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He glanced at my fingers and then smirked again. “That looks like yours.”
“Maybe, or maybe not. If I left one behind, the person who threw it over might have left a hair around here somewhere, too. Shouldn’t we collect them?”
“Right,” he said. “There might be hair. The problem is, this door wasn’t locked all night. It was also unlocked all day yesterday, and hundreds of people could have been here prior to you being here. I’ve been here a few times. Mine could be here.”
I winced, dropping the hair. “I’m trying to find some answers,” I said.
Some of the old Brandon anger bubbled up, and he lowered his hands and made fists. “And I’m trying to tell you that your crime scene has already been compromised, and your data is going to be useless at this point. Besides, we don’t exactly carry DNA-testing equipment around with us. There’s no way for us to identify stuff like that.”
I hadn’t considered that, but it irritated me that there could be some answer, right here at our feet, and we weren’t even going to make sure to find it. I groaned. “Whoever it was was here. Shouldn’t you have shut this place down and dusted for fingerprints or…something?”
He blew a long breath and closed his eyes. “You’re smart, and you’re on the right track, but you’ve got to trust us. Someone would have told you if we found a shoe print or fingerprint. We didn’t find anything. We dusted the door handle, but every print was smudged or not enough of a print to analyze, even if we did send it to a print database.”
“And there’s no video of the hallway or nearby hallways?”
“You know this,” he said, baring his teeth as he spoke, frustration in his tone. “The only video access we have is for main public areas. We don’t have the ability to outfit this entire place with cameras. And again, we would have told you if we did see something.”
I sighed and relaxed my tense shoulders. Where else was I supposed to start? I was a thief, not a detective.
I stepped backward until my back met the rail, feeling it solid behind me. I glanced over my shoulder at the water lapping against itself, and the ship. I was so far from everything I was familiar with. Out of my depth. Nowhere to really hide from the guys to think.
How could he stand there and talk to me like nothing had happened between us? After all we’d been through together, he now knew the truth, and he hadn’t said one word. Nothing. How could he not talk to me?
I sighed. My feelings were so mixed between wanting to save Raven, wanting to punch whoever had thrown me over, and most of all in that moment, wanting Brandon to yell at me like he used to. At least if I got a reaction out of him, I’d know he cared.
“I don’t know what to do,” I said, my body shaking just saying the words. I was emotionally tugged in so many directions. The longer we didn’t talk, the weirder I felt about being around him, like there was some barrier between us now. I had said I wanted to give him space to think, and not make things weird, but it was weird already.
“Kayli,” he said softly.
I pressed my lips together, looking hard at the floor. I couldn’t bring it up; he had to.
When I finally looked up at him, his blue eyes were distracting, urging me to talk, except I felt I shouldn’t.
He approached me until we were toe to toe. The move caught me off guard. I met his gaze, wondering what he was thinking.
“You should start with trying to remember last night,” he said, his voice much calmer now. “Did you tell anyone your side of what happened here yet?”
I struggled to focus on what he was talking about, then realized he probably thought I was saying I didn’t know what to do because I was worried about Raven.
Raven. I had to focus. For him.
I felt I had told Corey about everything that had happened when I’d called him to let him know we were okay. I’d relayed coming in and getting thrown over, but had I gone over any details? So much had happened since last night. I shrugged.
“I don’t know what you already know.”
“Here,” he said and lifted his hand, his palm hovering over my eyes, shielding me from the sun. “Close your eyes.”
“Why?”
“It was dark, wasn’t it?”
“Memory is faulty,” I said, trying to avoid thinking about the night before. “I could imagine lots of things that may not have happened. It wouldn’t mean anything.”
“You might remember something that could be a clue,” he said. He leaned in until he was nose to nose with me. “It might be a start. Close your eyes.”
I stilled, holding my breath. I wanted to look at him. Everything in my body needed something from him, to know he cared; here he was, the usual sadness on his face. He was steady, and strong, and trying to keep me on track. I was the one breaking down and hurting this investigation.
Focus, I told myself.
I closed my eyes like he’d asked, but then as soon as I did, all I could sense was his nearness. I was overcome by a desire to hug him, even just to say I was sorry.
“How do I know you didn’t do it?” I said in a mocking tone. I knew he had been in the dining room, but I just wanted to make a joke to ease some of the tension.
“Why would I?” he asked, his voice serious.
I didn’t want to answer his question. It felt like he was faking ignorance. “What do you want me to do?” I asked.
“Just think about it,” he said, his breath warming my face. I sensed him hovering close and then he covered my closed eyes with his palm, making it darker. “How tall was he?”
I heard him, but my heart raced. It was hard to think with him touching me. Didn’t he know it was hard to focus with him so close?
“We don’t know if it’s a he,” I finally said.
“Think,” he said. “Remember. You fought him. How tall was he? How big?”
I searched my memory. “Wide hands,” I said, thinking about the places on my body that he’d touched and grabbed to shove me over. “Pretty strong. He…or she, struggled a little when I fought, but still overpowered me.”
“Why do you keep suggesting it might be a girl?” he asked. “Did you sense anything feminine? Perfume?”
I pressed my lips together and then opened my eyes, tilting my head away from his hand. “It felt like a man’s body and hands,” I said. My nerves shook a little, remembering more now: the cold water, the swim. The struggle to keep up with Blake as he practically dragged me to shore. I tried to forget about the water, focusing on the moments that came before. “Fancy was here minutes before I went over. I remember when the door opened; I thought it was her
at first.”
Brandon dropped his hands to his sides. “But she didn’t do it. She was down the hall. We checked that, too.”
“I know, but… she was one of the few that knew I had one of those tiny boxes.” I’d been given a localized GPS box, tiny like a bead, that helped Doyle keep track of me on the ship. “Or could have seen me wearing it. She didn’t do it, but whoever did grabbed it off my arm before sending me over.”
He frowned and stepped away, looking at the stacked chairs. “Maybe it was an accident. Maybe he happened to snag it as he was wrestling with you.”
“Twice?” I asked. “I was following Blake’s black box signal when I went looking for him.”
“Did you talk about the tracker box going into the area?”
“I don’t know. Maybe. Doyle was the one who told me that Blake’s black box was still on the deck. So I stayed to look for it.”
He turned back to me and, with a hand, blocked the sun over his eyes as he looked at me. “Your attacker might still have been here, or nearby, when you two came in after he threw Blake over. Maybe the first time he didn’t know about Blake’s box, but if you talked about it, he would have learned about it quickly.”
“I couldn’t see who it was. He didn’t say anything. He was big enough to lift me and throw me over. He had to be strong enough to throw Blake over, too. He came right for me. I struggled, he snapped the thing off my wrist and tossed me over.”
“Did he do it on purpose? Or was it a result of you fighting back?”
I remembered the fight. I’d tried to kick, punch, and push. “It seemed deliberate,” I said. “Once he snapped off the cord holding the black box, he lifted me and threw me over.”
“So he planned to throw you over.”
I glanced back at the rail, staring at it. “Yeah…” I was slowly getting what he was saying.
I sensed him stepping closer. His deep voice changed to a softer tone. “So it wasn’t that he came to talk or haul you away. He didn’t come to warn you off. He came right up to you, snapped the thing on your wrist, threw you over and left. He could have shot you and flung you over. He could have choked you and made sure you were dead. He didn’t do that. Sounds like he was powerful enough to choke you out before tossing you, but he didn’t.”
