Barefoot, I padded to the living room, planted myself on the sofa, and opened my laptop. My fingers hovered over the keyboard while my brain creaked along. What I wanted was a website that would explain what was going on in Skye’s head. What was she up to? I’d been so preoccupied with her romance with my ex that I hadn’t stopped to consider the other discordant notes in our conversation. I’ve been seeing this guy for months, and I really thought he was The One, but he’s a bastard. Just… evil. There’s no other word for it. I’m ashamed I didn’t see it before, you know? I should’ve known something was wrong when he said we had to keep our relationship under wraps. What kind of guy does that? I’d assumed she’d been talking about Martin, but it bothered me that Gavin was well aware they were dating. Martin wasn’t one for confidences with his lieutenants, so if his dalliance with Skye was well known, what did that mean? I couldn’t get over the fact that Skye was holding onto a credit card that belonged to her ex. Why would Ryan let her do that? And why would Skye even want it? Maybe it had been taken, not given. It could be useful for shopping online, but I imagined she’d be caught quickly if she did.
I’d never thought of Skye as a person who held grudges, but either I was wrong or something had changed dramatically in her. I know how to get even with him. I’m going to destroy him professionally, and he’ll never even see it coming. It was hard to discern whether her rage was like a lightning strike—powerful, overwhelming, yet finished in a flash—or if it was something she nurtured that had taken root in her heart and poisoned her mind.
This isn’t about revenge. This is about righting wrongs. Illegal wrongs, Lily. I can deal with my hurt feelings, but he can’t be allowed to keep on doing the things he does.
What worried me was the story she was working on. That suggested she’d started on this vengeful trail some time earlier, and that it wasn’t a white-hot impulse that would burn itself out.
When I try to get to the bottom of things, the truth keeps slipping away. I can’t get the hard proof I need. Sometimes, I think if I were a real journalist, instead of a fluffy travel writer, I’d have done it already.
Those words made me feel as if at least some of her anger was directed at herself. When she’d said “real journalist,” I’d thought of an amazing man I’d met in Peru in the spring, one I’d initially despised. Felipe Vargas was dismissive of my writing guidebooks and fluffy articles. He’d told me that I should be an investigative journalist, which had a certain appeal—that was my childhood dream—but it was work I wasn’t sure I had either the smarts or stamina for. Worse, who even paid for investigative pieces anymore? Not that travel writing was getting any easier. Pico Iyer had famously described it as “covering eighty towns in ninety days while sleeping in gutters and eating a hot dog once a week,” which summed the business up pretty well. I’d turned thirty in February and I was ready for a change, but I had no idea what I’d do for my next act. Skye and I were the same age; was part of her drama over the fact that she was at a crossroads and had no idea which way to turn?
Thinking about her exhausted me in the same way that my sister’s crises did. I spent way too much time trying to figure out people’s motives. With that in mind, I typed a quick email:
Skye, I don’t know why you ran off last night, but that was a ridiculous thing to do. It’s fine if you don’t want to talk with me, but you might want to let the hotel know you’re still around before they call in the police.
All I really needed to know was that Skye wasn’t in trouble. Then I could go back to being furious at her, which was what I really wanted.
CHAPTER 9
When I finally managed to fall sleep, my dreams broke apart into strange fragments. In one, Skye was jumping off a cliff, just like Acapulco’s famous divers. Another had me wearing a pair of shoes that kept falling off, which made no sense but was profoundly annoying. The worst dream had me walking through a door outside the Hotel Cerón’s bar, then finding it led to an intimate, candlelit cocktail lounge; Skye was standing at the bar with Martin, staring into his eyes with adoration. I jolted awake, sitting upright and discovering I’d hurled two pillows onto the floor.
There was no way I could get back to sleep after that. It was five forty-five in the morning, and my headache had mostly receded, though it still lightly tapped out a code from behind my temples. I wanted to call Denny and ask if Skye had actually checked out of the hotel, but I knew I wouldn’t be able to do that for another hour, maybe two. I had to wait, which was something I’d never been good at—if anything, my patience had slipped precipitously over the past few months. It was as if some filter that modulated my responses had fallen away; I was still puzzling over whether that was a good or bad thing.
I’d stopped in New York for one night before continuing on to Acapulco, and while I’d stayed at my best friend’s apartment, he’d loaded my music library with songs he insisted I would love. While Jesse hadn’t actually told me I was in a rut, musically speaking, he not-so-subtly pointed out that I needed to broaden my “listenin’ spectrum,” as he put it. After my shower, I started up one of his playlists on my laptop. The singer was identified as Madeleine Peyroux, but the sound coming from her mouth was pure Billie Holiday. I would’ve thought Jesse was playing a joke on me, but the song was one I’d never heard before. I towel-dried and combed my hair, feeling shivers of pleasure at the sound of her voice.
It was too early for me to switch hotels, but I’d go stir-crazy sitting inside a Pantheon property. The sky was stormy and forbidding, though there were hints of sunlight on the horizon. It was a perfect time of day to stroll on the beach without being overwhelmed by crowds. I needed to go somewhere to clear my head. Maybe salt air would stop the hammering inside it.
I put far too much energy into getting ready to go out, for reasons that were purely vain; I didn’t want to look sad or sick in case I bumped into Gavin or someone who reported to him. My visit would eventually get back to Martin’s ears, and I could picture my ex’s smug expression if he thought I was pining for him. That got me to pull on a sleeveless green wrap dress with a belted waist. I snapped the latch on my silver bangle bracelet and slipped into a pair of jeweled flip-flops. That was enough glamorous armor, at least for this early in the day.
Downstairs, everything was silent. Outside, the humidity dial was turned up full blast, and my silk dress wilted against my skin, clinging to me for dear life. The only person around was a man standing a dozen yards away, under the shade of a palm tree. He was wearing a shirt with the Hotel Cerón’s name on it, but he didn’t seem to be doing much except smoking a cigarette and watching me with suspicion.
The hotel’s exterior was painted an unrelenting white that might have gleamed in sunshine, but under a gray sky, it had a sickly pallor. There were rows of navy and turquoise ceramic tiles at the base of the first story, and it was hard to tell whether the design was an artistic decision or simply a lack of commitment to finish the job. The main building looked like a plain rectangular box that had grown to a full four stories before anyone realized it resembled a minimum-security prison in Florida. To save face, the architect had added a more dramatic fifth story with arched windows. Then he’d tacked on a round tower, presumably allowing its owners to call it a castle. There were statues on the roof, posted like sentries.
Around the first corner, the view became less charming, with a sprawling parking lot and a plain service entrance. The scene improved after the next corner: at the back of the building was an Olympic-sized swimming pool tiled with aquamarine glass, surrounded by row upon row of white flagstones and fringed by of palm trees that protected the eyes—if not the ears—from the road beyond. I looked for snakes, but found only lizards, and they seemed content enough to ignore me. Continuing on, I passed the terrace where I’d sat with Skye the night before. In the dark, it had felt as if we were up on a balcony, but in reality it was a mere four feet above the level of the pool; if anyone had been swimming the night before, the illusion would have been di
spelled.
Her words came into my head suddenly. It’s a dead hotel in a dying destination. Every time I turned around, I was reminded of something she’d said.
As I stood there, staring at the balcony, it was easier to acknowledge why Skye kept haunting me. I was obsessing about her because, not long ago, I’d felt exactly the way she did. I’d been consumed by an aching desire for revenge that was unlike anything I experienced before; the only parallel in my mind was my sister’s craving for heroin. It clawed at me through every waking moment, and during many unconscious ones. The urge had hit me with the force of a tornado after I left Peru; I’d been full of fury at the way a select few never faced justice, no matter what crimes they committed. I wanted Claudia’s ghost to be laid to rest, and the only way to do that was to hurt those who had harmed her. Then, one day, I’d gotten a package in the mail, postmarked from London. It contained two sketchpads filled with my sister’s artwork. There were also notes and cards and torn-out pages tucked inside. The note with them said simply:
My Dear Lily, I stole these from our girl some time ago, before she could destroy them. Now, I must return them to their rightful owner, who I know will cherish them. Sincerely yours, Tariq.
I spent days going over them, feeling as if I’d been given a road map to Claudia’s mind. Her artwork was invariably disturbing. She had once drawn a picture of a woman killing two small children, and she’d burned it after seeing my horrified reaction. One of the notebooks had a rough study of that scene, along with a postcard of the painting that inspired it. On the back of the card was printed medea, 1838, eugène delacroix, musée des beaux-arts de lille. I knew the Greek myth, and I finally understood the lone word my sister had written on her sketch: Revenge.
After that, the urge for vengeance stopped coursing through my veins. Perhaps not completely, but it went from being a mighty river to a trickle of a stream. What I’d said to Skye on the balcony was, No matter how much you hate him right now, nothing good is going to come from taking revenge on him. I meant every word.
I turned away from the hotel, telling myself I needed to stop rehashing every detail of the night before. From the silence of the cliffs, it was clear there were no divers performing at this early hour. The soft rumbling of the water had a magnetic quality that drew me toward it.
The walk wasn’t as scenic as the call of the surf promised. I found myself in a barren dirt landscape dotted with a few palm trees. There was a ruin of a grand villa, but that building was charred to a skeletal frame and obviously uninhabited. A dirt path led me to the cliffs, and it was only when I got to the ledge that I realized I’d fallen prey to an optical illusion the night before. The Hotel Cerón wasn’t that far from where the divers jumped—which was why I’d been able to see torchlight—but there was water between the two cliffs. My eyes followed the jagged edges of the land and I realized it would be quite a challenge to walk around, with no obvious path to follow. In the distance, I saw a metal fence that blocked off this patch of dirt from its neighbor. Much farther off, I could see the crests of white towers; those were the newer, taller hotels that had sprouted along Acapulco Bay. They seemed a world away.
There was a wooden staircase leading to a narrow strip of sand; the jagged black rocks edging the water didn’t make it look like a great place to swim. I took a few steps down and realized I wasn’t alone. There was a tall, broad-shouldered man standing on the beach; it took me a moment to recognize Pete Dukermann. I watched him pull one arm back and throw something forward with the coiled tension of a baseball pitcher. I couldn’t see what it was, only a quick glint of gold before it sank into the water and vanished.
CHAPTER 10
Pete stared over the water, as if whatever he’d cast into the clapping waves and churning foam might be tossed right back at him. He was wearing a black T-shirt and black jeans, and looked even more ragged than he had the night before. He crouched, reaching for a giant black duffel bag resting on the concrete beside him. I held my breath, wondering what he was up to. On press trips, photographers were often out of bed hours before everyone else so they could reach some stunning, remote location before the sun rose over it. But if Pete was carrying any camera gear, it was hidden. He put his hand into the bag’s side pocket and started to pull a cord out when he froze. It was as if something beneath his skin had started itching under my gaze, because Pete whipped his head around and stared up at me. He was wearing sunglasses, but his expression was stormy. He stuffed the cord back into the pocket, grabbed the bag and charged up the staircase toward me.
“Are you spying on me?” he shouted. His long legs had already carried him a good part of the way up.
“Why would I bother?” I turned and walked back up to the cliff; I wanted to be on solid ground to deal with Pete.
He didn’t say another word until he reached the top of the staircase. “Then what are you doing here?” He was breathing hard as he strode toward me, moving so quickly I thought he wanted to knock me over. Pete was known for his indiscriminate passes, but he wasn’t someone who got angry easily. Even that time in Prague, when I’d poured a pitcher of beer over him, he’d laughed and told everyone I was mad because he’d dumped me. His nickname, Pepé le Pew, was cartoonishly demeaning, suggesting a bumbling character. Now, he was seething, and the role of the unkempt, would-be Lothario he usually played was replaced by something raw and ominous. His enormous dark silhouette blotted out most of the sky as he loomed over me. I could smell booze on his breath.
“Did you end up finding Skye last night?” I asked.
That unsettled him. “Skye?” The way her name crept out of his mouth was like a rasp of sandpaper.
“Did you see her?”
“No.”
“So you don’t know if she checked out of the hotel?”
Even though I couldn’t see his eyes behind the mirrored lenses, I felt them boring into mine. “She what?”
I took a step back. The lingering smell of gin mixed with sweat made my empty stomach churn. “Last night, I found Skye’s money and passport and medication. Denny and I went to her room, and it looked like she’d cleared out. There was a pair of shoes and some toiletries in there, but that was all she left.”
“Maybe she went to her other room.” His anger had softened around the edges and as it ebbed away he seemed to deflate.
“Where is that?”
“In the hotel.” His voice was dull. “The suite at the end of the hall.”
“I just told you her stuff was gone last night.”
“No, not the room across from yours. The other one.”
I put my hands up. “Pete, she’s in the room across from mine. What other room does she have?”
“After I checked in, I saw Skye come out of a room a couple doors down from mine. She freaked when she noticed me. Later, she told me there was a dead bird on the balcony. It made her flip out, and she changed rooms.”
“But if she did, she would’ve taken her things to the new room with her,” I pointed out. There was something else that was shaky about his story, a detail that didn’t jibe with what I knew, but I couldn’t quite put my finger on what it was.
“Yeah, I guess.” He shrugged. “Whatever.”
He was drifting back to being his usual lunkheaded, adolescent self, and that made me want to shake him. “No, not whatever. You thought something was wrong last night. You were looking for her. Why?”
“I don’t know.” He turned away from me to stare at the horizon. He wasn’t exactly drunk, but he was in that paranoid state some alcoholics fell into as the effects of inebriation wore off and reality started to intrude. It was almost as if you were waking them from a bad dream, one that they blamed you for. My mother had been like that, which meant that I understood the situation, even if I had no patience for it.
He reached up to rub his chin, and I noticed two long, rusty scratches on the side of his forearm. When I’d seen him the night before, hollering outside of Skye’s door, he’d been wearing a
long-sleeved shirt. I wondered how long those red stripes had been there, and what he’d done to earn them.
“I took some photos of her,” he said finally.
Photographers often took photos of journalists on a press trip; they always carried release forms in their pockets, so they could sell the images afterward. “And?”
“We talked.”
This was excruciating. “Okay, what did you talk about?”
“The business. You know, how it just gets worse and worse every year, how shitty the pay is now. Skye said she was sick of it and she was gonna become a real journalist. And I said that was stupid because they don’t get paid any better, and at least you get free trips when you cover travel. But she said it’s not worth it to stay at a shitty hotel like the Cerón. I told her about places I’ve stayed that were even worse.” He shrugged. “She mentioned her big-shot boyfriend. She said they were going to have a big talk, and everything hinged on that.”
“Everything? What does that mean?” Now, the catch was in my throat.
“Your guess is as good as mine.” He stared at the water. “She said they had to keep their relationship quiet, for professional reasons. I could tell that pissed her off.”
Pete looked down at his hands, and I did, too. His ring finger was bare, and there was a broad swath of tan line where a ring must have been until recently. That started me wondering, until I noticed a big, jagged cut that looked red and raw. His hands had been scratched up when I’d seen him in front of Skye’s door, but this mark was a new addition to his collection.
“What happened to your hand?” I asked him.
Pete stared at me silently. It was disconcerting, seeing my own reflection in his mirrored lenses. I looked anxious and apprehensive.
“Lily,” he said. “Is that guy following me, or you?”
Evil in All Its Disguises Page 5