He pulled a tiny box from his pocket and opened it, revealing a diamond engagement ring.
I leaned in, as did Corey. The stone was a square cut, and the band looked to be silver. “Nice,” I said. “I still say you’re a sucker for asking.”
“She hasn’t stopped hinting at a ring since I brought up the question about kids.” He shook his head and smiled, the dark skin contrasting with his white teeth. “My own fault. I jumped ahead apparently in how this whole planning a lifetime together works. Good thing I was thinking of asking her.”
“Congrats, man,” Corey said. “I can’t believe it’s really happening.”
“I can’t believe I’d actually consider getting married,” Kevin said. He closed the box and put it back into his pocket, zipping it closed when he looked at me. “If you would have asked me two years ago, I would have said forget it.”
“I still say forget it,” I said. “Take the ring back, save the money from the wedding to buy a house.”
Corey elbowed me. “What’s wrong with you? Don’t like marriage?”
I shrugged. “Why? Do you need a piece of paper to say you’re together?”
“Do you not like the paper?” Corey asked. “Or do you not like having to wear the dress?”
“Both.”
Kevin smirked, a rare occurrence for him. “Well, remind me not to ask you.”
“Deal.” I grinned again. I was glad for Kevin, but I couldn’t help thinking of girls back in high school who’d already been planning weddings by cutting out pictures from magazines. Dresses, fancy cakes, churches. Totally not my thing. Well, maybe the cake part was a good idea.
Axel whistled, drawing everyone’s attention to him. His shoulder-length black hair was drawn back into a ponytail. He was wearing khakis and a white ribbed undershirt, along with an olive drab jacket. He usually didn’t wear the khakis unless he was at the aquarium, so I must have interrupted his work. He wore his glasses now and I couldn’t tell his mood. With his steady eyes and confident demeanor, he had a way of appearing he knew everything, even what I was thinking.
Then there was the way he’d been talking to me lately. He always asked how I was feeling. He always asked if I needed anything. Fine and no were my standard answers to his questions. But then, the odd thing was, he’d compliment something: my eyes, ears, lips. Before I could formulate something in response, he’d walk away, or would talk to someone else in the room, like he didn’t need me to respond. It left my heart racing every time, and yet he never did more than that.
He stood a short distance from the gangway, raising his hand and making a circle. “I need a meeting,” he said. His voice was steady, smoky and commanding. “My team.”
The security team had left and were walking back toward the security house. Kevin, Corey and I shuffled to join Axel and Brandon. Brandon was looking a little tired, and since it was late, I thought he might have gotten woken up and told to pack.
I’d been more sensitive to his moods since we’d been in the hospital together. Identical in every way to Corey, except Brandon’s eyes were sad, his cheeks were tinted red, like he’d spent a little too much time in the sun today. He wore dark jeans and a red T-shirt under a black jacket, a spare since I’d stolen his other one. There were a couple of grease stains on his jeans. If he’d been asleep, he’d probably put on his jeans from the day of working at his motorcycle shop before hurrying over. That might make him grumpy. I did my best to look contrite and sympathetic, an effort to avoid a fight right from the start.
Luckily there were a lot of distractions, so while he did wave shortly to me, he didn’t have much of a chance to say anything.
Axel’s gaze fell on each of the guys’ faces, although he avoided mine for the moment. “Where’s Raven and Marc?”
“Raven went to go get Marc,” Kevin said.
“Marc went to work out with Avery where to fit us all,” Corey said.
“I’ve already lost two of you,” Axel said. He put his hand out and counted off as he made his points. “Now listen everyone, I know it’s late, but if we’re going to do this, we need to start work now. I want to know the ins and outs of this ship. I want the manifest for both crew and guests. I want an objective and then I--”
“I can help,” I said. I didn’t like interrupting Axel, but I didn’t want him to depend on the boys to do all of this for him when there were things already prepared. Blake said he’d make a binder for me and put it in the room, so hopefully if Avery was listening, he’d make sure it would get there.
Axel turned and everyone’s eyes landed on me. “You’ve got something for us?”
“I’ve got some material for you to go over,” I said. “And a game plan in place if you want to hear about it. I can share the materials I was given: ship schematics, crew and visitor rosters and an outline of the next few days.”
He pursed his lips and nodded. “And then we need an objective.”
I took the picture out of my pocket and showed it to everyone. “This is Michelle,” I said. “Her shelter for teenagers was promised money from Nightingale, but it never made it to her.” I went over as quickly as I could about Michelle, that we had six people coming onboard that were of interest to us, and a quick overview of the plan: identify bad people, discuss dirty money, steal their dirty money, and after that, quietly eliminate the bad guys from the companies.
Corey took the picture from me to study and the rest focused their attention on me. It surprised me not to be interrupted as I continued. They listened, nodding heads, taking in what I had to say.
“Avery can give a tour, if he isn’t too busy,” I said, feeling uncomfortable with the silence, even though it was respectful. It compelled me to keep talking. “Although some of us should get some sleep and we can reconvene at breakfast. It won’t do us much good to be too tired to work.” I looked at Brandon for this part. “Some of us have been up all day and we’ve got people coming tomorrow.”
“I’m fine,” Brandon said.
Axel put his hands into his coat pockets. “Sounds like you’ve got this covered,” he said. “So where do you want us?”
I hesitated at this. “Where...what do you want to do?”
“You’ve been put in charge, haven’t you?”
I nodded slowly, expecting some sort of retort, an argument why I shouldn’t run the team.
“Then we’re here to follow you. But I do have a couple of requests.”
“Like what?” I asked.
“I don’t want anyone wandering off alone without someone else there,” he said. “Not with so many people around and on such a large ship. I request that we all stay in teams, no wandering off without being within arm’s reach of another.”
Sounded reasonable. The ship was huge and we could get lost or cornered by bad guys. I had a feeling though, from the way the others didn’t seem surprised or protest, that this was normal for them and Axel was saying this for my benefit. “If we can arrange that,” I said.
“And I’d like to speak with Mr. Ethan myself before we take off. I want to be assured of everything going on. I don’t like being on board someone else’s boat without direct permission.”
Again, reasonable. I’d want to do the same thing. “Anything else?” I asked.
“Maybe after we check things out. I’ll let you know.”
He seemed rather calm. It threw me off of my expectation to have to fight with him over staying. Maybe he was more open-minded than the others had expected, too. I also needed to talk to him about Blake, hopefully before he found out he was on board. “I know you’ll want to catch up,” I said. “But maybe tomorrow morning we can talk at breakfast?” That seemed like the best solution. It would give him time to get involved and look at the whole thing. Then after he was invested, I’d mention Blake was coming along.
I just hoped they didn’t run into Blake before then. Was he listening to us now? Would he know to stay away until I had a chance to talk to Axel?
His lips twitched at t
his, nodding. His eyes behind the glasses were focused on me, and I felt intimidated, even if his face was otherwise expressionless. He was a blank slate, too difficult to read. “Yeah. We should do that.”
“And for anyone who isn’t too tired,” I looked at Corey, who was usually a night owl. “I could use some help figuring out what we can do to gather the most data on people coming in. We’ve already set up listening devices, but we should probably find a good way to focus on some particular guests that are of interest to us. I’m more interested in getting to the bottom of Michelle’s case and the Nightingale group, but we should gather as much data as we can while we’re here.”
“I can do a search on your Nightingale guests,” he said. “I might be able to find out what types of phones and laptops they have, and work out possible passwords before they even get here.”
“Some of us could work with the crew,” Kevin said. He redirected his gaze to Axel. “Bribe a few for any info on anyone who is acting funny.”
“Don’t look at me,” Axel said. He had his arms crossed over his chest and motioned with his elbow in my direction. “Talk to her. She’s in charge.”
Kevin shifted on his feet, looking uncomfortable. He blew a breath out of his thick lips, his cheeks bunching up as he did. He readjusted his red jacket, drawing it closer across his body. “Sorry,” he said. “What do you think?”
“Maybe,” I said. “Although to be honest, I can’t account for the entire crew here. I don’t know much about them. I don’t know where their loyalties lie. Although it might be worth it to be friendly with them and see what they think. I don’t know if we have much time to get that friendly.”
“A good honest answer,” Axel said. “But we should probably go over the data before we hash out any more ideas.” He clapped a hand against Brandon’s shoulder. “Let’s get organized.”
Brandon nodded. Everyone else said or grunted something like an agreement. At that point, everyone broke off and started moving in different directions.
Corey winked at me and then leaned in, whispering, “If you can bring me that information, I’ll spend time going over it with Axel. And I’ll be there to smooth things over with Ethan and find out how Axel feels about it.”
I could have kissed him for helping me. “Anything I should do tonight?”