Hoax

by C. L. Stone

  I couldn’t find Brandon anywhere, but I did find Corey. The only way I could tell the difference between him and his brother was remembering what Brandon had been wearing. I also knew that that Brandon was probably remaining hidden for now until he could get back here.

  Corey, however, was in a public area, wearing another geek shirt and shorts. He was pretending to read on a bench, his eyes darting up every so often. I clicked on his video feed, trying to see what he might be watching. Had he found Raven? Whoever he was watching, the camera was at the wrong angle to show me.

  I also found Tara Ward. She spoke with a couple of older gentlemen who had brought a little ankle-biter dog. She cooed at the dog and then left them and went to the pool. She wore a sundress and shades. She stretched herself out on a lounger and pulled a book from her bag to read.

  She seemed relaxed. Oddly relaxed. Yesterday she had been dead set on finding old Mr. Murdock. Today she seemed at ease. Had she thrown me overboard? Did she think she had gotten rid of her competition?

  Wait, we’d just figured out the guy who’d thrown me over, hadn’t we? We knew who he was, at least.

  My stomach growled. Maybe my lack of focus was because I was hungry.

  Marc eventually came over and took Liam’s chair. He sat beside me, and once he was done playing telephone check-in with everyone, he set the mic aside. He put the control pad in his lap, leaning back in the chair.

  “If I get someone to bring food up, do you want some? I haven’t eaten yet and could use some coffee. The coffee hasn’t been too bad so far. Kind of weak, but drinkable.”

  “I’d kill for a hamburger,” I said. I looked for the time, but the videos didn’t have time stamps, or if they did, I didn’t know the button to push to bring them up. I shook the mouse around the screen, clicking, but it wouldn’t bring up a task bar. Doyle must have had it set up so I couldn’t break whatever program was running. “Is it noon yet? Time for lunch?”

  “Not noon yet, but I’m sure the kitchen can make a hamburger.” He put a request in on the line, asking Avery to bring up some food for us.

  When he was done, he put the keypad down again and leaned back, stretching, his broad shoulders tightening the shirt across his chest. He looked down at his clothes, unbuttoned his shirt and took it off. He wore a black T-shirt underneath, which he untucked it from his pants. “I don’t need this right now,” he said, picking up the shirt he’d removed. He crumpled it into a ball and tossed it into Doyle’s cot.

  While the tight shirt revealed the dimensions of his chest and abdomen, I pictured the skin underneath, the scars from his bad boy past. He’d been in a gang but had gotten out and now worked for the good guys. He still carried that devil-may-care smirk and could always tell when I told a lie.

  Thinking of his marked skin reminded me that his knee was also scarred, and that had come from me. Like I’d done to Blake, I’d shot him in the leg, only with a nail instead of a bullet. I’d forever feel guilty about that.

  It had been a completely reckless moment.

  Those were a bad habit for me.

  So was getting distracted. I turned my head to focus on the monitors. I kept Corey’s image enlarged to keep an eye on him as I hunted on the two other monitors for more of our people. “Once Brandon gets here, are you going to stay?” I asked.

  “Someone has to make sure you don’t go running around,” he said with a smile. “Apparently Brandon can’t.”

  “It’s a minor concussion,” I said. “He said to rest, not to keep myself contained to a bed. I don’t need to be babied.”

  “You hurt your brain,” he said. “And he did say to keep yourself in bed as much as possible, especially right now. Seems like it’s already hurting your memory. There’s no way we can send you out for anything anyway. Your judgment was already shitty as all hell.” He chuckled and then leaned over, making his mismatched eyes big and showing me a coy smile. “I can’t imagine where it might be at now.”

  I rolled my eyes, but that caused a flash of pain in my head. I closed my eyes and covered them with my palms. “Be serious.”

  “This is serious. Any more excessive shaking around, and you could get some serious brain damage. You know, more than normal.”

  It frustrated me he was making jokes, but I was angrier that he was right. It kind of scared me that I had failed the doctor’s memory tests and that I couldn’t remember why I felt Marc should be angry with me.

  I aimed a fist at his knee, intending to punch, but just a little.

  He dodged and then went to chop me on the head, made light contact with my scalp, and then stopped and dropped his hand, his mouth falling open. “Oh shit,” he said and leaned in, dropping the keypad on the floor as he hovered over my head, examining where he had touched me. “Did I hit you? I’m sorry. It’s a habit…”

  “Stop,” I said, swatting away his hands. It was bugging me more that he was babying me. “You didn’t do anything.”

  He sighed and then bent to pick up his keypad. “Let me sit on my hands so I don’t try again.”

  “You don’t have to baby me,” I said.

  “You just said that. I get it.”

  Had I said it twice? I pressed fingers to the bridge of my nose, squeezing. “Is this normal?”

  “It’s one of a few symptoms you might experience. You really, really need to be careful right now. Any further damage to your brain could be fatal, or make this memory issue permanent. The doctor said bedrest and sun-lounging were the only things you should be doing. Obviously, we can’t allow you to go out and sunbathe unless it’s on a private balcony. You probably should go back to Fancy’s…”

  “Nope,” I said quickly.

  “Figured you’d want to come here instead.”

  Not like I could be of any help anywhere else. Hiding wasn’t my forte.

  I tapped my fingers on the table, noticing my fingernails were kind of long and some were ragged. “If we can’t get out there and kick some ass, then we could at least do something.”

  “You can do whatever you want within this room,” Marc said. “Or I’ll go fetch you whatever. How about a movie on a laptop? Or a book to read?”

  I waved my hand at him in refusal. I still had the USB key and Brandon’s phone, so I pulled those out of my pockets. “We did collect some data from the spa. Did you not get a copy of the files on that computer before? He had me use this USB thingie…”

  Marc took the USB drive from my hands and examined it. “Yeah, I got a copy before. The spa computer isn’t connected to the ship’s computers except once a day. And then it’s just to upload the financial transactions, not everything. I’m wondering if Sam didn’t have it rigged like that for some reason.” He got up, putting the headset on his head and clipping the keypad to his belt loop. He searched the shelves for a laptop, selected one, and pulled it down.

  “So why did Brandon want to get another copy?” I asked.

  He took the USB key, slid it into the laptop port and waited for it to load. “Sometimes you can see if they did anything different from the day before. It might tell us how things are operating down there without having to stick our neck out like Raven.”

  “Raven…” I said, and something bugged me about it. I snapped my fingers and sat up. “We’ve got the goon who threw over Blake and me, right? We’re just watching and waiting for a chance to catch him?”

  “This goon is most likely the one who knocked Blake out in the first place,” Marc said. “We’ll see if he or his friends try following Brandon, or maybe they’ll even try to throw him over.”

  “So is Raven not the prime suspect anymore?”

  “He’s not totally in the clear yet,” Marc said. “We only know this guard knocked you out. We don’t know for sure if he threw you over or how many of his buddies are involved. It does look better for Raven, though.” Sighing, he looked up from the laptop, and focused on me. “I just wish he’d let us know if he’s still here. I feel lik
e he is. If he got thrown over, he’d be in contact by now.”

  He’d be back with guns blazing if anyone had managed to throw him over. Subtle wasn’t exactly his forte.

  Knowing that made me more nervous about not hearing from him.

  Marc shifted his chair to sit very close to me, allowing me to look at his screen while he checked the USB drive.

  I could only look over at what he was doing every couple of minutes, as I was watching the monitors. I still had Corey loaded up, and was watching for anyone else.

  Marc went through the files. He was quiet for a long time, his eyes on the spreadsheets and other data he was sifting through.

  I studied his face. He seemed alert, not totally angry or frustrated like I was feeling.

  Wasn’t he mad at Blake? Or was I mad at Blake? Where was Blake?

  I blinked rapidly, trying to remember. Failing.

  I needed food. Maybe a nap. I needed to get my brain working again. I tapped on the desk, irritated when I realized I could be seeing all kinds of stuff on the monitors but wouldn’t be able to remember enough of it.

  I clicked randomly on different videos, hoping if I’d missed anything, maybe I’d catch it a second time and could alert Marc. Something told me it was unlikely. I’d probably been given this job because they didn’t expect much to happen just now. Why else would they have me sitting here?

  “I still don’t see how this attack on me, or even throwing me over, is connected to the accounts I was supposed to be investigating,” I said.

  “Might be nothing.”

  “Huh?”

  “There’s no telling if you being tossed over had anything at all to do with that,” he said, his eyes critical as he scanned the account books on the laptop. “If Sam and his people were worried we were suspicious of their prostitution ring, attacking you and Blake might have simply been sending clear warnings to back off. That’s all.”

  I twisted back and forth in the office chair, restless. “Why are we working so hard on this?”

  “Because someone threw you overboard.” He lifted his mismatched eyes to watch me swivel in the chair. “Remember? With Coaltar? You do remember that part, right?”

  “Blake,” I grumbled, tired of hearing his last name said like a suspect instead of someone we were working with. “His name is Blake.”

  The corner of Marc’s mouth twitched. “Blake,” he repeated slowly, then continued at his normal pace. “He watched Mr. Smith give Sam money, remember?”

  “Yup. Yesterday.”

  “He followed Sam to the spa, right?”

  “Yes. Also yesterday.”

  “And he got knocked out.”

  “Right.”

  “So you just went down there, looked at the exact same thing, and you got knocked out. Only this time, we were there to see who it was. Case mostly closed.”

  “So why are we following him?”

  He glanced back at his laptop and then looked at me. “Because it takes more than one to run prostitution out of the spa. Really not our area at all, but criminals will do anything to save their own skins. I could have turned a blind eye to prostitution, you know, as long as the girls are volunteers and not being forced, but now we’re going to have to shut them down. Who knows how many other people they’ve knocked out or tossed overboard?”

  “But why knock Blake out and then later that night throw him over?”

  “Who knows,” he said. “He could have wanted to wait until it was dark. They can only drag an unconscious body so far without too many questions being asked. Blake was just a little too nosy. So were you. They might look for ‘you’ and Brandon later to toss you over, just like before. We have to wait and see if they do.”

  It made sense. “Do you think any of this money they make in the spa is connected with those secret funds? Old Mr. Murdock allows prostitution on his ship and gets a cut?”

  “It might be part of it, but what he’d make would be chump change. You’d make more running legit cruises out of ports. Mr. Murdock might have allowed it just for people like Mr. Smith. Keeps guys like that happy.”

  “So what’s left to do?”

  He returned his gaze back to the laptop. “We’ll have to wait to see if that goon tries to toss Brandon over after dark. We’ll set it up so we can get to Brandon before he takes a swim. Now that we’re on to this guy, it’s just a matter of collecting the evidence to prosecute. Catch him in the act, collect a bit more evidence, and then we send it to a team that can take it from there. Not us. Not our thing.”

  I gasped, staring at him with wild eyes. “We walk away? You’re telling me we do nothing?”

  He raised an eyebrow. “What else did you want?”

  “To kick his ass.”

  The coy smile returned. “Love your attitude, but we become less credible to authorities if we go busting in on people. Best to collect the right info and present it to people who can stop them.”

  “We can stop them.”

  “We’ve done our job. Well, almost. It’s almost done.”

  “It doesn’t make sense,” I said, watching as one of the video feeds changed and Doyle appeared. He’d gone up to the pool deck and was sipping a drink while openly watching girls in the pool. “I hadn’t been watching the spa before. There was no reason to throw me over.”

  His eyes darkened. “I know.”

  “And he snapped off my bands.”

  “I know that, too.”

  “Why take those?”

  He frowned and reached to scratch his knee, where I knew his gnarly scar was. “I don’t know.”

  I sat back, folding my arms over my chest. “I don’t think this is over.”

  “No way to tell except watch this guy and see what he does,” Marc said, shaking his head. He reached up, combing some of the longer brown locks of hair away from his eyes. “Warning someone off with a Taser is different from trying to kill someone by throwing them overboard. That’s noticeable.”

  “Throwing someone overboard is a weird way to try to kill someone,” I said. “There wasn’t any guarantee that we’d die.”

  “Outright murder would attract too much attention.”

  “Wouldn’t a report of a missing person attract attention? He had no idea who Blake was. A wealthy person disappearing at sea would be news.”

  “If he’s working with security, they could cover up a missing person or death. But you and I have to back off and let proper police handle it after a point.”

  It still didn’t make sense to me, and I still didn’t like the idea of handing everything over to someone else at the end.

  “Don’t be bummed,” he said, reaching to pat me on the shoulder. “We’re narrowing the list—we’re doing important work. But if you’re looking for something to make sense, then we may never find that. Closure doesn’t always happen for us.” He put the laptop away and then picked up Brandon’s cell phone. “Is there more on here?”

  “Just the schedule book. Pictures of the physical one on the desk.”

  “I took pictures of that already,” Marc said and then flipped the phone over, turning on the screen. “But we can compare to see if…there’s…diff…” He paused.

  His eyes glowed with the light from the phone, darting up to the monitors and then back to the phone.

  “What?” I asked.

  “It’s…nothing,” he said, scrolling through the phone with his thumb.

  “The pictures?” I said, before I even consciously remembered Brandon had pictures of me on his phone.

  “Hmm,” he said, staring down intently at the phone.

  I didn’t want to skirt around any more issues. “Okay. Tell me.” I stretched my legs out, crossing them at the ankles.

  He lifted his head, eyebrow arching as he looked at me. “Huh?”

  “Ever since I’ve been back, you, Axel, and Brandon have been beyond nice to me.”

  He smirked. “Uh…was I not supposed to be nic
e?”

  “You could be honest,” I said. “I tell all of you how I don’t want to be exclusive. Then I get thrown overboard, and… no one wants to say anything about it? Like I can’t handle it or something. Here you are, looking at pictures Brandon took of me and…”

  His mouth opened and surprise flooded his face as he glanced back down at the phone. “What pictures?”

  Oops. Oh well. “Erm, the ones on his phone I thought you were looking at.”

  He checked the phone again, finding the photos and then examining them. “Huh,” was all he said.

  He kept looking, but said nothing.

  I rolled my head back and then almost fell out of the chair as it made me a little dizzy. The medicine was doing something to my balance. I sat up and straightened, pulling myself close to the table to balance myself. “I don’t understand any of you.”

  “You’ve never met anyone like us, Bambi.”

  I shot him a look, assuming he was teasing.

  But his lips were set, jaw firm. He was dead serious. “What did you think we’d do? Kill each other? Set you on fire?”

  Something like that. “Yes.”

  He twisted the chair around and then reached for mine, rolling me until our knees met and he faced me head-on.

  “I have to watch the monitors,” I said, my arms across my chest, looking away from him.

  “Fuck the monitors for a second, they’re being recorded.” He pulled my chair closer until his knees were on either side of mine. He leaned in. “Didn’t I promise you that you’d be okay? Didn’t I tell you that you were in with us for good?”

  I tightened my arms around my body. I felt like a petulant child, but this was way beyond knocking over the cookie jar. And yet they were telling me it wasn’t a big deal.

  “I kissed you,” I said, trying to be as blunt as possible. I wanted to shock him into being upset about it. “I kissed Brandon and Raven and Axel. I let it happen, and I didn’t say anything.”

  “You can tell me anything you want,” he said, his voice getting louder over the hum of the computers. “Yeah, I was hoping for a relationship with you, and still am…” His face turned red, his hands clenching the arms of my chair. “Goddamn it.”