The smell of smoke clung to him. The captain hadn’t smelled like cigarette smoke, but Terry must have been somewhere there was smoke. Maybe one of the casinos allowed the players to smoke. Though why would he need to be in the casino to investigate the possible murder of the captain? Did he already have a suspect and was looking for someone to interview?
“You smell,” she told him.
She could hear him breathing. He didn’t answer her, but put his arms around her and pulled her close.
As soon as Erin’s body and lips touched him, she knew it wasn’t Terry. She went rigid and tried to scream, but the man held her head in one big hand, pulling her hard against his mouth, effectively gagging her. Erin struggled, trying to free herself from his grip, still trying to cry out.
He had not stripped down. She could feel his clothes under her hands. In a way, it was a relief, but it also meant that he intended to do what he had come for and get away quickly without anyone being the wiser. He couldn’t run out into the passageway naked and expect not to be noticed. She clawed at him, trying to get his throat and face. He pinned her with his weight. Erin kept fighting back, but every self-defense class she’d ever taken had taught techniques to use when standing, facing an attacker. It was completely different with him using his weight to press her down and forcing himself over her face and body.
Erin writhed wildly and managed to get her face free for a moment as he took a breath and readjusted. She shrieked as loudly as she could. At first, she just screamed incoherently, making a noise but not saying anything. Then she yelled for Vic and for Willie. They were only a little way away, and she’d been able to hear people coming and going down the hallway all night. They would be able to hear her through the walls.
Her attacker abandoned the fight, letting her go and racing for the door. He was out of the room, slamming the door behind him, leaving Erin gasping and crying and still screaming on the bed.
Chapter Twenty-Six
E
rin! Erin, you had a nightmare, it’s okay.” Vic turned the light on as she entered the cabin and was at Erin’s side. “It’s okay, you’re safe. It’s alright.”
Erin shook her head. “There was someone in here! It’s not okay! It wasn’t a nightmare! It was real. Someone was in here and tried to… to assault me.”
Vic stroked Erin’s cheek. Willie stood in the doorway, watching but keeping his distance, obviously wary of making Erin more upset by simply being a man. He didn’t speak or do anything that might aggravate her.
“It wasn’t a dream!” Erin insisted. She wiped at her mouth, trying to wipe away his sour taste and the stale smell of cigarettes. Her hand came away streaked with blood. “Look! You see? I didn’t just imagine it!”
Vic looked at the blood on Erin’s hand, then turned her face to look at it. “You are bleeding. I think maybe you just bit yourself.”
“Why won’t you believe me? Just because I’ve had nightmares, that doesn’t mean I’m dreaming now. I’m telling, you, there was someone in here. You didn’t unlock the door, did you?”
“No,” Vic admitted, looking back toward Willie. “The door was unlocked.”
“Do you think Terry would have left it unlocked? I locked it behind him earlier, when he went back out to continue the investigation into…” Erin trailed off, unsure how much they knew or whether she would be breaking confidences.
“We heard,” Willie said in a low, gravelly voice. “About the captain, I mean. What a crazy boat this is. There’s something really wrong here.”
“There is!” Erin agreed. “And someone was in here. They attacked me. He. He attacked me. He tried to assault me. He did this!” She dabbed at the blood at the corner of her mouth. “I didn’t bite myself.”
“Okay.” Vic swallowed strenuously and looked back at Willie, her eyes wide. “Did you see anyone in the hallway?”
“I didn’t see anyone when I came out of our cabin. But I wasn’t looking for anyone else, either. I was just heading toward Erin. She was screaming and I just came straight here. I didn’t look behind me, or down the end of the hall, and if he’d already gone around the corner… I didn’t hear anyone running. If I had…” He shook his head at Erin. “I’m sorry. If I’d known, I would have chased him.”
Vic helped Erin to sit up and cuddled her close. “I’m so sorry! Do you know anything about him? Did he say anything? Do you know who it was?”
“He stank of cigarettes. He must be a smoker.”
Vic nodded. “Okay. Anything else? Any other smells? Could you see anything? Hear anything?”
“No.” Erin closed her eyes and thought about it. How had she known so quickly that it wasn’t Terry? What had been different about him from Terry? She hadn’t known immediately, but when he’d pulled her into an embrace and kissed her, she had known without a doubt. “He… he had a uniform, I think. I could feel… buttons, epaulets… the fabric was stiff.”
“So it was one of the crew?” Willie asked.
“Yes. It must have been.”
“Anything else?” Vic prompted. “Was he… fat? Skinny? Could you tell how tall he was?”
“No. I don’t know, I thought he was just Terry until I touched him. Then I knew. I knew it wasn’t him.”
“Of course you did,” Vic agreed. “You see and touch Terry every day. You would know it wasn’t him.”
“How did he get in?” Willie asked, looking at the door for evidence. “He had a key.”
“Yes. He unlocked it. I heard the key in the lock.”
“You should put the chain on too.”
“I did,” Erin remembered. “Terry said to and I did. He should have just opened the door into the chain and not been able to get it open the rest of the way.”
“Unless he was expecting the chain to be on and had some experience in unlocking them from the outside,” Willie said. “Most of these security locks are pretty easy to open with a tool or a rubber band. If you know what you’re doing, you can have it off in a few seconds.”
Erin remembered the jingle of the chain. He hadn’t opened the door right into the chain. He’d unlocked the handle, then opened it up enough to disengage the chain, and entered at will.
“Why aren’t these rooms more secure? Anyone can just walk in here who pleases? Why wouldn’t they have any real security?”
“The crew needs to be able to access cabins when the passengers lock themselves out. Or if someone is hurt or sick. If someone doesn’t show up for roll call and doesn’t answer their door in the morning, what are you going to do? They need to be able to access the cabins. You just would think that the cruise line would be properly vetting the crew so that they weren’t letting criminals into passengers’ rooms!”
“He just let himself in,” Erin repeated. “How could they let him do that?”
Willie looked up and down the hallway once again. “We’ll see whether they picked him up on their surveillance cameras. There are a lot of cameras around, one of them must have picked him up at some point.”
Erin just shook her head. She knew for a fact that the crew wasn’t going to give up one of their own. They would look at the security tapes and shrug their shoulders. I’m sorry… it looks like he avoided all of the cameras…
Vic rubbed Erin’s back soothingly. “You’d better go get Terry,” she told Willie.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
I
t didn’t take long for Willie to return with Terry, who, as well as looking tired, now looked panic-stricken.
“Erin! Are you okay?”
Erin nodded, tears suddenly springing to her eyes. “I’m fine. I managed to scream, and it scared him off…”
“But you’re hurt. Willie said he attacked you.”
Erin nodded. “Just split my lip. Nothing serious. But that wasn’t all he wanted.”
He swore and sat on the side of the bed. He reached his arms out to her, but let her come to him rather than embracing her. “Erin, I’m so sorry. I had no idea… I thought you
were safe. It was locked and chained, and I didn’t think that anyone would break in. Why would anyone risk that?”
“I don’t know. I just woke up… he came in… I thought it was you, until I got… close to him, and then I knew it wasn’t. He didn’t say anything, he just grabbed me and…” She swallowed, unable to describe it in more detail.
“I’m so sorry.”
“You don’t need to keep apologizing. Neither of us knew it was going to happen.”
“I could have left K9 with you. He would have protected you.”
“But we didn’t know. We thought that with the door locked, it would be okay.”
“Yes. I wish… I just don’t know what to say. How would anyone even know that you were alone here? As far as anyone knew, you were with me. Why would anyone break in?”
“The crew knew you weren’t here with her,” Willie pointed out.
Erin felt like the walls were closing in around her. They were watching her. They knew when she was by herself and when she was with someone else. She couldn’t get away from the crew, she couldn’t know which ones were harboring bad feelings against her and which ones were involved in whatever crimes were happening on the ship. She was lucky that it had only been an attempted assault, and not attempted murder. Or successful murder. How much harder would it have been for someone to enter with a knife and to stab her in the dark? She wouldn’t even have known what was going on until it was too late. She crawled into Terry’s arms and buried her face in his chest.
“It’s okay, Erin. You’re okay,” he told her.
“But it’s not okay! And I can’t be with you every second! We need to get off of this ship.”
He squeezed her tight. “We’ll figure something out. We’ll keep you safe.”
“How can you? You don’t have any idea who is safe and who isn’t. The captain didn’t know who was safe, and they were his crew! If anyone knows them, it should have been him! And how did that turn out for him? He’s dead!”
“I know. I know. We’ll figure it out.”
The tears streamed down Erin’s face. She didn’t even try to stop them. Terry held her for some time, not saying anything and not trying to talk her out of being upset. After a while, though, he pulled back from her, trying to look at her face.
“You might be in shock, Erin. Are you cold? How are you feeling?”
“I don’t know. I feel… I just feel like I’m falling apart. I don’t know how I’m supposed to feel..”
“You’re supposed to feel however you do.” He put his fingers over her pulse and stared into her eyes. “Let’s get another blanket on you. And maybe some tea?” he looked over at Vic. “Can you get room service to bring something down? I don’t want you to go get it, I want us all to stay together.”
Vic nodded. “Yeah, of course.”
She went over to the phone and sat down in the desk chair. She called the room service number and ordered not only enough tea for all of them, but also some pastries and some fruit. She hung up the phone. “It shouldn’t be too long. They’ll bring it right down.” She leaned back in the chair, sighing. “What are you going to do, Terry? Are you going to report this to the police? Or to the first mate or whoever is in charge now? You should tell someone what’s going on. This is getting ridiculous. We should have… I don’t know. A guard on the door. It’s obvious someone is targeting Erin personally, so she needs to be protected. It isn’t just dangerous for us to be wandering around the ship alone. It’s dangerous for Erin to be here at all.”
“You’re right. I don’t know what I’m going to do yet. I might call some people back in Tennessee to get their input on what action to take. At this point, I’m not sure of anything anymore. And who knows, half of this stuff that they’re giving me on not being subject to the laws of the USA could be crap. I’m not a lawyer. All I can do is accept what they’re telling me. And with the number of criminals who are apparently on this boat, why would I believe anyone?”
Willie nodded. “I think we should all stay here. In your room. I’m not comfortable leaving the two of you alone. Even though you’re here to protect Erin… You’re not armed. If someone was to come in here in the night with a knife or a gun, or even just a baseball bat… we can at least improve the odds by having more of us in here.”
“I don’t think you need to do that…” Erin protested.
“I do. And Terry does too, don’t you?”
Terry grimaced. He obviously wanted to say that Willie was wrong and that they wanted their privacy and didn’t need him there, but he couldn’t bring himself to say it. He knew it wasn’t true. There was just too much going on for him to think that he could keep Erin safe all by himself.
“Well… for tonight, anyway. I’m not sure that’s feasible in the long term, but I would feel better if we were not alone the rest of the night. I’m sure we’ll be fine, the attacker has fled and they’re not going to come back here while we’re being so vigilant, but I have to be sure. I have to sleep tonight, and I don’t think I could if I was the only one here to guard against another attack.”
Vic nodded, but didn’t say anything.
“We really do need to talk to someone,” Willie said. “Even if we can’t get anyone to come here to help, someone at home needs to know what’s going on on the ship. If something were to happen to us, they need to know what we already know. There is obviously a secret here that is too dangerous to keep.”
“Yes. That sounds like an idea. We can do that tomorrow when we go on the tour. We’ll be able to use a landline and get a good connection.”
“What are we doing tomorrow?” Willie asked.
“We are touring the glacier, for one thing,” Vic said. “I’m not sure how much of that will be by boat and how much we will be on land for. But there’s bound to be a phone somewhere. We’ll call the US and at least talk to someone.”
None of them was feeling particularly fresh in the morning. They had drunk tea and eaten donuts late into the night, and eventually Erin couldn’t keep her eyes open anymore and drifted off to sleep in Terry’s arms. She didn’t know when the others went to sleep, but when she woke up in the morning, both Vic and Willie were still asleep on the pull-out couch. Erin knew it probably wasn’t comfortable, but at least they had gotten some sleep. She ordered breakfast from room service to let everyone else sleep as long as they could. She would have just gone up to the dining room to eat, if that had been feasible. But with a target on her back, she wasn’t willing to do that. Vic would kill her even if a crew member didn’t.
The others awoke as the food arrived. Terry stuck to coffee, Vic and Erin had a light breakfast, and Willie cleaned up the rest. He grinned at Erin. “I have a fast metabolism.”
“You must. Terry walks all day and still doesn’t eat like that.”
“I’ve been blessed.”
“We’re still going on the tour today, right?” Vic asked. “We’re not just going to hide in the cabin all day?”
“No,” Terry agreed. “We’ll go up on deck and act like nothing has happened. I don’t think I’m going to tell the first mate about it. I don’t trust anyone on the crew. I don’t want to use any ship communications that they can eavesdrop on.” He scratched the back of his head, then rubbed his eyes. “A lot of the tour is supposed to be by boat, so we’ll just watch from the deck for that part. Then when we go ashore… I’ll make a phone call. Either on my cell if I can get a signal, or on someone’s land line. I’d call in reinforcements, but I’m not sure if there’s anything I can actually do. But I want someone to know what’s going on. Like Willie said, if something happened to us, I would want someone to know what it is we know. These guys have to be stopped.”
Willie and Vic nodded their agreement.
Erin didn’t nod, just feeling sick inside. If something happened to them? They were making contingency plans for what would happen if all of them got killed and were unable to tell their story. All because Erin had poked her nose into yet another mystery that wa
s absolutely none of her business.
What did it matter if someone on board were smuggling drugs or artifacts? Weren’t their lives worth more than that? Wasn’t it more important to keep them all safe?
She wanted to go home, back to Auntie Clem’s Bakery to make her gluten-free baking, side-by-side with Vic, with Terry stopping in to refill his water and get a biscuit for K9 every day. She wanted everything to go back to normal, the way it had been before leaving Bald Eagle Falls. It was ridiculous that they had left Bald Eagle Falls in the first place. What did they think they were going to find? Some kind of frigid utopia off the coast of Alaska?
Terry eyed Erin. “Make sure you put on a sweater. You’re shivering.”
“It’s cold.”
“Yes, it is. But the cabins are kept pretty warm. I’m still worried about you.”
“You don’t need to worry about me. I don’t want anyone worrying about me. I just want all of us to get home in one piece.”
“Well, we can’t all go home safely if you aren’t with us.”
Erin sighed. “I wish we hadn’t come. I wish I hadn’t gone wandering in the middle of the night and seen the murder. What was I thinking? That I could just wander all over a boat filled with strangers and nothing bad would happen to me?”
“We all thought that we would be safe,” Vic said. “None of us thought anything like this was going to happen. But it did. We have to accept that and deal with it, right? We just have to.”
Erin shrugged. “I’m going to get dressed.”
She grabbed her clothes, including a sweater, and went into the bathroom to dress. She splashed cold water on her face and returned to them a few minutes later, trying to act like she was calm and collected even if she wasn’t feeling that way.
“Okay. If everyone else is ready to go…”
“We need to go get dressed too,” Vic pointed out. “We’ll be five minutes, okay?”
Vegan Baked Alaska (Auntie Clem's Bakery Book 9) Page 16