I finally came to a curve in the hallway and took a moment to orient myself as I followed it. I wasn’t sure how long I had been running and was starting to lose track of how far I had gone and where in the enormous cruise ship my haphazard course had brought me. Had I run past the hairdresser three floors up, or four? Were there more levels of interior rooms below me or had I gotten all the way down to the bottom of the guest portion of the ship? The thought of being this far down always unnerved me. Even though I knew in the logical part of my mind that it wasn’t the case, whenever I roamed this far into the lowest passenger levels I felt like I was going underwater. There was a reason that I had always avoided the submarine rides onshore. And at amusement parks. Or sticking my head under the surface to rinse my hair in the bath.
I had been in the nightclub on one of the high decks when I started running. A bartender that had been trying really hard to flirt with me but was a bit too “cucu-kachoo, Mrs. Robinson” for my taste had just handed my drink to me across the glowing surface of a serpentine black bar that was reminding me of my younger days in a way that I wasn’t sure I appreciated when I glanced over my shoulder and saw the men step into the room. Even through the flashing strobe lights in the dark club I recognized them and my heart sank. The cruelness in their expressions sent chills through me and I knew instantly that Virgil had sent them. I dropped the drink from my hand and started to run, not looking back over my shoulder even as the people around me shouted their protest at the sound of the glass shattering and me forcing my way through the undulating bodies crowding the dancefloor. I had hoped that whoever these men were, they wouldn’t be able to keep up with me in the chaotic lights and dancing masses.
I heard shouting behind me as I burst out of the club and started toward the stairs. The men had obviously seen my escape and weren’t thwarted by any of the people trying to ride out the last gasps of the night locked in a messy tangle of anonymity and hormones. I ducked into the first stairwell and leaned against the wall for a second to pry the shoes from my feet. They were not sprint-friendly and the experiences that I had had in the past with men much like these told me that I wasn’t going to be slowing down again soon. From there I took the stairwells, corridors, and decks in a seemingly nonsensical pattern that had me weaving and backtracking my way through the massive cruise liner without consideration for who might see me or what anyone might think of me. At that point, it didn’t matter to me what I needed to do or who I needed to use to get away. I wasn’t above flinging myself on a stranger for a diversionary make-out session, or taking a tremendously-overdressed dip in the zero-entry pool if I needed to.
Why did it have to be a ship? Why did I have to be stranded out in the middle of the fucking ocean where I couldn’t just disappear into a store or hop out a window and get away?
I saw the door to another stairwell ahead of me and quickened my steps to try to get to it faster. I paused just outside it and leaned close to the door, trying to listen for any indication that they might have chosen that stairwell in their pursuit of me. It was quiet. It seemed that I might have actually confused them enough to get away. At least for now. Satisfied that I was safe for the moment, I pressed the brushed silver bar to open the door and slipped inside. The dizzying flights of steps spiraled up through the decks and then rippled down deeper into the ship, confirming that I hadn’t actually found myself in the bowels of the levels. I let my eyes follow both paths, trying to determine which would be a better choice. The last time I had gone through one of the stairwells I had gone down, so I decided this time I would go up, hoping that I wasn’t just backtracking myself right into their path. The move would make me end up right back to where I had been, but maybe I was going to run out of bad luck for the week.
I started up the steps as fast as I could. Even though I was clinging to the handrail like any good responsible stairwell-user, my feet tangled beneath me and I stumbled onto the stairs ahead of me.
Perfect. I was a dumb blonde from a 50’s horror movie.
Muttering a few creative obscenities, I pushed myself up and continued down the stairs. I ran past three decks before choosing the door that led out of the stairwell. I had taken only a few steps when a massive figure stepped out from a small alcove and reached out for me. I screamed and tried to escape the man's grip, but he turned me around and covered my mouth with one strong hand. Despite my thrashing, he seemed to have no trouble controlling me, and I eventually gave up, not having any energy left in me to fight against his strength. He picked me up off the floor and pulled me backwards into the alcove with him. I felt his mouth come to my ear and the heat of his breath burning on my skin.
"Be quiet," the man hissed.
The voice sounded distantly familiar, but I couldn’t place it. In my life, a familiar voice wasn’t something so completely out of the ordinary and many of the voices that were so familiar didn’t belong to people I would particularly enjoy meeting in a desolate hallway, so it didn’t give me any sense of confidence. I screamed harder against the man’s hand, but his grip tightened.
"Shut up," he demanded into my ear. "Unless you want those guys to find you, I suggest that you quiet down. You’re going to be lucky if every person on this deck hasn’t heard you by now."
I stilled at his words. His grip loosened and he lowered me to my feet again.
"If I take my hand away, are you going to scream again?" he asked.
I shook my head compliantly.
"Are you sure?"
"Yes, I'm sure, you motherfu-"
The man pressed his hand against my mouth harder to force me silent.
"That wasn't very convincing, Eleanor. Now, I’m going to let you try that again. Are you going to scream if I take my hand away?"
I shook my head and the man drew his hand slowly away from my mouth. When I didn’t make any noise, he slowly withdrew his arms from my body until I was free of his grip.
"How do you know my name?" I asked, turning to look at him.
As soon as I saw him, my stomach dropped a little further.
Well, shit.
“Hi, Eleanor,” Hunter said.
“What are you doing here?” I asked.
I knew that my voice sounded a little icier than it probably should have, but I hadn’t been prepared to see the young, gorgeous man in front of me again, and the circumstances being what they were, I wasn’t feeling exactly friendly.
“I’m assuming the same thing that you are,” he said, appropriately defensive in response to my bitchiness. “Noah and Snow sent me on this cruise as a thank-you celebration after their wedding. Though…” he hesitated, scrutinizing me, “I admit that I don’t really understand why they would send you. I was under the impression that it was just me, Snow’s friends Robin and Fawn, and a couple of Noah’s relatives. I didn’t realize that you and Noah were so close. I know that I’m certainly not that close with my third-grade teacher.”
I forced myself to withhold the grimace that tried to contort my face. That split-second lie had come right on back and bit me in the ass. Of course, that meant that I was going to have to come up with another one. That’s how lies work. They are like potato chips. There’s never just one. You always end up reaching into the bag and coming up with another. Sometimes you have to slather a little dip on it. Since I didn’t really know how to talk myself out of what I had already told him or how to explain in a few seconds what was actually happening, I went for the dip.
“We spent a lot of time together when he was younger,” I said. “I was his teacher, but I was also his babysitter. And my husband was his Cub Scout leader.”
Too far?
Hunter narrowed his eyes at me from behind the glasses that I still hated. This man was in serious need of contacts. His eyes were a gorgeous crystalline green and framed by lashes so long and full they looked like they had come packaged and emblazoned with the name of some celebrity du jour. They didn’t belong behind glasses, particularly not the thick black-rimmed ones that he was wearing.
“Interesting,” he finally said. “I don’t really see Noah as the Cub Scout type.”
“Oh, he was,” I said, swept up in the lie now so that I couldn’t even stop myself even though I knew that I was rapidly falling down a very steep slope. “Making fires. Hiking the trails. Making s’mores. The whole thing.”
“I thought that s’mores were more of a Girl Scout thing.”
I fell silent. I didn’t know where to go from there. I had reached as far as that particular lie would take me.