Trinity:
“And your own goal now?”
Helen:
“To find the missing. To lay it all out with your help, and to finally bring some closure.”
Carter
“Holy wow. Look at her—she’s insane!” Carter Frost exclaims as he tumbles out of the cab at the cruise terminal. He spins to face his granddad, who is paying the driver. “This is so freaking sick—she’s humongous. Can you see, Mom, can you see how big theBlack Orchidis? She’s bigger than I thought.”
His mother smiles. Her face is glowy with perspiration and her dark-blonde curls stick to her damp brow. But Carter, eight years old this month, doesn’t care one bit about the unseasonable Greek heat wave. He bounces on the balls of his feet as he follows his mom and grandfather into the crowded terminal. Carter cannot keep still as a rule, but he’s on turbocharge right now.
The milling passengers sweep him along in a noisy commotion of bags and big sun hats and sandals and sunglasses and chatter, and he quickly loses sight of his mother and Gramps.
“Carter!” she calls as she comes after him. “Get yourself over here. Hold on to my hand.”
“I don’t wanna hold your hand. I’m eight now.”
“Then hold on to the baggage cart. We can’t go losing you here. You could get whisked off, and we might never see you again.”
“Like who would take me?”
“I don’t know, Carter—some human traffickers or something,” she snaps. “Just hold on here.”
“You mean like the human smugglers on the boats from Africa? We’ll be pretty close to Africa when we get to Crete, won’t we, Mom? Maybe we’ll see a smuggler boat from Libya trying to get into Greece?”
“Carter, just hold on to the cart.” She’s rummaging in her purse for tickets and passports, and she looks increasingly irritated and hot.
He sobers and grabs hold of the cart handle. But he does in fact know quite a lot about kidnappers and child traffickers and terrible men who abduct women and children from their beds at night, and who snatch them from neighborhood parks and torture them and do other unspeakably evil things to them.
He knows because his grandfather is Dr. Gideon Marsh, a retired FBI mind hunter—or profiler—from the olden days at Quantico. He was one of the first ever profilers at the FBI, and now he writes crime books about his work and he’s literally famous for interviewing heaps of the scariest serial killers right inside their cells in the worst prisons in the world.
His grandfather is the reason Carter and his mom are going on theBlack Orchidtrip. Gramps was invited as a VIP speaker, and he’ll be giving a series of talks on his books and lifework. He’s bringing Carter and his mom because he’s allowed two guests and his mom says Gramps is trying to reconnect and spend more time with them.
The thrill of smugglers and serial killers, however, is fleeting, as a pretty woman in a dark-blue dress with her hair scraped back in a bun directs Carter’s party through security. Once Carter’s group has cleared the checkpoints, another lady in uniform points them toward an escalator under a sign that declaresTo Ship: Orchid Elites Only, and Carter is back to bouncing on the balls of his sneakers. He’s going to be sharing a cabin with Gramps while Mom gets the adjoining room all to herself. Carter will be at liberty to pick his grandfather’s brain about terrible killers the entire trip without his mom hassling him.
It’s wild, really, to think that so many people want to read his grandad’s books about the most evil kinds of men who torture and murder people for fun. They’re bestsellers. They make Gramps tons of money. At least that’s what Carter imagines.
As they head toward the escalator, his imagination tilts into overdrive. He plans on becoming a famous detective one day. Like Gramps. With a degree in psychology. He’s already practicing how to read people’s body language. He watches people all the time, intently, attempting to judge whether they might be suspicious, or evil. He even keeps a notebook he has titledList of Suspicious Happenings to Be Investigated by Carter J. Frost.
In the book he lists curious situations he observes throughout his days. His book and pen are in his yellow backpack right now. His mom bought the waterproof backpack in San Francisco especially for their trip because they’re going to do some kayaking and will be going to the beach. And with so many different people on board a big boat like this—well, there are bound to beplentyof curious happenings and suspicious guests to follow around and document. Maybe he’ll even solve a mystery. Or a real crime. If he can find one.
Carter grabs hold of his granddad’s hand as they step onto the escalator. As his fingers absently explore the knobbly shape of the old profiler’s knuckles, he asks, “What are you going to talk about for your first lecture, Gramps?”
“Carter,” his mother warns from behind them. She doesn’t like it when he starts asking about Granddad’s work. She says it’s macabre—a word his mom, also his homeschool teacher, recently taught him. He pretends not to hear.
“Will it be about Vincent? That bikini-killer guy who you said dug an escape tunnel under the old Greek prison that we toured yesterday?”
His grandfather’s face crumples into a grin as he glances down at Carter. A soft light glimmers deep in his pale-gray eyes.
“Partly, yes. Do you know that it was right here, in the Port of Piraeus, that the Bikini Killer executed one of his most daring escapes ever, after the Greek authorities transferred him from the prison we toured yesterday to an even worse prison on Makronisos Island?”
“You mean the one like Alcatraz?” Carter knows all about Alcatraz. He lives with his mom and dad in San Francisco and has visited the site.
“Sorta. It was once used as a military prison and a ‘reeducation’ camp for left-leaning civilian activists and political dissidents, especially during and after the Greek Civil War. Then it was briefly used for detainees until the early seventies. It was a place of utter dread, infamous for its harsh conditions, torture, and forced confessions.”
“Where the prisoners were locked in stone-walled cells with no activities at all, and couldn’t escape because of the sheer cliffs, and they were surrounded by water? Can we go see it?”
