by B. J Daniels
Gigi’s eyes widened. “In the entire Caribbean? Do you have any idea how long that could take?”
She shrugged. “Good thing I’m rich, huh, and have plenty of time.” She and Gigi both had come from wealthy families. She could live on the trust fund her grandmother had set up for her and never need to work a day in her life. Not that she’d ever considered it. She enjoyed working and making her own money. She had never touched a cent of the trust fund. But she would now if she had to.
“What about your job?” her friend asked.
“Darby will either give me the time off or accept my resignation.”
“I wasn’t referring to your bartending job, AJ,” Gigi said impatiently. “You’re a high-powered attorney and your father expects you to join the family business when you’re done doing your thing here.”
“I was a high-powered attorney. And I’ve told you, I don’t want to work for the family business. It isn’t where I belong.”
“Your father might disagree,” her friend pointed out. Gigi had met him so she knew how determined AJ’s father could be.
“You know, I was never going back. I wanted to stay here.” Her voice broke.
“And marry Cyrus. Oh, honey, what if he’s gone?”
She shook her head. “I wouldn’t be feeling the way I do if he was dead. I’m going to find him. As long as it takes. I have to find him. He’s alive and—”
“Wouldn’t we have heard from him if he was alive? If he’d been rescued?”
“Maybe not. Maybe he’s somewhere where he can’t get word out. I just know that I have to look for him. If I did nothing...” AJ shook her head. “I would never forgive myself.”
“Give me a few days and I’ll go with you.”
“Gigi, you have employees waiting for you to get your restaurant open again.” A fire in the building where Gigi had her Houston restaurant had caused fire and water damage. Now that the remodeling was underway it wouldn’t be long before Gigi could get her business going again and her employees back to work. She shook her head. “I appreciate your offer, but I have to do this myself.”
“Promise that you’ll wait and give the trained personnel a chance to find him before you do anything rash.”
AJ smiled at her friend. “Me, do anything rash? That is so not like me.”
“Exactly. Then if he’s not found...”
“I’ll go look for him myself.”
Gigi sighed, clearly seeing that there was nothing she could say to stop her. “Call if you need me. Seriously. I will drop everything if you do.”
She hugged her best friend tightly. They’d been roommates at boarding school and looked enough alike to be sisters. From the moment they’d met, they’d been best friends and had gotten into all kinds of trouble together, AJ usually the ringleader.
“I’ll keep you posted,” AJ promised. “I’ll wait. But if they don’t find him and call off the search, I’m going to get on a plane to St. Augusta Island. Flint said the ship docked there to report Cyrus missing. Once I find out exactly where the ship was when he went overboard... I will find him.” If he is still alive. Her heart told her he was. She had to believe it.
CHAPTER THREE
JULIETTE CAHILL DABBED at her eyes as she was ushered through the crowd of reporters. She’d told her story a half-dozen times, first to security on the ship, then the captain, then the St. Augusta Island police commissioner and finally to an FBI agent. She couldn’t go through it another time.
“What happened to your husband?” a reporter called to her. “Where were you when he went overboard?”
“Is it true you were newlyweds, married by the ship captain?” another one called out. “You must be devastated.”
She stopped and turned. “I am devastated. It was...love at first sight. I’m not sure how I can go on without him.” She broke down and had to turn away from the cameras as ship security helped her to the waiting taxi.
“Are you sure you don’t want us to see you back to your hotel?” one of the security agents asked.
She shook her head and motioned for the taxi driver to hurry up as the car was quickly surrounded by news people and their prying cameras. As the taxi driver pulled away, she leaned back and closed her eyes.
The cruise ship line had booked her into the nicest hotel in Miami as soon as the boat docked. The captain had offered to fly her from St. Augusta Island, but the last thing she wanted was a puddle jumper to San Juan where she’d have to wait for a plane to Miami. She’d told the captain that she preferred to stay on the ship in her room.
“Whatever you want,” he’d said. “I’ll make sure you get whatever you need.”
And he had. She ordered whatever she wanted and it was brought to her. She’d watched television and read, but had trouble concentrating on either. Mostly she stared out at the sea through the slider from her luxury cabin and just wanted for this nightmare to be over.
The taxi driver took her to her hotel. She checked in and waited until her luggage was brought up before she went down the elevator to two floors below. She tapped on the door. A dark-haired man with a mustache opened the door in nothing but a towel.
“You’re late,” he said and stepped back to let her enter.
* * *
FLINT HAD SPENT the morning trying to get more information on his brother and the rescue mission. It kept him busy, so he didn’t have as much time to think about Cyrus being somewhere in the ocean. Cyrus being gone.
He’d just hung up from talking to the St. Augusta police commissioner when AJ appeared in his doorway. From the look on her face when she sat down, it was clear she’d hoped for some news of Cyrus.
Flint wished he had some. He knew that she cared about his brother and hated to see her even more brokenhearted. What he’d learned was anything but good news.
“They’re still looking for him, right?” she asked, leaning forward in the chair across from his desk.
“They have air support and coast guard, also other ships in the area looking for him. If he’s still out there, they’ll find him,” he said with more confidence than he felt. It had been too long already.
“I just don’t understand,” she said, voicing what the whole family had been feeling since getting the news. “How could he have fallen overboard?”
Being born and raised in Montana and having never taken an ocean cruise, Flint had never given any thought to overboard incidents. But since the phone call yesterday, he’d learned that it was rare given how many people took cruises each year. The chance of going overboard was 1 in 1,650,000 passengers.
But still, twenty to thirty people went overboard from a cruise ship every year. Most were either accidents or suicides. But a few were because of foul play.
The worst statistic was that only 22 percent of those survived and were rescued. If a person was stranded for more than three or four hours, their chances of surviving were extremely low. Cyrus would have been in the water far longer than that before they’d even begun looking for him. Flint couldn’t imagine what it would be like to be floating in such a huge body of water and see the ship leaving.
“Apparently,” he said, shaking off the image of his brother alone in the dark water, “it is incredibly hard for a person to fall off a cruise ship. From what I’ve read, the railings and guardrails are designed to prevent people from slipping, tripping or losing their footing and falling over them.”
“Then how could this have happened?” she demanded, as if he knew the answer.
He was as frustrated by this as she was and having just as much trouble making sense of it. “Unfortunately, railings can’t prevent accidents when passengers have too much to drink.” Was that what had happened to Cyrus? He agreed with Darby. His brother had looked drunk in the wedding photo. Overly intoxicated passengers did stupid things like sitting on the railings, climbing over them, even trying to walk on th
em.
While he couldn’t imagine his brother doing that, he also couldn’t imagine him buying a bull, planning to come home the next day and then deciding instead to go on a Caribbean cruise and hell, why not get married while he was at it?
“He was on his honeymoon,” AJ cried. “Why would he be that wasted unless...” She shook her head. “I can’t imagine Cyrus being that drunk.”
Flint couldn’t, either. In the first place, Cyrus wasn’t much of a drinker. Nor did he take chances. None of the Cahill offspring were drinkers because of their father, Ely. A confirmed mountain man who spent his days back in the hills trapping and mining, Ely only got into trouble when he came back to town and tied one on at the bar. So it was no wonder that his children drank very little alcohol or, like Darby, didn’t drink at all.
But then again, Flint couldn’t imagine his brother doing anything so impulsive as meeting a woman and running off to marry her on a cruise ship, let alone getting wasted and falling overboard.
Being a lawman, he couldn’t help thinking there was more to all of this. If Cyrus hadn’t accidentally fallen overboard or done something stupid while drunk, then there were only three other possibilities. That his brother had jumped. Or that he’d been pushed. Or that he might have been drugged.
“And why didn’t someone see him?” AJ was asking. “What about his wife? She could be lying about taking seasick medicine. Doesn’t it seem strange that she just happened not to be with him?”
It all seemed strange, but Flint had no answers. Since the police commissioner’s call yesterday, he’d been sent the report from the cruise line. “According to his wife, she wasn’t feeling well and Cyrus decided to go for a walk on deck.”
“In the middle of the night?”
“Apparently there are parts of the ship that never sleep,” Flint said. “According to the wife, he’d promised not to be long. She’d fallen asleep and when she woke the next morning, she realized he hadn’t returned and set off the alarm.”
“Too late. He would have been in the water for hours by then,” AJ said, her eyes filling with tears. “You said they then had to search the entire boat first before they actually started looking for him?” She looked away, brushed at her tears. “More time lost.”
“They can calculate where the ship was when he went overboard so they had a place to start. They consider drift and other factors and home in on that area.” If Cyrus was out there floating in the ocean. “The ship was able to correlate the time-stamp images when Cyrus was last seen with the approximate location of the ship at the time he went overboard,” Flint said. “But it’s a big ocean.” He wished he could give her more hope, but he was running out of it himself.
She pushed out of her chair and took a deep breath, let it out. “I’m going to fly down there and help look for him. Please don’t try to stop me.”
He knew he had to tell her the other bad news he’d gotten this morning. It had been in the report from the cruise line. “There’s something you need to know before you decide to do that. Blood has been found on a lower deck railing. It is believed that Cyrus hit the railing before going into the water.”
“What are you saying?”
“Often when someone goes overboard, they’ll hit a lifeboat or another floor railing of the cruise ship before actually hitting the water. Injured...” He met her gaze, hating that he had to do this. She was already devastated. “Injured they often die within minutes. Most of the time, their bodies are never recovered.”
AJ covered her mouth with her hand for a moment as tears welled and ran down her cheeks. “Are they sure it’s his blood?”
He looked at her, understanding why she wanted to believe it wasn’t. He felt the same way. “The FBI sent it to a lab to be tested against DNA taken from his cruise ship cabin. They will also run a toxicology report to see if he was on drugs at the time.”
She nodded, but he could see she wasn’t giving up.
His phone rang. She motioned for him to take it. He picked up. “Sheriff Flint Cahill.” Silence. “Hello?” For just a heartbeat he thought it was Cyrus on the other end of the line. His pulse jumped. He realized he was waiting for his brother to speak, praying for a miracle. AJ was frozen in the doorway, no doubt praying for the same thing.
But when the caller did speak, it was a woman’s voice. “Is this Flint Cahill?”
“It is. Who’s calling?” He still held out hope that this call would be news of Cyrus. That he’d been found alive. Safe.
“Juliette. Juliette Cahill. I’m Cyrus’s wife. He told me so much about you, all of you and about Montana and the ranch and his love for...” She seemed to break down.
He didn’t know what to say. Disappointment filled him to overflowing. This was not the call he was praying for. “I’m sorry. We’re still reeling here from the news of his death, let alone his sudden marriage.” His gaze went to AJ. “He didn’t tell us anything about you.”
AJ seemed to crumble as she leaned into the door, her blue eyes wide and scared. On the phone Juliette seemed to pull herself together. “Of course you’re reeling. I’m the same way. I still can’t believe it. How does something like this happen?”
That was the question, wasn’t it?
“As for keeping our marriage from his family, Cyrus wanted to surprise you. We both did. We were planning to fly back to Montana at the next port and finish our honeymoon there. We were both so anxious to start our lives together there. Cyrus talked about building us a house on the ranch.”
Flint had never known his brother to do anything this impulsive. Was it possible he had fallen head over heels for this woman and literally jumped into a marriage? Not the Cyrus he’d known. But no one had to tell him how falling in love changed a person. He thought of his wife, Maggie, and their baby daughter, Elizabeth. He’d kill for them and had.
“Where did you two meet?” he asked, hating his suspicious nature and yet unable not to question her.
“In Denver. I was staying at the same hotel as he was. It was love at first sight for both of us. The cruise was Cyrus’s idea. He’d never been on one and thought it would be fun. Getting married on the ship... I don’t even know how that happened. It was such a whirlwind romance, I felt as if I couldn’t catch my breath. I just can’t believe he’s gone.” She began to cry again. “I’m sorry. I didn’t call to upset you more. I need to know when the funeral is going to be held.”
“Funeral?” He saw AJ turn and disappear out the door. “AJ, wait!” He got to his feet, needing to cut this call short and go after her. “There isn’t one planned yet. We just heard about his falling overboard. It seems a little...premature. Look, I have to get off the line.”
“With the search being called off, I just thought... The captain said they are seeing about getting me his death certificate. After this many hours at sea...”
His brother’s death certificate? Flint closed his eyes tight for a moment, pain making his chest constrict. The loss was almost more than he could bear. “I haven’t heard anything about the search being called off,” he said, his voice cracking. “I have to go. Give me your number. I’ll call you back.” He scribbled it down and went after AJ, catching her just outside the office.
She was crying hysterically and trying to walk away. He caught her arm, understanding her need to run away. He wanted to do the same thing himself.
“Come back in,” Flint pleaded. “I don’t like seeing you like this.”
AJ swung around. Her tearstained flushed face was quickly set in both defiance and determination. “I’m going to find him. He’s alive. I don’t care what anyone says. Cyrus is alive.” She put her fist over her heart, the tears coming again. “I feel it.”
He couldn’t imagine where she would even start. It was worse than a needle in a haystack. The Caribbean was over a million square miles of water. As he looked at her, he didn’t know what to say. He could see tha
t there was no talking her out of it. She was going to go look for Cyrus. It broke his heart.
But what worried him was what would happen when she didn’t find his brother? When she’d have to finally face that Cyrus was gone?
CHAPTER FOUR
AJ? JULIETTE HAD heard Flint Cahill call out the name. Cyrus had mentioned an AJ but she now realized there must have been more to the story.
Just as she surmised that the woman must have been sitting in the sheriff’s office when she’d called. Interesting. Especially how quickly the sheriff had gotten off the phone.
As she disconnected she tried to remember if Cyrus had told her the woman’s last name. Juliette prided herself on her memory. She’d always been a good listener. Just as she was good at drawing a person out. Men especially tended to tell her their secrets.
Cyrus though had been a tough nut to crack. It had taken a lot to get him to open up. He was shy and reserved, definitely the kind of man she was attracted to.
The woman’s name came to her as she waited at the rental car agency. Ashley Jo “AJ” Somerfield. Cyrus had especially been closemouthed about Miss Somerfield, now that she thought about it. Juliette hadn’t been concerned. She’d never let some old girlfriend bother her. But she couldn’t help being curious now.
She quickly pulled out her phone and thanks to the wonders of the internet, had the young woman’s life history at her fingertips. What she found surprised her. A lawyer? She thought that Cyrus had told her AJ worked as a bartender at some place his brother and sister owned, the Stagecoach Saloon. So what was a lawyer doing serving drinks in some out-of-the-way place in Montana?
AJ wasn’t just any lawyer, either. The firm where she’d worked was a big one. The girl must know her stuff. It made no sense, her bartending at the Stagecoach Saloon in Gilt Edge, Montana. Odd. It was those kinds of inconsistencies that bothered her. Who was this woman really? And what had she meant to Cyrus?
