by Nancy Holder
“He’s sort of an animal trainer,” she said, “and trust me, you don’t want to get into it with him. He is one nasty mother and that gun is just the beginning. Plus he’s working for us. If anything happens to him, we’ll know about it immediately and we will come for whoever did it.” She pointed upward. “There’s a bank of security cameras up there and the footage is fed directly into precinct headquarters. Every face they pick up is run through facial recognition software.”
His eyes widened. He rattled off a few choice swear words. Tess knew he would repeat everything she had told him to his homeys, which was the point. But there was also a risk in what she was doing. Street kids had to prove they were the biggest, baddest, meanest dudes out there, or risk getting beaten up or worse by their rivals. It was an endless escalation that nearly always resulted in death. Prison was often their only refuge—and she could rattle off the names of dozens of perps she had put into prison, only to learn later that they had been killed in their cells or the exercise yard.
“If you ever want out, I can help you.” She still didn’t put her gun away, but she reached in a pocket with her left hand and grabbed a business card. “Can I give you this?”
“Lady, they find that on me, they beat me.” She wasn’t sure if he realized that he had taken a step toward her. And that he was staring at the card.
“Okay, if you change your mind, what you do is call the main number for the one-hundred-twenty-fifth precinct. You can get it off Referenda. Ask to speak to Captain Tess Vargas. That’s me. Give me your name so I can tell them to let your call through.” When he hesitated, she said, “You can make up a name. Like a code word.”
“You a captain?” he asked. He took back the step and added two more toward the shadows. “Am I on the cameras? If they find out—”
“You’re out of sight of the cameras. And I am a captain. Which means I can help you. I really can.” She put her gun and the card back in her pocket. “These are tough streets.”
“They’re not so bad.” He raised his chin. “Not for me.”
This kid is still salvageable. And suddenly she found herself thinking about that spoiled white kid named Scott Daystrom and all the advantages he had. How he was so privileged he didn’t even know his life was a bed of roses, except for the fertilizer he was busily dumping into it.
“You have any folks?”
He shrugged. “My dad’s in gen pop. Mom… I don’t know. Probably OD’d by now.”
His dad was in jail, she translated. “Gen pop” meant “general population,” where most of the incarcerated were housed. She sighed at this kid’s brief summation of his childhood. Strikes against him, damage done. She’d been in the Big Sister-Little Sister program before. Sometimes you could help. Other times, the person who needed your help the most was too far gone to ask for it.
“Okay, listen, I have to go. But tell your friends about the cameras and leave that guy in there alone. And call me.”
She gave him a hard look but she couldn’t gauge his reaction. He was hiding his face in the hood of his sweatshirt. She might have just turned the heat up under JT. She fervently hoped not.
She turned to go. He said, “I’m Robert. If I call.”
Something loosened inside her chest. “I’ll remember.”
“But that’s not my real name,” he added.
“And I’ll remember that, too,” she said respectfully. She was willing to bet that it was, and a fleeting image of hopeful parents and a birth certificate gave her a fresh pang that was about expectations and outcomes. Maybe his parents had wanted him more than anything in the world and dreamed about getting him out of the neighborhood; maybe something had gone sideways to end all those dreams and they had spiraled downward. She was not a social worker.
But I am a human being.
He vanished into the night, but she knew he was still there. After she slid into her car and pulled away, she called JT and warned him to be careful around the windows and doors. Then she headed out, leaving everything in the rearview mirror, including, perhaps, the future of a boy whose best friends in the whole wide world would beat him up if they found out he’d talked to her.
She had to let him go. She had another life to save. Or so she fervently hoped and prayed with every fiber of her being.
She didn’t know what lay ahead of her, but she was ready for it.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
“A dead body?” Cat said as Vincent went silent, shifting into predator mode. “What do you mean? Where?”
“The smoke is a bigger issue,” he said ominously.
“I don’t smell anything but rain.”
“Yet.”
He took her hand and hustled her toward the dining room. The ship was rocking more violently, and by the time they got inside, Cat saw light glinting off the ice sculptures as they teetered. Captain Kilman and Dr. Jones were conferring with several other Sea Majesty crew near the door. Vincent and she hurried toward them and Vincent gestured at the captain.
“Sir,” he said, “I need to speak with you privately.”
The captain regarded them both. He said, “Dr. Keller, in about five minutes, the ship’s klaxons are going to sound and I’m going to order everyone to their lifeboat muster stations. There’s a fire below deck. We’re monitoring it and it’s growing.”
“You must have a fire suppression system,” Vincent said.
The captain shook his head and lowered his voice. “It didn’t go off. Something’s wrong.”
Cat looked over at their deserted table. Bethany, her father, and the engaged couple had left. Dr. Jones followed her line of sight.
“Dr. Keller, may I put you in charge of Mr. Daugherty? This is going to cause him a lot of stress. The Kuuipo and the Neptune Suites share the same muster station,” the ship’s physician said. “So they’ll be there with their bodyguard soon. The stewards are going to begin knocking on doors to get the passengers out.”
Cat turned to Vincent and mouthed, Chip. I’ll get it.
He hesitated, then nodded. She said, “I’ll see you at the muster station.” She gave him a kiss and dashed out of the dining room.
The rain was a blinding sheet as she staggered from side to side. Taking refuge in a corridor, she figured that she still probably had about a couple of minutes before the klaxons began to shrill. Would they have to abandon ship into that rough, wild sea? What would the people who had Heather do then?
She decided to run down this passageway, then take the stairs up to her stateroom. The way was clear and she needed to hurry. About halfway down the passageway, she saw Paul, her steward, knocking on a door with a Do NOT DISTURB sign on it.
“Is there a problem?” she asked, and he whirled around with a cry. The expression on his face was a mixture of fear and guilt, and her cop senses went on full alert. She looked at the door and saw that he had a passkey in his hand.
“There’s no problem,” he said, but he could barely get the words out.
She took the key from him and swiped open the door. The air conditioning was on full blast, but even she could smell the coppery tang of blood, undercut with a slight tinge of decay. This must be the dead body Vincent had scented.
“Mr. Connors? He’s not here,” Paul announced querulously.
Ignoring him, she crossed to the bathroom door and tried the latch. The door swung open. There was a dark shadow at the base of the shower stall. When she opened the door, a bone-white corpse in a fetal position tumbled out on the floor. It was a man, and he had been shot in the head multiple times.
“Oh, man, oh, no way, I did not sign up for this,” Paul groaned. He wheeled around and was almost back out into the passageway when Cat grabbed him by the arm and swung him to face her.
“What did you sign up for?” she asked him. But she knew the answer. “You were looking for it, weren’t you? When you unpacked our things.”
“I don’t know what you—”
She hit him. Hard. He gasped. “Please, all Mr. Conn
ors said was to find a little box and give it to him! That’s all!”
“Did you kill him?”
“No way! I’m a steward!”
Cat believed him. That meant that someone else was in on this. And that someone had killed Connors.
At that instant, the klaxons began to scream. The fire. The lifeboats. She said to Paul, “Get everyone out. Do your job!”
Then she put everything she had into getting to her suite. It didn’t take beast sense to pick up the stench of smoke, like burning tires. It must be filtering through the air-conditioning ducts.
When she grabbed the handle to their stateroom door she found it ajar. She pushed gently with the flat of her hand, opening it a crack. If the birdsong played, she couldn’t hear it over the blaring ship’s sirens.
The lights in the stateroom blazed. She hadn’t left them that way. The ship’s cabin lights could have been turned on in the emergency. One of the stewards could have used a master key to make sure the rooms were evacuated.
But there was another scenario, one with far worse consequences if she was right.
She entered the suite, bracing her legs as the floor rolled under her. The huge ocean liner didn’t pound into the seas; it lumbered and wallowed like a huge drowning creature. Something to her right slid along the kitchen counter, then slid the other way as the ship righted itself. Vincent’s morning coffee cup.
Against the wall she saw moving shadows, probably from the bedroom. She had no gun. But there was a ten-inch serrated bread knife next to the kitchen island’s sink. For a moment she thought about grabbing it. But the knife had no point. All she could do was slash with it. That meant getting in very close and slashing effectively a lot before she could subdue her adversary. If it was the same person who killed the guy and shoved him in the bathroom, he or she was armed with a gun. Cat decided she was far better off with her hands free.
She peered around the open bedroom door. The drawers in the dresser were hanging open. Clothes were strewn everywhere. The bed had been stripped, and the mattress was overturned and pulled off the box springs. Everything that had been on the nightstand was on the floor, including the candy bag.
The bathroom door was cracked open. The intruder was in there. And if he or she was still looking, they hadn’t found the chip.
Who are you? she thought. What will it take to stop you?
Through the gap she could see a man’s back, and immediately recognized the coral flowered shirt and navy blue trousers. It was the substitute ship’s photographer, Cecilio, the man who had taken their photograph when they had boarded the Sea Majesty.
He had the doors to the his-and-hers medicine cabinets open and was hurriedly tipping items off the shelves and into the double sinks. Cat moved across the room, hoping to catch him from behind with his hands full of bottles of makeup remover and hair conditioner.
He didn’t see her as she pushed the door inward. But when she crossed the bathroom threshold he looked up into the mirror and their eyes met. He let the containers fall onto the marble counter.
When he turned what looked like a plastic gun with a silencer swung up in his right hand. “Where is the chip?” he yelled.
“What chip? What are you talking about?” Cat said as she backed out of the doorway into the bedroom. “Why are you pointing that gun at me?” As she spoke she turned sideways to him, offering him a smaller target.
He followed her out. “Don’t play stupid with me. It won’t fly. You know what the chip is. And I know you have hidden it somewhere. It isn’t in the jacket. I already checked.”
He held the pistol steady despite the roll of the deck. Even so, Cat was pretty sure she could make him miss on the first and second shots, but there was no place to run after that. If he was any kind of marksman he would take her down from behind before she reached the stateroom door. With the silencer screwed on he could fire a dozen times and no one would hear.
“You killed Connors, didn’t you,” she said, changing the subject to buy herself some time.
His eyebrows lifted in surprise. “Oh, you found him.”
“Yes. Did you do it with that pistol?”
Cecilio shrugged. “Not relevant.” A cold smile failed to reach his eyes. “But I did kill that bodyguard with it.”
Cat could not spare a second to mourn Terry Milano, but she did it anyway. She wondered if, in some even more twisted conspiracy than she had imagined, the chip was somehow connected to Forrest Daugherty, and that was really why he and Bethany were on the ship.
“Who sent you?” Cat asked. “Who do you work for?”
He motioned with the gun. “Stop stalling. Where is the chip? Where did you hide it?”
Cat decided it was time to press, even if it meant showing her hand. “Where is my sister?”
“Your sister?” Cecilio looked puzzled; then his eyes slowly brightened. “Don’t worry, she’s alive. But if I don’t call to check in when I’m supposed to, she’ll be killed. And it will be a very painful death. Give me the chip now, and I’ll call to confirm that I have it, and my people will let her go.”
Her heartbeat blasting into maximum overdrive, Cat debated. She wasn’t convinced by his reaction that he knew anything about Heather. And if he did, and if he was telling the truth, his not having the chip yet was the only thing keeping Heather alive. Cat’s stomach tightened. If Heather was still alive. And the missing chip was the only thing keeping the man with the gun from opening fire right now.
“Do you know I’m NYPD?” she said.
“Do you know I don’t care?” He glanced at his watch. “Five minutes until I’m supposed to check in. You are wasting your sister’s precious time. She knows the score. Imagine how scared she’s getting about now… probably crying and begging for mercy.”
“Okay,” Cat said, waving her hands in surrender. “Okay, I’ll get you the chip. Then you make the call.”
But her mind was churning as she tried to figure out the most advantageous place to make her move. Her options were few. “This way,” she said, beckoning for the man to follow. “It’s on the lanai.”
“I didn’t look there yet.”
Thank goodness for small favors, Cat thought.
She slid back the door to the lanai and a spray of rain hit her in the face. Water stood in puddles on the stone deck; it sloshed back and forth as the ship rose and fell. The lights were on there too—romantic mood lights. Even with the extra-big chaise lounge, two tables and chairs, there was enough clear floor space to put up a fight.
Cat stepped around the chaise and lifted the nearest potted plant from its overflow dish. “Uhh, wait a minute,” she said, rain soaking into her hair and the back and shoulders of her ill-fated jacket. “I think my husband must’ve moved these plants. I know I put it under the first one.”
“Better hurry. Time is running out for your sister,” Cecilio said from the doorway, keeping out of the downpour.
“It’s got to be under one of these.”
Perhaps growing anxious, Cecilio moved a bit closer, stepping out into the steady rain, but not close enough.
Cat lifted up the potted orchid, looked down at the dish, and exclaimed, “Oh, no! The rain! It’s soaked through the pot… The little plastic box is full of water…”
“Get back, let me see it,” Cecilio snarled, closing the distance between them.
He didn’t wait for her to move out of the way, and when she did she planted her feet and pivoted from her hips. She slammed the clay pot against his forehead with everything she had. It shattered on impact, and the soggy potting soil flew over his face and into his eyes. Before he could recover, she grabbed his gun with her left hand, smoothly moving inside his reach. As she turned her back to his chest, she locked her right elbow over his forearm and trapped it against her hip. Both of them were suddenly pointing the gun in the same direction, fighting for control. Before he could push her away, she applied fingertip pressure to the nerves between his first two knuckles—a grappling hold. The eff
ect was humbling and immediate—a red-hot poker from hand to armpit and unendurable pain. She felt his knees buckling. He had to open his fingers.
The plastic gun dropped to the deck with a soft clunk.
Cat swept it out of the way with the sole of her shoe. The man seized her by a shoulder. As he spun her around to face him, he drew back to head butt her, but before he could do that she got a claw hand up and raked him across both eyes, leaving matching red furrows down his cheeks.
He let out a scream and staggered backwards, clutching at his face.
Cat front kicked, aiming for center chest, his vagus nerve—and instant paralysis—but he blocked and deflected with an elbow and forearm. The force of the kick only pushed him further away from her.
Holding his arms up defensively, he shook his head to clear it. He circled the furniture in retreat.
Lightning flashed.
A second later thunder rolled. So close she could feel the rumble inside her chest.
When Cecilio brushed his face, pink, rain-diluted blood dripped from his fingers.
She tried another kick, but he kept out of reach.
He was looking around at the floor, obviously trying to locate the gun that had slid under the chaise lounge.
“Your sister will die,” he said. “Even if I kill you and find the chip, I will not make the call.”
It was a desperation ploy on his part. He was trying to force her to act in anger, and to make a mistake.
She feinted a drop-down move for the gun, but instead of reaching under the chaise, she jumped onto the elevated platform, complete with its own set of springs, and vaulted off, throwing everything she had into a flying kick. She had him dead to rights, but as she jumped the ship climbed a big swell. Cecilio lurched sideways, and she sailed past her target, hit the wet stone floor and skidded. She crashed into one of the chairs, slipping on the deck before she regained her feet.