Page 69 of Fire and Ice Cruise

“She’s running from something. Financial troubles, for sure. She threw her phone in the ocean in Isafjordur. She was arguing with someone on a call right before. She looked devastated in that bar in Copenhagen, and Gideon clearly knew her even though she claims they’d never met.” I watch Wes carefully.

Ransom nods. “I have a gut feeling she’s hiding something big.”

“Everyone is hiding something,” Wes counters as if he’s defending her.

“True,” I say. “But not everyone is hiding something that may have got a man killed.”

Wes doesn’t respond. He just stares up at the gray sky with his jaw set tight.

“How do you feel?” I ask as gently as I can. “Knowing that Marina is essentially a suspect?”

He’s quiet for a long moment and I can tell he wishes he didn’t have to answer. “I’m not thrilled.”

“If she did it,” Ransom says, breaking his silence, “we know for a fact it wasn’t premeditated.”

“There’s a silver lining,” Wes growls at him for even suggesting it.

“She didn’t even know Gideon.” Bess nods, her practical side kicking in. “She wouldn’t have had time to plan anything.”

I give a little shrug, feeling the warm water lap at my shoulders. “But he sure seemed to think he knew her.”

Wes sighs, long and heavy, then flips onto his back, closing his eyes with his arms spread wide. Trying to float away from his troubles. Literally.

Bess and Nettie follow suit, drifting like starfish in the milky blue water.

Ransom glides up beside me and hooks an arm around my waist beneath the water, reeling me in like the day's catch. His chin finds my shoulder. “When in Rome?”

“When in Reykjavik,” I counter, but I lean back against him and we both tip onto our backs, staring up at the slate gray sky while floating in one of nature’s most invigorating hot tubs.

We float in blissful silence for a while, the heat seeping into places I didn’t realize were still cold from the investigation. And for a few minutes there’s no murder, no suspects, not a single secret pressing in on me—just warm water and gray sky and the people I’d follow to the ends of the earth. Or Iceland, which is close enough.

Eventually, we all drift back toward each other, upright and pruning and significantly more relaxed than we arrived.

Wes pushes off toward the swim-up bar. “Drinks anyone?”

“Yes,” we all say in unison.

He swims away with smooth, efficient strokes, and Bess, Nettie, and I look at each other for the first time in proper light, and all at once, we belt out a sharp, shrill scream.

“What’s happening to your hair?” Bess shrieks, staring at Nettie.

“What’s happening to YOUR hair?” Nettie shoots back.

I pat at my own mane, and encounter something that feels less like hair and more like steel wool dipped in concrete. “Why does my hair feel like a loofah?” I howl.

Bess groans, running her fingers through her own strands, and meeting serious resistance. “We look like a trio of sea witches!”

“Norse sea witches,” Nettie corrects, examining a chunk of her hair with scientific interest. “There’s a difference.”

“There really isn’t,” I say, trying and failing to smooth down what used to be relatively manageable waves, and is now something that could scrub pots.

“The silica,” Bess moans. “It coated everything.”

“I look like I stuck my finger in a socket,” Nettie says cheerfully.

“You look like you fought an electrical storm and lost,” I tell her.

“So do you!”