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“Come on. It’s been so long since I dancedwithsomeone.”

She was immediately embarrassed by her own words, and Patrick didn’t let on that he’d caught her implicit juxtaposition of dancingforsomeone—some creep who found pleasure in forcing a sex-trafficking victim to do much worse than dance against her will. If he could make her smile for a minute, if only by tripping over his own feet for her amusement, it was the least Patrick could do for this Shakespeare-quoting enigma from the dark side who’d risked her life to save him and asked for nothing in return—so far, at least.

“All right. I’ll try my best.”

She started to move her hips and took his hand. “I will teach you to dance like a Colombian.”

She pressed the palm of her right hand against the palm of his left, then took his other hand and placed it on her hip. Patrick felt the warmth of her skin through her jeans, but he was equally taken by the sheer mechanics of movement, all between her thighs and narrow waist.

“How do you do that without even moving your feet?”

“Listen for the counter rhythm.”

“What’s a counter rhythm?”

“You’d be pathetic if you weren’t so cute. Follow my lead.”

She moved left, Patrick went the other way. He apologized, and they started again. The old man turned up the music on the radio, and this time Olga counted the steps for him aloud.

“You got it,” she said, as she pressed his hand more firmly into her hip, as if to help him feel the music.

The old man started singing. They were face-to-face, hips swinging, as Olga led him back and forth across the small cabin. Patrick crushedher foot only once, but she smiled and kept counting. The old man was clapping to the music, which replaced Olga’s counting, and soon Patrick was leading.

“You’re dancing,” she said.

“Like a Colombian?”

“Hmmm. Close enough.”

The music stopped. The old man grabbed the radio and shook it, trying to make it work again. It was dead, but Patrick and Olga remained in their dance pose, choosing not to pull apart, her right hand in his left. Slowly, her left hand slid from his hip, gently, all the way up to his shoulder blade. Her shirt had a long opening in back that followed her spine, and his fingers traveled from the gentle curve of her hip to the small of her back. Their bodies drew closer, so close that the space between them was almost gone. Patrick tingled with the imagined feeling of her breasts pressed against him. Her breathing caressed his neck as she looked up at him with those dark brown eyes. His hand slipped inside the opening of her shirt, and he duplicated the light swirling motion across her back, skin so warm and smooth. So smooth. Until it wasn’t. The tips of his fingers found an inch-long ridge, then another, and another. Her body stiffened in his arms.

“Scars,” she said.

“From what?”

“Not important.”

Patrick didn’t pursue it, but it saddened him to know that this fallen angel in his arms lived in a world where getting stabbed in the back, literally, was an occupational hazard.

“They’re nothing,” she whispered.

The cabin door suddenly burst open. Olga dove to the floor and took Patrick with her. The old man shouted, but he was quickly silenced by a single gunshot. It resounded like cannon fire, sandwiched between the metal floor and ceiling.

“Don’t move!” the gunman shouted, and Patrick knew that voice.

Javier had found them.

Patrick and Olga lay side-by-side on the floor. Until then, Patrick hadn’t noticed that the old ship was listing, but it was evident from the port-to-starboard flow of blood on the floor from the crewman’s mortal chest wound.

Javier stood over his hostages, pointing his gun first at Olga and then at Patrick.

“Nice move, El Rubio. You boarded the one ship in the harbor that isn’t going anywhere.”

Chapter 41

It was a cloudy Sunday morning in the District, and Kate reached the theater on two hours of sleep and three cups of coffee. She had hardly thought about her play since the blow-up with Sean the Snake. But Irving Bass was still committed to a January opening, and Kate couldn’t miss the first table reading, even if it was the last thing she felt like doing. If nothing else, she needed to confront Irving about shopping her script.

“Places, please,” said Sean, as he and Bass entered.

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