Chapter 24
“A GAME?! I can’t BELIEVE he would pull this kind of stunt on us. It’s insanity, that’s what it is. True insanity!”
I’ve never seen Nash this enraged before.
Actually, I’ve never seen him angry at all.
Nash and I are back in the room, the poor room that has been torn to shreds in my haste to try to make sense of this horrible
case of murder of my boss and one of my dearest friends. A visual example of the chaos my life has been the past nine days.
For my boss and one of my dearest friends.
Yup. I am. I am going to kill him.
Nash has been pacing back and forth the past hour in front of the bed where I sit cross-legged in a heap of papers, tapping
away at my computer. I have at least twenty-five tabs open on my laptop.
“How are you not fuming at this, Pip?”
“I am,” I say calmly, continuing to type.
“But doesn’t it make you want to rip down the wall?”
“Certainly,” I say, flipping over to another tab on my computer. “But I’ve become accustomed to a certain level of chaos. It comes with the job. And then there’s the fact . . . he’s alive.”
My rage-relief has slipped out of proportion the past few hours.
I’m more 30 percent rage and 70 percent relief now.
Still furious, but the world has at least righted itself yet again.
Hugh is alive. Neena, Jackie, Crystal, Gordon, and even eerie Ricky are innocent.
Nash is by my side.
Better yet, Nash and I are together.
I feel better than I have in a long time.
There’s going to be one heck of an explanation needed for all this, and a salary increase demand of at least 50 percent or I’ll sue. I’m fine. We’re all
fine. Life, in its most sincere and beautiful word, is fine.
“What does he want? It can’t be money. Can it?”
My raised eyebrow is my answer.
“Is this part of the sick game then?” Nash says. “Another twisted clue?”
“The game is up,” I say. “Least, the first part is over. I’ve solved it. Hugh isn’t dead.”
“And yet,” Nash says broodily, “I can’t believe everything he’s done to us the past few days. And for what? I know he likes
his little games, but this has gone too far.”
“No, there’s something about this one,” I murmur, more to myself than Nash. I lean back from my computer and reach for my
notebook. I begin flipping through my notes. “This isn’t research for him. This isn’t some party trick gone wrong. He’s really
after something. But what—?”
“I’m going down again to try to find him.”
“Won’t work. He’s MIA. They all are.”
“Traitors,” he hisses.
I nod.
What else is there to say?
Everybody has disappeared since I discovered the envelope. I don’t know who was watching me, or from what vantage point, but
after combing through the lounge and finding nobody, I raced upstairs, only to find everybody gone. They weren’t in the dining
rooms. They weren’t in the lounges or the libraries or on deck. Nobody was in their bedrooms, and believe me, I picked every
single lock.
They disappeared.
The group I had thought was so broken apart is still united after all.
This time, just against us.
“I can’t stand here anymore.”
“I agree. You’re about to pace a hole in the floor.”
“I’m going to look again. I’m going to bang on every door on this ship trying.”
“We made it this long without making a scene on the ship,” I say. “We’ve only got a matter of hours left. Let’s not ruin it
now.”
I snap my computer shut.
I can’t look at any more of his old books.
The words are all starting to blur.
“I’ll come with you, though. We can at least walk the halls.”
This has been our rhythm the past three hours, bouncing from poring over laptops and notebooks for clues to circling the ship
for people. Neither journey has been successful.
Hugh doesn’t want money.
He doesn’t want a bribe.
He doesn’t want any thing that I can possibly think of.
The closest I can guess is that he really wanted to get his newest book on the front page of the Times magazine, but what power do I have to make that happen?
I have no control over that.
What does he expect me to do? Pull imaginary strings from my imaginary black book of influential contacts? (Okay, fine. I
do have some epic contacts, I’ve realized.)
At any rate, what does that have to do with “our story”?
“You know what we could do that we haven’t considered?” Nash says as we hunt in the halls. “We could just ignore him. Ignore
them all. Let’s just pretend they don’t exist. We don’t have to play their games.”
“But we will.”
“Why’s that?”
“The same reason we’re speed-walking now. And they know that. Hugh knows that. We’re too livid not to see this through.”
He growls. “I hate being Hugh’s pawn.”
“Welcome to the club.”
We comb through the top three levels of the ship, then when our legs wear out, drop into the lounge chairs we stargazed from
our first night here. The stars are out and sparkling at this ten o’clock hour, not so much as the other night, but enough
to give us something to look at. Help us clear our heads.
I sigh and sit back, resting my head against the chair.
“Maybe if we just take a beat,” I say. “Worst-case scenario, we will see them tomorrow getting off the ship. We can be the first off. Wait for the sorry group to show up.”
Nash is shaking his head, looking murderous. “I don’t think it’s wise for me to get near him right now.”
I laugh, more of a release of energy than anything.
But then I laugh again. “Can you believe I thought they had killed him? Jackie? Ricky?”
“That one’s not so far-fetched.”
“Neena?” I shake my head, halfway disgusted with myself. “You?”
“How did you know about Neena? That was a lot of points to connect.”
“I just followed the trail of logic. If Neena is in love with Gordon, then she didn’t really have the motive to kill Hugh,
did she? And if she didn’t, her influencing me to believe she could have been angry enough at Hugh for breaking her heart
was a lie. And if she was lying about being in love with Hugh, what else was she lying about? And then if the so-called anxiety
pills she was popping to make her calm and easygoing weren’t actually the reason she was so calm and easygoing, then what
was?”
I shrug.
“The only possible thing I could think of that would allow her to be emotionally restored from the death of one of her oldest
and dearest friends was exactly that: that there was in fact no death of one of her oldest and dearest friends. That in fact she was using those pills as a cover-up for the fact she was truly going to enjoy this vacation. And if there was no death
of one of her oldest and dearest friends, then somebody was making it up. And the only person I know who would possibly make
up something so stupid is the man himself. Hugh. And where is the one place Hugh knew I wouldn’t visit while on this cruise? A little karaoke lounge
deep in the hole of the ship, which I would avoid after he just so happened to give me a phobia organizing a recent diving
trip.”
Nash pulls up to sitting from his lounge position. His brow furrows in disbelief. “You don’t think. No. He wouldn’t do something so bad as to give you a complex—”
I raise a finger. “No? You don’t think he would plan months ahead to play with my head for the point of this game?”
Nash frowns toward the dark abyss ahead. “I severely underestimated that man . . .”
I drop my head. “Okay, fine. He didn’t create a complex in me. He probably just discovered my issues on our last research trip and decided to use it to his advantage.
The reality here is he decided to use the lounge as a hangout while waiting for me to face my fears—or get ticked enough—to go down there.”
Nash shakes his head. “And?”
“And what?”
“And how did it feel? Facing your fears?”
I take a breath. “Not great, per say, but . . .”—I exhale—“it was progress and that’s something. Baby steps in the right direction.”
“Does that mean you’re going to sign up for another cruise?”
I shake my head. Laugh. “Never.”
“What might you do? Go diving again?”
Another shake of my head. “More like I’ll walk inside a basement apartment again.
I’m going to look at this like let’s get my discomfort under control so I can manage average realistic situations I may end up in in normal life, not let’s get used to confined places so I can go scuba diving for megalodon teeth in the Florida Keys. ”
“That’s an admirable goal.”
“Thank you.”
I pause. Take a breath. “What about you, Nash? Does the tall, strong author-cowboy have any weaknesses? Because I’ve been around you awhile now, and I’m pretty convinced you’re not human.”
“Oh, I have plenty of ’em. But I know better than to fall for that trick. I’d rather you find out my weaknesses one by one.
Spread ’em out a little. Give me a fighting chance.”
I laugh. “Fine. Tell me one weakness. Just one. Make me feel better.”
“You really want to hear my weaknesses?”
“I really do.”
Nash sits up. Leans closer. “I’m a horrible speller.”
I squint. That’s pathetic. “You . . . can’t spell.”
“My editor hates me for it. I have to look up simple words. Like vacuum.”
“Nobody can spell vacuum. We’re forever second-guessing ourselves on the one c or two.”
“And embarrassed.”
“Is it one r or two? We all wonder—”
“And buoy.”
“What are you even doing using the word buoy in your novels? They’re all in the desert, it’s illogical.”
“And bellwether.”
“What’s a bellwether?”
“And apparently.”
“Okay, that one’s on you—”
I halt. And with a sharp inhale jump to standing.
Nash looks up with a laugh. “What? Apparently’s too far? That’s the line?”
“I figured it out,” I say in shock.
My mind begins to reel.
Everything is beginning to click.
Books.
Words.
The distant words from Hugh I’ve heard a hundred times.
When are you going to give me what I want, Pip? I want to see that first chapter. It’s all as simple as getting down that
first chapter.
That’s what Hugh wants.
The first chapter.
Of our story.
Life this week.
In a book.