Beauty & the Beast: Vendetta

by Nancy Holder

  Oooh, touchy. Cat moved her shoulders. “Okay,” she said, “I think I’m busted. Here’s the deal. My husband and I noticed a man following you and we want to know if you know him.”

  Paling, the girl sucked in her breath. “Oh, my God,” she whispered. “No.”

  “You do know him,” Cat pressed, senses going on alert.

  “Where…? I mean, I have to go.” She closed her book. Cat placed a hand on her forearm.

  “Let me help you. Who is he? Are you traveling with him?”

  “Stay away from me.” The girl got to her feet and looked around. Cat began to get up too, but by then the girl had taken off—in a one-eighty away from the man.

  Cat looked over at Vincent, who gave her a nod—I’m watching—pulled her legs out of the water, put on her wedges, and headed straight for the man. He saw her coming, turned away, and disappeared around the corner.

  She edged her way through the small crowd—their deck was very exclusive—and saw him moving down a narrow passageway dotted with rows of plain metal doors. He glanced over his shoulder, spotted her, and picked up speed.

  “Wait,” she called, but that was all she could say. She couldn’t invoke the power of her badge. She wasn’t a cop here. She was just a civilian.

  I’m never not a cop.

  He took a right.

  So did she.

  He went down a flight of metal stairs, ducking beneath a sign that read No PASSENGERS PLEASE! apparently in several different languages. She heard his footfalls clanging, then her own, as she followed him. When she reached the bottom, she saw him moving down another tight passageway. As before, she pursued, and when she was almost close enough to reach out and grab him, he whirled around and yanked on her arm.

  Instinctively Cat executed an open-palm strike, slamming the heel of her hand beneath his chin. God, he was made of iron; his thick neck muscles prevented his head snapping back so much as a fraction of an inch. He deflected her uppercut to his midsection, wrapping his hand around her forearm and throwing her against the wall. Anticipating his counterattack, she had tucked in her chin and so her shoulder took the brunt of the impact. She used her own momentum to push off with a sidekick that caught his jaw, and before he could grab her ankle, she twisted around and rammed her elbow into his side and punched him in the face.

  Then she let herself fall to the floor and contracted her legs into her chest, thrusting hard when he began to bend over her. But it was a feint; he had backed off. She jackknifed to her feet—and faced down the barrel of a gun.

  “Fire!” she shouted without hesitation. “Fire on the ship!”

  That was the magic word to utter in a crisis situation. Not “help” or “nine-one-one” or even “call the police,” unfortunately. That was because a fire could affect everyone including a random passerby who might not otherwise be inclined to get involved.

  “Shut up.” The man raised his gun.

  “I don’t think so.” She kept her voice even and steady. “Fi—”

  “Who do you work for?” he asked at the same time she started to yell.

  “I’m NYPD. You?” she shot back.

  “You’re a cop? Where’s your badge?”

  “Who wants to know?”

  “You know who I am.” But he looked uncertain. He dabbed at his split lip and frowned at the blood. “Wait. What’d she tell you?”

  “Who are you?” she said again, sensing that once he’d realized she was a cop, he abandoned the idea of shooting her.

  “Terry Milano. Her bodyguard.”

  “No way,” she blurted.

  His smile was sour. “Let me guess. She told you I was some master criminal after her father’s business secrets. Or some pervy pedophile.”

  “But you’re… her bodyguard? Do you have credentials to prove that?”

  He reached in his pocket and handed her a wallet. She checked it. He had a California driver’s license identifying him as Terence Milano. She also found a permit to carry a concealed weapon.

  “My best credential is inside the Neptune Suite,” he said. “My boss, Forrest Daugherty. Her father. You can speak to him if you want. Or to the head of security aboard the Sea Majesty. His name is Brian d’Allesandro.”

  That was correct. From force of habit, Cat had looked up the name of the ship’s security chief when she and Vincent had booked the cruise. Sometimes you came across ex-cops who had left the force. They got paid a lot more doing private security and put up with a lot less politics.

  “D’Allesandro knows I’m carrying,” he added. “He knows I’m working for the Daughertys.”

  I’ve been played, Cat figured. That girl is probably laughing her head off right now.

  “Why didn’t you just tell me that?” Cat asked him.

  He shrugged. “Not in my job description. And if I’m not mistaken, you don’t have a job aboard this vessel.” He decocked his gun and put it in a pancake holster inside his jacket and held out his hand. She took it. They shook.

  “What’s her name?” Cat asked.

  “Well, her code name used to be Six-Six-Six but she found out about it and told her father. I could tell he thought it was funny but he told me to change it. So now it’s Garbo. For Greta Garbo, the actress. She was a recluse. ‘I vant to be alone,’” he mimicked. “But her real name is Bethany.”

  He gestured for them to walk back the way they had come. It looked like all she’d given him was a split lip, but she was a little sore. Her ego required her to mask the damage, and she kept pace with him.

  “Are you going to tell her father?” she asked him.

  He scoffed. “What, and lose my job? She used to pull this kind of crap from time to time, but that was when she was in playgroups. I hadn’t seen her for a while. She’s gotten more sophisticated.”

  “Poor little rich kid?” she asked, looking over her shoulder at him.

  “You could say that, but I never would.” He wrinkled his nose. “I think you might be getting a shiner. Sorry about that.”

  “No problem. I’ve had worse.”

  “So you’re not here on the job,” he said. “Buy you a drink?”

  “I’m here on my honeymoon. I’m sure my husband would love to join us.”

  He grinned at her. “All the good ones are married or gay.”

  She grinned back. “Trust me. They’re not.”

  They walked up deckside to find Vincent standing expectantly beside Bethany Daugherty, whose arms were folded and her shoulders hunched. If looks could kill, no one within a fifty-mile radius of her would be alive. When she spotted him with Cat, she practically spit fire. She wheeled on her heel but Vincent had hold of her arm. She jerked herself out of his grasp but made no effort to flee. Maybe she realized her goose was cooked.

  “So this is what happened,” Cat began, but Vincent said, “Got it figured out. You okay?”

  “Thankfully, yes,” Cat answered. “Although Mr. Milano was compelled to pull a weapon on me.”

  Vincent gaped at her. Lowering her eyes, Bethany smiled.

  “Oh, I almost forgot to make introductions. Terry Milano, Vincent Keller.”

  The two men shook hands. “Sorry I kind of beat up your wife,” Milano said.

  “We’re cool,” Vincent replied.

  “So, hi, Bethany,” Cat said pleasantly. “I’m Cat. Terry and I decided we should attack that truffle bar and get to know each other better.”

  “Sure,” Milano said. “Sounds terrific.”

  Dear Bethany let loose with a barrage of swear words, some of which Cat had never heard before—and she was a streetwise New York City cop. Vincent chewed the inside of his cheek, equally impressed.

  “There is no way I’m going anywhere with any of you,” Bethany informed them.

  “Fine. We’ll pay your dad a visit instead,” Cat said.

  “He’ll be too busy to talk to you. He’s always too busy.”

  Cat didn’t press. She didn’t want to get Milano in trouble with his employer. And w
hile she was used to the self-absorbed sulkiness of teenagers—after all, she’d practically raised Heather herself—she knew that bratty behavior often masked real pain. Maybe she could do something to help Bethany.

  “I need to feed Sprinkles,” Bethany told Milano flatly. “Let’s go. I have to change.”

  “That’s her dog,” Milano explained. “They’re keeping him in a kennel below decks.”

  “This ship sucks,” Bethany grumbled. “Last time I got to keep my dog in my stateroom.”

  “That was Mariposa, and she was a Yorkie,” Milano filled in. “Sprinkles is a little bigger.”

  “Still, if their suite’s the biggest one on the ship, it would seem like a trivial matter to let her keep her dog with her,” Cat argued. “I’d hate to be separated from my dog if I had one.”

  “You can come with me to see Sprinkles.” Maybe Bethany knew Cat knew she was playing her in return, or maybe the girl really did want Cat to come with her. She looked straight at Cat. “Just you.”

  You’re not armed, are you? Cat asked silently. She met Milano’s gaze over Bethany’s head. He gave her a quick nod— permission granted. Maybe he would follow at a more discreet distance, or maybe he would trust a cop—even an unarmed one—to take care of Bethany for one harmless stroll.

  Cat kissed Vincent’s cheek and said, “Catch you later. We have the late seating for dinner, right?”

  “Yeah. I’ll catch up on my video games.”

  A flicker of interest lit up Bethany’s eyes. “What do you play?”

  Vincent rattled off a short list of titles. Cat had grown to accept that her man had a boyish side that included making cannonballs when he jumped into swimming pools and playing video games. Lots of video games, preferably games that required two players and had a lot of explosions. Enter the necessity of a best friend, that being JT.

  After a long, hard, dirty day as a cop the last thing Cat wanted to do was pretend-drive a speeding car and pretend-shoot bad guys. On the other hand, Vincent had no interest in watching TV shows about doctors, or chick-flicks “where nothing ever happens.”

  Enter Tess and Heather.

  “You any good?” Bethany asked Vincent.

  His answer was a bunch of scores and other statistics. They must have been good—Cat had no idea—because the jaded teen let her admiration show. Vincent said, “Tell you what. After you and Cat visit your dog, we can have a tournament.”

  “Your father is planning to have dinner with you in about an hour,” Milano reminded Bethany. Her face began to re-harden into its surly mask.

  “Maybe I can introduce myself, tell him we’ll look after her,” Vincent suggested. “We can get a bunch of stuff to eat in our room.”

  Bethany was all smiles now. All excitement.

  So much for the first romantic night of our honeymoon, Cat thought, but Vincent’s generous spirit warmed her heart. They had the rest of their lives to be together, and Bethany appeared to need someone now. Cat crossed her fingers that Mr. Daugherty would give her permission to hang out with them.

  “Sounds like a plan,” Cat said. “We can both go with you while you change and meet your dad.”

  “It’s this way,” Bethany said. She walked off, obviously expecting them to follow. Bemused, Cat and Vincent fell in. Milano allowed some distance between himself and the trio, although Cat didn’t know why he bothered. In his austere suit, he was impossible not to notice.

  They ascended a stacked stone riser dressed with tiki torches leading to a pair of curved lava doors. There were no signs indicating that this was the Neptune Suite. Cat supposed that if you needed to ask where it was, you didn’t need to know. Bethany pulled a key card out of a pocket in her bathing suit and the doors slid back. Inside a lava-rock foyer, a waterfall extended the full height of the room, and a skylight overhead bathed the water in pastels. The sun was setting on their first day aboard the Sea Majesty.

  By then, Milano had caught up with them. Moving silently around the cluster, he disappeared down a hallway. Bethany said, “I’ll go change,” and left via another corridor.

  “How big is this place?” Cat murmured to Vincent.

  “I hope he doesn’t say no,” Vincent murmured back. “She’ll probably burn the place down.”

  After a couple of minutes, a middle-aged man with a firm, tanned face and a physique to match returned to the foyer with Milano. He was wearing khaki trousers, a Hawaiian shirt, expensive-looking leather sandals, and a Rolex. His hair was salt-and-pepper gray and his eyes were blue. His smile was more practiced than genuine but he extended a hand to Catherine first and said, “Forrest Daugherty. I understand you had a run-in with my bodyguard.”

  Milano coughed into his fist and said, “I explained that I startled you on your way back from the pool. If you’ll excuse me.” He left the group in the foyer and walked down the same hall where Bethany had disappeared.

  “Detective Catherine Chandler, NYPD, and this is my husband, Doctor Vincent Keller.”

  “N-Y-P-D, eh?” Daugherty gave her a once-over but made no other comment.

  “Yes.”

  “And a doctor.” He shook Vincent’s hand.

  “He used to be Special Forces,” Cat interjected. “Afghanistan.”

  “This is your way of guaranteeing my daughter’s safety,” he drawled. “It’s very kind of you to spend time with her. She’s not the most social person.”

  “We’d be very happy to have her over tonight,” Cat assured him. “We’ll order some pizza or something—”

  “No bother. Our chef has already begun dinner. I’ll have it sent over.”

  “Oh. Well thank you,” Cat said. “That’d be nice. And you don’t mind if I go with her to see Sprinkles?”

  He looked at the two of them as if trying to make some sort of decision. Then his demeanor changed, and he leaned forward slightly.

  “Here’s the deal,” he said. “My ex-wife has been dating a very questionable individual. I think he’s mobbed up but I haven’t been able to prove it yet. Then about two weeks ago, someone tried to hack into one of my companies’ databases. One week ago, my ex phoned and told me her home had been broken into and a lot of jewelry had been stolen. Milano reported that he’d been tailed picking Bethany up from school. And someone tripped the alarm system on my property. We didn’t see anything on the security camera footage, but I decided to get Bethany out of there. It was very short notice, and her school is still in session but they have this end-of-year internship requirement. She has to shadow someone at their job and write up a report. I’ve set it up for her to hang around Captain Kilman. He’s the captain of the Sea Majesty.”

  “Sounds perfect,” Vincent ventured.

  Daugherty’s face fell. “You’d think. Well, she had arranged an interview with a veterinarian and she was furious with me for putting the kibosh on that. She blames me for the divorce and yeah, I’m gone a lot. And I know my ex talks a lot of trash about me. Absentee father, all that.”

  Cat nodded. “Father-daughter issues are tough. I have some.” She slid a glance toward Vincent. Her late father, Bob Reynolds, had spearheaded Muirfield, the project that had turned Vincent into a beast. Reynolds had gotten her mother pregnant with her but they had broken up before they’d realized it. Cat had only learned of all of this when the man who had raised her lay dying and she had been unable to serve as a blood donor for him because they had no matching biological markers.

  Daugherty beamed at Cat. “I figured there was some reason she let you in. She’s a brick wall, that one. So Milano will walk you down to visit Sprinkles and then he’ll stick around outside your suite. Don’t tell Bethany. She hates having a bodyguard.”

  “Got it.” Cat and Vincent nodded at each other and then at him. If that was the only stipulation required to make it possible for Bethany to spend the evening with them, they were all for it.

  “I’m ready,” Bethany announced. She appeared in a T-shirt advertising a heavy metal band and leggings. She had on blac
k mary janes. Her hair hung in her face and she had reapplied her heavy eyeliner. Ignoring her father, she walked up to Cat and Vincent. “Let’s go.”

  They walked out of the suite and headed for the stairs. She said, “Did you check the room service menu? Do they have vegetarian pizza? Because I don’t eat meat.”

  Cat glanced at Vincent. “Well, your father said he would send your dinner over—”

  She stopped walking. “No way!” she cried. “Does he have to mess up everything? I just want pizza.”

  “Maybe he’ll send over pizza,” Vincent said reasonably.

  “Maurice went to the Cordon Bleu, that stupid French cooking school,” she said. “It’ll be something unpronounceable and it will taste like gorgonzola cheese.” She looked miserable.

  “Tell you what,” Cat began, “you and I will go see Sprinkles and Vincent will get some pizzas for us from the Italian restaurant they have on board. What’s it called? Villa something?”

  Her face shone. She looked so young and excited. Cat wondered if she was accustomed to pouting and throwing tantrums because that was the only way she knew to assert herself.

  “Villa Capri,” Vincent said. “I’ll get a large vegetarian and a large meat-lovers.” He eyed Bethany. “You look like a popcorn kind of person. And maybe… Twizzlers?”

  “Yes!” she cried. “And Jolly Ranchers if they have them.”

  “Got it. You have a soda preference?”

  “Diet root beer.”

  Vincent smiled. “Okay. See you guys in a bit.” He gave Cat a peck on the cheek and headed off.

  “This is going to be amazing,” Bethany said, and Cat’s heart broke a little for her. Then she remembered that this poor little rich girl had manipulated her into a showdown with her bodyguard. Better to tread carefully in case the path was planted with land mines.

  Bethany showed Cat where the elevator was and they went straight down to the fourth deck. The girl’s mouth curved into that same secretive smile and Cat pictured Milano racing down ten decks’ worth of stairs to keep up with them. Barking and baying signaled that they had reached the ship’s kennel. The air was stuffy and three dog crates seemed to have been wedged into a corner where nothing else would fit. Cat still didn’t understand why the wealthy passengers couldn’t keep their dogs in their rooms. Especially since one of them was a Shih Tzu dressed in a rainbow of satin bows.