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How foolish we’d been. Maybe the evidence had been staring us in the face the whole time and we’d just been too sure he’d never do something like that to me. We had the right person, just the wrong motive, so it had thrown our suspicions off. Had our attacker choked or hit us, we probably wouldn’t have made it, but he’d thrown us over without other injury. Then he’d disappeared.
“Why didn’t you tell me what you were doing?” I asked as I rolled my head back, feeling the cool material of the wall. “Why didn’t you tell Blake?”
“I didn’t want a fight—we didn’t have the time.” He pointed to his nose. “You would have done more than this to me if I’d let you see that it was me. Him, too. Easier to do it quickly. Like a bandaging.”
He meant Band-Aid, but I didn’t want to correct him. I wasn’t really sure his analogy worked, either. “If you thought we should have disappeared, you could at least have warned us. Why did you do it in the dark? Why fight with us? Why couldn’t we have taken a lifeboat?”
He smirked. “It takes time to take those down, and it would have been noticed if it went missing. I already risked throwing a few life preservers over after you went, as many as I could find. We’re dealing with the security team on this ship, and who knows who else in the crew.”
I groaned. “I didn’t get a life preserver. And you could have warned me.”
“No time. Believe me, I thought of everything I could do. Getting you to swim to shore was the only way to make sure you disappeared. You couldn’t just hide. They’d find you eventually. They were coming for you, right then.” He leaned his back against the door. “I made you and him disappear, and then I told them I helped. Let’s just hope they don’t find you now. The only thing that really convinced them was Axel and the others running around asking about you.”
“Who was trying to kill us?” I asked.
“The investor,” he said. “The real one. It has to be.”
“What? We were looking at Sam.”
“It’s not Sam.”
“But who is the investor?”
“I’m not sure,” he said. He stepped toward me. His nose seemed to have stopped bleeding. He looked over my face. “When you told me to go talk to Sam, I did. Now I’m in with Sam because of this, but he’s not behind it. They’re just muscle. He got a message from upstairs to kill you and Blake. I’ve been trying to find out who made the call, but it got harder when Axel started looking for me, too.”
I stared at his chest. He hadn’t been trying to kill me. He had been trying to save us. If we were outnumbered on the ship, with a whole security team looking to kill us, in Raven’s own way, he’d done the best he could. “I almost drowned.”
“You’re strong,” he said, his voice raspy as he moved closer. “Little thief, I knew you’d make it.”
I shook my head, my eyes closing, feeling the tears. He had no idea. “I almost didn’t. I wasn’t even going to try.”
The room stilled, the only sound a low rumbling coming from the pipes.
He lowered his face slowly, looking up at my eyes, trying to get me to look at him. “Tell me why.”
I covered my eyes with my palms, partially to keep my head together since it felt like it was about to explode. “I…was in the water, going down, and I let myself go for a while. I didn’t know Blake had gone over. All I knew was someone was mad enough at me to toss me over. I thought… I messed you and the others up, after everything I said and had done. Maybe you all were better off without me.”
Silence swallowed us both for an eon. With my hands covering my face, everything was so black, and I welcomed the darkness. I hadn’t dared to admit that to anyone else.
Big hands covered mine gently, urging mine away from my face.
I gritted my teeth, sucked in a breath through my nose, and held it as I let him take my hands in his.
I finally looked up at him. His big brown eyes glistened. “You’re my little thief, girl. You just don’t know it yet.”
I shook my head, looking away. “You don’t understand…”
“I do.” He took both of my hands into one of his and used his other to capture my chin, drawing my face around to look at him again. His gaze darted from my eyes, to my mouth and then slowly back up. “You…and Corey.”
My heart raced, and I tilted my head, an eyebrow going up at the last name I would have expected him to say. “Corey?”
He brought my hands to his lips, kissed the knuckles and then spoke against my fingers. “He loves you, too, you know?” He smirked. “I’d tease him, saying you were all mine. It’d make him so mad. I liked making him jealous of both of us.”
Jealous? He loves me, too? Corey. Sweet, lovable Corey? His brother had told me he was gay, and I’d believed him—a twin would know, wouldn’t he?
Yet, Corey had cuddled with me, and kissed my forehead. Memories of sweet times with him filled my brain; I’d just assumed we were dear friends.
Though looking back, Blake had never believed me when I’d said Corey wasn’t interested in me. And Liam had been adamant about including Corey when I’d told him about everything.
Only I hadn’t been listening. Excitement filled me at knowing Corey felt for me in ways I had only secretly wished he would.
Then the other part of what he’d just said came into focus in my head. He’d said he liked making Corey jealous of both of us. At the thought of Raven and me being together? Wait…did he mean…Corey…and Raven?
“He likes you?” I asked.
Raven nodded. “He doesn’t know I know, but I have for a while.”
I tried to figure out the questions I wanted to ask. My hands were still in Raven’s and I wiggled them free to rub at my eyebrows. “His brother told me he was gay. I believed him. I mean, why wouldn’t I?”
“He likes who he likes. He doesn’t care.” Raven placed a palm over his heart. “Me, too.”
Bi. They were bi. They liked each other. They liked me.
I hadn’t totally been into Raven at first, thinking he was a brute, but Corey I’d adored from the start. I’d grown to feel strongly for Raven once I’d gotten to know him.
Then I was thinking of them together—how different they were but how they’d complement each other. The room was already hot, but I felt even more flushed all of a sudden, embarrassed at how excited I was. I would never have pictured it, but now I could.
Raven smirked. “When you told us last night how you were feeling, I knew exactly what it is like.”
Because he couldn’t decide between Corey and me? “But you—”
Footsteps echoed from down the hall. We quieted. Raven reached over, turning the light off.
He picked me up, pushing me toward the pipes. He remained quiet, but he urged me to climb over them.
I did, testing them to see if any were hot, avoiding one that was, and doing my best to get in behind
them in the dark.
I squeezed down, ducking.
Raven climbed in behind me, covering me with his body, and positioning himself so he could launch out at anyone who might spot us.
The door opened and I held my breath as the light went on again. I couldn’t see who it was but didn’t dare move.
Silence.
The light went off, door closed.
We remained behind the pipes until those footsteps disappeared. Raven went out first. He turned the light back on so I could see my way out.
“We can’t stay,” he whispered. “That had to have been security. If it was Axel, he would have looked back here. Axel or the others might be here soon.”
“But why do we need to hide from them?”
“For now,” he said. “Make it believable that you and I are gone. Security will be following them close to see if they’ll set up camp like before, or if they’ll give up for now. I got lucky hearing you.”
“You heard my voice,” I said.
“I was talking to you on the headset?”
“They were listening,” he said. “You were talking to me but they were listening to all the lines. They knew about Doyle’s room and they were heading there to see if it was you, so I lit it up.”
When I was talking to him, I was hearing piano music. He must have either been near Corey or he wasn’t at all near Corey and another piano was playing somewhere else.
And it would explain why I couldn’t hear voices around Corey. I wonder how Doyle knew I’d spoken to Raven and how he knew they’d been listening.
“But all that work,” I said. Colt’s phone I’d stolen. Other drives and phones we had duplicated. All those files. “The drives. The—”
“Duplicates,” he said and waved his hand. “We got them once, we can get them again. In fact, we don’t need them.” He opened the door, peeked out and then closed it again. He looked back at me. “Don’t you see? We have him. The investor, that’s all we really need, and if I can continue to get in with Sam, he might tell me who he is.”
“You’re still going to try?”
“I don’t know who they thought was talking, but I knew it was you, so I had to come get you, especially since they were on the way. I have to find Blake and make sure they didn’t find him. I’m worried they have. If he had an earpiece and talked on those lines at all, they know he’s here. Especially if they used his name.”
