Deadly Fate

* * *

Safe.

Clara had reached the Alaska Hut at last.

She wasn’t alone—and she didn’t need to be afraid. She was surrounded by policemen and FBI agents, and other scared and frightened members of her own cast and crew and the film crew.

She sat in a chair at the kitchen table, a blanket around her shoulders, a cup of hot coffee in her hands—and still she was shivering.

“Come, let’s sail the Alaskan cruise, it will be different, it will be fun!” Ralph Martini, at her side, murmured. “Fun!” he sniffed. He glanced over at Clara and then winced. “Sorry,” he said softly.

“No, it’s all right—it was my idea for us all to work on this cruise,” Clara said. She still felt like an ice cube even though the log cabin that was the Alaska Hut was well heated. She knew that the numbness was inside her. She was managing to speak, to sound somewhat coherent—and to take it all in.

The truth of everything was beginning to sink into her consciousness and comprehension. What was real and what was not.

The Mansion—where she had stumbled upon all kinds of horrors—had not offered anything real. She’d run from an imaginary foe when she’d left the place, too terrified to scream. Cameras had been shooting her movements. She shouldn’t have been there alone, though. She should have been there with Natalie Fontaine.

Except she knew now that Natalie Fontaine was dead—but not among the carnage that had appeared to fill the Mansion. She’d never made it to the island. She was dead back at her hotel room.

Decapitated.

While the members of the Fate cast had traveled to the island—Ralph, Simon and Larry had come together. They’d arrived at the Mansion about a half hour before Clara. They had also screamed their way out and run to the Alaska Hut—only they hadn’t stumbled upon the body of Amelia Carson along the way.

Cameras rigged at the Mansion would have captured first the terror—and then what was supposed to have been a laugh.

No one was laughing.

Because of what had happened to Natalie, Misty Blaine hadn’t gone to the island, and Amelia Carson hadn’t been there because she’d been dead, as well.

According to Nate Mahoney—who had spoken as if he’d become a zombie himself—it would have been a great crossover. The cast would have been featured on Gotcha, and then on Vacation USA as wonderful people who had come to work an Alaskan cruise, talking about why they loved the state so very much.

At the moment, Clara wasn’t sure that she loved Alaska at all. But then, she was still in shock, she assumed.

“It really doesn’t have anything at all to do with the ship,” Larry Hepburn said, trying to speak lightly.

“That’s right,” Simon Green said. “This is someone—someone who hates reality TV. And, I mean, that’s half of America. Some shows are cool—you know, where they save people or really give people jobs at the end. But, most of it...”

His voice trailed off.

“Alaska is beautiful,” Ralph said.

Clara looked at the three men at the table with her. Ralph Martini, kick-ass tenor, star of many a Broadway, off-Broadway and off-off-Broadway show. Simon Green, new kid on the block, early twenties, thrilled to have his first speaking role/solo song in Annabelle Lee, the play they were set to perform on the Fate the following Saturday night. Larry Hepburn, tall, blond, bronzed—everyone’s golden-hunk guy, leading man for the play.

They’d all worked the Caribbean and Mexico together on the Celtic American Line’s Destiny ship—until a serial killer had been taken down aboard. Clara had known she was in danger on the ship, but she had never faced anything like this, nor had she stumbled upon a dead body then...a dead body in two pieces.

Not that the previous situation hadn’t been awful. And naturally, after it had all happened, she’d wanted to go in a new direction.

When she’d learned about Annabelle Lee, her new path had seemed perfectly clear. Alaska! What could be more different from the sunny Caribbean? And the cast called for a middle-aged tenor in a great role as the father of the house—Ralph!—as well as two younger men and two younger women. Larry and Simon fit the bill perfectly for Ashley, the haunted husband, and Billie Boy, Annabelle’s brother. Clara had gotten the role of Annabelle, the light and ethereal ghost still longing for life, while Connie Shaw, great dark-haired alto, was the young hero’s new wife, having to deal with the ghost of the past—who just didn’t want to go away.

Simon, heroically trying to save Clara’s friend Alexi Cromwell when they were on the Destiny, had broken a leg in a fall down a flight of stairs on the ship. His injury was healing nicely, but since he was a song-and-dance man, it was great that this show only required a few ballroom-dancing numbers between the ghost and Ashley, played by Larry Hepburn. It made the part perfect for Simon while he continued working his rehab exercises on his leg.

It had seemed so good. And so they had all headed up to Seward. She’d heard about the beauty of Alaska for years from other performers with whom she’d worked. Clara had come as soon as possible—longing to see as much as she could of Seward before going into the long days and nights of rehearsals. She’d spent time at the museum, learning about the native people, the first Russians on the scene, “Seward’s Folly,” the quake that had devastated the area in 1964, and more. She’d been able to take a small local cruise to see the majesty of the glaciers, giant whales breeching, the power of falling ice...but there was so much more she wanted to discover. The wildlife, dogsled races, the raw geography of the area, Kenai Fjords National Park—everything that made Alaska so special and different. And, eventually, she would find the time, but then...

The time she had given herself just hadn’t been enough.

Rehearsals had started, and then Celtic American had contacted her and some of the others about filming for Vacation USA and she had met with Natalie Fontaine and agreed to head out on the ferry and meet her at the Mansion, and then the blood and guts that had been fake and now...

Now the blood and guts that were real.

Simon, slim, young and earnest, reached over for her hand. “It’s going to be all right.”

“Yeah,” Ralph said. “None of us blames you.”

“Blames me!” she repeated, staring at him, her temper rising. “Blames me? For what? Hey—you guys were out of a job. The ship was being held for months. I found out about this opportunity and told you about it!”

“I could have been playing that new role on Broadway,” Ralph said.

Clara felt the frown that gripped her brow. “That role is being played by Jeff Goldblum. I don’t think you should have counted on it—no offense, Ralph. Mr. Goldblum does have one hell of a résumé.”

Ralph sniffed.

“Hey—I’m happy. I’m out of the chorus,” Simon said. He smiled at Clara. “And I know I wouldn’t have any role on Broadway!”

“That didn’t come out right,” Ralph murmured. “I’m sorry, Clara. Really. I mean, this is going to be okay. This doesn’t have to do with us. This has to do with someone who really, really, really hates reality TV.”

Clara was silent. She prayed it went beyond that. One woman decapitated; one woman cut in half. That seemed like a lot more than anger.

“Miss Avery?”

She looked up. It was the wall of an FBI man who had pitched her down into the snow—and scared her out of ten years of life. She realized that she hadn’t been thinking FBI because these guys looked so different. He’d been bundled up in an official parka; now, he had doffed the jacket and he looked like a Norse lumberjack. He was Norse—he had said so. Norse American, obviously. He was very tall—possibly six-four or six-five—and definitely built like a logger. But then, she’d spent enough time with Jude McCoy and Jackson Crow of the FBI to know that they took their work seriously. They went to the gun range frequently, and they went regularly to the gym, since their strength and agility in the field could be just as important as tools of their trade.

“Your turn for the grill—I guess we come right after you,” Ralph murmured.

She supposed that they would. The state cops who had arrived first on the scene with a second FBI man had stayed with the cast where they were grouped together at the kitchen table. Clara knew that, a little more than a hundred yards away, police, FBI, techs and whoever else, were still working on the crime scene. So far the living film crew on the island—Nate Mahoney, Becca Marle and Tommy Marchant—had been questioned at the Alaska Hut. Clara felt bad for them; she’d only met Natalie Fontaine and Amelia Carson once. But that crew had worked with the two women hand in hand for several years.

Now, she wondered where the three of them had gone—or if law enforcement was purposely keeping them all apart.

Or, if they were lucky, and are already off this wretched island.

“Miss Avery?”

He had to repeat her name. She rose and followed him out of the kitchen. She passed through the dining room and the cozy parlor with its raw wood furniture and huge stone hearth to the office straight across from the kitchen.

There, Special Agent Thor Erikson indicated that she take a chair.

“You all right?” he asked her.

“Just great,” she replied. “Nothing like being taken with a bunch of fake blood—and nearly plowing into a pool of the real stuff.”