The shot had been aimed at the helicopter, Wes knew. Well, it had struck the copter, he thought.
But someone had wanted to kill Broderick.
Who?
Someone who had figured out just what the man had been guilty of doing. Someone who had figured out that Broderick had planned out all the murders?
After a moment, Captain Millbrook said exactly that.
“I don’t think we need to be afraid anymore, but we sure as hell do need to find out who has that gun. Security was supposed to be watching your belongings, right?” he asked.
“An officer said that he would and he told us that he had, yes,” Wes told him.
“How could I have been so careless,” Chloe murmured, distressed.
Wes took her by the shoulders. “My weapon was there, too, Chloe, just covered up by the pocket of the jacket it was in. You’re not at fault here. We went in to stop a killer and we did.”
She nodded, but she was going to blame herself, he knew. Well, he was the one who had said that their things were safe where they’d left them. The security officers on this ship tended to be good, really good.
But this man had evidently either not paid attention as he had said he would or...
Or worse. He was somehow in on something.
“We need to find the officer on duty on the lower deck, find out if—” Wes started to tell Captain Millbrook.
But Millbrook interrupted him. “No! No, no, no, trust me! I’ve been sailing for well over twenty years, young man, and I am no man’s fool! I research every man and woman who works on a vessel when I’m the captain—even if we do have an almost equal number of crew to passengers on this kind of a cruise.” He narrowed his eyes for a minute. “Nathan Samuels, that’s the young SSO who was on then. Come, his break started thirty minutes ago. He’s probably grabbingfood in the crew’s mess—right behind the casual restaurant with the open deck seating!”
Wes glanced at Chloe, and she shrugged. Millbrook was already walking.
They followed him.
They headed through the outer portion of the restaurant and through the kitchen to the rear where tables were set up separately for the crew.
The security officer, Nathan Samuels, was seated at a table with a book, reading as he consumed his meal.
He either heard or sensed them coming and looked up as they approached his table. He offered them a smile.
He stood, nodding to the captain, saying, “Sir!” Then he turned to Chloe and Wes. “Hey. Good to see you and thank you, once again, for saving the day on the ship! We think of ourselves as competent, but you two were really on top of everything!”
“They’re really agents, Nathan,” Captain Millbrook told him. “Chloe McMurray is FDLE and Wes Law is with the Feds.”
“Oh! Well, now it all makes sense!” Nathan said, nodding. “And you’re even more impressive.”
Chloe smiled and said, “Thank you for that, and now I have a question. Nathan, there was something missing from my bag. I thought you indicated that you’d watched our belongings the entire time we were in the water.”
“I had my eye on them and made sure that no one made off with them. Why?” The young officer appeared to be truly disconcerted. “Was something missing?”
“Yes,” Chloe told him.
“No! I’m so sorry, I saw people go by and I said please, just leave those things there where they are. I mean, I didsee people walk around the pile... and brush by a bit, but there were clothes on top and...”
He stopped speaking, looking perplexed.
Unless Nathan had studied with the best of them, he wasn’t lying and he was understandably distraught because he believed that he’d watched over their belongings.
“Oh! There was a gentleman who almost tripped over the pile. I saw him straighten it out before walking off,” Nathan said.
“What did he look like?” Wes asked the man.
