Paradise (The Erotic Adventures of Sophia Durant)

by O. L. Casper

  “I know something of what happened, if you want to know,” he said. I didn’t trust him, but what he went on to say got my attention. “Your people tipped off local police.”

  “My people?” I said, indignant.

  “Some white people…Americans,” he said in a heavy accent.

  I intuited immediately who it was. The FBI. This was their little revenge since they couldn’t touch my case themselves. For some reason the Times had reported they were on the island—which, unless they made it up completely (they might have), probably had some truth to it. They’d got the information from somewhere. But who would have leaked that and why? Something wasn’t right, other than what was obviously wrong; there was some sort of subterfuge going on. But, at the moment, that was the least of my problems.

  “I go now,” he said and left.

  Me too, I thought as I looked around.

  I listened to the man’s footsteps as he closed a second door, the door to the corridor my cell was in. Apparently I was the only one in any of the cells in the corridor since I heard no other noises apart from my own. I listened to the man’s footsteps as he walked out into the courtyard outside the building. I studied his steps. The sound disappeared abruptly as he must have stepped onto some grass or something soft.

  That night the temperature descended rapidly. There was nothing I could do but huddle up and bear the cold. Needless to say I didn’t sleep that night.

  In the morning the man from the night before came in and stood at the cell door. He had a stack of blankets. I watched him unlock it.

  “I’m sorry,” he began to apologize profusely. “I explained them your situation but they wouldn’t let me back in to give you these. I’m…”

  I stopped him: “It’s not your fault.”

  “There’s something else I need to say.” He looked at me with a look of sincerity in his eyes.

  I took the blankets and wrapped myself in them.

  “I could have died in here last night. I had to keep moving around to get my heart rate up to stay warm enough.”

  “You must listen to me,” he interjected. “On Monday they take you to the main island. To Nassau. There you await trial. It could be years. You have heard stories, I am sure. How they keep foreigners, especially Americans, for many years to await trial. Sometimes trial never comes.”

  I caught his drift.

  “Why are you helping me?” I asked.

  “It is because whole thing—not right. I talk it over with my wife. About your people. The way they talked to our police. Our guys—they never find you. Even if you do this here. You get away with it. Not in a million years. Now suddenly they arrest you. No connection to the crime. No evidence. This is the talk in whispers around the station. You’ve been set up. Everybody know it. Still, nobody do nothing for you. It is the way with my people. They are wicked.”

  “You didn’t answer my question.”

  “What?”

  “Why are you helping me? I don’t understand it.”

  “Well…I feel bad. And my wife—she put me up to it too. I mean it both our idea. But she give me strength. If you know what I mean.”

  I thought about what he was saying.

  “Still, how does this help me? You telling me this?”

  “Monday you not go to Nassau.”

  “Huh?”

  “They not find you here Monday.”

  “How?”

  “La clave esta en la manta.”

  I looked at the blanket as he did, stunned.

  “Before you go, what’s your name?”

  He looked at me for a split second, as if trying to figure out why I’d asked.

  “Santiago…Santiago Oyarvide.”

  He locked the cell door and exited the corridor.

  I immediately unraveled the blanket and it fell to the floor with a sharp, metallic clink—the keys. I was dumbfounded. My whole life I’d never had luck. This made up for all of it. I decided then and there I would be grateful for the entirety of the remainder of my life. Regardless of what happened. This was the silver lining. During the night I’d found a crack in one corner of the cell at the floor. I could remove and replace one of the rocks with a small pocket of space behind it left intact. At the time I’d not thought of any use for it. I took the rock out, set the keys inside the empty pocket and put the rock back. I did this in case I got inspected. I didn’t really think I would get inspected, but I’d seen it in several prison movies so I thought it a possibility. I decided I would go at night. That was when I figured I had the best chance of making this actually work. Even if I got shot and killed, I reasoned, that would be better than life in prison. Especially, life in prison in the Bahamas.

  After hours of visualizing the coasts leading back to the villa and the highway, darkness fell. I waited for what I was sure was a few more hours to put the time past midnight. It was cold, possibly freezing, but I had adrenaline as well as the blankets to keep me warm. Of all the excitement I’d recently had, this was certainly the height of it. I couldn’t believe my luck. I was living in a dream state. True, I hadn’t escaped and lived yet. But it was try or die….

  In the early hours I discarded the blankets with a brutal shiver. It was dark in the cell and I had to feel for the keyhole on the cell door. I could make out the bars in the dark. My eyes had adjusted well enough. But the hole was too dark to see. In seconds I found it and fitted the key in the hole. I tried various keys on the door leading out of the corridor. None of them worked. What the fuck? He’d gotten me this far only to lead me astray? I tried again. Every single key. None of them fit. I sunk down to the floor in despair. I listened for any sound outside. There was none.

  I tried the keys again. One by one. With a bit of thrust, one of them ripped into the lock with quite a loud sound. I cringed at the noise, disbelieving it had gone in. I twisted it and the lock unbolted. Turning the handle, the door began to open. I took a deep breath, in a state somewhere between shock and awe.

  Outside it was windy and cold. At first I merely peaked out of the cracked door. Seeing no one and no lights anywhere, I opened it further. There was nothing but an open courtyard leading down to the sea on one side and to another building on the other. Needless to say, I went by way of the side leading to the sea. I walked along the shore of the sound heading north.

  At the north end of the sound I came to what seemed to be an airport. Then there was a big stretch of grass to the west. I decided to follow this grassy stretch across to Tarpum Bay at the other side. After what must have been about twenty minutes I made it to the beach. I followed this beach for what must have been about five miles. Then the beach began to curve around to the east and I saw the lights of a housing development. On closer inspection I found it to be a middle class neighborhood with a few luxury homes. I checked some of the cars parked in the street but they were locked. The fifth car I got to was unlocked. It was a BMW, late nineties by the look of it. I got inside and sat in the driver seat. I thought back to a blog I had read about a year ago on the hacker’s life website about hotwiring cars. With some concentration the details unfolded in my mind. I followed the instructions to the letter. I was able to get the car to make a clicking sound, but couldn’t get the engine to turn over. It seemed like one obstacle after another had befallen me. I was nearly crestfallen. I saw a light come on in the house the BMW was parked in front of. And someone opened the front door. I’m fucked. Suddenly, the car started. I put it in drive and punched it. In the rearview I saw a man run out into the street, yelling, arms flailing. It turned out the road I was on turned into Queen’s Highway and I realized where I was. I cut the speed up to 180 all the way back to the villa. I parked the car in one of the garages and entered the main house. A security guard approached me, but recognizing me with some surprise, backed off.

  “Sir,” I addressed him, “there’s a BMW in the south garage I need gotten rid of.”

  I had come to know him as someone I could trust, and he was the sort of man to do
something like this. Still, he was surprised.

  He looked at me in question.

  “I need it done immediately.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  He nodded to another guard in the hall before departing.

  I went straight to Anna’s room. I knocked on the door profusely. Finally, she answered.

  “Mama, you’re alive and well!”

  She hugged me instinctively.

  “Come inside,” she said, pulling me in by the arm and closing the door behind us. I saw a digital clock. It was 2:35.

  “They’re going to notice I’m missing in a few hours when they go to check for me.”

  I pictured Santiago Oyarvide looking into the cell with a smile. Telling the others with a straight face, “She’s not there.”

  “I need to prepare the Gulfstream for a flight to Jacksonville, ASAP.”

  “You know what to do about that more than I do. I have not done that before.”

  “I know. I just want you to be with me while I do it.”

  “I’ll do anything. You’re right. We must get you out of here before they find you again.”

  We drank espressos from the Keurig in the kitchen. It dawned on me that in all probability it would be the last time either of us would drink espresso from that machine. I felt sentimental while I knocked back the hot espresso. Then it was time for action. I arranged for the plane to take off from North Eleuthera Airport at 5:45. That was the soonest the crew and the plane could be ready. A weight started to lift from my mind after the phone call to get the flight in order. I asked Anna to get Savannah ready for the journey and she proceeded to ensure that she was. I followed her around while she did so. I didn’t want to be alone. I remembered my computer and had her interrupt her duties to follow me to my room to check for it.

  Opening the door to my room, we found it to be trashed. Someone, or more likely a group of police, had gone through my room and trashed it. The MacBook was nowhere to be found. Some of my other belongings were missing too. Anna instructed me to pack my things, but I told her I wasn’t taking anything with me other than her and the baby.

  Twenty minutes before the flight we woke Savannah. We packed her into an Escalade with some of Anna’s fellow staff. She was in a spritely mood and seemed happy to travel. We were escorted in a motorcade with two more Escalades carrying personal security staff. The horizon lightened as we drove out onto the runway and boarded the Gulfstream. In another fifteen minutes we were ready for takeoff.

  Out the window I saw pack of local police cars in the distance headed in our direction with their lights blazing. The plane began moving, slowly at first. I prayed for it to move faster as I watched the pack of cars close in. Our engines screamed louder and we began a rapid push along the runway. Two of the cars outgunned the rest and caught up to our tail but broke off as our nose lifted off the ground. I was ecstatic as we began our climb to altitude. Just in time.

  Anna sat next to me for the duration of the flight.

  “Are we going to have jobs much longer?” she asked as we climbed to altitude.

  I smiled.

  “Nobody’s going anywhere unless they want to.”

  “I don’t understand how you gained control so quickly,” she whispered.

  “He left me a sum in his will with orders for the estate,” I lied. It was a half-truth really. In the will the whole estate, including Stafford Capital Group, all the real estate, jets, cars, and everything else, was left to me. But it was not Stafford who had done it. Rather I had arranged it after his death. I mentioned “securing the future.” Well, that’s what I did in good measure: I forged documents, signatures, made the proper arrangements through Stafford’s various attorneys to put the whole estate in my hands. That was the benefit of Stafford merely overseeing his affairs. If you knew the intimate details of what they were, you could manipulate them as I have. I’m now Sophia Durant, twenty-seven, with a fortune in excess of $3.2 billion and climbing.

  Anna was now my personal assistant helping to oversee the estate. I had relieved her of her duties with Savannah and made her my full-time attendant. We made arrangements for $100,000 cash to be securely delivered to Santiago Oyarvide for freeing me from jail. I would send him that sum year after year for the rest of his life.

  I opened Flipboard, the aggregate news app, on my iPad. On the front page of a newspaper there was a picture of a group of Arabs holding up a flag with some Arabic writing scrawled on it. The caption read: “Azadi: Arabic for freedom.”

  Chapter 26

  Sophia Durant’s Diary (continued)

  First thing after getting Savannah settled with Anna at the renovated dacha on Cinnamon Beach Road, I took a trip to Gainesville to see Julie. I remember the green blur of the forests and fields passing as I zipped down FL-20 with the top down on my Mercedes SLK. I felt an exhilaration, mirroring the exhilaration I had felt following the interview for the position I’d had as nanny, as I sped along the highway doing ninety. All the disparate strands of my life came together now, all pointing in one direction. I saw the ghost of an image of Julie’s face peering over the horizon at me as I raced madly in her direction. She was that transcendental star, the white light, the burning focus of all that I was. But there was another star on the horizon, Savannah. She would grow up with me now. I would be her mother for always. The rest of the dark experiences associated with her, the hopelessness of Mark Stafford and Isabella Gardner, the hopelessness of the trap that was the life little Savannah was about to enter were now all but a receding memory, fading in the dusk light. A cool wave of satisfaction poured over me. But it was not without pain. The pain of all I had experienced. The pain of the relationships I had built and the death that surrounded them. The pain of the souls of those hopeless women. The pain of being chased and hunted. The pain of the persecution of the FBI and the Bahamian police.

  And that’s what I’m really left with, not any sense of dominance or power at having outwitted any one or another, but the sense that I survived. I’ve overcome prison and death. I’ve gotten by. I made it through everything. And in the end that’s all there is.

  I’m a survivor.

  A Preview of the Sequel Paradise Redux

  The Second Novel from O.L. Casper

  Chapter 1

  Special Agent Glenn Carter’s Notes

  March 3, Jacksonville, Florida

  It was on a rainy day in April that she tracked me down. I was eating lunch alone at a park bench near the river in the city where I worked. The downpour had subsided, the temperature was pleasant out, the air fresh after the spring rain. She came strolling into the park, unannounced with large aviators on. I didn’t recognize her at first. She sat across from me and smiled. I don’t know how she tracked me down, but I could guess. She smiled and took off the glasses. Sophia.

  “After you were taken off the case you did what you could to see that I go down.”

  “I’m not at liberty to discuss it, but if I was—I’d say, no, we didn’t.”

  “Then who did?”

  I looked around to make sure there was no one within earshot in the park. I turned off my phone and leaned in.

  “Is this off the record?” I whispered.

  “You tell me,” she said.

  “Good. I followed your case a little further after we’d been thrown off it.”

  “Why?”

  “Curiosity perhaps. Sentiment too. A need to know what happened to you more than anything else. I read in the papers about how the FBI was present on the island conducting an investigation into Stafford’s death. In fact, that wasn’t true at all. But the people responsible for having that garbage printed are the same ones who contacted the Bahamas police.”

  She leaned in.

  “Taylor and Mason,” she said.

  “Or whomever else they are associated with.”

  “I should’ve known. That is assuming I trust you now.”

  “You have no reason not to. I’m speaking strictly off the record. I c
ould lose my post over this conversation, if not my job.”

  She nodded. I doubted she believed me. But it was impossible to tell.

  “Whoever they are and whatever rogue element of the government they represent, they’re the ones behind all of it. I wouldn’t be surprised if they were the ones who got the FBI involved in the Stafford case in the first place.”

  I took a deep breath before I continued, “They’re the ones you have to watch out for now. Not us.”

  “Perhaps I’ll have to do what Stafford would have suggested.”

  “What’s that?” I asked, genuinely curious.

  “I’ll have to find a bargaining chip to use with them in exchange for my life.”

  “Didn’t work out so well with Stafford, in the end.”

  Tears came to her eyes.

  I looked away.

  Finally she muttered, “I don’t know who killed him in the end.” She paused. “But I’m going to find out.”

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8