by A. E. Radley
Lost at Sea
A.E Radley
Extra special thanks to my amazing patrons Shantel, Jeanne, Jenn, Tina, Amy, and Sharon.
Contents
Sign Up to Win
Running from Diego
Changeover Day
Mirror Image
Status Report
All Aboard
Elvin
Muster Drill
Mustard Drill
The Shelbys
Captain West
Lost at Sea
A Stroll in the Night
Harmless Flirting
Good Morning
Dinosaur on Board
Perfectly Well-Jazzed
The Best Hot Roast Beef Sandwiches in the World
The Mix and Mingle
The Storm
The Morning After
Can I Buy You an Ice Cream?
No Point Denying It
The Best Friend Speech
Good Morning
A Great View
No Escape
In a Previous Life
A Perfect Afternoon
A Real Date
The Perfect Amount
Fuck the Door
Good Morning
A Private Word
A Note
Not What She Expected
Serenity
Megaride
Tenacious, Not Very Strategic
Home
Another Interruption
Diego Ortega
The End of the Road
She’s Taken
A Liability
Annie Peck
A Responsibility for Safety
A Clue
Deep Chill
She’s a Criminal
Explaining Things
Lies, Lies, Lies
She’ll Be Back
The Real Serena Rubio
Exhaustion
Explanations Over Dinner
Putting Things Right
Time Heals All Wounds
The Start of Something
Reaching Out
A Change of Schedule
A Gamble
Epilogue
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About the Author
Also by A.E Radley
Also by A.E Radley
Also by A.E Radley
Also by A.E Radley
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Running from Diego
Annie Peck hurried as much as possible without looking as if she was running for her life.
Which she was.
Her eyes darted around the wide and empty backstreets of Barcelona, searching for anyone who looked out of place. In particular, she was looking for anyone who might have followed her.
She knew she had to do her best to look casual and relaxed, to appear like a tourist strolling about the city, even if her heart was threatening to beat out of her chest and her breath came in short, sharp pants.
Getting out of the city was her number-one priority, even if she currently had no idea how she would manage that seemingly impossible feat. She imagined that Diego’s people were spread across Barcelona looking for her.
The grotty hotel she’d been staying in had accepting cash and asked no questions, but remaining there for much longer would just make her escape all the more difficult.
People talked, and she knew word of an English woman who never left the hotel would soon filter through to the ears of someone in the Ortega clan. And soon after that, she’d be dead.
A shiver run up her spine, and she tried to convince herself it was the chilly breeze in the morning air.
She stopped walking and sucked in a deep breath, marvelling at how shaky it sounded. She turned to look around, just in case.
An elderly woman was crossing the road in the distance, a mother was walking with her toddler, and a man walked his dog. Everything seemed normal and safe, but Annie knew from bitter experience that could all vanish in a second if Diego’s men found her.
She needed a plan. Her cash supply was running dangerously low, and she couldn’t trust anyone.
Her life had completely turned around in the space of just forty-eight hours. Being in the wrong place at the wrong time had ended her carefree lifestyle and would probably lead to her death.
She’d turned thirty-one a few days earlier, and now she doubted she’d see the end of the week.
“Excuse me, do you speak English?”
The young woman had appeared from nowhere and caused Annie to jump.
“Oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you! I just need directions,” the woman said, apologetically.
Annie took a couple of deep breaths and looked at the young backpacker in front of her. She seemed legitimate enough.
“Where are you heading?” Annie asked.
“Oh, you’re English,” the girl sounded surprised, no doubt assuming that Annie’s olive-skinned appearance meant she was from the region.
She would surely be shocked to learn that Annie was from North Yorkshire and, after five whole years living in Spain, had only learnt how to order a beer. And to say I love you.
She shuddered at the thought of all the times she’d said those words, to a man like Diego. Especially when she’d known that it hadn’t been love.
“I’m looking for this art gallery.” The girl pointed to a spot on the paper map she clutched, a map she obviously couldn’t read if she was asking for directions.
Annie gestured behind her. “Down there, turn left when you get to the main street. Walk for about ten minutes, and you’ll start seeing signs. It’s on the right.”
“Thanks, you’re a life-saver.”
Annie quickly continued walking, knowing that the girl was about to attempt to strike up a conversation. It’s what young travellers often did: find people from their own country and chat about tourist tips.
It’s what Annie had done. It’s what led to Annie staying in Spain when she should have just gone home. Not that she felt she had a home any longer. She felt nomadic and lost, feelings that she knew had always been there but had been lurking behind a seemingly perfect life in Spain.
It was only when everything had gone wrong two short days ago that she had been forced to face up to things and realise that her life was a façade. She’d lived in a semi-daze for five years, not having the courage or the strength to acknowledge what had happened.
A couple of stray tears fell down her cheeks, and she hastily brushed them away. She didn’t have time to think about her parents now.
She tried to tell herself that, in some ways, what had happened was a good thing. At least now they were safe from Diego.
She’d been twenty-six back then, young and naïve but thinking she knew everything. Now, at thirty-one, she would give anything to be able to go back in time and shake some sense into herself.
Not that she would have listened. Diego was charming, rich, powerful, and so handsome it made her knees buckle. And she was a mess. She needed saving, and he was there to save her.
She shook her head. She needed to focus, not think of the mistakes of the past. There were plenty of them, and she didn’t have the time to dwell on each one.
Getting out of Barcelona needed to be her one and only focus.
She knew tha
t they’d expect her to go to the airport, but she also knew that the Ortega family had people working there. She’d be seen in minutes if she tried to fly out of Barcelona.
That left driving or getting the train. The train seemed like the better option of the two. Safety in numbers… maybe they wouldn’t kill her if she was found in a packed train carriage.
Maybe.
“Get a hold of yourself, Annie,” she muttered. Falling apart now was not an option. She needed to keep everything together if she was going to get herself out of the city, and, hopefully, the situation she’d found herself in.
She adjusted her dark glasses and pulled her Hermès scarf up a little higher to obscure her face without looking too suspicious. Unfortunately, there was no way to get from her location to the train station without crossing some of the busiest roads in Barcelona.
She sucked in a deep breath and turned onto the main road at as fast a pace as she dared.
The ten-minute walk felt like it took half an hour. Across the short distance, Annie had been close to having a panic attack. Barcelona had been her hometown for five years. It was a city, but it wasn’t that populated. Even with the tourist season kicking off, it still felt like getting lost in a crowd was an impossible task.
Thankfully, the railway station had multiple entrances, and Annie knew to find a rarely used one. She walked through the wide-open space of Barcelona’s central rail hub. Her heels clicked on the marble floor, and she caught a glimpse of her reflection in the glass windows of the many shops she passed. She wondered if she stuck out as much as she thought or if it was just paranoia that was racing through her veins.
She found a departure board and stared at the names of stations.
Madrid, Paris, Lyon.
She didn’t know which was best. She’d gotten as far as deciding she needed to get out of Barcelona. Where she was actually heading was a completely different matter.
Wherever it was, it needed to be completely unpredictable, somewhere they’d never think to look. Somewhere she could lie low and, hopefully, reinvent herself.
Changeover Day
Captain Caroline West mingled with departing guests in the main promenade of the Fortuna Dream. She knew her cheeks would hurt by the end of the day with the permanent smile she had plastered on her face.
Guests of the Dream Cruise Company expected a certain level of service. They wanted their cruise to be luxurious, relaxing, and something to brag about when they got back to shore. Nothing said status like saying you’d met the captain. Or spoken with her, dined with her, danced with her. She was a highly sought-after commodity.
Essentially, there were times when Caroline knew that her years of training and experience were pushed to one side to ensure that Mr and Mrs Carlisle from Cornwall could say they’d had a one-on-one chat with the captain about the cost of octopus.
It hadn’t been the career she’d set out to achieve. Not that being the captain of one of the largest ships for the Dream Cruise Company was to be sniffed at. The pay was good, she was in charge of an impressive ship, and she enjoyed her job.
For the most part.
“Thank you so much for joining us,” she said to the couple from Luton who had studiously attempted to bump into her at every given opportunity. She shook their hands and ensured she made eye contact and maintained her smile. “It was so lovely seeing you.”
The couple beamed with excitement and assured her that they would be back next year.
The personal touch was something that had been drilled into her by Dream. She may be the captain of the Fortuna, but that didn’t mean she simply managed the day-to-day running of the ship. It was an essential part of her role to socialise, to give speeches, to dine and dance with the guests, to always be ready with a smile.
Most of her schedule was packed with opportunities to meet with guests or feature heavily on the ship’s dedicated television channel, where she spoke about weather, safety, and excursions.
She didn’t enjoy that part of her job as much. She felt as if she were trapped in a goldfish bowl, with guests able to tap the glass at any time. Walking from one end of the ship to the other should take a normal, healthy adult around four minutes. Caroline knew she’d never manage it in under thirty.
“Captain West!”
Caroline turned to see Archie McFarlane making his way past the coffee shop on the promenade. He leaned heavily on his walking stick as he hurriedly tottered towards her.
“My dear,” he said. “It’s been a sensational trip. Sensational. Hasn’t it, Agnes?”
Agnes McFarlane opened her mouth to speak but didn’t get a chance to produce any actual words before Archie and his motormouth were off again.
“If I didn’t know any better, I’d say you even controlled the weather for us,” he enthused. “Beautiful. Not too hot, though. I can’t stand it when it’s too hot. Neither can Agnes. Can you, dear?”
Agnes tried again but was too slow.
“We’ll be back later in the season, so we’ll see you again soon. I didn’t finish telling you the story of my boy and his bike being stolen in Cambridge,” Archie continued.
Caroline leaned closer to him, knowing that he was very hard of hearing. “I look forward to it, Mr McFarlane. It’s been wonderful having you on board, and I look forward to seeing you in a few short months.”
Archie tapped Caroline’s hand politely and nodded before turning to leave.
Agnes opened her mouth to say her own farewell but stopped when Archie called out to her to hurry up. She offered Caroline a tight smile before rushing off.
“One day, we may get to hear Agnes McFarlane actually speak,” Thomas Barridge spoke softly in her ear.
“I doubt that very much,” she whispered to her staff captain. “Not if Archie McFarlane has anything to say about it.”
He chuckled. “True, true.” He stood up straight and gazed around the emptying promenade. “Do you want to head off for a while? I think that’s most of the rush dealt with.”
Caroline lifted up the sleeve of her formal jacket and looked at her watch. It was changeover day which meant all of the passengers who had been on board for the week-long tour of the western Mediterranean were disembarking. A new batch of guests would be boarding within a couple of hours.
For a few short hours, Fortuna would be a hive of activity as the two thousand crew and staff prepared for the next intake. Over the course of the afternoon, more than five thousand new passengers would board, and during that time the captain would be expected to be present during at least the busiest periods to welcome people aboard, especially the Dreams Plus passengers, frequent cruisers who required a little more special attention.
Changeover day was the most stressful day for everyone on board. Personally, Caroline felt pulled in a hundred different directions. As ship’s master, she was responsible for the vessel’s mechanical, technical, safety, and navigational details. On top of those responsibilities, she also needed to liaise with the rest of her team, including the engineers, her deck officers, and, most importantly, the hotel director, whom she had a meeting with in just under five minutes.
“Yes,” she agreed. “I have to see Dominic; I have my radio with me if you need me.”
“Oh, you remembered it this time?” Thomas teased.
“I always remember it,” she replied. “Sometimes I just ignore you.”
She winked and discreetly made her way up a small spiral staircase to the upper level of the promenade so that she could sneak into the crew-only area of the ship.
As usual, she was running late. Not being able to walk the ship without being stopped by someone wanting to talk to her was utterly exhausting. There wasn’t a single member of her crew who ever expected her to be on time for anything, but she still felt guilty for being late. Caroline was used to a military life and being on time, even after years of working for Dream.
Not that working on a cruise line was that different from the Royal Navy in some respects. There was sti
ll a very strict hierarchy, rules and procedures, uniforms and titles.
It was just all tied up with a twenty-four-hour party mentality, thousands of guests, and spending six months of the year in the Caribbean and six months in the Mediterranean.
Almost identical, she joked to herself.
Mirror Image
Annie rushed into the ladies’ bathroom, away from the bustling crowd of Barcelona’s central railway station. She’d done it. A one-way ticket to Paris was now clutched in her hand, and she was ready to depart in just under two hours.
She walked over to the sinks and stared at her reflection. Her long, brown hair was swept up into a ponytail and hidden under a hat. She hadn’t washed it in a couple of days and dreaded to think what it would look like down. Bags were obvious under her light brown eyes.
All she wanted to do was get out of the city.
But she had to wait, which was increasingly difficult as Annie was convinced she’d been followed, or at least spotted. Nightmare scenarios played over and over in her head, and she was surprised that she hadn’t suffered a complete breakdown yet.
