Read Chapter 13: The Iceberg Warning

The engine-room grating was still warm under Jack’s palms when he slipped out through a service hatch on D-Deck. His lungs burned with coal dust and steam, and his ears rang with the memory of pistons slamming like the heartbeat of a beast. He wiped his face with a handkerchief—Margaret’s handkerchief, silk, monogrammed—and tried to look like a man who belonged in corridors this deep.

He didn’t.

A steward passed, gave him a glance, kept walking. Jack exhaled. He needed to find Margaret. He needed to tell her about Vance, about the crates, about the unmanifested cargo in the forward hold that stank of conspiracy the way steerage stank of sweat. But before he could find her, he heard his name whispered in a narrow stairwell—not his name. Someone else’s.

“—and if O’Leary shows his face in the saloon, you hold him until Mr. Moran arrives.”

Jack pressed himself into a shadowed alcove. Two men in crew uniforms passed within arm’s reach, their voices low, their eyes forward. Moran had stewards watching the dining saloon. Of course he did. Moran wasn’t a man who trusted chance; he manufactured it.

Jack waited until their footsteps faded. Then he climbed.

He didn’t know where he was going until he was there. The forward well deck, then a ladder, then another, his hands finding rungs worn smooth by years of other men’s desperation. He emerged onto a narrow catwalk that ran beneath the bridge—a lattice of steel and shadow where no passenger would ever think to look. Through a grilled vent, he could hear voices. Two men. One clipped and naval, the other older, gruff, carrying the weight of command.

Captain Smith.

“—reports from the *Mesaba* and the *Caronia* both indicate heavy field ice in latitude 42 north, longitude 49 to 50 west. Growlers reported as well, sir, and one berg sighted directly in our path.”

“We’ve had reports all day,” Smith said. “Icebergs, growlers, fields. We’ve been receiving them since noon.”

“Yes, sir. The *Mesaba* went so far as to advise that the region was the heaviest they’d seen in years. They suggested—strongly—that we alter course or reduce speed.”

A pause. Jack held his breath.

“We’re on schedule,” Smith said. “The ship is new. The ship is unsinkable—that’s what the papers say, what the owners say, what every man aboard believes. I will not slow this vessel for a few growlers. We’ll keep our course and speed. If the ice becomes visible, we’ll react then.”

“Sir, with respect, the lookouts have no binoculars. The night is calm, the sea is flat—reflection off the water will make bergs difficult to see until we’re nearly upon them.”

“Then the lookouts will see them in time.” Smith’s voice carried the finality of a man who had made his decision and would not revisit it. “That will be all, Mr. Murdoch.”

Jack’s blood turned cold in a way that had nothing to do with the Atlantic wind cutting through the grating.

He knew what icebergs meant. He’d heard the stories, read the penny dreadfuls about ships that met their end on ice—ships slower, smaller, less grand than this one. But this was the *Titanic*. The longest ship in the world. The unsinkable one.

And she was running full speed into a field of ice.

Jack pressed his forehead against the cold steel of the vent and tried to think. Midnight. Moran had given him until midnight. The dinner at table eight. Vance. Margaret’s missing friend. The crates in the forward hold. And now ice—ice thick enough that even the captain’s own officer was advising caution, and the captain was ignoring him.

If the ship hit a berg, everything changed. The prize, the diamonds, the list—none of it would matter if he was drowning in the North Atlantic. The safe-deposit boxes, whatever they held, would be lost to the deep along with every secret Vance and Moran had killed to protect.

And Margaret. He thought of her sharp eyes, her dry smile, the way she’d seen through him in a single glance. She didn’t deserve to be caught in this any more than Anna Jackson had deserved to vanish.

The officers’ voices continued, lower now, discussing scheduling and speed, but Jack had heard what he needed. He eased himself back toward the ladder, his movements careful, silent. The catwalk creaked once beneath his foot and he froze, heart hammering, but no voice called out.

He descended the way he’d come, past the rungs worn smooth, past the alcove where Moran’s men had planned their watch, until he reached the corridor that led to Margaret’s cabin. He knocked twice, three times, a pattern she’d taught him an hour ago—signal that meant *it’s me, it’s safe*.

The door opened. Margaret stood in the gap, a shawl wrapped around her shoulders, her expression sharp and unreadable.

“You look like you’ve seen a ghost,” she said.

“Worse.” Jack stepped inside, closed the door behind him. “I heard the captain on the bridge. There’s ice ahead, Margaret. Fields of it. And he’s not slowing down.”

Her face went still. “How bad?”

“Bad enough that the officer was begging him to change course. Begging.” Jack ran a hand through his hair, felt the coal dust shift under his fingers. “We’re running full speed into the worst ice in years, and the captain thinks the ship is unsinkable.”

Margaret was silent for a moment. Then she said, quietly, “Anna said the same thing, when she boarded. She said the ship was too grand to fail. That’s why she agreed to carry the locket.”

Jack looked at her. “Anna’s gone. The ship might be next.”

“Then we finish this before the ice does.” Margaret’s voice hardened. “Vance. The dinner. The list. We end it tonight, Jack, or we don’t end it at all.”

He nodded, but the nod felt hollow. Because from somewhere deep in the ship, somewhere far below the waterline, he felt it.

A shudder. Barely perceptible. A whisper of wrongness through the steel.

And then nothing.