The butler scooped up the discarded clothes. “I will have these laundered directly. Is there anything else, Mr. Lazarov?”
Lazarov murmured something and waved his hand.
The butler exited with the armful of clothes. I slowly counted to five hundred in English. By the time I repeated the exercise in Arabic, I figured Lazarov was probably starting to prune and the coast was clear. I slipped out of the shower room, moving silently towards the tub. I already had the plastic bag in hand. I’d asked Helen for a big one, but she’d had a better idea. She’d bought an assortment of things from the shops, asking for each to be put into a different-sized bag so I’d have several to choose from. You don’t want one too small, obviously. The head has to fit inside neatly with plenty of extra to go around the neck. But you don’t want one that’s too big either. All that plastic just gets in the way and you can’t even recycle it when you’re done.
Lazarov had just taken a sip of his tea and was moving to set the cup into the saucer when I sprang, dropping the bag over his head and twisting it tightly. His hands came up but I dodged them, pulling the bag tighter still. His feet scrabbled on the oil-slicked tub, sliding uselessly under him. It takes only ten seconds to choke a person into unconsciousness, but as soon as you let go, the airflow is restored. Then they’ll pop right back into consciousness, only now they’re good and pissed and surging with adrenaline. The trick to preventing that is to put a little extra pressure on the carotid arteries, ensuring a nice, deep blackout. If your goal is to kill them, then you just keep pressing for a good three minutes which is why I make a point of hitting arm day hard at the gym. It takes a lot more time and effort than you’d think to do it right.
But I wasn’t out to suffocate Lazarov—just to incapacitatehim. I only had to hold on for about twenty seconds before he was properly blacked out. He’d stopped struggling after eight; I hung on for the other twelve to make sure he wasn’t playing possum. But his limbs were limp, his neck soft as his head lolled to the side like a baby’s. The bubbles weren’t doing much to preserve his modesty, so I scooped a little foam over his groin and finished the job.
First, I slipped off the plastic bag and stuck it into my pocket. Then I pushed him gently under the water and kept my hand resting on top of his head. Slow bubbles rose to the surface for a few minutes, then gradually stopped. I put a hand beneath the water, feeling for his carotid. There was no pulse, and even if he’d been able to fake that, his bowels suddenly relaxed with a gurgle and I yanked my hand away. I stood back to study the scene. It was supposed to look like Lazarov had suffered a massive heart attack and drowned after losing consciousness. The teacup had been a casualty of the struggle, shattering on the floor, but it was reasonable that a man feeling a coronary coming on could have flailed a bit. That could account for the small amount of water that had sloshed onto the floor as well, so I didn’t bother to mop up. There were no marks on his neck. I’d removed the plastic bag before I’d broken any blood vessels. I had worried a bit about that because the last thing I wanted was to leave ligature marks but he was clean.
All in all, it had gone well and the scene looked plausible, I decided. And Pasha Lazarov was as dead as he was going to get. I stepped into Lazarov’s bedroom to collect my extra pillows. I was halfway out the door when I noticed it. On his bedside table was a pocket diary—navy crocodile with hisinitials stamped in silver. I flicked through it quickly. The pages were pale blue, thin, and watermarked, each corner perforated to keep track of the current week. The days at sea were marked with a series of simple slashes, but the pages before that were crammed with entries. They were jotted in a tiny, cramped hand, a mixture of English and Bulgarian, not a proper cipher, but the sort of mishmash you write in when you’re bilingual. One line featured a string of numbers that looked interesting, but before I could make any sense of it, I heard a noise from downstairs. The butler.Again. There was a soft susurration of footsteps on carpet and I realized he was climbing the stairs. Turndown service, no doubt. In about five seconds he’d be up the stairs and cutting off my means of exit. I didn’t plan what happened next. Sometimes instinct just takes over and you find yourself acting without thinking about it. I closed the diary and stuffed it into my pocket, grabbing the extra pillows off the foot of the bed as I heard the butler coming closer. I scuttled back through the dressing area and into the shower room. On the other side of the shower room was the back door of the suite, leading directly to deck ten. I held the pillows at shoulder height again as I slipped out the door. There was no way to lock it behind me. The butler might notice the unlocked door—the only sign of my presence I’d left behind—but then again, he might not. And even if he did, there was nothing to connect that with Lazarov’s seemingly natural death.
Except that his pocket diary was now missing, I realized. I paused, thinking fast. Lazarov was meant to have died of natural causes which meant all of his possessions should beaccounted for. Under normal circumstances, there wouldn’t be an inventory made of his things, but Lazarov was the richest, most important passenger on board. To cover their own asses, the cruise line would probably make a detailed list of everything they packed up. And if they didn’t, the bodyguard sure as hell would.
A list that would go where? Who was Pasha Lazarov’s next of kin? I flicked back through the mental dossier I carried around on him. The only relative left was Aunt Evgenia, and she was ancient, living in an old folks’ home in Switzerland. I didn’t expect she’d be sharp enough to notice a missing diary, and even if she were, the omission would probably be chalked up to confusion in the wake of Pasha’s death. Maybe the bodyguard would even get the blame. It was fine.
A little flicker of guilt tickled the back of my neck. I was slipping. Unless Provenance had made a direct request for retrieval, takinganythingfrom a mission was completely forbidden. We didn’t kill outside our briefs and we definitely didn’t keep trophies. We never took anything from marks, not even a breath mint. It was beneath us, the sort of opportunistic profiteering a common hit man might engage in. We were better than that.
It was almost as bad as killing the wrong mark. I shoved the memory of Chicago away as fast as it came. That had been my worst mistake, the likes of which I’d never made since.
Until now, of course. I considered my options, but returning the planner was out of the question. I’d made my escape and going back now could mean running into the butler during turndown service. And if he saw me, I’d have to killhim—a can of worms I had no intention of opening. Telling the others wasn’t high on my list of options either. The last thing I wanted was for them to give me the look we gave others, the ones who’d gotten soft or sloppy or too old for this job. The quick side-eye full of judgment and relief—judgment at the loss of skill and relief it isn’t you.
Blowing out a slow breath to steady my nerves, I eased down the staircase to the ladies’ room where Natalie waited. Forty seconds later, I’d ditched my uniform jacket, tugged off my wig and glasses, and shoved them along with the pillows into my tote before pulling my sequined cardigan back on. Natalie and I left together, our heads close as if we were gossiping, but it had the effect of keeping our faces averted from the cameras. We took a circuitous route back to the stateroom I shared with Helen, stopping long enough to ditch the plastic bag in one of the trash cans in another ladies’ room.
Back in my cabin, I went into the dressing area and stripped off the clothes I’d been wearing. I slipped the planner into the interior pocket of my tote, zipping it out of sight and out of mind. I slipped on a robe, and when I emerged, the others were there, and the champagne was already on ice.
“Well?” Helen asked anxiously.
I grinned. “Done. Pop the cork,” I told her. “It’s time to celebrate.”
Chapter Ten
The rest of the crossingwas uneventful. There was a discreet flurry of activity outside Lazarov’s suite the next day and Natalie kept us updated by peering through the peephole of our door at the various crew members passing by. I’d expected the body to be found the previous night since the butler had still been in the suite, but he must have steered clear of the bathroom.
“The butler just hurried past with the doctor,” she said. “Oooh, and here comes another officer. He looks stern.” She glanced at us and waggled her eyebrows. “I do love a man in uniform.”
I half expected the captain himself to turn up given Lazarov’s prominence, but if he did, he slipped through the back door of the suite up on deck ten. That must have been how they took the body out because although a few crew memberstrotted past with a collapsible stretcher, they never made the return trip past our door.
“You don’t think they justlefthim there, do you?” Helen asked, wide-eyed.
Mary Alice shook her head. “They couldn’t. Too warm, even if they turned the air conditioning way down.”
“Naomi confirmed there’s a morgue on board,” I reminded Helen. “In the lowest part of the ship. They’ll stash him there until we reach Southampton. And they probably won’t take him off until most passengers have disembarked.”
An hour later, the butler came back past our room, his expression solemn. Maybe he actually liked Lazarov, or maybe he was mourning the tip he wouldn’t get at the voyage’s end. I made a note to slip something extra in an envelope for him and leave it with the purser.
For the next few days, we kept our disguises on, our profiles low. We skipped the gala nights and eluded the ship’s photographer every time he popped up. Nat and I spent a lot of time reading on our respective balconies while Helen pinned kitchen pics from Smallbone to her Pinterest board and Mary Alice knitted like a fiend.
“What are you making?” I finally asked. “If that’s for Akiko, it’s going to be a crop top.”
She held up the tiny garment with its alternating rows of green and yellow yarn. “Sweaters for Kevin and Gary. I did Fair Isle for Gary, but Kevin needs stripes. They’re slimming and he’s carrying a little extra winter weight.”
I was sorry I’d asked. And I was tired of keeping my headdown. On the last night, I slipped out of the room and headed for the Commodore Club. I slid onto a barstool and ordered a glass of black Shiraz. I had just taken my first sip when someone heaved himself onto the adjoining seat. He lifted an empty glass towards the bartender, who gave him a tight-lipped smile but poured him another.
“Your nightcap, sir,” the bartender said as he pushed it towards him. The tone was clear—he was cutting off the man next to me, and I didn’t have to look at him to know why. He reeked of booze, and not the expensive stuff.
I raised my glass to take another sip just as the newcomer reached for his. His elbow jostled mine and a little of the dark ruby liquid pooled on the bar.