Unforgettable

by Caroline B. Cooney

  Mr. Senneth—whom Ben Franklin had seen only from a distance, while he sold T’s and Mitch rescued Miss Amnesia—smiled pleasantly enough at Ben. “I like a varied guest list,” he agreed. “Ben, let me introduce you to a couple of other friends.” He took Ben’s arm, led him away from the gray-haired crowd, down the curving stairs and into the wheel room, where he said to Billy, “I think this gentleman has crashed our little party.”

  Hope awoke.

  She awoke with a jolt like lightning bolts, and was catapulted right out of the bed.

  The room was very dark.

  The entire suite was very dark.

  She ran down the hall, looked in the other bedroom, looked in the huge sitting area, the dining room, the …

  Below and beyond the huge plate glass windows was Boston Harbor, and Long Wharf.

  Lady Hope, lit and bedecked like a princess, was full of guests.

  She could even see the dancers leaning on each other’s arms. She could see the band and the glint of lanterns off the silvery rims of drums. She could see the whites of the crew and actually catch the twinkle of glasses, lined like troops on the uppermost deck bar.

  And she could see Mitch, striding down the wooden docks, saluting the crew; yes, see him boarding Lady Hope.

  He’s crashing the party, she thought. To see me. To dance with me and hold me and kiss me and get to know me better.

  Hope knew the sensible thing to do. She knew the rational intelligent thing to do.

  But more than she was a girl in danger, she was a girl in love.

  I want Mitch to see me dressed up! I want him to see me in something beautiful, not that old pair of shorts. I want to dance with him and go for a midnight sail with him.

  Look how civilized they are on that boat! Only good things happen to people who dance on yachts. So many witnesses. What could possibly go wrong among all those rich people?

  Billy was courteous to Ben Franklin. He said softly, “Nobody wants any trouble. I understand how you’d enjoy this event. I enjoy a yacht, too. But you really do have to have an invitation to attend these parties, my friend. Now you’re not going to be in any trouble, and we won’t be calling the police. You and I will just walk casually down the steps, without disturbing any guests, and you don’t come back.” Billy smiled. “Got it?” He was friendly as a puppy. He reminded Ben of Derry.

  Ben said, equally courteously, “I know you have Susan Nevilleson aboard, and the minute I leave this boat, I’m going to be the one who calls the cops.”

  Billy’s smile wavered, and then collapsed.

  “I’m so sorry,” he said immediately. The perfect yacht steward. “Please forgive me. I had no idea that Susan invited you. Of course, any friend of Miss Nevilleson is a friend of ours. I’ll take you to her stateroom. She’s still dressing for the party.”

  They went down a different circular stair, down below decks and, too late, Ben remembered how Derry had described the layout of the boat.

  Susan felt the boat shift.

  The engines began.

  Her head was right up against pipes or exhausts. She could hear and feel every throb. She was forced to vibrate with every engine exchange. Michael had been correct. These were major engines.

  We’re going out to sea, thought Susan. Why not? Burial at sea is invisible and easy. You just weight the body. Down it goes.

  But it’s my body.

  I don’t want it going down.

  Air began to seem wonderful to Susan. She could taste each breath she took, and she took deeper and deeper breaths, but not enjoying them, because the metallic taste of fear ruined each lungful.

  She fixed her hair. She flung open the closet doors, and pulled out the indigo silk. She found no shoes that fit, so she wore her sandals. She would kick them off in the shoe basket before boarding. She took the elevator down. She hardly noticed the elegant marble, magnificent flowers, and uniformed doormen, not even the one who swung open the back doors for her. She saw only the image of herself and Mitch, the next act in her play, the final falling in love.

  She ran lightly over the plaza, ducking between Jaguars and Mercedes parked there for the party, ran right down the dock and right up the steps. Crew she did not recognize—catering people, perhaps—stepped out of her way. And Billy, whom she recognized perfectly, simply gasped and did absolutely nothing. What could he do? A boat full of guests, the most important guests the Senneths would ever entertain? There could be no scenes at this party.

  She would find Mitch in the crowd, she would waltz right off the boat with him, and together they would run to safety and to happily-ever-after.

  She had just threaded through the guests, just climbed the circular stair to the dance floor, when something she had never thought of occurred.

  Lady Hope left shore.

  Chapter 11

  MITCHELL MCKENNA HAD NEVER seen anything so beautiful. Hope was beyond mortal. She was a goddess, draped in silk, bronze hair heavy on her shoulders.

  Mitch wanted a conversation with his father: Yes, Dad! There is love at first sight! I really love her, Dad. I have no idea what’s going on with this girl, and what’s more, I don’t care.

  Night had fallen. The sky had the pinkish glow of city lights—never really dark. And yet there were shadows everywhere, black and solid, and Hope was in relief against them: a sculpture carved against the water and the night.

  He knew there was music; he could hear percussion, guitar, and singer. But mostly he heard only one syllable—Hope.

  The yacht was jammed. Dancing was close and slow because there was no room for wild and fast. Okay with Mitch—they had a lifetime for wild and fast. He put his arms around her with such pleasure he thought that his whole life had been just a preparation for this. He said nothing, nor did she; they leaned against each other, and warmed each other.

  The dance went on and on, their feet barely shifting, her head on his chest, his chin in her hair.

  Mitch was so in love that he was in love with love, more than Hope. He was on a primitive physical level: feeling, touching, tasting, seeing—but not thinking. He didn’t see Mr. Senneth. He didn’t see Kaytha. He didn’t see Ben Franklin. He didn’t even feel Lady Hope leave the dock and gently turn and move among the shadows of the sea.

  Hope saw even less. She knew only his cheek, his throat, and the silk of his jacket lapel. His hands gripped first her shoulders, and then her waist, and then shifted, restlessly, wanting everything.

  My own T-Shirt God, she thought.

  But Mitch was not wearing a T. He was wearing a black jacket with black silk lapels. If he had been handsome in a T-shirt, he was stunning in evening wear. She drew her hands down the lapels, down the silk, and he caught her hands in his.

  “Hope, I can’t wait till the symphony concert. I don’t sell T’s on Sunday. How about if you and I take a drive out to the country tomorrow? I’ll pick you up at ten, okay? Wear jeans. We’ll be very historic. It’s the only thing you can be in Massachusetts.”

  He was rewarded by Hope’s sweet smile.

  Loveswept, each was sure that twenty-four hours of adoration was enough to expect a lifetime together.

  Some party guests watched them with pleasure, remembering their own first love, happy for these beautiful strangers. Some were simply irritated, because the selfishness of love allowed them to take more than their share of space, and ignore everything around them.

  As for the host and hostess, they were dumbfounded.

  “What is happening?” said Kaytha. She was outraged. How dare they fall in love on her yacht? Hissing under her breath, she demanded, “Who are they really?”

  Her father shook his head. “I haven’t a clue.”

  Their fears had mounted like winds in a storm. Nothing in their previous museum arrangements had ever come to this. Their preparations—so careful, so detailed—prevented surprises. The world of fine art museums, and therefore the world of fine art thefts, moved very slowly.

  Kender Senneth was c
oming unglued.

  Kaytha could feel her father’s layers separating, his resolve dissolving.

  “Don’t you come apart!”—She continued to call him Uncle Ken. It was a part of the game that appealed to Kaytha; made it far easier to deal with him—“Uncle Ken, you have a necklace to get back!”

  He was hanging onto the rail, as if white knuckles could give him the strength to go on.

  Hope was so beautiful! Remarkable. How astute of Kaytha to see that this was the daughter he should have had. This was how his little girl should have turned out! A perfect sculpture, artwork, a sweet good girl, who attracted sweet good boys, who was too innocent to know what her father did, and who would never have believed it if she were told.

  “We’ll let her watch while our unwanted bunkmates drown,” said Kaytha. “That should bother her a little.”

  His own child, carrying his own genes, was a person who could kill.

  He was still so chilled by the thought that he had to run from the thought. He said quickly, “But she doesn’t know where the necklace is, Kaytha. That’s the problem. She really has lost her memory.”

  “How do you know? How do you know it isn’t a crock and a trick?”

  “Because why, when she woke up in spite of the pills, didn’t she go to the police? Kaytha, there is no logical intelligent reason for her to be here again. She must actually believe she is Hope Senneth.”

  Kaytha stared at the dancing partners. He was correct. There was no logical intelligent reason to come back. But when was love ever logical or intelligent?

  In Kaytha, all three were now absent: love, logic, and intelligence were gone.

  Which was when the message arrived from Billy. The caterer’s lower-deck bartender came up to his employer. “Miss Senneth? Billy says he just acquired another guest for the bunkroom. Would you please come give him a hand with the sleeping arrangements?”

  Kaytha had absolutely no idea who that other individual might be, but she knew one thing: She would give these particular guests a permanent sleep.

  Oh, Ben! He was so handsome! She loved him in a tuxedo!

  Of course, at that point, Susan would have loved him in a zebra costume.

  If only she could call out, tell him how wonderful he was, tell him she adored him! Beneath the cruel strapping tape, she was laughing and giddy. Oh, Ben! I’m so glad to see you!

  Billy held the gun very loosely, like a kid on Halloween. As if it were a toy.

  It wasn’t a toy.

  They were the toys.

  Oh, Ben, you can’t rescue me. You’re going to be caught up in this with me, instead. She loved him for it: for going so solidly into deep trouble. For her sake.

  She didn’t even glance at Billy, nor at the weapon he held, and when Kaytha took Billy’s place, Susan didn’t bother looking at Kaytha either. Ben Franklin was so much to look at. He was her answer to everything—and yet, he was as completely trapped as she, and the answer to nothing.

  Oh, Ben, Ben! You shouldn’t have liked me so much! You shouldn’t have followed me, like a knight in shining armor rushing romantically into the dragon’s cave!

  But she was so glad that he had done it.

  Proof that she was really loved. Loved beyond mere dates. Loved beyond rings or photos in a locket. She drank in the sight of Ben coming for her, Ben dressing and planning and crashing a party to carry her home—she wept with joy and fear for them both.

  “Feast your eyes,” said Kaytha. “Because you won’t have him to see for long.” Kaytha smiled. She held a long thin blade and, holding it, such a long, thin hand. Kaytha’s hand.

  “I am very accomplished with this knife,” whispered Kaytha. Her smile perfectly matched the blade. Kaytha did not blink.

  “You’re in big trouble, big boy,” she told Ben. “I’m not really angry with you, of course. You are nothing. Now you are out of time and will never be anything. But in the meantime, you are mine, and I am going to enjoy myself.”

  Kaytha was completely off the wall. Her sanity, if she had ever possessed it, was gone. The look in her eyes was so eager and yet so flat: as if she were a drawing of a person, but had no soul.

  We are doomed, thought Susan. Mitch did this to us, with his romancing and his partying and his role-playing.

  “Hello, sir,” said Mitch, with the vague friendliness of lovers. He should have a courteous relationship with his girlfriend’s father.

  Mr. Senneth drew them away from, the dance floor and over near the bank of canvas-draped yacht toys. A row of lanterns changed the entire night for Mitch. Now Hope was no shadowy museum piece, but a vivid blue, her gown as deep and perfect as the blue of her yacht.

  Hope’s eyes moved toward Kender Senneth, wanting her father’s approval also. Weird relationship, thought Mitch.

  If anything, Kender Senneth was equally impressed. He stared at Hope as if seeing a ghost. After a long while, in a scratchy voice, like a record from the attic, he said, “The gown is beautiful, Hope. But it needs that missing necklace.”

  Mitch hugged Hope. “Well, when you find the necklace, Hope,” he said happily, because everything made him happy right now, “let’s go out and celebrate.”

  “How will we find the necklace?” asked Mr. Senneth. “I’d be most happy to enlist your assistance, Mitch.”

  “It must be some necklace,” said Mitch. It would have to be, to match Hope’s beauty. He suddenly remembered that he was crashing the party, and he flushed with embarrassment. “Mr. Senneth, I want to apologize for just coming on board. I know you didn’t invite me. I know it’s pretty rude. I … just … um—”

  “Fell in love,” said Mr. Senneth. “I remember feeling that way once. Toward Hope’s mother.” His eyes filled with tears. He walked away from them, the pressure of other people’s love too much for him.

  “Your poor dad,” said Mitch sympathetically.

  Hope came back to earth. Time to level with Mitch. She did not know how he would react when he found out he was in love with a fake. Would he feel tricked and laughed at? Would he despise her?

  Not knowing the answer to that made her admit that she did not actually know Mitch McKenna at all. Her love frayed a little around the edges, was less secure, less wonderful.

  “He’s not my father,” she whispered.

  He sat on the nearest toy. The hull of a Wave Runner, he thought, pulling her down into his lap. He could hardly even look at Hope from so close. She was so beautiful he could not believe he had her.

  Unexpectedly, he didn’t hear Ginger’s voice in his mind, but Susan’s, answering Ben Franklin’s question. Why would you kidnap a person you don’t know? Either because you do know who she is, and she’s rich and is worth a fabulous ransom, or because it doesn’t matter who she is. You have evil plans for her no matter what.

  Not her father.

  Then what was going on?

  It never crossed Mitch’s mind to be afraid. He was excited. Delighted. Mystery and action and great lines. Yes!

  “You see, I did hit my head,” Hope was murmuring in his ear. “On the curb of the traffic island when I was watching that drive-by shooting thing. I fell down in traffic but somehow nobody ran over me and I managed to get back across the street. I ran through Quincy Market and finally sat down with something cold to drink and tried to stop trembling. I could have been killed! Or maimed or paralyzed! That was pretty exciting, so I spent a moment pretending I had been hurt horribly. Concussions. Cute doctors falling in love with me. Some long-term but not painful or disfiguring illness.”

  Mitch was laughing as silently as he could. “You drama major, you!”

  “Truly. It’s what I want more than anything. To act.”

  “Me, too,” confided Mitch.

  They were awestruck by this common ground, this proof of true love.

  “So then what?”

  “So then I decided on amnesia. And you walked up. And then this man appeared and claimed I was his daughter.”

  “Wait,” said Mitch, s
tarting to put this together, and finding a very long list of things he would never tell Ginger or his parents about Hope. “I thought you meant he was like your stepfather or your father’s business partner or something. But you mean, you really aren’t a Senneth? You knew you didn’t know this man?”

  Hope nodded.

  “You knew that he knew you weren’t his daughter? You knew that he had to know you were acting?”

  “No, all he had to know was that I had amnesia. It was so exciting. Like being a counterspy, Mitch! And in The Jayquith!”

  “You’re crazy,” breathed Mitch.

  “Do you hate me?” she said anxiously.

  “Where do you get that from? I adore you.”

  Slow dancing was a wonderful way to exchange information. It looked like kissing, or nibbling ears or laughing into each other’s hair, and it was all of those things, but it was also listening to Hope. If he had not been intoxicated by her, if he had not been as interested in her kisses as her words, he might have done things differently.

  But he didn’t.

  Derry had told Ben that these people were not accustomed to violence, and it was true.

  For Billy left. The man with the strength and the gun had walked away.

  How amazing, thought Ben, acting instantly, acting swiftly; for once in life, however, NOT acting.

  Kaytha was completely unprepared to be kicked. He grabbed the wrist whose fingers held the knife, and then he slammed her against the unyielding mahogany door. In an instant, he’d taken her knife away. She was so frail and thin it was easy to hold both her wrists in one hand. With his free hand Ben Franklin grabbed the strapping tape lying visible on Susan’s bunk. Using his teeth, he ripped off a strip and immobilized her wrists. He had tape over Kaytha’s mouth within seconds. It took him only another moment to locate the handcuff key in her pocket.

  A woman who never eats breakfast, lunch, or dinner cannot really stand up against a man who never misses them.

  It was so quick there was no time for Kaytha to react, never mind call for reinforcements. Ben was amazed. It must be true that criminals were stupid. It was incredibly stupid of these people to assume that they were in control and nobody could change that. He had changed it with the tip of his highly polished black shoes.