Beauty & the Beast (12 page)

Enter Tess and Heather.

“You any good?” Bethany asked Vincent.

His answer was a bunch of scores and other statistics. They must have been good—Cat had no idea—because the jaded teen let her admiration show. Vincent said, “Tell you what. After you and Cat visit your dog, we can have a tournament.”

“Your father is planning to have dinner with you in about an hour,” Milano reminded Bethany. Her face began to re-harden into its surly mask.

“Maybe I can introduce myself, tell him we’ll look after her,” Vincent suggested. “We can get a bunch of stuff to eat in our room.”

Bethany was all smiles now. All excitement.

So much for the first romantic night of our honeymoon
, Cat thought, but Vincent’s generous spirit warmed her heart. They had the rest of their lives to be together, and Bethany appeared to need someone now. Cat crossed her fingers that Mr. Daugherty would give her permission to hang out with them.

“Sounds like a plan,” Cat said. “We can both go with you while you change and meet your dad.”

“It’s this way,” Bethany said. She walked off, obviously expecting them to follow. Bemused, Cat and Vincent fell in. Milano allowed some distance between himself and the trio, although Cat didn’t know why he bothered. In his austere suit, he was impossible not to notice.

They ascended a stacked stone riser dressed with tiki torches leading to a pair of curved lava doors. There were no signs indicating that this was the Neptune Suite. Cat supposed that if you needed to ask where it was, you didn’t need to know. Bethany pulled a key card out of a pocket in her bathing suit and the doors slid back. Inside a lava-rock foyer, a waterfall extended the full height of the room, and a skylight overhead bathed the water in pastels. The sun was setting on their first day aboard the
Sea Majesty
.

By then, Milano had caught up with them. Moving silently around the cluster, he disappeared down a hallway. Bethany said, “I’ll go change,” and left via another corridor.

“How big
is
this place?” Cat murmured to Vincent.

“I hope he doesn’t say no,” Vincent murmured back. “She’ll probably burn the place down.”

After a couple of minutes, a middle-aged man with a firm, tanned face and a physique to match returned to the foyer with Milano. He was wearing khaki trousers, a Hawaiian shirt, expensive-looking leather sandals, and a Rolex. His hair was salt-and-pepper gray and his eyes were blue. His smile was more practiced than genuine but he extended a hand to Catherine first and said, “Forrest Daugherty. I understand you had a run-in with my bodyguard.”

Milano coughed into his fist and said, “I explained that I startled you on your way back from the pool. If you’ll excuse me.” He left the group in the foyer and walked down the same hall where Bethany had disappeared.

“Detective Catherine Chandler, NYPD, and this is my husband, Doctor Vincent Keller.”

“N-Y-P-D, eh?” Daugherty gave her a once-over but made no other comment.

“Yes.”

“And a doctor.” He shook Vincent’s hand.

“He used to be Special Forces,” Cat interjected. “Afghanistan.”

“This is your way of guaranteeing my daughter’s safety,” he drawled. “It’s very kind of you to spend time with her. She’s not the most social person.”

“We’d be very happy to have her over tonight,” Cat assured him. “We’ll order some pizza or something—”

“No bother. Our chef has already begun dinner. I’ll have it sent over.”

“Oh. Well thank you,” Cat said. “That’d be nice. And you don’t mind if I go with her to see Sprinkles?”

He looked at the two of them as if trying to make some sort of decision. Then his demeanor changed, and he leaned forward slightly.

“Here’s the deal,” he said. “My ex-wife has been dating a very questionable individual. I think he’s mobbed up but I haven’t been able to prove it yet. Then about two weeks ago, someone tried to hack into one of my companies’ databases. One week ago, my ex phoned and told me her home had been broken into and a lot of jewelry had been stolen. Milano reported that he’d been tailed picking Bethany up from school. And someone tripped the alarm system on
my
property. We didn’t see anything on the security camera footage, but I decided to get Bethany out of there. It was very short notice, and her school is still in session but they have this end-of-year internship requirement. She has to shadow someone at their job and write up a report. I’ve set it up for her to hang around Captain Kilman. He’s the captain of the
Sea Majesty.
”

“Sounds perfect,” Vincent ventured.

Daugherty’s face fell. “You’d think. Well, she had arranged an interview with a veterinarian and she was furious with me for putting the kibosh on that. She blames me for the divorce and yeah, I’m gone a lot. And I know my ex talks a lot of trash about me. Absentee father, all that.”

Cat nodded. “Father-daughter issues are tough. I have some.” She slid a glance toward Vincent. Her late father, Bob Reynolds, had spearheaded Muirfield, the project that had turned Vincent into a beast. Reynolds had gotten her mother pregnant with her but they had broken up before they’d realized it. Cat had only learned of all of this when the man who had raised her lay dying and she had been unable to serve as a blood donor for him because they had no matching biological markers.

Daugherty beamed at Cat. “I figured there was some reason she let you in. She’s a brick wall, that one. So Milano will walk you down to visit Sprinkles and then he’ll stick around outside your suite. Don’t tell Bethany. She hates having a bodyguard.”

“Got it.” Cat and Vincent nodded at each other and then at him. If that was the only stipulation required to make it possible for Bethany to spend the evening with them, they were all for it.

“I’m ready,” Bethany announced. She appeared in a T-shirt advertising a heavy metal band and leggings. She had on black mary janes. Her hair hung in her face and she had reapplied her heavy eyeliner. Ignoring her father, she walked up to Cat and Vincent. “Let’s go.”

They walked out of the suite and headed for the stairs. She said, “Did you check the room service menu? Do they have vegetarian pizza? Because I don’t eat meat.”

Cat glanced at Vincent. “Well, your father said he would send your dinner over—”

She stopped walking. “No way!” she cried. “Does he have to mess up everything?
I just want pizza.
”

“Maybe he’ll send over pizza,” Vincent said reasonably.

“Maurice went to the Cordon Bleu, that stupid French cooking school,” she said. “It’ll be something unpronounceable and it will taste like gorgonzola cheese.” She looked miserable.

“Tell you what,” Cat began, “you and I will go see Sprinkles and Vincent will get some pizzas for us from the Italian restaurant they have on board. What’s it called? Villa something?”

Her face shone. She looked so young and excited. Cat wondered if she was accustomed to pouting and throwing tantrums because that was the only way she knew to assert herself.

“Villa Capri,” Vincent said. “I’ll get a large vegetarian and a large meat-lovers.” He eyed Bethany. “You look like a popcorn kind of person. And maybe… Twizzlers?”

“Yes!” she cried. “And Jolly Ranchers if they have them.”

“Got it. You have a soda preference?”

“Diet root beer.”

Vincent smiled. “Okay. See you guys in a bit.” He gave Cat a peck on the cheek and headed off.

“This is going to be amazing,” Bethany said, and Cat’s heart broke a little for her. Then she remembered that this poor little rich girl had manipulated her into a showdown with her bodyguard. Better to tread carefully in case the path was planted with land mines.

Bethany showed Cat where the elevator was and they went straight down to the fourth deck. The girl’s mouth curved into that same secretive smile and Cat pictured Milano racing down ten decks’ worth of stairs to keep up with them. Barking and baying signaled that they had reached the ship’s kennel. The air was stuffy and three dog crates seemed to have been wedged into a corner where nothing else would fit. Cat still didn’t understand why the wealthy passengers couldn’t keep their dogs in their rooms. Especially since one of them was a Shih Tzu dressed in a rainbow of satin bows.

Until she saw the other two dogs: a German shepherd and Sprinkles, who was an enormous Great Dane. So gigantic, in fact, that he didn’t seem real.

“Hi, boy-boy, hi,” Bethany said. She opened up his cage, pulled out a leash she unwound from her jeans pocket, and attached it. Then she eased him out. He studied Cat for a few seconds, and then he buried his face against her hand. The gentle giant made a sweet chuffing noise.

“Hi, Sprinkles,” Cat said.

They walked him together between two rows of stacked cartons, then out through a hatch to a nondescript metal deck. The air was fresh and clean and Sprinkles leaned against Bethany as she rubbed his head. The moon glittered on the water. It was a sweet moment.

“I hate my father. He’s a total douchebag,” Bethany said. Then she began to walk Sprinkles up and down the deck. Without comment, Cat walked beside her. Sometimes the best way to ask questions was just to remain silent.

“He can’t just let things be normal. All we want is effing pizza.”

Cat got that. When Bethany glanced over at her, she nodded. “It’s like sometimes you just want vanilla ice cream. Without anything else. But someone wants you to be happy, so they make you a banana split,” Cat said.

“Exactly. And they make the ice cream from milk flown in on a private jet from France.”

“That’d be terrible,” Cat agreed, smiling to herself.

“The worst,” Bethany grumped.

* * *

Miguel’s wife Barbara hadn’t seen the humor in Rachael’s birthday comment about what Daddy did with the other ladies who were not Mama. She was understanding up to a point, but after the last little party guest had left, she’d laid into him. What did she expect? He was a red-blooded man. And now
he
was pissed. So he called his people on the
Sea Majesty
to see how it was going. The reception was terrible even though they had satellite phones.

“
Anything?
” he barked.

“Not yet,” came the reply.

“Then step it up. I don’t care what you do, but get it done.” He slammed down the phone.

* * *

Waiting for the pizzas, Vincent was watching a Las Vegas-style floorshow through a window in Villa Capri while he sat on a bar stool and drank a beer. An extremely well-endowed, heavily made-up but nevertheless very beautiful woman was singing a sad love song in Spanish. Tears ran down her cheeks and as she ended the song, she lowered her head and whispered the last words, “
Adios, mi amor.”
Applause rose up and Vincent made rings on the counter with the bottom of his beer bottle.

The pizzas were taking a long time; he might have gotten better service if he’d ordered from their room. He ducked out to snag the popcorn and candy from the Da Kine Sweet Shop across the hall. While he was browsing, trying to decide if Red Vines were an acceptable substitute for Twizzlers, he realized that the shopper beside him was the singer from the show. She had taken off her stage makeup but he would have recognized those, ah, eyes anywhere.

She must have noticed him looking at her. She smiled and said, “Hey, how ya doin’?” Her accent was pure New Jersey. The breathy Spanish accent was completely gone.

“Great. You?” he asked.

“So far so good,” she said, and pantomimed knocking on wood. “You never know with a new venue.”

“Oh, you’re new?”

She nodded. “Got this booking last minute. That’s why my name’s not on the website.”

There seem to be a lot of late additions to the crew
, he thought. He wondered if that was normal. It happened at the hospital sometimes: A spate of docs or nurses called in sick and suddenly you were working with per diems you might never see again.

“Not bad, a free trip to Hawaii,” he said.

She smiled at him. Looked him up and down. “Yeah. The scenery’s great.”

“So I hear. But we’re in the middle of the ocean.”

“But the scenery
is
great.” That breathy voice was back, and Vincent chuckled. She was hitting on him. Not that he was tempted in the least, but it was flattering.

“Well, I’m sure I’ll see you around,” he said, taking his purchases to the counter. “Please put these on my room,” he told the clerk. “Honeymoon suite.”

“Yes, Mr. Keller,” the clerk replied.

He turned back to say goodnight to the woman. She was holding up a cell phone. Was she taking a picture of him?

“
Buenas noches,”
she replied.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

A blanket dropped on top of Heather as she dozed in her chair. She jerked awake with a shout. Svetlana was silhouetted by the camping lantern, the outline of her body fuzzy against the brilliant light.

“Be quiet,” she said, and handed Heather a small container of yogurt, a sweet roll in a cellophane wrapper, and a water bottle. Heather’s hands shook as she accepted the food and water. Then Svetlana gave her a plastic spoon.

“Thank you. Thank you so much,” Heather murmured as she gobbled down the sweet roll.

The Russian woman said nothing as she walked out of the cell and pulled the door shut.

Only, the lock didn’t click.

Heather stopped chewing. After Svetlana disappeared, she counted to ten. Then she jumped up out of the chair and took two silent giant steps to the door, grabbing one of the bars because there was no knob.

It hadn’t shut.

Her heart hammered. She pushed on the door.

It swung open.

“Oh, my God,” she whispered.

Her mind raced. She listened hard.

Did she do it on purpose? Is it some kind of test? I gave my word that I wouldn’t try to escape and they said they would kill me if I did try. But they
are
going to kill me anyway. And they haven’t used me to talk to Cat yet.

Maybe they don’t need to. Maybe they already have the chip.

Maybe my sister is dead.