disappear around a corner that led to midship. She looked in the other direction.
“Hey, Alexi,” Nolan said.
“What’s going on?” she asked.
“I’m just showing these gentlemen the ship,” Nolan said. He lowered his voice. “They’re bigwigs with Celtic American,” he told her, then cleared his throat. “Alexi Cromwell, meet Jackson Crow and Jude McCoy.”
“How do you do?” the first man said, smiling as he reached for her hand. He was tall, good-looking and obviously had Native American ancestry. His dark hair and light eyes made for a striking contrast.
“Ms. Cromwell,” said the other. He was equally tall, broad-shouldered, sandy-haired. His eyes were unusual—blue and green with flecks of brown. His features were clean-cut, his jaw hard and square. Very attractive, in a rugged, austere manner.
He looked at her oddly.
As if he knew her? Or thought he did?
Or worse—thought she was guilty of something!
Both men wore tailored shirts and pants, not the usual tourist apparel. But then, they weren’t tourists. They were bigwigs with Celtic American.
“Nice to meet you,” Alexi said.
“Have you seen a man?” Nolan asked her.
That made her laugh. “A man? Nolan, I’ve seen hundreds of men. It’s a cruise ship.”
She understood exactly what he meant. And yet, for some reason, she was loath to tell him that yes, a man—a strange-looking man—had just gone by. She wondered why company VIPs were so interested in him.
“He’s tall, bizarre makeup of some kind, sweat shirt and jeans,” Jude McCoy said.
She lifted her shoulders. “I believe I did see him earlier,” she admitted, “running through the piano bar when the passengers were boarding.”
She had seen that same man again, just minutes ago. And she wasn’t telling these men. Why? Instinct? Pity?
But there’d been something even more peculiar about him than the prosthetic makeup or whatever it was he had on his face. A sense of anguish, perhaps.
She hesitated. She shouldn’t lie to these people. But the young man had seemed so desperate. In her heart, she felt that he’d come to her for help.
Still...
“Actually,” she said, “I think he was in this hallway. He ran in that direction. But where he is right now, I couldn’t say.”
That was mostly the truth. She didn’t know where he was. He’d run.
“Well, thank you, Ms. Cromwell. If you should see him again, can you report him to us, please? We’re in staterooms 312 and 314,” Jackson Crow said. “It’s imperative that we find him,” he added quietly. “But I’m not at liberty to discuss the details.”
“Of course,” she murmured.
As they walked down the hall, she was more suspicious than ever.
Why were company bigwigs staying down in the bowels of the ship with the crew? The larger rooms—staterooms with balconies, the suites—were on the upper decks.
She was about to return to her cabin when Clara came running down the hallway, leaning against the wall, gasping for breath. “Alexi! Did you have the news on?”
“The news? No, why?”
“Thank God we’re leaving! That guy, that horrible killer!” She gasped for more breath. “The Archangel—he murdered a woman in New Orleans!”
It wasn’t until the Destiny was far out into the Gulf of Mexico that Jackson Crow and Jude had a chance to meet with Captain Xavier Thorne and his head of security, David Beach. Their first business on board after walking every deck, including the holds and areas passengers never saw, was to go through the ship’s passenger and crew screening. There was a page for every passenger and crew member on board, including a photograph and information regarding citizenship and means of identification. A ship-issued ID was required anytime anyone, passenger or employee, boarded or left the Destiny.
In other words, no one, including crew, could get on or off the ship without that ID.
Jude and Jackson hadn’t seen their man in the thousands of passenger screening documents—but then, even if they’d seen him, they might not have known him.
This suspect could have ditched his makeup anytime after he’d boarded. Or certainly, after he’d been seen by Alexi Cromwell.
It was time to explain to Thorne and Beach just what they were doing there.
Xavier Thorne was fifty-five, according to the information they had, a veteran of many sailings. He’d served in the United States Navy before becoming a civilian employee in the pleasure business; he’d worked as a captain for smaller yachts doing private charters and for a number of the major lines before he’d settled in at Celtic American fifteen years ago. He was a serious man, but still capable of smiling.
Jude had wanted to stop the ship from going out, which had proved to be impossible. Not even the powers that existed behind Jackson Crow had been able to make that happen. Neither he nor Crow knew for sure if the man they’d chased was a killer. And, despite Ms. Cromwell’s sighting, they couldn’t verify that he was on the ship. At least his new partner/supervisor seemed to believe him. He’d not only put Jude on the ship, he’d also accompanied him. So now, at five that afternoon, they met with the captain and Beach.
David Beach was an ox of a man, almost six and a half feet tall. Jude, at six-three, felt dwarfed by him. Beach also had stellar credentials, having served with the NYPD and Homeland Security before retiring at fifty to enter the civilian sector and take the job with the Celtic American line.
They knew all this because they’d accessed Jackson Crow’s home office to receive dossiers on every member of the crew.
Now they sat in the captain’s office to speak and while the space was large enough, it felt small. David Beach, Jude thought, could make just about anyone—short of Shaquille O’Neal, no pun intended—seem small and any space seem close and crowded.
Beach remained quiet after Jackson had spoken, and Captain Thorne frowned as he weighed his response.
“You believe you’ve chased a serial killer onto my ship?” he finally asked.
“Yes, Captain,” Jude replied. “We believe that the killer’s been using cruise ports and ships to track and murder his victims—and that we followed him onto the Destiny.”
The captain shook his head. “I don’t see how you could know this. I heard about that terrible business at the church in the Treme district and I don’t think anyone, anywhere in the world, has missed the news about the fear this man is creating, but...this was the killer’s first strike in New Orleans.”
“You
