Page 45 of Without a Clue

But no. No fireworks this night.

The door is still cracked when we return.

Nash noticeably cuts me off to step ahead of me.

Enters first.

Checks it all out.

“And you’re sure you saw her?” Nash says in the quiet, taking a tentative step toward the bathroom and pushing the cracked door open in the dark. The clock on the bedside table glows 4 a.m. now. Another night on this ship with no sleep.

Another night with Nash, I can’t help noting, but for two vastly different reasons.

“I mean, I wouldn’t gamble my life on it,” I say, then correct myself. I rub the bridge of my nose. “I don’t know. I would’ve sworn I saw her, but it was so close up, I guess it could’ve been anything.” I throw my hands up. “Or nothing! I don’t know. I really could just be hallucinating at this point. Everything I say should be taken with a grain of salt. Nash?”

I realize that Nash has turned his entire attention onto something at the edge of the bed. Shoes.

But wait. That can’t be right.

Nash is wearing his boots.

And if Nash is wearing his boots . . . whose shoes are they?

And suddenly, the little table mirror now in Nash’s hand, he steps forward and—

Chapter 11

Two dead men.

It’s unbelievable.

I’m pretty sure at this point I’m never going to sleep again, even if we did vacate my room that is now surrounded in caution tape and migrate over to Nash’s. And while, yes, the sheets are clean, the room’s an identical shade of interior design perfection, and the bed doesn’t carry a dead man underneath, the effect is the same: I will never sleep again.

I even at some point around 8 a.m. google that question. Exactly how long can someone live without sleep? The answer, for the record, is eleven days.

I stir my freshly poured cup of coffee from the coffee cart in the corner of the library as I listen to Cedar Pogache, the second man in command (more like very, very new adult); the one who carried the stretcher with Hugh just yesterday. He’s much younger than Carragan, and several strands of his long blond hair bounce unwelcome over his eyes every minute or two like a cat batting at a toy hanging in the window. He’s got adolescent acne on his forehead. He reminds me of a childhood cat I once tried to dress up in a colonial dress. His clothes swim over his bony limbs. He fumbles over half of his sentences and takes pains to avoid using words with more than two syllables.

“Shouldn’t you be writing this down?” I say at last, trying to tap into what little reserves of my patience are left. Pogache has been pestering Nash with questions for the past half hour and has yet to open a notebook. “Or recording it. Or something.”

He halts in mid-pace. Puts both hands on his hips.

Is his goal to look intimidating?

He doesn’t manage it.

“Record, yes,” Pogache says swiftly, lifting his finger. “And I am doing that.” He pats his chest, as if to say the recording device is inside.

I bet.

“So,” Pogache continues, casting his eyes uncertainly around, “if that’s . . . all . . . I think it’s time we take a recess now. And you should go about your . . . activities,” he says unsteadily.

“Activities!” I cry out, waving a hand at the group of us. “Your security officer and boss is dead hours after he told me he figured out who did it. We can’t go on and have our normal activities. Clearly the time for activities is over.”

The group members are perched back at their misery stations now.

Jackie with her nose in a handkerchief by the bookcase.

Gordon at his sturdy chess set.