Page 70 of Backtrack

Nope. The elevator alcove was vacant but for an Indonesian crew member polishing the brass fixtures.

Thinking she must have missed him, she pushed the button on the sliding door and stepped outside again. The wind felt ten degrees colder than it had mere seconds ago. Her cheeks burned. Hair whipped across her face. She ignored it. Hands stuffed in the blazer pockets, she trudged along the deserted deck, making a complete loop around the track. She even stopped to lean across the barrier ropes and peer into each of the four hot tubs. Stupid. No way Steve was dumb enough to climb four steps and then tumble into one of the tubs. They hadn’t had that much to drink.

“You idiot,”she whispered into the night.“You came on too strong.The night doesn’t have to end …Good Lord, Joellen, the poor guy’s getting over a dead wife and you comeon like a sex-starved maniac. What the hell’s the matter withyou?”

She took the stairs down to the pool level, hoping she might find him there. Nope. Same story inside by the elevator alcove. Minnesota Steve had done a runner. There was no doubt about it. Joellen wiped tears of frustration out of her eyes, catching the earthy odor of cologne on the sleeve of his coat. Pretty sad day when a guy was so desperate to get away, he abandoned a five-thousand-dollar Tom Ford jacket.

Too impatient to wait for an elevator, Joellen virtually flew down the stairs. She found deck 6 all but deserted. It was long past trivia or mambo lesson time. Cruise ships this size never actually slept, but they did doze. She counted seven passengers lounging on the couches and chairs around the grand piano, reading, scrolling through their phones. Soft, nighttime music played over the intercom. A single uniformed crew member staffed the passenger service desk.

Flushed and frazzled with worry and embarrassment, Joellen tried to get her words in order as she approached. At the last second, she realized Steve’s ridiculously long sleeves on the oversize sport coat made her look drunk or, at the very least, too ditzy to be taken seriously.

She shrugged it off quickly and draped it over her arm.

“I’ve somehow become separated from my friend,” she said.

“Perhaps he’s gone back to your cabin.” The twentysomethingDanish woman was polite enough, smiling, nodding, as the crew were trained to do.

“Oh no,” Joellen said. “We’re not together … I mean, we’re not sharing …”

“Perhaps he’s gone back tohiscabin,” the woman said.

“Could you give me his cabin number?” Joellen asked. “He loaned me his coat, and I need to return it.”

It was clear the Danish woman didn’t see the gravity of the situation.

“You don’t already know his cabin number?”

“He never gave it to me,” Joellen said.

A condescending smile. “Perhaps he will call you back tomorrow.”

“Look,” Joellen said. “This is a five-thousand-dollar Tom Ford …” She bounced her fist on the counter, nodding to herself in resignation. “Never mind.”

Joellen thanked the woman out of habit—she was from the South, after all—and then made her way slowly aft to the spiral stairs leading up to the casino deck. Maybe he’d gone to a bar or found someone else who didn’t come on so strong.

The bastard. He could have just told her he wasn’t interested. He didn’t have to disappear. But what if he hadn’t? What if something had happened to him? The familiar itch of a stranger’s eyes crawled over her skin. Someone was watching her. She could feel it.

She looked at her watch. A square-face Cartier that Arliss had given her on their first, and only happy, anniversary. The ship would be in Ketchikan in five hours. She’d find Steve then and give him an earful. She looked down at the blue blazer draped over her arm. Her head was beginning to clear enough from her cocktails that she could see things more rationally. Why would he abandon such an expensive sport coat just to end the date? Joellen was no spring chicken, but she wasn’t an old hen either. Something had happened. Something bad.

Arliss would figure it out. She’d told him not to worry. He said he wasn’t going to come. But Joellen knew better. He’d be there bright and early tomorrow, ready to kick ass and take names. Arliss Cutter couldn’t resist showing up to save the girl. It was ingrained in his DNA.

CHAPTER 27

Texas

1977

It was not yet eight in the morning and the day was already hot. Wayne Cutter didn’t waste his breath telling Johnson he understood. He’d lost more than one friend to violence over the course of his military and law enforcement careers. The dismay and pain hit him a different way every time. It was a fool’s errand to try and make sense of death or how its occurrence affected the living. Killing was always senseless, even when Cutter was the one meting it out.

In the end, Cutter sent Johnson home to try and get some rest. Whether the kid closed his eyes or not was up to him.

The Jack County sheriff was adamant that he be given all the information Cutter had on the armored car robbery. It made sense. Cutter was investigating a robbery homicide. Jack County had lost one of their own. Cutter promised to send everything he had to Jack County by the end of the day with the understanding that they would run their investigations in tandem unless one or the other decided the murders weren’t related—a highly unlikely scenario.

It was nine in the morning by the time Cutter rolled into the Parker County Sheriff’s Office lot. The coffee urn in the dispatch office was his first destination. He’d left his thermos with LJ.

Nikki, the dispatcher, pushed the headset back on her blond hair and stood when he opened the bottom of the Dutch door. Hernose was red, her eyes puffy and bloodshot. She raised her arms and stepped in to give him a hug.

“Oh, Wayne,” she sobbed. “That was just awful.”