Her fingers fumbled to release the knapsack as she started to run again. Sobs caught in her throat. She heard the footsteps gaining on her.

No—no. Just turned twenty-one, she was finally free to live on her own. She couldn’t die now. Her fresh burst of speed granted her another hundred yards before hands found her throat.

Chapter 1

FRIDAY, JUNE 19, TEN YEARS LATER

AT SEA

GAVIN GRAY HURRIED down the hallway, crashing into one handrail and then the other as he struggled to keep his balance. “If I weren’t on a ship, I’d think I was drunk,” he mumbled. But he didn’t care. His adrenaline was pumping so much he felt light-headed. Another reason to bounce off the walls.

The ocean liner he was sailing on, a magnificent floating city, had hit rocky seas tonight. It would be another day and a half before they docked in Southampton, England. Not soon enough, he thought as he lunged his way to the safety of his cabin. He couldn’t wait to see land again, and the weather they’d experienced during this crossing had nothing to do with it.

He had already spent enough time on this mammoth vessel playing the genial host. “Let them find someone else to make an idiot out of himself doing the cha-cha. No more black and blue marks for me,” he cackled under his breath.

On these long transatlantic crossings, there was always an abundance of unescorted females. Hoping to help even the odds, the cruise line had hired him as a sixty-two-year-old host—a roving companion who would be only too willing to whisk them off onto the dance floor and suffer the brutality of their aimless kicks.

Just this morning he had been teaching the polka to an enthusiastic octogenarian wearing black bulky shoes. They were like gunboats hinged on her thick ankles, targeted for his luckless feet. Gavin winced when he thought of it. Stomping on someone’s foot was supposed to be a form of self-defense, not a recreational activity.

Reaching his cabin door, he slipped his key into the polished brass keyhole and sighed in grateful relief. He sat down on his bed, lay back, and stared up at the ceiling as he tried to catch his breath. Funny how these cabins are so much smaller than the way they appear in the brochures, Gavin thought. Really funny for the poor slobs shelling out thousands to park their behinds on these bunks for a dreamy week at sea. Victims of trick photography.

He turned and looked at the digital clock next to his bed. Eleven thirty-two P.M. Should he go to the casino and get a nightcap? Be seen? Charm any of the single ladies still awake? He certainly could use a brandy to calm his nerves. No, he finally decided, he had better not. Most people had retired to their rooms early tonight, the stormy seas, not Mr. Sandman, being the reason.