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Vampiress’s.
    And then she wanted to throw up.
    “Evan?” Her voice quivered in the early stages of panic.
    She started to unlock the cabin, but didn’t want to have to lock everything back up if she had to go find him, so instead she twisted her rings while standing at the back of the boat. Luckily, she was a bit early. Maybe he just wasn’t a punctual guy. Good thing she’d told him an hour before the first actual tour.
    She waited five more minutes, checking her cell. She had so much to do. If she had no deckhand, she had to pull the covers off everything, and she wanted to set up the cabin for guests the way Drew always did. And dang, she sure could’ve used a coffee. She glanced longingly up the dock through the morning fog, hoping Cora would show. Although Lia could probably figure out how to use Cora’s French press if pressed.Desperate times, and all. Her cell phone told her only two more minutes had passed.
    She headed back into the cabin and rummaged through a drawer for the small chain that Drew sometimes used across the stern. Her hand flew across a piece of cardboard in her neatest, most professional Sharpie handwriting, which still came out a little too bubbly, but it would do:
10 a.m. Whale-Watching Tour: Wait Here!
She hung the note and the chain at the stern entrance and dashed down the dock toward the guest slips, twisting her ankle at the bottom of the dock.
    Dang
. Even her body was betraying her. . . . She rubbed it and hobbled on.
    Evan’s sailboat looked the same as it had the other days. She couldn’t tell if he had slept onboard or not. That would drive Drew crazy. He was a stickler for rules, and was friends with the harbormaster, Harry James.
    Lia glanced around for Harry and kept her voice down in case: “
Evan
?” she called in a loud whisper, limping along the port side.
    Fog left a quiet pall along the harbor as she scanned the deck for any clues, but the white February sun was starting to break through, glinting off the boat’s brass rails. From her ten-foot distance, she tried to peer into the cabin windows. Some kind of brown paper covered or blocked most of them from the inside, except one, which had a torn curtain pulled back enough to take a peek.
    “Mr. Betancourt?” she tried again, louder. “
Evan?
It’s me, Lia.”
    She eyed the deck. Should she take her chances and jump down? Knock on his door? After what happened yesterday, she didn’t want to risk it. But time was ticking here, and she couldn’t just stand around and wonder where he was.
    “
Evan
?” Louder.
    Nothing.
    She glanced at her phone for the time. Tentatively, she poked her toe against the hull. The boat rocked gently, but not enough to wake him. Finally, she went for it: She threw her weight into a leap and flung herself onto the deck. A sharp pain skewered through her ankle, but she’d live. She regained her balance and rapped on the cabin door.
    “
Evan?
It’s me, Lia,” she called before he thought it was an intruder again. “Are you in there?”
    She got only to the second rap when the cabin door flew open and Evan scowled outside.
    Seemingly half-awake, he stood, half-bent, with only jeans on, his arm casually dangling a gun at his side. His other hand came up to shield the morning sun from his eyes, and he squinted to bring her into focus, then—when it finally seemed to register who she was—he murmured an obscenity and whirled back into the cabin.
    Through the half-ajar door, she watched him snatch up a shirt from a bed that seemed to take up the whole back of the cabin and slide it over his muscles while he opened a side drawer and tossed the gun inside. Behind the gun, he shoved some type of small, silver-framed picture, then slammed the drawer. Two empty scotch bottles teetered, and one tumbled onto the floor as he swore again and threw it on the bed, which was covered in discarded clothing.
    Lia was still blinking her shock at seeing him so scarcely clothed, an unbid intimacy