Cape Storm

“Joanne Baldwin,” I said, and presented ID. “I’ll be taking the room that Botox Diva just cleared.”

He looked at me wearily. “Ma’am? Why that room in particular?”

“Because she probably left Godiva chocolates and chilled Dom Perignon, not to mention random stacks of cash in the couch cushions,” I said, straight-faced. “I’ll guard it with my life.”

That broke the ice a bit. He even managed to produce an anxious second cousin to a smile. “You’re one of them, right?” Them presumably being the Wardens. I nodded. “I hear you guys have some kind of, uh, magic. Would you mind . . . ?”

“What, working some on these idiots? Not sure you really want me to do that. It tends to not be so great at crowd control, unless you’re trying to kill people or put them in comas. Better let me try the persuasion route first.”

“Be my guest. I hope you brought horse tranquilizers.” He gave me a bow and handed me the room. Cherise and I exchanged glances and stepped inside.

We stepped in it, all right. The place was complete chaos, which was odd, because it really was a room with all kinds of calm built right in. The designers had envisioned the space as a Victorian-style reading room, complete with expensively bound leather volumes and comfy couches and chairs. Nobody was enjoying the decor now, though. Middle-aged society matrons rubbed shoulders, however unwillingly, with young, vapid starlets (I might have recognized one or two of those, but truthfully, they’d all been sculpted and styled into the same person, so it didn’t much matter). A thick cluster of black-clad people who I assumed were New York literary types clumped together like a dour flock of crows toward the outer edge. West Coast bling glittered in a group on the opposite side of the room. It was like a map of the wealth of America, from coast to coast—all arguing at the same time.

Another steward, looking not-so-crisp, was trying his best to calm people. They were ignoring him and all yammering away at each other, waving tickets, papers, cell phones, and BlackBerries. The din was all focused on one thing: I’m going to sue. I’m not leaving without my (fill in the blank).

I beckoned the steward over. He came, looking grateful that someone—even a potential troublemaker—was paying attention to him instead of shouting at full volume. I could understand why; this room full of people, at least fifty strong, had enough clout to bury the cruise line in legal red tape for years, if not generations. “We need to move these idiots out,” I said. “It’s time to go.”

I saw him swallow whatever he was tempted to shoot back at me, and try again. “Yes, miss, I’m trying,” he said, in that smoothly patient tone that only the very stressed develop after years of therapy. “I explained that if they didn’t disembark, we couldn’t wait for them to do so, but—”

“They called your bluff.”

“Exactly.” He swallowed and tugged a little at the white collar of his formal jacket. “I’ve tried to get the captain, but he’s busy with preparations to cast off.”

A woman of indeterminate age—indeterminate because plastic surgery, heavy makeup, and a forty-hour-a- week workout schedule had effectively rendered her a wax figure of herself—grabbed the steward by the arm with expertly manicured, clawlike fingers. “What are you going to do about this?” she demanded. “I demand to speak to the captain! Immediately!”

“Ma’am, I’m sorry, but the captain is occupied,” the steward said, and patiently removed her grip from his uniform sleeve. “You must depart the ship immediately, for your own safety.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.This ship was advertised as being able to sail through a hurricane without a wineglass tipping. It’s the safest place to be! I refuse to be turned out like some penniless hobo into a storm. My people say there are no hotels, and no flights out. There’s nowhere to go. I’m staying.”

“That’s not an option,” I said. “If you get your people and head toward the exit, you might still make it off the ship. Go. Right now.”

She fixed me with an icy stare. “And who are you?” Her glance traveled over me, dismissing every item of clothing on me with ruthless clarity, and then summing me up and dismissing me as a whole, all over again. “Are you with the cruise line? Because if you are, I will have a word with the captain about the dress code for—”

“Shut up,” I said. She did, mainly because I don’t think anybody had told her that in her whole life. “Pretend there’s a bomb on board. Now. What should you do?”

She blinked. “Is there?”

I stared at her, unblinking.

She lifted one heavily ringed hand to cover her pouty lips. “Is it terrorists?” Terrorists, the new monster under the bed. Well, whatever worked.

“I can’t confirm that,” I said, in my best poker-faced government-agent style. Hey, I learned it from television. “You should go immediately. But don’t tell the others. We don’t want to cause a panic.”

That was an added kicker, because by being told to keep it secret, she felt privileged, and of course that convinced her. She gulped, grabbed her personal assistant in red talons, and whispered something urgent. Then they hustled off, presumably heading for the docks.

“One down,” Cherise said. “Terrorists, huh?”

“The FBI can Guantánamo me later,” I said. “It does the job. You take that side of the room, I’ll take the other.”

And so it went. About three repetitions later of the terrorists-but-keep-it-quiet story, I ran into someone who demanded to know if I had any idea who he was. I tried to control my instinctive awe and assured him I did—how could I not? He seemed to like that, and especially the whole I’m only saving your ass because you’re so special undertone. When he strode off, trailing employees like a comet, I turned to see the steward watching me with a look that was half appalled, half amused. “What? Who is he?” I asked.

“I believe he’s in the film industry,” he said. “You’re scary.”

“You should see her when she’s really bothered,” Cherise said as she passed us, heading for her next victim. “But I hope you won’t.”

I felt the change in the ship before I saw the expression shift in the steward’s face from nervous to outright alarmed. There was a deep, throbbing sensation coming up through the decks, transmitting itself all the way through my body.

“We’re moving,” I said. “Holy crap. Lewis wasn’t kidding around.”

“Guess not,” Cherise said. We’d cleared half the room, but there were at least thirty of the first-class passengers still staging a sit-in, and we were out of time. “Maybe we can load them into lifeboats or something.”

“Cher, do these guys look like they’d let us put them into lifeboats?”

“I didn’t say they’d agree. We could, you know, knock them out or something.”

“So we’ve moving up from threats to assault.”

“Oh, come on. Not like you haven’t assaulted anybody recently.” And Cher punched me in the shoulder for emphasis.

“It wouldn’t do any good,” the steward broke in. “In these conditions, we don’t dare launch any lifeboats, not even the new speedboat type that this ship carries. We have to have relatively calm seas or there’s a significant risk of the lifeboats being compromised.”

Compromised was, I assumed, ship-speak for sunk. Which was kind of where we were, from the standpoint of achieving our goal.

I looked around the room again. Thirty-odd people, of which approximately a third were the rich sons of bitches who’d refused to leave, aggressively arrogant and sure that the universe cared too much about them to put them in real danger.

The others were their hapless hangers-on, employees, and family members.

I hated having innocents in the line of fire, but they’d made their choice, and now I had to make mine.

“Let them go back to their cabins,” I said to the steward. “Confine them to quarters for now. If they want anything, deliver it. Don’t let them go roaming around. Let them whine all they want, but do not let them intimidate you.”

“Yes, miss.” He was glad to have a clearly defined order, and he signaled to a couple of discreetly suited security men standing in the wings. They were both impressive specimens—large, muscular, with the kind of no- bullshit expressions that only men who do violence for a living could afford to wear. I figured the bulges in their coats had more to do with weaponry than with overindulging at the all-you-can-eat buffet.