by Jan Thompson
Before anyone could say another word, there came a knock on the door. “Room service!”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Gruffy ordered one of his men to usher Marie to the door. As they walked slowly, Marie spotted a small dagger in a sheath strapped to the man’s left thigh.
With a pistol pressed against her spine, she answered the steward on the other side of the door.
“Your hot panini sandwich is ready, ma’am,” came the reply. “Plus snacks for Mr. Urquhart.”
Marie waited for Gruffy to tell her how to respond. When he didn’t, she said, “Logan likes midnight munchies.”
“You had dinner,” Gruffy said.
“We’re on vacation. I’ll diet later,” Marie said.
“Diet later? Or die now?” Gruffy grunted.
Behind him, the third gunman stood watch by the closed balcony. The ceiling light reflected off the sliding glass door, such that one could not see outside. However, as the ship glided across the waters, Marie thought she saw movement outside, on her balcony.
She couldn’t be sure.
She prayed that help had arrived.
“He’ll be suspicious if we don’t open the door.” Marie stepped toward the closed door behind her, trying to keep Gruffy distracted and turned away from the balcony.
“He dies if he comes in—”
The noise of shattered glass interrupted Gruffy, as two figures in dark outfits burst through the broken balcony door, knocking down Gruffy’s man at the door.
“Get down, Logan!” Marie yelled, as she tried to kick away the gun from her guard—but hesitated when she remembered she was barefoot.
It gave the gunman enough time to coil an arm around her neck and point the handgun at her temple.
Everyone froze.
Gruffy grunted. Both of his arms extended, a handgun in each hand, he addressed the new batch of intruders. “Well, who dies first?”
Marie’s eyes darted toward Logan, who was on the floor, sandwiched between the sofa and the coffee table. He didn’t move.
Behind him, the two men who had entered the room were also wearing what looked like ski masks, exposing only their eyes—
Familiar eyes.
Zaid.
Marie couldn’t believe it, but she tried to make eye contact with him. She wanted him to know that she could help—even if she didn’t have shoes on.
Quietly she scolded herself for hesitating only moments earlier.
Help me get over it, Lord.
Having broken her big toe twice in her lifetime, Marie almost always wore closed-toe shoes—that was, when she was out and about. It hadn’t crossed her mind to keep her shoes on inside the stateroom.
It also hadn’t crossed her mind that Buchanan would track her down for three years and find her here in Alaska. How did he know about her personal alias?
That was one more thing she had to explain to Logan, who only ever called her Marie.
Somehow, Buchanan had also found out about her private life as Marie Bouchard.
And here we are.
Zaid was staring straight at her when Marie looked in his direction. He seemed to be trying to tell her something.
She guessed that the man next to him must be one of Aliyah’s bodyguards. The third one had to be still be with Aliyah.
Was Zaid there to help Marie and Logan? If he was, then he hadn’t brought enough fighters.
“Now that we’re all pointing our weapons at one another, please introduce yourself,” Gruffy said to Zaid and his man.
Neither answered.
Zaid’s eyes moved toward her bare feet.
I know. Marie sighed.
The gunman’s grip on her neck and shoulder was strong.
Marie gasped. “Can’t breathe.”
She leaned back against the man, even though the barrel was still on her forehead. She tried to remember where the dagger was. Leaning against the man, she felt the sheath push against her left thigh.
There it is.
“Stand straight,” he barked into her ears.
“Can’t breathe.” Her knees were wobbly.
“Marie!” Logan lifted his head above the coffee table. “Are you okay?”
Gruffy pointed one gun at Logan. “Sit down on the sofa!”
Logan got on his feet. His injured left elbow accidentally hit the edge of the coffee table, and he yelped.
Just then, the stateroom door behind Marie broke open.
Several armed security personnel poured in—
To gunfire.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Howling like a wolf, Logan hoped to create enough distraction for their two rescuers to do something. What he didn’t expect was to see Marie move so fast that in a split second, she had disarmed her guard, stabbed him—where did that dagger come from?—and knocked him unconscious to the floor.
She picked up his handgun.
Logan forgot about the pain in his elbow. All he could think of right now was that he had just seen his ex-wife make some moves unbecoming of a garden-variety translator.
All around her were dead people. The shipboard security was no match for the intruders.
Marie looked up, not at Logan, but at their two other rescuers, the ones who had rappelled down to their balcony on ropes still hanging out there over the railing.
In front of Logan, with the tables and armchairs overturned, their rescuers were in close combat with the one intruder—the one who had spoken the most to Marie earlier.
Logan heard more engine noises coming from the sea. Oh no.
Two—three—more people landed on the balcony.
“Logan! Come on!” Marie yelled at him. “Now, Logan!”
Logan stumbled across the carpet toward Marie, but before he could reach her, Marie lunged forward and pinned him to the floor.
Logan heard gunfire. He closed his eyes.
He heard more gunfire, and then a thud.
He opened his eyes to see a man wearing night vision goggles sprawled out on the floor.
“Get up.” Marie rolled off Logan, and pulled him out of the stateroom.
In the hallway, at least twenty feet away, more security personnel had assembled in the nook where they served snacks and morning buffet.
“Logan needs medical attention.” Marie pointed to his left arm.
Someone nodded and radioed the ship’s medical center.
“You’re coming with me, right?” Logan asked.
“Soon. Zaid needs help.” Marie surprised Logan with her answer.
“Zaid?” So their rescuers were Aliyah’s bodyguards?
How did Marie recognize him behind his mask?
How well did Marie know Zaid?
A question for later.
Someone ran down the hallway toward them, his handguns by his side. It was Aliyah’s third bodyguard.
Marie said something to him.
It sounded like Arabic.
Logan remembered that Marie had translated Arabic into French and English before. Which led him to wonder how much interaction Marie had with Zaid.
A small wrinkle of jealousy gripped Logan’s heart.
Logan heard the name Omar, and guessed that it could be the bodyguard’s name. He did not understand the rest of their back-and-forth in Arabic. The conversation ended when the bodyguard handed Marie two guns that somehow appeared out of his flak jacket.
Logan thought it was odd that the man trusted Marie with his weapons. Did he know who Marie was?
More than Logan knew?
Marie turned to one of the ship’s security personnel who looked about the same size as she was. “Your vest, please.”
Logan’s heart beat faster. He didn’t want her to die. “Marie?”
“Pray, Logan.” And she followed Omar down the hall, back into her stateroom.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
By the time Marie and Omar returned to her stateroom, Zaid and his bodyguards had made a short work of the carnage. Gruffy was dead. So were his two
accomplices and the second trio of assailants who had arrived via jetpacks.
Marie caught the end of the mess at the moment when Zaid kicked the handgun out of Gruffy’s arm and stabbed his neck with a twisted blade.
When it came to close-contact combat, Marie had never seen anyone else better than the Zaid’s men. She was impressed, and slightly scared at the same time. Her own Krav Maga training seemed like child’s play compared to what Zaid had.
Maybe she could ask him to teach her how to disarm Buchanan’s men that quickly. It was like Zaid had superhuman powers—either that, or Buchanan had sent rookies into the fight.
One last intruder raised his arms to get up from the floor, and Omar finished him before Marie could. She tried not to read too much into it, but Omar’s smirk gave her the impression that he was delighted to be faster than she was.
Whatever. I’m not here to compete with you.
Marie had no idea how much time had lapsed. Covered in blood and sweat, she was exhausted as she stepped aside for the shipboard security to take over. Those bodies were no doubt going to the ship morgue.
The Alaskan Queen of the Arctic Seas was heading for the glaciers, and wouldn’t be docking at a port until Friday. As far as the rest of the five thousand passengers were concerned, the cruise had been uneventful.
Even as six men lay dead in Marie’s stateroom, spilling blood and guts all over the off-white carpet.
Marie wanted to get her things—her purse and the suitcase in her closet. Security debated whether she should, but she insisted that she needed her pajamas and her passport.
They sent a steward in with a trolley to get her luggage, and told her they would take it to an empty stateroom, where she would stay for the rest of the cruise.
Her old stateroom was officially a crime scene.
In the hallway, it bothered Marie that Zaid had broken the necks of Buchanan’s men. She would have rather kept them alive for INTERPOL interrogation.
“No need,” Zaid explained in Arabic.
He seemed to wait for Marie to answer, as if testing her basic Arabic. He’d soon find out that she had already conversed with Omar in his mother tongue. Fluently.
“Because you’ve already traced Buchanan’s point of origin while he was on the phone,” Marie responded in English.
She knew it was a burner cell phone, and Buchanan was smart enough to use private VPNs. If INTERPOL, the FBI, the CIA, MI5, and MI6 could not find him the last three years, who was Zaid to succeed?
“If they were alive, you could ask them questions,” Marie said.
“Is that what you do, generally? Play nice?” Zaid smirked. “These people killed millions with their weapons. We will track him down and take him home with us. He will be tried and executed for his crimes.”
“So you know who was behind this.” It was becoming clear to Marie now. “You were sending him a message by killing all six of his men.”
“One was a woman.”
“Oh, I didn’t know. Then again, Buchanan is an equal opportunity arms dealer.”
Zaid nodded. “When they boarded the ship, we thought they were pirates. But when Buchanan started talking, I contacted my office and found out that he is wanted in my homeland.”
He spoke so casually that Marie wondered what kind of job Zaid did. “We who? Do you work for the captain?”
He laughed. “The captain works for us.”
“Us who?”
“Her Royal Highness Aliyah’s husband owns this cruise line.”
“What?” Marie was surprised.
“You didn’t google?”
“I was busy working.”
“Of course.” Zaid gave her a sly smile. “Please tell your boss at INTERPOL that Buchanan is ours.”
He said INTERPOL.
Marie tried not to react. Zaid knew where she really worked.
“You don’t have to worry. He won’t be bothering you anymore.”
Marie clammed up.
“We have just cause.” A sly smile appeared on Zaid’s face, ending at the scar on his cheek—which Marie hadn’t been this close to notice. “His people sell weapons through my country and it’s affecting our relationship with other countries, such as the United States. We now have an opportunity to end his activities.”
“I’m just a simple translator.” Marie didn’t know why she felt that she had to say that. Her cover was blown now that Zaid knew she worked for INTERPOL. “I’m on vacation with my family, nothing more.”
He ignored Marie. “It took a while to get to you. I’m sorry your husband was injured.”
“Ex—never mind. You’re not really a bodyguard for Aliyah, are you?”
“Her Royal Highness, you mean.”
“I’m sorry. She introduced herself to me as Aliyah with no titles.”
“We’re trying to be low-key onboard. You better go clean up.”
Marie nodded. “Thank you for rescuing Logan and me.”
“We aim to keep our passengers safe. Next time you go on a cruise, do not hide under your real name.”
Next time, I don’t have to hide at all.
Marie lifted a finger. “One last thing.”
Zaid frowned.
“What happened to Buchanan’s phone on the coffee table?” Marie asked, anyway.
“What phone?”
Chapter Thirty
In the medical facilities several decks below, the shipboard physician x-rayed Logan’s arm and then paged a retired orthopedic surgeon who happened to be among the passengers on the cruise.
Between the doctors onboard the ship and their telemedicine associates at a partner hospital in Texas somewhere, they determined that Logan had a simple fracture in his left arm, near the elbow. It must’ve been where he had landed on the balcony when Buchanan’s men invaded Marie’s stateroom.
Watching the surgeon and the doctor put a cast on Logan’s arm, Marie drew a sigh of relief. Her hair was still wet, but tied up in a ponytail. She had showered in her new stateroom, and changed into whatever clothes were still left in her suitcase that the steward had retrieved from her stateroom. It was a good thing that she had practically lived out of her suitcase. They had to bring her a new toothbrush and a tube of toothpaste, but she had everything else she needed for the rest of the cruise.
Except honesty between her and Logan.
Eventually they’d have to come clean with each other. However, if they never remarried, what would it matter? After what happened tonight, Logan might be done with her.
Just as well.
Some things were best left unsaid, unexplained.
By the time Marie accompanied Logan back to his own stateroom, it was nearly dawn.
“Come in for a minute?” Logan asked.
So he can interrogate me?
Marie couldn’t decide if she should say yes or no. She had sent a secure message to both INTERPOL to advise them on what happened to her family. To be on the safe side, she also sent an encrypted message to her friend Esperanza, whose security firm had protected Jonas in the past. Maybe she could send the same person to accompany them home from Alaska.
“I know we’re both tired, but I have some questions,” Logan explained.
“I have many questions.”
“But few answers.”
With that statement, Logan confessed to Marie that he knew she wasn’t going to be forthcoming with him.
She opened her mouth to say something.
“You don’t have to come in. We’re no longer married to each other, and we’re not obligated to share the same space.”
“Obligated?” Marie asked.
“Unless you want to come in and explain everything to me.”
Marie took a deep breath. “I don’t have all the details, to tell you the truth. But we can talk if it makes you feel better.”
Logan held the door with his good arm.
Marie stepped inside the stateroom with the same configuration as hers—except without the gore.
Log
an pointed to the sofa. “I’m going to change out of these clothes. Wait for me?”
He kicked off his blood-stained loafers, then tossed them into the trashcan. “I hope those bad guys didn’t have diseases, because I got blood all over me.”
“You better take a shower. I did.”
“Did you throw away your clothes?”
“Yeah.” Marie surveyed the room. The curtains were drawn, and it bothered her. She started walking toward them. “I didn’t feel like getting them laundered.”
“My thoughts exactly.” Before he closed the bathroom door, he said, “Promise me you won’t leave.”
“I’ll sit here and wait for you. Don’t get your arm wet.”
“I’ll try not to.”
The door closed, and Marie heard the shower head come to live.
She pulled the curtain open. Outside, a new day was dawning. Small streams flowed down the rocky mountains, streaked with rocks and snow. The ship glided across the water so slowly that small icebergs floating by looked like they were doing it in slow motion.
Every now and then a seal jumped up on an iceberg.
Jonas would have loved this.
Marie glanced at her watch. It was 5:21 a.m. He was probably still asleep.
Between cleaning up in her new stateroom and collecting Logan from the infirmary, she had stopped at Jonas’s room to tell Mrs. Ping to be extra vigilant. There was no time to explain everything.
Mrs. Ping understood what was going on. In fact, Marie had told her more than what she had told Logan. Perhaps it was time for Logan to be in on the secret too.
“Ah, you’re still here. Good.”
Marie spun around. Logan was drying his hair with a towel. He was dressed in a pair of tee shirt and pajama pants.
“Let’s sit and talk. Want some coffee? I’ll ask the steward to bring some.”
Marie shook her head. “I think you better lie down. I will bring a chair and sit with you.”
“Yeah, the painkiller they gave me…” Logan offered to help Marie move a chair, but she said he could do it with more hands than he could spare.
Logan climbed into the bed on top of the bedspread, and waited for his ex-wife.