by Jan Thompson
Jonas was skipping happily, with Mrs. Ping by his side.
Marie didn’t see Logan anywhere.
She missed him. The family didn’t feel complete without Logan for some reason.
When they were seated, Logan had still not arrived.
Marie texted him.
He texted back, saying he had overslept, but he was on his way.
Marie waited anxiously until Logan arrived.
“Missed me?” Logan asked. It seemed that his question was directed at everyone, but he was looking at Marie in particular.
Marie didn’t answer him. She didn’t want to sound forward or give away a secret or two about how she still felt about him.
But yes, I missed you.
Chapter Twenty-Three
They almost met again in Logan’s stateroom for their private conversation, but he confessed that his room was even messier than before, and he had hung the Do Not Disturb sign on his door, thereby preventing the stewards from making his bed or cleaning up his bathroom.
“In other words, you’re saying that it’s a pig sty,” Marie said as the elevator door closed.
They were the only people in it. They had left dinner late, and everyone else had gone on to their after-dinner activities.
“So can we go to your room?” Logan sounded pleading.
“You want to see my cabin.”
“Because it’s bound to be cleaner than mine.” Logan lowered his voice. “We can’t talk about things on the top deck or in any open area. I’ve been doing some investigating…”
Investigating? “No, Logan.”
“I meant research. Okay, I googled. Some things didn’t make sense.”
“The whole world doesn’t make sense sometimes.”
“Just give me an hour. If you still don’t think I’m onto something, then kick me out and I’ll be out of your way.”
The elevator door opened to their floor. Standing there, about to enter it, was Zaid, one of Aliyah’s bodyguards. He was dressed in a long-sleeved charcoal shirt, buttoned up to his neck. He had on a pair of slacks.
And military boots.
Marie made eye contact with him. He nodded to her. There was a hint of respect in his nod, as if…
No. Nobody knows who I am.
Zaid held the door, and waited for Marie and Logan to step out of the elevator.
“Thank you, Zaid,” Marie said quietly.
His eyebrows rose.
Yes, I know your name.
When the elevator door closed, Logan said, “Hmm. You know his name.”
“They mentioned it in the playroom.”
“The playroom, huh?”
“Yeah. We should take turns accompanying Jonas there. I’m not the only one on parent duty onboard the ship.” Marie led the way toward her stateroom.
“What’s Abdul’s mother’s name?”
Marie didn’t answer Logan until they were safely inside her stateroom. She kicked off her heels, and placed her purse in the safe.
“Aliyah,” she finally answered. “She introduced herself to me as such, but her assistant called her Your Highness.”
“No kidding. The plot thickens.” Logan sat down on the sofa, untied his shoelace, and pulled out his phone.
“There’s no plot.” Marie asked him if he wanted some water. He shook his head.
“Isn’t there?” Logan motioned for Marie to sit down. “I made a list.”
“I thought you were working all afternoon on your merger issues.”
“That, too, but this was bothering me, so I thought about it. I didn’t finish because I fell asleep.”
“At least you had a nap. I was watching Jonas the entire time, praying for God’s protection for us.” Marie sat down on the other side of the coffee table in a small armchair.
“I should pray more,” Logan said.
“To be honest, I’m trying not to read too much into what happened this morning in Ketchikan. So I turned around for a split second, and our five-year-old wandered out of the store with his new friend Abdul and his family.”
“There were only two exits, and somehow we missed both of them.”
“We made a mistake looking inside the store. One of us should’ve gone outside.”
“Maybe. Instead we both looked inside the store, so by the time we reached the doors, they had gone down the boardwalk.”
“They didn’t go too far. Only to where the bridge was.”
“To see the fish.” Logan rubbed his bare chin. “However, what made me upset the rest of it. When we went to get Jonas, what did they say?”
“Nothing.”
“Exactly. It was as though they saw nothing wrong for a child to walk with them out of the store.”
“They have three bodyguards, although only two seemed to have gone out with them.” Marie wondered what the third bodyguard was doing. It was none of her business—unless they made it her business.
“Those were bodyguards? How did you know?” Logan asked.
“You remember the second day when we were out at sea? Mrs. Ping and I took Jonas to the pool? I was sitting poolside when their whole group showed up. There were three men, two women, and one boy.”
“And the boy was about the same size and height as Jonas. If you put baseball caps on them, I bet you couldn’t tell them apart.”
“Not from a distance, no,” Marie agreed. “Up close, a stranger can probably tell that Jonas has a chubby face and blue eyes, and Abdul’s eyes are dark brown and his face is more tanned.”
“I need to get Jonas out in the sun more often. He prefers to play in his playroom at home. It took lot of effort to get him to the backyard to play soccer.”
“Even if he gets out in the sun, you can still tell the kids apart. However, I get your point.” Marie wondered where Logan was going with this.
He was a businessman, but a savvy one at that. He had an eye for details, yes, but did she want him to continue with this?
She could not tell him what she had found out from her office in France. It might be premature yet. She was waiting for them to contact FBI and MI5 to get more details. She had sent them enough photos and videos for them to squeeze through their facial recognition software.
If she told Logan all of that, he would begin to question her again. It was best if he didn’t know.
Or was it?
“I want to believe that it was a genuine error,” Logan said. “But what kind of a mother—or parent, for that matter—would take someone else’s child along with them without parental consent, and then not apologize for it?”
“Maybe their language barrier prevented them from apologizing.”
“You don’t think it’s cultural.”
Marie shook her head. “Every culture has moms and dads. It’s normal for us to protect our children. They know that.”
“Exactly.”
“What do you mean?”
“I suspect they took Jonas with them on purpose.”
“Now you’re speculating.”
“Am I?”
“Don’t go all paranoid on me, Logan.”
“It was so quick, though.” Logan crossed his feet on the coffee table and leaned back against the sofa.
Marie remembered how she used to cuddle next to him while he was relaxed like that. They’d watch TV or listen to music or the news. She didn’t care what they were listening to or watching as long as she was with him.
Those days were long gone now.
Although the danger was over now, Marie wondered if new danger was rolling in.
Marie hadn’t been assigned to the Middle East in several years, so she was quite sure it had nothing to do with that. After she was done with it, they kept her in France, chasing after a French terrorist, not Middle Eastern.
Granted, that project was not over, but Marie had asked to be removed from the project after they captured Molyneux’s associates in Tel Aviv. Once the team returned to Europe, her Arabic linguistics abilities were no longer needed.
The multinational effort to hunt for Molyneux and her terrorist organization went on, but Marie’s part in all of that was over. They had enough French speakers, and she could go home.
Perfect timing to take a break in Alaska with her son.
And ex-husband.
He seemed to be staring at her.
“Why are you looking at me like that?” Marie asked.
“Your mind is somewhere else,” Logan said. “I can always tell. Or could, anyhow. If I didn’t know you any better, I would say that you know more about Abdul’s family than you let on.”
“More speculating.”
“Am I? You told me that Abdul’s family had three bodyguards. What could possibly happen on a cruise ship?”
Marie didn’t want to break the news to Logan that many things could happen on a cruise ship—murders and suicides, people falling overboard, to name just a few. Of course, there were less dramatic problems like food poisoning and fire.
“To be sure, we’re not always on a cruise ship, yes?” Marie countered. “Whenever we go on excursions, we’re on land.”
“We were in Ketchikan. I think we’re in good hands with the authorities if something happens on US soil.”
“We’ll be in Victoria on Friday, but I’m sure Canadian law enforcement is reliable too.” Marie made a mental note to find out who to contact once they reached the island—in case anything happened.
Nothing is going to happen.
This is a simple no-drama vacation.
Marie chuckled. Yeah, keep telling yourself that.
“What’s funny?” Logan asked. “What are you not telling me?”
“What am I not telling you?”
Logan dropped his feet onto the plush carpet, and leaned forward. When he did that, his eyebrows rose.
Marie had seen that look before. He was getting serious.
“When my PI gave me a report of what he found in Europe, he said that you worked for the US State Department.”
“I work where I’m paid. If a diplomat or attaché asks for my translation services, I will work for them—if they pay me well and the assignment doesn’t go against my personal principles. It’s a job, Logan.”
“Why did you carry a gun then?” Logan asked. “Do translators carry weapons as part of their work?”
“Some of us carry for our personal protection.” Marie wondered whether Logan’s PI saw more than they had thought.
That day, three years before, her decoy had carried a gun. How would Marie disclose that fact without also sharing more about what she had been doing? Even a small amount of information could cause Logan to ask more questions.
Therefore, she could not tell him that she had been deep undercover that week when Vienna had been attacked, that they were chasing leads across Europe, trying to prevent another Vienna.
“Someday, when I’m retired, we will have a chat about all that. However, as I recall, I did not carry a gun during that particular week when I ran into your PI. Clearly, he was mistaken. It wasn’t me.”
“Another person who looked like you?”
Yes, the same one who beat up that PI. Another thing Marie could not tell Logan. Not right now.
“Whether you trust me or not, we have a problem at this time,” Logan said.
“We don’t know if your suspicions about Abdul’s family are correct.”
Logan shook his head. “Tell me you don’t worry about Jonas.”
“I worry.” It was a confession, but Marie could not take it back.
“Then why does it look like you’re brushing off the matter?”
“I’m not.” Marie felt like she should tell him to leave her room now. “If you called this meeting so that we can get into an argument, then you’re destroying any morsel of post-divorce friendship we might have.”
“I’m only asking if you cared that our son was almost abducted this morning.” Logan didn’t raise his voice. He seemed genuinely unsure about what he was seeing.
“I told you I’m not making light of the situation. I totally care. But we need to be careful not to jump the gun and cause an unnecessary international incident.”
“Like what?”
“Like accusing a foreign princess of attempting to abduct a five-year-old boy who merely followed them down the boardwalk to look at salmon swimming upstream.”
“A princess?” Logan’s eyes widened.
“I told you they called her Your Highness.”
“I heard you, but it’s not registering until now.”
“Well, I’m not sure, but I’m guessing she might very well be one.”
“When it comes to my own son, I don’t trust anyone, even kings, queens, and heads of states.” Logan closed his eyes. Rubbed his temples. “Maybe you’re right. I might have overreacted.”
“I don’t want you to talk to the bodyguards or approach Aliyah or her assistant. That would raise suspicions. We just need to find out what they’re up to. I’m calling in favors, and I will let you know what they find. Okay?”
“Favors? What kind of favors?”
“Friends back home,” Marie explained.
“Home as in France.” Logan’s shoulders sagged. “Somewhere in my heart I wished that we had made it work. I was so angry with you for leaving Jonas and me. You had been gone for months without letting me know where you were. Could you blame me for hiring the PI to find out if you were…if you were—I mean…”
“If I were having an affair? The answer is no. I had no time for such nonsense. Besides, I could only love…” Marie cleared her throat.
“Go on.”
She didn’t.
“Would you like to order snacks?” She asked instead.
“Don’t change the subject. Besides, we already ate dinner and desserts.”
Marie got up. “I need some fresh air.”
She unlocked the balcony door. When she opened it, she heard the swooshing of the Atlantic waves mixed in with the noisy wind, which blew in droplets of rain against her face.
She closed the sliding glass door. “Raining outside.”
Logan’s face reflected on the glass door. There were lines of sadness across his face, his eyes droopy. He reminded Marie of Jonas.
Like father, like son.
Marie turned around. “Please don’t whine like Jonas.”
Logan laughed. “Do I look like I am?”
“Your face looks like you’re about to.”
“Give me more credit than that. I’m thirty-five, not five!” Logan walked back to the sofa. He put on his shoes.
Marie didn’t want him to leave, but it was for the best.
“I wish we could be more than friends, but we’ve been there, done that, and it didn’t work out,” Logan said. “I’m sorry I was pushy about the incident this morning. I’m probably just paranoid after that…uh.”
“After what?” Marie placed her hands on her hips. “After what?”
“It was a while ago, and I’m sure it was nothing.”
“A while ago when?”
Logan picked up his phone. “I’ll email you what I found about Abdul’s family.”
“Don’t change the subject.”
“Touché.”
Marie grabbed his arm. “Seriously, Logan. Is this about Jonas? Why didn’t you hire security? This is your only son!”
Marie knew she had to backtrack later. She herself could have asked for continued security, but she had thought the danger was over.
“Whoa. Slow down.” Logan held her hand. “If you must know…”
“Yes, I must know.”
“Then sit down and I’ll tell you about it.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
“One year ago? Now you tell me?” Marie’s voice was rising. She paced the carpeted floor barefooted. “Someone broke into Jonas’s bedroom and tried to kidnap him and you never said a word for one year?”
“Calm down, honey.” Logan felt halfway between bad that he had to tell his ex-wife what happened to their son a
nd good that he had finally gotten it off his chest.
“Don’t you honey me.” Marie stopped at the back of an armchair. “I wish you had told me before we boarded this ship.”
“What would you have done?”
“Brought extra security, for example.” She placed her hands on the top of the chair’s backrest. Her fingers dug into the leather.
Was it Logan’s imagination, or did Marie’s painted fingernails look like fangs?
“One year ago.” Marie sighed. “That was long after we thought it was over.”
“What was over? Who thought what was over?”
Marie didn’t say.
Logan recalled all the questions of his own that had gone unanswered for six years. “If we keep more secrets between us, how can we come together to help our son? I told you everything, but you told me nothing. It’s not fair, Marie. I can’t do this with you this way.”
“I have sworn not to talk about my work.” Marie came around the chair and sat down. “I have one more assignment, and then I’m quitting.”
“You’re quitting what?”
“My job.”
“Which one? Your translator job or the one you can’t talk about?”
“They’re the sa—I can’t tell you.”
“Were you trying to tell me they were the same job?”
Marie didn’t respond.
“See what I mean?” Logan threw up his arms. “This is why we fought and argued a lot. You know me, but I don’t know you.”
“There’s not a lot I can tell you, truly.”
“Tell me enough inasmuch as it concerns Jonas. We will cross the other bridges after you retire—or quit—from whatever it is you’ve been doing behind my back for the last six years.”
Marie closed her eyes. “I can tell you this much. Until two years ago, I translated for the State Department. While traveling around the Middle East, I was also their eyes and ears in meetings and conferences.”
Eyes and ears?
Like a spy?
Logan didn’t say a word but he was wondering how he never knew that Marie had been a spy. Still, she hadn’t come right out and say it until now.
Eyes and ears.
Logan shook his head. “Was it dangerous?”
“Not if you’re trained.”
The other shoe dropped.
