She hadn’t been on a ship in years. And never one this big. Macy looked up at the huge vessel, its tall hull taking up half the horizon. Multiple cranes on both sides hoisted multicolored shipping containers aboard, stacking them neatly in place with loud, echoing booms. When hoisted by cranes, the containers looked light, like toys, Legos, fitting all neatly together. But these toys weighed thousands of tons—250 of them being uranium.

She stood next to Tansy, her new hacker friend, as they both watched their container lift up and hang over the ocean. For a moment, she could almost feel his nervousness.

“If that falls . . .” Tansy said, trailing off.

But he didn’t need to finish the sentence. Macy knew exactly how horrible it would be if something happened to that container.

She turned to see the other men, who were once busy with their own mundane tasks, drop everything to watch that single container hoist over the air. Some used tense whispers, someone with a South-African accent crying, “Oh, bloody hell . . .”

Once the container came down and locked into place, there was an audible sigh of relief from their small crowd. She had felt it too, her shoulders finally lowering, her breathing returning to normal. Now it was just excitement she felt, the possibility of finally returning home.

“Is that it for the uranium?” Macy asked Tansy.

“No,” he said. “There’s a few more cubes, including your accommodations.”

“My what?”

“Your bedroom,” he said, pointing to one of the hoisted shipping containers. “There it goes now. Double bed, no cable, no TV. Wireless if it can pass through the metal.”

“Very funny.”

“I have to warn you, though. There is some truth to that. You staying in a container. When we get to the port in the US, that’s where you’ll be, to hide from inspection. You knew that, right?”

No one had told her she would be actually staying in one of the containers. They had joked about it with her, many times, so many that it had become a little grating to hear. But never did she really think . . .

“Is that a problem?” Tansy asked, likely seeing the annoyance on her face.

“No problem at all,” she said, forcing out a smile.

He smiled in reply and then walked back to the group, leaving her to wonder about her actual accommodations. There wouldn’t be many on a ship designed for cargo and a few deck hands. Yesterday it was something to be excited about, the thought of sharing private, tight living quarters with Tucker. It was an idea that made her feel almost nervous. The good kind of nervous that only Tucker could provide. Now, the sensation was different, and not at all pleasant.

She found his face in the crowd, watching how the expressions flowed across that irritatingly handsome face of his, the ideas he was conveying to his men. All business. All concentration. He and the rest of the DARC Ops men were in charge on this voyage, and she liked watching him work. She still liked watching him, especially here on a sunny dock with the ocean breeze playing through his hair. But she was also careful to look away when he noticed her gaze.

An hour later, she was aboard, walking the narrow hallway in the lower commons level. It was lit with a hard antiseptic florescent light that would remain that way for all twenty-four hours of the day. Beneath her was a short and stained carpet that almost turned her stomach to walk on—even with shoes on. Everywhere on the walls were scuff marks. It was definitely not a vacationer’s scene, but an area of complete and utter utility. There was nothing romantic, either, about the stale smell of dirty mop water that seemed to line the place. No, it wasn’t a fantasy getaway. It was just a getaway, maybe Macy’s if she could somehow make it out by the skin of her teeth.

There would be no romance inside the rooms, either. Rows of gray metal bunkbeds, each lined with a bare Naugahyde mattress. The very look of it conveyed a sense of hardness, of discomfort. The type of bed one might see in a prison.

There was no Tucker yet, either. Macy hadn’t seen him since boarding, when she was instructed to the very important task of “settling in”—as if she wasn’t a CIA-trained warrior, but just a woman. At worst, a homemaker, someone to oversee the important task of fluffing pillows and making sure the Naugahyde slabs had been covered with the right blankets.

She sat on one of the hard mattresses, the material making a squelching sound with each subtle movement. What other tasks could she do? Something more suitable to her skill set, something like saving their asses and not sitting alone in this room. But maybe it was the end of that, the end of the line for that kind of excitement. And maybe, for her, it was for good.

They were boarding the ship, “settling in.” What more could she do now? What more did she even really want to do besides just hang out like a stowaway?

She could definitely resort to sleeping. Perhaps she’d make that her new hobby. The ship was large enough to not rock very much. And the mattress, while prison-like, wasn’t the worst sleeping arrangement she’d come across. It was definitely better than a pile of straw. The room, better than a cow-dung hut set next to a landfill. If everything went according to plan, she would soon be back amidst the Western luxuriousness of the United States. The creature comforts she had grown independence from. But she would also be amidst the source of so much pain, the government and the thugs themselves.

A set of ominous-sounding boot steps approached down the hall. She waited, still sitting on the bed, as Tucker entered with a large duffel bag slung over his shoulder. He inspected the beds, and then fixed his gaze to hers. He shrugged and said, “Hi.”

Inside the bag were several sheets and blankets. He pulled them out almost like a magic trick. Apparently, he’d taken it upon himself to do some of the homemaking. “Compliments of the captain,” he said, turning the bag over and emptying everything out onto the lower bunk across from her.

“So,” she said. “Got your sea legs ready?”

“Legs I’m fine with. It’s my stomach I’m worried about.”

“Me too,” Macy said. “I’m always the first to get seasick. So far so good, though.”

“Well, we’re still anchored at port.”

“So?”

He laughed. “You’re right. Let’s stay optimistic.”

Macy got up from her bunk, stretched her arms, her back.

“You’ll have to find something to keep you busy,” he said. “Physically, so you can be tired enough to sleep.”

She knew exactly how she’d like to wear herself out. Multiple images ran through her mind, but she didn’t dare say a single one out loud. She didn’t have the heart to even joke, let alone flirt with him. Maybe she’d find someone else aboard, some other hunky crew mate. A fling. A raw and muscled deck hand she could keep warm with, and whom she could flaunt in front of Tucker. That plan lasted for all of three seconds, until Tucker flaunted that smile of his, triceps flexing as he pushed off the bed and moved toward the door, waving to it. “Ladies first,” he said.

Why did it have to be him? The man who set her core fluttering and her heart pulsing with guilt at the same time.

“Where to?”

“I’ve got something to show you.”

Macy followed him out of the room. She didn’t spare one thought to what he wanted to show her. No, she wanted to know what he was hiding. Hiding behind that smile.

What made him so confident?

As they approached the door at the end of the hall, the smell of ocean water grew even stronger. He guided her up the stairwell and through two more doors, and then out into the open air on the main deck.

“What’s going on?” she asked.

“They’re done.”

The cranes had all moved away, the shipping containers stacked up high in a giant multicolored cube.

“We’re all loaded up,” he said.

“When do we leave?”

“Now.”

Static-filled squawking sounded over Tucker’s radio, attached to his hip. He reached for it and held it to his ear for a moment before saying into it, “Tucker and Macy aboard.” And then he looked at her and said, off-radio, “Right?”

“Yeah,” she said. “I’m aboard.”

What other option did she have?

“It’ll be good,” Tucker said. “Smooth sailing from here on out.”

“You better hope so, for that stomach of yours.”

There was more radio squawking, and then Macy felt a rumble underneath her as the massive diesel engines vibrated to life. Everything went quiet for a moment as the ship inched away from the slip, rocking gently, the silence broken up by one long blast of a foghorn.

And that was it. No turning back now.

“You excited?” Tucker said.

Oddly, she wasn’t. She had expected to be, at least a little, but she couldn’t shake a dull, deadened feeling, like her body had lost all circulation. A confusion, too, as if she’d been knocked in the head.

“You don’t look very excited,” Tucker said after she mumbled the opposite.

“Maybe I’m scared, then,” Macy said.

He nodded. “I can understand that.”

She felt the vibration again, the engines turning back over. The ship was moving quicker now, away from the port. She took a long, deep breath of the moist, salty air. If anything, it felt nice to be away from the mess that was Africa, away from the death. But still, even away from all that, there was fear.

“Macy,” Tucker said. “No matter what . . . no matter what happens with us, I mean, I’m there for you. I’ve got your six. Okay?”

“I know,” she said, feeling it, knowing it. She wanted to reach out to him, but instead she stayed clutched against the railing. “I’m there for you, too. Here for you.”

It might have been the rocking motion, but Macy could have sworn Tucker’s head moved in, and lower, closer to hers, before a loud blast of the foghorn made him jump back, blank-faced and scared. He looked embarrassed after that, standing straight up, away from her. A moment later, he sighed and ran a hand through his hair, those long fingers coursing through. “Anyway,” he said. “They’ll probably want to meet with us.”

Macy couldn’t hold back an “Ugh . . .” like she’d been punched in the gut. She was getting a little sick of the DARC Ops meetings. It had been a very long time since she’d been accountable to anyone but herself. It was going to take awhile to get used to how the world worked again.

“I know,” Tucker said. “I know.”

She looked across to the ever-shrinking coastline, trying to get her head on right for the meeting. Perhaps the last of its kind until she could properly shut down and hide away from everyone, like a true castaway.

“Hey,” he said, “I thought you wanted to be involved. You wanted to do something”

“You’re right. Let’s do something.”