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When we got to the storage room, the normally thick cloud of smoke had dispersed a little. Fluorescent lights were on overhead, but Doyle appeared to be sleeping on a cot in the corner. Hadn’t he been awake before talking to Brandon?
It felt like seconds ago to me. Maybe more time had passed than I’d realized.
Liam was at the computers, staring at a monitor. He was still in the blue shirt and jeans, his sleeves rolled up past his elbows. When he raised his head, he spotted me, and then his rusty eyebrows squished together. “Man, you look weird.”
“Thanks?” I said and then realized he meant the makeup. “Looked better before I got hit. Nice to see you, too.” Wasn’t I supposed to be mad at him? My gut told me I should be, but I was having a hard time remembering why.
“Sorry,” he said with a smile. He motioned for me to come closer. “I’d come to you and give you a hug, but I can’t leave this spot.” His eyes switched from me to the monitors.
Give me a hug? Why? Oh wait, he was being nice because I’d hit my head. Maybe he was nicer than he had seemed at first.
Doyle made a noise like a snore but then quieted.
“He’s not really asleep,” Liam said.
“Not easy to sleep around here,” Doyle said in a low voice. His leg twitched. He was in jeans and his chest was covered by a black bomber jacket.
Liam brushed his palm over his short reddish hair and focused on the screens again, eyes darting between them. “Why don’t you help me here? I’ve got to keep an eye on things while Doyle pretends to sleep.”
“I’m not pretending,” Doyle said.
“You’re talking,” Marc said.
“I talk in my sleep.”
Marc found the only other rolling office chair in the room and rolled it over the linoleum flooring to the tables, pointing at it until I sat. Liam made room, allowing me to watch the computer monitors with him.
The table held up three monitors. Each monitor was split digitally six ways, showing black-and-white footage.
“These are the security cameras in most public areas around the ship,” Liam said. He moved the mouse and clicked on one of the six videos on the monitor right in front of me. The video enlarged, taking up the entire screen. “You click on one to get a better view. Click it again to send it back.”
I studied the screens, but it was hard to watch all of them at once. “How do you pay attention to all of this?”
“You don’t have to watch everything all at once,” Liam said. “There’s security downstairs watching for the general sort of trouble. You can focus on any major players, and follow our team members when they come into the frame. We’re limited since no one spends all their time in these areas. I honestly doubt we’ll witness anything significant; our suspects are not likely to do too much in such public areas.”
Doyle grumbled and shifted. There was a clicking noise, like a button was being pushed. “Blake, Axel says fuck off.” Shifting noises, another click.
I was about to say something to the effect of how everyone should get along, when Liam touched my arm to get my attention. “Ignore it. He’s incapable of relaying information verbatim. You have to read between the lines…kind of.”
Marc examined the supplies on the shelves in the storage room. He shifted through files I recognized as Blake’s dossiers and notes about the ship. Nearby were two square plastic containers filled with hard drives.
Marc spoke as he checked out the stuff. “We’ll have to hang out here for a bit. Once Brandon’s sure no one else is following him, he’ll need to come up here and hide.”
Liam sat back in his chair and drummed his fingers on the computer table. “I can stay with her,” he said. “If you want to go…”
“I have to stay with her,” Marc said, his tone determined.
Liam glanced at me, his brow wrinkling. “It’s not a problem.”
“I’m not leaving,” Marc said over his shoulder, a little louder. He wasn’t looking at either of us, so it was hard to read what he was thinking.
Liam checked in with me, an eyebrow raised.
I shrugged, unsure what he wanted. The medicine, and possibly the concussion, were making it harder for me to focus. I turned my attention to the monitors. What did it matter now who stayed? I was stuck here for possibly the rest of the trip.
Was Liam not okay with Marc? Hadn’t they talked?
Liam sat back in his chair again, sweeping his eyes around the room in thought. “Okay, then maybe I’ll…”
Doyle violently flipped over onto his back. The cot skidded, the metal screeching against the linoleum, hurting my ears. Doyle blew out some air between his lips in a rush. “I don’t care what you do,” he cried out. “I should have never come on this boat.”
“Sorry,” Liam said. “We’ll get quiet.”
“You should learn to sleep while people are talking,” Marc said. “It’s really helpful when you have to share space.”
“Don’t care. I’m too tired for this.” Doyle sat up and ripped a headset off his head. The bomber jacket fell in a heap onto the cot. He left it behind as he headed to the door. “I’m going to go get more food and cigarettes. Then I’m going to watch girls in bikinis and take a nap on deck.”
He opened the door, then stopped, turned, and pointed at me. “If you touch one thing in here, I’ll know, and I’ll curse you and your children and your children’s children, and all the children everywhere. You’ll be responsible for babies being cursed. So don’t touch.” He walked out, and the door shut hard behind him, echoing in the room.
Liam scratched at his forehead and looked at me. “He really doesn’t like you.”
“I think I ruined the man-crush he has on Blake,” I said absently. Then I worried about bringing up Blake around Marc, and I waited for a flinch, or a comment.
Marc looked right at me and laughed, his mismatched eyes lighting up. “He said girls in bikinis, but maybe he meant Blake. Wouldn’t surprise me.”
I raised an eyebrow at him. Nothing? No…fight? Didn’t we normally fight? I lightly pressed a palm to my temple, hating that my memory was a little fuzzy. I felt like I was supposed to be angry at him, too, but I couldn’t remember why.
Marc went to the cot and pushed the jacket aside until it fell to the floor. He fished out the headset. It was attached via a wire to a handheld keypad.
“Doyle hasn’t left this room since he’s been on the boat,” he said. “It’s only fair he gets out for a bit.” He placed the headset over his ears and turned the microphone toward his lips. He pushed a button on the keypad and spoke into the microphone on the headset. “I’m taking over for Doyle. Start over.”
“I’m going to go keep an eye on our friend,” Liam said, standing. When I started to scoot out of the way, he redirected me to the chair in front of the monitors. “Watch things, will you? I don’t like leaving anyone on our team alone.”
Our team? Wasn’t he with Henry? Wasn’t he mad at me, too? “So…you’re on our side now?”
“Always was,” he said. He checked in with Marc, waving at him and signaling that he was leaving.
Marc nodded to him but continued to talk into the headset, relaying messages.
Liam turned back to me. “Just let Marc know if you see anything funny going on,” he said before he left.
I wasn’t sure how to tell if there was something funny going on, but I’d keep my eyes on the monitors and do my best. While Marc talked to people using his headset, I got used to navigating the images, enlarging every video to see if I could identify faces and locations.
I sat in the chair, leaning back, my elbows propped up on the armrests. My head was swimming, a little high from the medicines, but at least the chair was comfortable. It was tempting to go take a nap on the cot, but I didn’t want to leave Marc to handle both tasks.
It could wait until…who was going to come bac
k? I wracked my brain, picturing faces one by one in my head, including my brother’s and my father’s. Frustrated, I gave up trying to remember things.
Focus. Watch monitors. That was my job now.
I studied the black-and-white images. The dining areas were easy enough to identify, as were the shops, but all the different sunning areas looked the same to me. There were some other places I didn’t recognize at all. The ship was bigger than I had thought.
The video feeds changed every few minutes to other cameras at other angles of different rooms. Just as I thought I was getting familiar with a location and might recognize a face, the video changed. It was hard to keep track.
This was going to be difficult.
Where was this goon that had hit me on the head? Shouldn’t we be watching him?
“Axel’s following him,” Marc said, spooking me. I turned to see him sitting on the cot, messing with the hand controller connected to the headset he was wearing. He took the set off, looking at it, adjusting it. “Only Colt is chasing him down. Blake was following Axel, only Blake needs to get here because this is probably our guy.”
I stared at him and blinked. Was he talking to me?
“Yes, I’m talking to you,” Marc said, but he was still looking at the headset. “We don’t want to approach yet. He’s a security guard. So we need to be careful or we might find the whole security team chasing us down.”
Oh wait, if he’s holding the headset in his hands, then he’s probably not talking to anyone else. I realized my mouth was open and promptly closed it.
I was going crazy, saying my thoughts out loud without realizing. I clamped my hand over my mouth, trying to ensure I didn’t start doing that again.
It was easier to use one monitor at a time, expanding the video feed to take up the entire screen. This way, my attention wasn’t split so much. I focused until I was familiar with what I was looking at. When I was sure all the faces weren’t people I knew, and that all seemed peaceful in that feed, I’d minimize and move on to the next.
