“We’ll get it one way or another,” Tinseng promised. “Then we’ll be in the clear.”
They all sipped their wine.
“That poor translator,” Yukying mourned. “I wonder what secrets he died for.”
Tinseng huffed and took another bite of his sandwich, ripping the bread with his teeth. Shan Dao said nothing at all.
The ship stayed in the Barcelona dock that night; they would sail to Villefranche mid-morning. The harbor town loomed in her mind now. Somewhere on its sun-drenched streets a confrontation would happen. And tonight, her brothers and Chiboon were out in the bars as bait; would they get into an altercation? Would the steward come to inform her they’d been arrested? Would the phone ring any minute now? She sat in her room all night and kept checking the clock despite herself. She’d never been on a vacation less relaxing, even the ones with Laurence’s parents.
She found sleep more elusive than ever, especially with the muscles along her spine nearly pulsing. Grodescu’s voice kept circling in her head: Follow them onshore only. The ship has too many eyes. Laurence lay in bed reading the end of the third book in his Churchill series, unlikely to fall asleep until he’d reached the last page. She stayed up writing overdue postcards and letters until her hand cramped. She stood into an exaggerated stretch and checked her watch: 12:15 a.m. Tinseng said he would be back by one.
“I hunched over the desk too long,” she told Laurence. “I think I’ll take a walk. Do you think I need a sweater?”
“Definitely,” he said absently. “When do you think you’ll be back?”
“Before one.”
“All right. Stay warm.”
She left him to his book and began to walk. She didn’t notice where she was going; by this point, the ship was so familiar to her she thought she could walk parts of it blind. It’s become a home of sorts, she thought as she took the stairs from her deck up to the very top deck. Like the pretend homes they made with leaves and sticks in Yichang—the ship had that childlike sense of safety, a construct away from the real world. The sea air greeted her as she pushed the door open, beckoning her into the refreshing summer night. She stepped onto the deck and looked along its long bow. The ship has too many eyes, she thought, and this time the thought brought her comfort.
She saw him then: Lucas Grodescu, sitting in a chair that faced the stairway. As if he had been waiting for someone to emerge from the decks below. Their eyes met. He stood slowly, pushing himself up from the chair. Her blood ran cold—she had heard him strangle someone today. For a moment she stood completely frozen. She could not look away from his hands as he walked toward her. Then his shoe squeaked on the wood, and she jolted back into her body. She turned and barely managed not to run. Her instincts were all wrong: Instead of walking back downstairs and straight to Laurence, she walked around the middle of the ship with its huge supporting column and crossed to the back half of the deck. Even as she did, she yelled at herself: What is your plan? What are you thinking? She wasn’t; she couldn’t. She scrambled for a place to go.
Grodescu followed. She tried to keep from shaking as she walked down the deck. She’d never thought of the polished wood floor as slippery, not even with the morning dew, but now she worried she would fall if she tried to run.
On the aft end of the deck was a staircase that led to a bar, but that had closed at midnight. The pool had a staircase, though, down into the women’s changing room, which in turn emptied out into a lower deck with rooms. It would have been smarter to make a loop around the deck back to the original staircase, but her hindbrain had long since panicked.
Two swinging doors separated the outside deck from the inside pool. The moment there were doors between her and Grodescu, she ran, flinging herself down the stairs to be out of sight when the doors swung open again.
She ducked down to listen but heard only silence. Had he stopped just inside? Where was he? She slipped off her shoes and took each step on tiptoe. When she reached the lower level, she hurried to the women’s changing room. With her hand on the door, she heard above her,
“Hello, Mrs. Li.”
Her chest rose and fell quickly, shallow sips of animal fear. She turned around. The shimmering light from the pool caught his gray eyes as he walked down the spiral staircase.
“Hello, Mr. Grodescu.”
His gaze was flint as it swept her up and down in cold calculation. Yukying felt very small and unprotected in her thin cheongsam and Laurence’s cardigan. She wanted to cross her arms over her chest but that would just draw attention.
“Are you enjoying your evening?” She tried to sound as insipid as possible, remembering Marissa’s promise to report back that she was nothing but a housewife. “I was thinking of a swim but, silly me, I forgot my swimsuit. I’ll have to go back and get it.”
“Hmm.” He reached the bottom of the stairs and stepped toward her. “Not a pleasant feeling, being followed, is it?”
Did he know about this afternoon? Was he guessing?
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“Then it wasn’t you in the blue dress? And your friend Dao Shan, in the white?”
“No, it wasn’t.” She inched her way to the door.
“Mrs. Li, I hate to be the one to tell you this, but these men are using you. You may be in grave danger if you continue to associate with them.”
“Shan Dao is just a translator.”
“Is he? And your brother, Tinseng?”
“A language tutor.”
“Really.” He smiled as he took a step forward. She pressed back against the wall. “Just a translator and a tutor. And you believe them?”
“I, I really should go get that swimsuit. If you’ll excuse me.”
“Before you go, Mrs. Li, don’t you want to know who I was talking about this afternoon?”
She needed to move.
“I didn’t leave the ship this afternoon. You can ask my husband.”
“Now, now, let’s not bring your husband into this. I would like to keep you out of it too, if possible. You don’t belong in this world, Mrs. Li. I’ve looked. You have no secrets, no skeletons as they say. You have been innocent until now. Shouldn’t it stay that way?”
“I— I . . .”
She shouldn’t have come down here. Surely by now someone would have walked across the deck, but no one came down here. All she had to do was take two steps to the right and walk backward through the door. If I can do that, she thought frantically, if I can just get another door between us—
“Listen very closely now,” Lucas Grodescu said in a low, soothing tone, “I mean you no harm, Mrs. Li. But you know nothing about me, and I know everything about you. You have no idea what you’ve gotten yourself into, and now, unfortunately, you’re in the middle of a very dangerous world. Your companions might have convinced you that you can be a spectator in that world. Perhaps they’ve made it seem like a fun distraction from your otherwise mundane existence. But there is no such thing as a bystander when it comes to secrets like these. This world can reach out and—” He lifted a hand and snapped loudly. She flinched and hated herself for it. “Do you understand?”
