Read Chapter 14: Aftermath of a Shiver

The shudder came up through the deck like a cat stretching against a sleeping leg. Subtle at first, a vibration you could mistake for the engines changing pitch. Then the glassware on the sideboard chimed, and somewhere down the corridor a woman screamed.

Jack had one hand on the wall of the second-class smoking lounge when the floor tilted—not much, two degrees at most, but enough to send a stack of newspapers sliding off a table and a portly gentleman stumbling into his wife's lap. The room erupted in a chorus of startled cries, the kind of noise that died as quickly as it began. People laughed nervously, adjusted their collars, made jokes about the captain's driving.

Jack didn't laugh. He'd grown up in the tenements of Hell's Kitchen, where you learned to read the sounds of a building the way sailors read the sky. That shudder wasn't the engines. That was the ship kissing something it shouldn't have.

"Steward!" a voice barked behind him. "Steward, what was that?"

Vance stood at the entrance to the smoking lounge, a cigar clamped between his teeth, his face flushed with the particular outrage of a man accustomed to being obeyed. His eyes swept the room and landed on Jack with unpleasant precision. "You. You're the one who came barreling in here—"

"I was already here," Jack said, keeping his voice calm. "Wasn't moving fast enough to shake the whole ship."

The crowd tittered. Vance's jaw tightened.

"You were in the corridor. I saw you. You were running—"

"I was walking to the bar for a whiskey. Is that a crime now, Mr. Vance?"

Vance took a step toward him, and Jack felt the old familiar tension coil in his shoulders. The man was bigger than him by a head, with the thick neck of a former dockworker turned wealthy bully. But before Vance could close the distance, a hand curled around Jack's elbow.

"Mr. O'Leary." Margaret's voice was calm, cut with just enough steel to turn heads. She'd appeared from nowhere, her dark hair pinned tight, her evening gown a deep burgundy that made her look like she'd stepped out of a painting. "I've been looking for you. Father wants a word about the—" she paused, glancing at Vance with a cool smile, "—the matter we discussed."

Vance's eyes flicked between them, calculating. "Miss Beaumont. I didn't realize you were acquainted with this—" he paused, letting the word hang, "—gentleman."

"Mr. O'Leary is a business associate of my father's." Margaret's smile didn't waver. "A rather important one. I'm sure you understand."

Vance held her gaze for a long moment. Then he laughed, a short bark with no warmth in it. "Of course. Business. These days everyone's in business." He turned back to Jack, and his voice dropped. "Watch yourself, Mr. O'Leary. Ships are dangerous places. Men have been known to fall overboard without a trace."

He walked away, disappearing through the far door of the lounge. The crowd began to disperse, conversations resuming in hushed tones about the shudder and what it might mean. Jack let out a breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding.

Margaret didn't release his arm. "Come with me. Now."

She led him through a service corridor, past a stack of linen and a startled-looking steward who quickly averted his eyes. She didn't stop until they reached a small alcove near the stairwell, empty except for a coiled fire hose and a brass clock ticking steadily on the wall.

"All right," she said, turning to face him. Her voice was low and urgent. "What happened? The ship—"

"It hit something." Jack ran a hand through his hair. "Ice. There were warnings all afternoon, I heard the captain himself—"

"You heard the captain?"

"Wireless room. I was—" He stopped. There was no good way to explain why he'd been lurking near the bridge. "I was looking for something. Doesn't matter. What matters is the ship has a hole in it."

Margaret's face went pale, but her voice stayed steady. "How bad?"

"I don't know. The captain didn't seem worried. Kept the speed up." Jack shook his head. "But ice is ice. If we've cracked the hull—"

"We're on the largest ship in the world." Margaret said it like a prayer. "Surely—"

"Largest ship in the world hit the most solid thing in the ocean." Jack met her eyes. "I've seen what happens when a crate cracks on the docks. Doesn't matter how big the crate is. You sink, you sink."

The clock ticked. Somewhere above them, a band struck up a cheerful tune, incongruous and strange.

Margaret was quiet for a moment. Then she said, "You came down here to get away from that man. Vance. Why?"

Jack hesitated. He'd been holding the confession in his chest like a coal, waiting for the right moment to drop it. But the ship was listing—just slightly, just enough to notice if you were paying attention—and the right moment might not come.

"Because I know what he's carrying," Jack said. "In the forward hold. Crates that came aboard at Southampton with no paperwork. Unmanifested cargo."

Margaret's brow furrowed. "How do you know that?"

"I saw him paying off a crewman. Night before last. He's not just a passenger, Margaret. He's the buyer. The diamonds from the robbery—the ones that were supposed to be in that bank vault—they're on this ship. And he's the man they're for."

Margaret stared at him. The color had drained from her face entirely now, leaving her lips pale against her skin. "Anna," she said. "Anna was carrying the key. And you're saying she was mixed up in—"

"Diamonds. Theft. A network of thieves who used the banks to move their money." Jack took a breath. "Your friend wasn't just a courier, Margaret. She was part of an operation that Vance is trying to finish. She had the key to a vault in New York, and the list of names that would tell anyone who opened it exactly who was owed what. She was running, I think. Trying to get it out of the country before they could stop her."

"And they stopped her anyway."

Jack nodded. "I'm sorry. I should have told you sooner. I just—" He stopped, searching for words that wouldn't sound pathetic. "I didn't want you to be part of it. The danger, I mean. I thought if I could handle it myself—"

"Handle it yourself." Margaret's voice was flat. "By dressing like a gentleman and swimming through a laundry chute and getting chased by that—that thug Moran, who threatened to expose you to the captain before midnight."

"You heard about that?"

"I hear a lot of things, Mr. O'Leary." She took a step closer. "You're not the only one who can keep secrets. I knew you were a thief the moment I saw you in the dining saloon. No gentleman holds his fork that way."

Jack felt his face warm. "You knew—"

"I knew you weren't who you said you were. I didn't know you were carrying something that belonged to my friend." Her voice cracked on the last word, and she steadied herself with a hand on the wall. "She gave it to you. Anna. The locket. Didn't she?"

"Not exactly." Jack pulled the chain from beneath his collar, letting the small gold locket catch the light. "I found it. In her room, the same night she disappeared. It was hidden in a Bible on her nightstand. I didn't know what it was at first. I just knew it was valuable enough to hide."

"And you decided to keep it."

"I decided to live." Jack tucked the locket back beneath his shirt. "I'm not proud of it. But I didn't kill her, Margaret. I never even met her. I found her room already ransacked, the key in the Bible, and a dead man in the corridor outside who wanted it badly enough to—" He stopped. "You don't need to hear the rest."

Margaret was quiet for a long moment. Above them, the band had switched to a waltz, the strains drifting down through the decks with eerie cheerfulness.

"The list," she said finally. "The one in your notebook. The one that matches the red ledger I saw in your cabin. Those names—"

"They're the account holders. The people who put money into the scheme with Vance. If the vault in New York gets opened, and the list is read, everyone who thought their secret was safe will be exposed." Jack met her eyes. "Moran wants that list so he can control them. Vance wants it buried so he can disappear with the diamonds. And me?" He laughed, a short, humorless sound. "I just wanted enough money to get to America with a clean name."

"And now?"

Jack looked at her. The ship shuddered again, a deeper vibration that ran through the floor and into his bones. Outside the porthole, the sky was black and absolutely clear, stars sharp as broken glass.

"Now I think clean names might be overrated," he said quietly. "I think maybe holding onto the truth is worth more than any diamond Vance could put in his pocket. And I think—" He paused. "I think Anna wanted someone to know. That's why she hid the key where she did. She wanted it found. She wanted someone to care enough to finish what she started."

Margaret's eyes glistened. She blinked, and the wetness was gone, replaced by something harder and brighter.

"Then we'll finish it together," she said. "You and me. We'll get the list to the right people. We'll make sure Anna's death means something. And we'll do it before that clock—" she nodded toward the brass timepiece on the wall "—hits midnight and Moran carries out his threat."

"You don't have to—"

"Yes, I do." She cut him off with a shake of her head. "I dragged you into this, remember? I came to you for help because I didn't know who else to trust. And you—" She laughed, a sound with more than a little disbelief in it. "You're a pickpocket who stole from a morganatic prince and somehow ended up carrying the hopes of a dead woman across the Atlantic. If that's not fate, I don't know what is."

Jack found himself smiling. It felt strange on his face, like a coat that didn't fit quite right. But it was real.

"All right," he said. "Together."

The ship tilted again, more noticeably this time. A glass slid off a nearby tray and shattered on the deck. In the distance, a man's voice shouted something urgent, followed by the sound of running feet.

Margaret looked toward the noise, her jaw set. "Whatever's happening up there, we need to move fast. Vance said he'd be at table eight tonight. If he's planning to make a move—"

"Then we need to be there first." Jack nodded. "But I'm not going in through the main saloon. Moran's got stewards watching every door."

"Then how—"

"I know a way." Jack grinned. "Through the kitchen. It's a trick I learned from a man who used to work the transatlantic lines. If you can get past the pastry chefs, you can get anywhere."

Margaret raised an eyebrow. "Pastry chefs?"

"They're territorial." Jack shrugged. "You'll want to follow my lead."

The ship groaned beneath them, a low metallic sound that seemed to come from everywhere at once. The clock on the wall read ten past eleven.

Forty-eight minutes until midnight. And somewhere in the dark water ahead, the ice was waiting.