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I craned my head back and stared at the starry night sky with a sigh. “Again, why do you think I would do that? Someone probably accidentally stumbled onto it and called the authorities. I knew it would happen eventually. Why not just make a new site?”
“Our programmer was killed last month. We’re screwed without him.”
I groaned. “Just freakin’ let me go. Please. I can’t help you.”
The taller one chuckled beneath his mask and I noticed he had a long blond ponytail. “Oh, but you can. And you will. You’re going to build us a new site, then we’ll let you go. We’ll pay you nicely to maintain it, too. But if it gets shut down again, we’ll kill you.”
The hell if I was gonna build them another one of those disgusting sites. However… were they actually going to give me access to the internet? “What, on this boat? You have computers and internet access here?”
“No, we’re heading someplace that does. You’ll stay until you get a new site up. Then you can go back to your shitty apartment in that shitty-ass city.”
I pursed my lips and stared at the duo. “Take your masks off.”
They laughed. “No,” the taller one said.
“It’s going to take me weeks or months to build a site like that,” I lied. I had no idea how to build anything but a simple, basic website, but they didn’t know that. “You’re gonna wear those things the whole time?”
The shorter one nodded. “Yes.”
“What are your names?” I asked.
“None of your fucking business, bitch.”
“You guys sound like a dream to work for,” I murmured. “Fine. I’ll do it. But you could have just asked me instead of all these theatrics.”
“No, because if you’re the one who called the cops and reported our website, you would have turned us in.”
I rolled my eyes. “Whatever.” I huffed and stared at the duo. “Where are we headed, anyway?”
They looked at each other and said nothing.
“What? Who am I gonna tell? I’m out here in the middle of nowhere and you took my effing phone.”
“Virgin Islands,” the shorter one answered.
Ponytail smacked him upside the head with a scoffing noise. “Stupid.”
I was relieved I knew where we were headed. “Now, can I get some blood, please? I’m hungry.”
The shorter one untied me from the chair and manhandled me by the arm to below deck, where he stopped and pulled a blood bag from a fishing cooler. He pressed it up against my chest, where I held onto it with my tied hands before he threw me into my room and locked the door.
I yanked the phone from under the mattress and checked it. No more texts, but that wasn’t surprising. I was lucky to have received a reply from Parker due to our remote location. I sent him one last text: We’re headed for the Virgin Islands. I gotta power this down to save battery. I’ll make contact when I get there. As suspected, it’s the human traffickers. These goons are going to try to force me to build them a new website so I’ll have internet access. Update later xo <3
I begrudgingly powered down the phone and ripped open the blood bag. As I was drinking it, I thought about the dream I’d had today. I hadn’t dreamt of my past in a very long time. I loathed thinking about the worst day of my existence. Alec saved my life, but he also ended it. I hated him for a long time, but now that I’d been a vampire for so long, I realized he had the best intentions and wasn’t trying to hurt me or ruin my life. I just couldn’t believe I’d have to look like this forever. There was not going to come a time where I’d get old and wrinkled and maybe the scars wouldn’t be noticeable.
After two years with Alec and his clan, I left him and went to live alone in Alabama. I was still technically a missing person. I left my family, friends, and job behind and after creating a false identity, I took night classes in computer science. I basically self-taught the rest of what I’d learned—and I was still learning. In the nineties, technology was still very new that I had to keep up or be left out. I learned quickly that me getting a regular job was out of the question. I couldn’t deal with the stares and questions. No matter how friendly I was to people, they still looked afraid of me. Especially little kids who had no filter and would point and sometimes cry.
I had watched a lot of tutorials online on how to apply “full coverage” makeup, and while it did actually help me to look less hideous if I took the time to do all the highlighting and contouring that came with it, I mostly found it a waste of time. It was easier to just hide behind my hair and this hood.
After finishing my blood bag, I lay on the bed and stared at the ceiling. I wished they’d untie my hands. What was I going to do against two strong male vampires? It wasn’t like I could escape either. I was so used to being on the computer that I was going to go stir crazy in here without so much as a book to read. I got up and tried the door. I used vampire strength to try to break the lock, but it wouldn’t budge. They must have done something to it.
Sighing, I went back to the bed and closed my eyes, praying to whoever would listen that Parker would find me before these thugs found out I couldn’t do what I said I would and build them a super secure website on the Dark Web. Those website addresses weren’t like normal ones, they were scrambled and complicated.
I hated feeling like the damsel in distress waiting to be rescued, but I literally had no other way out of this unless Parker found me. The most depressing part about it was—if I’d never met Parker, I wouldn’t have had anyone to call to try and save me. I’d have been good and truly fucked.
Chapter 20
Waiting Game
