Triton (6 page)

She unlocked their suite and rushed inside, steeling herself for the barrage to come. After a second of silence, she let out her breath and opened her eyes.

He wasn’t back yet. She stared around the empty stateroom in disbelief. He was still with that girl. Maybe they were having sex.

Was it even possible? She had just spent an awesome night in a Jacuzzi with a hot eighteen-year-old, and there was
no
punishment? Not even a lecture?

Her dad wasn’t back either, which meant he was still at a bar somewhere on the lower decks. She checked her phone. They hadn’t paid for cell phone service at sea, but the clock still worked. Forty-five minutes past midnight . . . still early, by his standards. That explained it.

Bubbling with euphoria, she took a running leap, and landed on the bed, grinning. The mattress tossed her up again.

But that meant she was alone.
Completely
alone. She glanced around the empty stateroom, and as if a flip had been switched, her giddiness evaporated. Unnerved by the silence—and a little scared—she flipped on the television.

It only played static.

“Come on,” she moaned, flipping through the channels. But every channel was the same.

Just static.

A sticky film
of mucous had glued Cedar’s eyelids together. Disoriented and soaked in cold sweat, he peeled them apart and stared out at a frosty haze . . . the fogged up cockpit of the minisub.

A weight on his shoulder had cut off circulation to his arm. He shifted, and blood returned to the limb in a wave of needles. The weight slumped off his shoulder, and something warm and soft rubbed his neck.

Naomi’s head. Crap.

“We fell asleep,” he said.

“Wha . . . ?” Naomi yawned and stretched out, and at last her eyes opened. Seeing where her head was, she jerked away from him.

Cedar rubbed the sore spot on his shoulder. His ear throbbed, which had been crushed against her scalp.

“Sorry,” she said.

“Forget it.”

“It’s dawn.” She pointed at a porthole, where a sliver of blue stained the horizon.

“I know. My dad’s going to murder me.” Cedar climbed out of the sub after her. After their night spent crammed in a fish bowl, his muscles felt dead. He shook his limbs out on the deck outside the sub.

Back in the I-95 passageway, Naomi paused at a stairwell. “This is where I go down and you go up.”

“Bye, I guess,” he said.

Carefully, not meeting his eyes, she stepped closer and wrapped her arms around him.

Their goodbye hug lasted longer than it should have . . .
way
longer. But it wasn’t romantic, just two bleary-eyed strangers comforting each other at dawn.

Cedar couldn’t deny his attraction to her—and she had been coming on to him all night—but they were both too screwed up to be capable of anything more. Just two broken seventeen-year-olds.

No, that wasn’t true.
He
was screwed up, not her. Her hug was meant to comfort him, not the other way around.

The moment she disappeared down the stairs, he shoved his hands in his pockets and hurried up the corridor, his gaze crawling the dark carpet.

Cedar drifted through a deserted elevator lobby, unsettled by the sheer emptiness of the place. Not even the waiters meandered the halls this early.

Though the hallways were brightly lit, the faint hint of dawn gave them a haunted, otherworldly feel.

He saw no one.

Finally he slipped into stateroom six sixty on deck fourteen. One of the bedside lamps still glowed, illuminating Brynn curled up in her bed. Seeing her safe filled him with relief and slowed his racing pulse.

But the other bed was empty.

Naomi wandered through
the dark hallways of the crew section below the waterline, eerily quiet this early in the morning. Even at this hour, there were usually a few people up. But this morning, no one stirred behind their cabin doors.

Most of the shifts didn’t start until six, so they all still had a while to sleep.

She slipped into her cabin, and was surprised to see that her mom’s bunk was empty. Either she was still up drinking—which wasn’t unheard of—or the more likely scenario: she had spent the night with another crewmember. At the image, Naomi felt her lip curl.

According to the stories, that was exactly how Naomi had been conceived.

She fell into the bottom bunk, which her mom would no longer be needing, and flipped on the TV. The screen filled with static.

More problems with the satellite TV. Typical.

She switched it off and rolled over, and instead thought about the strange and alluring boy
she
had spent the night with. Cedar Edgerly. His haunted eyes.

Naomi recalled what he told her last night about his mom. She didn’t know how to feel about it, didn’t know what it meant. All she knew was that Cedar would never be able to forgive himself for as long as he lived.

As she drifted off to sleep, the silence of morning pressed in on her ears. Even at this hour, the sounds of voices, hissing radios, and creaking beds could usually be heard through the thin walls of the crew cabins.

She heard nothing.

Jake woke up
at seven in the morning, and found that neither of his parents were in the room. They must have come in after him last night and already left this morning. Their bed was perfectly made as if they’d never slept in it. They were that anal.

His parents had probably gone down to get an early breakfast. He dressed and slipped out of the stateroom into the hallway running the length of deck nine, which was empty.

An unmanned room service cart rested in the middle of the hallway. Jake squeezed around it, and caught a whiff of old calamari. Probably from last night.

He took the elevator down to deck three, and emerged in the luxurious entrance to the Opus Dining Room, adorned with dark, stained wood and glittery vases mounted behind glass.

A velvet rope blocked the entrance, though. He leaned over the rope and peered inside. Every table was set, the plates and silverware gleaming under the enormous chandelier, wine glasses winking, the napkins folded in erect triangles . . . and every table was vacant. Closed. The restaurant was closed.

No one, not even a waiter, moved inside the vast, three-story dining area.

Sure it was early, but still . . .

Jake checked his cell phone. There was no service, but the clock said 7:19. A placard fixed to the wall indicated breakfast was served from 7:30 to 9:30. That explained it.

With a sigh, he left the main dining room and headed back to the elevators. Now that he thought about it, his parents had mentioned another restaurant, a restaurant with unparalleled panoramic views over the bow of the ship—the Solarium Bistro on deck fifteen.

The same deck where he and Brynn had shared a hot tub the night before. He recalled the evening with a bittersweet pang. Now he couldn’t get her out of his head . . . the heat of that first kiss, those playful, flirty looks of hers, and how she effortlessly held his gaze.

That whole evening—and now thinking about her again—gave him a nervous rush. But what the hell was he thinking? She was too young, crazy messed-up in love with an ex-boyfriend, and untouchable by order of her overprotective psychopath older brother.

Just his type, of course.

Outside the elevators
of deck fifteen, early morning sunlight streamed in through the floor to ceiling glass. Like everywhere else, the deck was empty. Jake could understand not wanting to dine at the Opus Dining Room in the bowels of the ship, but up here? Surely
someone
would want to sip coffee in solitude and enjoy the wide expanse of open ocean out the panoramic windows.

He paused at the portside windows, which extended in a huge semicircle around the bistro. Two hundred feet below him, the Atlantic sailed by at a steady twenty-two knots. He scanned the horizon. Nothing but wide open ocean under cloudless blue sky.

And not a single person out here enjoying the sight. What a shame.

He followed the curve of the glass and entered the Solarium Bistro. Like the Opus, the dining area was empty. The tables were all laid out, ready for the breakfast crowd.

Yet no one was there.

He checked his cell phone again. It was nearing seven-thirty, yet the restaurant was vacant. Closed. The buffet counters were all bare, just empty stainless steel trays. No eggs. No pancakes. No omelet chefs. No muffins. No bagels.

Nothing.

Come to think of it, since last night—since Brynn kissed him goodnight—he hadn’t heard a single voice.

But that wasn’t that surprising, was it? The
Cypress
was a floating city. There were twenty-two other dining options he hadn’t checked, sixteen other floors. They could be anywhere.

Jake walked back toward the elevators, hurrying only a little. Air conditioning wafted over his face, making his skin feel dry. Instead of entering an elevator, though, he pushed through the glass doors to the open-air pool deck. Outside, sunlight struck his cheek, and he breathed in the salty Bermuda air.

The pool deck was empty. Row upon row of pool lounge chairs faced the main swimming pool, still as glass—not a single one in use.

“You’re sure he
wasn’t here when you got back last night?” Cedar said, facing his sister—who was hugging her knees to her chest on the bed.

“When I got back, the room was empty,” she said.

“And when was that?”

Brynn glared at him, and he detected an extra note of defiance in her voice. “Eleven thirty . . . right after you left with that girl.”

“And you went straight to bed like I told you to?” he said.

“Yes. I swear.”

“And he wasn’t here?”

She shook her head, a hint of fear in her eyes. “What time did you get in?”

“I don’t know.” Cedar spun away from her and continued pacing. “Late. After dawn.”

“Did you have sex with her?”

“Not now, Brynn.” He checked his cell phone. Nine in the morning. Their dad never stayed out this late.

“Should we tell someone?” she offered.

“Shush, I’m thinking.” He scratched at his cheek. Though he hadn’t shaved since they left home, only a hint of stubble had grown in. “He went out drinking last night.”

“No duh.”

Cedar ignored her tone. “He probably stayed out late . . . until the bars closed. Around four in the morning.”

“Then where has he been for the last five hours?” she said, alarm rising in her voice. “What if he got alcohol poisoning?”

“He didn’t,” said Cedar. “They would have taken him down to the medical center, and they would have let us know. I bet he ended up in someone’s room playing poker . . . probably spent the night there.

“We need to go look for him,” she said.

“No. We’re going to wait here until he comes back. If we leave now and he comes back while we’re gone, we’re going to be in big trouble.”

“No,
you’re
going to be in big trouble,” she said. “You’re the one who stayed out until the butt crack of dawn. I’ll go look for him if you’re too scared.”

He swiveled and grabbed her wrist, twisting it until she winced. “We’re staying put, Brynn.
Don’t
question me.”

She jerked her hand free. “Why are you such a jerk?” Then she gave an exasperated sigh, threw herself backwards onto the bed, and screamed into a pillow.

“Real productive,” Cedar scoffed.

“Let’s just ask at the bars—”

“We’re not leaving this room, Brynn.”

“God, you are such a baby.”

“I’m keeping you safe,” he spat, “because you can’t keep yourself safe. I let you out of my sight for ten seconds and you go and try to get fucked by some college guy, and you wonder why I try to protect you.”

There it was. His first mention of Simon, when he had resolved to not bring it up for these seven days.

She glared at him, and her blue eyes turned watery. “I was in love with him.” A tear slid down her cheek. “Not that you’ll ever know what love is, you’re not even capable of love . . . you’re
evil
.”

“He was Jewish; you never could have been together anyway.”

“For your information, I was taking Hebrew 101 at the city college. I was planning on converting.”

“Too bad, they don’t take blondes. He was nineteen, Brynn. You’re fifteen. That’s not okay. Not in my book, not in dad’s book, not in anyone’s book. I should have killed him.”

“I want to go look for dad,” she said.

“No, Brynn. We’re staying put.” He paced across the room, and then said softly, “I didn’t mean to bring it up.”

From the upper
level of the Sky Walk, Naomi leaned over the railing and took in an unobstructed view of the Pool Deck, the shops lining Central Park eight stories below her, and—through the skylights—the Royal Promenade another three stories below that. A hot breeze whipped her hair across her face, which she flung aside. It was 10:00 AM.

The sun was nearing its peak.

By this time, the Pool Deck should have been crowded, Central Park a flurry of activity, the overlooking balconies alive with guests. There should have been hundreds of passengers scarfing down croissants and nursing their hangovers with glasses of iced coffee. The pool lounge chairs should have been overrun with half-naked bodies soaking up the Bermuda heat.

Instead, she stared out at a ghost ship. The
Cypress
carried 5,400 passengers plus a crew of 2,400—almost 8,000 people.

Not one was out on deck.

Despite the tropical
heat, a chill settled into Naomi’s skin. In her lifetime of cruising, she had never seen a ship this empty.

8,000 people didn’t just unanimously decide to sleep in. They hadn’t left their cabins for a reason. As she gazed out over the desolate landscape, the sun baked her cheeks and drew prickles of sweat.

Food poisoning.

They had all gotten food poisoning.

Her mom. Was her mom okay?

Why wasn’t anybody doing anything?

Again she scanned the deck, utterly abandoned . . .
wait
—her eyes flicked back to the shadows under the raised loft suites. She squinted to make out the details . . . and saw movement.