The Catch: A Novel by Taylor Stevens Page B

nice as I can,” Munroe said. Pinched the bridge of her nose and closed her eyes. “The
Favorita
is running illegal weapons and Leo wasn’t hired to protect the ship and the crew, but to guard the shipment and make the arms delivery.”
    “That’s not possible,” Amber said. “Leo would never have done that without telling me.”
    “You’re certain?”
    Amber hesitated, and in that delay Munroe found her answer.
    “But gunrunning,” Amber said. “The only place they could offload between here and Kenya is off the Somali coast.”
    “Exactly.”
    “Oh God, Michael, no, he wouldn’t.”
    “I discovered the weapons,” Munroe said. “Brought the issue to Leo and he was pretty pissed that I found them—didn’t think I was worth telling—didn’t want me meddling. I figure Natan has answers for you that I don’t.”
    “Natan knows?”
    “The whole team knew. Everyone except me. And apparently, you.”
    There was another long spell of silence, Amber pulling in these details to reconfigure them, make sense of them, and Munroe didn’t rush her. “If it’s you calling and not Leo,” Amber said finally, “then something went wrong. Where is he?”
    “Go talk to Natan first.”
    “Hang on,” Amber said, and in the background a door slammedand Amber’s breathing picked up tempo, as if she’d jogged from the main house to the annex. Another door opened. Slammed. And after that came the pounding of Amber’s fist on Natan’s door. Then Natan’s voice, muted, as if Amber pressed the headset to her chest—arguing, then yelling—mostly Amber—and then more pounding, this time the headset itself, being beaten repeatedly against something while Amber swore in time with the beat, words Munroe had never heard from her before.
    And then a door slammed again, and Amber, still breathing heavily, said, “I’m pissed off and angry, but mostly scared. Michael, where is Leo?”
    “The ship was hijacked,” Munroe said. “I got off before the fighting got bad. That was around thirty hours ago. Last I saw him, he was still alive on the
Favorita
, about three hundred nautical miles somewhere east of Mogadishu.”
    Amber responded with silence—no tears, no hyperventilating. She was in that scary quiet place she went when an emergency struck and she plotted how to fix it. When the reality of what had happened fully sank in, Amber would break down and lose it completely.
    “How is it possible,” Amber said, “that the first armed ship ever taken by pirates happens to be Leo’s ship?”
    The question was rhetorical, without inflection, emotionless and numb, but Munroe answered anyway. “I can tell you that it wasn’t a typical hijacking,” she said. “Was something closer to a military assault but carried out by people with no military training. It’s possible the ship was targeted because of the illegal cargo.”
    “Oh, Michael,” Amber said, but in her tone of patronization what she left unspoken was
What could a boy like you possibly know about a military assault?
    Munroe said, “Did the
Favorita
carry kidnap and ransom insurance? Do you know anything about the owners? The charterer? The captain?”
    “If a ship carries K&R, then the contract requires that it be kept a secret,” Amber said. “I could try to find out. Leo handled all the coordinatingon this one, so I don’t know what due diligence was done on the ship or the principals.”
    “You were okay with this?”
    “Work has been really slow, Michael.”
    Amber’s justification for mediocrity and sloppy work was a maddening headache, one more frustration Munroe didn’t want to deal with. “I’ve got to go,” she said. “Ask around, see what you can find out about the ship. I’ll call you back in a couple of days.”
    Amber said, “Please wait.”
    Munroe paused.
    “I just,” Amber began, and then stopped.
    Munroe waited a moment longer and then, unwilling to be a surrogate for Amber’s tenuous connection to Leo, hung up.
    She shut