19

The Villain

The last person I expect to find at Lola’s bedside is her father.

As soon as I round the corner into the infirmary where she’s resting, I catch sight of that perfect salt-and-pepper head bent as if in prayer. Since I highly doubt that’s what he’s doing, I stop and prepare to step back, bowing out unseen and unheard.

“Come in, Penelope,” Peter says in his mild voice.

“Oh, um.” I swallow and hesitate in the doorway. I’ve suffered enough torture today—I lack the stamina to confront this man, too. Especially since I doubt his methods are quite so…satisfying. “I don’t want to intrude. I can come back later.”

“There’s no need to worry yourself. She’s asleep.”

And therefore can’t serve as a witness to my death. It’s not a comforting thought, but I don’t see what other choice I have. When Peter Sanchez summons you, I get the feeling you follow, even if it’s over the side of a cliff.

Resigned to my fate, I step inside the dimly lit room. I allow my eyes a moment to adjust before asking in a soft voice, “How is she?”

“Better, now that I’ve had her tranquilized.” He pats the seat next to him. “Keep me company a while.”

“Tranquilized?” That doesn’t sound like good medical care for someone who needs to focus all her energies on breathing.

“It’s a very light sedative,” Peter says.

It’s also a very convenient sedative, but I don’t say so out loud. If Lola was asking for me, I presume she had something she wanted to say. She may have even seen her attacker. Forcing her to lie in a sickbed all day would be one way of keeping her mouth shut.

I shudder to think of the others.

Some of my fears must show on my face, because Peter adds, “It’s not what you think. My daughter has always been high-strung in moments of stress. I felt it would be best if she got some rest.” His smile, if you can call it that, appears wistful. “She’s not like you.”

I sit perched on the edge of a nearby chair, poised for flight. “Like me?”

“Naturally.” He bows his head in a brief acknowledgement. “There aren’t many people who would so calmly share a room with just me, my daughter, and a twenty-million-dollar piece of jewelry everyone already suspects you of having attempted to steal.”

“I wasn’t aware I was being given a choice.”

Peter’s laughter is surprisingly soft. “You’re not. But I appreciate that you’re willing to play along.”

“Yes, well.” I shift in my seat, relaxing enough to put one whole cheek on the cushion. It’s not that I’m comfortable being in a dark, secluded room with a man like him, but he doesn’t appear to have any murderous intentions toward me. Yet. “I have my father to protect me.”

“Do you?”

I don’t care for his implication. “Of course I do. My dad and I try not to get in each other’s way, especially when it comes to things like enormous diamond tiaras”—and late-night visitors by the name of Eden St. James—“but I know he’ll come to my aid the second I need it. All I have to do is say the word.”

“It’s such a comfort, isn’t it?” Peter asks. “The father-daughter bond?”

As he doesn’t look down at his daughter even once, I find myself bristling. I resent the implication that my father and I are anything like these two. I mean, he didn’t show up to watch me play poker today, and he hasn’t unlocked the adjoining door between our rooms yet, but that’s hardly evidence of villainy. He’s just trying to enjoy his vacation, that’s all.

“The father-daughter bond?” I echo. “Is that what you call putting your daughter at the mercy of five hundred malicious thieves?”

Peter’s eyes flash a warning. “No one will cross me. They wouldn’t dare.”

I scoff. “Someone did. Just because they weren’t successful today doesn’t mean they won’t be tomorrow.”

Peter smiles an empty, chilling smile, and I find myself wishing for the warning flash of anger instead. At least it sprang from a place that’s human—a place that’s real.

“That’s why I have the great Penelope Blue to assist me,” he says.

“I’m not the great Penelope anything. Most of that stuff you’ve heard is made up.”

“I know,” he says with a slight bow. “Clever of me, wasn’t it?”

“You spread all those rumors?” I cry before slapping my hands over my mouth and casting an anxious look at Lola. She stirs but doesn’t wake. I lower my voice. “That was your doing? But why?”

“I had to. You’re very accomplished for your age, but I found that in order to build up your reputation to where I wanted it, it was important to expand on your exploits. I hope you don’t mind.”

I do mind—very much, in fact—but of course, I can’t say so. “But why?” I ask, eyeing Peter warily. “What do you want from me?”

“Your help in protecting my little one, of course,” Peter says in a soothing tone. He pats Lola’s hand, causing her to stir once again. “I told you once that my daughter thinks the world of you. She always has. More than anything else, I wanted her to be comfortable.”

I’m not buying it. A man whose primary concern is for his daughter’s well-being wouldn’t even allow her on a boat like this in the first place, let alone place her in the crosshairs of every villain on board.

“If you really want her to be safe, you’ll let her stop wearing that stupid tiara,” I say. It’s a risk, speaking so bluntly to this man, but I have to do it. If even Grant’s most powerful persuasions can’t get me to crack, then a violent threat or two from this man won’t do the trick, either. “I’m sorry if you’re not used to people talking so disrespectfully to you, but you need to hear it. She’s the nicest, most unassuming, sweet-tempered—”

Peter holds up one hand. “Spare me a litany of my daughter’s virtues, I beg you. I’m fully aware of them and have had many an occasion to lament their existence.”

“You’d rather she be ruthless, like you?”

“I’d rather she be fearless, like you. But she’s not, and I’ve done my poor best to work with what I’ve been given. I was serious when I said that security on board the Shady Lady has been a nightmare. Can you imagine what it’s like to prevent five hundred determined thieves from stealing something of so much value?” He doesn’t let me answer. “No, of course you don’t. No one does. If I’d have realized…”

I hold my breath, waiting for him to tell me everything he’s realized and why, but all he does is shake his head.

“No. Even knowing what I do, I’d still arrange things this way. It’s not easy to get someone like Johnny Francis into the open.”

Grant hadn’t been kidding about that, it seems. Peter isn’t above using his daughter as bait.

“You want Johnny, too?” I ask.

“My dear, we all want Johnny. You didn’t think I threw this little gathering for the sake of making money, did you?” His laughter is faint but mocking. “Don’t be ridiculous. I could buy the Luxor Tiara twenty times over.”

“So this whole thing is an elaborate trap to catch him?”

“But of course.” His eyes open in the wide, doe-eyed way of his daughter. I find it much less endearing on him. “Johnny’s been after my diamond for years. I wasn’t inclined to let him have it, but he knows too much about a few of my business ventures, so I decided to cast a lure. This cruise was the only way I could draw him out of his hole.”

I release an inward curse. Peter isn’t telling me anything I don’t already know thanks to the conversation below deck, but hearing the words straight from the devil’s mouth has a way of turning my blood cold.

“When I heard Penelope Blue would be joining my little game, I rejoiced at the possibilities. Especially when I discovered that her husband would also be coming on board. You understand how it is. I saw at once what I had to do.”

I stare, unmoving, his words making little impression on my brain.

He tsks. “Such a brave effort, sending a federal agent undercover on a cruise like this. Just imagine what my guests would say if they knew. I find it vastly amusing, of course, but I doubt my old friend Two-Finger would feel the same. A keen mind, but he’s never had much in the way of a sense of humor.” He laughs in a way that carries a sinister sort of soundlessness. “Oh, dear. I see I’ve frightened you, which isn’t at all what I wanted to do.”

Like hell he didn’t. He feeds on fear, a soulless parasite sucking at other people’s emotions.

“You know?” I manage.

“Of course I do. Do you take me for a fool?” His voice carries a hard edge. “I could have had him killed the moment he set foot on this boat, but out of respect for your father, I didn’t.”

I have to warn him. Every instinct I have warns me to fly out of this room, find Grant, and get him out of harm’s way before Peter even knows I’m gone. But his next words stop me short.

“Which is why I recruited his assistance instead.”

Like Lola, I’m finding it suddenly difficult to breathe, the closeness of the room and the danger of our situation working together to set my adrenaline in direct opposition to my respiratory system.

“He didn’t like it, of course, but once I outlined what would happen to your pretty little head if anything happened to my tiara, he came around. You have to admit it’s an even exchange—his help in securing the tiara in exchange for your life and the life of everyone you hold dear. Alas. Men who love their wives unconditionally are one of the worst liabilities out there. I never employ them myself.”

I hear but don’t hear his rationalizations. I’m too busy dwelling on the fact that Peter Sanchez knows. He knows everything—about what my friends and I are really doing here, about all our secret communications, probably even about what went down in the interrogation room. Grant’s cover is blown and has been from the start.

While all that is alarming enough, the most important point is that Grant wasn’t going to tell me. All that stuff about complicated developments, about the situation getting worse before it gets better… He was talking about this. Grant has every intention of letting me and my friends walk off this boat at the end of the tournament without him, leaving him to whatever tender mercies Peter plans to employ to bring his usefulness to a close.

My husband has always suffered from superhero syndrome—it’s one of his worst flaws—but this is taking things too far. If we get off this boat alive, I’m going to kill him.

“What do you want from me?” I ask again.

“I told you. Protection for my daughter.”

Yeah, right. “You mean protection for the tiara.”

“At the moment, they’re one and the same.”

His words, calculated to put me in my place, stir something—a thought, an idea, a feeling so dangerous, it leaves me shaking. On any other day, I might sit here and listen to him outline his nefarious plans, playing along for the sake of the game. Today, however, I’ve just about had enough.

No one puts my husband in danger and gets away with it. Not even my husband.

“Then let me wear it,” I say, the words out before I can stop them. “Give it to me instead.”

Peter’s interest is visible as a slight lift of his shoulders. “Give it to you? You want me to hand over the one plan I have to find Johnny?”

“Why not?” Now that I’ve put the idea out there, I plan to hitch everything I have on it and watch where it goes. With any luck, it will fly high enough to extract not just me, but all my friends and family members from this boat. “Your only concern is that no one steals it before the poker game is over, right? That it stay out there long enough to catch Johnny in the act?”

“I wouldn’t say it’s my only concern, but yes. That has been my primary motivating factor.”

“Then there’s no reason why I couldn’t take Lola’s place,” I say. “As today’s events have proven, people aren’t nearly as scared of your wrath as you’d like them to be. It’s just a matter of time before someone tries again. Instead of putting your daughter in danger, let me be the one to assume all the risk. Same great security plan, no asthmatic complications.”

Now it’s not just his shoulders that are up—his eyebrows are as well. “You’d do that for Lola?”

Not just for Lola—for everyone I love. “I would. I’ll protect your stupid tiara and accept responsibility for its safety, but you have to promise me that no harm will come to Grant. You have to let him go as soon as all this is over.”

“Such devotion. It positively warms the heart.” He nods once. “I like it. The Luxor is yours.”

The speed with which he accepts my proposal doesn’t fill me with much in the way of confidence. I like this man as much as a pit full of spikes, trust him as much as a politician in an election year. I have no doubt that he’d send my husband overboard with bricks tied around his neck if he thought it would help him reach his goals.

Still, I can’t help feeling a flutter of satisfaction as he reaches down and extracts the tiara from the silken strands of Lola’s hair.

He bought it. I did it. I’m in.

“I’ll go make a formal announcement now, but you should plan on showing yourself sometime this evening.” He hesitates. “I can’t promise this will go down easy, coming as it does so soon on the heels of your interrogation. They’ll be out for your blood.”

“Just tell them it’s my punishment,” I say. “That’s believable enough. At this point, putting this tiara on my head practically guarantees my death.”

He chuckles. “Fearless, just as I said.”

He sets the tiara in place. Once again, the heaviness takes me by surprise, all that gold and all those precious gems carrying the weight of its previous bearers. Instead of feeling buried by it, however, the tiara feels natural, an extension of myself. My neck comes up, and my shoulders straighten. I rise to the task ahead of me, to the responsibility imbued in all these impressive scrolls.

In that moment, I can almost see why Johnny Francis is so keen on getting his hands on it.

“It looks good on you.” Peter steps back to survey his handiwork. “Better than it ever did on Lola. Unlike my daughter, you have the confidence to pull it off.”

That’s easy for him to say. He’s not the one carrying the full weight—pun intended—of his actions.

“I’ll expect that to be ready and waiting for me at the end of the poker tournament,” he adds. And with that, his apparent interest in the tiara is gone. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ll hand the bedside vigilance over to you. Sickrooms have never been my forte.”

“By all means,” I say and gesture for him to find the door. The sooner this evil villain of a man is out of the room—and our lives—the better. “I wouldn’t want to detain you from your duties as host.”

He doesn’t take note of the heavy sarcasm in my voice, but he does pause in the doorway, lingering just long enough to look back at me with an ironic, almost grandfatherly air. “By the by, I hear congratulations are in order.”

The last thing I want is this man’s congratulations. “What for?”

His eyes widen in mock surprise. “For making it to the next round, of course. Word came in while you were detained. They salvaged the gameplay at all the tables, and you’ve been declared the official winner at yours. Four-of-a-kind to Eden St. James’s paltry three jacks.” He tsks. “Poor Eden. That loss is going to be difficult for her to bear.”

I can’t find it in me to be excited about the happy news. “Not quite as difficult as bearing twenty million dollars on your head, though, huh?” I ask.

Peter laughs out loud. “You’re worth a hundred of my daughters, Penelope Blue. I hope you don’t live to regret this day’s work.”

I don’t answer him. Living to regret this day’s work is exactly what I intend to do.