Chapter 3: What the Alarm Was Hiding
"Her name is Claire," Richard said.
The alarm was still screaming somewhere above us.
Neither of us moved.
"You know her name."
"Yes."
"How long have you known her?"
He looked at the floor for just a moment.
Long enough.
"About four months."
Four months.
Claire had found this man four months ago, given him my itinerary, my photograph, my cabin number — and said nothing to me.
Not a single word.
"She paid you."
"Yes."
"To do what, exactly?"
"To make sure you were safe.
To stay close.
To report back if anything seemed wrong." He paused.
"She said you'd been having dizzy spells.
That you'd collapsed twice in the spring and hadn't told anyone."
My chest tightened.
Because that part was true.
"That was private."
"I know."
"She had no right—"
"She was scared, Dorothy." He said my name like he'd said it before, in conversations I wasn't part of.
"She didn't know how to talk to you.
So she did this instead."
I sat down on the edge of the bed.
Not because I chose to.
My legs simply stopped.
The photographs were still spread across the blanket.
Me at the breakfast buffet, laughing at something the waiter said.
Me on the upper deck with my face turned toward the sun.
Me reading on my balcony in the early morning, still in my robe, thinking I was completely alone.
"She watched me through you," I said.
"Yes."
"For seven days."
"Yes."
I picked up the one taken on the balcony.
The angle was from below.
From the water, or from another deck entirely.
"This one wasn't taken by you."
Richard was quiet for a beat too long.
"No," he finally said.
"It wasn't."
I looked up at him.
"Then who took it?"
He crossed to the cabin door and checked the corridor again.
When he turned back, something in his face had changed.
The calm he'd been holding onto was gone.
"That's what the alarm is about," he said quietly.
"Someone else has been on this ship watching you.
And it isn't anyone Claire sent."
The floor seemed to shift beneath me — and not from the ocean.
"What do you mean someone else?"
"I mean I've been finding photographs I didn't take in places I didn't leave them.
Someone has been inside this cabin.
Someone who knew which ship you were on before the cruise even departed."
I stood up.
"Who?"
He reached into his jacket pocket and set a single photograph on the bed beside mine.
It was a man I recognized immediately.
May you like
A man I hadn't seen in eleven years.
My late husband's brother.
