Read Chapter 17: Collision Course

The bow was already under. Élodie felt it through the soles of her shoes—that terrible, irresistible tilt that turned every step uphill into a war against gravity. The boat deck, which had been a chaos of shouting officers and weeping women twenty minutes ago, now stretched before them nearly empty, a tilted stage awaiting its final act.

Tom leaned against her, his broken arm pressed white against his chest, his good hand gripping the rail. His face was the color of old paper. The hidden wound on his side had soaked through the bandage Élodie had tied not an hour ago, leaving a dark bloom spreading across his torn waistcoat.

"William," Tom rasped. "We can't leave him."

Mr. Hargrave sat crumpled against the base of a funnel, his head lolling, his breath coming in shallow gasps. The earlier collapse on the staircase had robbed him of whatever strength remained. Marie knelt beside him, pressing her shawl to his forehead, her face unreadable in the dark.

Élodie opened her mouth to speak—to argue, to plan, to do something—when the ship groaned.

Not the way she had heard it groan before. This was something new. A sound that came from deep in the hull, a metallic screeching that climbed the scale until it became a deafening howl. The bow plunged. Water exploded over the forward deck in a white curtain that rushed toward them like a living thing.

"Hold on!" Tom shouted.

Élodie grabbed for the rail, but her fingers slipped on the ice-cold metal. The wave caught her at the knees, lifted her off her feet, and slammed her against the funnel's base. Salt water filled her mouth, her nose, her lungs. She was spinning, blind, drowning—

A hand closed around her wrist. Tom. He had her. He pulled, his teeth gritted, his broken arm useless at his side but his good arm fighting the water's grip. She kicked, found a foothold on something solid, and broke the surface gasping.

Around them, the deck was awash. The wave receded as suddenly as it had come, leaving pools of swirling water and debris. A deck chair splintered past. A lifebelt. A woman's glove.

And something small and golden, tumbling toward the scuppers.

Élodie lunged without thinking, her hand closing around the object just before it slipped into the sea. She came up holding it, water streaming from her fingers.

A locket. Oval, brass, tarnished at the edges. A child's locket, the kind a mother might give a son before a long journey.

Rose's toy. The one the girl had been clutching in the second-class playroom, the one she had lost in the rush to the boats.

"Rose dropped this," Élodie said, her voice hoarse. She turned it over in her palm. "She was so upset when we couldn't find it—"

Tom was staring at it, something strange in his eyes. "Open it."

The catch was stiff with seawater. Élodie worked it with her thumbnail until it gave way with a small, sharp *click*.

Inside was no portrait. No lock of hair. Instead, scratched into the inner face of the brass in crude, hurried letters, was a message:

*MARIE IS NOT MY NAME.*

Élodie's blood went cold. She read it again. And again. The scratches were fresh enough to catch the light, the metal bright beneath where a blade had bitten deep.

Tom reached for it, swayed, and caught himself on the rail. "Let me see that."

She handed it over without thinking, her mind racing. *Marie is not my name.* Whose handwriting? A child's? Louis had been with Rose in the playroom. The children had been playing with the locket when they were separated from Marie. And Marie—

*I am not Marie.* The note they had found in the flooding mailroom. The same words.

"Who is she?" Élodie heard herself say. "If not Marie, then who?"

Tom turned the locket over in his good hand. The motion made him wince, and Élodie saw fresh blood darken his bandage. His face was grey now, not just pale, and she knew with a horrible certainty that he was losing more than she could measure.

"Louis's mother," he said slowly, "was called Hélène. The wife of the man who—" He stopped. Swallowed. "The man I hurt. The man who killed my brother."

Élodie could not breathe. The pieces were there, scattered before her, but the pattern refused to form. "The man who killed your brother. The man Marie said was her husband. The man whose *body* she claims she needs to find."

"The same man." Tom's voice was barely a whisper. "I saw her at the funeral, months ago. The widow in black. I never saw her face clearly, only her back, her veil. But the height was right. The way she stood—"

"She's not Marie." Élodie's hand went to her mouth. "She's the widow of the man you—"

"I don't know." Tom grabbed her arm, his grip fierce despite his weakness. "I don't know what I believe anymore. But if she is his widow, then the husband she's so desperate to recover is not her husband. And the children—she never said they were hers. She said she was responsible for them. They were in her care."

Louis's red ribbon, washing up in the mailroom. The locket, scratched with a confession. The note, dropped in the flood. Marie refusing to board the boats, insisting she must go back down to the mailroom. Not for her husband's body, perhaps. But to make sure no one else found what she had left behind.

"It's her." The words came out of Élodie like a confession of her own. "She left the note for us to find. She wanted us to know. Before—"

"Before the ship goes down," Tom finished. "She doesn't plan to survive this. She's going down with her secrets."

Another groan shook the ship, deeper this time. The bow had sunk so far that water now lapped at the base of the forward funnel. The remaining lifeboat—the last collapsible, still being cut free by frantic sailors—sat thirty yards away, angled so steeply that the passengers already aboard were clutching each other to keep from sliding.

William Hargrave had not moved. His eyes were closed, his lips blue. Marie stood over him now, her wet hair plastered to her skull, looking down at him with an expression Élodie could not read.

"She won't leave him," Tom said. "Whoever she is. She won't leave any of us."

Élodie looked at the locket in her hand. At the cruel scratches, the child's clumsy letters. She thought of Rose and Louis in the lifeboat, sailing away into the dark without their parents. She thought of the note still in Marie's pocket—or was it Marie's pocket—unread by anyone who could accuse her.

She thought of the promise she had made Marie in the mailroom, dripping water and fear: *I will help you.*

"I have to talk to her." Élodie shoved the locket into her own pocket, felt its cold weight settle against her hip. "Before the last boat goes. I have to know who she really is."

Tom caught her wrist. His fingers were ice. "Élodie. If she's dangerous—"

"She's already saved my life twice." Élodie pulled free, gently. "And she risked everything to save those children. Whatever she's running from, whoever she is—she's not my enemy. Not tonight."

She turned before he could argue, and picked her way across the tilted deck toward the woman who had claimed a name that was not her own.

The ship groaned again. Somewhere below, something massive gave way with a sound like the world ending.