“If that’s a phone, I don’t understand why you can’t call your father, Davis.”
“For the same reason we can’t use Poppy’s phone, Mrs. Way,” Fantasy said. “We don’t want DeLuna to know we have a way to call out. We don’t want to tip our hand. If we make a call from inside this room, he’ll know we have a V2.”
“Well.” Mother blew a raspberry. “Fiddlesticks.”
Arlinda held her hand up, third-grade style. “Who is Poppy?”
“She’s a crazed bitch,” Mother said.
(OMG.)
“So, a craybitch.”
“Right.”
Mother mouthed it silently several times so she wouldn’t forget again.
“Poppy was our stateroom attendant, Arlinda,” I said.
“Was?” she asked. “Where is she? What happened to her?”
“She—” Jessica was about to tell the tale of the trunks.
“Jess?” When we need her asleep she’s awake. When we need her awake she’s asleep. “Let’s stay on track.”
“I’m so confused,” Arlinda said.
“So, me too,” Jess said.
I looked at my watch. I stood.
“We don’t have time to be confused.”
* * *
The casino opened at noon. I planned on having No Hair out of the submarine at noon-oh-five. What I couldn’t count on was the Orlon Deck being deserted at midday like it was at midnight, so Fantasy and I had to get clever. She was cleverly stuffed into one of Poppy’s uniforms: khaki shorts and a Probability staff T-shirt. The only problem being Poppy was (very past tense) half Fantasy’s size. I couldn’t fit anything of Poppy’s past my elbow, so I had to suck it up and go back to Burnsworth’s room. I borrowed a starched white short-sleeve cotton uniform shirt with navy blue shoulder boards that extended a good eight inches past my shoulders. I was wearing the uniform tent over my Mommy 2B white stretch pants, and I looked like I was on my way to knock on Probability doors and say, “Trick or treat.”
Fantasy pulled the Berretta PX4 we found in a lockbox in Poppy’s room from somewhere behind her. It couldn’t have been the waistband of the khaki shorts, because there wasn’t room to fit an idea in the waistband of those shorts. She placed it in front of Mother. Who stared at it.
“Don’t let anyone in except us, Mother. Anyone. And shoot to kill.”
“You got it, Davis.”
Then, at long last we caught a break.
Fantasy and I walked out of 704 at eleven forty-five using Poppy’s V2 to open the door. We traveled the companionway without seeing anyone. We took the service elevator alone to the Orlon Deck, where we found plenty of traffic. We got a few looks because I was so pregnant and Fantasy was so busting out of her t-shirt, but for the most part we blended in. We could have been the butler and stateroom attendant in any of the fifty suites, albeit a very pregnant butler and a six-foot-tall stateroom attendant in Daisy Dukes.
I snagged a wide service cart stacked high with dishes (we could use in 704) so large and heavy it took both of us to roll it. We hid behind the dishes and made our way down the wide path we’d traveled last night without incident. A few close calls with the dish cart today, but again, no incidents. That it was lunch helped. An hour earlier or later might have meant more traffic. As it was, we looked like we were doing our jobs and everyone we passed looked like they were doing theirs. We made it to the lobster tank. We stepped behind it and stood in front of the blue garage door. I aimed Max DeLuna’s V2, and with everything I had, prayed the door would open. The lock slid and the blue door raised and rolled. Fantasy ran through first, then helped me cross the gap between metal floor and submarine dock. I aimed the V2 again and closed the garage door behind us, then we took exactly one second to orient ourselves to the massive dimly lit space with a submarine close enough to reach out and touch.
“Where’s the door?”
Fantasy’s breath was coming in gasps.
Mine too. “Look for a hatch. Find the hatch. There!” I saw a set of dock steps. We ran, we climbed, yelling “No Hair!” the whole way. I aimed, I pushed the padlock, and nothing. The V2 wouldn’t open the hatch. I tried it ten more times and as hard as I was trying to get V2 to open the hatch, I was trying harder not to have a full-blown panic attack.
“You’re going to have to climb, Fantasy.”
“Climb what?”
“The submarine. To the escape hatch.” I sat down hard on a dock step. “There are four exterior ladders. Find one. Climb to the top. You’ll find a round hatch on top of the submarine right in the middle.” My heart was beating out of Burnsworth’s shirt.
She took off and I dropped down to a sitting position on the dock step in front of the hatch. The air in the submarine chamber was dead, there wasn’t a ray of natural light, and Prospect 1000 was floating in water with wide docks built around it. My eyes adjusted more and I found another blue garage door against the hull of the ship, this one wide enough for Prospect to clear.
I listened as Fantasy thumped down the dock in one direction, then the other. She found a ladder. I couldn’t see her climbing, but I could hear her.
“I got it, Davis!” Her voice echoed off the chamber walls. I heard the slam of the escape hatch opening. “I’m going in!”
The longest seventeen minutes of my life ensued, during which I wandered up and down the wide dock worrying the hem of Burnsworth’s shirt until I had it twisted into knots. I couldn’t hear anything from inside Prospect; the only thing I could hear was my own pulse slamming my temples and the water gently slapping the submarine chamber walls. It raced through my mind that this level of stress couldn’t possibly be good for my babies and if I ever got off this ship, I would sit my butt in a chair and stay in it, without moving one single muscle, until the day these babies were born. My thoughts raced past Mother, Daddy, my sister Meredith, my niece Riley, and the daughter I had yet to meet, then they all landed on Bradley. I’d never wanted or needed him more, and alone in the submarine chamber I was on the edge of turning a dark corner of despair—something must have happened to Fantasy inside Prospect—certain I’d never see Bradley or anyone else again, when I finally heard Fantasy.
“DAVIS!” She was climbing out from the escape hatch. “Davis! Davis! Davis!”
The sheer panic she painted on my name as she called it out paralyzed me.
“Davis!”
I took off, running for her, and the next thing I saw, clearing the shadowy corner, was No Hair. The relief of seeing him would have knocked me down had he not started yelling my name too. “DAVIS!” Urgency propelled his stiff muscles down the dock. “The pilot!” The two words bounced off the metal walls. “Davis! The pilot! DeLuna’s pilot! She’s on Bellissimo One! She’s flying Bradley’s plane!”
I passed out.
TWENTY-TWO
There was an underwater quality to my world, as if the ship were sinking. Maybe I’d been tossed overboard. Maybe I fell overboard. Maybe I’d jumped.
Everything in my limited field of vision was floating. No Hair was there, but I didn’t remember swimming with him or even swimming at all from Prospect 1000 to 704. I must have, though, because everything was soaking white linen and my limbs were dead from swimming. I could feel their lifeless weight sinking into the white, with the only active part of my body the wide and spherical middle. Something in the middle of me moved with vibrant energy, and that must be how I was breathing underwater. I was floating on my back and the image of my mother’s head zoomed in and out above me, and someone, Fantasy I think, kept putting something to my lips and telling me to drink. I didn’t think I should be swallowing, I’d drown for sure, so I refused. It was when No Hair demanded—his voice coming in loud rippling soundwaves, demanding, insisting, breaking through the high-pitched ringing in my ears—that I let my lips part. My mouth filled
with sweet, stinging ocean water. It bit my tongue and froze my throat. Above all this, a liquid slideshow played in the air, near the light, near the air, near the surface I couldn’t reach. Through the water I saw us in our first apartment: we were at the stove, Bradley was stirring, offering me a taste. Bradley and me in the park, playing with someone’s dogs, telling me we needed puppies of our own. Bradley in his office, a woman standing beside him holding three sharp pencils, sharp enough to draw blood, and I tried to take the woman’s pencils so she wouldn’t stab my husband. The aquatic movie played on and on, and I couldn’t understand why No Hair wouldn’t pull me up for air. Then everything went dark again. Merciful sleep.
* * *
The first coherent words I processed between receiving the news about Bradley on the deck of Prospect 1000 and waking fully in 704 were No Hair’s. “She brought her cat?”
Fantasy dropped Anderson Cooper on my babies. “Here she comes.”
I lifted my head and buried my face into the warmth, the scent, the music of my cat. I held her with one arm and reached out with the other to touch my mother, No Hair, and Fantasy, all within reach, all with end-of-the-world faces. Arlinda was across from me, sitting beside Jess, whose head was hanging off the white linen sofa, her dark hair covering her face as she napped. “Is he alive?” The words clawed their way out of my throat. My follow up was, “I need the computer.” No one would know if Bradley and Baylor were alive on the Gulfstream. I would have to answer my own question.
Fantasy shot off in the direction of the dressing room.
“Of course he’s alive, Davis,” No Hair said. “This is a con. There’s no money in a kamikaze mission.”
He was right. Of course. Yes. Hope. Blessed hope.
Mother moved to sit on the arm of the white linen sofa, at my side. “Davis? Do you want more Coca-Cola?”
“No.”
I pushed my hair out of my face. I stirred my sleeping babies, they pushed back reassuringly, then I set to work to find their father.
“I’m going to make you the Starbucks, Davis.”
“Thank you, Mother.”
She stood, always happy to have kitchen work in times of trouble, and kissed the top of my head.
“I have a pot roast in the slow cooker.”
(Slow cooker?)
No Hair and I looked at each other, long and hard.
“He locked us in here.”
“I know,” he said.
“I had a baby when I was sixteen.”
“I know, Davis.”
“Fantasy is leaving Reggie. Not the other way around.”
A tendon in his neck jumped, the news catching him off guard.
“It’s the game, No Hair. Knot on Your Life. DeLuna is diverting the deposits to an account set up in Bradley and Jessica’s names. The players don’t know because their V2s are showing a balance that isn’t there. He’ll have two hundred million in a Cayman account before the casino closes today.”
“I know,” No Hair said. “Fantasy told me.”
“Did she tell you about Burnsworth?”
He inhaled sharply. She’d told him. Then she returned, sat beside me on the sofa, and passed me the laptop.
I went straight to (my husband) the deep web, then opened a browser window. I pulled up FlightView and my shaking fingers typed GPT, the airport code for Gulfport-Biloxi International Airport, where Bellissimo One was hangared and scheduled to depart from Friday when this nightmare started. The chances of the flight being tracked were so very slim—Colby Mitchell the Skyjacking Pilot would have flown dark, without registering—and plugged in the Gulfstream’s tail numbers. Nothing. No flight records. Of course not.
Mother placed a champagne flute of hot coffee in front of me.
No Hair scratched his ear, but didn’t ask.
I spent the next five minutes in the airport’s Human Resources department, hiring myself. Air Traffic Controller, no dependents, yes 401K, just give me my password. I had to stop, open a second screen, and create a Firefox email account to receive the password. The only person in the room I knew for sure was breathing while I worked my way into the airport’s radar archives was Jess, because she was snoring. It felt like hours, but it was just minutes and a champagne flute of hot mostly decaf coffee later when I was able to log into Friday’s records and find the one afternoon flight departing GPT without a flight plan.
“Nome,” I told my quiet audience. “She flew the plane to Nome.”
“Alaska?” Fantasy asked.
“The edge of the world,” No Hair said.
“Nome.” I couldn’t stop saying it. “Nome.”
* * *
The International Airport Transport Association airport code for Nome was OME. And I cyber-hired myself as an Air Traffic Controller for the second time in twenty minutes at the Nome Airport. Having just been through the FAA application and screening, I got the job in two minutes instead of the three it took me to hire myself in Gulfport.
“It was a direct flight from Gulfport to Nome.” I didn’t look up from the computer. “Five souls onboard. Four thousand miles.”
Jessica did the math. “They landed in Alaska at ten on Friday night.”
I clicked through Nome departures, a very short list, and found the one unregistered flight between two Bering Air flights. “The plane has been sitting on the tarmac this whole time.” Bellissimo One slept ten and had every creature comfort known to man, but still, this long? “Until an hour ago.” I glanced at the computer clock. “It took off an hour ago.”
“For where?” Everyone in the room asked the question.
“South. The plane is traveling south. It’s over the Bering Sea right now.”
“We need that plane traveling east,” No Hair said. “Where in the hell is it going?”
I looked up from the laptop. “Hawaii.”
“Of course,” Fantasy said. “The bank.”
“So, Elima?”
Fantasy and I stared at Jess.
“What?” she asked.
“Yes,” I said. “Elima. Banco de la Elima.”
“I’m not following,” No Hair said.
“They’re making a run for it, No Hair,” I said. “They’re cashing out. Colby Mitchell is flying Bradley to Hawaii to have him withdraw the money. The account is in his name. She’s going to walk him to a teller window and have him empty it.” I flew all over the keyboard calculating the flight, distance, and speed. They’d land in Hawaii an hour before we docked in the Caymans, exactly when the casino closed for the passengers to disembark. “The Knot on Your Life deposits are being diverted to a Cayman bank,” I looked up, “that has a branch in Hawaii.”
Jess waved. “Hello! You can’t get that much cash and it’s not a branch.”
Fantasy and I had developed Jessica immunities, knowing we only had to halfway listen to every fifth or sixth thought, but No Hair hadn’t been here long enough.
“Excuse me?” he said.
Jessica splayed a hand across her red bra. “Me?”
He was looking right at her. We all were.
“Yes,” No Hair said. “You. What did you say?”
“Banks require a fourteen-day notice for large withdrawals.”
“Make a lot of large withdrawals, Jessica?” No Hair asked her.
She looked at him curiously. “So, what?”
My husband’s very life was at stake. No Hair could interrogate Jess about her banking habits later. I agreed it was well worth looking into, but not here and not now. “Can we talk about this later?” I asked. “This deal is going down tonight.”
“They can get a cashier’s check.” Jessica whispered, mostly to herself. “But they can’t get that kind of cash. Unless they called ahead.”
If I knew the magic words,
I’d say them and put her to sleep. I wasn’t the least bit concerned with bank rules and regulations and very concerned with what Colby Mitchell had planned for Bradley and Baylor after she got her money. Or her cashier’s check. I didn’t care. What I did care about was this: When Bradley finished banking for her, what would happen to him? To Baylor?
No Hair got it. “The only way to stop the withdrawal is to stop the plane,” he said. “They can’t land that plane in Hawaii.”
“How do we stop a plane from landing?” My hands hurt. Because my nails were digging into them between laptop operations. “If Bradley or Baylor had control over the pilot or the plane they wouldn’t even be on their way to Hawaii. They can’t take control of the plane, No Hair, because they’re not pilots. And how is it you suggest we keep the plane from landing?” Now my hands hurt and my face was wet. I swiped at my wet face with my hurt hands.
My questions filled the salon and no one had answers.
Mother began saying the Lord’s Prayer under her breath.
Arlinda stood. “Mr. Blackwell. My player.” She pointed up. To the casino. “He was a pilot in the Navy. He was with NASA. He parks satellites. Surely to God he can do something.”
Of course he could. Of course. The question was, would he? How in the world could I convince Fredrick Blackwell to disrupt the flight of a jet in the sky? By speaking every billionaire’s favorite language on the ground, or in this case, at sea—money.
Money talks.
* * *
From the ottoman in my dressing room, surrounded by Probability server bikinis and an odd collection of power tools, I launched a cyber-attack against the thieves who’d locked us in 704, taken No Hair hostage, and now had my husband and Baylor in their grips. I didn’t go deep or dark web because I no longer cared and I didn’t have time.
I isolated the eighteen-digit Knot on Your Life numbers assigned to the fifty players and cracked into the Cayman bank. I left the withdrawals alone, so funds would still be pulled from the personal accounts, but I stopped the funnel of cash to Max DeLuna. When I plugged in the final eighteen-digit number and hit enter, the flow of player money to con man stopped, and for the first time since the switch was flipped, the Knot on Your Life wins went to the right place—the player accounts.
DOUBLE KNOT Page 20