RIP.
Her heartwhumps. Her mouth is dry. She looks up, brain spinning. Nothing makes sense. She flips the page back.
Locate Poppy in Brighton.
Brighton—where she thought fate had crossed her path with the enigmatic widow sitting on a bench. It wasn’t a chance meeting?
Emotion burns into her eyes. Lillith was purposefully waiting for her on that bench with her camera in her lap? When she asked Poppy if she could take a photo, it was planned, a way to strike up a discussion? When they met later at the bandstand for gelato, it was part of some scheme? Some lure? Why? Poppy cannot understand. She thought she’d been hired as a stroke of freaking good luck, that her fortunes had finally changed.
But it wasn’t fate.
It was intentional. She was lured. To Scotland. Into Lillith’s castle. And now onto this boat.
Is this some kind of game? Or worse? Is she still going to be punished for all she’s done? Was Lillith connected in some bizarre way to Paz, or to his extended family? Or to his organized crime affiliates?
She glances nervously around the room, confused, dread rising in her gut. She has absolutely no idea how to fit the pieces of this puzzle into a picture that makes any sense.
All she knows is that she needs to get off this boat. Now.
But as she surges to her feet, her phone chimes.
Poppy freezes.
It’s the special tone for texts from Lillith.
It chimes again.
She scrambles to find her phone in her tote, and she reads the text.
So sorry, Poppy. Early spa appointment ran longer than anticipated. I’m on my way down the hall. Almost at the suite. Come meet me in my room—we can go ashore together.
Panic whips across her chest. Her gaze flares to the door.
She hears the steady click and thump of Lillith’s cane growing louder as she approaches outside.
Arrabella
Arrabella spots Roshaan near the ship’s exit doors. Feeling sick with worry, she hurries over.
“Roshaan, have you seen Patrick?”
Roshaan looks confused.
“My fiancé—Patrick McGregor. We’re in the Calliope suite.”
“Of course. My apologies. I was distracted. Yes, he disembarked earlier this morning. He asked about transport options to Chania.”
Her heart kicks. “Thank you.” She rushes for the exit and races along the gangway, sun hat and bag in hand. On the dock she sees no sign of Patrick. She stands in the hot sun, tourists milling around her, struggling to figure out what to do next. If she were Patrick, where would she go in Chania?
His bags are still in their room. So he could be planning to come back. But once he sinks into a morose frame of mind and starts drinking, it can take him several days to snap out of it—he’d be looking for more alcohol.
She grabs a cab to the old town of Chania, asks the driver for a list of drinking establishments, and when he drops her off, she begins wandering the meandering cobblestoned streets, stopping at tavernas and bars in search of him.
She finally finds him in a dimly lit pub with cool stone walls from ancient Venetian times.
She stills in the doorway at the sight of him hunched over the counter. Relief washes through her. She sucks in a deep breath, and approaches.
“Patrick?” she says gently as she reaches him.
