Hoax

by C. L. Stone

  My body stiffened, and my nerves wound tight. I waited for my world to fall apart.

  Liam had concerned himself with the other guys and how they would handle things. He hadn’t considered that I might not be able to take hearing a rejection from any of them.

  Memories flooded through me in those few seconds. I pictured Brandon with me in the trunk of a car, hearing his desperate voice. How could I put him through this, after what we’d been through together? I was suddenly sure I’d done something horribly wrong sending Liam and Axel to tell them everything.

  He looked right at me, then at Blake, then back to me before he straightened and looked away. It was a simple glance, dismissing me without any interest at all as he passed me and headed toward Fancy’s door.

  I nearly fell to pieces at the rejection, at how easily he had dismissed me. But then I realized he must not have recognized me.

  At least the outfit worked. “Brandon,” I whispered, afraid to talk too loudly.

  I didn’t want him to get his head blown off by waking Fancy up.

  Brandon stopped just short of her door and then slowly pivoted on his heels, staring down the hallway at me. He had dark circles under his eyes, like everyone else I’d seen so far.

  I gestured for him to come closer.

  “I guess he’s here for you,” Blake whispered in my ear. “Best if I scoot along.” He started down the hallway, away from Brandon, before I could answer him. He walked tall, looking back at me and silently telling me to call him back if I needed him.

  I didn’t blame him for leaving. Brandon had a knack for lashing out at Blake. If Brandon had talked with Axel, he knew everything and had agreed to not make trouble; I didn’t think it was wise to agitate his feelings.

  I turned toward him.

  He slowly approached me with a questioning tilt of his head. His eyes weren’t angry at the moment, but sad, confused. “Uh…”

  “It’s me,” I said, looking at him full-on as he got closer. My heart pounded and I hid my shaking hands behind my back. I should trust him, no matter how he felt about me.

  Seeing him up close, he was still Brandon, the guy who had saved me so many times. The guy I had saved from dying. I wanted to be calm and readied myself to hear him say what I thought would be the worst: that he was not interested.

  His eyes scanned me, and slowly his lips parted, until his mouth was hanging open. “My God, it is you…” He breathed heavily and lifted his arms, reaching for me. His eyes were wide, and a concerned expression crossed his face. He paused just short of touching my shoulder, rubbing his thumb against two fingers. “I can’t believe…I mean, I knew you were back, and I was coming down to see you, but…you don’t look like you.”

  I didn’t move, not daring to. I wanted to hug him, to hold him, but I kept my distance. I needed to let him come to me, and not push for attention or answers, even though waiting was almost unbearable.

  I thought lightening the mood would make it easier to talk. “Better, right?” I grinned, trying to make it obvious I was joking.

  “No,” he said, still serious. “It’s not you. I mean…” He withdrew his arm and reached up to his hair, running his fingers through it, then pressing a palm to his forehead. “I’m sorry. I don’t know what I’m supposed to do right now.” His eyes fell to the floor.

  My heart dropped when he pulled away. “What’s wrong?” I asked, suddenly worried something else had happened. Had he actually talked to Axel and Liam?

  He pressed his lips together and then frowned at me before darting his eyes around the hallway. “Please don’t take this wrong. I don’t think we can talk about it here.”

  He looked so serious; I dreaded finding a spot to talk privately. I didn’t want to hear his rejection. As much as I was dying on the inside, hearing the words would be too much.

  But we couldn’t stand there in the hallway any longer, so I motioned for him to follow. I’d planned to go to the sundeck anyway. I wasn’t sure how I’d focus if he was nearby.

  There were no questions as to where we were going. No redirecting me. I took the lead, and he followed.

  I hadn’t expected that. I had expected Brandon to bark orders, to tell me I was taking too many risks. I’d expected a fight.

  Without passing anyone else in the deserted hallway, we stepped into the elevator, and I pushed the button that would take us to the right deck.

  The elevator stopped before we got to the right level, and the doors opened. I held my breath, edging closer to Brandon.

  He turned completely, looking right at my face.

  He was hiding. Did he need to get some makeup and another outfit? What had happened while I was gone?

  I didn’t recognize anyone coming onto the elevator but couldn’t tell if Brandon knew them. They talked about the shopping level and the comedy show later that afternoon. They offered us a “good morning” and quickly dismissed us after I smiled politely and then shyly looked at my feet. I tried to look pleased to be there, but just not talkative.

  They didn’t show any interest in us beyond the greeting, but Brandon still didn’t face them.

  A few minutes later, we reached our deck. Brandon and I quietly exited through the crowd of people waiting to get on after we got out.

  The sudden bustle of being on a populated floor shook up my senses. It had been so quiet for so long, and I was suddenly hypersensitive to noise: loud talking and laughing, music playing from overhead speakers. Ice clinking in glasses as people carried beverages. People walking around shuffling their shoes along the blue carpet.

  Everyone here was either on vacation or part of the crew. I felt like I was traveling in my own universe, and no one could see the shadowy underworld I could see. I scanned faces for someone I recognized, but they blurred by, and no one seemed familiar.

  All of the guests were part of Murdock’s empire. Not all were innocent. We’d only scratched the surface.

  I focused on what I was there to do. It took me a few wrong turns to find the area where I’d been thrown over. Luckily, it was a small sunning deck a good way away from the popular pools. It was empty when we arrived.

  The sun was out, and the day was warming, but there was still a November breeze blowing over us as the ship cruised on. I couldn’t see any land, so either we were way far out, or it was on the other side of the ship. Were we moving? I couldn’t feel it, and there was no reference landmark to tell me if we were.

  The rail attracted my attention, and as I looked at it, panic threaded through me. Maybe Blake was right about not coming back here. If Brandon wanted to talk, maybe this wasn’t the right spot for it.

  “Why are we here?” Brandon asked. He stayed by the door, his eyes looking over the deck and then at me. “Is something wrong?”

  I was going to answer him, but then became distracted when I heard voices in the hallway. I stared at the door until the voices moved on. “Just give me a couple minutes,” I said.

  There was rust along part of the door, and there were spots where paint had been reapplied, but mismatched the older paint of the ship. Nothing of interest stood out to me. I looked at the small grooves where the wall met the decking and got on my knees, checking the corners, the flooring.

  Minutes passed as I looked around, and every little second seemed like eons while I waited for him to say something.

  Yell at me. Tell me you know and you don’t like what’s going on. Break things off cleanly. Don’t just stand there and look at me!

  I couldn’t stand it. I ground my teeth and focused on looking around, too wound up to talk. I got to work checking the blue outdoor lounge chairs that had been stacked and pushed to the far side of the deck.

  When I was on my knees checking underneath the deck chairs, he came up behind me, watching. “What are you looking for?”

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  He folded his sleeves up past his wrists. The lightweight sweater was very loose, and the fol
ds eventually kept falling until finally he gave up.

  “Clues?” he asked. “Are you playing spy and looking for clues?”

  I gave him the side-eye. “You’re not supposed to use the spy word.”

  A small smirk. He hadn’t totally lost his sense of humor. “I don’t understand you. We’ve been all over this place.”

  “Have you?” I asked. “This morning, since the sun’s been up? Or just last night?”

  He furrowed his eyebrows. “We checked with flashlights last night, right after it happened.”

  I pointed to the floorboards. “There’s smudges from different shoes along this balcony.” I stepped toward him, pointing again to another part of the floor. “There’s a scuff mark over there, closer to the rail.”

  I went to the rail, examining the space. I leaned toward it and then reached out, dusting the rail with my fingertips. A hair drew my notice and I lifted it gingerly. It looked like mine, but could I be sure? The wind blew stronger here. It was a miracle at all that it had caught on a small bump in the rail and hadn’t blown away.

  “You’re not going to find some magical shoe print,” he said, raising his hands, palms facing me, as he approached and inched closer to me. “This isn’t like the crime shows.”

  I spun and held the single hair out to him. “What if this is from whoever threw me over?”

  He glanced at my fingers and then smirked again. “That looks like yours.”

  “Maybe, or maybe not. If I left one behind, the person who threw it over might have left a hair around here somewhere, too. Shouldn’t we collect them?”

  “Right,” he said. “There might be hair. The problem is, this door wasn’t locked all night. It was also unlocked all day yesterday, and hundreds of people could have been here prior to you being here. I’ve been here a few times. Mine could be here.”

  I winced, dropping the hair. “I’m trying to find some answers,” I said.

  Some of the old Brandon anger bubbled up, and he lowered his hands and made fists. “And I’m trying to tell you that your crime scene has already been compromised, and your data is going to be useless at this point. Besides, we don’t exactly carry DNA-testing equipment around with us. There’s no way for us to identify stuff like that.”

  I hadn’t considered that, but it irritated me that there could be some answer, right here at our feet, and we weren’t even going to make sure to find it. I groaned. “Whoever it was was here. Shouldn’t you have shut this place down and dusted for fingerprints or…something?”

  He blew a long breath and closed his eyes. “You’re smart, and you’re on the right track, but you’ve got to trust us. Someone would have told you if we found a shoe print or fingerprint. We didn’t find anything. We dusted the door handle, but every print was smudged or not enough of a print to analyze, even if we did send it to a print database.”

  “And there’s no video of the hallway or nearby hallways?”

  “You know this,” he said, baring his teeth as he spoke, frustration in his tone. “The only video access we have is for main public areas. We don’t have the ability to outfit this entire place with cameras. And again, we would have told you if we did see something.”

  I sighed and relaxed my tense shoulders. Where else was I supposed to start? I was a thief, not a detective.

  I stepped backward until my back met the rail, feeling it solid behind me. I glanced over my shoulder at the water lapping against itself, and the ship. I was so far from everything I was familiar with. Out of my depth. Nowhere to really hide from the guys to think.

  How could he stand there and talk to me like nothing had happened between us? After all we’d been through together, he now knew the truth, and he hadn’t said one word. Nothing. How could he not talk to me?

  I sighed. My feelings were so mixed between wanting to save Raven, wanting to punch whoever had thrown me over, and most of all in that moment, wanting Brandon to yell at me like he used to. At least if I got a reaction out of him, I’d know he cared.

  “I don’t know what to do,” I said, my body shaking just saying the words. I was emotionally tugged in so many directions. The longer we didn’t talk, the weirder I felt about being around him, like there was some barrier between us now. I had said I wanted to give him space to think, and not make things weird, but it was weird already.

  “Kayli,” he said softly.

  I pressed my lips together, looking hard at the floor. I couldn’t bring it up; he had to.

  When I finally looked up at him, his blue eyes were distracting, urging me to talk, except I felt I shouldn’t.

  He approached me until we were toe to toe. The move caught me off guard. I met his gaze, wondering what he was thinking.

  “You should start with trying to remember last night,” he said, his voice much calmer now. “Did you tell anyone your side of what happened here yet?”

  I struggled to focus on what he was talking about, then realized he probably thought I was saying I didn’t know what to do because I was worried about Raven.

  Raven. I had to focus. For him.

  I felt I had told Corey about everything that had happened when I’d called him to let him know we were okay. I’d relayed coming in and getting thrown over, but had I gone over any details? So much had happened since last night. I shrugged.

  “I don’t know what you already know.”

  “Here,” he said and lifted his hand, his palm hovering over my eyes, shielding me from the sun. “Close your eyes.”

  “Why?”

  “It was dark, wasn’t it?”

  “Memory is faulty,” I said, trying to avoid thinking about the night before. “I could imagine lots of things that may not have happened. It wouldn’t mean anything.”

  “You might remember something that could be a clue,” he said. He leaned in until he was nose to nose with me. “It might be a start. Close your eyes.”

  I stilled, holding my breath. I wanted to look at him. Everything in my body needed something from him, to know he cared; here he was, the usual sadness on his face. He was steady, and strong, and trying to keep me on track. I was the one breaking down and hurting this investigation.

  Focus, I told myself.

  I closed my eyes like he’d asked, but then as soon as I did, all I could sense was his nearness. I was overcome by a desire to hug him, even just to say I was sorry.

  “How do I know you didn’t do it?” I said in a mocking tone. I knew he had been in the dining room, but I just wanted to make a joke to ease some of the tension.

  “Why would I?” he asked, his voice serious.

  I didn’t want to answer his question. It felt like he was faking ignorance. “What do you want me to do?” I asked.

  “Just think about it,” he said, his breath warming my face. I sensed him hovering close and then he covered my closed eyes with his palm, making it darker. “How tall was he?”

  I heard him, but my heart raced. It was hard to think with him touching me. Didn’t he know it was hard to focus with him so close?

  “We don’t know if it’s a he,” I finally said.

  “Think,” he said. “Remember. You fought him. How tall was he? How big?”

  I searched my memory. “Wide hands,” I said, thinking about the places on my body that he’d touched and grabbed to shove me over. “Pretty strong. He…or she, struggled a little when I fought, but still overpowered me.”

  “Why do you keep suggesting it might be a girl?” he asked. “Did you sense anything feminine? Perfume?”

  I pressed my lips together and then opened my eyes, tilting my head away from his hand. “It felt like a man’s body and hands,” I said. My nerves shook a little, remembering more now: the cold water, the swim. The struggle to keep up with Blake as he practically dragged me to shore. I tried to forget about the water, focusing on the moments that came before. “Fancy was here minutes before I went over. I remember when the door opened; I thought it was her
at first.”

  Brandon dropped his hands to his sides. “But she didn’t do it. She was down the hall. We checked that, too.”

  “I know, but… she was one of the few that knew I had one of those tiny boxes.” I’d been given a localized GPS box, tiny like a bead, that helped Doyle keep track of me on the ship. “Or could have seen me wearing it. She didn’t do it, but whoever did grabbed it off my arm before sending me over.”

  He frowned and stepped away, looking at the stacked chairs. “Maybe it was an accident. Maybe he happened to snag it as he was wrestling with you.”

  “Twice?” I asked. “I was following Blake’s black box signal when I went looking for him.”

  “Did you talk about the tracker box going into the area?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe. Doyle was the one who told me that Blake’s black box was still on the deck. So I stayed to look for it.”

  He turned back to me and, with a hand, blocked the sun over his eyes as he looked at me. “Your attacker might still have been here, or nearby, when you two came in after he threw Blake over. Maybe the first time he didn’t know about Blake’s box, but if you talked about it, he would have learned about it quickly.”

  “I couldn’t see who it was. He didn’t say anything. He was big enough to lift me and throw me over. He had to be strong enough to throw Blake over, too. He came right for me. I struggled, he snapped the thing off my wrist and tossed me over.”

  “Did he do it on purpose? Or was it a result of you fighting back?”

  I remembered the fight. I’d tried to kick, punch, and push. “It seemed deliberate,” I said. “Once he snapped off the cord holding the black box, he lifted me and threw me over.”

  “So he planned to throw you over.”

  I glanced back at the rail, staring at it. “Yeah…” I was slowly getting what he was saying.

  I sensed him stepping closer. His deep voice changed to a softer tone. “So it wasn’t that he came to talk or haul you away. He didn’t come to warn you off. He came right up to you, snapped the thing on your wrist, threw you over and left. He could have shot you and flung you over. He could have choked you and made sure you were dead. He didn’t do that. Sounds like he was powerful enough to choke you out before tossing you, but he didn’t.”