Roshaan
No one notices her. If they do, she has an excuse ready.
She finds his phone on a small shelf beneath his mirrors. His watch sits beside it. She knows he always takes it off because he wears cuff jewelry as part of his costume. She slips both into a sling bag she brought.
She struggles to find his cabin key card. Panic prickles up her spine—Avi is waiting. She’s on the clock. He threatened her life if she missteps, and she believes him. But she can’t find the damn key. The room narrows, her pulse races.
Heat flares into her face. “I—ah, I need to pick something up for Theo. Have you seen his key card?”
“Check that little gold box there.” The artist nods toward the counter in front of Theo’s chair.
Roshaan lunges for the box, opens it. Relief swamps her. It’s there. She grabs the key and bolts for the exit.
“Hey, Rosh—” the artist starts, but Roshaan is already out the door and halfway to the elevator.
Inside the glass-bubbled tube, she presses the button for the staff accommodations deck in the bowels of the ship. As the lift slides down, a sinking feeling presses through Roshaan’s stomach.
On the crew deck, she runs down the corridor to Theo’s cabin. She pauses outside his door, listening. Sweat beads at her hairline. She waits until a crew member enters another cabin, then unlocks Theo’s door and slips in.
She goes straight to his desk. His laptop is exactly where she expects it. She slides it into her bag alongside his phone and his watch. In the closet she finds a USB flash drive. Avi’s orders echo in her head.
I want them all. Phone. Laptop, tablet, smartwatch, thumb drive—whatever he could have used to save footage or to access the cloud. Anything he might have used to send footage. I want to know every contact he’s made in order to fully neutralize any threat to my employer.
She then gives the room a quick final scan, a sense of doom pressing through her chest. She has a feeling she’ll never see this place again—the cramped little cabin where she made love with Theo.
Roshaan exits and hastens back up to the lounge theater with her bag secure over her shoulder.