Assassins in Love (12 page)

She knew because she had had a choice between those and a room in the lowest deck on the ship. She had taken the lower deck, even though the room was just a bit smaller. She hadn’t wanted to be noticed.

That was her usual M.O. She never wanted to be noticed.

And here she was, about to be noticed.

But sometimes, she had to alter the plan.

She lurched toward security, hoping she wouldn’t turn an ankle in these shoes. She took the lift with relief, because that way she wouldn’t have to walk for a few minutes.

Then she got off the lift on the main deck, used a hand to steady herself, and silently cursed that no one seemed to notice she was having trouble. Misha had noticed the night before.

Of course, that had been suspicious behavior on his part: she had to remember that. He had been following her. He had hired her to kill Testrial so that he could keep track of her, capture her, and have his way with her.

Um, she meant, do away with her.

Um, oh, never mind.

She let the confusion happen, because she knew it would add to her story in security. She pushed open the ivory colored door, with security written on it in half a dozen languages, and stepped into a utilitarian space.

Most of the places on the ship—at least the ones she had been in—had either been highly decorated or extremely opulent. But this wasn’t an area that catered to passengers. Here the walls were unadorned, the chairs looked as uncomfortable as the one in her cabin, and in the distance, she could see cubicles marked off by the same ivory colored material that covered the door.

A man in a green uniform sat on a clear plastic chair. Five screens floated around him, and he ignored all of them. Instead, he stared at her.

“Yes?” he said in a tone that almost made her regret coming here.

She licked her lower lip. “Security, right?”

“Yes, ma’am. Can I help you?”

“I think I got myself in some pretty serious trouble.” She made sure her voice broke. She raised one shaking hand to her neck and pulled down her collar as far as it would go without ripping. “See what he did to me?”

To his credit, the guard didn’t stand. Instead, he sent a small round drone about the size of her fist to examine her skin. The drone flew just under her chin and hovered. She could hear it whir.

“Who did this, ma’am?” the guard asked, his voice not quite as calm as it had been.

“He says his name is Rafael,” she said. “But I don’t believe him. He—knew things—no rich guy should know. Last night, he gave me something.”

“Besides the bruises?” the guard asked, and Rikki silently thanked him. She had made a deliberately misleading statement and he had gone with the safest question. Although she knew his mind had silently asked a dirtier one.
He
gave
you
what, ma’am?

A woman came out of one of the cubicles. The male security guard looked relieved to see her.

“Why don’t you come talk to me?” the woman said.

She wasn’t the guard Rikki had seen the night before. This woman was in shape as well, but older, her face lined as if she was permanently tired. Her name badge read
Bess Windham
.

Rikki followed her past the main guard, into the hallway formed by the cubicle walls. Most of the doors into those cubicles were open, but no one sat inside. She didn’t know if that meant security was understaffed or if they were all out on assignment.

She rubbed a damp palm on the side of her dress. She didn’t have to pretend to be nervous. She was nervous. She hated being anywhere run by authority figures.

Windham’s cubicle was at the very back, and it was larger than the others. The sign on her door read
Passenger
Relations
, but the words were in a holographic font. Rikki wondered if they got changed for each crisis that someone reported.

This cubicle actually had a desk, and several comfortable-looking chairs around it. The cubicle looked friendly enough, but Rikki recognized some of the displays above her: they were made of tiny lenses, so that everything could be recorded multiple times.

Normally, she would care. But she didn’t here. She wanted this interview to get recorded.

“How may I help you, Miss—?”

“Carter,” Rikki said as if she didn’t know that the woman already knew her name. “I’m Rachel Carter.”

“Miss Carter.” Windham had a gentle voice. “What’s happened to you?”

Rikki ran her hands along her sleeves. She made her eyes as big and vulnerable as possible. Then she swallowed hard.

“Last night,” she said in a small voice, “I really wasn’t myself.”

That
was true enough.

“I met this man, and he dragged me to a bar on B Deck. I couldn’t get in without him. And then he gave me a beer—I don’t drink much, but I drank that, and then I couldn’t keep my hands off him.”

“But not before?” Windham asked.

Rikki shook her head. “He was dragging me around. I thought it pretty strange, but he had said he needed my help.”

“To do what?”

She shrugged. “Something about putting one over on someone? I don’t know. It’s all pretty fuzzy.”

“You think he put something in your beer?”

“Or he used one of those touch drops, you know, the aphrodisiacs?”

Windham raised her chin lightly. Touch drops were illegal in most sectors but that didn’t stop their use. Their name reflected what they did: they changed behavior with a single touch.

“What makes you think that?” Windham asked.

“Two things.” Rikki bit her lower lip, and winced at the slight pain. Okay, maybe she was taking this acting thing a bit too far. “The first are these.”

She raised her hand to her collar and brought it down, just like she had done in the main part of security.

Windham didn’t even look, which confirmed what Rikki already knew: that the woman had seen the bruises through that tiny drone and had decided to take on this incident herself.

“The second is…” Rikki let her voice trail off as if she was embarrassed. “I, um, saw him tonight, and I went up to him, thinking that maybe, you know, it would, I would, you know, feel the same way?”

The woman nodded. “But you didn’t.”

Rikki made a face. “We danced and I wanted him to stop touching me.”

She was lying. It was surprisingly hard to lie about this part.

“And I kept telling him I wanted to stop, and he wouldn’t, so finally, I just stopped, and then I got away from him as fast as I could.”

“Did you have a physical reaction to him tonight?” Windham asked.

Oh, yeah
, Rikki wanted to say.
Just
as
strong, just as thrilling as last night. Only I didn’t let myself act on it
.

“Yes,” she said with some emphasis. “But not what I expected. He disgusted me. I couldn’t wait to get away from him.”

Windham closed her eyes for just a brief moment, but that moment was enough. Rikki knew what it meant: Windham dealt with a lot of aphrodisiac-based crimes, and she thought this was another.

“I realize that you’re not the police,” Rikki said before Windham could speak up. “I know you can’t do anything to him, and you probably don’t want to, since he has a suite the size of your office—”

Windham looked like she was about to deny that was an issue, which she probably had to do to cover the ship’s ass in some kind of legal proceeding, but Rikki didn’t let the woman talk.

“—but I’m not sure he is who he says he is.”

That caught Windham’s attention. “What do you mean?”

“Like I said, it’s all pretty hazy. But he said a few things. For one thing, he asked me to call him Misha, and I have no idea how you get from Rafael to Misha.”

“That’s not enough, ma’am.”

“I
know
,” Rikki said. “I remember laughing about something, about the way it took only so much money to get a ship to think you were really rich, but I’m not sure I dreamed it or what. And he said something about being rich giving you access—”

“We can’t help you in a lawsuit against him, if that’s what you’re looking for,” Windham said.

“No, I’m not,” Rikki said. “It’s just that I, um, haven’t washed my hand, and I touched his face, and I’m pretty sure I have some of his DNA…”

Windham’s gaze met Rikki’s. It wasn’t exactly legal for the ship to check DNA without suspicion of a crime. Rikki just hoped that she had presented enough information to give the ship cover.

Windham’s gaze flitted to Rikki’s neck again. Then Windham nodded as if she had made a decision.

“We’ll do a swipe,” she said. “Come with me.”

The square little man with the injured hand had left the ballroom, and Rikki hadn’t returned. Misha still leaned against the pole, a bit amazed at himself. He wasn’t sure why he had thought she would come back. To apologize?

Not that she had anything to apologize for.

But it seemed odd to him that she was so angry at him, and yet she had clearly waited for him. The square little man had confirmed that.

So what had she wanted? To confront Misha? But why? They had had their confrontation that morning, and she should have left things alone.

He frowned, went over their interaction, and found it somewhat strange, but he couldn’t quite tell why.

Maybe she had wanted him to follow her. But why would she want that? To take their disagreement into the corridor? To play some kind of sexual game he didn’t entirely understand?

She certainly had been experienced and the square little man had thought she was some kind of professional.

Sometimes female assassins used all of their wiles to deal with their targets. She had certainly flirted with Testrial, but she hadn’t gone to his room until the night she killed him.

So that didn’t seem like it was the way she operated.

Still, Misha had been misjudging her from the start.

The waltzes continued. He was getting sick of them.
One
two three,
one
two three. If he wasn’t careful, he was going to hear that rhythm in his head for days.

He pushed up his sleeve and checked his wrist screen. Rikki’s icon remained motionless outside the side exit. She was just standing in the corridor.

He frowned, wondering if she had dumped her identi-card. He caught himself thinking that she didn’t know how to turn it off, but he couldn’t make those assumptions now. She was smarter than he gave her credit for. He constantly underestimated her abilities and it had hurt him. He couldn’t continue doing that.

So why was she just standing in that corridor?

He sighed. He could, he supposed, just stomp his way down that corridor and confront her. But where would that get him? He had done that just a few minutes ago, and she had walked away from him.

Then, as he watched, the icon moved down the corridor. After a moment, the icon moved inside the ladies room and stayed in the front part of the lounge for a good five minutes.

Now he was getting suspicious. She was up to something. Had she taken two jobs on this cruise? The ship was still in the NetherRealm. If she killed another person here, she would try to get away with that as well. And if it was an actual job, she might actually be right.

He glanced up. No one watched him. The dancers continued to turn, bright swirls of color against the room’s black-and-silver background.

Yet he had been thinking so hard about Rikki that he had forgotten to keep track of his surroundings. Again.

That was why the woman was dangerous. She took away his concentration.

He certainly hadn’t concentrated on anything but her the night before.

He glanced at his wrist screen. She had left the ladies’ room now, and had found one of the lifts. It was heading to the main floor.

Something about that bothered him. She was up to something, but he didn’t know what.

He tugged his sleeve over the screen, then circled the dance floor, staying at the edges. He remained in the shadows as much as possible, feeling a bit unsettled.

He had no idea if anyone was watching him. He even double-checked the chip in his hand to make sure it was off.

Then he slipped out the same door Rikki had used. He half-expected to find her in the corridor, waiting for him, arms crossed. It wouldn’t have surprised him if she had slipped someone else her chip, and tried to see if Misha was following her.

But she wasn’t there. The corridor, blazing white after the darkness of the ballroom, was empty.

He walked carefully in the direction she had gone, and then, as he got on the lift, he looked at his wrist screen again.

His breath caught.

She had gone to the security office.

Why would she go there? To turn him in for Testrial’s murder? To confess?