Beauty & the Beast

by Nancy Holder

  The question for which she had no answer was: “When do I brake?”

  It answered itself when she roared out of the alley doing ninety miles an hour.

  ASAP.

  Heather stomped both feet on the pedal, locking up the brakes. The rear of the SUV began a right-hand drift as she slid across two lanes of traffic. Instinctively she turned into the skid, which brought the front of the car around to the left.

  Bright headlights blasted into her face. Wide-set, bright lights.

  Its air horn blaring, the semi-tractor trailer bore down on her.

  Momentum carried the rear of the SUV past the edge of the truck’s front bumper. The car chasing them wasn’t so lucky. From behind came a terrible crash. It had broadsided the trailer, but somehow, someway she had made it safely across the centerline. There were more lights and horns and squealing brakes as she barreled into both lanes of traffic headed left.

  “You can drive,” Svetlana said.

  Heather flushed with pride and excitement.

  High beams behind them flashed again, blinding Heather as she looked up into the rear view. It wasn’t the Russians, though. It was just someone mad at her for cutting them off.

  The SUV had drifted right before she realized it. The car slid against the cars parked along the curb with a screech and crash as side mirrors were shattered and ripped off. By the time she got them back on track she left half a block of destruction in their wake.

  Heather cut a hard right at the next cross street. Frantically she made a series of left and right turns, zigzagging.

  “We lose car,” Svetlana said, “but new one follow. You take us to sister.”

  “Can I have your cell phone?”

  “No phone. At warehouse.”

  Heather had no idea where they were.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  Boom. Boom. Boom.

  Thunder? Cat wondered as her eyelids fluttered and she tried to rouse herself. The ship was pitching, or else she was sicker than she thought, or maybe she was dreaming—

  Was that a doorbell? Did they have a doorbell?

  “Yes,” she muttered. Then her eyes popped open. It was raining and that was a doorbell. Had Vincent forgotten his key?

  She got up and slipped on the fluffy white Sea Majesty bathrobe, calling hoarsely, “Just a minute!” as she belted it and swayed left and right. Lightning flashed and she caught her own reflection in a mirror. She looked a sight. Her mascara had smeared, giving her hollows for eyes.

  The doorbell rang again. She peered through the peephole but could see nothing—it was too dark—so against her better judgment, she opened the door. It was a man in a yellow raincoat over a ship’s uniform holding what looked like a big cell phone about a foot long with an antenna.

  Satellite phone, her brain supplied. Emergency.

  “Come in.” She stood aside to let the man in.

  “I’m Tom Rourke, the purser,” he said. “You have an emergency call from Captain Tess Vargas of the NYPD.” He held out the phone.

  Cat went numb from head to toe. She wanted to panic but years on the job kicked in and clamped down every emotion in the book. She became a steady thread of action: Do this, do that, do this next. Item one: take the phone. Item two: talk to Tess.

  “Please wait here,” she said, and carried the phone back into her bedroom. Her heart thumped and turned over in her chest. This was bad news. Tess wouldn’t place a satellite call for any other reason. An image of Heather and then of JT burst like fireworks in her soul. The numbness threatened to lift but she forced it to stay. She was under fire.

  Officer down, the thunder rumbled.

  “Tess.” She took a breath, unsure if the phone was still connected.

  There was a plink, static, and Tess. “Cat. Cat, listen, I don’t know, okay? No one knows for sure.”

  “Knows…” She shuddered once, very hard, as if she had been dunked into ice water. “It’s Heather. What’s wrong with Heather?”

  “I went to your apartment. Forced entry. Signs of a struggle. There’s blood on the couch. Lots of it. I don’t know if it’s hers. What’s her blood type?”

  “What’s her…” Cat was slipping into shock. “Oh, my God, oh, God,” Cat gasped. “Tess, what-where is she?”

  “We don’t know. There was no one here. I need her blood type.”

  “Type A positive. Tess, describe the scene.”

  “I need to move fast, Cat. What’s that guy’s name? The new guy she was dating?”

  “Ravi Suresh.” She gripped the phone with both hands and fell onto the bed when she tried to sit down. This was not happening. Forced entry. “Tess, you need to fill me in.”

  “Tell me about Ravi Suresh.”

  Why? Cat closed her eyes. She didn’t have the luxury of falling apart. That was for civilian victims. “Thirties maybe, works for Chrysalis, from India. I only met him once. But he lied to us. He said he had a text from work and he didn’t.” She concentrated hard. “He was nervous.”

  “But no animosity between them.”

  Tears welled. Cat wiped them away. Lightning flashed and the rain danced on the deck outside like shell casings.

  “Cat,” Tess prodded.

  “She came over after he left the party early—we were at a dinner together—because Vincent told her he didn’t get a text. She spent a ton of money on her dress…” And Cat broke down. She began to sob. “Tess, oh Tess…”

  “Hold on, Cat. Just hold on. I need your help.”

  Cat steeled herself. “So she came over to spend the night because she was going to come in the morning anyway. She took that picture of us that I texted you.” She shut her eyes as she imagined Tess taking notes: Vic last seen alive by sister at approximately nine a.m. “Do you have her phone?”

  “Not so far. But her purse is here.”

  Cat bit her lip to keep from screaming. A bad sign. The worst.

  “Damn it, run it down for me, Tess. The whole thing.”

  “The door was smashed into the door stop. Someone was shot on your couch. I have good DNA samples and CSU is on the way. We’ll type the blood stat. Your place has been ransacked. Your stuff is everywhere. It looks like someone was looking for something.”

  The room was whirling. Cat kept a grip on the mattress with one hand and leaned her head forward. The phone weighed at least twenty pounds, or so it seemed.

  “Looking for something,” Cat echoed. A thought began to form. She tried to grab onto it.

  Her mouth away from the phone, Tess said, “Okay.” To Cat, she said, “Listen, CSU is here. As soon as I have more information I’ll call back.” There was a catch in her voice.

  “What aren’t you telling me?” Cat demanded.

  Silence.

  “Tess, it’s me. Cat. Tell me.”

  “Remember that duvet you got as a shower gift? We could never figure out who gave it to you? Well, it’s not on your bed.”

  It was used to wrap a body. A homicide cop’s first thought.

  “I’ll fly home,” Cat said. “We’ll be there as soon as we can.”

  “Okay. Remember that we don’t know anything yet. You know how this goes. You have to stay calm. You have to help me.” Tess’s voice caught. “Any information, thoughts, guesses, anything.”

  Looking for something. What could someone have been looking for? The secrets of Vincent’s DNA? The data on Julianna’s experiments? Nothing to do with Heather, certainly.

  “Have you got people where Heather’s been staying?” she asked.

  “Not yet. Is this correct?” Tess rattled off a Brooklyn address.

  “Yes. What about Ravi Suresh’s apartment?” Cat remembered that she’d just given Tess his name. They wouldn’t be there yet.

  “We’ll get right on it. See if he’s at work, if he has… answers.”

  An alibi, Cat filled in.

  “Don’t touch that,” Tess said away from the phone. “Cat, I have to go.”

  No, please don’t. “I know,” Ca
t replied. “You need to do your job.”

  “You’ve got the best working on this.” Tess did not speak from ego, just pure, simple knowledge.

  “I’ll see you soon,” Cat promised.

  The call disconnection was like a sock in her gut. She sat for a moment and then she lurched to her feet and staggered back to the foyer, where the purser was waiting.

  “I have to get off the ship,” she said. “Can I get a helicopter to transport me to the airport in Hilo?”

  The purser made a moue of apology. “I’m afraid that’s not possible. We’re in a storm front and it would be too dangerous.”

  “You must have motorized craft aboard.”

  “We’re two days from Hilo,” he countered. “But once the storm dies down, we’ll talk to the captain.”

  He’s placating me. They’re going to make me wait until we land.

  “Can you radio ahead for plane reservations? I’ve got to get back to New York as soon as possible.”

  He took that in. “I’ll make it happen,” he promised. Then he added delicately, “Is this a bereavement situation?” She knew that airlines made special arrangements for customers who had a sudden death in the family, mostly boiling down to cheaper fares.

  I don’t know.

  “No, but it is a crisis,” she said.

  “Would you care to speak to the chaplain?” He gave her a once-over. “Or our physician?”

  “Not right now. But thank you.” She herded him to the front door. She needed to think. She needed to pack.

  Pack.

  They were looking for something.

  “If you need anything,” he began, and she opened the door. The rain sheeted in, pelting her face like tiny slaps.

  “I’ll let you know. Thank you.” She gave him a wave and shut the door. With the rain and the shock, her haziness decreased markedly, but she knew she still wasn’t a hundred percent.

  Still, she was fully dressed in a blue-and-white striped top and blue linen trousers and had her suitcases open and half-filled by the time Vincent returned. He was soaked to the bone.

  “Oh, Vincent,” she cried, and told him about the call. Like her, he struggled to remain calm. As he held her, she became aware of a hard object in the right pocket of his jacket. He pulled out a dinner napkin and unwrapped it. Inside lay a champagne glass.

  “I think someone drugged us,” he said. “No one else at the table was as out of it as us. I stuck around to check them out.”

  “Drugged? Did you tell Dr. Jones?”

  He shook his head. Using the napkin, he set the glass down on their coffee table. “It was only a supposition. And we don’t know enough to know who we can trust. For all we know, Dr. Jones herself slipped us a mickey. That said, Mr. Daugherty mentioned that he hasn’t seen Terry Milano for a while. I haven’t seen him. Have you?”

  Cat shook her head.

  It always boiled down to that. Whom they could trust. But that wasn’t an issue solely for people like them, a couple who shared extraordinary secrets. Look at Heather.

  Heather knows about Vincent. And Muirfield. And Liam. Someone was looking for something in our apartment. I know it’s got something to do with packing for the trip. I can feel it. But what?

  “Something I packed,” she said, and then the light bulb went on. “Vincent, it’s my black jacket. I wore my jacket to dinner tonight. It’s the first time I’ve put it on since the cruise started. My champagne was drugged, and Fidela and Dre followed me to the bathroom. Then they pretended to admire the jacket so that they could touch it.”

  “And Heather wore it at the charity dinner,” Vincent put in. “She had it on when Ravi showed up. They went to get drinks at the bar, and then he left right away.”

  “Our hotel room at Playa del Rey was tossed. Those other rooms were probably burgled to throw us off the scent.” Cat touched his arm. “Speaking of scent, when you tracked the hotel perps, what did you get?”

  He thought carefully. “Male, female. Specific mixtures of body odors, perfume, deodorant, shampoo. The female was older than the male. He’s got arthritis. No one we’ve met on the ship yet, or at least I haven’t caught their specific scents on the ship. But if they approached me, I would definitely recognize them.” Cat’s father had transformed Vincent into an apex predator, able to catalog a wealth of detail about his prey even if they were no longer in his immediate vicinity.

  Cat parsed that. “Maybe they didn’t come aboard. What if someone tried to get the jacket from our apartment, but failed because we had already left? Then word was given to toss our room in Los Angeles, but that failed because our luggage had been sent to the ship? So now there are people who were planted aboard the ship trying to get it? Vincent, this is all part of a plan.” She shut her eyes for a moment, hating to speak the dreaded words. “A conspiracy.”

  He picked up the thread. “Roberto was surprised to find Paul already in our suite unpacking our clothes when we came aboard. Maybe Paul was looking for the jacket. But tonight I saw Roberto loitering around our suite the first time I came from the dining room tonight to check on you. So it could be Roberto.”

  “Or even Forrest Daugherty. He booked passage last minute. Maybe Terry Milano isn’t MIA at all. Maybe Daugherty is just covering for him,” Cat pointed out.

  Vincent nodded thoughtfully.

  “So someone is looking for something in my jacket,” Cat concluded. “Maybe Roberto or Paul. Or Fidela. Or Dre.”

  “Maybe Dre and Stephan together,” Vincent said. “Maybe they only pretended to get engaged so they could sit with us at the captain’s table.”

  “To get to the jacket,” they said in unison.

  Together they hurried back into the bedroom and the pile of clothing Cat had stripped off when she had lain down. She plucked up the jacket and they turned on the bedroom light. They spread the jacket on the bed and leaned over it, shoulder to shoulder, Vincent observing as Cat began a methodical examination. She inverted each pocket, right first, then left.

  There.

  It was a clear plastic box the size of a Mentos, half-inch by half-inch. Cat grabbed the end of the sheet to pick it up, shook her head, and used her bare fingers. Really, what was the point? She didn’t have a print kit and they needed to move fast. Whoever had drugged them might be waiting outside right now, impatient to get this tiny cube.

  If they think Heather knows anything about this, they’ll keep her alive. It was not a statement of fact. It was a prayer.

  As Vincent held his hands beneath the little box in case anything popped out, Cat caught her fingertip under the plastic flange and eased back the top. They both peered at it. Something metallic gleamed on a field of gray foam-like substance. A computer chip. They looked at each other. In their experience, computer chips were bad news.

  “Only Ravi Suresh could’ve had access to this kind of tech and ‘Heather’s’ jacket. He tracked her to our place so we need to assume he knows the jacket is here by now. We need to assume someone aboard is looking for it.”

  “We know someone aboard is looking for it,” Cat corrected him

  They locked gazes. Did Vincent’s eyes begin to glow golden? She wasn’t sure, but the moment served as a reminder that they weren’t defenseless. Beast-Vincent was a terrifying creation brimming with fury, operating at super-speed, massively strong. He could tear the steel waterproof hatches of the Sea Majesty off their hinges, leap from one deck to another. When faced with one or two human assailants, there would be no contest.

  But if Vincent beasted out on the ship in front of witnesses, that would blow their world wide open. However, to save their lives, he might have to do it.

  “We can’t let them find it.” Cat began scanning the room for hiding places.

  Every stateroom was equipped with a safe, but that would be too obvious. It had to be a place they could get to fairly easily to retrieve it without it being discovered if their room was tossed. Whoever was after it might not know that she and Vincent were onto them, an
d they also probably weren’t sure if the box was still in her pocket. It was small and so lightweight that Cat hadn’t even realized it had been there. Something that insubstantial could have fallen out on its own. But whoever was looking for it would want to verify that.

  For a moment she considered lifting the tiny chip out of the plastic box and placing it in an envelope in order to hide it. Their suite came equipped with stationery. But she was afraid they would lose it during the transfer. For all she knew, it contained a tracking device that was beaming out its location right now. Maybe it could be used to trigger a bomb brought aboard the ship. Maybe whoever wanted it so badly was prepared to destroy thousands of innocent lives rather than allow it to fall into someone else’s hands.

  Maybe they will contact me to offer a trade: it for my sister.

  She wouldn’t, couldn’t think about that now.

  She went to the closet and slid the box into the toe of a pair of red flats she had yet to wear. Then she straightened out her row of shoes and did the same to his. Then she second-guessed herself, took it out of her shoe tip, and grabbed up the bag Vincent had received when he’d bought all the sweets for Bethany at the candy shop. They still had half a pound of Jolly Rancher hard candies. She untwisted a rectangle of sour apple, popped it into her mouth, concealed the plastic box in the wrapper, and put it inside the sack with the rest.

  She knew from experience that their steward would leave the bag alone—unless he decided that the time had come to tear the place apart inch by inch.

  Then she went to the bathroom, redid her face, tucked her hair back into her updo, and put on the jacket. Vincent grabbed two umbrellas that had come with the suite and together they went outside. The rain was still coming down hard. They made it to the railing as they headed for the dining room but their umbrellas were on the verge of inverting and within seconds, were useless.

  At night, the Sea Majesty shone bright lights on the waves and tonight was no different. Cat wondered if it was wise to let the passengers see how rough the seas had become. The Sea Majesty was currently moving through a trough as waves crested to its right, forming a wall of water rising that seemed to barely miss the side of the ship as it crashed back down. They both darted back under the cover of the archway.