Free DOUBLE KNOT by Gretchen Archer Page A

broad-spectrum
     corporate financial activities. Not all Cayman banking was aboveboard and sanctioned
     by the United States Federal Government. But all Cayman banking was tax free on profits
     and capital gains with no withholding taxes for foreign investors, in addition to
     being free of estate and death duties. It was the ideal location for the mega wealthy
     to set up trust, annuity, and savings accounts, and the fifty invited guests on Probability
     had one thing in common: They banked in the Caymans.
    There were three reasons Probability was only making the one stop.
    First, anchorage—where to park the big thing. The draft of a ship refers to the distance
     between the waterline and the keel, the rock bottom. The draft on Probability kept it well away from the shoreline. In other words, what you couldn’t see went
     too deep to dock the ship anywhere near land without running aground. It had to stay
     in the ocean; there weren’t enough tug boats in the whole Caribbean to pull Probability off a sandbar. The bazillionaires would be ferried to George Town on luxury commuter
     speedboats with three-piece Jing Ping bands housed in Probability garages. (The boats were housed in Probability garages.) (Not the Jing Ping bands.) (Surely they had staterooms.)
    The second reason we were only making one stop was interest level. The passengers
     on this cruise had upcountry estates on Maui, chateaus in the south of France, penthouse
     condos on Bora Bora, and beach-front mansions in Monaco. They cared very little about
     the tourist traps of Jamaica, Cozumel, and Montego Bay, because the activities and
     amenities aboard Probability were greater than the activities and amenities in all of the Antilles, Greater and
     Lesser.
    And the third reason Probability had one destination: security.
    “Only one passenger on the entire guest list won’t be bringing private security.”
    “Which one?” I asked. “Me?”
    No Hair and I were in his office and the countdown was on. T-minus six weeks before Probability would set sail. I’d parked my car ten minutes earlier, having just driven back from
     Pine Apple. I’d gone upstairs to Bradley’s and my twenty-ninth floor home to put Anderson
     Cooper to bed, then straight to No Hair’s office. He gave me a bear hug with one massive
     arm around my shoulders and patted my babies bump. He asked about Mother, he asked
     about Daddy, then we took seats at his corner conference table covered with hundreds
     of Probability dossiers.
    “Not you,” he said. “The passenger who isn’t bringing security is actually in the
     security business. He’s his own security. You have security. You’re taken care of.”
    “Fantasy?” I asked.
    “Fantasy is definitely security,” he said, “and she’s definitely booked in your suite.”
    “What have we heard from her?”
    “We’ve heard exactly nothing.”
    Fantasy had been working the bare bones minimum, showing up only when it was absolutely
     necessary. Between my pregnancy, managing Bianca Sanders’s pregnancy, and running
     back and forth to Pine Apple, I’d spent a whopping hour with her over the last six
     months. I had no idea what was going on in her marriage, I missed her, and I was looking
     forward to spending time with her on Probability . “So it’s been you and Baylor all week?”
    He nodded.
    “Are we sure Fantasy’s going to make the cruise?”
    “Davis, they filed.”
    My heart hit a wall. We’d been holding our collective breath waiting for Fantasy and
     her husband Reggie to work it out, and filing for a divorce wasn’t a step in that
     direction.
    “Who they?” I asked. “He filed? He’s divorcing her? On what grounds?” The last time
     we’d talked, a good six weeks earlier, Fantasy’s greatest fear wasn’t that Reggie
     would divorce her—she felt certain he would. Her main concern was that of every mother:
     the fate of her children. To be determined in a courtroom based largely on how he divorced