Page 88 of No One Aboard

“Mom?” Rylan stepped into the room. “What are you doing here?”

Lila turned and summoned a quick smile. “Looking for Alejandro.”

She must have read the question in his expression. “To ask him about what desserts he could bake for your birthday, which reminds me...” Lila waved him into the hallway and closed the door behind her and continued. “I have someoptions for you to pick out your birthday dinner. Alejandro wants to do some cooking prep tonight.”

Rylan tucked his drawing away, folded neatly in his pocket. “What are the options?”

“He suggested all of your favorites: pesto pasta, grilled cheese, or meat loaf. Tia said she was happy with any of them.”

It was a far cry from the resplendent feast Alejandro had prepared last year: tea cakes and little sandwiches and caprese salad. By the time they had reached dinner, however, no one’s appetite remained.

“Meat loaf, please,” Rylan said, nauseated at the memory. It would be hearty and savory, especially with Alejandro’s special herbal garnish. And it was nothing like last year.

“Meat loaf it is.” Lila kissed him on both cheeks. “I’m going to go check for Alejandro on deck and let him know.” She fussed with his hair. “Tomorrow you’re eighteen, my love!”

“Tomorrow,” Rylan repeated as Lila whisked away.

He went to the salon and folded onto the couch. Pirate, who’d been cocooned in the corner, stretched and came to make biscuits on Rylan’s chest.

“Hey, boy...” Rylan scratched behind Pirate’s ears, guilt seeping through him. He hadn’t been paying the cat as much attention as he deserved in the week since MJ’s death.

Pirate rubbed his face against Rylan’s knuckles, then bounded away. MJ and her cat hadn’t been on the ship during the twins’ birthday last year. MJ would have interfered—unlike Lila, she wasn’t afraid to rile Francis up—just as she would have interfered if she’d been alive when they found out Francis wasn’t taking them to Florida. MJ would have been even more aggressive than Tia.

But maybe that would have just made things worse, like it did when MJ forced the truth out of him about the tests.

Rylan glanced around for Pirate, who had clambered his way to the freezer, pacing along the top of it. He saw Rylan looking at him and meowed insistently.

Rylan rose from the couch and picked up the cat. He hugged him to his chest, suddenly feeling cold. Pirate meowed again.

He’s trying to tell me something.

Pirate strained in his arms to return to the freezer, but Rylan set him on the floor instead.

His heartbeat didn’t consume him. In fact, it didn’t seem to be beating at all, as if he was frozen himself, blood icelike in his veins.

Alejandro had suggested meat loaf for the twins’ birthday dinner. Meat loaf which would need to be kept in a freezer on a voyage this long. Meat loaf which he had seen sitting on the counter in a sweaty plastic bag on the day MJ died to make room to store her body.

Only it wasn’t on the counter anymore.

If Alejandro could make meat loaf for dinner, he must have been able to store it back inside the freezer. But there shouldn’t be room for that, unless...

Rylan touched the handle of the freezer. The last thing in the universe he wanted to do was open it up. Maybe Alejandro had covered the body with a tarp and put the frozen food over it so it didn’t go to waste? Maybe Rylan should go to Lila and tell her he actually wanted grilled cheese, something simple with nice, refrigerated ingredients.

He should and maybe he would, but first he had to know what was in there.

Maybe he owed it to MJ to look at what he’d done to her.

Pirate mewled and brushed up against Rylan’s legs. Warning him.

“I know, boy,” Rylan murmured, and he opened the lid ofthe freezer. He sucked in his breath, not making sense of what he saw. The meat loaf, crusted with ice, lived in the bottom of the freezer along with a bag of peas and a plastic-wrapped lamb chop. Leftover sailfish was packaged in another corner. That was it.

The corpse was gone.

Chapter 44

Tia Cameron

Call sign: Thimble