If Cole had something to hide, I’d be incredibly foolish to flag what I’d just seen. He’d deny it, and then he’d probably delete the picture.
On the other hand, it was very likely he had no idea who the girl was and might be willing to let me have the image. But if I raised the issue now, in front of Chloe, and with who knew who else possibly listening . . .
I thought of the way Bjorn had appeared from behind the paneling at breakfast and I involuntarily looked over my shoulder. The last thing I wanted was for this picture to go the way of the mascara. I wasn’t going to make the same mistake twice. If I did decide to confront Cole, I should do it in private. The photo had been safe on Cole’s camera up until now; it would be safe a little longer.
I stood up, my knees suddenly shaky.
“I’m—I’m actually not very hungry,” I said to Chloe. “And I’m supposed to be meeting Ben Howard.”
“Oh, I forgot,” she said casually. “He was in here looking for you. I met him coming up out of the spa. He said he had something important to tell you.”
“Did he say where he was going?”
“Back to his cabin to do some work, I think.”
“Thanks.”
Bjorn appeared again like a genie from behind the concealed screen.
“May I get you a drink, Miss Blacklock?”
I shook my head.
“No, I’ve remembered I’m supposed to be meeting someone. Could you please send a sandwich to my suite?”
“Certainly.” He nodded, and I slipped out of the room with an apologetic nod to Cole and Chloe.
I was hurrying along the corridor that led towards the aft cabins when I rounded a corner and ran slap into Ben himself—literally. We collided with a crash that knocked the breath out of me.
“Lo!” He grabbed my arm. “I’ve been looking for you everywhere.”
“I know. What were you doing down in the spa?”
“Didn’t you just hear me? Looking for you.”
I stared at him, at his face, the picture of innocence, his eyes above his dark beard round and full of urgency. Could I trust him? I had absolutely no idea. A few years ago I would have said I knew Ben inside out—right up until the moment he walked out. Now I had learned that I couldn’t even totally trust myself, let alone another person.
“Did you come into my treatment room?” I asked abruptly.
“What?” He looked momentarily confused. “No, of course not. They said you were getting a mud wrap. I didn’t think you’d want me barging in. I was told to look for some girl called Ulla, but she wasn’t there, so I pushed a note under your door and came back up.”
“I didn’t see any note.”
“Well, I left one. What’s this about?”
Something in my chest felt like bursting—a mixture of fear and frustration. How could I possibly know if Ben were telling the truth? The note would be a stupid thing to lie about anyway—even if he’d written the message in the steam, why fib about leaving me a note? Perhaps it had been there, and I’d just overlooked it in my panic.
“Someone else left me a message,” I said at last. “Written in steam on the mirror of the shower next door while I was having the treatment. It said Stop digging.”
“What?” His pink face went slack with shock, his mouth hanging open. If he was acting, it was the best performance I’d ever seen him give. “Are you serious?”
“One hundred percent.”
“But—but didn’t you see them go in? Is there another entrance to the bathroom?”
“No. They must have come through the room. I . . .” I felt oddly ashamed saying it, but I put my chin up, refusing to be apologetic. “I fell asleep. There’s only one entrance to the spa, and Eva says no one went down except for Tina and Chloe . . . and you.”
“And the spa staff,” Ben reminded me. “Plus, surely there must be a fire exit down there?”
“There’s an exit, but it’s one-way. It leads into the staff quarters, but you can’t open it from the other side. I asked.”
Ben looked unconvinced.
“Not that hard for someone to wedge it open, though, right?”
“No, but it’s alarmed. There would have been sirens going off all over the place.”
“Well, I guess it’s possible if you knew enough about the system you could fiddle with the alarm settings. But Eva wasn’t there the whole time, you know.”
“What do you mean?”
“She wasn’t there when I came back up. Anne Bullmer was—she was waiting for her nail varnish to dry. But Eva was gone. So if she says she was there for the whole time, she’s not telling the truth.”
Oh God. I thought about myself, lying there, half-naked beneath the thin film wraps and towels, and how someone—anyone—could have come in and placed a hand over my mouth, wound a sheet of plastic around my head . . .
“So what did you want to see me about?” I said, trying to sound normal. Ben looked uneasy.
“Oh . . . that. Well, you know we were on a tour of the bridge and so on?”
I nodded.
“Archer was trying to text someone, I think, and he dropped his phone. I picked it up, and it was open on the contacts page.”
“And?”
“The name just said Jess, but the preview picture was a girl, a lot like the one you described. Late twenties, long dark hair, dark eyes . . . and this is the thing—she was wearing a Pink Floyd T-shirt.”
Something cold trickled down my spine. I remembered Archer last night, his laughing face as he twisted my arm up behind my back, Chloe’s disapproving maybe the rumors about his first wife are true. . . .
“Was she the person he was trying to text?” I asked. Ben shook his head.
“I don’t know. He might have pressed a few buttons when he fumbled the phone.”
Automatically, I pulled out my own phone, ready to google “Jess Fenlan”—but the search bar whirred fruitlessly. The Internet was still down, and my e-mails were still not loading.
“Is your Internet working?” I asked Ben. He shook his head.
“No, there’s some issue with the router, apparently. I suppose teething problems are par for the course with maiden voyages, but it’s a right pain. Archer was sounding off about it over lunch; he kicked up quite a stink to poor Hanni. I thought she was about to burst into tears at one point. Anyway, she went and spoke to Camilla Wotserface, and it’ll be fixed shortly, apparently. At least, I bloody hope it will be, I’ve got a piece to file.”
I frowned as I pushed the phone back in my pocket.
Could Archer have been the person who wrote the message in the steam? I thought of his strength, the hint of cruelty in his smile last night, and I felt sick at the idea of him tiptoeing past me while I slept.
“We went down to the engine room,” Ben said, almost as if reading my thoughts. “It’s three decks down, we probably passed fairly close to that exit from the spa you were talking about.”
“Would you have noticed if someone had peeled off from the group?” I asked. Ben shook his head.
“I doubt it. The engine deck was very cramped, we were all kind of strung out, slotting in and out of small spaces, the group only got back together when we got upstairs.”
I felt suddenly and nauseously claustrophobic, as if the stifling opulence of the boat were closing around me.
“I’ve got to get out,” I said. “Anywhere.”
“Lo.” Ben put a hand out towards my shoulder, but I pulled myself away from his grasping fingers and staggered towards the deck door, forcing it open against the wind.
On deck, the wind hit me in the face like a punch, and I stumbled to the rail, hanging over it, feeling the pitch of the boat. The dark gray waves stretched out like a desert—mile upon mile, stretching to the horizon, no sign of land of any kind, nor even a ship. I shut my eyes, seeing the fruitless whirling of the Internet search engine icon. There was literally no way of calling for help.
“Are you all right?” I heard over my shoulder, the words snatched by the wind. Ben had followed me. I screwed my eyes shut against the salt spray that smacked the side of the ship and shook my head.