Lost at Sea

by A. E. Radley

  “At least it’s not Marseille from last year,” Dan pointed out.

  “Don’t remind me.” Caroline walked around the room to see if she could find anything to unravel the mystery.

  Cruise ships were often targeted by crime gangs who thought they could use the ships to transport drugs and other illegal cargo. The previous year they had discovered that a member of the hotel staff had been bribed into storing cocaine in one of the storerooms.

  It had all been fixed in the end, but it had caused days of headaches and paperwork for everyone who had to clean up the mess caused.

  “What do you make of this, Dan?” she asked, her own mind too cluttered to process it.

  “I know men like Diego Ortega. They’re arrogant bullies, and they don’t show mercy. I think this woman’s in a lot of trouble.”

  Caroline snapped her head around. “You don’t think they are working together? That this was a heated argument over something that went wrong with their plan?”

  Dan quickly shook his head. “Definitely not. Why would she take the risk to get on board Fortuna under an alias? On top of that, a famous alias? That’s a huge gamble for someone to take. She could have been very easily found out, and if she was, then she would have been arrested and handed over to local authorities. And for what? What was the plan?”

  “That’s what I’m trying to figure out,” Caroline said.

  “Logically, the reason to take an identity like this would be to leverage it on board, but my research tells me that she kept to herself. She wasn’t soliciting money under the guise of a famous opera singer. She wasn’t asking for favours.” Dan folded his arms and leaned against the desk, sucking in a deep breath as he looked thoughtfully around the stateroom. “I don’t see the reason for her doing it, which makes me think it was one thing and one thing only: desperation. Especially if she was in any way involved with the Ortegas.”

  Fear had been pricking at her insides for a while, and Caroline now realised she was holding it back with anger. Anger at Annie for fooling her. Deliberately fooling her, day after day. Even kissing her, dragging Caroline in with no regard for her feelings.

  Now she realised she had to consider the very real possibility that Annie was somewhat innocent in whatever had gone on.

  Dan’s radio beeped. He answered it and held the device out so they could both hear the report.

  “We have Diego Ortega in custody. He is refusing to answer our questions. He’s denying any involvement in anything.”

  “Of course he is,” Dan said privately to Caroline. “He thinks he’s above the law.”

  “Not on my ship he isn’t,” Caroline said.

  Dan spoke into the radio. “Put him in the brig. If he wants to say anything, then let him. Otherwise, let him stew. I want everyone looking for the female; she’s presumed to be in a vulnerable state.”

  Caroline looked at the chair leg, a nasty splash of blood now dripping onto the white bedsheet below it. She was responsible for the safety and security of every single person aboard Fortuna, no matter her personal opinion of them.

  She promised herself right there and then that she would do everything she could to find Annie and ensure her safety. Answers would come later. Not that she could think of a single scenario that would mend her broken heart and shattered trust.

  A Clue

  Caroline paced the bridge. She’d radioed Thomas and told him to delay departure. She’d then made some private calls to contacts in the Royal Navy who she knew would love the opportunity to question Diego Ortega about his various businesses.

  When Caroline worked for the service, the drug families were the bane of her existence, thoughtlessly flooding markets with drugs without a single care for what the end product did to people.

  Caroline may not have worked for the navy anymore, but she still supported them wherever she could. Her own poor treatment from the higher-ups didn’t mean she wouldn’t assist in the overall mission for the service as a whole. And advising them that one of the big players in a large crime syndicate was soon to be arrested by the local police was a good way to help. They’d be able to take him in for questioning on any one of the outstanding charges they had against him, long before his network managed to bribe any local law official into letting him go without charge.

  It meant a further delay to Fortuna, but it was worth it.

  However, his refusal to say a word about Serena or Annie had infuriated Caroline further.

  Dan was coordinating the security effort from the SCC and had all but kicked Caroline out when her constant questions and hovering became too much. She’d exited to the bridge, where she couldn’t be asked to leave. A flurry of activity, and several officers leaving the area, caused Caroline to speculate that they had a lead. She didn’t have to wonder long when Dan walked over to her.

  “Diego took an all-access tour of the ship when he came aboard, a VIP thing,” Dan explained.

  Caroline closed her eyes and sighed. She’d always hated the tours. They were a terrible idea, and the VIP ones were the worse. Letting anyone view the entire ship’s operation for a fee was a disaster waiting to happen. The VIP tours even allowed guests to pick and choose some areas to visit, within reason.

  Diego didn’t seem like the kind of man to have an interest in the engine room of a large ship, nor the kitchens behind the scenes of the main dining room. Just the thought that he had been in the crew areas set her on edge.

  “He had a good look at deck two and deck one. And the boarding record shows that he checked in with a suitcase.”

  Caroline opened her eyes. “But there wasn’t one in his room.”

  “Exactly, which means that it’s somewhere on board. We’re having trouble accessing the CCTV, it was one of the systems affected by the reboot, but I will bet my house that it will show Diego wheeling a suitcase out of his room at about the same time that Annie Peck went missing.”

  Caroline felt instantly sick. She put a hand out and steadied herself against the navigational deck. The image was too horrific for words.

  “Do you,” she lowered her voice, “think she’s dead?”

  Dan shrugged. “Impossible to say at this point. My instinct is to say no, there wasn’t that much blood in the room. And no sign of a weapon. Besides, these mafia big shots like to play games. If he wanted her dead, he could have thrown her over the balcony in his room.”

  Caroline swallowed down the rising bile. She wasn’t an innocent by any means; she’d seen terrible crime scenes and was no stranger to the sight of a dead body. But the thought of a woman she had seen a few hours ago being murdered shook her to the core.

  “More likely he wants her to suffer,” Dan continued. “And have a story to tell people. They are always trying to outdo each other in the most disgusting way to get rid of someone.”

  Caroline held up her hand to stop him from saying anything else. The last thing she needed on this terrible evening was to throw up all over the navigator’s workspace.

  Dan got the message. He straightened his spine and took on a more professional tone. “I have my men searching the lower decks.”

  “That will take hours,” Caroline sighed.

  “We don’t have any better suggestions at the moment,” Dan said apologetically. “I’m going to go and assist with the search personally; I’ll keep you updated.”

  She dismissed him, and he turned and left the bridge. Caroline made eye contact with Thomas; he was vaguely aware of the issue and had fully taken control of departure from the port. He offered her a tight smile, one that said he was there if she needed him and that she could rely on him.

  It meant more than he could ever know.

  Mara had stayed on the bridge in one of the visitors' chairs and now walked over to stand beside Caroline.

  “There must be something we can do. I feel utterly useless,” she whispered.

  “I know what you mean. But you know the lower decks: so many rooms, so many possibilities of where he could…” Caroline
trailed off.

  Was Annie dead? Had a murder taken place aboard Fortuna? It was a very real possibility. And a horrifying thought. Caroline took her responsibility for safety very seriously. Annie was probably the passenger whom she’d seen most of the entire trip.

  She’d failed her miserably.

  Caroline heard a crewman making a phone call, asking someone on the lower decks to close a door.

  “The doors,” Caroline said.

  “What?” Mara asked.

  Caroline entered the SCC. “The doors,” she repeated. “We’ve had doors opening and closing on the lower decks today. Some of them might be a clue.”

  She approached one of the control screens, slinging her arm across the back of the operator’s chair. “Matt, can you isolate a list of door alarms we’ve had? I want to know which rooms were accessed between five and seven this evening, and then again between eight and ten.”

  Matt nodded. His hands flew across the keyboard.

  “What are you thinking?” Mara asked.

  “If Diego went on a VIP tour the moment he got on board, he must have been planning something. Why bother? It’s not like he was bored and had nothing else to do. He was looking for something. I’m going to guess that he was looking for locations, especially for locations that weren’t so secure. Maybe he tried a couple of doors when he was down there? See what he could open without a pass card? Maybe he even spoke to staff and figured out what he could convince them to open for him.”

  “Wherever he had luck, he’d return to later,” Mara said. “After dinner, when he had Annie with him.”

  “It’s just a guess,” Caroline said. “We get these alerts all the time. Maintenance are famous for leaving doors open while they go and get a spanner.”

  “Here’s a list of doors that were flagged in those hours.” Matt pointed at the screen. “I’m going to guess that it wasn’t these three; they aren’t anywhere near the tour route.”

  “Which leaves us with two,” Caroline said. “The incinerator and the dairy chiller.”

  She spun around and grabbed a radio from the rack.

  Mara was right behind her. “Where are we going? Which one?”

  “The chiller,” Caroline said. “If it’s the incinerator, we’re already too late.”

  Deep Chill

  Caroline hurried down the stairwell, thankful for the crew area. If she were trying to navigate the passenger area, she’d have no hope at all. She’d radioed ahead to Dan to tell him of her suspicions, and he was already dispatching officers to the two locations.

  She could have stayed on the bridge and coordinated efforts from there, but that was never going to happen. She was a hands-on leader, and a passenger in danger was something she would always fight for.

  Even if that passenger had consistently lied to her for days and broken her heart in the process. Whoever Annie Peck was, whatever reasons she had, Caroline had to push her feelings to one side.

  She arrived on deck one, Mara a couple of flights of steps behind her, something Caroline would remind her of at a later time when staff physicals were underway.

  “Matt, I’m on deck one, door 7B. Where am I going?”

  Caroline knew Fortuna like the back of her hand, but the exact location of the dairy chiller wasn’t ever going to be something she could locate without consulting a map. Or using a member of her bridge crew to guide her via the live CCTV feeds.

  “Turn right, go for one hundred metres to the intersection, then left, and then it’s the second door on the right,” Matt replied.

  Caroline sprinted. In the distance she could see one of the supplier managers, Clifford. He was looking at her in confusion, clearly having no idea what was going on.

  “Clifford, dairy chiller?” she asked, out of breath.

  “Which one?” he asked. “There are three.”

  Caroline would have screamed if she’d had the energy. Why did any ship need three dairy chillers? The excess of Fortuna staggered her sometimes.

  “Matt, there are three dairy chillers, which one?”

  There was a pause.

  “I’ll check, one second.”

  Clifford looked at the radio and then at Caroline. “Everything okay, Captain?”

  “We believe a passenger has injured another passenger. There’s a chance he brought her down here,” Caroline explained.

  “Shifty-looking tall guy?” Clifford asked. He nodded knowingly. “I knew that fella was trouble. He was on the tour.” He waved his hand for Caroline to follow him and led her through a maze of short corridors. “He was asking all sorts of questions, questions a man with expensive shoes had no business asking.”

  They stopped outside a large metal door. Clifford entered a code on a keypad. It beeped in recognition and then he lifted the large handle and pushed the door to the side. Cold air seeped out immediately. Caroline would have shivered if adrenaline wasn’t pulsing through her.

  “Caroline?” Mara called from the distance.

  “In here,” she shouted back. She looked at Clifford. “Please go and get Doctor Perry, we might need her.”

  Clifford jogged back towards the main corridor while Caroline walked farther into the metal-walled industrial refrigerator. She passed pallets filled with boxes and plastic tubs of yogurt stacked to the ceiling.

  Then she saw it. Nestled between two large pallets was a suitcase neatly parked up against the wall.

  She hesitated only for a second, the fact that she may come across a dead body being pushed aside quickly. If that was the case, then she’d deal with it later.

  Her fingers were already numb with the cold, and she fumbled for a moment to find the zip. She took a deep breath and pulled the zipper open around the extra-large, soft-sided suitcase. The lid fell open to the side and Annie tumbled out, gasping for breath as she did.

  She’s alive, she’s alive, Caroline reassured herself.

  She heard Clifford and Mara approaching and shouted for Mara to hurry.

  Annie was deathly white. Dried blood caked the side of her face, and a gag prevented any sound from escaping other than the fast pants for air that echoed off the metal walls.

  Caroline quickly loosened the gag, and it dropped to the floor. Annie knelt with her arms out in front of her, sobs coming in between deep breaths. Her hands were tightly bound with rope, and Caroline immediately set to untying them.

  She was shivering uncontrollably. It started to dawn on Caroline that even though she was alive, there was a possibility that she wasn’t going to come through the ordeal.

  She felt Clifford appear behind her. He stripped off his work jacket and draped it around Annie’s shoulders. Caroline released the rope around Annie’s wrists; they didn’t fall away as easily as the gag had done. The fastenings cut into Annie’s skin, and Caroline removed the ropes as carefully as she could. Eventually, she managed to get Annie’s hands released and dared to look up into her eyes.

  “Caroline,” Annie whispered. She started to lean forward; her arms outstretched to grab hold of her.

  She lied to you, she’s not who she says she is, Caroline reminded herself.

  Caroline stood up and gestured for Mara to take over. She contacted Dan on her radio and advised that Annie Peck had been found. She requested further medical backup before looking at Clifford and jutting her head towards the exit.

  The moment they were outside she rounded on him.

  “How on earth does that happen? A suitcase in a chiller? This door is locked by a keypad code. I need a list of people who had access—”

  “Captain West?”

  Caroline stopped ranting and turned to see a young man behind her. He wore a wait-staff uniform and was staring at his feet.

  “Yes?” she snapped.

  “I opened the chiller for him. He… he had a VIP lanyard,” the waiter explained.

  Caroline felt her jaw drop open. “You let him put a suitcase in the chiller?”

  “He said it contained imported cheese. Very expensive.
He said he had permission.”

  Dan appeared with several security officers, all out of breath from having run the length of the ship, presumably from the incinerator. Caroline pointed to the chiller, and Dan went inside.

  She looked at the waiter and slowly nodded. “Okay. It’s not your fault; we need to have better procedures in place. And we need to reiterate the rules. A VIP lanyard does not give someone access to the whole of my ship.” She turned to Clifford. “I want you to talk with your people about security. We’ll be organising ship-wide training very shortly.”

  “What was in the suitcase?” the waiter asked hesitantly.

  “A woman,” Caroline said.

  His eyes widened in shock.

  “She’s okay,” Caroline reassured him.

  Saying the words made it real in her own mind. She’d been operating on autopilot for so long that she hadn’t given herself time to think.

  She’s okay, she reminded herself. Mara will be able to heal her.

  Concern faded, and anger took its place. She could get answers now, but she wasn’t sure she even wanted them.

  She was on an emotional rollercoaster like she had never experienced before: one moment confused, the next hurt, the next terrified, and now… furious.

  She’s a Criminal

  It was two in the morning when Caroline completed her final meeting. Reports were typed up, paperwork was filed, plans of action were in place, crew members were apprised of the situation, and head office had chewed her out.

  She slumped in her chair.

  It was, without question, her most stressful evening aboard Fortuna.

  Questions would be asked for weeks and months to come. The rumours would go on far longer. If they were extremely lucky, the media wouldn’t hear about any of it.

  She leaned forward and wearily placed her hands on the conference room table and pushed herself to her feet. She couldn’t delay it any longer; she had to go to the hospital and get a status report on their patient.