Hoax

by C. L. Stone

  We left the coveralls on, just in case we were caught. Maybe we’d be mistaken for crew fooling around. I took the hard hat and hearing protection off.

  He crawled in next to me, closing a thin curtain that gave a small bit of privacy. It was a tight fit, but with my back against the wall, it was comfortable enough.

  “How do you know they won’t look for us here?” I whispered.

  He brought a finger to my lips, silencing me.

  “Trust me,” he whispered.

  He turned onto his side and faced me, his wide body easily hiding me. I turned toward the wall.

  His hand rested on my hip.

  He kissed the back of my head.

  “Raven,” I whispered.

  He said nothing, but his hand drifted up to my waist, warming me.

  I took his hand, drawing him in, meaning to pull him into my back for warmth, but ended up putting his hand on my breast.

  Worked for me. It was oddly calming and comfortable. I covered his hand with mine, just holding it against me.

  He tucked his other arm under my head, providing extra support, and held me like that.

  “Little thief,” he whispered against the back of my head. “My mushka.”

  With his warm, strong body behind me, his comforting hold, it was hard to be angry with him for throwing me over. I still thought he could have gotten us off the boat, or found another way, but he’d thought he had no choice and I accepted that. That he’d tried to save us.

  He has his own moral code, Axel had said. Sometimes even he didn’t understand it.

  I wasn’t sure I ever would, either, but I wanted to.

  ♠♠♠♠♠♠

  I slept deeply. So did he, although we flipped around inside the small, contained space.

  He got up once to get a bottle of water and some cellophane-wrapped muffins. He was back so quickly, I suspected he’d stolen them from someone’s stash.

  Sometime during the night, we woke up hungry and split the muffins, careful to not drop crumbs on the bed. Once we were done, we went back to sleep.

  I took aspirin around every four hours because the headache kept returning through the night, waking me up.

  We listened when anyone came into the room, but we must have ended up in the quiet cabin. People came in and went to bed, or grabbed something and left the room. We remained dead still when other people entered. Nothing else. No one bothered us.

  Still, I didn’t feel safe. Every time someone entered the room, I anticipated one of them would pull back the curtain.

  The way Raven tensed next to me made me realize he did, too.

  When the room was clear in the morning, Raven drew back the curtain and jumped out. He reached for me, pulling me down.

  My headache had eventually cleared up, which Raven said was a good sign. If I’d woken up with it when it was time to go, he’d have had to take me back to the doctor.

  The spot where I’d been hit was still sensitive when I touched it, but I could skip the aspirin.

  “We shouldn’t have slept for so long,” I said.

  “You did,” he said, “I didn’t.”

  I glared at him. “You were here the whole time.”

  He smirked. “Only at first. I’ve been up and down for a while now. You slept pretty hard.”

  Crap. “You shouldn’t have gone out alone.”

  He pushed a finger toward my lips again and nudged me toward the door.

  “Time to go, little thief.”

  The Cold Room

  When we were alone in an empty hallway, I said, “I think we should start with Sam.”

  “I’ve been checking in with him. He doesn’t have Blake, at least I don’t think so. I’ve been hinting around to see if he had someone stored away, and he doesn’t seem to. Security doesn’t appear to be looking for him, only her. The girl they don’t recognize who was hanging around the spa.”

  “Me dressed up,” I said.

  “So technically they’re looking for you.”

  I wasn’t sure what time it was, but Raven told me guests had been permitted out of their rooms.

  We arrived at an intersection. Raven checked out the options and headed right.

  After a few turns, I realized we were still on the spa side of deck two. Raven took another hallway and I caught a whiff of nail polish.

  Raven poked his head into open doors along the hall, especially as voices echoed to us. He told me he was not just heading somewhere, but also scouting potential hiding spots for later.

  The first time someone came into the same hallway, I hid behind Raven, head down.

  When they disappeared, Raven turned to me. “Don’t do that. You look like you’re hiding.”

  Whoops.

  “Keep your head up,” he said. “Just don’t look at anyone for too long.”

  Still, the hallways were narrow, and I fell behind him naturally as people passed because we needed to make room. I kept my head up, though, looking once in someone’s direction and then at Raven and at things we passed by, like doors. I only got brief looks at the people we walked past. No one I recognized. No one even looked at us too long. We weren’t just crew. We were maintenance. Invisible. The earmuffs helped some as I wore them around my neck, giving some cover to my face since they were pretty big.

  One more turn and we were in what I recognized as the main hallway for the spa. The front desk was ahead of us. I knew there was a camera looking into the lobby and where it was.

  Raven went close to the desk, just out of view of where the camera would be looking. He waved to a girl working the counter, avoiding the camera, but anyone in the waiting room would probably think we were just trying to stay out of the way.

  I could hear people behind the various walls separating sections of the spa. There was one person out on the sundeck, wearing a robe with a towel wrapped around her hair. No one familiar.

  The spa receptionist was short and Asian. She noted Raven, and when she was finished dealing with a customer, she walked up to speak to him. She only briefly looked at me. Uninterested.

  “It’s about time someone came up here,” she said. “The ice room isn’t working again. How hard is it to keep a room cold?”

  Who would want a cold room?

  “On it,” Raven said, giving her a salute. “By the way, Sam said he was looking for someone?”

  She raised an eyebrow. “Yeah. Did you see something?”

  “Maybe,” he said. “Can he come down?”

  She nodded. The phone rang, and she waved him off. She pointed to the hall opposite the one we were standing in. “Last door on the left.”

  Raven grabbed my wrist and tugged once, encouraging me to follow.

  I did and kept my head tilted, looking at the desk. Just in case security could recognize me, I wanted to make sure to hide my face.

  We crossed through into the other hallway. This one had the relaxing flute and piano music playing a little louder. There was more bubbling, too, like water fountains.

  We passed some rooms with signs indicating they were massage rooms.

  I tried not to listen too closely to what was going on in those rooms.

  When we got to the end of the hallway, the white walls were replaced with glass ones. There was a sauna, something called a salt room, and on the left at the end was the ice room.

  Stepping in, it looked just like the sauna, except the benches were stone, and it was already a little chilly. The music was piped in, though it was soft in the background. There was a mosaic made to look like ice crystals in the tile on floor. Plastic white crystals jutted out from the corners.

  It was cool, like the air conditioner had been left on all night. This wasn’t cold enough? Why didn’t they just install a walk-in freezer and put a stone bench inside that?

  I had to hold my tongue just to stop myself from asking Raven why on earth people paid for the craziest things, like cold rooms.

 
He looked around and found a panel cut into the wall near the benches. He pulled a pocketknife out from his coveralls pocket and used it to open the panel.

  As he peered inside, I knelt next to him, not seeing much over his shoulder other than shadows. “Are we really going to fix this?”

  “Don’t talk,” he said.

  I pressed my lips together.

  He used the pocketknife to point inside the exposed controls, tapping the knife on the meter, the thermostat, the pipes, and other things that I knew nothing about. “Pretend you know what you are doing,” he said. He handed me the knife. “Unscrew something. If someone comes in, look once, go back to fixing.”

  I was going to kill myself sticking a pocketknife in places I probably shouldn’t. But then, I was holding a pocketknife. At least I had that in case we got discovered and things went south.

  I was looking for something to unscrew when the door to the room opened.

  I timed looking over my shoulder for when it sounded like whoever was coming in was inside the room. I kept my hands inside the opening in the wall and peered over my shoulder, allowing the earmuffs to mask part of my face.

  It was Sam. He had on a permanent bitch face, his blond hair smoothed back with way too much product. He wore all black like the crew, but with a thin tie and high-collared shirt.

  Behind Sam, still in the hall, was a brute of a guy. Obviously Sam’s henchman. He kept his back to the door, scouting the hallway.

  There was also something in Sam’s pocket. It was something familiar. The outline of the object had me looking at him much longer than I probably should have. I cursed my concussion. I couldn’t pick out what was in the doctor’s pockets, but I should have been able to, even if I couldn’t exactly remember the color. Only, I couldn’t look at Sam long enough to allow my mind to figure out what it was. Front pockets and back pockets told me something important. I stared at some pipes, hoping at another chance to look.

  I was hiding in plain sight. Marvelous.

  Sam ignored me and raised an eyebrow at Raven. “Raquel said you saw something?”

  “One of those guys you told me to look out for. The tall one with the blue eyes. One of them went inside a storeroom.” Raven told Sam the direction we’d just come from. “He stood in there alone for a few minutes and then left. A little too long. Might be looking to set up a new base camp.”

  Corey had been in that room yesterday and was long gone, or so I hoped.

  “I’ll have someone check it out,” Sam said, but he didn’t sound like he was leaving. I resisted the urge to turn and look at him again. “Do you need to be doing this now? I told all maintenance to be on the lookout. Don’t stir up guests, but we need all areas searched.”

  “We’ve been looking for someone all night.”

  “There’s more people on board than we realized. The Asian girl from yesterday morning is still missing.”

  Was that me in the disguise yesterday?

  “We need to find her and figure out if there’s any more.”

  “We’ll get on it,” Raven said. “But can I ask you something?”

  “Yeah, what?”

  “First, you put the word out to get rid of one girl and one guy. I did that. Now there’s another girl. Am I supposed to get rid of her, too? Should I be getting rid of any of those other people? The blond guy and the black-haired guy with the glasses or any of those people?”

  I wondered if anyone could hear through the walls.

  “Your job is to search the ship, and report back if you find her and who she is with. Nothing else yet, but don’t be surprised. We don’t hang on to trash, we get rid of it.” The door opened again and then his footsteps faded away.

  I looked over just in time to see the back of his head going down the hallway. His goon followed.

  I stopped tinkering with whatever it was, and Raven helped me to put back the panel.

  I was going to say something when Raven tugged me, yanking me out of the cold room.

  When we were out in the hallway, he walked with purpose down a hallway, away from the main spa. He had a place in mind.

  I followed, heart pounding, wishing he’d tell me what he was doing. Keeping up with him was difficult when I couldn’t read his brain.

  Raven backtracked through the ship, and I wasn’t exactly sure of where he was going next until we came up to a familiar door, the storage room we’d left yesterday.

  It was open, and a big guy with a bald head stood inside. More security.

  I hid my mouth behind the earmuffs I had around my neck, avoiding his eyes.

  Raven walked right up to him, leaning against the door. “Nothing?”

  “No,” he said. “Looks like things were knocked over, though. Might be scouting a new spot to crash.”

  “We could camp out here. See if they come back?”

  “I’ll get someone up here,” he said. “But if they’re looking for another hideout like this, then we’ll have to do around-the-clock sweeps. Anywhere they can sit or sleep, we want to keep an eye on.” He grunted. “You were right. Ever since you got rid of the girl, they’ve been scrambling. Killing the head of the snake has them all in a tizzy.”

  I was amused that they thought I was the boss of the crew.

  “I just followed orders,” Raven said, frowning. “I prefer to know who I’m working for, though.”

  “Sam’s your boss unless Sam tells you otherwise. Besides, the situation is only temporary. Once this ship gets back to shore, it’s business as usual. None of our business what this other guy does. Just make sure no one else goes bothering guests, starting rumors.”

  Whoever was telling Sam what to do was making sure everyone kept quiet about his identity.

  Raven nodded once, backed up and headed down the hall.

  “And, hey,” the big bald dummy called after him.

  We both turned.

  He motioned to me but looked at Raven. “Who is he?”

  “Kitchen bitch,” Raven said without hesitation. “Made him come down to help me. Didn’t want to get jumped. That other group has been walking around in pairs.”

  I tried not to snort at what Raven had called me.

  Big dummy nodded and waved him away.

  We hauled ass down a hallway before he could get a second look at me.

  Mechanics

  We couldn’t go bug Sam or any more of the crew for the moment. Calling down Sam with little things, like there might be someone snooping around too much, would draw suspicion, and it was clear they were keeping things quiet. Their goal was to find the girl and possibly kill her. Since “she” wasn’t around anymore, it kept them looking for a ghost, which was better than looking for the real deal.

  Maybe I’d lucked out coming back and getting knocked out. I’d bought us a lot of time.

  So far, it sounded like they didn’t know about Blake having returned. Unfortunately, since I’d triggered a search, Blake was in danger of being found if he wasn’t careful.

  Since Blake wasn’t with Sam, and the guys were likely searching public and perhaps staff areas, Raven and I searched the engine room. It was a big open space with lots of loud machines and we really did need the earmuffs. No one looked twice at us since everyone was wearing the same thing. It helped that down there, we needed safety goggles as well.

  There were lots of storage closets, catwalks, and large machines and pipes to look around.

  We did this for a few hours, and every so often we pretended to be pushing buttons, studying some meters, or sorting through a few tools.

  Occasionally, Bald Dummy and some other crew in black came down, looked down their noses at the maintenance team, and asked Raven if he’d seen anything.

  “Nothing new,” Raven said each time.

  I was wondering if Bald Dummy was the guy who’d knocked me out—something about him gave me the feeling he was.

  We searched all over and then backtracked through the area. No B
lake. No one else on our team down here.

  “Why are we still down here?” I asked. “We’ve searched this area. Shouldn’t we be looking upstairs?”

  Raven had his head inside an opening where he’d removed a wall panel. The panel was low, so he had to be on his back and slide in, like he was looking under a car. “Everyone else is upstairs. People keep coming down to check for updates. Means nothing is happening.”

  “You didn’t tell me you told them you killed me.”

  He scooted out on his back, looking up at my face, an eyebrow raised. “Yes, I did.”

  Had he told me he’d said so? I frowned and scratched my eyebrow. “This concussion sucks. I forget things sometimes. Who all did you tell…? Wait, didn’t you talk to Tara and Mr. Smith and—”

  “Shh,” he said, looking down his body toward the open area of the large engine room and then back at me. He stuck his head into the wall opening again. “Remind me to teach you Russian so we can talk without being overheard.”

  I folded my arms, leaning against the wall he was looking in. “But did you?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “I passed along a message, saying Sam took care of everything. I thought one of them might be the investor, but then Sam was pissed I went to talk to them without him.”

  “I would think Sam would be okay with someone else doing his dirty work.”

  “He doesn’t like me, doesn’t trust me, but clearly, I got the job done, so he’s assuming I’m on his side, at least for now. The only problem is, I can’t get him to say much more. He’s keeping me out.”

  “We could just hold him at gunpoint and ask directly,” I said, nudging his hip with my foot.

  His hand shot out, catching me by the ankle. He held on as he scooted himself out of the wall again, looking up at me with those big brown eyes. He was usually so punk with his lip ring and tattoos. In the jumpsuit and with his hair brushed down, he looked so blue-collar—not a bad look for him, just different.

  “Last resort. So far, so good. At least they aren’t directly looking for him. If they’re coming down here like clockwork, that means they haven’t found anything of interest to us.”