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pace, his blood boiling. “I can’t believe this,” he muttered under his breath.
    “You’re a US citizen, so there is a good chance the FBI will get involved.”
    “You don’t believe me, do you? You actually think that I tossed my wife off the ship.”
    Bennington sighed. “Including staff, there are almost six thousand people on this ship that we are still responsible for. We have a suicide note written by your missing wife—”
    “And you have my testimony that three men threw me off the damn boat!”
    “There’s nothing more we can do, Mr. Green. I really am very sorry. We’ll continue to search the ship, but until we reach port and allow the proper authorities to take over, all we can do is hope she’s okay.”
    “Hope she’s okay ? She’s at the bottom of the ocean, you piece of—” Despair fueled his anger with hot tears that were suddenly streaking down his face. “Do I look like someone who wants to die? Like someone who came out here to jump? Like some freakin’ lunatic who wanted to get rid of some tramp of a wife?” The resolve he’d spent building over the last two hours slowly melted away beneath a whole new wave of grief. “She had cancer ! We came here for one last good time before…” He clenched his fists. “Why the hell would she jump the first night?” He sobbed in frustration, wanting to feel the guy’s vertebrae crackle and pop in his bare hands. “And what, you think I’m making up the masked men? For what reason? Why would I do that?”
    Bennington stood and calmly shrugged. “I don’t know you, so I obviously can’t answer that question. Maybe you forced her to write the letter, and then you threw her overboard, except that you slipped yourself. Or maybe you wrote the letter.”
    “You little—” Jack almost charged the man.
    “All I’m saying is that I’m ill-equipped to do anything more in this situation. It’s a matter for the police now. As soon as we reach port, the proper authorities will be here to further investigate. In the meantime, I have six thousand other passengers to look after.”

9
     
    Jack spent the next two days sitting on a bed and staring at a blank hotel wall in Nassau while the local police force did as little investigating as possible into his wife’s disappearance and his own “alleged” abduction. He would have taken a flight home sooner had he not been so terrified of confronting Joseph with the news of his mother’s death. It was news he had gotten himself once, and he couldn’t even imagine presenting such pain to his son now. Every time he picked up the phone to call a taxi, he thought of Joseph’s face as his little mind would try to comprehend the bitter sword of truth plunging into his heart. Even now, after so many years, Jack’s own heart still bore the scars of such news. After slamming the phone back into its cradle, he could only bury his head in his hands and start sobbing all over again.
    Today was different though.
    Now, day three of this nightmare, he yearned desperately to hear Joseph’s voice, to see his smile. He needed his son if he was going to make it another week, needed to hear his voice if he was going to make it another day . The knowledge that they would eventually get through this and that Joseph would need him as much as he needed Joseph in order to do so was the only anchor fastening Jack to the spinning rock spiraling crazily though the galaxy. If not for his son, he would be spending the next week and a half getting as drunk as possible in preparation for the trip back to Miami—with, of course, no intention of actually reaching Miami. Without Stacey, his life would be a joke, the punch line not worth sticking around for.
    So Joseph would have to fill that hole, become the sun that rose over his world every morning, the only star capable of blotting out the pain. But he needed to hear his son’s squeaky voice now, before the grief stormed back and changed his mind.
    He swore, slammed the