Gerald’s grip tightened, not cruelly, but with the urgency of a man running out of time. “That alarm isn’t a drill,” he said. “And those photographs aren’t mine. I found them an hour ago, which is why I brought your suitcase down here.” I stared at him, my heart pounding, unable to decide whether he was the danger or the warning. He pointed to the images spread across the bed, the ones taken before we ever met. “Someone has been watching you since before you boarded, Diana. I recognized the pattern because I used to do this for a living. I spent thirty years as a maritime investigator before I retired. I didn’t sit at the table beside yours by accident. I was assigned to it.”

The floor seemed to tilt beneath me, and it had nothing to do with the sea. “Assigned by whom?” I whispered. Gerald crossed the cabin quickly and gathered the photographs into a folder. “Your late husband’s estate,” he said. “Your stepson contested the will three months ago. He hired people to prove you were unfit, unstable, or worse, so he could overturn it. The champagne, the breakfasts, none of that was pretend on my side, Diana, but the reason I was watching you at all is sitting on that bed.” Then the cabin door behind him swung open, and a member of the crew I had smiled at every morning stepped inside, no longer smiling, holding a keycard to a cabin that was never his.