Page 147 of Without a Clue

He holds out both hands toward the computer like it’s a brand-new baby and says proudly, “Well. She did it.”

The man certainly knows how to create a climactic moment.

Applause breaks out again, even louder this time.

Some even stand.

“She did it,” he repeats over the crowd as he pulls me in and begins to heartily shake my hand. “Everybody meet the future mystery writer of America!”

“That’s a little generous, isn’t it?” I say quietly to him as he takes my hand and raises it in triumph to the crowd.

“A plot primarily about me?”

“Primarily about me,” I interject.

He shrugs. “We can agree to disagree. What we can agree on, however, is that this book will be a tremendous hit. Everyone will know it. And if they don’t at the beginning—what with you being new and all that, naturally—believe me, Pip, we’ll make sure it happens. You’ve got the lot of us by your side.”

I grin.

It’s the first time I’ve felt the force of The Magnificent Seven. Oh, how every author longs for them by their side.

Hugh tilts his head. “What are you going to title it? The Book Cruise? The Magnificent Seven? The Greatest Murder of All Time?”

“Without a Clue,” I say without hesitation. And he laughs.

It’s a fitting title for a girl like me, who ends up on a book cruise only to find her boss and mystery giant has been murdered in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, and due to the incompetence of the security on board realizes it’s up to her and her amateur sleuthing skills to solve the murder before they all hit land.

“You know, if this was all just to get me writing, it was quite the risk,” I say. “Making me believe lives were at risk, giving me a phobia by absolutely terrorizing me with that underwater diving research—”

Hugh raises a finger. “I did not give you a phobia, Pip. I just realized last month that you had quite the disinclination to confined underwater situations and went with it. It’s a handy room to spend the week in for the most part, don’t you think?” he says, waving a hand around the blue room. “Endless karaoke. Lots more fun than the original plan of hiding out in a broom closet. And you’ll be happy to know I continued on with my workshops, so we have plenty of happy cruisers.”

“I noticed that,” I say with a frown. “So what? Everybody on this ship knew . . . except me?”

“Well, you and Nash, of course. But that wasn’t by design. I had intended to tell him alongside the others, but when it was clear he was bent on being with you, I decided we best not tamper with love. Ultimately, I didn’t trust that he would see the vision and keep the secret.”

“He most certainly would not have,” I say. I frown at the others. “But the others did, huh? They were so willing to play along?”

“When they knew the plan, of course. But some were easier to convince than others.” His eyes slide over to Jackie’s. “Unfortunately, I had to pull a card on a couple of them.”

“What card?”

“Well,” he says, slipping his hand behind my shoulder and guiding me offstage as the applause begins to die down. “That’s the thing, Pip. People like to cling to little rumors about The Magnificent Seven. Rumors of secret handshakes and secret meetings. Most are them are terribly fun and terribly untrue, but some?” He smiles. “Some secrets are even better than you can make up. You are, as it turns out, in quite a delightful world.”

I raise a brow. “Like what secrets?”

“Oh, we’ve got a whole booklet on it. I’ll get Jackie to show you sometime. I had to use one, though. The Rule of Yes. When you join The Seven, you have the gift of one automatic yes, no hesitation, no questions asked. You only have one card like this in your lifetime, so you have to use it wisely. As for me, I used it here. You see, that first day everybody believed I really was murdered. I needed it to be so for authenticity’s sake. You saw how awful they reacted when they thought they were in on the plan of me missing. They’re good writers and terrible liars, which is humorous, really, as my writing helps me lie considerably. But there you have it. You saw how everyone reacted. At first, I was afraid Neena was going to lose her mind.”

“She did, Hugh,” I say. “That first day she was a complete wreck.”

Hugh smiles and touches his heart. “It was nice to see I’m so loved, wasn’t it? I found Neena and told her first. Then the others. There were, as you can imagine, several intense reactions. Nobody likes to be woken up in the middle of the night by a ghost over their bed. But”—he shrugs—“Jackie was the only one with whom I was reduced to using Rule #4 on.”

“Which is what, exactly?”

Hugh begins walking us toward the circular table of authors.

“The Rule of Yes. One Ask with a capital A. Whatever the asker needs in that moment, wherever we are, and for whatever purpose, you drop everything and help out. Neena used it on Christmas Eve of 1989. Remember that, Neena? When we all had to fly out to Morocco?”

She grumbles, “I thought he was a prince.”