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I pressed my lips together.
He used the pocketknife to point inside the exposed controls, tapping the knife on the meter, the thermostat, the pipes, and other things that I knew nothing about. “Pretend you know what you are doing,” he said. He handed me the knife. “Unscrew something. If someone comes in, look once, go back to fixing.”
I was going to kill myself sticking a pocketknife in places I probably shouldn’t. But then, I was holding a pocketknife. At least I had that in case we got discovered and things went south.
I was looking for something to unscrew when the door to the room opened.
I timed looking over my shoulder for when it sounded like whoever was coming in was inside the room. I kept my hands inside the opening in the wall and peered over my shoulder, allowing the earmuffs to mask part of my face.
It was Sam. He had on a permanent bitch face, his blond hair smoothed back with way too much product. He wore all black like the crew, but with a thin tie and high-collared shirt.
Behind Sam, still in the hall, was a brute of a guy. Obviously Sam’s henchman. He kept his back to the door, scouting the hallway.
There was also something in Sam’s pocket. It was something familiar. The outline of the object had me looking at him much longer than I probably should have. I cursed my concussion. I couldn’t pick out what was in the doctor’s pockets, but I should have been able to, even if I couldn’t exactly remember the color. Only, I couldn’t look at Sam long enough to allow my mind to figure out what it was. Front pockets and back pockets told me something important. I stared at some pipes, hoping at another chance to look.
I was hiding in plain sight. Marvelous.
Sam ignored me and raised an eyebrow at Raven. “Raquel said you saw something?”
“One of those guys you told me to look out for. The tall one with the blue eyes. One of them went inside a storeroom.” Raven told Sam the direction we’d just come from. “He stood in there alone for a few minutes and then left. A little too long. Might be looking to set up a new base camp.”
Corey had been in that room yesterday and was long gone, or so I hoped.
“I’ll have someone check it out,” Sam said, but he didn’t sound like he was leaving. I resisted the urge to turn and look at him again. “Do you need to be doing this now? I told all maintenance to be on the lookout. Don’t stir up guests, but we need all areas searched.”
“We’ve been looking for someone all night.”
“There’s more people on board than we realized. The Asian girl from yesterday morning is still missing.”
Was that me in the disguise yesterday?
“We need to find her and figure out if there’s any more.”
“We’ll get on it,” Raven said. “But can I ask you something?”
“Yeah, what?”
“First, you put the word out to get rid of one girl and one guy. I did that. Now there’s another girl. Am I supposed to get rid of her, too? Should I be getting rid of any of those other people? The blond guy and the black-haired guy with the glasses or any of those people?”
I wondered if anyone could hear through the walls.
“Your job is to search the ship, and report back if you find her and who she is with. Nothing else yet, but don’t be surprised. We don’t hang on to trash, we get rid of it.” The door opened again and then his footsteps faded away.
I looked over just in time to see the back of his head going down the hallway. His goon followed.
I stopped tinkering with whatever it was, and Raven helped me to put back the panel.
I was going to say something when Raven tugged me, yanking me out of the cold room.
When we were out in the hallway, he walked with purpose down a hallway, away from the main spa. He had a place in mind.
I followed, heart pounding, wishing he’d tell me what he was doing. Keeping up with him was difficult when I couldn’t read his brain.
Raven backtracked through the ship, and I wasn’t exactly sure of where he was going next until we came up to a familiar door, the storage room we’d left yesterday.
It was open, and a big guy with a bald head stood inside. More security.
I hid my mouth behind the earmuffs I had around my neck, avoiding his eyes.
Raven walked right up to him, leaning against the door. “Nothing?”
“No,” he said. “Looks like things were knocked over, though. Might be scouting a new spot to crash.”
“We could camp out here. See if they come back?”
“I’ll get someone up here,” he said. “But if they’re looking for another hideout like this, then we’ll have to do around-the-clock sweeps. Anywhere they can sit or sleep, we want to keep an eye on.” He grunted. “You were right. Ever since you got rid of the girl, they’ve been scrambling. Killing the head of the snake has them all in a tizzy.”
I was amused that they thought I was the boss of the crew.
“I just followed orders,” Raven said, frowning. “I prefer to know who I’m working for, though.”
“Sam’s your boss unless Sam tells you otherwise. Besides, the situation is only temporary. Once this ship gets back to shore, it’s business as usual. None of our business what this other guy does. Just make sure no one else goes bothering guests, starting rumors.”
Whoever was telling Sam what to do was making sure everyone kept quiet about his identity.
Raven nodded once, backed up and headed down the hall.
“And, hey,” the big bald dummy called after him.
We both turned.
He motioned to me but looked at Raven. “Who is he?”
“Kitchen bitch,” Raven said without hesitation. “Made him come down to help me. Didn’t want to get jumped. That other group has been walking around in pairs.”
I tried not to snort at what Raven had called me.
Big dummy nodded and waved him away.
We hauled ass down a hallway before he could get a second look at me.
Mechanics
We couldn’t go bug Sam or any more of the crew for the moment. Calling down Sam with little things, like there might be someone snooping around too much, would draw suspicion, and it was clear they were keeping things quiet. Their goal was to find the girl and possibly kill her. Since “she” wasn’t around anymore, it kept them looking for a ghost, which was better than looking for the real deal.
Maybe I’d lucked out coming back and getting knocked out. I’d bought us a lot of time.
So far, it sounded like they didn’t know about Blake having returned. Unfortunately, since I’d triggered a search, Blake was in danger of being found if he wasn’t careful.
Since Blake wasn’t with Sam, and the guys were likely searching public and perhaps staff areas, Raven and I searched the engine room. It was a big open space with lots of loud machines and we really did need the earmuffs. No one looked twice at us since everyone was wearing the same thing. It helped that down there, we needed safety goggles as well.
There were lots of storage closets, catwalks, and large machines and pipes to look around.
We did this for a few hours, and every so often we pretended to be pushing buttons, studying some meters, or sorting through a few tools.
Occasionally, Bald Dummy and some other crew in black came down, looked down their noses at the maintenance team, and asked Raven if he’d seen anything.
“Nothing new,” Raven said each time.
I was wondering if Bald Dummy was the guy who’d knocked me out—something about him gave me the feeling he was.
We searched all over and then backtracked through the area. No B
lake. No one else on our team down here.
“Why are we still down here?” I asked. “We’ve searched this area. Shouldn’t we be looking upstairs?”
Raven had his head inside an opening where he’d removed a wall panel. The panel was low, so he had to be on his back and slide in, like he was looking under a car. “Everyone else is upstairs. People keep coming down to check for updates. Means nothing is happening.”
“You didn’t tell me you told them you killed me.”
He scooted out on his back, looking up at my face, an eyebrow raised. “Yes, I did.”
Had he told me he’d said so? I frowned and scratched my eyebrow. “This concussion sucks. I forget things sometimes. Who all did you tell…? Wait, didn’t you talk to Tara and Mr. Smith and—”
“Shh,” he said, looking down his body toward the open area of the large engine room and then back at me. He stuck his head into the wall opening again. “Remind me to teach you Russian so we can talk without being overheard.”
I folded my arms, leaning against the wall he was looking in. “But did you?”
“Yeah,” he said. “I passed along a message, saying Sam took care of everything. I thought one of them might be the investor, but then Sam was pissed I went to talk to them without him.”
“I would think Sam would be okay with someone else doing his dirty work.”
“He doesn’t like me, doesn’t trust me, but clearly, I got the job done, so he’s assuming I’m on his side, at least for now. The only problem is, I can’t get him to say much more. He’s keeping me out.”
“We could just hold him at gunpoint and ask directly,” I said, nudging his hip with my foot.
His hand shot out, catching me by the ankle. He held on as he scooted himself out of the wall again, looking up at me with those big brown eyes. He was usually so punk with his lip ring and tattoos. In the jumpsuit and with his hair brushed down, he looked so blue-collar—not a bad look for him, just different.
“Last resort. So far, so good. At least they aren’t directly looking for him. If they’re coming down here like clockwork, that means they haven’t found anything of interest to us.”
