“You were going to kill them anyway.”
The warlord smiled, delighted by the coldness of Blake’s response. “But, without your help.”
Blake thought on that, tried to find some kind of conscience for the deaths of men he’d never know. Men who’d be just as dead by different guns if he’d never come here. “They shouldn’t be here,” he said.
The warlord nodded. “Same will be said of you.”
Kahega intervened with a hard squeeze of Blake’s shoulder. “Let’s go,” he whispered.
And they left.
Five
Sara walked into the resort lounge and found her afternoon dates sitting at a back booth, facing the entrance. Vape smoke puffed past Jean-Philippe’s pursed lips and Guillaume waved to her from the haze.
Sara paused, catching her reflection in the wall mirror. What a mistake, she knew. The dark dress stretched over her curves like spandex, an outfit once intended to tease her husband over Italian in the resort’s swankiest restaurant, the one that required reservations three nights in advance.
Prowling eyes crawled her from other darkened tables as she walked. On some level, the attention felt good.
Eager aftershave sifted through Sara’s nostrils as she approached. She flashed a polite smile and sat facing them. Guillaume’s hair was slicked back, still wet from a quick shower. The black button-down was only fastened halfway, revealing a hint of the clean-shaven chest that had glistened poolside. That he was off limits, allegedly, made him more attractive.
“Still don’t know why I came,” Sara said.
“No reason needed,” Guillaume’s smile sparkled with just a hint of game. “We are guests here at the same moment in time. Let that be enough.”
The Frenchmen were drinking Cognac, which was an immediate invitation to go hard. Sara ordered a whiskey double, glad for a second that Blake wasn’t around to judge. He handled his liquor the way a toddler would, and harbored resentment because she could knock it back with the best of the last callers.
And it beat the steady diet of tropical sugar bombs so sweet her stomach now had cavities.
“What should we drink to?” Jean-Philippe said.
“Paradise,” Guillaume said. “May we always find it, wherever we are.”
They turned out to be good company. Afternoon conversation was preferable to more lonely hours by the pool. She was glad for the distraction, because right now the mere thought of Blake Jovish tightened her jaw like a wrench.
Jean-Philippe was often distracted, watching the crowd and audibly sighing whenever Sara and Guillaume got off on too long a jag. He referred to Sara as “mademoiselle,” and she ignored the passive-aggressiveness of it. She’d retained enough college French to know it meant “unmarried woman.”
She felt like a pawn in some married couple’s game, but didn’t care. Didn’t have to understand. Certainly didn’t judge. She liked their company, mostly Guillaume’s, kinks and all, and thought it funny that in this moment she knew them better than she knew her husband.
The men managed an antique shop right outside of Paris and were occasionally bankrolled into the field whenever their boss needed an opinion on the authenticity of recovered goods.
Sara asked what made their opinion so special, and Guillaume revealed he held an advanced degree in archeology.
“Some Indiana Jones stuff,” Sara said.
“Indiana Jones was a professor,” Guillaume said. “I couldn’t wait to leave university. Besides, I am better looking.”
Sara cocked her head. “Than young Harrison Ford? Please.”
Jean-Philippe laughed at this, chiming in to talk about how he handled the day-to-day affairs of the antique shop.
“That’s a fantasy life,” Sara said and couldn’t square it. They earned their living completely outside the rat race. Nothing was more enviable than that.
“Plenty of rats,” Jean-Philippe told her. “If you’re not working for yourself, you’re making somebody richer.”
Guillaume was interested in Sara’s employment as a marine biologist, an unwelcome topic in her mind. She’d rather hear about the exotic corners of the world they’d seen, but he continued to insist on tales of the nautical life.
She sighed. Told them her job title was “Fishery Observer” and that meant she collected catch and bycatch data from U.S. commercial fishing vessels. Her job was to measure what these vessels were taking out of the ocean, what they were tossing back, and the type of equipment and gear used to do it.
It guaranteed adherence to regulations and ensured the sustainability of our marine resources.
It also kept baker’s hours. Sara was up and on the road well before dawn, usually 3 am, in order to be at the port before departure. Sometimes she was gone for the day, other times she’d be at sea for a week or even two. She liked the way her schedule shifted because it meant keeping things interesting. Last thing she wanted was to sit in front of spreadsheets all day.
Which is what the job was slowly becoming.
Used to be that she’d compile her data at sea to be debriefed in port, handing over her spreadsheets for independent correlation. But like all things, number crunchers figured out they could save money by cutting loose that middle man, and now Sara debriefed herself by writing up reports on her own data.
Excel nightmares haunted her dreams every couple of nights.
“Excel,” Jean-Philippe said.
“Oh, do not start,” Guillaume groaned.
“Au contraire,” Sara laughed. “I can’t resist a good spreadsheet war story. What good is drinking if you can’t drown a few sorrows?”
“If he starts on this song,” Guillaume warned, “he will sing it all night.”
“Warm up that throat,” Sara told Jean-Philippe and then slapped the table with enthusiasm. “Because I feel you.”
“Inventory reports and profit margins. I’m living to manage someone else’s fortune.” Jean-Philippe downed his drink and coughed. “Just tiresome, is all.”
“And here I thought your lives sounded pretty hot.” Sara cocked an eyebrow, caught a flash of Guillaume’s seething eyes that he tried to hide.
Jean-Philippe ordered another round for the table. “My job is customer service for a niche that has more money than it knows what to do with. Our boss says we are a full-service outfit and sometimes that makes me more of a slave.”
Guillaume rolled his eyes and nudged his partner. Jean-Philippe fell silent, placing the e-cigarette back between his lips. “Sara, how you can say for certain what is taken out of the ocean when there are other countries who do not cooperate with your bureaucracy?”
“It’s estimated,” Sara said. “Data points are shared among the participating countries while percentages of piracy are factored into the data.”
“But what happens when—”
“It’s my turn to ask y’all something,” Sara said.
The shimmering sun gave Guillaume’s dark complexion a bronzed sheen as he lifted a single finger. His grin was winter fresh. He had a model’s looks and knew it. “What do you do for fun around here, Sara? Once everyone has gone back to their rooms for the evening, I mean.”
“Don’t be lame.” Sara flashed her ring. “We were doing good. You smiling all cool and shit. Think I don’t know where this is headed?”
“Where is that?” Guillaume could barely contain his smile. Next to him, Jean-Philippe blew a rush of vape smoke across the table, enshrouding her.
Sara didn’t like games, given that Blake was off playing one without her. “I’m about to finish this drink and wish you a good rest of your vacation.”
Guillaume clicked his tongue. “That would be hasty,” he grinned. “Let us back up. We three are world travelers. Accustomed to more than just our ports of call. Is that fair to say?”
“Fair to say,” Sara said.
“Look,” Jean-Philippe put his hand on top of his husband’s and held it there with a slight squeeze. “This is not what you think it is.”
>
“Oh no?” Sara said. “You came over to me at the pool like dogs in heat because you wanted to be all intellectual?”
“Sort of,” Guillaume confessed. “There is a whole beautiful island here, yet all you have seen is this resort.”
“Charity then?” Sara laughed.
“Of course not. You are an interesting woman.”
“Who’s getting bored fast...”
“Why’d you wear that dress?” Jean-Philippe said, tiring of this dance.
“I’m on my honeymoon,” Sara growled. “Didn’t pack for a single’s night.”
“Tomorrow,” Guillaume said, “I propose our own adventure.”
“Forget it.”
“More poolside drinks in your future?” Guillaume said.
A sigh. “What’ve you got?”
“Diego Suarez is near one of the most amazing sights the world has to offer. The Tsingy Forest. Ever see it?”
“Where the hell is Diego Suarez?” she said.
“I’m sorry.” Guillaume cleared his throat. “You know it as Antsiranana. The locals call this city Diego Suarez because that is its founded name. But the Tsingy Forest is something special. In Malagasy it translates to ‘where one cannot walk barefoot.’ You have never seen such a place. You will feel like you’re on Mars.”
“Why do you want to take me on a tour?”
“We have been honest with you,” Guillaume said. “Here is a woman with a passion for these things. A prisoner to tourism. It’s there in your eyes.”
“You couldn’t see my eyes by the pool,” she said. “I was wearing sunglasses.”
Guillaume ignored her. “If you crave a more nautical setting, then we look to Antsiranana Bay, which is so imperceptible from the ocean that smugglers once built an entire port inside it.”
Sara’s bullshit detector was running out of batteries. The longer she spoke to them, the more comfortable she felt. Even if the back of her mind was loaded with suspicion.
Guillaume slipped her a business card for something called LE VASE CASSÉ and told her to drop him a line next time she was in France, as if she went over there every couple of weeks.
“Give that card to the front desk,” he told her. “Tell them who you are with. You can also tell the US embassy you are taking the trip. Give them our names, of course. Both are on that card. You would be smart to do these things, Sara. We would not consider it rude, because if you were to lend us the pleasure of your company, I would want your mind at ease.”
“This is our first vacation in years,” Jean-Philippe said. “We enjoy meeting interesting people from corners of the world other than our own.”
Their invitation intrigued her, but Guillaume’s spiel sounded rehearsed. Yes, it might set her mind at ease, but it was exactly the kind of thing a grifter might say. Besides, this was her honeymoon, and here she was making plans to see the continent with strange men. Men who were not her husband.
Wherever the hell Blake is, Sara thought, suddenly feeling ill about it.
“Well, at least think about it,” Guillaume said. “We will leave from the lobby tomorrow around nine.”
Sara chewed on it. “I’ll let you know,” she said and stood to leave. And then hurried for the elevators because the tears were coming faster than she realized.
Six
“If I did not give them money, they would have killed us both,” Kahega said.
“That’s not my problem,” Blake shot back. His heart raced harder now than it had in the presence of that warlord. His guide had used all the money to get them out of those crosshairs. Now he wanted more.
“Consider it,” Kahega said.
“Appreciate the advice,” Blake said. “But I’ll take my chances.”
“You don’t have a chance,” Kahega said. “You’ll be gunned down where you stand.”
“What do you want?”
“To get paid,” the guide said, arms outstretched. “Every dime I earned from the last two days was taken from me. For us.” The guide reached between the seats and lifted a machete in his fist. The tip of the blade stung cold against Blake’s neck.
“This is what they’ll do,” he said.
“You took me to a warlord.”
“The only man on this island who would have known.”
“You put a price on my head.”
“I should have gone alone? Doomed myself?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“We are both back to square one, yes? It does not take an accountant to know you are nearly out of money. How will you advance if not without my help?”
As of right now, Blake didn’t have an answer to that question.
“Took me a minute,” Kahega said. “You were coy from the start, but I should’ve known what you were really after. People always come here thinking they’re gonna find that pirate’s stash.”
“What?”
“Do not lie to me,” Kahega said. “There is a man from Italy who is out here every summer. Spends months at a time hunting it and he has been doing it since Roger Moore was 007.” He laughed at his own joke. “Many have tried, no one has succeeded. So at first I laughed at you and thought I would take your money.”
Blake put his fingers to the blade and eased it away, a gesture that prompted Kahega to laugh.
“At least you do not deny it,” Kahega said.
Blake weighed his options. This was a race against time. He imagined Sara in there, sitting with her eyes on the clock. Waiting for him to return. She had a temper like C4 and when she blew, there’d be nothing left of them but a crater. “What kind of assurance do I have?” Blake asked. “That I can trust you?”
“None,” Kahega said.
Blake felt helpless as the jeep idled. His beard itched. He caught sight of himself in the side mirror and lamented that he couldn’t even get a tan. His pasty flesh went straight to sunburnt.
The resort walls were six feet from him. It was as far as the porter could drive. No unofficial transportation was allowed past the gates, because vacationers were apparently to be insulated from the island regulars at all times.
“You did not think this through, Little Sticks,” Kahega told him.
“I did,” Blake said. “That’s why it’s frustrating. I thought everything through. Cost me thousands to get here, and now I need more to finish, but I have nothing left.”
“We did more than buy information back there. We bought our lives.”
“I’m ruined if I go in there now,” Blake said. “I’ll lose everything.”
“I can get you the rest of the way,” Kahega said. “No longer as your employee, but a partner.”
Blake stewed.
The guide gave him a moment. He turned up the radio and watched a tourist bus depart through the gates for the island sunset tour.
What was the alternative? Blake wondered. Go inside now, like this, and ‘fess to Sara that they were twenty grand in the hole because he’d gone all Allan Quartermain without her knowledge? She’d find a way to annul their marriage on the flight home.
Kahega understood this as well, sitting with his arms folded, grinning like the future was bright.
“What do you want?” Blake said.
“I’m reasonable. Thirty percent.”
“Thirty?”
“If you find it, you are going to have one heck of a time taking treasure out of this country. Our government will pull out every stop to prevent you from leaving with a single coin. That is what I offer. I’ll get us a ship. A small crew paid from my end. And then we both live out the rest of our lives in peace.”
Blake gnawed the inside of his cheek. “Partners, huh?”
Kahega stuck out his hand.
Blake shook it.
“We leave tomorrow,” the guide said. “Perhaps now is the time to tell your wife everything. Because we may have to leave in a hurry.”
Blake swallowed hard. This wasn’t going to be pretty, but it needed to be done.
Seven
Sara
had gone back to her room and decided to call her parents, eager to hear a few friendly and familiar voices. Dad was out, and Mom sounded annoyed that she had to be the one to talk to her.
“Look who finally decides to call,” she said.
“Flight was good, Mom, thanks.”
“Everything okay?”
“I guess?”
Mom didn’t hear the reluctance. Or didn’t have time to hear it. “Good. Lookit, baby, I’m in the middle of interviews. Hiring a new manager for James’ campaign and we’re down to just two finalists. I like the girl ‘cause she’s not afraid of a street fight, and that’s what politics is these days. But your father and brother—”
“Listen to them,” Sara said.
With a clucking tongue, “You always take their side.”
“It’s James’ campaign,” Sara said. “Just don’t forget that.”
“Forget? Been working twenty-four seven on it for the last two years. Only one who’s forgetting anything is the girl currently halfway around the world. One who—”
“On her honeymoon!” Sara screamed and Mom ignored it, continued.
“One who can’t help her brother because she feels like she needs to make her own mark in the world.”
“Oh, I’m sorry, Mom. I’d like my own life. Is that unreasonable?”
“You gotta make sacrifices. The Mosby name is what’s important. One day we’ll be gone and that will be all that matters.”
“You’ve made that real clear,” Sara said. “A million times.”
“I’ll tell Dad you send your love. He’ll be relieved you called.” Mom didn’t give her a chance to respond. There was a click, and then she was gone, leaving Sara standing alone inside the darkened room.
She stood frozen for so long, the line clicked over and a voice from reception said, “Emerald Tides front desk. How may I help you, Miss Jovish?”
Sara slammed the phone down and stepped away from it as if it’d bitten her. Her eyes settled on Blake’s suitcase. Reminders all around. No, she couldn’t stay here.
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