Page 2 of Finding Elodie
She heard other footsteps heading toward the upper decks and assumed it was officers going to the bridge. Elodie ran as fast as she could to the floor where the galley was located.
She hadn’t lied to Manuel, there were lots of places to hide in the kitchen complex. She’d already scoped them out, but not because she was afraid of pirates.
She was scared of Paul Columbus.
The man had said more than once that the only way out of his employ was in a pine box, and she believed him. She hadn’t known he was the leader of one of the most dangerous mob families in New York when she’d accepted a job as his personal chef. She’d just been excited for the opportunity to get out of the restaurant business. The money had been hard to turn down too.
At first she’d been utterly clueless as to how the Columbus family made their millions. She was happy to stay in the kitchen, minding her own business, creating delicious food for Paul and his frequent guests. But eventually she was clued in that the man she worked for was beyond evil. He didn’t care who he hurt, as long as he found a way to make money illegally.
Everything she was surrounded by in his home had been purchased with dirty money, even the food she used to find such satisfaction in preparing.
Knowing she didn’t have time to reminiscence over all the mistakes she’d made in her life, Elodie entered the officers’ mess room. All the rooms in this part of the ship were connected in one long horizontal line. First was the officers’ mess, then the officers’ pantry, the galley, the crew pantry, and then the crew mess. There was a door in the galley that led to a hallway containing the food storage rooms. There was a general freezer, a fish freezer, three refrigerators, and several pantries for dry food storage.
She’d scoped out all the cabinets she could fit in, and even how she might be able to get to the elevators and stairwells undetected if she had to. She wouldn’t have the first clue where to hide down in the engine room, which was another reason she wanted to come here. This was where she was comfortable. She knew if the pirates decided to stay for any length of time, they’d make their way to the galley, as Manuel had said. While that made things more dangerous for her, she would also do what she could to make sure their trips to the galley were as short as possible.
Keeping the radio tucked into a large pocket of her cargo pants, Elodie worked as fast as possible. She moved three bundles of bottled water into the main kitchen area, where they’d easily be seen. Then she took out several boxes of crackers, a few loaves of bread, and bags of potato chips, and strategically placed them around the galley and both crew pantries. Generally, the food was stored in cupboards, secured so the boxes and cans wouldn’t go flying in rough seas. She wanted the food to be readily accessible for the pirates but at the same time, she didn’t want it to look like anything had been left out intentionally. She wanted the pirates to think they’d hit the mother lode with the food in plain sight, and not bother to dig much deeper.
Elodie ran her arm across her brow. She was sweating and hated not knowing what was happening high above her head in the bridge. Were the pirates onboard? Had they gotten into the bridge? Were they hurting the captain and the other officers?
And most importantly, what did they want?
The radio she’d stuffed in her pants squawked, scaring the shit out of Elodie.
“Holy crap!” she exclaimed, putting one hand over her racing heart and using the other to pull out the radio. The voices were muffled, but she could hear heavily accented males yelling, and Walter trying to placate them.
Confused about what she was hearing, Elodie stood in the middle of the galley trying to decipher what was going on. It took a minute, but she finally realized that someone had activated a radio up in the bridge, and it was broadcasting everything that was happening to the others onboard.
Chills raced up her spine as she listened to Walter doing his best to calm the pirates. It was hard to figure out how many there were, but it seemed as if it was more than a handful. Her stomach clenched in fear. The more pirates there were, the easier it would be to control the ship, to leave some up with the captain and the officers on the bridge and send others to prowl the decks, looking for crew and anything of value they could steal. The last thing Elodie needed was to be held for ransom. Her face would be plastered all over the news…which meant Paul Columbus could use his extensive mob network of soldiers and associates to find her.
“Where is the safe?” one of the pirates asked loudly.
“Not here. It’s downstairs in one of the chart rooms,” Walter told him.
“You go, get money.”
“You can have all the cash we have, then you’ll go,” Walter said.
“No go,” another man said sternly. “You take ship where we say. Our men come on. You open containers.”
“That’s…it’s not safe,” Walter stammered.
“No care. We open. You drive!” the man shouted.
Then Elodie heard scuffling and more shouting. A gunshot went off—and she held her breath, waiting to hear who, if anyone, had been hurt.
“Stop! Okay, okay! We’ll open whatever containers you want, but don’t shoot that thing again!” Walter yelled desperately.
The pirates merely laughed.
“We shoot when and where we want. We shoot you if you do not give us what we want. No hostages, too hard to get money. But if you don’t do what we say, we kill,” one of the pirates said.
“You can’t shoot Walter,” Elodie whispered. “We need him to drive this damn thing.”
As if the captain could hear her, he said, “If you kill me and my officers, this ship will run aground. The Bab el-Mandeb Strait is tricky as hell to navigate.”
“I am fisherman. I can drive boat,” one of the pirates said, unconcerned.
Elodie snorted. Driving a super ship like this one was way different than the skiffs the pirates were probably used to.
