Distress Signals by Howard Catherine Ryan

Author:Howard, Catherine Ryan [Howard, Catherine Ryan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Mystery, thriller, Suspense, Crime, Contemporary
ISBN: 9781504757522
Amazon: 1504757521
Goodreads: 30509033
Publisher: Blackstone Publishing
Published: 2016-05-05T07:00:00+00:00

It – she, I should say – was parked – docked – alongside the terminal building, which now that I thought about it made sense. We would simply check in here and walk aboard, just like that.

This is really going to happen. I’m going to get on the Celebrate.

Or try to, anyway. Peter had concerns that one or both of our names could be flagged. I’d made the booking – two cabins, one under Peter’s name and one under my own – without encountering any problems, but it might be a different story trying to physically board the boat. He’d explained that that was partly why he’d never attempted to board the ship before. The other reason was the fact that he’d cleaned out his bank account petitioning Blue Wave in court for access to CCTV and then, after that failed, filing a civil suit.

Either way, our tickets were non-refundable. My credit card was effectively melted down now.

We flashed our tickets to a security guard manning the start of a line for Customs and Immigration, then showed our passports to Spanish border guards.

We barely spoke to each other while we waited. There was only one thing we wanted to talk to each other about, and when we did it we couldn’t risk being overheard.

Afterwards, we shuffled to a check-in counter where our passports were scanned and our photos taken by a tiny camera mounted on the desk. I could feel Peter tensing beside me as the agent activated our Swipeout cards, but she said nothing to us except for an automatic-sounding, ‘You’re all set. You’ll be Boarding Area C.’ Then she handed me a blue plastic wallet and told us to enjoy our cruise.

The wallet had a Blue Wave logo on it, but it was different to the one on Sarah’s note. They were rebranding, I remembered the receptionist saying back at the Blue Wave office. The tickets had the waves so this logo, on the wallet – an outline of a boat – must be the one they were replacing.

Up ahead, passengers were posing in front of a backdrop of the Celebrate at sea while a professional photographer hopped around them, shouting instructions and snapping his lens. When he was done, relevant Swipeout cards were scanned into a handheld machine by the photographer’s overly enthusiastic Blue Wave T-shirt-wearing assistant who squealed the same line every thirty seconds, like one of those dolls with a pull-string on their back. ‘Don’t forget to stop at The Photo Shop on the Oceanic Deck where prints start at just €9.99!’

‘We should do it,’ Peter said. ‘Everyone does. We don’t want to stand out.’

So the two of us stood in front of a picture of the ship where, as far as we knew, the women we loved had last been seen alive, and smiled wide for the camera.

After that there was one more security check where our Swipeout cards were compared to our photo IDs, and our bags scanned. Then escalators carried us up onto the terminal’s mezzanine level.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.