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"I just thought it might be more convenient," he said. "In case you want to bribe anybody in cabin seventeen. "
"I want to intimidate the holy living shit out of cabin seventeen," I said. "How would that be?"
He gave me a slow, evil smile. "You only love me for my ability to terrify. "
"And your ability to produce money out of thin air. That's important, too. "
"I'm glad I'm well-rounded. "
"In oh so many ways. "
Mr. Trent Cole, aka Cabin Seventeen, decided that he wasn't going to submit to answering any questions, no matter how nicely we asked. In fact, Mr. Cole wouldn't even open his door.
Yeah, like that was going to keep us impotently standing outside.
"We're not Housekeeping," I called through the door. "Open it or we're coming in anyway. "
"Like hell you are! I know my rights!" Mr. Personality screamed back at me.
David moved me out of the way - my own personal Djinn shield - and put a single finger on the surface of the glossy wooden door. When he pushed, the lock snapped and shattered like glass.
Nice. I liked the economy of his violence.
He stepped over the threshold, and Trent Cole fired three bullets into his chest, point-blank. He did it like a guy who'd had practice, but when David didn't fall down - didn't even flinch - Cole's expression turned from murderous to completely confused.
David stepped forward, took the gun (Aldonza was right, it was a big black semiautomatic), and handed it to me. I dumped it in the ice bucket on the bar, after burning my fingers on the barrel. If David was bothered in the least by someone trying to kill him, he didn't let it show in his cool smile, or the absolute ease with which he stiff-armed Mr. Cole toward the sofa.
Cole met the cushions at speed, and toppled like a tortoise onto his back, an awkward position at best. He was dressed in one of the ship's fluffy robes, his big feet shoved into slippers that flopped around hilariously as he tried to right himself. He struggled up to a sitting position as David shut the door behind us and repaired the lock with a minor pulse of power.
There was a bottle of Perrier-Jouet champagne sweating on the coffee table, along with two full flutes of sparkling liquid.
"I see we're in time for happy hour," I said, and settled myself in the tapestry armchair across from the sofa. I poured myself a glistening flute and then appropriated the second one for David. We sipped. Mr. Cole, a bulky sort, grabbed at the flapping hem of his robe to avoid giving me a Full Monty as he swung his feet to the floor. David settled himself in one of those intimidating poses the Djinn had perfected several millennia ago, literally guarding my back.
Cole, uncertain what to do, leaned back on the sofa. Slowly. "You can't just barge in here," he said. "I've got rights, whoever you think you are. " The champagne really was excellent. "You think those rights include shooting anyone who walks through your door?" I asked him. I craned my neck a bit to look up at David.
"Speaking of that, you okay, honey?"
"I'm fine," he said. He held out a fist. I opened my palm, and he dumped three perfect bullets into it. "Souvenirs. "
"For me? Thanks. " I fluttered my eyelashes at him, and got a slow, hot smile. We both loved this part. I focused back on Cole, who was staring at us like we were straight out of a big-budget special-effects movie. "You need these back? Maybe you recycle?" He shook his head. I put them in the pocket of my jeans. You never know when you'll need a good bullet.
"Now," I said. "Thanks for seeing us, Mr. Cole. We'll only be a minute. First question: Why do you feel the need to go all Wild West Show on friendly visitors? Bonus question: Why are you still on this ship? Because I think anybody who doesn't have to be here must have a really good reason to be staying. "
Trent Cole was not accustomed to answering questions of any kind, much less from a plebeian like me. He struck me as nouveau riche, probably something to do with hedge funds or stocks or porn. Someone who had a lot of cash and was tremendously impressed with it.
He kept darting admiring looks at David. I was familiar with that. I just wasn't so familiar with seeing it in a man.
"I was just defending myself," Cole said. "I'm sorry. I got rattled. " While he was speaking, I allowed myself to drift just a bit out of my body so I could examine him in Oversight. His aura was muddy and indistinct - so, a genuine regular human-type guy, no surprise there - and bloody around the edges with guilt and nerves.
"Rattled?" I repeated. "You looked pretty calm to me. Good grouping on your shots. "
"Center mass," David supplied. "Very well aimed. "
Cole looked from one of us to the other, then fixed on David. His whole body relaxed.
"You're wearing a vest, right? Of course. "
For answer, David unbuttoned his shirt and displayed part of his bare chest.
"David, stop teasing the man," I said. And me. "Mr. Cole. Look at me, please. " He did, not with any great pleasure, and I deepened my focus to get a better look at the inner Trent.
Not a terribly good experience.
"You're protecting yourself," I said aloud. "That's why you didn't leave the ship. You know you're an obvious target if you do. You're running from something. " He flinched, but he didn't move otherwise. "What the hell are you talking about?"
"Do you know a man named Robert Biringanine?" This was the money question, but I got nothing from him. Just a continuing roil of anxiety and fury. He didn't know Bad Bob, at least not by name.
David took his cue. "He looks like this. " And he transformed himself into a perfect replica of Bad Bob, from his flyaway white hair, bloodshot blue eyes, and pug-Irish nose to his bowlegs. In fact, it was so good that I pulled in a startled breath and clenched my fingers on the arms of the chair, then deliberately relaxed. It was just an image, nothing more, and David dismissed it with a flick of his fingers when Trent Cole shook his head.
"Okay," I said, and tried to slow down the fast beat of my heart. "Who's after you?"
"None of your business," Cole barked.
"It is if you plan to go around shooting anybody who looks at you funny on this ship," I said.
"Let us help you. There's no need to be afraid. Not now. " Cole stared at me with a perplexed look on his face. Clearly, I wasn't fitting the pigeonholes he was trying to stuff me into. I was used to that, actually.
"Who are you?" His gaze leaped from me to David, and then back again. "Are you with the government?"
"Yes," I said. In fact, that was sort of true. And sort of not.
"I'm calling my attorney. He's kicked the ass of everybody in the Justice Department, from the attorney general to the janitorial service. He'll make short work of you two jokers. "
Cole reached for his cell phone.
It disappeared. Cole stared at the place where it had been, slapped his hand around, and looked at me with comically big eyes. "What the hell?" David opened his right hand, and there was Cole's cell phone. "If you want it back, play nice," he said. Cole's mouth dropped open, and he surged to his feet.
"Hey, fucking David Copperfield, give that back!" His face turned brick-red, which I was pretty sure wasn't an indication of his general good health. "You sons of bitches, my life is in that phone!"
"Then I hold your life in my hand, don't I?" David pointed out mildly. "Sit. " I wasn't sure if it was a suggestion or an order, but Cole's ass hit the sofa cushions pretty quickly. His high-blood-pressure blush was already fading, as he realized that his biggest problem might not be in retrieving his contact list and scandalous text messages. "What the hell do you people want ?" From Cole, that actually sounded kind of subdued.
"We want to be sure there's no more trouble," I said. "So we'll be taking your gun. Anything else contraband in here we should know about? Purely for safety?" His gaze flicked away from me, racing toward the sweeping staircase, and then returning just as fast. In the aetheric, his aura whispered a fast rainbow of anxiety and
guilt. I sat back and looked up at David, who nodded and disappeared, taking Cole's cell phone with him.
"What - " Cole's mouth had dropped so far open that I could see all his impressive dental work. I guess he'd figured out that David might share a first name with a famous magician, but he was far, far more impressive. "What are you people?"
"Who said we were people?" I smiled coolly at him. That flummoxed him for a full ten seconds.
"Look, I'm not some terrorist or something, I'm just - Okay, I took some money. A lot of money. From some people I worked with. And they're trying to get it back from me, that's all. It's just business. "
Business mob-style, I gathered. Which explained why he wanted to hole up in his suite with a warm gun, and why he hadn't disembarked with the others. A common criminal.
I could live with that.
David ghosted back into view behind me and dropped a hand on my shoulder. I twisted to look at him.
"Boyfriend," he said. "Up in the bedroom. He had this. " David deposited another gun in my lap, a match for the semiautomatic we'd confiscated from Cole. "Do you want to take a look?"
"Why, is he naked?"
It's hard to get a complete double take from a Djinn, but I managed. "I didn't notice," he said. Which was, no doubt, a crushing blow to Mr. Cole. I was sad for him. "What do you think? Pass?"
"Pass," I said. "Whatever problems he has aren't any concern of ours. Mr. Cole, we're done here. I'll be taking your guns with me, though. If you have intruder problems, David will be
happy to come to your rescue. " I batted my eyelashes again. David didn't look pleased with being volunteered. "Thanks. "
"Thanks for what?" Cole asked, mystified. I walked over to the bar and retrieved the second pistol from the ice bucket. Nicely cooled down.
"Not shooting me, too," I said. "That would have been awkward. "
"No," David said. "That would have been fatal for Mr. Cole. " I gathered that Mr. Cole was a man of few boundaries, but he recognized that one, and he nodded. "It won't happen again. Sorry. Eh - what's your name?"
"I'm David Prince. Her name is Joanne Baldwin," David said. "But you can call her Mrs. Prince. "
I got a shiver out of that. A nice one.
We left Cole on the couch, still grappling with the utter destruction of his worldview.
All in all, not a bad first interrogation. Then again, my standards are pretty low. If I survive it, it can't be that bad.
Chapter Five
After Mr. Cole, the others seemed meek as kittens. Spiteful, furious, spitting, hissing kittens with needle-sharp claws and biting teeth. Each cabin seemed to come with its own particularly darling set of divalicious problems. Take Holly Addams, the model. . . . She had two employees, one of whom was solely occupied in making her disgusting-looking smoothies whenever she got hungry. They must have been made out of cardboard and water, because she had less body fat on her than your average piece of dry bone. She also had a trunk full of illegal and controlled substances, which explained why she hadn't left the ship when ordered. Her employees were just hapless and cowed. I tried not to traumatize them any more than I had to.
Three bankers in a row, two male and one female, all of whom had refused to leave out of lapdog-like devotion to star clients. These were rich people in their own right, but they'd gotten that way by single-minded dedication to that art of brownnosing, and they weren't about to stop the habit of a lifetime now. No connection to Bad Bob that I could find for them, their assistants, or (in the case of one of them) his mistress, who was ensconced in the downstairs bedroom.
And then we ran into Cynthia Clark.
" TheCynthia Clark?" I asked Aldonza, who was still hustling clean towels around the hallway. She nodded. "Isn't she making a movie?"
"She was," Aldonza said. "But she quit. I don't know why. Now she's here. " Cynthia Clark was an old-school star - glamorous, beautiful, icy cool. If Grace Kelly had ever had a rival, or Audrey Hepburn had ever worried about being upstaged, she was the source of their anxiety. Her 1960sera films were classics. So were her '70s efforts. By the '80s she'd transitioned from starlet roles to tough matrons, and still did it better than anyone else.
Then she'd had a well-publicized marital disaster, some alcoholism, some rehab, and a whole lot of plastic surgery. Now she looked frozen at the age of fifty, although the twenty-year-old ice was beginning to crack under the strain.
She occupied cabin thirty-two, along with a European maid and a personal trainer, who I suspected doubled as another kind of workout partner.
I knew the minute we entered the cabin that something was off. David did, too. No bullets flying, no obvious signs of danger, but there was something very wrong with the feeling of the whole place. I couldn't put my finger on it.
Maybe Miss Clark had been in the middle of a knockdown, drag-out fight with her assistant. That would have explained the feeling of tension and anger that saturated the air.
Miss Clark was seated, like Mr. Cole, on the grand sofa, but she was wearing a pair of pencil-legged white pants, very '60s nautical, paired with a blue-and-white-striped knit shirt. Her eyes were the same blue as shallow Caribbean waters, and if her hair was dyed that lustrous shade of blond, I couldn't tell. Even with the makeovers, she had seriously fierce DNA at work.
I felt as if I should genuflect before taking a seat in the side chair that she offered with a gracious nod. David remained standing, but he didn't resort to the in timidation stance this time around. More of a tranquil stand-at-ease type of thing.