he would see the movement reflected back at him from the same barrier I was using to spy on him. The night was unbelievably beautiful, and for the first time since I had come out here, I looked around.
We were deep inside one of the fjords, the rocky sides of the valley rising up all around us, the waters beneath black and still and unfathomably dark and deep. Far across the fjord I could see the lights of small settlements, and the lanterns of boats moored out on the still waters, but the overriding thing was the stars—clear and white and almost unbearably lovely. I thought of Carrie, down below, trapped and bleeding like an animal in a snare. . . . Please, dear God, let her be found. I couldn’t bear it if something happened to her. I would be responsible for locking her down there, leaving her to her crazy plan.
I waited, shivering helplessly now, for Richard to fall asleep. But he did not. At least he dimmed the lights slightly, but the television continued to blast away, the flickering images turning the room shades of blue and green, with sudden cuts to black. I shifted my weight again, pushing my chilly hands beneath my arms. What if he fell asleep in front of the TV? Would I know? But even if he did fall asleep, properly and deeply, I was not sure if I could summon up the courage to enter the room with a murderer, tiptoe through it while his sleeping form lay there just inches away.
What was the alternative, then? Wait until he went in search of Carrie?
And then I heard something, something that made my heart seem to stop, and then stutter back to life, twice as fast. The boat’s engine was starting up.
Panic washed over me like a cold sea wave and I tried to think—we weren’t moving yet. There was a chance the gangway was still down. I would have heard it being raised. I remembered from when we set out from Hull that the engine had hummed and thrummed for a good long time before we actually departed. But it was a ticking clock. How long did I have? Half an hour? A quarter? Perhaps less, given there were no passengers on board, no reason to hang about.
I stood there, frozen in agonized indecision. Should I make a run for it? Was Richard asleep? I couldn’t tell from the reflection in the balcony barrier—it was too blurred and indistinct.
Craning my head and moving as stealthily as I dared, I peered around the edge of the veranda door and into the silent room—but just as I did, he shifted and reached for a glass, and I whipped my head back, my heart thumping.
Fuck. It must be one a.m. Why wasn’t he asleep? Was he waiting for Carrie? But I had to get off the ship. I had to.
I thought of the veranda windows, how they could be opened from the outside, how someone very brave—or very stupid—might scale the high glass wall between the verandas and gain entry to an empty cabin. Once inside I could just let myself out of cabin 2 and then make a break for the gangway. I didn’t care what story I had to spin when I got there. Somehow I would get off this boat, if not for me, then for Anne, and Carrie. No—fuck it.
For me.
I was getting off this boat for me—because I had done nothing to deserve this apart from being in the wrong place at the wrong time, and I was damned if Bullmer was going to add me to the list of women he had screwed over.
I looked down at myself, at the flowing, slippery lines of the kimono, impossible to climb in, and I untied the belt and shrugged off the soft silk. It fell to the floor with barely a whisper, and I picked it up, balled up the fabric as tight as I could, and then tossed it over the privacy screen, where it landed with a soft, barely perceptible flump.
Then I looked up at the glass screen, towering above me, and swallowed.
I was never going to be able to climb the privacy screen itself, that was clear. At least not without some serious equipment and/or a ladder. But the barrier over the sea—that I probably could climb. It was rib height, and I was flexible enough to get one leg up and over and pull myself to