Tuesday Tales: From the Word MULTIPLY

Welcome back to this week’s Tuesday Tales, the weekly blog post where a small group of authors share their work in progress with you. My last few posts have been on the gory side, but now I’m going to put you to work and make you think.

I’m continuing with The White Dahlia, Book Four of The Harvester Files. Enjoy!

“Both on cruises? That’s a hell of a coincidence. Were they traveling alone?”

“It looks that way. At the time Rachel disappeared, I questioned her boyfriend, but he had a rock solid alibi. He was four thousand miles away in Anchorage, Alaska. When I told him Rachel had vanished, he was sure something bad had happened to her. He didn’t believe she would voluntarily run off since her music meant everything to her. She was a gifted pianist on scholarship at Juilliard. Her aunt reported her missing. The woman swore Rachel had returned to New York. Apparently, she’d messaged her when the ship made port, promising to phone as soon as she got back to her apartment. She never did. According to the vessel’s records, the woman debarked and collected her luggage. Customs agreed she made it through passport control. Then, she vanished.” He snapped his fingers. “She might as well have been abducted by aliens. There were no leads, nothing.”

“And the new case?”

“It’s as if Rachel’s case simply multiplied itself. After her cousin fell and broke her leg the week before they were set to sail, Rebecca decided to take the trip anyway. She was on vacation for a couple of weeks. No one filed a report until she failed to turn up at work three weeks later. I spoke to the cousin.She figured Rebecca was mad at her for screwing up. Like Rachel, Rebecca made it through customs and passport control, and then poof!”

Her eyes narrowed in speculation. “You think there’s some kind of predator who hunts single women on cruise ships, and then what? Kidnaps them, keeps them until he’s bored with them, kills them, freezes them, and while they’re turning into ice cubes, goes out hunting again?”

“I don’t know what I was thinking, but it definitely wasn’t that. Interesting theory. I was working under the assumption they’d somehow been dragged into the sex trade, maybe picked up at the port by an uber driver. Your theory doesn’t contradict that, especially considering the brand, but if they were singled out on board … That’s something to consider. If a friend offered you a ride, you might not think twice about accepting. The thing is, no one remembers seeing either of them leaving the port, but you know what a zoo that place is, especially with three thousand people rushing to get to their buses, and there aren’t any cameras outside.”

That’s it. Stay safe and don’t forget to check out the other Tuesday Tales.