Alana Albertson - Invincible

I opened my eyes and placed my hand on the back of her head, her dark, wiry hair bobbing up and down. She stopped for a second, looked me dead in the eyes, and shifted from kneeling to sitting on her left side, exposing her right ankle. It had a tattoo of an alien from a Saturday morning animated show that I used to watch when I was a kid—did women in the Caribbean watch American cartoons? Weird.

She got back down to business.

I didn’t want to come, for this moment to be over. But fuck, it had been so damn long. I mean, I barely even jerked off in my rack because my buddies were in the ones right next to mine.

Her mouth sucked on me hard, pulling and pushing. Man, why did this feel so good even with the latex barrier between us? I couldn’t hold back any longer—I exploded into the condom.

She handed me a towel. I took off the condom, threw it in the trash, cleaned myself up and then pulled on my shorts. This part was awkward, always was. But at least she hadn’t spoken yet, so her voice wouldn’t haunt my dreams or my conscience.

Her lashes blinked twice, as if she was deep in thought and wanted to tell me something. But I didn’t want to know her problems—I just wanted to get the fuck out of there.

I threw down five twenties and pushed myself off the cot. But she stood up, took my hand, and her lips grazed my ear, making sure to shield her hair over her mouth.

“My name is Annie Hamilton. I’m an American citizen. I was kidnapped from a cruise ship five years ago. You’re my last hope. Please save me.”

What the fuck? This bitch wanted me to believe she was a sex-trafficked American? What kind of con was this heroin-addicted whore trying to pull on me?

“I gotta go.” I shoved her off me. This was not my problem. She was not my problem. I walked out of that smelly room and didn’t look back.

The streets of Curaçao were bustling now in the early evening, tourists strolling through this idyllic Caribbean town, unaware that around the corner from where they were buying shot glasses and sundries, women were turning tricks for less than the price of the tourists’ margaritas. The view of the beach was blocked by the endless taxicabs and the cobblestone streets were littered with cigarettes.

Dammit. Of all the brothels, all the whores. Why did I go there? Why did I choose her? I didn’t need this shit. I headed to the closest bar to get drunk. Not one of those pretty tourist joints that served up fruity drinks. A seedy local dive that offered nothing but hard liquor. No pictures of palm trees and beaches. The walls were barren, the air was thick with tobacco, and the bar stools had been cut with blades.

I should’ve listened to Kyle, fucked some college girl.

“Tequila, straight.”

The bartender poured me a drink, then another. Smooth, sweet, salty, tart.

The more the liquor flowed, the more I tried to push her out of my mind. I thought about my dog back home, my mother, my ex-girlfriend, my truck. I made small talk with the bartender; lied about my job, told him I was a tourist on a business retreat.

By the end of the night, I was blazed senseless. I stumbled back to the U.S.S. Ronald Regan, our huge, Naval nuclear-powered super carrier, and collapsed onto my rack.

But there was one problem. Her voice. She had spoken with a perfect American accent; sounded like she was from California. And her vaguely familiar face now made me think that I had seen her picture once on a magazine.

Christ. One fucking blowjob and now the whore was a constant presence in my brain. Maybe Kyle was right—I did need to get laid more often.

I closed my eyes and tried to sleep, praying to erase her from my memory.

I rolled out of my rack the next morning and hit the head to take a piss. A hot shower would’ve been nice, but I had something more important to do.

I poured myself a cup of coffee, black, and went over to our computer and typed in the name she had given me. A-N-N-I-E H-A-M-I-L-T-O-N.

The screen lit up—articles, news clips, videos, websites. “American Analía ‘Annie’ Rose Hamilton Vanishes on Romantic Cruise.” There was even a wiki: “The Disappearance of Analía Rose Hamilton.”

Could the drug-addicted prostitute from last night really be America’s missing sweetheart? Maybe she was part of some elaborate con job? A light-skinned prostitute could’ve faked the American accent, learned the story, and used it to bilk johns like me out of cash. How could I be certain that woman was Annie?

I clicked on the first image—the cover of People Magazine. “Vanished Without A Trace: Annie Hamilton.” Those deep hazel eyes from last night stared back at me.

Fuck.

I skimmed the first line; five years ago, just as she’d said. And by all accounts, she was still missing.

After five years, surely she was dead, right? Yet no trace of her body had ever been found. Now I remembered hearing about her disappearance, but I was deployed in Iraq at the time so I never knew all the details.

I read the first article. Annie and her boyfriend, Chris Porter, had taken a spring break cruise to the Caribbean. They’d partied until around two a.m. in the nightclub on the cruise ship and multiple guests saw them dancing together. By all accounts, they’d both been extremely intoxicated and a few guests recalled that Chris seemed to be jealous when Annie climbed up on stage to sing with the members of Divi Divi, the house band. At two thirty a.m., her boyfriend’s key card was used to enter their room, and he swore that she was with him. Chris stated that the last time he saw her was around five a.m. sitting on the balcony of their suite the morning the cruise docked in Curaçao. He figured she just wanted to get fresh air and watch the sunset so he went back to sleep. A few other passengers claimed that they saw her at around six a.m. in the elevator with a member of the house band. Chris passed a lie detector test and had repeatedly stated his innocence. The FBI had conducted a bomb search of the ship but found nothing. Authorities believed she’d fallen overboard in a drunken stupor, committed suicide or was pushed by her boyfriend after a fight, but despite a search of the waters, no trace of her had ever been found.

I didn’t believe that she had drowned, because the ship had already been in port when she vanished.

Suicide? Doubtful. She was young, hot, in college, in love. Came from money. I guess she could’ve been depressed but I figured it was a long shot.

As for the boyfriend? I felt bad for the guy. He was a pretty-boy, wealthy surfer from La Jolla who probably never worked a day in his life. Tan, blonde, looked like one of those guys who sat on the beach smoking weed laughing at the BUD/S SEAL candidates while they were running around carrying logs over their heads during Hell Week. Came from a good family, played water polo at San Diego University. He seemed normal enough, but how did anyone really know how he treated Annie behind closed doors? Maybe he abused her. If he killed her, then he got away with the perfect crime. If he was innocent, his life was ruined from the suspicion and the guilt he must’ve felt not knowing what had happened to her.

I gazed across the ocean from my porthole. The cruise ship dock was only a mile away. If she had fallen, someone would’ve seen her, either on her ship, from the surrounding cruise ships, or in the port. It didn’t add up.

In the weeks, months, years that had followed, there’d been a few sightings of Annie on Curaçao and on other neighboring Caribbean islands, but nothing ever panned out. Her family had even supposedly once paid some con man pretending to be a former SEAL three hundred thousand dollars to find her, but he turned out to be a fraud. I fucking hated any motherfucker who lied about being a SEAL. It was easy to figure these assholes out—just ask them their SEAL training class number. Not knowing your SEAL training class number is like not knowing your last name.