Read Chapter 10: A Missing Passenger

The second-class lounge had gone quiet by the time Margaret found him. Most passengers had retired to their cabins or wandered up to the boat deck for a final cigarette before bed. She stood in the doorway, her fur-collared coat still buttoned, her face pale beneath the electric lights.

“You look like someone who’s been chased,” she said.

Jack was seated in a leather armchair near the dying fire, nursing a whiskey he’d paid for with a coin he couldn’t afford. He glanced up at her, then around the room. Two old women knitted in the corner. A steward was collecting empty glasses. No Moran. No henchman with a brass-knuckle smile.

“I’ve had a better evening,” he admitted.

Margaret crossed the room and sat opposite him, leaning forward with her elbows on her knees. The posture was too honest for a companion. It said: *I am not playing the lady now.*

“I need your help, Mr. O’Leary.”

He almost corrected her—*Sparrow*, he almost said—but caught himself. She knew his real name now, or enough of it. She’d seen him flee from Moran with a photograph proving he wasn’t who the passenger manifest claimed he was. Still, she was here, sitting across from him, asking for help.

“Anna Jackson,” she said. “She was in the cabin next to mine in second class. She didn’t return last night. Her bed wasn’t slept in.”

Jack set his glass down slowly. The name landed in his gut like a stone in a well. Anna Jackson. He’d seen it in the red ledger—the name beside a notation in cramped, hurried script. *Courier. Key delivered. Proof required on death.*

“You checked with the purser?” he asked, keeping his voice flat.

“I asked the steward on Deck C. He said there was no formal report. She wasn’t important enough to alarm anyone.” Margaret’s jaw tightened. “She was my friend. And she’s not the sort to disappear without a word.”

Jack studied her. There was something raw in her face, something less practiced than the way she’d spoken to him at the dinner. He’d seen plenty of liars in his life—he’d lived among them, swum among them—and Margaret Hayes was not lying now.

“What was she doing in second class?” he asked. “You said you were a companion. She wasn’t traveling with your lady?”

Margaret shook her head. “Anna was a governess for the Whitney children in Boston. She’d been visiting family in London and was returning home. We met on the train to Southampton and found we were both traveling alone. We made a habit of taking tea together after lunch.”

“After lunch,” Jack echoed. The cipher he’d decoded in the library had listed names beside vault designations. Anna Jackson’s name had been there, in his handwriting copy, connected to a number he’d matched to one of the staterooms. He hadn’t known her title then—just a name on a list of murdered or missing men and women.

He pulled his watch from his vest pocket. Half past eleven.

“You last saw her when?”

“After dinner, around nine. She said she was tired—she’d had a headache all afternoon. She went to her cabin to write letters.” Margaret paused. “I knocked on her door this morning before breakfast. No answer. I assumed she’d already gone up. But when I didn’t see her at lunch, I went back. The room was locked from the inside.”

Jack’s fingers tightened on the whiskey glass. “Locked from the inside?”

“I had the steward open it with his master key. Her things were there—her trunk, her hat, her writing case. But no Anna. The bed wasn’t slept in. And her porthole window was open.”

The fire popped. One of the old women in the corner laughed at something in her knitting pattern.

Jack leaned forward, lowering his voice. “You went into her cabin with the steward watching?”

“I did what I had to do.” Margaret’s eyes glittered. “I’m not afraid of propriety when my friend is missing.”

“What else did you see?”

She paused. The hesitation told him everything he needed to know. She had seen something, and she was weighing whether to tell him.

“Her writing case was open,” Margaret said finally. “The ink was dry on a half-written letter to her mother. She’d been describing the crossing—” She stopped, swallowed. “She was describing a man who had been following her. She hinted she’d be posting a longer letter in New York with the full story. She called him a *gentleman with a ledger.*”

Jack felt the air leave the room. The ledger. The red ledger. Crawley’s book of debts, of names, of contracts paid in blood. Anna Jackson had been the courier. She’d carried the key from London to the ship, and someone on board—someone sent by Vance, or by Crawley, or by anyone who wanted the contents of those vaults—had found her.

“Margaret,” he said slowly, “what did Anna have with her when she boarded?”

Margaret’s brow furrowed. “What do you mean?”

“A pendant. A locket, perhaps. Something she kept close. Something she told you not to touch.”

The color drained from Margaret’s face. “How did you know that?”

Jack didn’t answer. He was already rising, reaching into his coat pocket. His fingers found the slim gold chain he’d lifted from a London courier in a smoky pub—a locket with a cipher inside that had led him to the list of names. The list that informed him exactly how many people had died for what he now carried.

“Where is Anna’s cabin?” he asked.

“Why? What does this have to do with—?”

“Just tell me.”

Margaret stood as well. Her voice was steadier than he expected. “E-Deck, cabin number E-112. It’s a small berth near the end of the corridor. Second class, starboard side.” She stepped closer. “Now tell me what you know about my friend.”

Jack looked at her. He thought about lying. He thought about inventing a story, a way to deflect her attention while he slipped away to check the cabin himself, to see if Anna had left behind anything else that might point to the list or the vaults.

But Margaret Hayes had already seen through him once tonight. And she’d come to him, not to the captain, not to the purser, not to the authorities. She’d come to a thief she knew was lying about his name.

“Your friend was carrying something valuable,” he said. “Something that belongs to a man who wants it back badly enough that he’s already killed twice on this ship for it.”

Margaret’s breath caught.

“I have it now,” Jack said. “The locket you saw. I took it from a courier in London. I didn’t know she was the original—I didn’t know your friend’s name until I decoded the numbers inside.” He held her gaze. “If Anna is missing, if her bed wasn’t slept in and her window was open, then I know what happened to her. And I need to see her cabin before anyone else does.”

Margaret was quiet for a long moment. Her hands were trembling slightly at her sides, but her eyes were dry.

“You think she was killed.”

“I think she was carrying something people kill for. And I think whoever took it from her is still looking for the rest of it.”

The fire flickered. Margaret reached up and unbuttoned her coat, revealing the high-collared black dress she wore beneath.

“Then we had better move quickly,” she said. “The steward on Deck C owes me a favor. He’ll keep his mouth shut for an hour if we ask nicely.”

Jack almost smiled. “You’re a natural criminal, Margaret.”

“I’m a woman who’s learned to get what she needs.” She glanced toward the corridor. “Lead the way, Mr. O’Leary. And if we find what happened to Anna, you owe me more than a story. You owe me the truth.”

He didn’t know what he’d find in cabin E-112—Anna’s ransacked belongings, a clue to who had taken her, another thread in the web pulling tighter around him. But he knew one thing for certain as they moved toward the door, the weight of the locket warm against his chest:

Whatever had happened to Anna Jackson, it had happened because of him.

Because he’d taken the key.

Because someone on this ship was willing to kill for what it opened.

And because Jack had barely twenty-four hours left before the sea swallowed them all.