Chapter 3 - What a Dead Woman Looks Like
I was already in the bed.
The second his footsteps stopped outside the door, something behind my eyes went cold and sharp and clear, cutting straight through the fog.
Four steps across the room. Onto the mattress. Sheet up to my chin. One arm hanging off the edge, loose. Eyes shut.
The door opened.
Bennett stood in the doorway for a long time. I could feel him watching me. I kept my breathing deep and slow and dumb, the way it had really been for three days when the pills were doing their job.
His footsteps came closer. Stopped at the side of the bed.
"Still under," he said, to nobody.
Then he surprised me. He sat down on the edge of the mattress. The springs dipped under his weight, right next to my hip. He reached over and pushed a piece of hair off my cheek — soft, careful, the exact way he used to touch me in the first month, back when I still thought it was real.
"You really were perfect," he said. "I almost feel bad."
Almost.
He stood up. Crossed to the safe and opened it. Paper rustling — the power of attorney. He was checking it. Then the safe clicked shut and he walked back to the door.
"See you at midnight, sweetheart."
The door closed.
I counted to thirty. Then I opened my eyes.
My phone was under the pillow. I had the pills, the document, the safe combination. But pictures weren't going to be enough. Bennett had people. A lawyer. Men already waiting on a mountain road. This wasn't one man losing his mind. This was months of planning, maybe years, with money and patience stacked up behind it.
I needed a witness. Someone on this boat who wasn't his.
The crew. Bennett had said they'd be below during the weather. But the weather wasn't due until after midnight, and it was barely nine.
Captain Navarro.
He'd worked for my father for eleven years. He'd taken this yacht from Lisbon to the Seychelles and back. He'd been at my christening. He'd mailed a card when I finished college. He was the one person on this vessel my husband hadn't picked, hadn't checked out, hadn't bought.
I had to reach him without Bennett seeing me move.
I sat up slow. The room leaned. The drug was still in me — not enough to drop me, enough to make every step feel like wading through wet cement. I held the nightstand until the worst passed, then stood.
Through the porthole over the desk: black water, and far off, the first thin flicker of lightning.
The storm was early. I had less time than I'd thought.
I pulled a cardigan on over my nightgown, pushed my phone into the pocket, and put my ear to the door. Quiet. I eased it open, checked both ways, and moved.
Crew quarters were two decks down. I took the service stairs — narrow, no lights, thick with the smell of diesel and salt. My hand never left the wall. Twice I had to stop and let the dizziness roll past.
The captain's cabin was at the end of a short hall. Light under the door. I knocked twice, quick and soft.
Footsteps. The door opened.
Navarro looked at me — bare feet, nightgown, the cardigan buttoned crooked — and his face went from surprised to something a lot harder in about a second.
"Miss Wexford." He hadn't called me that since before the wedding. "Get inside."
I stepped in. He shut the door behind me.
"I need you to listen to the whole thing," I said. "And I need you not to say one word to anyone on this boat until I'm done."
He looked at my face for a moment. Then he pulled the chair out from his desk and set it in front of me.
"Sit," he said. "You look like you're about to go down."
I sat. And I told him everything.
He didn't cut in once. When I stopped, he was quiet a long time, both hands flat on the desk.
"The pills," he finally said. "You still have them?"
"Photographed. Still in the nightstand."
"The document."
"Photographed. Still in the safe."
He nodded slow. Reached for the radio on the desk — and stopped. Turned back to me.
"Bennett has somebody in the coast guard," he said. "Your father told me. Six months ago, when he first got worried about this marriage. He didn't tell you because he didn't want to scare you."
The floor seemed to slide. It wasn't the sea.
"My father knew?"
"He suspected. He asked me to keep an eye on you." Navarro's jaw went tight. "I should have kept both."
He picked up a different handset — not the ship's radio. A satellite phone, old and heavy, the kind that doesn't run through any system Bennett could have gotten to.
"I know a man," he said. "Outside the coast guard. Somebody your father trusts."
He dialed. Waited.
Outside, the first real gust of the storm hit the hull. The whole boat shuddered. The lights dipped once.
Navarro looked at me across the desk as the call connected.
"Stay in this cabin," he said. "Don't open that door for anyone but me."
Then, into the phone: "It's Navarro. I need an emergency intercept. International waters, Caribbean sector." A pause. "Yes. Tonight."
May you like
The wind screamed against the glass.
Above us, I heard Bennett's footsteps cross the upper deck. He was already looking for me.
