Deeper into Darkness

by Maria Ann Green

It was a horrible accident.

  Nothing anyone could have predicted.

  And so many people were hurt. Some died on impact, others drowned after being thrown from the ship, and many went missing. Aidan Sheppard and Bee Iverson among those never found, likely at the bottom of the ocean.

  I thought I would feel bad leaving Bee behind; I had with Clementine, Bridget, and the others. Those other times it felt like I was leaving part of myself there, only moving forward with a fraction of what I was, or could be.

  But this time I had Aidan. I had all I needed.

  Since the ship was docked right near shore, even some people on land were injured, a couple killed. The body count was high, and included people from all backgrounds and nations. Makes for a messy investigation, one that will go on for a long time.

  Aidan was the technology guru. He unplugged some cameras, set the timer. All I did was schmooze and make friends. I made sure there were people who would remember us on the cruise, hopefully some of them who survived. I wanted an investigator to be sure, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that we were aboard—that we didn’t just scan our ticket and never get on in the first place.

  We were there.

  Then people died.

  And we were no longer there.

  It was brilliant, and it could take weeks, or forever to find every single last missing passenger.

  We’d watched from a café. We saw the fire and heard the screams. We knew it would be hard to account for everyone, people coming and going, so we watched and tried not to smile. It was hard. We jumped and yelled—if halfheartedly—like everyone else. We ran away from the fire, to make room for rescue efforts.

  Then we walked down the road, around the corner, and off into our new lives.

  Bee and Aidan died, but Samantha and Ethan were born again.

  We chose Colorado for our new life. We wanted somewhere far away from Jason and Harwell, and everywhere we’d been. We wanted to start fresh. We wanted to settle into our new names, our new lives. And, honestly, Colorado was perfect.

  It was easier than you’d think to move into a new place with just an ID and cash.

  The money part had been harder, since we’d only planned a week or so out. But that’s where Ethan and Samantha came even more in handy. They disappeared, so it made perfect sense for their bank account to be emptied first—and then ours didn’t have to be.

  Win–win.

  When we killed them we had their IDs, which provided their addresses, which lead to other bonuses like a passport (not to use on the ship, but as another form of identification for updating our new IDs in our new home state), mail, and so much more.

  Plus a whole new wardrobe, which is always a good thing.

  It wasn’t all fun, though.

  We’d argued about where to go, where to end up together. And the fighting was stupid really, because wherever we went it would be together. But, stupid or not, we argued anyway. He wanted somewhere warmer. I wanted somewhere with space, somewhere we wouldn’t be bothered by close neighbors. Somewhere we could be friendly but not too friendly; somewhere we could blend in.

  I won.

  But that means in the end we both won, because it’s a better fit for us, and we’re here together.

  Not that anyone would ever know; not that anyone suspected we were alive.

  So, we had new identities. As Ethan Johnson and Samantha Olson, we moved to Colorado—and like the good citizens we were, we changed our state IDs right away. We made nice with the locals, sort of. And we settled in.

  Aidan found a job, and I tried to figure out how to write under a new name, with a new voice.

  It was surprising how easy it was to assume a new identity, to fit seamlessly into a new skin, a new personality, a new everything. And I wasn’t sure why that was, but whatever the reason it was nice, a relief even.

  It was like I’d peeled away all the problems Bee had; I took them off and left them on that cruise ship. I left my anxieties behind too, and I started fresh with the only person alive who could really understand me.

  Here we could make a new life.

  Breaking Here and Now @BreakingHaNNetwork

  Officials say there are dozens still missing, possibly a hundred dead. It’s likely the worst death count of the year. Click here for more information.

  2.5M comments10.9M shares1.8K likes

  Psychology Tomorrow @Psychtomorrowtoday

  One woman says she can still hear the screaming when she lies down at night. Experts weigh in on the effects of PTSD and how those aboard the Caribbean cruise ship disaster may be suffering now.

  90 comments258 shares742 likes

  Five Star Updates @.5starrnewss.

  More have been found, further dwindling the numbers of those missing from the Caribbean cruise ship that exploded weeks ago. Officials are asking that anyone who knew individuals aboard to please call.

  84 comments301 shares1.2K likes

  Plunder Publishing @PPubAndRead

  A horrifying account of what happened aboard what some are calling the cruise to death, book to be published early next year. Preorder available now!

  99 comments258 shares10.1K likes

  News For You @NewsNow

  One “steps” forward to announce a generous scholarship fund in the name of the Caribbean cruise ship. Only family members of those aboard are eligible to apply. Donor wanted to remain anonymous, but we have clues to who this faceless hero may be.

  1.2K comments42.6M shares101.9M likes

  Jane D @impeachhimplease_XOXO

  President says: cruise ship was wrong place wrong time, and if it had been nearer the best country, disaster could have been avoided.

  How is he still in office?! He needs to be canceled.

  9.4K comments10.9M shares145.8M likes

  Go Positive @Just.Breathe.

  Too many stories about death in your feed? Feeling blue about the news lately? Unplug and self-care. Stop in and make an appointment for a massage with us today!

  0 comments12 shares198 likes

  crime watch @truecrimeupdates1987_

  Detectives find new information regarding the Caribbean cruise ship explosion, two more bodies found, and more witnesses step forward—is the investigation winding down to an end? More here.

  5 comments2 shares9 likes

  After tonight, or soon anyway, we’ll need a new hunting ground. Because it probably isn’t a great idea to get too comfortable, too stuck in our ways.

  But for now…

  The man stumbles a little off the floor and toward the bar, so I follow him, staying a few steps behind and off to the side. But when I get to the bar, I walk over. My hand finds his lower back, strong and cool against his heated shirt.

  “Another drink?” I lean into him when I ask, my chest against his shirt. Instead of stiffening, at least in posture, he melts into me.

  It’s amazing, what alcohol will do to your system, to your judgment. Because this man probably can’t see straight, and he’s already turned on. He’s already ready for me to be on my knees in front of him.

  Though, I’m not sure at this point he’d turn anyone down or care what anyone interested in him looked like.

  “Hell yes,” he yells, slurring.

  I move my hand along his back, up to his shoulder, and then down his arm until I can wind my fingers around his wrist. Putting a little pressure there as I circle the bone, I keep him close and move my body until I’m pressed against his side instead of his back, sliding my dress over his frame, warmed from dancing.

  “Your friends leave?” I ask, already knowing the answer.

  “Not all of them, one’s left,” he says in my general direction, eyes lidded.

  “Good answer.”

  I signal to the bartender, who quickly refills the man’s drink. My companion downs it in two gulps, my hands all over him, encouraging him. And he asks for another before I have the chance to do it for him.

  I’ve lived this scene before, not this exact one, b
ut close enough. And the familiarity excites me too, reminds me how powerful I really am.

  Putting my mouth to his ear, and adding more air to my voice than normal, I make sure the wetness of my lips makes contact as I say, “Take me to the dance floor. Make me want to go home with you.”

  He downs his second drink, then slaps a few bills onto the bar top before pulling me to dance. I don’t protest; I want to be center stage. The dance floor is dark, flashing with colored lights strobing to the beat of the music. His face falls into darkness, then lights green, goes dark again, then his features are all red.

  It’s an eerie sort of scene, but fitting. And it turns me on, pushing me forward—not that anything would slow me down at this point, but it’s fuel to the fire nonetheless.

  His hands are all over me, not in a sexy way but in a sloppy drunk and horny kind of way. Then I see a familiar face, in the back of the writhing crowd. Eyes I could spot anywhere flash bright in the light, then disappear behind a wave of blonde curls.

  I smile.

  And my dancing partner thinks I’m smiling for him. Which I am in a way, but not in the way he thinks. He pulls me closer, grinding his hips into mine. I lean back, letting his hands support my weight, and I dip myself backward, giving a view of my cleavage to those in the other direction—to the tall man behind me and the fierce-eyed shark taking the place I held earlier circling the floor.

  Feeling like the center of the universe, sexual and violent and full of excitement, I pull myself up and let him move me. I let his hands roam, under my skirt, in my hair. I don’t look at him, only around the room.

  Again I see a flash of Aidan, his sly smile at the bar, ordering a drink and paying for the patron beside him too.

  When my partner tries to kiss me, I pull away. There’s a line. I may be letting him touch me, but that’s just for foreplay, and not his.

  I picked this man out because I knew he was alone. When Aidan and I came in together, before separating with one eye on the crowd and the other on each other, he asked me what I thought. So I went through the possibilities, listing why I was discarding the ones I did.

  But this man, he was already drunk. He didn’t start alone, but he was already separating himself. And he was someone I’d have picked if I were on my own, but tonight we could do this together and it would feel like something new in that way, something better.

  Aidan left me to watch, and I’d talked to him, my back to the rest of the bar the whole time. When his friends left, he stayed, hoping for a chance with me, while Aidan continued watching.

  It worked. But I’m only half of the equation. It takes both parts now, and it’s as if we never did this alone before, like it’s been so strategic all along.

  I do let him kiss my neck, though, and he does so with gusto, his scruff scratching along my skin in a pleasant sort of irritation. He nibbles and licks at my skin, while I continue looking around. My hands start on his back, making my way to the edge of his pants, letting two fingers dip just inside the top edge.

  He groans when I pull them back out, all tease and no follow-through. “I’ll be right back,” he says after realizing I won’t be re-entering the danger zone.

  I pretend to pout for a second, which elicits a wink of reassurance. Holding onto his hand as he starts to walk away, I wave at him with the other. “Hurry back.”

  My date heads for the bathroom, and I watch him going as I step to the bar. Nodding my head, I signal to Aidan where he’s gone. Aidan’s quick as he pays for a few drinks—his new friends at the bar are appreciative—then excuses himself to the bathroom as well.

  It begins.

  There’s a charge in the air now, static rising off my skin and connecting with the flashing lights and thump of the bass all around. It feels as if I’m in a dream, a great one, and I never want to wake up.

  I wish this could be our every day, as I watch Aidan swing the door to the bathroom open and disappear inside.

  Bathrooms in the back of bars, down a dark hallway, with locks inside the bathroom, they’re a killer’s wet dream.

  It’s easy.

  I follow. I check for witnesses—none of course. Then I join my two men in the little room, also poorly lit.

  It’s easy.

  And it’s fun.

  I can feel the fun between my legs, building. I can feel a tingle in my fingers, itching to dig into flesh. I can feel an eagerness from scalp to toes, from bones to skin. Every part of me was made for this, meant for this.

  Aidan stands at the wall, facing the door when I enter. He smiles, but doesn’t move.

  He’s here for assistance, not to lead this time, and he locks the outer door behind me, covering the sound with a cough. Letting a finger trace down my side, he charges me up again. I feel lit up, eager, ready.

  At full power, at maximum anticipation, I walk forward quickly like I have somewhere to be and no time to get there.

  I run into the stall door, all accidents and elbows.

  He’s standing, facing the toilet, holding himself in one hand and using the other to stay standing, braced on the cubicle wall.

  “Shit.”

  “Oh my god.”

  “What the hell?”

  “I’m so sorry.”

  “You scared me.”

  “I thought this was the ladies.”

  The words all come out quickly, tripping over each other in a bottleneck block up. It’s confusing and somehow sets my insides even more on fire, the mess of it, the quick and chaotic memory, unique; I’ll touch myself thinking about it for weeks to come.

  His eyes move slowly, his drinks catching up with him. He can’t react like he should, half here and half in a bottle in the clouds. He hadn’t locked it. He wasn’t thinking, wasn’t concerned. He should have been.

  “Did you need something, sweet thing? You must have really missed me—couldn’t wait another second.” His eyes droop as he speaks, the words coming out half mumbled, half shouted.

  “I missed you,” I say, not really lying.

  “You want me so bad. Say it.”

  His voice would sound hard if it weren’t for the fuzzy edges, feathered by booze.

  “I needed you.”

  “Say it again.”

  “I wanted to touch you.” And this one is all truth. A truth he’ll regret for the last minutes of his life.

  “Prove it,” he barks, commanding.

  And I do.

  I lean into him, my hand going to his face—the chrome color of my nails catching in the dirty light—instead of where he’d like it, the other behind my back waiting for a gift from Aidan. I kiss him then, like I wouldn’t before, but it’s a means to an end, a way of getting what I want. When I get it, slipped quietly into my waiting hand, it’s warm from Aidan’s touch and hard against my fingers, immovable.

  I lean deeper into the kiss, letting his tongue graze my teeth.

  Then everything stops when the plunger sinks down, the sharp metal in his neck, a small sound as it happens.

  I sigh, flashing warm all over, eyes still closed for just a fraction of a second longer.

  Then I pull away, watching his pupils widen with the pain, the shock. He drops, mouth still open, to the floor, not bracing for the landing.

  Then

  Red and blue; those horrible colors.

  No sound accompanied the flashing red and blue, not even a tick, tick, tick, like I expected from the switching back and forth. Or maybe my ears were broken, maybe they were as numb as the rest of me, the bones and drums no longer working.

  The wheels of the car turned slowly, too slowly, as it rolled past the alley. Far enough away that surely I wasn’t noticeable. The siren stayed silent but the crunch of those tires on a discarded beer can sent a shriek up my throat.

  The sound was caught, stopped short by the panic clogging its route.

  They can’t see you.

  They aren’t here for you.

  Rising, rising, rising up into the air, I felt like I would float
away. Out of the reach of anyone and everyone. But I didn’t. I was rooted to the spot until the car finished passing by.

  And then I could move again.

  I could take a step. I could extend my shoulder, my arm, my fingers toward the handle in front of me—the handle leading into the place with flashing lights and bodies with so much skin and so little inhibitions, the place with sex and booze and regret. My place. I could.

  So I did.

  My fingers trembled, but I opened the door anyway. I shook out my blonde hair, knowing I’d have to cut and change it now, before I straightened my shoulders. Chin up, but eyes down.

  Confidence. Not cockiness.

  That’s what would get me through tonight, and into tomorrow. Into anything more than just the next minutes, more than a few hours. That’s what would get me into a new place, a new name and away from what went wrong.

  So I walked out of the alley, away from my mistakes, and toward a possibility, toward a crackling tightrope with promise on one side and destruction behind.

  ***

  “Bridget?” A woman stopped right in front of me—all I could see were her spiked heels, my eyes trained on the stained carpet—and I froze as her voice drifted down.

  Sucking in a breath, and hoping that I was also sucking in conviction and charisma from the sour, sweaty air, I looked up—past her G-string and past her pasties, right into her dark eyes—and I smiled. I tried to ignore the flashes of Parker’s face, bloodied in his apartment earlier tonight, I saw superimposed over her shoulder.

  “Bridget…”

  He breathed it, and droplets of red had splattered my face as he did.

  I didn’t step back. I didn’t flinch.

  I only corrected him, “It’s Beatrice now.” Confusion clouded his eyes. So I added, “But, call me Bee.”

  I blinked Parker away, focusing on the warm face right in front of me.

  “Hey, Cinnamon, how are you?”

  “Better than you, doll. You look ragged,” she said with concern in her voice, and I turned up the power on my smile, trying to get it all the way to my eyes.