Page 71 of Beast

“I went back today to be one hundred percent sure. I’d fucking bet my Budweiser on it.”

The room fell silent. We didn’t joke about “The Budweiser,” our trident, our Navy Insignia. It was pinned on every Navy SEAL, after completing the BUD/S training,

Kyle put his hand on my shoulder. “You’re serious. You fucking think you found Annie Hamilton in a Aruban whorehouse?”

“She’s pretty wrecked, but she’s alive. A heroin junkie barely holding on. It’s a miracle she’s survived these last five years. Now, how are we going to get her out?”

Vic shook his head. “You fucked a hooker? That’s low, even for you, Walsh. Go tell Captain Marshall. You realize you’re going to get charged for solicitation.”

“Shut your fucking cock holster. Who the fuck do you think you are telling me what to do? You’re not my sea daddy. Of course I know I can get charged, but I don’t give a shit. We need to save her. We’re fucking SEALs. No one else is going to do it. Don’t you see? I was meant to be on this deployment, this SEAL Team. To rescue her. But we aren’t going to tell Captain Marshall—or anyone else on the Team, for that matter. The Navy would have to go through the proper channels. It’s too risky. There have been sightings of her before and no one did shit. I’m going to rescue her. You going to help me? Or you going to fucking rat my ass out?”

Kyle didn’t hesitate. “I’m in.”

Vic bit his lip. “So am I.” I knew Vic would help, even though he liked to follow protocol.

Kyle put his hand on my back. “Yup. Not even worried. These dumbasses are jokes compared to the guys we usually deal with.”

He was right. I’d been in firefights with the Taliban, overtaken Somali pirates, and offed members of drug cartels. A low-grade Caribbean white-slavery ring didn’t scare me.

We had two weeks at sea to come up with a plan before we arrived back in San Diego. The second my feet touched the ground on shore, I was going to hop on the next flight to Aruba. She’d survived five years. I’d never forgive myself if I couldn’t bring her home to her family, home to the United States. What was the point of being called a hero if I couldn’t save her? It didn’t matter that rescuing her wasn’t an official mission. She was my mission.

7

Star

MY MIND RACED. HE WASN’T coming back. He had left me. Another man who used and abandoned me, but even worse, he’d given me false hope. He knew I was whom I said I was, the hell I’d been through, and he had just left me here.

It had been more than two weeks. The longest weeks of my life—even longer than the first weeks I had gone missing. Back then, I had been slipping in and out of consciousness so I hadn’t even been aware of my surroundings. I didn’t know who or where I was, drugs shooting through my veins.

Why did he have to come back and give me hope? I didn’t want to believe him, be let down again by another man. But what choice did I have?

I crept into the bathroom and turned on the shower. The lukewarm water beaded down my body, highlighting my scars. How much longer could I go on like this? I wondered what Patrick was doing at this precise moment. Was he thinking of me, planning my rescue? Or was he partying somewhere with his buddies, paying for another whore to service him? Why did I believe him? This was a man who paid for sex in a whorehouse. Sure, all men had needs, but I didn’t know if I could ever respect a man who used a woman for sex, knowing she was a living corpse with no control over her body or life.

Patrick was nothing like the men I’d known before I was kidnapped. He was rugged, masculine, and unfiltered. My father was a proud and honorable man. He and my mom had been married for twenty-six years and he always treated her and me with such love and respect. He prided himself on having the perfect wife, the perfect daughter—how did I even fit into that picture anymore? I shuddered and it wasn’t from the now ice-cold water. Thinking of the immense pain my father must be experiencing, unable to find his daughter, almost seemed worse than enduring my daily grind.

I’d had a boyfriend at the time I vanished. Chris was a marine biology major, and a world-class surfer. And Patrick said he’d been a suspect in my supposed murder? My careless decision to leave my room at dawn to take pictures ruined his life too. I’m sure he’d moved on now, not that I could blame him. Who would ever want me knowing I had been with hundreds of men? Even if I came back, I couldn’t really see his parents accepting me into their family; a smack-addicted whore doesn’t belong at the yacht club.

I scrubbed my body with the soap, until my skin was almost raw. Sometimes when I came down from a high, my skin burned and itched and I wanted to gouge it off my body. No matter how much I scoured and cleansed, I felt so dirty.

The steam filled the room and I exited the shower. Within an hour, I’d be back on the line, waiting for my next john.

I hated sex. Hated it. I could never learn to enjoy it again. It had even become more painful after Patrick had returned. Every time a man touched me, I wanted to vomit.

I’d give him a month or two. If he didn’t come back for me, I needed to consider my options. Ha—back when I was younger, the word options to me meant travel, colleges, cars, jobs. Today, the only options I had available to me were to continue to live this miserable life, or to end it all. I couldn’t go on like this forever.

But I had a reason to live. A reason to hope. And for now, that was enough to keep me going.

8

Patrick

KYLE, VIC AND I HEADED down to the ship gym to get one last workout in before we docked in San Diego. Tomorrow we were going to fly to Aruba. Adrenaline pumped through my veins yet I was able to control my emotions. I wanted to kill these motherfuckers, but to avoid an international incident they would have to do something really stupid for me to pop them off.

I was glad Kyle and Vic had my back. That’s the thing with Team guys—we were more than brothers, we were bonded for life.

Kyle smacked me on the head. “Shit, man. I don’t see why I can’t get laid with one of the other whores first and then we can save your girlfriend. I’ll be quick.”

I hit him back. “Yeah, your ex mentioned your little problem. But sorry, not going to risk it. And she’s not my girlfriend.”