Normally, Tara wouldn't mind rainy days. She liked sitting inside, staring out the window and drinking hot chocolate while the waters cascaded down the glass. In more recent days, she would have gotten one of her warm-bodied friends and taken them for a roll between the sheets. But no one else was around that day.

A few days earlier, she had finished up another voyage as a maid aboard Deep Blue Cruises. On that trip, she had made some new friends. But a former member of the Lounge Gang, a group of employees who hung out together when their shifts were up, who had fallen out of favor had basically...