Chapter 3 - The Man Below Deck
Evelyn refused to hide. She followed Marcus down the narrow stairs, with Luis protesting all the way. Near the engine room, a young deckhand named Owen stood bleeding slightly from his eyebrow. A stranger in a gray maintenance shirt had vanished through the aft service door.
“He tried to take the camera recorder,” Owen said. “I stopped him.”
“Did you recognize him?” Marcus asked.
“He had a tattoo. Three black lines on his wrist.”
Luis checked the recorder cabinet. The security drive was gone.
“Not all the recordings,” Luis said. “Our bridge unit has a backup. Whoever sent him didn't know that.”
Evelyn looked at Marcus. “Who knew there would be a camera recorder worth stealing?”
“Someone who knew there'd be a confrontation tonight.”
At the upper deck, Daniel was trying to call the harbormaster and Sloane had locked herself in the owner's suite. Evelyn heard her crying through the door, then heard a second voice—the low, calm voice of a man.
“She's not alone,” Evelyn whispered.
Marcus put his ear near the wood. Sloane said, “I did exactly what you told me. You said she wouldn't recognize it.”
A pause. The man's response was too quiet to understand.
“Then get me off this boat,” Sloane hissed. “I am not going down for your family.”
Evelyn knocked. Sloane opened the door just enough to show one eye. “Go away.”
“Who are you speaking to?”
“My attorney.”
“Tell him he'll want to see the necklace.”
Sloane's eyes filled with fury. “You don't know what you started.”
“No,” Evelyn admitted. “But I know how it began. Nora wore that star every day, even in the bathtub. She said it made her brave.”
Sloane's expression briefly cracked. “It didn't make her brave enough.”
Daniel appeared at the end of the hall. “Sloane, don't say another word.”
May you like
Evelyn turned toward her son. He was pale, his jaw clenched, his phone shaking in his hand. She had never seen him look quite so much like his late father.
Then Marcus's phone chimed. The card had been copied by a technician aboard the yacht. One video file was playable. Its thumbnail showed Nora standing in a bright yellow raincoat beside a man with three black stripes tattooed on his wrist.
