A/N: A 2022 Xmas story. I plan to publish chapters on Sunday from now until December 11th, and then publish more frequently, hoping to finish before Christmas day, if possible.

Chuck Bartowski plans to take a slow, relaxing, train trip from LA to NYC. In NYC, he will visit his sister and her family for Christmas. But on board, Chuck meets a beautiful woman, Sarah Walker, whose traveling companion, Carina Miller, mysteriously vanishes. Sarah searches for her and asks Chuck for help. Together they attempt to unravel the strange circumstances of Carina's disappearance from the moving train.

The Vanishing Woman

Trains tap into some deep American collective memory.

― Dana Frank

Chapter One: Red

Chuck Bartowski pressed his lips together to keep from whistling with pleasure, the pleasure of freedom. He almost jumped for joy.

Anticipation coursed through him.

For months, no years, he had been toiling away, building a company that he had sold just two days before for a vast sum of money. He had signed the papers and walked away. An ounce of regret and a pound of uncertainty accompanied the sound of his fountain pen on paper, but, as he capped the pen, he felt he had uncapped himself.

He was free.

He was headed toward New York from LA, Union Station to Penn Station, on a three-night journey to visit his sister, Ellie Woodcomb, a neurosurgeon in the Big Apple. It had been two years since he had seen her and her husband, Devon, and he had yet to see his niece, Clara, born eighteen months ago.

Of course, he'd seen countless pictures and videos, but watching on his computer, or worse, on his phone, was not remotely a substitute for actual presence, for being in the same room with the tiny blonde beauty who so resembled her mother. Clara had lately learned to say his name, and he was eager to hear it from her lips, and not from a speaker. He would spend Christmas with them.

He had only the vaguest plans for his post-Christmas future, but the bottom line was that he was now wealthy enough to forgo working for the rest of his life. He had, out of curiosity, checked his bank account again before he left his apartment. The number of zeros after the initial crooked numbers had intimidated him so much that he logged out, in danger of hyperventilating.

Despite his bank account, taking a permanent vacation was not what he expected to do; no, he expected the old itch to create, to program, to claim him again after some R&R, but, for now, he was going to enjoy the freedom, the freedom not only of travel but also of an empty planner, nothing scheduled except his visit to Ellie and her family, the holiday.

A holiday. Christmas. Sightseeing sounded good, Christmas in the city: his previous trips to NYC had all been business trips, jail-celled in conference rooms, the city less a 3D physical place than a 2D prospect out of large windows on top floors.

Maybe I'll take Clara with me, and give Ellie and Devon time off.

But he would work that out, the sightseeing, the babysitting, whatever. For now, he was going to enjoy the leisurely train trip eastward that he had booked. Three nights aboard a train, alone, uninterrupted.

He had a first-class cabin reserved, a bedroom suite, meals planned in the executive dining car, and a half-dozen paperback mysteries in his luggage, along with gifts for Ellie, Devon, and Clara. The latest Roark Enterprises laptop — a last-minute gift to himself — was in his backpack. He was eager to play with the computer; it was supposed to be cutting-edge. The train had wifi, so, if he wanted, he could surf as he chugged along. His phone was a cornucopia of his favorite music; he had a pair of fully charged, state-of-the-art Bluetooth headphones. All in all, he was ready for a few peaceful days of rocking, rolling railroad travel, staring purposelessly out the window of his cabin, feet up, watching out the window as America unreeled itself left to right.

He grinned in anticipation, tempted again to whistle in sheer pleasure. He stood on the Union Station platform, letting the moving, maddening crowd part around him, gazing at the sleek, metallic train, a new Viewliner, reveling in the sights, sounds, and smells. He adored trains. His best Christmas as a boy wafted back to him, his number-one Christmas present ever: an HO gauge model train set — The Polar Express. This trip would not reproduce that magic, of course, and it would lack Tom Hanks as conductor. Still, he felt a thrill of excitement gazing at the life-size train, a thrill much like the thrill he had that Christmas morning gazing at the HO Polar Express.

Sometimes, bigger is better — or just as good. Adulting isn't all bad.

He took his wallet from his breast pocket. A quick look at his ticket confirmed his memory of his cabin number, and he walked along, jostling and being jostled in turn until he found the right car. He got on, pulling his luggage up behind him, and negotiated the narrow hallway, keeping track of the numbers, until he reached his cabin.

The door was open and he pulled his luggage inside and plopped down heavily on the seat, a bit overcome by all the excitement and by the exercise of boarding. A gym — he needed to find a gym near Ellie when he got to NYC. Over the last few weeks, as he prepared for the sale of his company, and did interviews with TV, magazines, and newspapers, he'd neglected himself, gotten too little exercise, and eaten too much junk. He hadn't gained any weight; he was still his constantly lanky self. But he felt a smidgen soft, and clearly, breathing heavily as he was, he was not in top form.

He looked out the window, stiffened, and his heart shook, ignited, and rocketed skyward, no countdown.

A blonde woman was standing on the platform outside. He could see her in partial profile. She had on a severely fitted dress, red, cut in an old style, like vintage Hollywood, sharp lapels, a pearl necklace, and a red, alligator belt around her narrow waist. Her figure was a lyric of curves. She had on red shoes, heels with a white toe box and counter. Unexpectedly, she turned, no, pirouetted, toward Chuck's window and he got a non-profile look at her. Tortoise-shell sunglasses hid her eyes beneath her red hat, but he could see her full lips, matching the color of her hat and dress. She had a strong chin above a long, beautiful neck. She did not seem real: for a moment his window seemed like a movie screen. She was a movie star, a creation of celluloid, and not an actual woman. He had never seen a woman who more deserved the description, glamorous.

She embodied the full power of female fascination.

She continued her pirouette until her back was to the window; she seemed to be looking for someone.

And then she was gone.

Chuck was too mystified by the whole experience to stand, to try to keep her in sight. His ears were occupied by his heart, a thumping that would have been deafening had it been external and not internal. He just sat there, astonished, awed, unable to do anything but bask in the afterglow of the vision.

I know how Moses felt, next to that burning but unconsumed bush.

Eventually, he came to himself and stood up, shaking his hands and then rubbing his eyes. Fanning himself with his hand seemed to help He was half convinced he had simply imagined her, that she was a residual effect of overwork, and stress. His window was not a movie screen — but the woman might have been a phantasm of his brain. He closed his cabin door.

Chuckling out loud at himself, he took his travel wallet out, making sure his ticket was still in it and put it on the seat beside him. He took his toiletry kit out of his bag, and some pajamas for later, and put them on the closet-sized bathroom sink. He selected one of the mysteries he packed, a book by A. A. Milne, The Red House Mystery.

Milne was the author of Winne-the-Pooh, but, earlier in his career, he had written other sorts of books, and The Red House Mystery was supposed to be terrific, a locked-room mystery. Chuck knew that Raymond Chandler had praised it; that was how Chuck learned of it.

He kicked off his shoes and sat down, reconsidering Moses and the burning bush. He looked out the window again, hoping he might catch sight of the blonde woman, but she was gone. A long sigh expressed his disappointment, but he followed it with a stoic shrug. To be honest, he felt a little embarrassed. Although obviously not immune to beautiful women, Chuck prided himself on not objectifying women — or people in general. I subjectify, not objectify, people not bodies. But the whole moment had been so unexpected, the woman so transcendentally ideal, so beyond real, so larger than life. Chuck was not sure that the shade of red she wore occurred in nature. The only thing she was missing was theme music, a soundtrack. He opened the paperback with another shrug and began to read.

The train started moving; Chuck settled down, putting his feet up on the seat on the opposite side of the cabin, an advantage afforded by his long legs.

Lulled by Milne's sparkling, light prose and the motion of the train, Chuck began to sink into the mystery. He jumped at a knock on the door. He stood up and opened it.

The conductor was in the hallway, the distinctive, flat-billed hat on his head, an electronic ticket processor in his hand.

"Ticket?" The man looked exactly like Tom Hanks, but white-haired. Chuck's jaw dropped and he stood otherwise motionless for a moment.

"Ticket?" the man asked a second time.

"Sorry, sorry," Chuck said, patting his pockets and then remembering that he had put his wallet on the seat.

He turned and put his book down, grabbed his wallet, took out the ticket, and handed it to the conductor.

"Got lost in my book." Chuck gestured to the paperback.

The conductor peered at the cover. "Milne. Is that the bear guy? The one with honey and a piglet?"

"Not a piglet. Piglet. That's his name."

"But isn't he a piglet?"

Chuck stopped, his mouth open again. "Guess so. I think of him as a small animal of a generally timid disposition."

The conductor smiled. "A small piglet of a timid disposition."

"Right," Chuck said, shrugging and laughing. "But, yes, the same author."

"Didn't know he wrote anything but children's books," the conductor commented as he put Chuck's ticket into the processor.

Chuck was struck again by how much the man resembled Tom Hanks. The voice was even the same.

Curious, Chuck asked, "Speaking of children's books, or children's books made into movies, have you ever seen Polar Express?"

The man looked up, handing Chuck the ticket, now processed. "Is it about a train?"

"Yes."

"No. No, I try to avoid trains when I'm not on one. Have a good trip."

The conductor handed him a key card, turned, and went down the hallway.

Chuck stood there for a moment, struck by the uncanniness of a Tom Hanks look-alike as his Christmas conductor.

The train had left LA and Chuck was deeper into his mystery — or, rather, deeper into the Introduction, in which Milne explains what he prefers in a mystery novel.

Chuck was re-reading the section "on the great Love questions" and pondering Milne's reasons for wanting none of it. Chuck disagreed; he quite liked Love mixed with his Mystery. The detective's more fun if his heart, as well as his mind, is engaged.

His stomach growled, and he looked at his watch. Dinner time. He hadn't eaten much at lunch, too excited about his trip. So, he stood, put his jacket back on (he had taken it off after the conductor left), and put his book in one of the pockets. After slipping on his shoes, he stepped into the bathroom and checked himself in the narrow mirror.

His sports jacket was new, forest green, expensive but not flashy. Flashy was his aversion. He had on a light green polo beneath the jacket and was wearing a pair of dark jeans. Instead of a comb, he ran his fingers through his curly brown hair, then gave it a shake. Combing it was mostly a waste of time; the curls re-sorted themselves after any combing. Presentable, he left the cabin, making sure he had the keycard and that he locked his door. The executive dining car was two sleeping cars from his cabin, a bit of a hike, requiring him to negotiate a number of doors.

He finally arrived, greeted by the smell of fresh coffee and baked goods. His hunger had taken him there early, so the dining car was nearly empty; he had his choice of seats. He picked one next to a window, admiring the gleaming metal and polished wood of the car, the leather seats, and the white tablecloths. Christmas decorations, subtle but festive, were displayed. First-class travel was still a new thing to him, and he was both delighted by the amenities and overwhelmed by them. Sitting in that moving car, it was easy to imagine the splendor of train trips in the past. He felt like Cary Grant in North By Northwest, except that he was traveling in sort of the opposite direction, he was not wearing that gray suit, and he definitely was unaccompanied by Eve Marie Saint.

He was remembering that movie, staring unseeing out the window, when he heard someone else enter the car.

He looked up to see the woman from the platform. And just as he saw her, soft music began to play in the dining car.

The woman had changed. Clothes, that is. But it was positively the same woman. She wore a black jacket over a white blouse, a matching black skirt, and black slippers. Her blonde hair, a shimmering cascade of lazy waves, was now fully visible, the red hat gone. She had on a golden necklace from which dangled a rectangular onyx stone.

Her eyes — blue, so blue — settled on him as she scanned the car. She gave him a smile like a blessing and sat down across the aisle from him. Maybe it was because he was sitting, maybe it was because she was not standing below his window on a platform, but she seemed surprisingly tall.

Chuck was hoping to summon the fortitude to speak to her when a white-jacketed waiter entered the car from the other end. He stopped at the woman's table first.

"Welcome, madam. Our menu for this evening is on the card," he gestured to a decorative card on the woman's table (Chuck's table had one too). "Can I get you something to drink while you make your choice?"

The woman smiled at the waiter and Chuck blinked. He could feel her smile echo through his body despite it not being aimed at him, not for him.

"Sure," she said in a lovely, slightly husky voice, "I'll have a gimlet."

Chuck blinked again. He'd never known anyone, outside mystery novels, who ordered that drink. The waiter nodded and turned to Chuck. "And you, sir?"

Chuck was still staring at the woman. She met his gaze and he gave her an embarrassed grin and faced the waiter.

"I'll have her. I mean, I'll order her. Her order. I mean, I'll have what she's having. I'll have a gimlet too. One gimlet please."

The waiter did not react to Chuck's colossal stammer, beyond a twitch of an eyebrow. But the woman chuckled, a reedy, soft sound, poised ambiguously between tickle and caress.

"Yes, sir." The waiter moved to the other person in the car, an older woman seated near the door Chuck had used to enter.

Chuck felt awkward, his heart thumping again. The woman's eyes were on him, amused, her smile soft. "Don't meet many gimlet men."

Chuck wasn't quite sure what to say to that.

He wasn't certain he even remembered the ingredients in a gimlet. And the way she said the word 'gimlet', sounded less like a common noun and more like a slightly improper one. There aren't any improper nouns, are there?

She laughed that laugh again, smirking at his preoccupied silence.

"I'm not sure you're meeting one now," Chuck finally confessed. "It sounded good when you ordered it. Are you a gimlet woman?" It was deflated that he could not make 'gimlet' sound slightly improper, as she had.

And then it struck him how close 'gimlet' was to 'piglet'. Is a gimlet a little gim? A drink of timid disposition?

The woman's smile became curious and she openly studied Chuck's face. "What?"

Chuck could not admit to thinking about Piglet, not to her, not to this beautiful, sophisticated woman. Piglet?

"Oh, nothing, really. 'Gimlet' is an odd word."

She looked surprised. "Huh, now that you mention it, it is. But almost any word seems ridiculous if you let yourself concentrate on it, especially if you repeat it."

"That's true. I've always thought that was weird, the way a word can become just…"

"A noise?" she offered.

"Yeah, a noise. I'm Chuck, by the way."

She gave him a smile, warm and mocking. "Don't meet many Chucks, either."

"Right, speaking of noises…" He paused for a moment, in the middle of his self-deprecation, unsure whether to continue, then rushed forward, changing direction. "Chuck's a nickname for 'Charles'." Chuck could have kicked himself for saying that.

She deliberately widened her eyes. "No! Really?" And then she laughed, and the mockery was gone. She seemed to enjoy her own laughter.

Chuck joined her in it. "Sorry, leave it to me to explain what's universally known."

"You're adorable," the woman said as her laughter ended. "I'm Sarah. By the way."

Chuck put out his hand. "Nice to meet you, Sarah Bytheway."

She took his hand across the aisle and gave him a flat look tinged with good humor. "Sarah Walker."

"Nice to meet you, Sarah Walker. Chuck — as I said — Bartowski."

"That's a formidable middle name," she intoned, but with a wink in her voice, "Asisaid?"

This time Chuck did not miss a beat. "It's a nod to my family's Middle Eastern heritage."

She dropped her chin and gave him a low look and then they both laughed.

The dining car began to fill. At one point, Sarah suggested she move to his table, and Chuck was happy to have her do so.

Their drinks arrived, and the waiter served them without remark on Sarah's change of place. They ordered dinner, Sarah steak, Chuck salmon, and Chuck took a sip of his gimlet as Sarah watched.

"What do you think?"

"Tart, good. I like it. But then I like tart."

She smiled without explanation and sipped her gimlet. A subtle shift of her shoulders told Chuck that she relaxed with that sip; he had not imagined her tense.

She put the glass down. "So, Chuck, where are you heading?"

"New York. Visiting my sister and her family for the holiday. What about you?"

"I'm traveling with a friend. She's on her way to New York and I'm with her."

"With her?" Chuck asked, not entirely sure he understood.

"Traveling companion. She's had a bad breakup recently. Real heartbreak. Her family is in New York and I'm keeping her company. She is deathly afraid to fly, and she was unwilling to be alone for the time it took to go by train. I had some time off for the holiday, so I agreed to travel with her, keep her from being alone, and I got a free trip to New York, some new clothes, and several days in the city as a result — days in a suite at the Lotte New York Palace." She grinned and lifted an eyebrow, marking the name.

Chuck whistled low, duly impressed. "Fancy schmancy."

Sarah sat back. "Did you really just say 'fancy schmancy?"

Blushing, Chuck nodded. "Afraid so. But that's one ritzy hotel. My sister mentioned it to me once in hushed tones. She was at some hoity-toity charity event there once."

"'Hoity-toity?'"

Chuck shrugged, "Speaking of words that quickly end as noises…"

"Or that began as noises. You dazzle me with your learned and varied vocabulary, Dr. Bartowski."

"My sister's the doctor," Chuck said, "not me. She's a neurosurgeon."

Sarah nodded. "What do you do?"

Chuck had spent a lot of time lately talking about himself, and his company. Doing interviews for magazines and newspapers and even a tech-oriented cable TV show. More talk about himself was not what he really wanted. What he wanted was to know more about the woman seated across the table from him.

"I'm sort of between jobs. I'll spend the holiday in New York and then I'll figure out what comes next. I'm a computer guy."

"Oh, like that fellow, Ted Roark?"

"No, not on such a grand scale. Roarke's in a different league and Roarke has diversified into so many other things. Phones, TVs. I have no dreams of empire. Creation is what does it for me, the artistry of programming, the way, at its outer limits, programming shifts from logic to intuition. That's what I really love, that point where programming slips its bonds…"

He stopped, grinning at himself, chagrinned. "Sorry, I get carried away."

Sarah shook her head. "Don't apologize. Nothing is sexier than whole-heartedness. Most people today can't manage it, not about anything." She frowned, glancing down at the table. "Well, maybe about money."

Sexier?

The gimlet seemed to go to Chuck's head, and he subtly grabbed the side of the table to steady himself.

Chuck spoke as Sarah stopped shaking her head. "Money does not make you happy. You could have all of it there is and still be miserable."

She gave him a verdictive look as if she was not quite sure how to take him. "I suppose. But when you don't have much, and you spend time with people who do, it makes you wonder."

"Wonder what?"

"Whether you could manage to make yourself happy with that much money, even if they don't, or can't." Sarah's bright countenance darkened slightly.

Chuck sipped his drink again. He was pretty sure that Sarah was talking about her friend, Carina, but he did not want to intrude. This already felt personal.

"Maybe so. We do like to believe we would have succeeded where others failed. But we're biased in our own favor."

She bit her bottom lip. "But sometimes we just know we could do better. It's not biased, it's fact."

Chuck did not want to argue, and Sarah's comment had an edge to it. Luckily, the waiter arrived with dinner. As he put the plates down in front of them, Sarah spoke to him.

"I'd like to put in an order for a steak sandwich and a salad. Vinegar and oil. Could you take it to a cabin, 304?"

The waiter bowed but shook his head. "No, ma'am, but we have someone who takes care of service to the cabins. I'll see to it."

"Thanks," Sarah said and reoriented on Chuck.

"For your friend?"

"Yeah, but she won't eat it, probably. Maybe a few pieces of salad. Her asshat fiance, ex-fiance, might have mentioned that her getting fat was among the reasons for breaking the engagement."

"Damn," Chuck said in a long exhale, "that's cold."

Sarah bared her teeth. "Tell me about it. And you should see her. Tall, willowy, zero body fat. But now his vile comment has practically turned her into a hunger artist. I'll spend the trip trying to cajole her into eating a little."

They both began to eat. Carina's situation seemed to deflate Sarah. Chuck wished he could think of how he could help. After a couple of minutes of the sound of silverware on plates mixed with the hum of other conversations and the background music, Chuck cleared his throat. "I'm good at cheering people up. I used to do it for my sister, and for friends of mine. If you would like some help or someone to sit with Carina, assuming she'd allow it, I'd be happy to."

Sarah stared at him, her surprise showing. "That's sweet, Chuck, really. But I couldn't ask you to do that. Besides, Carina's got nothing but venom for the male of the species at the moment. She might bite you just for having an offensive Y chromosome."

"Okay," Chuck said, smiling and putting up one hand. "But the offer's been made if you'd like to take me up on it. So what do you do in LA, Sarah? I assume you plan to go back?"

"Sure, I do. I should say I'm an actress, and that is what I'd like to be, but the truth is that I'm a dog walker — "

"Wait, Sarah Walker walks dogs for a living."

Sarah widened her eyes again as she had earlier, but with real irritation. "Wow, no one has thought of that joke before, not even me."

Chuck glanced down at the table and then back up. "I didn't think about originality, only the odd happenstance that your name and profession match. It's like meeting Joe Cobbler, who makes shoes."

Sarah chuckled despite her annoyance. "It is like that, I guess. I'm just a bit thin-skinned about the job. I love it, and I make good money. I met Carina when she hired me to walk her airedale terrier, Mugs. I started walking him a year ago, and Carina and I hit it off, and became friends."

"And Mugs?"

"I still walk him, but he's not with us. He's back in LA — dogsitters in Carina's penthouse apartment. He couldn't come: he gets motion sickness. Carina makes him wear a red rubber bib in the car, and sit in the back on a waterproof seat cover."

Chuck smiled without meaning to, imagining the image of the terrier with his bib.

"But he can walk without getting sick?"

"Of course, when he's the cause of his motion, he's fine. The problem is when he doesn't cause it."

"Hmmm," Chuck said, chewing on some salmon and reflecting, "maybe Carina should let Mugs drive."

He was rewarded with another of Sarah's reedy chuckles and they went on eating.

Chuck finished perfectly satisfied with his meal and especially with his companion. Somehow, during the meal, he had managed to forget how beautiful Sarah was even as her beauty affected him, and cheered him. It was like the way that you forget the sunlight even as it makes everything around golden, lovely, even as you bask in it.

It had gotten dark outside by the time they finished. They turned down dessert but lingered over glasses of sweet wine.

"Thanks for the company, Chuck," Sarah said as she finished her glass and glanced at her phone (ignored until then), "but I need to get back to Carina. She insisted that I come and have dinner in the dining car, take a break from sitting with her in her cabin. My cabin's next door to hers. She hasn't texted, but she's probably wondering where I am. I didn't expect it to take so long. Besides, I need to see if she's eaten anything I sent to her."

Chuck stood as Sarah did. "Thanks to you too, Sarah. I enjoyed meeting you so much, talking to you." He wanted to ask if she might be willing to do something with him in New York before she went back to LA, but he could not quite summon the courage.

Later. We're on a train together. I'll get another chance.

She stepped around the table and leaned toward him, kissing his cheek quickly, chastely — so chastely that a moment later he would doubt that it happened.

"I like you, Chuck," she said in a quiet voice, and then she was gone.

Sexier?

Chuck floated back to his cabin charmed from head to toe. Whistling softly, he undressed, then donned his pajamas. He washed his face and brushed his teeth, then he put the bed down and retrieved his book from his jacket. Closing the narrow closet, he looked out the window. He could see nothing in the dark but he could feel the onward rush of the train, the slight swaying side to side.

He thought again about Sarah outside the window, on the platform, in that red dress. She had been as lovely at dinner, even in the subdued black. Still, he would have given a lot of money, and he had the money to give, to see her again in the red dress. He imagined her pirouetting outside his window.

His hopes for his trip had changed. Spending time with Sarah, if possible, was what he hoped to do. The paperbacks, the Milne, could wait. So could the Roark computer.

But he was uncertain how much free time she would have. Would her friend demand all her time? Would Sarah at least be able to have dinner again in the dining car?

Chuck wanted to get to know her, to screw up his courage and ask to see her in New York.

He turned on the reading light above his bed, turned off the cabin light, climbed into his bed, and stretched out. He read a few chapters of The Red House Mystery, trying to keep the title color from distracting him. Red, red, red.

The book was good — but he was reading it half-heartedly, he realized. The other half of his heart had been walked out of his chest, and out of the dining car, on Sarah Walker's leash.

He blew out a breath and counted backward from one hundred. He had reached the forties and was losing track, falling asleep, edging into dreams...dreaming...when he heard a smack on his door and another. The knock might have been hours later; he had fallen asleep, dreamed. But the smacking was no dream.

"Chuck! Chuck!" He heard a voice from outside the cabin door. It sounded like Sarah. She was trying to speak loudly enough to wake him, but softly enough to wake only him.

He jumped from the bed and opened the door.

Sarah stood there in a silky black robe, belted around her waist. She had on fuzzy black slide-on slippers that did not cover her toes. He caught a glimpse of red lace beneath the robe as she tightened the belt. She looked frightened and worried.

"I'm sorry to bother you, but I can't find Carina. I can't find her!"

Chuck boggled, struggling to catch up. "Can't find her? She's not in her cabin?"

"No, she wasn't there when I got back from dinner. I didn't worry; I thought maybe she'd decided to stretch her legs after all. I waited in her cabin. The food was there, inside, so she must have been there when it arrived. But it was untouched. Her phone was on the bathroom counter.

"I sat there, waiting, then went to my cabin, got ready for bed, still expecting her any moment, and," — she looked down — "well, the gimlet and the wine affected me. I sat down and dozed off. I woke up a little while ago, and checked, and still no Carina. No sign of her. I've wandered around, asking people, but no one seems to have seen her."

She twisted her robe's belt in her hands. "Can you please help me, Chuck? I'm getting frantic."

A/N: All aboard!