“What are you talking about?”
Pete gestured with his chin and I turned to look. A man in a ball cap was standing maybe fifty feet away, by a palm tree, speaking quietly into a cell phone. He could have been the gardener I’d spotted when I’d left the Cerón, but his appearance was so unremarkable I couldn’t be sure.
Pete spoke again. “If anyone asks, you haven’t seen me, okay?” Without waiting for me to respond, he started on the dirt path back to the hotel. As he got close to the interloper, the man in the cap moved around the tree, still talking on his cell. Pete halted, reconsidered, and kept moving along the path. I watched his hunched shoulders and retreating back with a growing sense of unease. As I followed Pete, I noticed that the man in the cap fell in line behind me, keeping a wary distance between us.
CHAPTER 11
I retraced my steps back to the grounds of the Hotel Cerón, but Pete had already disappeared from sight. Looking at the path behind me, I saw that the man I’d thought was following me—or Pete—had vanished, too. I stood in place, waiting and watching for the man to reappear, but he didn’t. I couldn’t be imagining all of this, I told myself. If I were, that would mean I’d lost my marbles. The other option was that everyone else had lost theirs; that didn’t make me feel any better.
My watch told me it was a quarter past seven, and I made a mental note, in case that was important later. It was an awful way to think, but my brain had opened up a dossier called Things to Tell la Policía, and it was filling up quickly. It was hard to imagine what Pete could have to do with Skye’s disappearance, but his strange behavior grated on me. More than that, why did Pete look as if he’d been on the losing side of a bar fight?
Sheltered in a grove of trees, I stared at the facade of the Hotel Cerón. The sky had turned several shades darker, and instead of sunlight warming the structure’s stark edges and angles, the gray veil of menacing weather made it more grim. It looked as if the life had been sucked out of the place and all that remained was a neat stack of hollow bones.
It didn’t help that there wasn’t a soul moving around the hotel. I stared at window after window, my eyes tracing up its full five stories, expecting someone to appear at any moment. The drapes were drawn in all but a handful of rooms, but the ones that were exposed had no lights on inside. The glass looked dark; perhaps it was tinted to compensate for what was surely blazing sun for most of the year. The only indication that I wasn’t completely alone was the occasional sound of a car on the road, which was hidden by a tall hedge with a wall backing it up.
There was an opening on the other side of the property and another pathway, and I wanted to see where it led. The stone pathway was slick from the rain, and I moved as quickly as I dared. The hotel’s windows were like a hundred black eyes on me; once my back was to them, I was filled with the heavy, unshakable sense of being watched. Stop being ridiculous, I told myself, looking around yet again. There’s no one there.
The pathway on the other side of the hotel was a short one, but it changed styles in the middle, so that the Cerón’s slippery stones were replaced by wide flagstones that made it easier to move forward. The path opened suddenly to a small clearing that was filled with the skeletal remains of three dozen small bungalows. No, not remains, I realized, taking in the scene; there were construction supplies and equipment littering the ground. The bungalows were still in the process of being built.
They didn’t have proper pathways between them, just rows of packed-in mud. My pretty flip-flops were going to be goners after this, I realized, as I stepped through the muck. Maybe the earth was used to the constant precipitation it got at this time of year, which was why I didn’t sink into it, though mud clung to my shoes and slowed me down. I peered into one bungalow, which seemed almost ready for human habitation; all someone had to do was tear off the clear plastic that shielded the window openings and fill them with glass instead. The next house I looked at was further from completion; the inside needed drywall, but it already had a snake lying on the floor. I was about to look into the next one when a hand grabbed my shoulder and pulled me back, off-balance.
Turning my head, I saw a man who was about my height. His pie-round face and sparse scraps of beard made him look like a kid starting high school. But he was holding a gun and pointing it at my chest, and once I noticed that, his age didn’t matter.
He watched me and I watched the gun. That standoff went on for an eternity. I felt as if I were sinking, but I couldn’t take my eyes off the gun. When I tipped to one side, I looked down and saw that one of my feet was completely submerged in the mud.
His eyes followed mine, and he started to chuckle. The gun bobbed from side to side.
“It’s not funny,” I muttered.
He gave me a broad grin, flashing yellow teeth, and lowered the gun so that the muzzle could brush against his jeans.
“Soy un huésped en el hotel Cerón,” I said. I’m a guest at the Hotel Cerón.
“Lo sé,” he answered. I know. His tone was careless, as if the difference between shooting me and not wasn’t such a big deal.
I looked down again and tried to pull my foot out of the mud. That was easy enough, except that the flip-flop stayed planted. I tried to lift it out with my toes and failed. Finally, I bent down to retrieve it. He went from chuckling to laughing in earnest, making his belly wobble. When I finally extracted the shoe, I moved to one side, and he got serious again, gesturing with the gun to move to the other side. He kept that up while we retraced my original steps along the path, stopping briefly to stuff my muddy foot into the unrecognizable flip-flop.
He shadowed me all the way back to the front door of the Hotel Cerón, frequently mumbling to himself and giggling along the way. The man-boy seemed like a perfect fool, but he was a fool with a gun, and there was a peculiar terror in that. It wasn’t unreasonable that a guard would be watching over the construction site. Mexico was a poor country, and even in a wealthy one, it wouldn’t be unusual to have someone watching over building materials that weren’t locked up. But the giddiness made him seem out of control, and even if he didn’t plan to shoot me, there was a fifty-fifty chance of it happening anyway.
When we reached the hotel’s front door, a bellman stood there, and the two nodded at each other. The bellman held the door open, staring at my feet and the mud I tracked in. The guard said, “La premia”—sarcastically calling me a prize, or perhaps something worse in Mexican slang—and he laughed, but the bellman didn’t join in. Inside the double doors, soaking in the cool air, I turned back and saw the bellman yelling at the guard. I couldn’t hear a word, but I watched as the bellman shoved him, knocking him to the ground.
“What happened to you?” the clerk at the reception desk said. It was the same man who’d been there the night before.
“Long story,” I murmured. When I turned back to look at the scene outside, both the bellman and the guard were gone.
CHAPTER 12
By the time I got the mud scrubbed off me in my second shower of the morning, Denny had called and left a message. After I called her back, she came over to my room. I was in a fluffy white robe with my hair piled into a towel-turban. Denny was wearing an elegantly simple white linen sheath with taupe suede heels that made her tanned legs enviably long. Her long, dark hair was pinned up with a tortoiseshell clip, matching the frames of her glasses. I’d never managed to look effortlessly chic like that in my life. I wanted to take notes as she sauntered in.
“Morning, Lily.” She touched my arm. “How did you sleep last night?”
“Fine.” I lied. “What about you?”
“I was up late trying to figure out if Skye left the hotel. She didn’t say anything to anyone, and she didn’t check out. None of the staff saw her leave, but that doesn’t mean much because there’s just a skeleton crew on duty here. But she’s definitely gone. She cleared her stuff out of her room.”
“We saw that last night…”
“No, I mean I asked a housekeeper
to let me into her room half an hour ago. The bag you put in there is gone. So’s her toiletry kit. For some reason, her shoes are still there.”
“You’re saying Skye came back to the room and picked up her things?”
“I don’t know if Skye did it herself, or if someone else went into her room. But her things are definitely gone.” Denny sighed. “Was there anything, anything at all she said to you about leaving the hotel?”
“No, nothing.”
“Is there a chance she could have been meeting someone?”
“She mentioned the man she’d been seeing, but only to say how much she hated him.” For some reason I couldn’t quite explain, I didn’t want to mention Martin’s name. “She gave me the impression that he wasn’t at this hotel, or even on this continent right now.”
“Hmm. I know I’m grasping at straws, Lily, but did Skye say anything about knowing people here? Or maybe she said something about a hotel?”
“No, there was nothing like that.” Bits of conversation spun through my head like snippets of film reels. “Wait, there was a man who came out to the balcony while we were there. All he said was ‘good evening,’ but it was obvious Skye knew him.”
“Why do you say that?”
“She warned me off him. When I asked who he was, she said I didn’t want to know him.” I tried to picture his face; he’d been handsome, but there was a lounge lizard quality to him that wasn’t attractive at all. “She got up to make her phone call right after he left the balcony.”
Denny’s brows shot towards the ceiling, but her voice was calm. “Could she have been following him?”
“I… I never thought about that. I believed she was making a call.” Looking back, it suddenly seemed clear that the man was the real reason Skye had run off suddenly. The call was just a ruse. Then another thought jolted me. “Pete Dukermann said something about seeing Skye come out of a room at the other end of the floor. She must have been coming out of someone else’s room. That’s why she made up a story about switching rooms.”
Denny’s lips were pressed into a firm line, and her arms were crossed in front of her chest. “Okay, this is all starting to make sense. It’s a lousy thing for her to do, but at least we know what’s up.”
“What do you mean?”
“One of the hotel’s drivers took a couple to the airport in the middle of the night. The woman was wearing dark sunglasses, a black scarf over her hair, and a black raincoat, and she never spoke. I don’t know for sure that it was Skye, but that’s my guess. This is just like her. Nothing with Skye is ever simple or straightforward. She thrives on drama and she invents some when there isn’t any to be had”
“You don’t mean that her boyfriend was here, do you?” The hairs on the back of my neck were bristling. Had Martin been in the hotel last night? That thought unsettled me, but more than that it made me angry. It made me feel as if Martin and Skye were toying with me.
“That guy she left with is not her boyfriend.” Denny’s voice sounded weary.
“How do you know?”
“Because I know the whole awful story about the boyfriend,” Denny said. “Skye and I used to be a lot closer than we are now. I care about her, but she…” Denny’s voice trailed off. I could hear her taking breaths, trying to compose herself. “Skye is one of those people who seems wonderful until you really get to know her. Then you realize she’s abusive toward the people who care most about her.”
“Abusive?” In my mind, the textbook definition of the word was my mother; the drunker the got, the more she lashed out at my sister and me. “Not physically?”
“I don’t mean she hits anyone, Lily. She’s manipulative. I think the person who gets it worst is Ryan. He’s such a sucker for her. She breaks up with him, sleeps with strings of guys, tells him all about it, then asks him for money. And he gives it to her.” Her tone went beyond disapproval, edging into disgust.
“She had one of Ryan’s credit cards in her wallet.” As the words came out of my mouth, I felt ashamed for going through Skye’s things. It had seemed like the right thing to do at the time, but in the light of day it was just nosy. “I found it accidentally when I knocked her bag over and the false bottom fell out and—”
“You don’t have to explain, Lily. Look, if someone takes off without a word, any normal person is going to look at the stuff she left behind to try to get a clue.” Denny reached her left hand to her left shoulder and stretched her neck to the right. “Sorry, just thinking about their psychotic relationship ties my muscles up in knots. I’m supposed to be her friend, but I feel terrible for Ryan. He’s a really good guy. He deserves better.”
“When she talks about him, it’s as if she thinks he’s her puppet.”
“Or her slave.”
We were both quiet for a moment. “Do you have any idea who the guy she left with is?”
“No. Just another guy she’s sleeping with. This is the point where I say it’s none of my business.”
“Denny…” I wanted to ask her about Skye’s boyfriend. Clearly she knew; she had to. Her gaze met mine briefly and swept away. “About Skye’s boyfriend…”
“Please don’t ask me about that, Lily. She swore me to secrecy and I… I just can’t say anything about it, okay?”
“Sure,” I said, backing off instantly. Did I really want to hear about whatever drama Skye was involved in with Martin? My brain buzzed with curiosity, but my gut said hell, no.
Denny smiled. “Now, we have to figure out what hotel to move to. I’ve already sent a couple of messages out, but it’s so early, and this isn’t an early-morning place. My guess is that we’ll be moving hotels around lunchtime. Is that okay?”
“That’s fine.” Sooner would be better, but I didn’t want to act like a petulant brat.
“It’s possible that I may have to move Pete Dukermann with us. I don’t want to, but now that we’re down one journalist, the tourism people are probably going to insist. Would you mind if he does?”
“I honestly don’t care. You might have issues with him because he’s being weirder than usual.”
“I know he’s slimy,” Denny said.
“It’s more than that. Last night, he was banging on Skye’s door, looking for her. This morning, I ran into him outside, by the cliffs. He was throwing something into the water, and he looked like he’d been in a fight. There were scratches on his arms and a cut on his hand.”
Denny breathed in sharply. “You think maybe he came on too strong to a woman and she…” She closed her eyes and shook her head. “No, I don’t want to go there. Now I need brain bleach. I’m going to figure out a way to leave him here.” She smiled at me. “Don’t worry about anything. This isn’t your problem, Lily. I’m going to get things sorted out while you have breakfast and that massage.”
“Thanks, but I’ve got work to do, so I’m going to pass on the spa appointment.” The truth was that I didn’t want to enjoy anything at a property owned by Martin.
“There’s no getting out of the massage, Lily. You need one after the stress caused by Skye’s little stunt. And it’s Saturday, so you should be off work and on the beach, not stuck in front of your computer in a hotel room.”
“When you’re self-employed, you’re never off work.” I glanced at my computer screen, noticing that I had new email. When I clicked into the inbox, I saw that there was a message from Skye. “Denny, you won’t believe this.”
She moved closer and glanced at my screen. “Speak of the devil.”
I opened the message.
Hi Lily! I feel SO guilty about leaving Acapulco without saying goodbye. I’m in a complicated situation right now, and I had to come home. I feel TERRIBLE about this and I hope everyone won’t hate me for screwing up the press trip. I’ll talk with you soon and explain everything! Skye
“Well, at least she finally said something.” Denny’s tone suggested she wasn’t impressed. “I wonder if she’s bothered to email me.”
“Denny,” I said. “Somet
hing is seriously wrong here.”
“What do you mean? I’m pissed off at her, but I feel better knowing nothing terrible has happened.”
“There’s something very wrong.” I went to the desk, pulling out Skye’s passport and handing it to Denny. Her face froze.
She looked at Skye’s photo, leafed through the pages, then went back to staring at Skye’s photo. “I… I don’t understand.” Her expression was blank, as if she couldn’t process what was happening. “How did you get her passport?”
“Denny, the only thing that matters right now is that Skye doesn’t have it. Her email says that she went home, but there’s no way she could have done that. Not without her passport.”
CHAPTER 13
Denny was shell-shocked when she left my room. She murmured something about finding Gavin, and talking to the tourism people, and getting to the bottom of this. But the story her face told was very different. Denny was a take-charge type who was convinced that every problem had a solution. That confidence normally made her unflappable, but this situation wasn’t something she knew how to fix. She was suddenly cast adrift, and it was clear that she didn’t have any sense of which direction to go in.
When Denny left, my suite suddenly felt much colder. I read and reread the email, wanting to believe it; things would be so much easier if I didn’t know the message couldn’t possibly be true. There had to be an explanation for this bizarre situation, one that wasn’t sinister. But each time I looked at the laptop’s screen, my heart plunged a little deeper down into my chest. The only thing I felt sure of was that Skye was in trouble.
The message, brief as it was, sounded like something Skye would write. The email had come from her account, too, which made it seem legit. But why would she lie about going home? Why did she want everyone to think that she’d left Mexico? Her deception made my nerves crackle. Reflexively, I opened and closed the latch of my silver bracelet, the two clicks reminding me of my sister’s shaky relationship with the truth, but also all that she had done to try to make up for that. Claudia’s falsehoods were self-serving, hastily constructed to meet immediate needs. No, I’m not using drugs. I just need money for food. No, I’m not in trouble again. As much as I hated hearing them, I’d at least understood the purpose they served. What I couldn’t grasp now was what purpose Skye could possibly have for telling lies that were so easily disproven.
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