Caleb turned the knob leading into the mystery compartment. The rust-tinged door swung open with a creeeak worthy of a horror movie. A single porthole let sunlight in, revealing the sparse interior of a nearly-bare cabin.

The rank smell of urine hit him first.

Then his breath rushed out as he saw what lay inside.

A half-dozen young women stared back at him with a mixture of fear and desperation. Lengths of chain ran between pairs of wrist cuffs and over a pipe that ran along the cabin’s ceiling. Their mouths had been sealed shut with shiny lengths of duct tape.

Each of the women wore stylish clothing, but were barefoot. Their wrists had been rubbed raw by the cuffs, particularly the shortest, who’d been forced to practically stand on tip-toe. The woman closest to the front, a slender brunette, dripped blood from one foot from where she’d been kicking the wall to broadcast the SOS.

She shouted something through the duct tape over her mouth. Pleading with him. The veins in her neck stood out in sharp relief. Tears beaded in the corners of gray-blue eyes.

Caleb took a step back and slammed the door shut.

Christ, Christ, Christ…what the hell has Tomaz gotten himself into?

The aforementioned Tomaz called from upstairs.

“Hey, barátja! Where are you, Santa Claus? You come, you make it snow up here!”

“On my way, amigo!” Caleb called back.

He took the stairs at half-speed. His heart whammed frightfully in his chest. His mind raced.

Caleb started with what he knew.

He didn’t think the women locked up downstairs were prostitutes with a john-gone-bad. They lacked the hard-eyed, jaded look he’d seen on true professionals.

There’s a porthole in that cabin facing the Second Chance. They must have seen me board this ship. Even as terrified as they look, one of them had been brave and desperate enough to try and call for help.

Chills ran down Caleb’s spine as he came to his next realization.

Tomaz Tarantus had changed lanes from top-of-the-line cocaine sampling.

One of the unwritten rules of his trade was to steer clear of anyone that was ‘changing lanes’. From cocaine to heroin. From shipping drugs to selling black-market weapons.

Or from fencing high-value stolen goods, like the Tarantus family, to human trafficking.

Specialists prospered on the high seas. Those changing always ran new risks, risks they weren’t prepared for. Men were only driven to change lanes by greed. Desperation. Self-destructive madness.

The last guy who changed lanes swapped shipping ecstasy to peddling aftermarket military parts, Caleb thought. I got a nice thank-you gift after helping him conclude a single deal. The next week, the federales caught up with him and blew his go-fast boat to hell.

His initial impulse was to drop the briefcase in his hand and dash back to the safety of the Second Chance. With a defunct engine, the Rabszolga wasn’t about to chase his ship down. And it wasn’t as if Tomaz Tarantus was going to file a Better Business Bureau complaint if Caleb skipped on a delivery.

Yet it would rankle him. Caleb’s reputation was spotless: If he promised to make it snow on board your boat, he’d move heaven and earth to deliver.

There was also the second unwritten rule of his trade: You never got involved in whatever deal a client was doing on the side. He knew that anyone else in his position would put those women out of mind, do his job, and then leave.

The door on the top-deck compartment had been thrown wide open. Inside lay a mess of torn-up cushions, empty bottles, and broken plates. The reek of sweat and gone-off food made Caleb wince.

Tomaz reclined on one of the still-intact chairs. He idly scratched an armpit as he waved Caleb to take the half-wrecked chair opposite his. He reached down and flipped the overturned coffee table upright and set it between, then patted the surface meaningfully.

“Set the coke down here.”

Tomaz took out a switchblade knife and set it on the table. Then he pulled a hundred-dollar bill from a grimy shirt pocket and rolled it into a tube. Caleb put the briefcase on the table. He opened the lock with a press of a button, then raised the case’s cover and swiveled it to face the client.

Plastic packets filled with alabaster-white powder lay inside, laid out in neat rectangles. Tomaz slit one open with the knife. He didn’t bother portioning it out. Instead, he leaned forward, put one end of the rolled-up bill to the open slit, and snorted the other end.

Powdered, pure-as-driven-snow Caseteja White vanished up his nose. Tomaz sat up, eyes crossing comically, and let out a yell.

“Úgy szép az élet, ha zajlik! I see the lightning and the thunder!”

Not surprising, Caleb thought, without commenting aloud. Be lucky if you don’t burst a blood vessel in your brain at this rate. Not that you seem to care anymore.

“This is too good not to share!” he declared, motioning to Caleb. “Here, I make it snow for you too. White Christmas comes to July off Boca, ha!”

Caleb held up a hand. “Sorry, I can’t. Company rules.”

“Damn those Nepomucenos! You sure?”

“Yeah, I’m sure.”

Actually, there was no such rule. Caleb simply knew too many couriers who got hooked sampling their own goods. That earned them either an overdose, or a bullet in the back of the head from Deacon Love once they tested positive for Caseteja’s best.

Tomaz got up and spread his arms wide. He half-walked, half-staggered over to the remains of a smashed-up bar. A smile beamed from his face.

“My friend, you must let me treat you to something! Wait, I know! I said we should have a toast to celebrate, so that requires something liquid, not powder!”

He snatched up a pair of stainless-steel tumblers and one of the few remaining intact bottles. A red-and-gold lion head roared silently from over the label’s words: Triple Platinum Filtered Vodka! A slosh and pour later, and Caleb had a drink in his hand. A faint whiff if acetone floated up from it.

“What exactly are we celebrating?” Caleb asked, as Tomaz sat down across from him.

“New ventures! New opportunities!” He leaned forward, clinked his tumbler against Caleb’s, and raised his drink in his unsteady hand. “Egészségedre!”

“Bottoms up,” Caleb agreed. Though he was used to spirits, he took the barest of sips. Tomaz wasn’t in good enough shape to notice. “Well, if you ever need a courier to move this new opportunity, you let me know.”

“I let you know, all right. This cargo, it needs speed though. Very perishable. That is good one! Perish-able!”

“That’s why you’re transporting it on a cabin cruiser, then. Make sense. Only this one doesn’t go fast right now.”

“Süsd meg! Idiótas downstairs drank and smoked and snorted too much with me.” The man gestured vaguely, indicating the smashed-up remains of the room. “Now idiótas downstairs try to fix.”

“Yeah, someone tipped the bottle a one too many times. You get smashed, sometimes your boat gets smashed.”

Understatement of year. This place looks like a rock band and their groupies went wild in here. And a drunk or high crew is bound to damage or otherwise screw up the delicate systems on an old tin can like this.

“Ha! Good one!” Tomaz jabbed a finger at him. “Now I give you good one back. My cargo, you don’t know what it is. But it is very valuable.”

Caleb laughed along with his host, though it sounded tinny to his ears. His lie sounded just as fake as his laugh, but it skated by without challenge.

“You got me there, I have no idea. Hey, I’m in the transportation business. What you carry, that’s your own business.”

“It is! It is! I can’t tell you what I’m selling on the…what do you call it in your country? The ‘black’ market. But I can tell you without telling you, if you like riddles. Black market riddles.” Without waiting for a reply, Tomaz plowed on ahead. “These can make part of a man feel good, good like king. Yet where bottle is empty or roll is smoked, pleasure is over…but these, these can be sold over and over again. So. What are these things I speak of?”

Caleb’s face froze. The answer came to him. It came just as the desperate faces, voices robbed by duct tape, flashed in his mind.

The answer? Women. Women trafficked and sold like cattle. But I need to guess something. Anything to reassure him that I’ve got no idea what he means.

“I know what that is!” Caleb roared with laughter. “You’re selling stolen boats!”

Tomaz spat out the last of his drink. “Boats? Boats? How can you say something so…so stupid?”

Caleb shrugged. “What? It fits! A good sailing ship, she makes a part of a man – his heart – feel like nothing else. And unlike drugs or drink, you can rent out a boat over and over again.”

“Pokolba veled, you have been at sea too long, my friend. And besides, how could I fit a boat…on board my own boat?”

“Three luxury yachts were stolen out of Nantucket Sound last month. They were found with their navigation centers and specialized engine parts ripped out. Those are worth millions on the black market. I figured with your connections, you’d be selling–”

“Get out,” Tomaz leaned back and made a shooing motion with his hand. “I like you, but you are no fun, Captain Ledger.”

Caleb didn’t have to be told twice. He left without comment as his host took a long swig from the vodka bottle. He paused for a moment at the bottom of the stairs, but no more sound came from behind the rusty door.

He turned and made his way down the corridor. The sounds of hammering and cursing came from the engine room. The breeze outside tussled his hair. He inhaled and felt its cleansing power.

But he didn’t feel clean, not really. His mind clawed away at that. Hammering each point home as he stood on the starboard side deck.

Dammit, this is none of your business.

You walk away. Walk away now.

Get onto that drug-running ship of yours and sail for the horizon as fast as the wind can take you.

He looked over to his ship. The name gleamed back at him from the hull: Second Chance.

Why was he the only one to get a second chance in this life?

He made his way to the gangplank and crossed over. Martín appeared and went to detach the plank to separate the ships. The man gave his boss a curious glance, given how preoccupied he seemed.

Caleb’s mind gibbered at him: So what are you going to do?

Scenario after scenario flashed through his mind. as calmly as he could.

Offer to buy the women: Not happening. He had at most six hundred dollars in cash aboard the Second Chance. Chump change compared to what Tomaz had in mind.

Swap cargo for cargo: A non-starter. Even if Tomaz agreed, his bosses the Nepomucenos would be less than happy if he traded away their merchandise. Deacon Love would have his guts torn out and steaming on the dock for that.

Take the Rabszolga by force: Pure insanity. The only firearm he had aboard the Second Chance was a bolt-action Remington rifle. Mostly it had been used to sink cans and bottles he tossed overboard. No telling what Tomaz had by comparison.

Even if an assault worked, what then? He ran the risk of triggering hostilities between the Tarantus family and the Nepomucenos. The Nepos would probably gift-wrap and hand Caleb over to avoid any conflict once they found out what happened.

Sail off into the sunset, no one the wiser: That was the correct answer. He’d made it into sweet spot with the Nepos. He’d keep earning his pay, his damned good pay, until–

Until what?

He hadn’t given much thought to exiting his profession. The rewards of getting in seemed too good. And the price to stay in this spot wasn’t all that high.

Wasn’t it?

Caleb’s gut twisted as he prepared to give the order to cast off.