Chương 4
“I’m fine.”
“That wasn’t a medical diagnosis. Sit.”
She did.
A sofa that had seemed decorative twenty minutes earlier now felt absurdly soft beneath her.
Daniel crouched several feet away rather than towering over her.
“Did you put the case in your bag?”
“No.”
“Did you know it was there?”
“No.”
“Did you touch the necklace tonight?”
“No.”
“Did you enter Mrs. Sterling’s cabin?”
“No.”
“Did you have any reason to believe she suspected you of theft?”
Maya looked at Vanessa.
“No.”
Then she corrected herself.
“Not until she said she recognized me.”
Daniel turned.
“Recognized her from where?”
Vanessa’s gaze went to the black ocean beyond the glass wall.
“It’s irrelevant.”
Maya whispered, “You were at the Lennox Foundation dinner.”
Vanessa looked back at her.
The memory came not as a story but as a smell.
Hotel coffee.
Burned and bitter.
Maya had been twenty-three, working temporary banquet shifts between yacht contracts. Four hundred people had filled a ballroom in Miami for a hospital foundation fundraiser. She had worn a black vest two sizes too large and spent most of the night carrying trays that made her wrist ache.
Near midnight, a guest had reported a missing diamond brooch.
Vanessa Sterling.
Maya remembered her because Vanessa had accused a dishwasher named Elena Cruz of taking it.
Not privately.
In the service corridor.
Maya had been there.
So had three hotel supervisors.
The memory sharpened.
Vanessa demanding that security search Elena’s locker.
Elena crying from anger rather than fear.
Maya telling a hotel security officer that she had seen Vanessa wearing the brooch after the point Vanessa claimed it was missing.
Vanessa had turned and stared at her.
The same stare.
“You,” Maya said softly.
Vanessa’s mouth tightened.
Avery looked between them.
“What dinner?”
Vanessa said, “This is ridiculous.”
Maya stood.
Four years fell away.
“You accused a dishwasher of stealing a brooch.”
“I have attended hundreds of events.”
“You remember that one.”
“No.”
“You remember me.”
Vanessa said nothing.
Daniel’s expression changed.
Not conclusion.
Interest.
Grant picked up the tablet again.
“What year?”
“Four years ago,” Maya said. “Maybe March? It was at the Beaumont Grand.”
“Lennox Foundation,” Vanessa said automatically.
Everyone heard it.
Vanessa closed her eyes for half a second.
Maya’s heart began pounding.
“You said you didn’t remember.”
“I remember the foundation.”
Avery stared at her mother.
“Mom.”
“Stop saying my name like that.”
“How should I say it?”
No one had an answer.
Daniel rose.
“All right. We’re done doing this in front of guests.”
Vanessa gestured toward Maya.
“She is not a guest.”
Daniel’s face became still.
“She is crew under my authority.”
“I pay a substantial amount of money to be on this vessel.”
“That does not make her your property.”
Vanessa flushed.
Maya looked down.
She did not want to enjoy that sentence.
She did anyway.
Daniel assigned Tessa to take Maya to the crew mess and stay with her. Grant would remain with the jewelry case until it was transferred to the captain’s safe in the presence of witnesses. Vanessa was asked to return to her suite until Daniel could speak with her privately.
Vanessa refused.
Daniel did not argue.
He simply waited.
The pause lasted long enough to become embarrassing.
Finally Avery said, “Mom. Go.”
Vanessa looked at her daughter.
Whatever she expected to find there was absent.
She picked up the edge of her gown so the hem would not catch under her silver heels.
At the door she turned toward Maya.
“You have no idea what you’re involving yourself in.”
Maya almost said, You involved me.
She did not.
Grant did.
“She didn’t choose this.”
Vanessa looked at him with an expression that promised memory.
Then she left.
The service corridor felt narrower than usual when Tessa led Maya below.
Warm guest lighting gave way to practical white fixtures. The teak disappeared, replaced by nonslip flooring and stainless trim. Somewhere behind the bulkhead, machinery hummed steadily.
Tessa opened the crew mess.
Inside, two deckhands stopped talking.
Neither asked what had happened.
That meant they already knew.
News traveled through yachts faster than engine vibration.
Maya sat at the little table beneath the television.
Someone had left half a banana beside a mug.
Tessa picked it up and threw it away.
“You want water?”
“No.”
“Tea?”
“No.”
“Something with sugar?”
“I’m not going into shock.”
“I know. I’m offering tea.”
Maya stared at her.
Then she laughed again.
This time Tessa joined her for one second before both stopped.
It felt inappropriate.
That made Maya want to laugh harder.
Instead she pressed both hands over her face.
Tessa filled a glass from the dispenser and put it in front of her anyway.
Maya drank.
“What happens now?”
“Captain documents it.”
“And me?”
“We document you too.”
“That sounds comforting.”
“It’s not supposed to.”
Maya rubbed her thumb against the edge of the glass.
“I’m going to get fired.”
“No.”
“You don’t know that.”
“No, I don’t.”
“Then don’t say it.”
Tessa sat across from her.
Maya immediately regretted snapping.
“Sorry.”
“Don’t apologize because you’re scared.”
“I hate when people say things like that.”
“What things?”
“Like I’m allowed to feel whatever I feel. It sounds like a greeting card.”
Tessa nodded.
“Fair.”
They sat in silence.
The yacht rolled almost imperceptibly beneath them.
A fork slid a quarter inch across the counter and stopped against a napkin holder.
Maya watched it.
“My dad is going to tell me to quit,” she said.
“Yachting?”
“Yes.”
“Will you?”
“No.”
“Then don’t call him yet.”
Maya looked at her.
“That’s terrible advice.”
“I didn’t say never call him. I said don’t call him while you still sound like you’re being held hostage.”
Maya picked up the water.
Her hand shook.
She put it back down.
Tessa’s expression softened.
“That video matters.”
“So does the part forty people saw before the video.”
“Yes.”
Maya looked at her.
“Thank you.”
“For what?”
“For not pretending it doesn’t.”
May you like
Tessa leaned back.
“Rich people don’t own gossip. Crew are better at it.”
