Page 38 of The Situation Ship
Dropping the jewellery box, Poppy looked up to find him staring at her in the mirror. “Holy shit, you scared me to death!”
“I’m glad someone does,” he snapped.
“How did you find me so fast?” So much for getting Mina to take her place.I made her rearrange her date for nothing.
“I got an alert when you left the suite. I told you after Patrice that I’d keep the tracker on. If I’m not within fifteen feet of you, I’ll get an alert,” he explained sternly. “I didn’t think I’d have to use it, since we agreed not to keep secrets or run off.”
“Speaking of secrets, where did you go earlier?”she challenged him.
“I told you, I had to go to the reception desk.”
“What did Eckells want you to ‘review’?” He obviously didn’t want her to know, since he didn’t send whatever it was to the room.
He huffed. “It was a call from Eckells. He wants to ensure I’m keeping Mina safe. He heard about the incident from the captain and wanted a personal update to ensure we followed the rules. I was going to tell you before I left, but then Mina came in, and her relationship with Eckells is… odd. I don’t think she would appreciate him checking up on her.”
She studied his expression for any hint of deception. “Okay, I believe you. So believemewhen I tell you that I wasn’t going to keep this a secret; if I found anything out, I was going to tell you – but in case I was caught, I wanted you to get out of it so you wouldn’t get locked up with me.”
“If I’m locked up with you, I can protect you!” Isaiah sighed. “How did you even get in here?”
“A maid was doing turn-down service when I arrived; I waited for her to leave and sneaked in before the door could close fully,” Poppy said. “How’d you come in after me?”
“The door was caught on the latch, so it didn’t close behind you either.”
She was lucky he had come in after her, not someone else who’d noticed the door was left ajar. “Oops.”
“What if the guest had returned? Whose suite is this?”
“Calliope’s.” She avoided eye contact, not wanting to see his reaction.
“And why are you risking getting us thrown into the brig?” Isaiah asked.
“Because of this.” She showed him the small tape in her hand. “I found it in the top drawer of the jewellery box, shoved in the back.”
“A tape?” He took it from her, and his eyes lit up as the penny dropped. “Patrice’s tape recorder.”
“Give the detective a prize.”
“Cute, but how did you know it would be in here? Did she give something away earlier?”
“No, it wasn’t what she said. It was what I found in Patrice’s cabin.”
His eyes widened. “You went down to the staff cabins?”
“Only for a few minutes, and I wasn’t seen.” Poppy put everything but the tape back into the jewellery box as she’d found it. She needed to know what was on it, and if whatever Patrice had learned was worth killing over. “But it was worth the risk, because I discovered Patrice was stealing from guests, recording their conversations, and blackmailing them. She kept a notebook of who, when and how much. Calliope’s tape was the only one not in its case and the last entry in the notebook. We just need the tape recorder to play it, but you left it with Patrice’s body.”
“I’ll find a way to get into the morgue,” Isaiah said without elaborating. The morgue was the last place she wanted to go, so she would entrust him with that task.
“Since I found a lead, are you still mad at me?” she asked, batting her eyelashes at him. His jaw clenched and his eyesnarrowed, but the lecture didn’t come. Not yet, anyway. “I know you said not to leave the room without you, but I’m still wearing the anchor charm, so I knew you’d be able to find me if anything went wrong—”
Before she could finish, Isaiah pulled her body against his.
“Stop talking,” he snapped as she went rigid, motioning to the shadow beneath the door. Someone was outside the door.
A loud knock caused them to freeze.
“Ms Chase, I’m sorry to disturb you, but I left some cleaning products in the bathroom,” the maid called out when they didn’t answer.
Isaiah glared down at Poppy, and she shrugged. How was she supposed to know the maid would be so forgetful?
