“By yourself?”

I laugh a little. “You offering to tag along?”

She just shakes her head. “I’d be in your way.” She’s right, of course. “No chance we can just go to the police, is there?”

I shake my head. “The yacht goes to that port town because they have some influence over the police there. That’s been their MO everywhere else.”

“So what can I do?”

“We need a room near the port, ready for us when we arrive.”

She nods. “I’ll book something. What else?”

“I’ll need a speedboat and some diving gear. You can make some calls before we get there.”

She nods, types a note in her laptop, then looks back up at me. “I don’t know who you are, and I don’t know what you are capable of. But there is no way you can rescue all those girls.”

“That’s not my plan. My plan is, I’m going to get onto that boat to wrap my hands around somebody in charge. And if I have to kill any goons that get in my way, I’ll do that, too.”

To her credit, Talyssa has become dramatically more accepting of my dirty work since we met. She doesn’t blanch at the prospect of me killing again. But she says, “You don’t seriously think the head of the operation is on board that yacht, do you?”

I shrug. “There’s somebody on there who can give us some answers. I’m going to beat the shit out of them till they talk.”

She just stares at me a few seconds, and I know what’s coming.

She says, “That is literally the only strategy you know, isn’t it?”

I laugh again. I’m so tired I’m getting goofy. “Like I have a strategy. It should be pretty obvious that I make this shit up as I go.”

“Wonderful,” she mutters sarcastically, and then she looks back down at her screen to begin searching for an apartment to rent.

* * *

• • •

Just after noon we arrive in Pula, park the stolen car at a bus station, and then take a cab to a rental car office on the other side of town. We get a two-door Honda using my fake passport and credit card, and only after leaving a large deposit. Then we head for the marina, stopping along the way to drink espressos and eat a small lunch in a café.

At the marina I drop her off after reminding her of exactly what I need, and then I drive to a nearby scuba shop.

Here I buy a complete scuba rig along with fins, a mask, and a wetsuit. Fully equipped, I next drive to a marine-supply business, and I buy several items I think I might need to board the ship from its mooring line tonight, and several more “just in case” odds and ends.

I also stop at a hardware store and a pharmacy, and then, with the car laden down, I return to the marina two hours after I left Talyssa. I find her standing on board an eight-meter-long Mano Marine speedboat with a 350 horsepower Mercury Verado engine. I’d told her I needed at least 180 horsepower, so she has greatly exceeded her mandate.

My plan is simply to motor out a few hundred yards away from La Primarosa when it moors here later this evening, and I don’t need a particularly muscular boat to do this, but when it comes to gear, I do subscribe to the mantra that more is more.

I’d been worried about her renting anything too ostentatious and conspicuous, but the boat she found for us has a simple, unassuming white hull and hardly looks like the powerful machine that it is.

“Nice,” I say. “Any problems with the paperwork?”

“Had to sign my life away, basically.”

“I’ll try to return it in one piece.”

She takes this as a joke and lets it slide with an eye roll, and I begin hauling gear out of the car to place in the little hold belowdecks.

* * *

• • •

An hour later we are locked in our rented flat within sight of the marina, and we treat our various cuts and bruises with first-aid items I bought from the pharmacy. Talyssa is in pain, her shoulder is killing her, and I doubt the pills I bought over the counter will do much more than blunt the sensation, but she takes them anyway.

Then I begin preparing equipment. I’ve bought a small utility anchor and fifty feet of ultralight braided anchor line, and I attach these, then pull a can of spray-on rubber coating out of the bag from the hardware store. I apply this all over the four-pound anchor, using the entire can and covering it completely with the quick-drying black rubber compound.

I put the line and the anchor in a black backpack and stage it by the door.

I also assemble my scuba equipment, clean my pistol, and take care of other small details.

Then Talyssa and I both set the alarms on our phones to go off in four hours. The plan is to wake up at eight p.m., and to be down at the speedboat ready to go by nine.

Talyssa lies down fully clothed on one of the twin beds, while I pull a pillow and a comforter off the other and toss it in the bathroom, then lie down, unholster my Glock, and place it on the floor next to me.

I pray for sleep, but I also pray that I won’t dream of the red room yet again.

TWENTY-FIVE

   The clouds over Los Angeles hung low in the morning, trapping the air and the exhaust of four million morning commuters. Street-level Hollywood was smogging up a couple hours after dawn, but high in the Hollywood Hills, the air was somewhat cleaner and markedly cooler.

Ken Cage wore a Harvard sweatshirt and an LA Kings ball cap to ward off the slight chill, and he sat at a canopied glass table near the deep end of his infinity pool, sipping coffee with his sandaled feet up on the table. Before him his landscaped and manicured two acres cascaded down a steep slope. Beyond that, Hollywood was splayed out flat and wide, and in the distance the skyline of downtown LA seemed to lord over the entire scene.

While he sipped coffee and gazed out at the view, all three of Cage’s kids lounged around the pool, having just finished breakfast. This was family time, before Dad started his workday, but all of Cage’s kids stared into screens held in their hands.

His wife, Heather, sat next to him, and she also held a tablet computer in her lap. She read aloud an article about a museum exhibit one of her friends had recently curated, but Ken Cage barely heard her.

As he gazed out at the view, his mind wasn’t focused on his family, on his property, or on his work; it was focused on the next shipment of girls to Rancho Esmerelda. Two would be arriving from Asia in less than a week. Two more he’d see in Venice on his upcoming trip there, and then they would be flown back to America with Jaco in a jet owned by one of the Consortium’s shells.

There would be other new girls coming, but these four he’d chosen by hand, and he was looking forward to enjoying them all.