“Yes, sir?” Avery said, stepping up beside him.
Ethan smiled and shook his head. “Don’t call me, sir,” he said. “You’re not a servant. Not even my assistants call me that.”
Avery grimaced. “Sorry. Habit.”
“You’re not driving a taxi anymore,” he said. “Crew of the ship call me Mr. Murdock. In your case, it’s better if you call me Ethan. People will understand instantly that you’re a partner.”
Avery’s lips faltered and he blushed. “A partner?”
“I need you nearby,” Ethan said. “Spot things that appear odd to you. I’m too close to most of these people. I may not see things you might notice.”
Avery gazed at the clipboard. “That’s a lot of people to look at.”
“Your job is to stick by Ethan at every moment,” Axel said. “Your first concern is to ensure he, for one, isn’t in any danger. After the fiasco with his father, the vultures will be circling.”
I gulped at the thought of that. I’d been focusing so much on Nightingale that I hadn’t even thought of what Ethan might be going through. He was more of a target than we were.
“Where will you two be?” Avery asked.
“We’ll make a circle,” Axel said. “We need to keep an eye on every Nightingale board member, even if they won’t talk to us. We’ll be close by to overhear or make friends, whichever works.” He looked over his shoulder at me. “That’s plan A, anyway.”
“We’ve got recording devices in every room,” Avery said. “We might catch more than just Nightingale by the end of this.”
“That’ll take a lot of man hours to listen to all those conversations,” Axel said. “And those things can get interrupted if people really want a quiet talk.”
Avery was quiet for a long moment, turning his face toward the sun and squinting. “Won’t that just mean if they disrupt the listening devices, that we should pay closer attention to those people?”
Axel’s lips twitched and then lifted into a smirk. “You catch on quickly. What in the world were you doing driving a taxi?”
“Driving wasn’t so bad,” Avery said. “You control your time. You learn new things about the city. No pressure except for morning rush hour. Not a lot of people have those advantages.”
Axel nodded, but then turned his head, giving me a long, silent look. He liked Avery.
I was glad about that. I just wished he could learn to like Blake. Blake was over at the bar right now, getting an orange juice that was being served in champagne flutes. He leaned against the counter, looking out at the water on the river side. He really looked like he was on vacation. I couldn’t believe he was so calm.
We stood at the rail, looking down toward the dock at all the activity. There were two guards now in the guardhouse prepared for the arrival of Mr. Murdock’s guests with a copy of the same manifest that Avery held.
A couple of town cars pulled into the parking lot and stopped right at the edge of the dock. A driver hopped out of each, nodding their heads to each other in acknowledgement and hurried to open the back doors.
Two older men stepped out, almost at the same time. One with grey hair and a lean figure carried a small dog in his arm. The other man was on the plump side but they wore similar polo shirts and tan slacks.
“There’s going to be a dog?” I asked, studying the dark Yorkie. The little dog barked as the security guard approached with the clipboard, waving the people on as he checked them off his list. The high pitched yap could be heard, even from the distance we were from them, the sound echoing against the hull of the ship.
“That’s Raisin,” Avery said. “He belongs to Mr. Kroner. The other one is Mr. Hill. They’re old friends. Mr. Kroner is a vice-president for a real estate company. Mr. Hill is CFO for an investment firm.”
My jaw slackened in amazement as I gazed at the side of Avery’s face as he looked toward the oncoming guests. “Do you have them all memorized? You know what they look like and their names?”
Avery shrugged, breaking his concentration to look at me. He smiled, his face lighting up. “I had a head start,” he said. “I guess I studied more than I realized. I was just real nervous. You’re going to have to get familiar with them, too.”
I groaned. I just realized I probably needed to remember their names and faces if I was going to keep track of who acted suspicious outside of Nightingale. “I may need a hand.”
“I’ve got two,” Avery said. “Just let me know.”
“Okay,” Axel said, stepping away from Ethan and curling his fingers at me. “You and I need to break off from Ethan. We are now guests on this ship.”
“Where’s Fancy?” I asked. “Where is she going to be?”
Axel scanned the deck and nodded toward the hot tub area. “She’s doing her job.”
I followed his gaze, spotting Fancy in a skimpy yellow bikini, covered with a very loose blue cover up dress, the woven material covering her crotch area. The cover-up draped across her shoulders to reveal her ample breasts in the yellow bikini top. The stacks of bracelets she normally wore had been lightened to just three on each arm, with a couple of rings on her fingers and a plunging set of necklaces. She stood at the edge of the hot tub, looking out at the water.
Standing beside her were two women, also in bikinis. They were sticks with boobs that appeared to be implants. They went without the cover ups, and leaned into Fancy, giggling and holding orange juice flutes.
“Uh...” I said, tilting my head and not hiding my gawking. “Who are...”
“You can’t have a yacht with rich, powerful men without some eye candy walking around,” Avery said. “They’ve been hired by the company to encourage people to relax and have fun.”
“Fancy’s job is to drink orange juice and hang about?” I asked. “Why didn’t I get that job?” I was joking, but Fancy’s part sounded more relaxing and a lot less stressful. I’d have to don a bikini, but wouldn’t it be worth it?
“Because Fancy is going to get manhandled,” Axel said. “And you’d more than likely shoot a CEO if that happened to you, which would be counterproductive.”
I couldn’t argue his point. Still, it was hard to feel comfortable standing in a dress and long socks and loafers, feeling like a lump compared to the other girls. I inevitably compared their thighs and stomachs to my own, and found myself covering my belly with my arms. It was a girly move, but it was hard not to feel like I was out of place. Maybe I did need to watch what I ate more. Or start exercising. Yeah...no. “So we
have to put up with the beach bunnies hanging around all the time?”
“They’ll target whoever we point out,” he said. “They’ll sneak in and distract someone if you need to check out a pocket. You can use them; they work for us now.”
That did sound a little better. I wondered about the girls. They appeared to be completely female, but even Fancy could fool you if you didn’t know her very well.
Mr. Hill started to board the ship. Mr. Kroner had let Raisin down to poop on the dock, waving Mr. Hill on. The cars they’d arrived in were being unloaded by the drivers. One carried a very fancy dog bed that looked to be made of gold and velvet.
“Excuse us,” someone said and a shoulder brushed past me before I had a chance to look. Two crew members walked toward the gangway, the blond man and another woman I hadn’t seen before. They hurried along, going for the luggage.
I checked out the tiny dog who was hunched over in a vulnerable position, barking frantically at the newcomers. “He’s just going to let his dog poop on the dock?” I asked.
“Don’t worry about it,” Avery said. He motioned to the woman, who spoke to Mr. Hill and then moved on to Raisin and Mr. Kroner. She stopped to pull out a plastic bag from a pocket and collected the waste once the dog had finished, talking briefly to Mr. Kroner. The blond crew member moved on to the drivers to collect luggage, pointing toward the ship. There was another level, and a cargo door he kept pointing to. Was that where luggage went? How come we rolled ours all the way up here?
“Who is the blond guy?” I asked. “I didn’t get his name before.”
Before Avery could respond, Axel tugged me away and pointed me toward the bar. “You need to stop talking to Avery and Ethan.”
I waved goodbye to Avery, wishing him luck. I walked with Axel, looking around at the various outdoor chairs and loungers spread out along the deck. “What do you want me to do?”
“Relax for now,” he said. He took my elbow until I stood with him at the corner of the bar, where another member of the crew—a woman with slicked back brown hair in a bun—stood by. She wiped counters that were already clean. There were trays of flutes with the orange juice already prepared. Axel took two and handed one to me. “Right now, we pretend we belong here. And we wait for someone interesting to arrive to talk to. Don’t just jump out at everyone coming on board. Just take it slow.”