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I was lost in thought, wondering how to approach Sam, when the door opened again, letting in light from outside.
I stiffened, and waited.
The door stayed open.
Silence.
The door closed again. The room went dark.
I pressed my hand to my chest, willing my heart to slow down as I listened, hearing nothing. Raven was right—we needed to stay on the move. We were outnumbered by the crew. Wasn’t this ship supposed to be sailing for four or five days? There was no way we could keep this up for so long. If we were going to live through this, I needed to blend in.
I let out a slow breath and turned on the shelf, trying to get comfortable. My hip pushed one of the boxes, making scratching noises against the metal.
“Who’s in here?” a voice said as the light went on, blinding me since I was so close to the ceiling light. Pain surged through my brain.
Trying to cover my eyes, I knocked over a box. Never said I was graceful.
“I know you’re here.”
The voice.
I sat up quickly.
Corey. He was wearing a crew outfit, black on black. There were dark smudges on his hands and across one cheek. Oil or dirt.
I held a hand toward my chest, breathed out slowly. “Thank goodness, it’s you.”
His eyes widened. He moved from the door, closing it behind him, motioning to me. “We’ve been looking for you,” he said. “Come down. I’ll take you to—”
“No,” I said, and I waved him off. “You have to leave.”
“Leave?” he asked. “You need to come with me. Everyone’s going crazy.”
“I know,” I said. “Let them keep looking for me.”
“What?” He stopped just below the shelf I was sitting on. “Why?”
“I can’t explain, but look at me,” I said, even though he was already doing that. I pointed to my face, hoping I appeared serious. “I need you to walk out, pretend you never saw me, and keep looking for me.”
He frowned. “What’s wrong?”
No time to explain. The longer he stayed in here, the more suspicious people watching him would get. “Do you trust me?” I asked.
He nodded slowly.
I steadied my gaze on him. “Do you trust Raven?”
His eyes widened. “Yeah.”
“Don’t tell Axel or the others that you saw me unless you are absolutely sure they are alone. Let them keep looking.”
He frowned. “Anything else I should do?”
Thank goodness he was willing to listen. Axel and the others might not have been so willing to trust me unconditionally. “Be very, very careful. Security is watching.”
His frown deepened. “And we need to let them?”
“Yes. Spend your time looking for me. Get off the boat safe, that’s all we need to do. Oh, and find Blake if you can. Right now. We’re looking for him, too. If you find him, keep him stashed somewhere safe. We’ll find out if you have him.” I wasn’t sure how, but I bet Raven would know a way.
His frown instantly disappeared and his face brightened. “He did find you,” he said.
I put a finger to my lips, and then winked at him. “Don’t tell anyone.”
He nodded and then went to the door. “Light on or off?”
“Off is fine…Corey?”
He paused at the door, switching the light off. “Yup?”
I didn’t know how to say it. The throbbing in my head and the stress of everything…I had no time to figure out how to be delicate. “I didn’t know…how you felt about me before. Not fully. I’m sorry about that.”
It was a long moment before he spoke, so long I worried he wouldn’t say anything. “Don’t be sorry,” he finally said, his voice coming at me through the dark. “But I thought you knew.”
“I know now.” I wanted to say much more, but there wasn’t time. If he didn’t leave right now, someone watching might think he’d found something. “Be safe,” I said. “Don’t get hurt.”
“You, too,” he said. He walked out, closing the door behind him.
I relaxed as best as I could on top of the shelf, listening to my breaths, hearing them slow back to normal.
I wanted to tell him so much. I just hoped I’d get the chance.
A Night with a Bear
It was another ten minutes, I guessed, before Raven returned. His nose was clean, and he had some sort of thin bandage over the top of it. It was swollen and getting more discolored as time went on.
He carried two dingy blue jumpsuits, two hard hats, two pairs of protective earmuffs. He presented a set to me as I came down off the shelf.
“We’ll be maintenance,” he said.
The jumpsuit could fit over my clothes, but I discarded everything except the bra and underwear. It would be too hot otherwise. He kept his jeans on, but took off the bloody shirt. He dropped our discarded clothes into a bucket and pushed it as far back into the room as possible. “We might want to use these later.”
I zipped up the suit. It was bulky, but I rolled up the legs.
“You should pull your hair back,” Raven said. “No one wears their hair down in maintenance.”
“I don’t have a band,” I said, looking around the supply room but not seeing much to work with.
He made a circling gesture with his finger. “Turn around. I’ll braid it.”
I smirked at him. “You braid hair?”
“You’re not the first girl I’ve been around, little thief.”
I didn’t want to hear about that.
I turned, presenting him with my hair. “Corey was here. Caught me. He knows I’m hiding.”
Raven snorted, reaching up to my hair and gently collecting it in his hands. He parted it, combing with his fingers. “Proud of my boy.”
“I told him to pretend to keep looking for me and to try to look for Blake. If he does find him, I told him to hide him somewhere.”
“Good. They should be looking for him. Especially now. But we need to look, too. We can look in places t
hey can’t.”
I waited while he did a single braid, liking the feeling of his hands in my hair. In the end, he did a weird twist thing to it, which was basically a small knot to hold it in place. When he was finished, he flattened his palm against the braid, smoothing it before he kissed me on the back of my head. “I usually like it down, but up is good. Your face is good.”
Flattering. “I like your face, too.”
He smiled widely at my compliment and then asked, “Corey knows I’m here?”
“Yeah.”
“Good,” he said and gave me the hard hat. “I got your aspirin, too.”
“I need to stop by a bathroom,” I said. I wasn’t even sure what time it was anymore. Afternoon, for sure.
“We will. We’ll also have to find a place to bunk for a few hours. You should sleep anyway. Guests are supposed to be in their rooms. It’ll be too obvious if we’re just walking around.”
I put on the hard hat and kept the earmuffs around my neck. The big earpieces covered my cheeks, helping to mask my face. I tucked the braid into the hard hat. I’d look more like a boy, which was good. A girl maintenance crewmember would stand out to the maintenance men.
Raven guided me as we left the room. We went further down into the ship and stopped by a bathroom, where I got water for my aspirin and took care of things.
We walked for what felt like ages around the ship, taking our time to look for Blake and dodging security.
But Raven was right—if people were confined to their rooms because of the fire, we needed to lay low.
I was a zombie on my feet anyway.
He must have read my thoughts. “We’re no good,” he whispered to me in the hallway. “I was up all night. We can’t fight anyone like this.”
He guided me to the crew bunks. There were four tiny bunks to a room. Crewmembers’ names were written on labels on each bunk. Raven found a vacant room with an empty bed without a name.
He urged me up and into the bunk. I crawled into the narrow space, careful to not hit my head on the low ceiling. There was no window, making me thankful I wasn’t claustrophobic.
