Hoax

  Brandon went down the hallway, toward the sound of the vacuum. I assumed he was going to give me cover if someone heard me rustling at the front desk.

  The monitor at the desk was small, and I had to search for a computer tower. I kept my eyes on the front of the spa, hoping no one came in.

  I inserted the key. It didn’t beep or indicate I needed to do anything. Was I supposed to just wait? How would I know if it was done?

  I checked the desk, where there were printouts and an appointment book like Brandon had said. I didn’t look too closely but used the phone to take pictures of everything. I flipped pages in the book, reading some of the names.

  Mr. Smith was scheduled every day this week.

  Ew.

  I tried to scrub the image of Mr. Smith with a masseuse out of my head. It was gross, but that really didn’t prove anything.

  I didn’t see a cash register, though I assumed everyone paid via credit card. No tip jars, either.

  Where did Sam keep the cash he got from people? There didn’t appear to be a place to put it here, so Sam had to have pocketed it.

  I couldn’t tell if the USB key was doing anything. I didn’t often use computers, but I knew copying over files sometimes could take a while. I was reluctant to pull it too soon if it was doing something.

  The longer I stood still, the more sure I was that we were going to get caught. I was about to duck down and take the key out when I heard a bell.

  I froze, glanced back toward where Brandon had disappeared. Where was he?

  A middle-aged couple I didn’t recognize appeared beyond the glass doors. They met my eyes and smiled as they approached the entrance.

  Uh-oh.

  I smiled toothily and hoped they didn’t have an appointment.

  They were uninteresting looking, in their midfifties and wearing casual slacks. He wore a polo, she had on a pastel flowered blouse.

  He opened one door and poked his head in. “Are you open yet?”

  I shook my head and cocked it toward the vacuum. “Still cleaning a bit. Not long.”

  “We’re just taking a tour,” he said. “Can we come snoop around?”

  “Sure,” I said and then grinned as prettily as I could. At least they bought that I worked here. I pointed to the opposite direction of the vacuuming and where Brandon had gone. “Start on that end. Just don’t open any closed doors, okay?” It seemed like a reasonable request. Someone else could kick them out. If a real employee came to kick them out, though, Brandon and I would have to get going before that happened.

  The man gave me a thumbs-up, and they started down the hallway. There must have been open doors or other hallways, because I looked away to see if Brandon was coming back, and when I looked back, they were out of sight.

  How big was this place? Too many places to disappear.

  Once the couple was gone, I snapped up the USB, hoping I had done it right. If I hadn’t, we’d just have to come back later; we needed to get out of here now or risk getting caught.

  Brandon returned, but before I could tell him anything, he grabbed my wrist and dragged me toward the door.

  “Did you get caught?” I whispered.

  He said nothing, but shot me a dead serious look.

  We were in trouble. I just didn’t know why.

  There was a slight tilt to his head as he went through the glass door, and I heard the tiniest of voices, Doyle’s, as he turned toward the stairs. I couldn’t hear his words, but I could sense the panic.

  The elevator nearby dinged and the doors opened. Brandon ducked and practically threw me behind an arrangement of potted plants. There were two particularly large bushes we could get behind.

  We ducked down together and I peeked out, trying to see who had emerged from the elevator.

  A second later, Sam appeared, walking toward the spa. He looked a little different from how I remembered. His blond hair was brushed back and seemed shorter. He wore all black like the rest of the crew, and he held a little blue notebook in his hands. He had it open to a page, looking at it as he walked.

  I was able to watch him as I peeked between the plants. Then I realized our backs were exposed to the stairs. If anyone came down the steps, they might spot us.

  Brandon crouched, staying silent, but angled his body toward the elevators. I sensed he’d want us to go the minute we could.

  I wasn’t so sure that was the best idea and wondered if we shouldn’t go in now, ask for a face mask or something. Maybe if we hung out all day at the spa, we’d see something interesting.

  Sam went to the front desk. He tapped at the computer, but then focused on the appointment book I had taken pictures of earlier. He checked his blue book, and then the book on the desk. He wrote something in the bigger desk book, closed his notebook and put it in his pocket. He then turned, eyes wide, and headed in the direction I’d sent the couple down the hall.

  Uh-oh. They might tell him some girl had told them it was okay to be there.

  I turned to look at Brandon, to tell him we should get going before Sam came back.

  Before I could even open my mouth, a hard strike landed on the back of my head. Pain bloomed as darkness spread over my eyes quickly.

  A jolt burned my shoulder. I had one fleeting thought of worry for Brandon before I crumpled to the floor, consciousness slipping away.

  Knocked

  As I began to come to, a dark fog covered my eyes; everything was a blurry mess. Pain coursed through my head and along my back.

  I was being carried, a dead weight in someone’s arms. Whoever it was was slow but kept moving.

  My stomach lurched. I felt the urge to vomit, from the hit or the sudden panic, I couldn’t tell. But I knew I was going for a swim. Thrown overboard again.

  Where had Brandon gone?

  I gasped for air every time I could, knowing I might have to hold my breath for a while.

  I was eased down onto a hard carpet.

  A palm crossed my forehead. A voice, and then a kiss at my brow.

  Or was it?

  Suddenly I felt alone. Too quiet.

  A couple of minutes or maybe an hour went by. Time seemed to just stop. I struggled to figure out what was wrong with me. What had happened? I tried to summon the energy to get myself to sit up, but my muscles refused to work. My cheek and lips pressed into the carpet fibers.

  Whoever had dropped me had left and the room was silent except for my occasional rustling as I tried to lift my head and look around.

  The familiar numb, electrified feeling took over most of my back and neck. Someone had hit me on the head and then zapped me.

  I hated being tasered. Tasers are stupid. I was going to taser someone on their genitals when I found out who did this.

  Light shifted above me, and I forced myself to open my eyes. I twisted my head, and ended up staring at too-bright fluorescent lights. I squeezed my lids closed again.

  I realized there were voices; someone was saying something to me, but I couldn’t understand the words.

  I blinked, trying to focus. I swallowed back a bit of bile that had rose into my throat. The more my brain started to come back together, the more my head hurt. Maybe being unconscious wasn’t so bad.

  “Hey,” someone said from above me. “Wake up. Can you hear me?”

  The voice was unfamiliar. Where was I? My head was exploding and my shoulder was burning and tingling, prickling under my skin.

  When I tried to open my eyes again, the light was too bright. My stomach lurched. I rolled over and retched but there wasn’t anything in my gut. Saliva dropped from my lips as I dry-heaved.

  A calm hand touched the back of my neck, another pulled my hair back for me.

  “We need to get your head looked at,” someone said. “That might be a bad concussion.”

  It wasn’t Brandon; that was my first thought as I suddenly remembered crouching with him behind the plants when I’d been hit. What had happened
to him?

  Suddenly anxious to find out, I tried to get up, but a fresh wave of nausea washed over me.

  “Easy,” the voice said, the gentle hands holding me still.

  Once my stomach stopped trying to jump out of my body, I slowly sat up. My eyes started to clear.

  Marc hovered close. His mismatched blue and green eyes were wide, intense. Dark eyebrows were scrunched together in worry.

  At least it wasn’t a bad guy.

  My eyes focused more, getting better with every passing minute. I looked around; we were in a library of some sort. No one was inside. Shelves were lined with paperbacks and board games. The windows were small portholes, as if to ward off too much sun. I was on the floor, behind an armchair.

  No Brandon in the room.

  “Where is he?” I asked. “Did they take him?” I’d kill them, whoever they were.

  “He punched the guy, brought you here, and ran off to separate you two,” Marc said. Before I could ask more, he put an arm around me. “Come on. Brandon escaped fine. You got the worst of it.”

  I swallowed as my stomach felt funny again, and planted a palm on my belly.

  He lifted an eyebrow. “Going to puke again?”

  I shrugged. I didn’t think so, but then a wave of nausea would start.

  Marc placed a palm against my forehead, cupped my neck by the ear, and tilted my head gently in his hands. “You’re bleeding in one spot, but…didn’t you bump your head yesterday? Someone said you did.”

  I inhaled sharply, trying to recall what he was talking about. “On the boat. I hit my head on a banister on the way in. So there might be two bumps.”

  He released me with a chuckle. “Bambi…what the hell. I can’t leave you alone for two minutes.”

  I wanted to tell him to stop calling me Bambi, but my brain hurt, and I could feel the cut on my head throbbing. The deep, tense feeling on my shoulder was uncomfortable and my body felt so tight.

  Marc eased me until he could pick me up, then moved me to a nearby sofa. I sat back, trying to rest my head on a cushion, but my headache wasn’t liking the pressure. I closed my eyes to shut out the light. “So Brandon got away?”

  “He’s finding a safe place to hide. We’ll be lucky if Corey doesn’t get mistaken for him.” He pulled away an extra pillow, tossing it to the floor. “Do you need to lie down?”

  “My head hurts,” I said.

  “I should to take you to the doctor, but I need to make sure we don’t rattle your head around too much more before we can get there. Lie down if you can.”

  I tried, but leaning over made my head throb, bringing more nausea. “I think it’s better if I’m upright.”

  “Do I need to carry you? I probably should.”

  “No,” I said. Not after last time. If the doctor here saw me like this, being carried in again, who knew what he’d think.

  He nodded and tapped his ear, where I knew an earpiece was hidden. “Axel and some of the others are trying to clear the path to the doctor. We have to make sure the hospital on the ship is clear, too. Sam’s goon might come looking for you.”

  “Maybe the doctor should come here,” I said. I cupped my forehead, partially blocking the light. The longer I was upright, the better I felt, but the major headache was killing me. “At least we know who knocked out Blake. Was Brandon able to identify him? How did he get away?”

  “He saw it coming, I guess. I only got the gist of what happened before I was told to come get you.”

  He knelt on the floor in front of me, looking up at my face. He examined other parts of me, testing my feet and knees by bending them and putting pressure on different spots. He took my wrist in his hands and bent my joints. “Any of this hurt?”

  “Just my head.”

  Once he determined nothing else was injured, his touch turned into massaging my legs and feet. He looked up at my face and squinted. “I still can’t believe it’s you. If I didn’t know better…it’s a good thing they told me you were in disguise. You…look so different.”

  “The makeup,” I said and breathed in deeply, willing the headache to go away so I could look at him without being in agony. He was in all black, like he’d been with crew. He even had a tag on his chest, the name faded just enough to make it difficult to read.

  He seemed different, too. I realized he wasn’t wearing his usual black cord with the silver sand dollar medallion. Had he lost it? I’d never seen him without it.

  He studied my face. “It’s your eyes.”

  “Huh?”

  “You’re looking like me,” he said. “Only one green and one brown.”

  I lifted a hand toward my eyes, touching my eyelids like I could feel their color. “A contact must have fallen out.” I reached up, and the wig felt askew. I removed it, getting some air to my head.

  “Why were you down in the spa, anyway? I can’t believe Brandon agreed to that.”

  “I helped us find out who hit Blake, didn’t I?” I asked. “Who knocked me out?”

  “Another crew member,” Marc said. “Brandon said his name. I didn’t talk to him directly and wasn’t told yet.”

  “Not anyone else we know?”

  “Nope,” Marc said. “No one we were really looking at. Just some big security guy who usually works in the casino part of the ship. Except it seems like in his off time, he does some protection work for Sam. From what I heard, he must have come down in the elevator after Sam and spotted you two hiding. I don’t know if that’s true. That’s the exact same spot where Blake was hiding before. I think they know that spot is a place people could spy on them, so they knock out anyone behind it who might have been snooping around.”

  A flash of pain radiated again from the bump. I groaned and rolled my head to one side, holding it in my palm. I didn’t want to get up because of it; staying as still as possible made it slightly less painful. “They can’t just knock out anyone watching Sam near the spa. That’s stupid. Why?”

  “I think it’s because you were hiding,” he said. “Why would you hide right there unless you were spying? And why spy on them unless you were on to what they were doing.”

  “But…why? Wouldn’t the doctor on board notice if people were getting hit just being around the spa?”

  “We won’t know right now, but that doesn’t matter.” He put a hand on my knee. “Stop thinking about it for now.”

  “We need to make sure Brandon is okay,” I said.

  “Sweetie, I told you, he’s fine. We need to get you to a doctor. Your head needs to be looked at.”

  I didn’t really want to sit on an exam table again. I just wanted twenty Tylenol and a nap. And a Blake. And an Axel. And a Brandon. And…

  I looked at him, suddenly realizing he’d been sent to me, but…it had been an emergency moment. Was it only because of the dire circumstances that they’d told him to come get me? “Can we just…” I paused, trying to come up with some excuse why I didn’t need to see the doctor.

  “Nope,” he said and smiled at me with the coyest expression. He rested his palm on my knee. “You go willingly or I take you myself. I’ll drag you if I have to.”

  “I’ll scream,” I said, more annoyed that he was bossing me around than upset about going to the doctor.

  “I’ll go get Axel,” he said. “He’ll help me drag you.”

  I couldn’t fight both of them, not that I cared to. “Just give me a minute. I don’t want to puke on the way.”

  He frowned and gently squeezed my knee. “Puking isn’t good. The concussion might be pretty bad if you keep doing that.”

  “You don’t know if it’s a concussion,” I said.

  “If you don’t have one, you’ve got the thickest skull ever,” he said and then smirked. “Which I’ve suspected for a while now.”

  My head was swimming with pain and anger at whoever had attacked me. I was worried that Sam’s goon had recognized me. I worried about Blake, wondering if he might have walk
ed right past him in the casino, never realizing who he was.

  As Marc touched my knee, I started to remember that he should be mad at me, angry about finding out about the others. He should be grumpy to even have to help me.

  Instead, he was smiling with concern, but sure everything would be okay.

  I swallowed, pushing those thoughts away as I tried to tell if my stomach was going to purge again. It seemed more settled now. “Let me get up and walk there. I don’t want to be carried in.”

  He sat back on his heels, waiting, watching me with those mismatched eyes. His dark hair was combed to the side, looking a little nicer than his usual rock star style. His angled jaw was tense, as were his lips, pressed together into thin lines. I could feel frustration from him.

  His hand on my knee was holding firm. His other hand was balled up in a fist against his thigh, the knuckles white.

  I had been stupid. I knew someone had knocked out Blake when he’d been watching Sam at the spa, and I had done the same stupid thing.

  At least it wasn’t a total loss. All we needed now was to know where this goon had been last night and he’d be the prime suspect.

  Maybe then Raven would return.

  But what if Sam or his goon had done something to Raven? Like knocked him out like they’d done to me and Blake and then stashed him somewhere?

  I straightened up slowly, cupping my head, knowing it wasn’t doing any good for me to sit here. The pain wouldn’t go away until I got some medication for it. As I prepared to get up, I felt the layer of thick numbness that seemed to blanket the rest of me, probably from the Taser. It must have been at a higher setting, or maybe it was a different type from the last time I’d gotten a shock. My muscles felt weird, wobbly. I was worried about my knees giving out.

  After a couple more minutes, Marc released my knee and moved as if to lift me again. “We need to go,” he said, putting an arm around my shoulders. “There’s people on this floor heading this way. We don’t need anyone seeing you like this.”

  I gritted my teeth, forcing myself to slowly, steadily get up, testing my knees to make sure they worked.

  Marc combed my hair away from my face and straightened it as best as he could. It wasn’t until then that I realized the wig was gone. With no wig and a contact out, I was at risk for being recognized.