He rose as they entered.
He was in a steward’s white-and-blue uniform, and for a brief, shining moment, Clara thought they had stumbled upon help.
Then he smiled.
“Miss Avery! My lovely, lovely Miss Avery. How very nice to meet you in person. You really are quite something. You know, I wish we could have met under other circumstances. I’m really a charming man. You would have enjoyed knowing me.”
“I doubt that,” she said.
Emmy and Kimball seemed to retreat—still as one—to a corner of the room. The desk was between her and Tate Morley. She couldn’t help but note that there was a letter opener on it.
She wondered about the possibility of grabbing for it—and stabbing Morley.
That left poor little Emmy in the same position.
But how could she help the woman if she was dead herself?
“I won’t get to know you, but...I’d love to know how you managed all this,” she said.
He was a truly nondescript man. Maybe five foot ten, with watery blue eyes and sandy short-cropped hair. His build was medium. There was nothing about him that stood out, and Clara assumed that made changing into whatever he wanted to be easy enough.
“You’re a sad little man that no one notices, aren’t you?” she asked softly.
“They all notice me!” he said, a note of irritation in his voice. “They all notice me. I bring the adrenaline of fear and excitement into their lives. And those women... I made them famous. I made them beautiful as they had never been.”
“Your last victim didn’t even have a face.”
He flicked a finger in the air. “But the first! Ah, that I might have remained the Fairy Tale Killer!” Something hardened in his expression. “Your lover boy and Crow ended that for me. But, now...reality TV! They wanted reality—I gave it to them. And it was so convenient. With the resources and knowledge to come to Alaska, I not only got to begin again, but as an added bonus, I got those arrogant FBI bastards, as well. And, any good killer knows, a signature is needed...but! With your blonde beauty...all I can think of is a fairy tale! The fairest of the fair.”
“You know you’re on a ship. You know that police and FBI will be crawling through it within minutes.”
“And I’ll be gone. You see, I’ve had opportunity to learn all that I need to know. Please, Miss Avery! I’ve come and gone like the wind.”
“Let Emmy go!” she said.
“Let Emmy go... I don’t think so.”
She’d been eyeing the desk—waging her chances.
If he wouldn’t let Emmy go...
No choice.
She made a dive for the letter opener.
*
Thor followed the apparition down and along the hallway at breakneck speed. Then, just as Amelia Carson seemed to disappear into thin air, he heard voices.
Tate Morley’s voice. And the man was talking about fairy tales...
He heard Clara’s voice; it was trilled slightly with fear—it was heavier with anger.
He tried to determine who else might be in the room—and then he heard something like a war cry and he had no choice but to swing around the corner and into the room.
Clara was holding her own. She was down on an old Victorian desk, grappling with Morley and a letter opener.
Emmy Vincenzo was locked in a hold with Marc Kimball.
“Stop!”
He fired his Glock into the air.
For a moment, it seemed that everyone in the room froze; as if he had created a tableau.
But then, Morley let out a scream of fury, and slammed against Clara, wrestling the letter opener from her and raising it over her head.
Thor aimed and shot in less than two seconds.
“Emmy!” Clara screamed, scrambling from beneath the dead man.
But poor little Emmy had found her courage at last. She’d freed herself from Kimball. She had the knife; Thor saw Kimball’s eyes widen and his mouth open, as if he would make one last derisive comment—fire her, perhaps!—before her knife landed in his gut.
Kimball crumpled to the floor and Thor rushed forward to take Clara into his arms.
16
The following two days were, for Thor and Clara, a mass of reports, further investigations and dodging the press. Questions remained. Had Kimball been corresponding with Morley? When had Morley determined how, where and when Clara should be brought to him? Theories abounded on paper; they didn’t have all the answers. They were still putting together puzzle pieces.
The state police found the ship’s officer whose life and identification Tate Morley had stolen two days later deep in a forest that bordered the road to the state park.
It would have been his first voyage on the Fate, and therefore none of the other employees had known him to be anyone other than who he had presented himself to be.