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Peep… da-dah…

Strange noise. I'm so goddamn tired, I don't even wanna know what it was. Must have been asleep for hours, it's still dark outside, it must be in the middle of the night.

For a short moment I barely open one of my eyes to check. Dark. Nothing. No light is on. The wood paneling of the cabin must be in front of my eyes. I can't even make it out in the dark.

The engines are still purring at the same tone, just like they had been when we left the marina. Everything is okay. We're on the way. The waves sway the boat and my body back and forth. Actually, it feels kinda good now. The beep sounded unfamiliar. Probably some device here in the ship, I have no idea. I've never cared about boats.

Peep… again.

There are only four people on this boat. Mohammed, his helper, Audrey and me. We're in the middle of the Caspian Sea, there's no one in a hundred mile radius. Must by this freaking survival instinct. I have to check. No, sleep. Don't wake up Audrey.

Pip… just a short one this time. Something in the cabin moves, I can hear it. Probably Audrey heard it as well and woke up… I better check.

Tiredly I push the blanket aside and turn around. There's a shadow. Audrey seems to be up, standing in the aisle.

Audrey?, I ask and switch on the light.

She shrieks and yields back.

And suddenly, I find the source of the noise. She has the satellite phone. My satellite phone.

Audrey…. I hurriedly stand up, but my sudden moves only make her yield back even further, until she reaches the door to the tiny bathroom. She almost stumbles over the door sill.

Audrey, give me the phone, I try to sound calm, but I barely manage to. If she makes this call, whoever she's calling, she'll give away our location. I can't let that happen.

It seems like she hasn't called yet. She moves the phone away from her ear and has one more look at it, presses another button. My heart sinks. All hell will break lose. They'll find the boat on the satellite image, they'll await us on the shore, or worse: they could just send a missile. One missing boat. Nobody cares.

Audrey please, you're gonna get us all killed if you do that, I tell her. It's more like a hiss, but I'm done being friendly.

She yields back further into the bathroom, determined to make her call.

I can't let her.

I dash forward to rip the phone out of her hands. She screams aloud and not even a second later, I feel how something hits my head.
For a moment, everything goes dark. She still screams and shouts at me. I don't understand what she's saying. I find myself lying on the floor, gathering my senses, as she runs off. She doesn't care that I'm lying in the middle of the way. Her feet kick heavily into my back.

Thank god, at least I have the phone. She dialed, but she didn't get a connection. Seems like she found the phone but not the sim cards that I hide at a different place. Hurriedly I take the battery out and hide the phone. Mohammed would kill us both if he found out that we used a satellite phone on his boat.

I'm bleeding. She must have hit me with something heavy.

Audrey.

Damn it.

It takes me a while to blow away the cobwebs. The boat is still rocking. She's gone.

Hurriedly I rush out of the cabin, after her. Mohammed and his companion also heard her scream. They come rushing out of the back cabin, their weapons drawn, shocked to see me bleeding.

No guns! I shout at them, while I run into their direction.

The hatch to the deck is open.

I got this. I'll do this alone, I tell Mohammed, to stop him from going up there. I am not sure what Audrey will do if two strangers try to tear her into the ship. I guess she'd jump.

Damn it. Pure panic flows through my veins as I hurry up the ladder, into the darkness and the rain. As soon as I am up, Mohammed closes the hatch behind me to keep the water out.

She's walking towards the bow, about ten feet away from me. What the hell is she up to? What will she do if she reaches the bow? She can't go any further. What, when she realizes that she can't get away from me?

Mohammed will not turn around if she jumps. Not even if I hold him at gunpoint. It must not get that far. Even if I could get him to turn around, we'd never be able to find her in the rough sea. She'd be lost.

I grab the railing and follow her. It's hard to walk out here. Everything is wet and slippery, the railing as well as the deck. I need to be faster than her, that's the only chance. The seam of her gown just got caught up in one of the clamps on deck and makes her stumble.

I leap forward and throw myself onto her. Got you.

A second later, her fists beat against my body. Let me go!, she shouts.

I hold her tight. My right arm got a tight grip around the railing, my left one around her waist. I'm lying half on top of her so she can't move or get away or jump.

Let me go!
Bastard!

You son of a bitch!

How could you do this to me!

Stop it!

I should be so glad that words come out of her mouth, even if she's telling me off. She's thrashing around aimlessly, against the deck and against me. He feet keep kicking my legs and the side of the boat. If she could reach me, I'm sure she'd even bite me.

I won't let you go, Audrey, I tell her that, again and again. The rain is pouring down on us. Sometimes, even a larger wave makes it to the deck and soaks us completely. Mohammed switched all the lights off. We're lying in the pure darkness. I see almost nothing. I don't even see her hits coming.

I won't let you go, Audrey, I repeat. She hasn't gotten calmer, even though she's been raging for quite a while now.

She has to let her anger out, now. I know that she doesn't really mean what she's saying. I'm just the only one who's here to let it out on.

She's telling me to stop it, to let her go, to go away, to stop asking, even to die. I'm not the one she means. She's yelling at the guards, at her tormentors. It has to get out, because it was on her mind for too long. I was at the exact same point, exactly where she is now. After I came back from my imprisonment in China, I first tried to cope with it myself. Silently. I thought I was strong enough to swallow it. Bullshit. If the injustice is that big, the anger will resurface.
It came after I arrived in Sengala. I took it out on the first guy who tried to rob me. He thought I was just a usual American tourist, easy prey. He paid with his life. It is one thing to kill someone, another to murder. That was a slaughter.

Let it out, Audrey, I hiss into her ear.

Damn. That blow hurt. I need to shift a little, so she won't hit the same rib again.

Her knuckles must be bleeding by now. She can't feel the pain, I'm sure.

It goes on like this for almost an hour. Finally, her powers are at an end. The kicking stopped already a while ago, the blows got weaker. She collapses to the deck and lies there immovably, for a few minutes.

It seems reality comes back.

I remember it. I saw that black guy in the ditch. His blood was everywhere. On the roadside, on my face, on my hands, on my body. I don't know how many times I had stabbed him or why I tried to cut his head off, I didn't succeed, anyway. You can't do that with a two inch knife.
I felt so sorry for him in that moment and hated myself for having done that.

What on earth would I have given, to make him wake up and tell me that it was okay and that it wasn't my fault… bad timing… that I couldn't be held responsible for the tricks my mind was playing on me.

The sun must start to rise, soon. The first rays are still far away but the sky gets brighter.

Audrey's eyes are open.
She lies there, on the wooden deck, without moving, staring into the void. I wonder, what is going on inside her head.

Finally, I ease my grip around her waist a little. She's too bushed to do anything stupid now. The sea has become calmer, too.

Audrey, I silently say to her.

She shifts a little to lie on her back. Finally, her eyes find mine.

It's okay… I say, It's alright, I add, because this is the point when she finally realizes that she's beaten and kicked me a thousand times in the past hour. It's good that you let it out. You had to.

She's trying to say something.

Jack

Her voice is raspish and husky. She hasn't spoken in weeks – and only shouted for the past hour. I guess she's wondering now, too, how strange her voice sounded.

I've wanted to talk to her, such a long time, but now I'm at a loss and I don't know what to say.

Jack…. She begins again, but she's at a loss, too.

I owe her such an awful lot of explanations but I just don't know where to start.

You got bad news, she suddenly says, out of the blue. Did she see it in my eyes? She knows me because she's always been able to read my mind. I silently nod my head yes.

How bad?

I straighten up a little an just take a deep breath as an answer. My right arm has gone to sleep long ago. It hurts to let go of the railing. While I sit up, my view gets stuck at Audrey's hands. Her knuckles are bloddy.

Let's fix this, I say and take one of her hands to show her the damage. And then we'll talk.

I'm glad that she lets me help her back down into our cabin.

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