“So—”
“No, I don’t think she said anything. That’s what I’m trying to tell you. If she told her brother, he’d know where we are too. They both would know exactly where to send people.” I let that sink in. “They’d have been here a loooong time ago. No, I think this is something else.”
“What?”
“I don’t know.”
“I still think we should move.”
“Lazzo, we’re in the darkest corner of the ship, as far away from the tower as possible. We have three potential escapes within a hundred yards of our door. There aren’t many better places we could be.” When he didn’t argue, I told him I was tired and needed to rest a little. I crawled beneath the steel bed frame in the far corner of the room—onto the thin mattress I’d slid under there—and closed my eyes.
A hard poke in the arm and a sharp whisper woke me a short while later. “Hey. Someone’s coming.”
I froze. I could hear steps approaching, and a light went on in the hallway outside our dark room. Crap. I was wrong. She did give us away. There were voices now, too—several of them. A male voice said, “We’ll check in here,” and the light came on in our room. I could see Lazzo clearly now, under the bed next to mine. He was ready to shoot if he had to. Based on the rhythm of the footsteps, it sounded like there were two people in the room with us. Stacks of boxes and mattresses blocked most of my view of the rest of the room, including whoever was in here with us. Strangely, no one checked under the beds. The light went back off, and the people left the room. I could hear them talking to someone else outside our door.
“You guys checked that one?” a deep male voice asked.
“Yes,” came the female reply. Sounds a lot like Flynn.
“Did you look under all the beds?” Same deep voice as before.
“Seriously? You think we wouldn’t?”
“An adult is supposed to check every room,” another male voice said.
“If seventeen isn’t adult enough for you, then go ahead.” That’s a younger male this time. Could that be Flynn’s brother?
“Come on, Chase.” Definitely Flynn. “They think we’re incompetent, so let’s go.”
The light came back on in our room. “You want me to check it again?” one of the men asked.
“Nah,” the other man with the deep voice replied. “Chase wouldn’t lie to me. He knows I’d kill him.”
“You got it, LT. Moving on then.”
LT? Lieutenant? As in the captain’s right-hand man, Brock? I certainly hoped so. That would make it far less likely anyone would second-guess his search area and come back to our room. I looked at Lazzo, and he was staring back at me, seemingly waiting for me to say something. “I don’t know.” I honestly didn’t know what else to say.
We stayed under the beds in case anyone came back. Lazzo seemed to understand the girl’s voice we’d heard had been Flynn’s. She—and apparently her brother—had been in here and hadn’t looked under the beds. They’d barely searched the room at all. So why were they in here? If neither Chase nor Flynn had reported us, then why was the ship being searched?
I had a headache now. I’d had one continuously from all my crying the night before, but it was really pulsing now. I needed to sleep. I turned my back to Lazzo and ignored him when he whispered at me.
A while later he tapped me on the back, and I rolled over to look at him.
“It’s been two hours. My turn.”
Wow. That felt like ten minutes! I nodded and slid out from under the bed. I sat by the door while Lazzo slept. After about an hour, I stood up and peeked out into the hallway. There was a surveillance camera above our door with a blinking red light. I hadn’t noticed it when we came in. Was it on then? Regardless, there was something strange about it now. I could see another camera down the hall pointed away from our room—toward the stairs—and the one above our door was pointed to our left. A third camera at the far end of the hall to our left was also pointed away from us toward the stairs. Holy crap. That left a fifty-yard gap with no camera coverage from the door by the stairs to our room. Someone had to have manually created that gap before the alarms went off—before the cameras on this end of the boat were turned on. Flynn. So she is actually helping us.
Lazzo took one more watch shift that night, and then we both slept four more hours until 6:00 a.m. I finally felt a little rested—which was good—and my headache had subsided, but I awoke even more bitter toward Lazzo than I’d been the day before. The finality was sinking in, and the resulting ache was spreading through my chest. He killed Sam. My boyfriend is dead.
I pulled myself out from under the bed, desperately needing to pee. There was a bathroom across the hall from our room, conveniently not in the scope of the cameras. I had a feeling Flynn had moved those cameras specifically for me—for another girl. She didn’t want me to have to improvise. I was silently grateful as I tiptoed across the hall. I washed my face in the sink and cleaned up a little. I looked like a chimney sweeper. Ugh!
When I came out, Lazzo was standing in our doorway. “Where were you,” he asked.
I pointed at the sign that read Ladies. “That okay with you?”
He ignored my sarcasm. “My turn,” he said. “Don’t go anywhere.”
“Oh, okay.” Seriously? Where was I going to go?
I had just sat down inside the door to our room when I heard a distinctive “Pssst” out in the hall. I poked my head around the corner and saw a head sticking out of a manhole over by the stairs. Flynn. She waved at me to come toward her, motioning me to stay against the wall. I slipped down the hall to her.
“Hey,” she said with a slight smile.
“Hey yourself.” I smiled back, and then I saw the bruises on her face. “What the hell? Flynn, did your—”
“Can we not talk about it, please? I’m fine. Sorry ’bout the knife, by the way.”
“I’ve been through worse. You too, obviously.” My dislike was rapidly becoming hatred for that man. I reluctantly changed the subject. “Hey, did you move the cameras?”
She nodded and the smile came back. “Hayley, do you have a minute?”
Several hours worth of them. I nodded. She was looking nervously behind me—likely for Lazzo. “He’s in the bathroom. What was up with the alarms last night?”
“Governor Barnes sent a message about two terrorists sneaking onto the boat the night we left. Dad sent search parties out to look for them… or you. No one found anything though, so they’re still looking.” She lifted a knapsack up from the manhole and handed it to me. “Chase and I saved our bread for you from last night, and I brought two bottles of water.”
“Flynn, you shouldn’t ha—”
“Hayley!” Lazzo whispered sharply at me. He was back in the bunkroom. “What are you doing?”
I held up a hand, signaling him to wait.
Flynn put her hand on my arm. “I wanted to ask if you’re okay?”
I shrugged.
“I know—sorry—it’s kind of a stupid question. You said he killed your boyfriend. So is he holding you hostage?”
I could hear Lazzo walking up behind me. “It’s complicated.”
Her eyes shifted up, and the sparkle in them vanished. She gave Lazzo a cold stare.
“What do you want?” Lazzo was suspicious of our conversation. With good reason.