Chapter 13 - MY BEST FRIEND
Samantha had introduced me to Daniel.
That realization hurt worse than his fist ever could.
Three years earlier, she had invited me to a charity dinner.
Daniel happened to be seated at our table.
Or so I had believed.
Samantha encouraged the first date.
The second.
She helped Daniel choose my engagement ring.
She planned my bridal shower.
She zipped my wedding dress.
And while I stood at the altar, she smiled beside me knowing exactly what he intended to do.
Hale searched her records.
Samantha Reed didn’t exist before age twenty-one.
Her real name was Victoria Mercer.
Daniel’s older sister.
The entire relationship had been engineered.
Every coincidence.
Every introduction.
Every moment I thought was fate.
A Coast Guard team boarded the ship.
Pike was taken into custody under armed supervision.
Daniel was restrained in the medical bay.
But Victoria was gone.
“She never boarded under Samantha,” Hale said.
“Then how did she get here?”
Captain Reynolds checked crew records.
A temporary event coordinator had joined the ship that morning.
Photo identification.
Different hair.
Glasses.
But it was her.
Victoria.
We searched the cabin.
Empty.
Then my phone rang.
Samantha.
I answered.
“You’re hard to kill,” she said.
Her familiar voice suddenly sounded poisonous.
“Nine years.”
“I know.”
“You pretended to be my friend for nine years.”
“I was your friend.”
“Friends don’t arrange murders.”
“You were never supposed to know.”
“Where are you?”
She laughed softly.
“Look outside.”
I walked to the window.
A tender boat was moving away from the ship.
One person stood at the controls.
Victoria.
“She stole an emergency launch!” Reynolds shouted.
The Coast Guard moved.
Victoria accelerated.
Daniel heard the commotion from the medical bay.
He started laughing.
“She has the files!”
I turned.
“What files?”
“The originals.”
Hale grabbed Daniel.
“Original what?”
Daniel smiled at me.
“Everything.”
Pike’s buyers.
Bank accounts.
Government contacts.
Names.
Evidence capable of destroying an international criminal network.
If Victoria disappeared with those files, the larger operation survived.
I looked toward the Coast Guard officer.
“Can you stop that boat?”
“We can.”
Then an explosion erupted off the starboard side.
Flames swallowed the tender.
Everyone stared.
Rebecca whispered, “Oh my God.”
But I kept watching.
Something was wrong.
The explosion was too clean.
Too convenient.
Then I saw a second small boat in the darkness.
Victoria had never been on the one that exploded.
May you like
She had switched boats.
And she was heading straight toward shore.
