Page 71 of Terminal Voyage

I shook my head. It didn't make sense. I'd seen her just a few days ago.

Didn't I?

I began to put all the pieces together. I was so drunk that night. Was it that I hallucinated my encounter with Kate? Or did her spirit pay me a visit?

Was Kate already dead when I first spoke to her?

Perhaps I was so far gone that the veil between this world and the next was thin. Maybe with all my inhibitions removed, I accessed my gift. It was always something I resisted.

I knew in my gut that Kate wasn’t missing. She was dead. She had been on this boat and never left.

I was going to prove it.

Too amped up to sleep, my mind raced, trying to put all the pieces together. I tossed and turned all night and finally pulled myself out of bed around 7 o'clock for breakfast.

I joined the others on the bridge deck aft. The usual spread was available—pancakes, waffles, French toast, omelettes, you name it. I could get used to this.

I kept my new discovery to myself for the moment. But I was bursting at the seams to tell someone. I figured Vanessa would be my only confidant.

Yesterday was gone. Everyone continued on as if it didn't happen. Just another stop in a long tour of the Caribbean. I didn’t plan on going back to Puerto Maya anytime soon. We had escaped Mexican waters and were tied up in a marina in Corazón Bay. The Universe had conspired to put me here, and I felt closer than ever to discovering the truth.

After breakfast, I pulled Vanessa aside and showed her the magazine.

“Oooh, I love that dress!”

"No, not the dress! The model."

"What about the model?”

"That's her. That's Kate!”

"Kate, Kate? Your ghost?"

I told her all the information I had found.

She looked at me, dumbfounded. "You're serious?”

I nodded.

"Well, that explains everything," Vanessa said.

"What do you mean?”

"You’re not crazy after all.”

"I know that.”

"I mean, you're crazy, but clearly, you were flipping through the magazine, and she got into your subconscious. You must have read an article online about her disappearance. Then you put it all together, and it came out as a wild story when you had too much to drink.”

I shook my head. "No. I never read the magazine. I never read any articles online about her before last night.”

"That you're aware of,” she said. “Maybe you picked it up while you were drunk and don't remember. I'm sure there's alotabout that night you don't remember."

I frowned and hung my head, ashamed. Then I shook it off. "It doesn't matter. What matters now is finding out what happened to Kate. She's been missing for a month.”

"Why make it your issue? You’ve got other things to worry about, don't you?”

"Yes, but she reached out to me for a reason.”