Free Adrift (Book 1) by K.R. Griffiths Page A

number of reasons.
    Yet something about the voices made Mark pause. It was the tone, he decided. Clipped, almost... fraught . The muffled words were part of a tense exchange, and from the lowered sound of the voices, the men speaking did not want to be overheard.
    Mark had worked in cruise ship security for several years, hopping from ship to ship, usually getting out of one job before his 'attitude problem' got him fired, and moving on to the next. It was an easy life: only once had Mark ever needed to involve himself in anything approaching violence—when two drunken passengers had started a fistfight that ended up turning into a miniature bar brawl.
    In general, cruise ship security just meant...being there. Being visible, and getting paid.
    Once upon a time, not long after he had first started out in the security business, Mark rode shotgun in an armoured truck, delivering eye-watering bundles of money to cash machines in and around Birmingham. That job had required him to undergo some formal training, and he had spent his time in the truck on a state of high alert, scanning for the potential robbery that never came.
    He hadn't lasted long in that role. The constant state of watchfulness he was required to maintain was draining and nerve-wracking at the same time.
    Still, a faint echo of that training returned to him now; rusted over after so many years without use but still apparently functional. Something about the tone of the men's voices he had heard in the ventilation system made his nerves jangle, and he felt that sense of high alert, just as he had when he had been transporting cash.
    Something in the way the men spoke suggested that whoever they were, they weren't supposed to be there.
    Mark stubbed out the cigarette, and listened intently.
     
    *
     
    "You saw a body being thrown overboard."
    Dan gritted his teeth in frustration at the obvious disbelief in the big man's tone.
    When he had finally found his way to the security suite, Dan had told his story to a man in a dark grey uniform who nodded at him, distracted and clearly not listening, before hurriedly passing him on to 'the boss.'
    The boss wore an identical—though much larger—uniform, and introduced himself as Mr Steven Vega, and he spoke to Dan with a puffed-out chest and a raised jaw that reminded Dan of watching old World War Two films with his father when he was a kid.
    In those movies, the British officers always seemed to be stiff-upper-lip types who delivered words like machine gun fire. The kind of guys that expected to have their orders followed immediately and without question.
    As a young boy, Dan had loved those old movies, and the stories his father had told him about how Grandfather Brian had helped to bring Hitler to his knees.
    Brian had passed on years earlier, having discovered that cancer was a battle that bullets and bravado could not win. He didn’t talk about the war much, but he had always maintained that it was nothing like the movies. The officers, Brian had once assured his rapt grandson, were as shit-scared as everybody else, unless they were they types that sat miles behind the front line and handed out the orders.
    Those sort of guys, Brian said, ceased to be important the minute they were out of earshot.
    Steven Vega looked just like one of those movie-officers, though, and Dan felt sure that the man had either been in the military, or had spent a long time watching those same old movies to perfect the look and the attitude.
    Vega's bristling confidence made Dan nervous, but he tried to shrug it off. After all, everybody made Dan nervous.
    "That's right," Dan said, trying to summon up an authoritative tone. "A body wrapped in an orange tarp."
    "So...you didn't actually see a body. You saw a tarp."
    Dan sighed. He had expected a certain level of disbelief, but had hoped also to encounter someone professional enough to at least investigate his claims. From the dubious expression on Mr Vega's face, Dan thought that was