Chapter 17
"BASTET! SEKHMET! COME OUT! HERE'S YOU BREAKFAST!" Rachel gave a sigh. The cats were having none of it, although the food dishes were empty, the litter box needed cleaning. Was there a maid who cleaned the apartment? Maybe not. Maybe the girls valued privacy over convenience. And Rocco? He had the girls to be his maids. If they even knew how to keep house. Spoiled little princesses. How long were they going to last in the culinary school?
Just at that moment, the apartment door opened. A maid, after all? Or Andre out of the hospital already? She went out into the living room.
"Rocco? Is that you?
Mon Dieu
! What happened to your hair?" He was as hairless as Nestor. Naked, and completely hairless. Nestor carried it with confidence but poor Rocco looked like a plucked chicken, his skull red and blotchy. "What are you doing here? Where are the girls? Is everything okay?"
"The answers are you wouldn't believe me, ditto, ditto, and no. Is there something to eat?"
"I don't know, except for cat food. Here." She retrieved some yogurt from the fridge, which he downed in a gulp.
"That's better. We were attacked by pirates and I was thrown overboard and I swam here and the girls are not okay."
"The pirates shaved off all your hair and threw you overboard?"
"No. Is there more yogurt? So we went up on to the ship one at a time, and Bea went up first and they strapped her into a little cart, she was sort of lying on it folded up so her knees were at her shoulders, yeah, like that, and the guards gave her a few shocks with a cattle prod and fucked her some and wheeled her inside. Then Risa went over and the same deal. So then I came over and the guards said the cart is too small for you and no offense but if the abeed wants to fuck you that's his business. So they just put cuffs on me and led me down to where the girls were. They were still on the carts but they'd already been shaved and painted."
"Shaved? Their heads too? Like you?"
"Yes."
"Painted?"
"Everything painted. Bea dayglo blue and Risa bright pink. So then they shaved me too."
"You let them?"
"Once we got on the ship they could do anything they wanted. That was the deal. So then they strapped me on a table. The girls were still on the carts, and people started to wander in to fuck us. Everyone came in naked, so it was hard to tell if they were crew or guests or what. And they were wearing masks." He saw the questioning look. "Yeah, they were spitroasting me, and the girls too, but they could turn the carts on end to do dp if they wanted too."
"Oh. They were fucking you? Like, sodomizing you?"
"Yep. Not much I could do about it, so I decided to just relax and enjoy it. I hadn't done that for a long time. I guess it's like riding a bicycle. So this is going on for a while, and I guess we must have gone out of port, you know the ship might have been rocking more but I was like, getting fucked."
"For how long?"
"Oh I have no idea, but it was dark by then. There were some portholes so I could tell the sun was setting. So anyway, all of a sudden these black guys in clothes come bursting into the room."
"What kind of clothes?"
"Some sort of uniform. Why? Anyway they come in, and they have pistols in their hands, and everyone else in the room is naked. No one put up much of an argument. So they round up the three or four guys who are there and herd them off somewhere. Then they're looking at the three of us.. They're speaking is some sort of French, hard to make out. But it's something about maybe we can sell the girls, but the guy is worthless. I thought they were going to shoot me then and there. But instead they took me off the table and carried me over to a door that opened outside and tossed me into the ocean. It was down a deck or two from the gangway so it was only about six feet into the water. I pretended I didn't know how to swim. They were laughing at me as I went under the water."
"So you swam back to the beach?"
"Eventually. I hid under the ship for a while until I thought it was safe. We were a few miles off shore. It took a while to get back."\
"How did you get in to the apartment?"
"Spare key in the pool locker." He was starting to shiver.
"You must be very tired. You should get into bed for a while, get some sleep. Maybe rinse off in a nice hot shower."
"What about the girls?"
"I don't know. Maybe contact the police? I'll call that one who took us up to the funeral. What's his name again?"
"Javert." Rocco was fading. Forget the shower. It was all she could do to get him into a bed, she wasn't sure if it was the right one, before he passed out.
What to do? What to do? The first thing she did was call Elise.
"Rachel, what's up? Cats giving you a hard time?"
"You won't believe me. Rocco showed up. He said the ship had been attacked by pirates and he was thrown overboard and who knows what's happening to the girls? If they're even alive still."
"Not much you can do about it."
"I need to contact the police. Can you give me another hour?"
"Sure, it's slow here this morning. What was the name of the ship?"
"I have no idea. There was someone they called the sheikh. It was his yacht and it was in the marina here."
"Okay I'll see in anyone here knows anything. I'll contact the marina."
Next she used the police emergency number, which she had memorized in case there was a problem at the restaurant.
"Good morning. What is the nature of your emergency?"
"I need to speak with Inspector Javert."
"We have another number for placing routine calls. This one is for emergency use only."
"It
is
an emergency. Two girls who have been kidnapped. They may be in great danger."
"Can you give me an approximate location?"
"A few miles out at sea. A few hours ago." Rachel paused. "Maybe further away by now."
"And the name of the ship?"
"I don't know."
"And the names of the girls?"
"Beatrice and Marissa."
"Last names?"
"I don't know. Really, could you put me through to Inspector Javert? He knows who the girls are. We went to a funeral with him yesterday."
"I'll see if I can contact him. Your name?"
"Rachel."
"I need your full name."
"Rachel Untel."
"That's your real name?"
"It's the name on my birth certificate. My mother had no idea who my father was."
"Oh, I'm so sorry."
"It's none of your fucking business! I'm a student at the culinary school, if you need to know."
And part time whore. Her mother's daughter.
"Rachel," the woman's tone had changed, "one of the services we offer is counseling."
"I'm not threatening to commit suicide! I'm trying to save my friends!" Her friends. Were they, really? Maybe after yesterday, in the van. Before that they had treated her like piece of trash, a servant girl worth no more than ten euros a minute. And what about the van, what had happened to her in the van? Had she been unfaithful? Of course, she and Elise had both had boyfriends, they both were rented out at the restaurant, but always by men. But what about in the van? It had been so much better than anything she and Elise had ever done. Beatrice had said something about Nestor, and things Nestor had done to her, after they had left the restaurant, and how she was trying them out on the other girls while she still remembered how to do it.
Which made Rachel wonder, why had Nestor been so nice to Beatrice, and with her - well hadn't he told Elise she was delightful? But mainly he'd delighted in dragging her face through the sand and into the water while he was sodomizing her. Okay, he had licked her some, but nothing special.
"Rachel? Are you still there?"
"Yes."
"Thank you for holding. I did contact Inspector Javert. He said he was busy on another case, something about a missing foot or a missing person, I couldn't quite make it out, and he was interviewing a dead Russian named Andre. He said that having the girls go off on a lark and getting themselves in trouble was the last thing he needed right now. But that you needed to contact the maritime patrol in any case. It was out of his jurisdiction."
"My friend is contacting the marina."
"That would be a start. Rachel, I need to tell you this. The private yachts that come into the marina are very secretive. They keep to themselves and no one asks questions."
"Oh."
"So the marina may not even know the real name of the yacht."
"It was very large. Hard to miss."
"Well, you need to have that discussion with the marina. Really, I can't tie up this line any longer. Someone may be calling with an emergency that we can respond to. I'm sending you a text with numbers and links that may be useful."
"Thank you for your help. And your concern."
The phone beeped then. The text message included the number for the marina, for the maritime patrol, the missing persons office. And the counseling service. Rachel gave a sigh as she stared at her phone, wondering what to do next. Maybe Rocco knew the name of the ship. He certainly knew the full names of the girls. But Rocco was very sound asleep. The cats had joined him, the three of them snoring blissfully. What good would it do to wake him up? He was probably teetering on the edge of total collapse, after what he'd been through. Better to let him rest.
She could go back to work. She was still wearing the little lap apron, ready to resume her duties. She glanced at her watch. She still had half of the extra hour Elise had granted her. Maybe there was some clue, some scrap of paper with the name of ship, or the name of the sheikh. There was a pile of skulls on the mantel over the fireplace. What the fuck was that all about? She'd seen the skulls in one of their videos. Trying to be edgy, now that just being far underage wasn't enough to attract attention.
She picked one up. "Alas, poor Yorick." Her English class in ninth grade had put on a presentation of Hamlet. Her mother had insisted that she take English. And hadn't that come in handy, with her job at the resort. Although a lot of the words and phrases she needed now had not been taught in lycée.
There were some books on the mantel alongside the skulls. Books on Satanism, it appeared, all in Italian except for one in English. She thumbed through it briefly. What nonsense - sillier even than the drivel the priests and nuns had fed her at the lycée. Next to it, a book about Charles Manson. Now that was disturbing. What to do? What to do? She felt so helpless. The headset for the game caught her eye. Maybe if she went back into the game, she could find Anna again? Or some clue? She still had twenty minutes. Five minutes in the game wasn't going to hurt.
She was back with Jabba the Hutt, right away this time. The little lap apron had been replaced by a scrap of cloth that didn't cover anything, and her boobs were twice as big as in real life. Annoyingly large, flopping around at each movement. For the first time in her life she was wishing she had a bra on.
"Come here, honey." One of the guards started rub his cock between those oversized boobs. Really. Was this some sort of fantasy she'd never known she had? She'd watched Elise do that once or twice, well she liked her amante's luscious soft breasts, but personally she liked being able to go for a run without everything flopping around. Or needing to wear a bra. Within ten seconds, there was a huge splatter of semen on her face. Really, was this her, or the game, doing this crap? She was just about to hit the panic button in disgust when Anna walked in. Actually was dragged in to be dropped on the table next to her.
"You again? I came looking for Nestor."
"Me too. Actually for you, maybe. I need your help."
"You need my help? What for?"
"Bea and Risa are missing. Captured by pirates."
