Apparently, he’d been seeing what she’d been seeing.
Something a wee bit different.
“I think she’d intended to fall,” he murmured quietly in Chloe’s ear.
And it was what she had been thinking. Jeff hadn’t really missed his wife’s hand.
She had meant to fall.
Insurance? Had she wanted to sue someone, either the cruise ship owners, their bus guide or the young man guiding them at the falls?
They had all signed waivers, acknowledging what they were doing and that the falls could be dangerous.
Or...
Did she want to hang around a nurse. Get closer to George. And through George...
Get closer to Edward Thompson?
“Poor thing!” the young woman said. “Oh, and she’s so great! I loved taking her classes on the apps, how to be safe... But then I heard... Oh, sorry!” she murmured.
“No, no, please!” Chloe said. “What were you about to say? Oh, and I don’t think that we’ve met formally. I’m Chloe Douglas and this is my husband, Wes!”
“Darlene Jordan and my dad, Bryan,” the young woman told them quickly.
“Darlene!” the girl’s father warned.
“Dad—”
“Wait!” Bryan said softly.
Chloe frowned. She realized that Bryan Jordan was watching Daniel McClintock.
But Daniel was already moving on, chatting with a few young women, obviously in “flirt” mode.
“Dad, I need—”
“Darlene!” he said again, firmly.
He seemed to be making sure that Daniel McClintock was far ahead of them.
Bryan Jordan didn’t let his daughter answer. He interrupted her with a loud groan, shaking his head. First, he murmured to her, “You don’t want to be offending people you want to teach you things, young lady.” He turned to Chloe and Wes then, explaining, “Darlene loves her computer, and she already makes a decent income—helping herself through college—as an influencer. She was beyond excited to be on this cruise. I just told her that she had to keep me out of herinfluencingthing. No camera while we’re at the falls, phone camera or otherwise. She can look up just about anything and she wants to ask all the teachers on this thing what they think, like why in the world would that other young woman become so murderous and why did all those people just sit there and get shot. I’m sorry—I’m sure you heard about it, but I don’t want my girl asking questions and making anyone nervous!”
Chloe glanced at Wes.
Human nature, maybe. Or the circumstances of the crime.
Maybe anyone who knew about what had happened in Broward County was suspicious!
“I believe that law enforcement is looking into the incident,” Wes said. “But here’s the thing, Darlene. None of the people on this ship were there so none of them is going to know what happened. And your dad is right...”
“Just pretend that nothing happened? Is that fair to the people who died?” Darlene demanded.
“No, doing nothing isn’t fair to them. But leaving it up to law enforcement is fair because those people are trained to investigate,” Wes said.
“He’s right,” Chloe said. “I mean, you’re loving the classes. You don’t want the people teaching them, lecturing or whatever, to think that you suspect they might be awful people, even killers!” she said.
“They won’t want you in their classes,” Wes told her gravely.
