nathan remained silent but held out his hand and I took his fingers even though Isaac’s words disturbed me more than I cared to admit.
Isaac looked intently from one to the other. “This plan was doomed from the beginning, but if I had told you thatbeforehand, you wouldn’t have gone along with it. It was that simple. Just look at you!” He walked past Nathan’s men, men who had scared me to death weeks ago but now seemed as harmless as schoolboys when I compared them to Isaac’s henchmen. “You give yourselves names from Greek mythology. Troy, Pan, Apollo, Taurus… I was against this farce from the beginning.” He pointed to Troy, whose eyes widened in shock, and then he looked in my direction. “Willa Nevaeh Rae, this is Noah Van Veenstra, and this”—he pointed first to Pan and then to Ilias—“is Kjertan Johannsson and his twin brother, Rayk.”
“Stop!” Nathan yelled and let go of me, taking a step forward, whereupon the giant next to us immediately pointed the barrel of his gun at him.
Isaac didn’t even pay attention to him as he strolled down the line. “Thomas Tremblay, aka Taurus. I repeat: Thomas Tremblay, remember it for your police report, little lady.”
“Stop, damn it! Have you gone mad?” Nathan yelled at him. I could almost physically feel his desire to attack Isaac, wanting to pummel his face. But that was prevented not only by the giant next to us but also by the dark-haired man on the bollard, who was also aiming his Glock at him.
Isaac stopped in front of Icarus. “Should I stop? I didn’t change course to betray my brother and my own friends. It’s not my fault that the little lady now knows all the faces inside and out. Why no names then, Nathaniel McCormack?”
He pointed at Icarus and the man with the iron-hard mercenary face standing by his side pointed his gun at him as if to stop any further protest. “Our trickster Icarus, alias Ian Lee…and this, our Castor, is Jack Wilson.” Castor was the grumpy man with the goatee and emerald-green eyes, whom I had only ever seen briefly, as well as Apollo, the nondescript banker type, whom Isaac now passed. “The good Alvin White and next to him we have Mykonos, whose real name is Owen Williams, aman who should hate you with all his heart, Willa Nevaeh Rae, because he will die miserably in a few weeks.”
Owen, with the razor-short army haircut and mushroom-like skin, looked at me, and in his eyes, there was that same glow as Sparta’s. Icy water ran down my back. He certainly wouldn’t take my side.
Isaac continued walking and nodded to the hobbits. “Ben Baker and Jerry Millman. Next to them is our Delphic oracle, Raphael Gauthier.”
I could only guess why he was doing it. He wanted to give the men a reason why I had to disappear. For good.
Instinctively, I dug my nails into my palms. Now, I felt like I had been locked in a container with a bunch of psychopaths. Anything could happen. Over Nathan’s shoulder, I saw Isaac stride to the middle and bow with a sarcastic smile.
“Allow me, little lady, Isaac McCormack.” As he straightened up, I was met with that possessive look again, a flicker that made every cell in me tremble.
