Double Up

by Gretchen Archer

  The second picture was of a walk-in closet. Stuffed full of art.

  Mr. Sanders’s art, to be exact.

  I texted her back: What HAPPENED?

  Bea: He’s ornery. Said he didn’t believe a word I was saying because he saw me on the big airplane with you. I told him he was mixed up like when you think you see a movie star at the Stuckey’s but really, you don’t. Then he called me ILLUSIONAL and a LIAR and had the nerves to say I was faking it. He’s a real smart mouth, Davis. So I gave him a little poke with my walking stick, and then I thought what the hell I might as well beat him.

  Me: Bea, get that man to a hospital. Right this minute.

  Bea: What do I do with his roommate?

  Me: WHAT?

  Bea: His roommate. Robin’s boyfriend. Holt on. I’ll take a selfish.

  It was a full five minutes of me imagining Bradley bringing our daughters to the visitation room at some faraway federal prison to see me and Banana Nana Bea Bea—we’d be cellmates, it would be my ultimate punishment—before the picture showed up on the screen of my phone. Bea was grinning from ear to ear between Stuart Vaughn and Carter Gerrardi, the Blitz pit boss, Robin Sandoval’s Fun Friday Lunch buddy. His face was caved in worse than Stuart Vaughn’s and he no longer looked a bit like Zorro. His ears were bleeding. Both ears. Dripping blood.

  He had a sock stuffed in his mouth too.

  The socks were black zebra striped with neon pink dandelions.

  They were Bea’s.

  She took the socks off her feet and stuffed them in the men’s mouths.

  The biggest difference in the two men was inside Gerrardi’s jacket, which was pulled and strained open because his arms (didn’t appear to be broken) were tied behind his back. I could see the glint of gold inside Gerrardi’s jacket. But not Blitz gold. Badge gold.

  Gerrardi was law enforcement.

  Which meant Vaughn, former Financial Investigator Liaison at Equitable, was too.

  Vaughn was liaisoning with the feds.

  Which meant I wasn’t the only one who knew something wasn’t right at Blitz. The feds knew too. And Bea just hammered the feds. She’d been laboriously typing a text as the rest of my life flashed before my eyes.

  I can’t see taking them to the hospital, Davis. First off, they’re pissed. I might have trouble loading them up. Second off, I’ve got a shrimp problem. I was taking Don Juan home last week, maybe it was last week, might have been last last week, because his truck was out of gas, you know he’s a illegal alien, and I stopped off in the Dunkle Donuts parking lot and bought five pounds of fresh shrimp, heads and all, nice fat shrimps with big long whiskers, but I forgot all about them until I got in the car today. Stanky stanky. I’ve never seen shrimps melt like that. Had to stick my head out the window the whole ways over here. Don Juan was supposed to get them out, but you know he’s from Italy. I guess he forgot. Anyways—

  I didn’t read the rest.

  Me: Bea. Listen to me. Get in your car and get out of there. Go straight to Blitz. No one will look for you there. Get there as fast as you can, hide your car in the hotel parking garage, then go straight to your Blitz suite and stay there.

  A text from her interrupted. There’s no sheets on that bed.

  I typed as fast as my thumbs would let me. Don’t talk to me about sheets, Bea. Get out of there and in that Blitz room. Lock the door, don’t answer it, and don’t come out. Don’t go anywhere, don’t speak to anyone, and don’t move a muscle until you hear back from me. DO YOU UNDERSTAND?

  She texted back: What about the shrimps?

  “What in the world are you doing over there, Davis?” my mother asked. “Writing a book on your phone?”

  My father cleared his throat.

  I looked up from the small screen of devastation in my hands.

  “Davis, you’re sweating,” Mother said. “I can see it on your face. Are you hot?”

  ADJUSTING THERMOSTAT! ADJUSTING THERMOSTAT! ADJUSTING THERMOSTAT!

  “OFF! OFF! OFF!” Our heads swiveled to find Bradley, home from work early. “The Falcons have landed.”

  The Falcons had reached their designated cities. The players would board. Wheels Up was underway. I slid out of the living room to the kitchen as everyone, girlies first, greeted Bradley. This time I didn’t text. I called. I needed help, big help, right now help, this minute help.

  She didn’t answer.

  I sank into my office chair, and the first thing to catch my eye was the gold paint smear on the white chair that started this entire mess. I stared at it for two seconds, waiting for Bea to call, then gave up and dialed her. She answered in the middle of a sentence, “—and you can shut the hell up or you’ll get it upside the head with the toaster again.”

  “Bea!”

  “What, Davis?”

  (Great. Say my name in front of the federal hostages.)

  “Why in the world are you still there? Get out of there. Get out and leave the front door wide open.”

  “You wouldn’t believe the statutory fats they got in this place, Davis. It’s Hots Pockets City here. It’s like they’ve never heard of healthful eating. I tell you something else, they fight like girls.” Then I heard her say, “Did I not just tell you to shut up? Shut the hell up, Pizza Pockets, or these socks are coming off my feets again and going right back in your mouth.”

  I felt sick. Sick sick.

  “Bea, you need to get out of there as fast as you can. Run, Bea. Run for your life. Call me the minute you’re in your car. I’m going to sit here until you do. Get to Blitz and hide. Hide!”

  “Davis?” It was Bradley, calling out to me from the living room where my unsuspecting family was gathered.

  “Give me two minutes,” I yelled back. “I’m coming.”

  Although actually, I was going. To prison. There wasn’t a doubt in my mind I was going to prison and taking Bea Crawford with me.

  Five minutes later, she still hadn’t called. Seven minutes later she still hadn’t called. At the ten minute mark, I dialed her number again, one eye on my office door the entire time.

  “Bea! Why haven’t you called?”

  “Because you said call when I leave.”

  “Why haven’t you left?”

  “Hold onto your horses,” she said. “I’m walking out the door right now with my last load.”

  Last load of what?

  “I got you a present. Lots of presents. Masterpieces presents.”

  The blood pumping through my veins stopped right where it was.

  I counted to ten, then scrambled my IP address and contacted 911 from the call center of my computer. I didn’t have to feign panic. My breath was coming in short gasps, I was seeing stars, and I knew for a fact my legs wouldn’t hold me up should I try to stand. I didn’t say, “Emergency Services, will you get there as fast as you can and free the federal agent and his banker friend?” I did say, “I’m in unit sixty-ten at the Oxford Point apartment complex on East Taylor Road in Gulfport and I’m trapped in my burning apartment. The whole place is on fire. I’m totally engulfed in flames.”

  I ended the call to sputtering. Then a drenching spray from the ceiling sprinklers.

  FIRE! FIRE! FIRE! EXIT IMMEDIATELY! FIRE! FIRE! FIRE!

  Twenty

  “I’m steaming it to you alive right now.”

  Forty-five sopping-wet minutes passed before Bea checked in from Blitz. I’d almost forgotten the Bea fiasco because every square inch of our home was drenched. Bradley yelled, “OFF! OFF! OFF!” as soon as the first drop hit, but the sprinkler system still had its way with our house for almost a full minute. After I called Emergency Services to clean up her mess, Bradley and I, along with Mother, Daddy, Baylor, July, a housekeeping crew and a maintenance team, had been busy cleaning up mine. Wet-dry vacuums roared in every room only outdone by the thunderous industrial fans
aimed at the rugs and furniture. Housekeeping stripped and changed the beds; July stripped and changed the babies. Bex and Quinn were wearing Kate Mack pink and white tankinis with terrycloth cover-ups, pink flip-flops, and heart-shaped sunglasses for the Great Flood Cleanup.

  I couldn’t describe how much cuteness my daughters brought to the chaos.

  “What did you say?” Bradley was pushing a mop. For the first time maybe ever. He leaned in to whisper, lest House rain down on us again. “Inferno? Hell? Five-alarm fire?”

  “I can’t even remember.”

  I remembered exactly.

  We were standing beside a wet-towel mountain in the foyer when my phone buzzed in my pocket. I dropped a dripping towel, told Bradley I’d be right back, then slid to my office to take Bea’s call. I had to dig my laptop out of the diaper bag I’d tossed it in to keep it dry, then minimize her divorce docket still pulled up on my desktop to see the video coming from her phone. All I could see were knees and elbows. Joint after joint. “I don’t even know what I’m looking at, Bea, and I can’t hide from everyone long enough to figure it out.”

  “They’re about to open up the big gold room again. I caught it with my spy glasses.”

  “Where are you?”

  “In the casino looking at the gold room.”

  Not where I told her to put herself. “You’re supposed to be locked in your hotel room, Bea.”

  “I was. But I zippered downstairs for a guacamolo smoother.”

  “Get back to your room right now, Bea. Lock the door and don’t leave again.”

  “Well, excuse me, but I thought you’d want to see this.”

  She’d gotten into the habit of deciding for herself what was news at Blitz and what wasn’t. I thought there was a shooter in the casino one day last week when I’d walked away from my phone long enough to rock my girls to sleep, only to return and find forty-seven messages from Bea stacked one on the other, and the big news was she’d won $1,000 on the bonus round of a Pinball slot machine.

  The day before that, I thought the roof had caved in across the Bay and the breaking news was that Bea was positive the mustachioed star of Smokey and the Bandit was eating a chocolate donut in the coffee shop. Blitz reopening high stakes was no surprise to me, not nearly the big deal Bea was describing, and certainly not worth her being out in the wide open. She had no idea what she’d done or who she’d done it to. She needed to find a rock and crawl under it. I needed to get out of my office, find a mop, and start pushing it.

  The video streaming from Bea’s spy glasses was nothing short of chaos.

  “Can you be still for one second, Bea?”

  She huffed in protest, but she stopped.

  “Now, what’s going on?” I asked.

  “The gold room is opening back up with a big game. I mean big as a barn game. It says—holt on. Read this sign.”

  She aimed her spy glasses at a large printed display.

  SO YOU THINK YOU KNOW SLOTS?

  THE FUTURE IS TONIGHT

  GATE HIGH STAKES

  MIDNIGHT

  BLITZ

  ALWAYS THE BEST PLAY

  “Bea, that doesn’t make sense and it probably doesn’t mean a thing.”

  “There’s about five thousand people here who think it means something. Can you see it now?”

  She was swinging her head so fast I couldn’t watch. “No.”

  “Well, I tried,” she said. “It must be a big deal, because the television people are here. I thought you’d want to know.”

  Reporters were there?

  I moused and clicked all over the feed and still couldn’t see anything but backsides in front of gold velvet. “Is there any way you can get better video, Bea? I can’t see a thing.”

  “Well, if I unplug my spy ears I can,” she said. “But how am I supposed to talk to you if I unplug my spy ears?”

  I explained to her that time was of the essence, and by that I meant the feds were surely trying to identify and locate her. They’d use webcams to retrace the route she took to Oxford Point Village, where she’d beaten the living daylight out of the two men, and it was only a matter of time before they showed up here looking for her—and me. It wouldn’t take them long after that to find her there. She was safer in the crowd at Blitz for the time being, but she needed to get to her hotel room, which was secondary to the fact that I could only talk to her one more second before someone in my house demanded an explanation as to why they were swimming around sopping up the flood while I was on the phone. Case in point, I heard my mother calling out for me. One thing my mother could do, and do well, was track me down.

  “I’ve seen enough, Bea.” I had one eye on the computer screen and one on the door. “Get to your room and stay there. We’ll talk about this later.”

  I hung up and was about exit the video feed when I caught a glimpse of the high stakes ceiling.

  “Davis?” My mother was getting closer. “We’ve got enough food out here to feed an army. Come on before it gets cold.”

  I backed up the video to catch a glimpse of the flashing marquee above the game behind the curtain in Blitz’s high stakes room. I froze the screen, stared at it, then my damp chair caught me on the way down. The game kiosk above the miles of gold velvet was in the shape of a jet, with the word Takeoff spelled out in red flashing lights across the fuselage. I turned away from my computer screen.

  It was hopeless, useless, and it was over.

  Blitz stole my game.

  The Bellissimo wasn’t going to turn gaming on its ear. Blitz was.

  Mine was a marketing tool, with a buy-in on the player end meant to fill our casino with players again and generate enough income to keep the Bellissimo going. Theirs was on the casino floor, anyone could walk up and play. Which meant my first Wheels Up run would also be my last.

  From the living room, I heard my husband. “Davis! Where are you? Your game just made a million dollars!”

  While we’d mopped, my players had flown a million game miles.

  I gave myself a quiet moment to gather the crumbs of our Bellissimo lives and careers, wondering how it happened. Wheels Up was all me. I secured my system before I clicked on Script Center five weeks ago and swept for bugs every morning and night. I didn’t write the game on a network, so it wasn’t like someone in the next cubicle installed Keylogger and duplicated my program. I’d timed the twenty-five digit key to unlock the game at three o’clock, when the planes were to have taxied out of the hangar. Blitz hadn’t built Takeoff between then and now. I’d been as careful as I knew how to be, and still, my game had been swiped.

  There was a spy in my house. Here. In my home.

  By the time I made my way to the living room, where my furniture was wearing blankets, I’d made the decision to keep the news to myself for now. Someone had ordered room service—probably July, who stayed three steps ahead of everything—so I had my life sofa to myself. I sat down with a perfect view of Blitz and much food and laughter behind me in the kitchen. It was then and there I decided I was done. I was ready to let go. Leave. I was finally onboard with Mr. Sanders—sell it. Move on. Get out of this screaming house. It was time.

  I was just about to plan the rest of our lives when my view of Blitz was suddenly obstructed by something dropping out of the sky and onto our terrace.

  INTRUDER ALERT! INTRUDER ALERT! INTRUDER ALERT!

  It was Robin Sandoval’s limp body, swaying like a pendulum, her neck in a noose, suspended from somewhere above.

  She was dead.

  I finally blinked. When I did, Baylor was in front of me, Glock out. Mother and July ran—Mother with Bexley, July with Quinn. My father had already dialed nine and was on his way to one one. I caught him by the arm. “No, Daddy.” My mouth was dry, so dry. “Not yet.”

  Baylor eased open the terrace door, removing the glass barrier betw
een us and Robin’s body, swaying against the backdrop of Blitz and what promised to be a moonless night. He checked right, left, up and down, then said, “Clear the penthouse, Davis.”

  Baylor and I had officially switched roles.

  “Let’s go.” Bradley reached for my ice cold hand and we ran. He stopped at the private elevator in the foyer, called it, and held the door while I ran to the study. I got the gun safe combination wrong twice before I got it right once. My hands didn’t stop shaking until they were full of the cold steel comfort of a Beretta M9-22 for me and Colt .357 Magnum for my husband. I checked the magazine on the Beretta and the cylinder on the .357, stuffed them in the waistband of my jeans, secured the gun safe, and bolted for the elevator. I passed Bradley the Colt, muzzle down. The only sound for the next thirty seconds was our labored breathing and the whir of the elevator.

  “Back up,” I whispered. We flattened ourselves against opposite side walls so the elevator would take the heat if the doors parted and we had company.

  We did.

  The doors had barely opened when a succession of bullets ripped in, taking out the mirrored back wall of the elevator. Glass shards exploded around us and fell to our feet, all thanks to a Smith & Wesson .38 Special. I knew the gun and I knew the shooter.

  She was wearing black slacks and a white blouse under a gold blazer.

  She was wearing a Blitz security uniform.

  Bea Crawford was the world’s worst spy.

  My father, who appeared from out of nowhere, approached her from behind and put his gun to her skull. He racked one in the chamber, then said, “Drop your weapon, Fantasy. On your knees.”

  Twenty-One

  Bradley took a hard seat on the upholstered bench beside the elevator and, head hanging, stared at the floor, trying to catch his breath. I slid down the wall on the other side of the elevator door and collapsed on the floor, my Beretta falling out of my hand onto the carpet. Daddy reached under Fantasy’s jacket and came out with handcuffs, when Bradley said, “No, Samuel. Let her go.”