She didn't know their names. She couldn't pull them from wherever the last three years were buried. But her body knew something her memory didn't, and what it knew made the back of her neck go very, very cold.
These women were familiar.
And they were not her friends.
She turned around slowly to face them, and she made sure that when she did, her expression gave them absolutely nothing.
"Well," Ruby said, her voice coming out steadier than she had any right to expect. "This is a small world."
Her eyes moved just once, quickly to the door behind them.
Then back to their faces.
She smiled.
It was the kind of smile Max would have recognised immediately. Not the forced one from the yacht. Not the careful one from dinner. This one was something else entirely, the one that meant Ruby had already started thinking three steps ahead and was simply waiting for everyone else to catch up.
Somewhere on the other side of that door, she could hear footsteps. Fast ones.
Max, she thought.
