His Reluctant Bodyguard (24 page)

A short while later when the heat and humidity started to climb, the first of the passengers filed back onto Intrepid and he joined them.
He stowed his sunglasses and mobile phone inside the backpack, but kept his new baseball cap pulled low to shadow his face.

Predictably, the crewman who shoved his sea pass card into the reader didn't even glanced at Robert Adams' picture as it flashed on the screen. An uneventful stroll through the metal detector while his bag went through the
x-ray,
and the Irishman was home free. Only one more thing to do and he could relax until they reached
Zihuatenajo
tomorrow and his real work began.

After a short elevator ride, he walked into the ship's spa. As he expected, the place was empty.

"Nope, I don't have an appointment," he admitted in his best West Coast accent and with his most ingenuous smile. "But it's just too hot with my hair this long." Still grinning, he looked around the empty room then back at the young Asian woman's name tag. "You don't look very busy, Mimi. Can't you give me a break?"

She took his proffered sea pass card and the twenty dollar bill under it. "All right, Mr. Adams. Have a seat. But if I cut it short, you won't have any more gold highlights."

"That's okay. I'd rather have it natural anyway, and call me Rob."

By the time she'd finished, his dark hair was almost military short on the sides and coaxed into stiff spikes on the top with gel. He doubted anyone from the flea market would recognize him as the same man. Snagging his backpack from the floor, he left the spa and headed for lunch at the buffet.

He found a secluded corner not far from the exit near the elevators and consumed his Caesar salad and pasta, savoring each bite as he watched four crewmembers
who
were eating at a nearby table.

The two uniformed men seated on one end of the long table seemed to be speaking a Scandinavian language, and he guessed they were officers. On the other end, the two women spoke English with unmistakable American accents. The brassy blonde in a short black skirt he figured for one of the entertainers or a member of the cruise director's staff. But the other woman, whose honey-brown hair was swept back severely into a tight bun at the back of her head, wore a uniform similar to the men.

A squawking noise interrupted the women's conversation, and he watched the uniformed woman pull a walkie-talkie from her belt and speak into it.

"I'll be right there," she said, and a frown marred her pretty face as she replaced the device on her belt. Then she turned back to her tablemate and sighed.
"
Gotta
go.
Lost sea pass card down at embark."

She headed for the bank of elevators, but as she passed his table, she looked directly into his eyes and a puzzled expression slid over her face. He thought she was going to speak to him, but the chime of the elevators interrupted whatever she'd been about to say, and she turned and hurried for the hallway. Not, however, before he noticed the patch on her sleeve that said "ACL Security."

He finished his pasta and returned to the buffet line for dessert. After selecting a slice of strawberry cheesecake, he found a different seat at the opposite end of the dining
area,
just to be sure he didn't run into Ms. Security again.

But a couple of hours later, he did see her. He'd been trying to bank a bit of sleep by napping on one of the chaise lounges near the pool. The stifling afternoon heat had awakened him, and when he lifted his sunglasses to wipe the perspiration from his eyes, he saw her on the opposite side of the deck once again talking to the blonde.

Idle curiosity got the better of him. Since he was ready to take a dip anyway, he left his sunglasses,
flip
flops, and backpack on his chaise and slid into the refreshing water in the pool's deep end. Surfacing on the other side brought him close enough to the pair to give him a nice view of the blonde's bare legs. But before he could focus on Ms. Security, a familiar noise erupted from her walkie-talkie.

"Davidson," she answered, then gave a frustrated growl low in her throat. "Are you kidding me? That's the third time today. I'm on my way."

She clipped the device back on her belt and strode away, while he swam underwater to the shallow end of the pool, climbed out, and snagged a towel from the pile on the rolling cart. Rubbing the water from his wet hair, he walked back to his chaise. When he finished drying off and placed the damp towel in the dirty linen cart, Robert Adams' sea pass card was neatly folded inside it.
 

***

"I'm telling you something weird is going on today,"
Skylar
Davidson declared as she
unkinked
the power cord from the electronic Bingo board, and helped her roommate and assistant cruise director, Avery Knox maneuver the unwieldy piece of equipment into place.

Avery swiped a golden lock of hair out of her eyes. "You worry too much. People lose their sea pass cards all the time. Can you plug this into the power strip?"

Squatting down,
Skylar
did as Avery asked, but she stubbornly insisted, "This is different. I don't know why, but I know it's not just a coincidence."

"Honestly,
Skylar
, this is a long way from LAPD. Relax! The worst thing you've done yet is roll some drunk out of one of the lounges, or separate two little old ladies fighting over the last blueberry waffle in the breakfast buffet. That's how it is onboard."

As she watched the board's lights blink to life and the corresponding overhead screen flash on,
Skylar
gave a little shrug of defeat. She knew Avery was right, but old habits were hard to break. She'd spent five years doing police work, three of them with the LAPD, and only two months as a security officer on Intrepid. This trip was only her sixth time out. Her step-father had first brought up the idea of working for a cruise line when he and
Skylar's
mother had taken her on a Caribbean cruise for her high school graduation.
Like she couldn't hack it as a 'real' police officer.
But ten years later, here she was.

Her days were filled with busy work, not crime, and her surroundings were beautiful. This was exactly what she'd wanted, needed, which was why she'd chucked everything and signed on. Why did she insist on looking for trouble?

"All right, unless you're expecting a riot from your two dozen frothing Bingo players, I'm going back to the buffet and check for a drive-by fruiting."

"See you at the sail-away party at seven," Avery replied.

The rest of the day and evening passed uneventfully. When her shift ended at eleven PM,
Skylar
went down to the tiny cabin she shared with Avery. Her boss and head security officer Yuri
Ivanov
never failed to remind her how fortunate she was to have only one roommate. Her male counterparts were in four bed dormitories. Because she was female and had been hired as a last minute replacement, she'd been lucky.

Like this little broom closet is so great
,
Skylar
thought sardonically as she slipped inside.

However, she knew she really was lucky.
More lucky to have the roommate than the room.
A veteran of four contracts on the Intrepid, Avery was friendly, easy-going and could sleep through just about everything, a skill
Skylar
still struggled to perfect.

Avery was off in dreamland and never stirred as
Skylar
showered, washed her hair, and crawled into bed herself. Tomorrow would be a busy day since they had to tender passengers into port in
Zihua
. But in spite of her attempts to relax, the unease that had hung like a cloud over her head all afternoon continued to plague
Skylar
. After dozing fitfully and waking up every hour, she finally crawled out of bed a little before four, threw on some clothes, and went to prowl the upper decks.

This wasn't the first time she'd walked around the ship in the wee hours of the morning. In fact, she rather liked it. Nobody else was around, though some of the early morning crew would start removing covers and setting chairs aright in another hour or so.

A cool breeze lifted off the dark water as she strolled the empty length of the net covered outdoor pool, past the stacked and roped chaise lounges and the silent shuttered bar. The view of the sea and sky was obstructed by the enclosing windows, so she climbed the metal stairs and headed for her favorite place, the Observation Lounge, a bar and disco on the top deck in the very front of the ship.

Forward,
she reminded herself of the correct nautical term,
and the back is aft. Port is left and starboard is right
. One of these days, she would use those words without thinking about them. Just like one of these days she would stop thinking about the girl she'd shot.

Her thoughts were on
Esme
Sanchez as she traversed the dimly lit aisle of the circular, glass-enclosed lounge. Had
Esme
and her pimp already blown through the settlement money the city had paid out for the injuries she'd sustained for being a far-from-innocent bystander?
Skylar
would bet they had, and that the girl was already back to turning tricks even if she was still short of her eighteenth birthday.

The LAPD shrink, all
Skylar's
friends and co-workers agreed. The shooting had been accidental, not
Skylar's
fault. Nightmares of that day and the confrontation still plagued her sleep with regularity. But no matter how many times she thought she'd learned to live with the fact that she'd discharged her weapon and hit a sixteen year old girl, she hadn't. And as she stood at the window and stared across the ocean into the starry night sky, she wondered if she ever would.

Skylar
didn't know how long she stood there contemplating, but she suddenly experienced that prickling feeling on the back of her neck that meant she wasn't alone. Then, very close by, she heard the unmistakable sound of another person breathing.

But that's not possible
.

Yuri himself had been scheduled to make the final round of checks at two AM, and the head of
Intrepid's
security would never miss a drunk asleep in one of the public areas.

Holding her own breath,
Skylar
moved noiselessly toward the hidden sleeper. He was less than a dozen steps away, his tall frame scrunched on one of the high-backed suede sofas, his head cradled on a small black backpack. She recognized him immediately as the man she'd seen sitting alone at lunch -- the one who had seemed familiar somehow.

Automatically, her hand fell to her belt and the small flashlight she always carried there. When she shined the slender beam in his face, his eyes immediately popped open and his arm flew up to shield his face.

"Sorry, I – I must have dozed off," he murmured in what might have passed for a sleep-fogged voice.

But
Skylar
knew better. In the split second before he'd covered them, she got a good look straight into his glittering gray eyes. And in that same instant, she knew exactly where she'd seen him before.