by Sharon Dunn
Maybe it was something about seeing Maya with Bess that had made him imagine pictures of domestic bliss in his head. She was just so different from any of the other women he’d dated. Yet although he felt drawn to her in that moment, he had to remind himself that he had a lousy track record where women were concerned...
More conflicted thoughts flitted through his mind as they worked side by side. He mixed pancakes and poured them on the grill, watching them closely for the bubbling that indicated he needed to flip them. Their shoulders touched as she spread the eggs onto the griddle and scrambled them with a spatula.
“It smells good,” she said.
Though he still felt that same spark between them now, he knew he had to let go of the idea that there could be anything but a friendship between as much as he enjoyed this time with her. Even a friendship would be strained by how often he was away at sea.
They finished cooking. David fished out some syrup that had not been opened as well as individual containers of orange juice that were sealed with a foil cover. All of the precautions reminded him that the killer was out there waiting for another chance to get at Maya and Sarge and that he didn’t mind taking David out as collateral damage.
When they sat down to eat, only one other person remained in the kitchen, an older woman in a maid’s uniform.
They bowed their heads while David thanked God for the food.
Maya stared down at her plate. “This looks so good. That was fun to cook together.”
The warmth and affection that permeated her voice was a reminder that he needed to nip this in the bud.
“As work colleagues, Maya, I enjoy your company.” His words held a chilly quality on purpose.
Her features hardened. “Yes, David. It has been good to work with you and spend time together.” Her voice had turned cold as well.
Just as long as she understood the boundary. He didn’t want to hurt her or lead her on. Even if he did feel a special connection to her, they were two people from two different worlds. He couldn’t fathom how those worlds would ever fit together.
NINE
Maya found herself grateful when their meal was interrupted by a text from the K-9 unit’s forensic scientist, Tala Ekho. Whatever blossoming feelings she harbored for David, he had made it clear that he wasn’t interested. Focusing on her work would take her mind off the disappointment she was experiencing. She reread the text.
We’ve had some developments in the wedding party murder. Call when you can. Want to keep you in the loop.
She looked up from her phone. “I have to make a ship to shore call. It would be nice if I could have consistent Wi-Fi, which I’ve noticed we don’t get down here.”
David finished up his last bite of breakfast. “Your better choice would be the internet café on deck six. I can escort you there.”
“Sounds good. Let’s pick up Sarge from the room on the way.” Even as they spoke, Maya felt David’s walls going up all around him. She’d breached some emotional boundary by expressing affection for him. She sensed though that it wasn’t meanness that had made him become all brusque and businesslike, it was fear. And even though David had been crystal clear about where they stood, she found herself wanting to know more about why he’d shut her down so quickly. Was it just the incompatibility of their lives...or something deeper?
They loaded their dishes in the mostly full dishwasher and stopped back at her cabin room to get Sarge. As they walked down the labyrinth of the hallways, she told herself she needed to let go of her curiosity about David and focus on what mattered the most. Her work with the Alaskan K-9 unit. They headed up to the internet café, and once they arrived, the attendant provided her with log-on information so she could set up a video call.
While she sat waiting for the call to go through, David cupped his hand on her shoulder. “I’m technically on duty as of ten minutes ago. If I get called away, please wait here until I can come get you or send one of the other security officers.”
She was surprised he had gone back to work so quickly. She still felt weak from the poisoning. But then again, wasn’t that what she was doing too by getting briefed on the wedding party investigation? Maybe, like her, David had had no choice but to jump back into the fray. She hoped for both their sakes it was a quiet day.
Tala’s face came up on the video screen. Her long dark hair was pulled back in a ponytail, and the round silver-framed glasses she wore seemed to make her brown eyes even darker and more intense. “Maya, so good to see you.”
Tala worked out of Anchorage at the state crime lab. She handled most of the evidence pertaining to the K-9 unit’s cases. Seeing anyone connected to her job tugged at Maya’s heart. Especially after David’s rejection. She missed being on land and working side by side with the team.
“Hey, Tala, what’s up?”
“Lorenza wanted to make sure you were up-to-date on any breakthroughs with the cases we’re working on,” the other woman said. “We’ve had a big surprise with the wedding party murders.”
“Oh really! Did they catch Violet James? Lorenza said they thought she’d been spotted in Anchorage.”
“I don’t know about that. You’d have to talk to Eli,” Tala replied. “He was going to look at footage from where she was spotted.”
Maya made a mental note that calling Eli Partridge, the tech guru who helped the team out, might be the next order of business. “So what’s the development?”
“As you know, the groom and the best man have said all along that it was the bride, Violet James, who killed the guide and pushed the bridesmaid off the cliff, which made sense considering she seems to have gone into hiding.”
“Her behavior would suggest guilt, yes,” Maya concurred. “Even though the bridesmaid says it’s totally out of character for Violet.”
“Well, now that the best man and the groom are missing, Eli is trying to track them via credit card use.”
“I hope he hits pay dirt soon.”
“You and me both,” Tala said. “So anyway, back to my big news. You remember how the groom Lance Wells and best man Jared Dennis claimed that when they were attacked in the hospital while a guard was posted outside their room, that the perpetrator was Violet?”
“Yeah... And I recall that the reason they were attacked in the first place was because the bride coldcocked the guard, granting her access to the room.” Maya furrowed her brow. “Why? Wasn’t that how it all went down?”
“Not exactly. As it turns out, the guard never saw his attacker because the cameras in that hallway were disabled. The last recorded image is of someone in surgical scrubs and a face mask, an easy enough disguise to pull off in a hospital, so we couldn’t ID anyone. However, there were some microscopic samples on the guard’s uniform. Some hair and fibers that didn’t match the guard’s. The DNA matches the groom’s.”
Maya sat back in her chair. “Wow! This shifts the whole case. You know I had a gut feeling about the groom. There has been something fishy about Lance from the beginning, as well as his best man. How did you come up with a DNA match anyway? We checked Lance out when the murder of the guide first happened. He doesn’t have a criminal record.”
“That was one of the reasons it took me so long to match the samples. Violet and Lance gave each other an engagement gift of an ancestry test. Ariel was the one who told me about it. She still maintains Violet’s innocence by the way.”
“But if the bride hasn’t done something, why doesn’t she come out of hiding?” Maya’s attention was drawn to David who had been pacing at the open entrance to the internet café. He was now talking on his radio, probably getting a call on something he needed to deal with.
“Motive is for the K-9 team to figure out. I just look at things under a microscope. Speaking of which, I need to get back to work.”
Maya stared at the screen. “Thanks for the update. It was good to see you, Tala.�
��
She hung up and the screen went black. When she looked over at the entrance to the internet café, David was gone.
That meant she was stuck here until David could come back or she would have to summon one of the other security officers. A wave of nausea suddenly roiled through her. Great. Her stomach felt like it was in even more turmoil than before.
To make matters worse, she was the only one in the internet café besides the attendant. Sarge lay at her feet. “I don’t suppose you have anything on hand for an upset stomach?”
The attendant who looked like he was barely out of his teens looked up from his laptop and stared at her for a moment. She realized it was a bizarre question to ask someone who ran an internet café, but she would not be able to leave the café as per David’s orders. Maybe the clerk had been sick at one time and had something around.
“No, there’s a pharmacy down the first hallway to your right,” he said.
She had a vague memory of having seen a sign with an arrow for it when she and David had come toward the internet café.
Her stomach churned again. She feared she was going to be sick. Had she been poisoned again? She stood up and tugged on Sarge’s leash, glad that he was with her. This part of the ship was not a place with heavy passenger traffic. She saw only one other person walking away from her up the long corridor. As she read the signs on the doors, it looked like it consisted of places people would seek out because of particular needs. She passed a lost and found and also saw a sign indicating the infirmary was on this floor, which helped her orient herself a little. Her entrance and exit from the infirmary the previous night had been kind of a blur.
Maya followed the sign to the pharmacy. An older man was behind the counter. She found the shelf that contained medicine for stomach upset and selected a bottle. After paying the clerk, she texted David that she had left the internet café to go to the pharmacy but would head back there now. She didn’t want him to return and worry that something had happened to her.
When she didn’t get a text right back, she assumed he must still be out dealing with whatever the radio call had been about.
The pharmacy did have a public bathroom which she used to take some of the medicine she had just purchased. Afterward, Maya took the short walk up the hallway toward the internet café. She saw no one which gave her an uneasy feeling. Back at the café, the doors were still open, but the young clerk had disappeared. Maybe he was in the back room.
She checked her phone, but David had not texted her back.
She typed in another message.
Clerk is gone. Here by myself. Feeling a little vulnerable without you.
Her finger hovered over the send button. Sending such a text meant she was admitting something to David. She was a trained police officer with a K-9 partner who had her back, and yet she felt the safest when David was close by.
Maya pressed Send and sat back in her chair. She looked at the laptop in front of her thinking she should use the time to get in touch with the tech guru, Eli Partridge, to find out if he had made any headway in tracking down the missing groom and best man or in locating the bride. Her stomach was still doing a gymnastic routine while her hand hovered over the keyboard.
Then she heard approaching footsteps out in the corridor.
* * *
David hurried to deck eight where the call about an altercation had come in. This part of the ship had several hot tubs beneath a glass ceiling and a shuffleboard court and a virtual putting green. Several senior citizens were engaged in the shuffleboard game and he spotted four people in one of the hot tubs. Everyone appeared very relaxed.
His throat went tight. The call had come in as an emergency.
One older man playing shuffleboard looked in his direction. “Everything all right?”
David shook his head and turned to run in the direction he’d just come. “Just fine.” He’d been set up, lured away from Maya.
As he increased his pace from a jog to a sprint, pain shot through his injured leg. He swung the door to the stairs open and hurried down. Once on the deck where Maya was, he ran as fast as he could to the internet café. When he got there, Sarge sat up in an alert stance. His tail thumped when he saw David. The clerk was behind the counter staring at his laptop. He looked up when David stepped into the café.
“The woman who was here?”
The attendant shrugged. “I went in the back to deal with some inventory. She left to go get something for her stomach.” He pointed at the dog. “She must have come back while I was in the back room and then left her dog behind.”
David’s mind reeled. Was it possible the killer had managed to abduct or subdue her with Sarge so close?
“Did you see anyone else?”
The clerk closed his laptop. “Actually, I did. A guy came by twice and peered in like he was looking for something or someone. When I asked him if he needed help, he just shrugged.”
“What did he look like?”
“I don’t know. Average build, brown hair.”
Pushing down a rising panic, David turned one way and then the other. “How long ago was that?”
“Five to seven minutes.”
David could not piece together what had happened. The guy would not have come back looking for Maya if he already had her. Sarge was alert but not agitated. He looked at the dog. “Where did she go?”
Sarge wandered over to him and licked his hand.
“Hey.” The voice behind him was more welcoming than a cool breeze on a hot day.
He whirled around to see Maya. She was extremely pale and clutching her stomach.
Joy surged through him. Even though she did not look well, he was glad she had not been harmed. “You okay?”
“Not really, I got sick and had to run to the bathroom. I don’t think I am fully recovered yet from the poisoning.”
“Oh no, so sorry to hear that.” David took a step toward her. “When you weren’t here, I was a little afraid something might have happened. The call I went on was a false alarm.”
Her hand fluttered from her stomach to her neck. “Do you think our suspect made the call to lure you away, so I’d be alone?”
“Yes, and the clerk said a man came by here twice and looked in.”
“Let me guess.” She blew out an agitated breath. “He was of medium build, totally generic in appearance and too far away to notice if he had green eyes.”
He hadn’t asked the clerk if he’d noticed eye color, but since the young man hadn’t mentioned something that distinctive, Maya was probably right. The near miss with the attacker was a reminder of how vulnerable she was. If she hadn’t gone to the bathroom, if the timing of the clerk being in a back room had been different, David might not be looking into her beautiful brown eyes right now. “Glad you’re okay. I was really worried.”
“I did send you two texts.”
He pulled his phone out. “There was no time to check them. I thought the most important thing was to ensure that you were not in danger.” He looked at both texts. The first one was straightforward, just saying she had gone to the pharmacy on the same deck. However, the second caused a tightening in his throat. Feeling a little vulnerable without you. It was almost like she was admitting that she liked having him around. Maya could obviously take care of herself—as a highly skilled state trooper he figured she had all kinds of self-defense training. But did she feel safer when he was close? When he looked up from his phone, she stared at the floor as though self-conscious.
Against his will, his own face felt flushed. He smiled and shook his head. Despite how he tried to keep his defenses up, she had a way of getting to him. “It’s nice to know you feel that way.”
Her expression was glowing. Sarge, standing by her feet, wagged his tail.
He could at least admit that he felt an attraction to Maya. Even if nothing could come of it.
He needed to keep reminding himself, and her, of that. His voice took on a businesslike quality. “I have some regular check-ins and follow-ups I need to do with some of the establishments that reported crimes. We have a bit of an employee theft problem in one of the shops. I need to pick up their surveillance footage. You and Sarge can come along with me.”
The brightness faded from her features. “Sure, David. I need to make another ship to shore call to Eli Partridge sometime today—he’s the tech wiz that works with the K-9 Unit.”
“Some of the stuff I have to do is time sensitive.” He stepped outside of the café and Maya fell in beside him. “We can work in the video chat when things are slower or maybe when I get off shift. I don’t want you down here alone though.”
“Sure, I get that. But I need to stay abreast of the unit’s current investigations. Maybe we can come down here on your break or something.”
“We’ll work something out.”
The whole conversation seemed stiff. Like they were both trying to avoid talking about their feelings by focusing on their respective jobs. Maybe they’d both crossed a line and the start of what might have been a unique friendship had become uncomfortable.
“Are you free to speak about the cases the team is working on? I might be able to provide some input. Sometimes just talking a case out can make light bulbs go on.”
“You’re right about that. It’s hard not to be part of the investigation. Especially, the one involving a wedding party homicide. I was very involved when the case first broke.”
“Tell me about it?”
She had a moment’s hesitation about discussing the cases. “I would love to troubleshoot with you about them. But let me message my boss and ask permission first.” She sent the text. “If she doesn’t get back to me...as much as I would like to, I really shouldn’t.”
The fact the Maya respected the ethics of police work made him like her only more. Her phone dinged a few seconds later. She read the text. “My boss says it’s okay to talk to you about the investigations.”
