by Mark Stone
He snatched my hand and held it out. “You know, on second thought, I’m starting to dislike your humor.”
“It’s not for everyone,” I admitted. “But my advice is more of a universal thing. So, let me give you a little of that. It would be in your best interest to let go of my hand right now. Otherwise, I’m going to make what I did to your criminal brother look like a love tap.”
“Something tells me you’re more bark than bite,” Rascal said. “Let’s see.” He twisted my hand hard. I yelped as I felt something pop in it. “See?” he growled. “Bark.”
Blinking hard and shaking away the pain, I drove my head straight into the goon’s face and then followed that up by leveling a punch into his gut with my free hand.
“See?” I said as he stumbled backward. “Bite.”
I rushed him again, throwing an elbow into his face. He caught it and tossed me backward. I stumbled a little but managed to keep my footing.
Rascal came toward me, his jaw tense and his teeth grinding together. I heard another door close, and looking at the truck, I saw another man, an obvious Mangrove, step out holding a baseball bat.
“This should be fun,” I muttered, ignoring the fact that I was outnumbered, out-weaponed, and only had one good hand at the moment. I mean, at least I had luck on my side, right?
Rascal came toward me, but I spun, driving a fist into his ribcage and focusing on the other man. It wasn’t that I thought he was a bigger threat. Even with the weapon, he was much smaller and less imposing than Rascal. It was just that he was holding a baseball bat, and for my plan of getting away from here alive to work, I needed to take that for myself.
The man swung at me, and I dropped just in time to feel the wind breaking around the bat as it narrowly missed my head. On my way down, I threw a shoulder into his gut and immediately switched directions. Lifting the smaller man, I drove him into the ground like I was nailing him in. Headbutting him too, because apparently, that was just the way I dealt with Mangroves. I grabbed the bat.
Standing, I turned back to Rascal, only to find that he had a switchblade in his hand.
“Knife beats bat. Didn’t anybody ever tell you that?” Rascal asked, grinning at me.
Just then, I heard two shots ring out. My head snapped over and I saw Random. She was standing and had a gun in her hand, pointed straight up into the air. “What beats this?” she asked, motioning to the piece of shiny metal in her hand. Slowly, she lowered it. “Stay where you are,” she said breathlessly. “I’m calling my sister.”
“Or what?” Rascal asked. “You gonna shoot me, Random? Are you actually gonna shoot me? You think you could really do that to me?”
There was pain in his voice and a familiarity that struck me as strange. Did they know each other, and if so, how well?
Random didn’t answer. She just stood there silently, the gun pointed at the man.
“No,” he said finally, shaking his head. “No. I don’t think you could.” he walked over, grabbed his brother’s arm, and hoisted him up. “Come on, Tommy. We’re leaving.” He glared at me as he tossed his brother into the passenger seat of the truck that had just smashed up my car, a truck that was irritatingly unharmed. “This isn’t over,” he said.
“No,” I muttered as he got in the truck and drove away. “No, I don’t suppose it is.”
12
“I never get to do any of the fun stuff!” Davey whined as I packed the rest of the stuff I’d need into a suitcase and pulled it off my bed, setting it on the floor. “First Mia’s party, and now this.”
I narrowed my eyes at my friend. “I almost got killed at Mia’s party,” I reminded him.
“Yeah, almost,” Davey answered. “That’s what makes it fun.”
“And as far as this goes,” I said, motioning to the suitcase and the upcoming trip it symbolized, “I’m not sure fun is the word I would use.”
“That’s because you get to go,” Davey answered, throwing his hands out at his sides. “Besides, it’s a huge gambling boat. It houses the biggest casino in the entire world, and the fourth-floor restaurant is run by a chef who won the hardest cooking competition on television—twice.”
“Why did he come back the second time?” I mused, shaking my head.
“You’re missing the point, John,” Davey said. “This boat is basically what would happen if Vegas could float. I even heard Carrot Top was going to be there.”
“Is that supposed to be a good thing?” I asked.
“That’s just like you, you know,” Davey said. “Focusing on some job when there’s fun to be had.” He shook his head at me too, mirroring what I had just done to him. “I thought the whole ‘winning the lottery’ thing would be enough for you to forget about jobs and stuff.”
“Usually, I would agree with you, but something about nuclear launch codes makes this a very different sort of job,” I said.
“Please,” Davey scoffed. “I mean, yeah. I get it. This is important and stuff, but that’s really more of a coincidence than anything else. I know you, John. You’d throw yourself in front of a firing squad if it meant saving half a ham sandwich.” He scoffed again. “Not even the whole sandwich.”
“You’re being dramatic,” I said.
“Doesn’t mean I’m wrong,” he said.
“It most certainly does not,” I said. “But something tells me you’d be singing a different tune if I could actually get you onboard.”
“Well, of course, I would,” he said. “Look at you. You’re packing board shorts and flip flops, dude. I want to live that kind of life.”
“The beach is fifteen feet from our front door, Davey,” I said, chuckling. “You fall asleep at night to the sounds of the Gulf, for God’s sake. I can’t even remember the last time you wore a pair of pants that went down the whole way. At this point, I’ve seen your bare calves more than I’ve seen my own hands. You already do live that life, my friend.”
Davey blinked, thinking for a second before finally replying, “Yeah, but they have an open bar there.”
“Maybe next time, bud,” I answered. “I promise you, though, if there were a way to get you in there, I would. You heard Wendy. The security on that ship is insane. The only way I could even make it there is with Charlotte in tow. Not even Wendy can get herself onboard.”
“I know,” he said, moving toward the door. “And I understand that. The thing is, I just feel like I’m not helping you out enough.”
“What the hell are you talking about?” I asked. “You know we’re in this together.”
“But I’m not there,” Davey said. “You just about get killed at Mia’s party, and what was I doing?”
“Probably flirting with someone way out of your league,” I answered.
“She wasn’t that far out of my league,” Davey said. “The point is, you were in trouble and I wasn’t there. And here you go, running toward danger again, and I can’t follow. We were in a foxhole together, John. That’s where we met. You remember?”
“Of course, I remember,” I answered, thinking back to a day that seemed like a lifetime removed from now and a place that felt like another world entirely. “You saved my life that day.”
“And you saved my life the next,” Davey answered. “And it was just like that, over and over again. That’s who we are. It’s what we do.” My best friend in the whole world shook his head, and in his eyes, I saw something like regret, something like guilt. “So, seeing you going off like this, putting yourself in danger just like we were back at war, makes me want to be right there alongside you, like we used to do. I haven’t been able to do that for you since we’ve been here, though. I’ve been slinging drinks and telling stories of the good old days while you’ve been out there having brand-new good old days.”
“Can you have new old days?” I mused, my eyebrows arching.
“You know what I mean,” Davey said.
I smiled a little as I stared at my friend. “Of course, I know what you mean, bud. You don’t want to le
t me down. Well, you can rest assured that you never could. Whether I’m here or there or anywhere else, we’re in this together. I know you’d be right there with me if you could, and that means the world. I just need you to hold down the fort here. I’ll be back before you know it, and if I’m lucky, I might even be able to stop nuclear codes from being sold on the black market. Wouldn’t that be cool?”
“The coolest,” Davey answered. “You be safe out there, John. You might be lucky, but everybody’s luck runs out one of these days.”
“I will. Don’t worry,” I answered, blinking hard and thinking about what it was that I had to do. “With any luck, though, ‘one of these days’ won’t be anytime soon.”
13
People say thirteen is an unlucky number. There’s Friday the thirteenth, a lot of hotels and motels omit a thirteenth floor from their floor plans, and I’m sure there are a million other examples of ways people try to dodge what they consider to be a troublesome figure.
I never gave too much thought to that. In fact, before the whole lottery thing, my last name aside, I never gave thought to luck in general. I always thought of myself as more evolved than that. Prepared was better than lucky. That was what I always believed, even if I didn’t really ever have any need to vocalize it in such a way.
I wasn’t sure if I still believed that. I mean, to be truthful, luck had played a big part in my life as of late. I sure as hell didn’t prepare myself to win the lottery. That had to be attributed to luck. So, when I was assigned room thirteen on the fifth floor of the Diamond Mine, a bit of an uneasy feeling started to rumble in my stomach. I pushed it aside and kept it to myself, of course. I was a grown ass man. I couldn’t go talking to people about how a room number was making me shake in my boots. They’d laugh me off deck. Hell, I’d laugh myself off deck. Still, if I were being honest with myself, the instant I stepped aboard the huge, immaculate gambling cruise ship known as the Diamond Mine, I could feel trouble in the air. It was every bit as thick as the salt. And if I wasn’t careful, I knew I could choke on either one.
“God, I really hope there’s an open bar,” Charlotte said, lugging her suitcase behind her as she followed me onboard. The ship was a grand thing. Bright red and white, it sat at the pier like a whale, majestically dwarfing every other ship in sight. The onboard attributes didn’t fall short of the promise the exterior made, either. Though a ship this size could never be summed up with such a cursory glance, one look at the chandeliers, plush carpeting, grand pianos dotting the marble floors, and well-suited men and women walking around with shrimp cocktail and pigs in a blanket told me this was the sort of ritzy place that I’d have been thrown out of a year ago. Right now, though, it just made me feel underdressed.
“This is a cruise ship, Charlotte. Of course it has an open bar. Getting drunk is the number-one reason you go on a cruise ship.”
“Getting drunk is the number-one reason most people do anything,” Charlotte muttered. “And forgive me for not knowing. This is my first time on an actual boat.”
I looked over at the woman, a woman I knew I would be connected to in one form or another for the rest of my life, and chuckled at how wide her eyes were and how exhilarated her expression became. She was like a kid in a candy shop. Judging from the look on her face, she couldn’t be happier.
“Are you serious?” I asked, remembering all the times I went fishing with my grandfather on the lake or motorboating around with my friends. “Any boat at all?”
“I mean, there’s a ferry in Disneyworld that takes you to the Magic Kingdom, but I don’t know if that counts.” She shrugged.
“I’m going to say it doesn’t.”
“Does that surprise you?” Charlotte asked. “You met me in Illinois, sweetheart. I’m not sure how rusty your geography is, but that’s landlocked.”
“Don’t be a smartass.” I grinned, a little bit of warmth running through me as I registered the fact that she’d called me sweetheart. I was sure it wasn’t anything. Charlotte and I weren’t a couple, far from it. We’d had a great night together after I saved her from that attempted robbery, and I did get an enthusiastic and pretty carnal thank you after she found out I was gifting her ten million dollars of my lottery winnings. Still, beyond that, I hadn’t heard from the woman. She had been a mystery to me. People would sometimes ask me about her, about how she was doing and if we kept in touch. I’d always think of her and the great times we had and tell people I was sure she was doing well. The truth was, and maybe I was just realizing this now, I had no idea whether she was doing well or not. Sure, I’d landed on my feet with the lottery winnings. But for every story of some lucky SOB turned beach bum living the good life, there are a hundred tales of people who’d tell you the money ruined their lives. I wasn’t sure which category Charlotte fell into, but hopefully, by the end of all this, I would.
“Smartass is kind of what I do,” Charlotte said, winking at me. “It’s my life’s passion. Besides, if I remember correctly, it’s my quick mouth that drew you to me in the first place.”
“I’ll admit, your mouth is very talented in a lot of ways.” I chuckled.
“Now who's being a smartass?” she joked, swiping playfully at my shoulder with her free hand and turning away just a touch too late to stop me from seeing her blush.
“You should get some patches,” I answered.
“What?” she asked, turning back to me.
“For sea sickness,” I answered, shaking my head at her. “If the only boat you’ve ever been on in your life took you to see a cartoon mouse, then I’m guessing you’re going to need them.”
“I’m not worried,” Charlotte answered, practically scoffing at me. “I’m a farm girl, you know. I don’t know if I told you, but I grew up around things that would make your hair go white. I delivered a baby calf on my own when I was twelve years old. No help at all.”
“I, for one, think I’d look damn good with white hair,” I said, smiling over at the woman. “But I’m afraid it’s going to take more than that to do it. A Midwestern girl doing farm work isn’t exactly the shock of a lifetime.” I took a left, bypassing the throngs of people moving back and forth across the ship. Each of them looked more enamored with themselves than the last. They were all very well dressed, very well manicured, and completely aware of both facts. It made me wonder just how many people were on this boat to have a haughty good time and how many of them were looking for a chance to bid for government secrets. “It doesn’t matter,” I said, clearing my throat. “Delivering a cow isn’t the same as being on a ship for several days in a row. There’s something about the back and forth that can get to you if you’re not used to it.”
“Whatever,” Charlotte scoffed. “I’ll take my chances. I’m not quite sure what the big deal about this place is, anyway. As far as I can tell, it’s just a big floating casino. I’m not quite sure why I’m supposed to be impressed.”
“Because, Ms. York,” a voice sounded from behind me. Turning, I saw a tiny balding man with a tie and a nametag that read Oliver. On one side of him stood a tall woman with long red hair tied into a braid, and on the other side stood an even taller man with a severe part running through his blond hair and more shoulder where his neck should be. “This might look like a floating casino, but the Diamond Mine has a history that reaches as far back as the Great Depression. Kings, queens, and the world’s most influential people have all stood where you are, and they have all been honored to do so. I don’t see why you should be any different.” He shook his head distastefully. “After all, if you think you’re more influential or beloved than Prince Phillip, you have another thing coming.”
“Wasn’t that the love interest from Sleeping Beauty?” Charlotte asked, scrunching her nose up as she looked over at me.
“The cartoon?” I mused. “I don’t know, but if it is, Oliver here is right. That dude killed a dragon with just a spear and his wits. There’s no way we can compete with that.”
“I do hope this sort of s
tale humor isn’t the kind of thing we can expect from the two of you,” Oliver said. “I’d hate to think we freed up not one, but two continental suites onboard the hardest ticket in the world to get just so two B-list celebrities could chuckle at their own mediocrity.”
“Damn, Oliver. That’s pretty cold,” I said, looking the short man up and down.
“Warmth isn’t something that pays on the Diamond Mine, Mr. Lucky,” he answered. “This may look like a party boat, and in a lot of ways, it is. But it is also home to what even the most hardcore of people would call a cutthroat competition. The tournament that culminates our slow voyage across the Gulf and back again has a prize of one hundred million dollars.” His eyes cut from me to Charlotte and back again. “That’s more than either of you received for your little lark in the gas station.”
“It was a truck stop,” Charlotte answered defensively.
“Was it?” Oliver quipped. “Forgive me. I didn’t realize you were ‘truck stop’ caliber people.”
“There’s nothing wrong with truck stops, my man,” I answered, taking a step toward the snooty bastard. “In fact, I’ve been in a few that are a lot nicer than this boat, and Lord knows I’ve met people in them who seem to be of a lot better stock than anyone I’ve run across here so far.”
“I doubt that very seriously, Mr. Lucky,” he answered drolly. “Though I do appreciate the spunk. Something tells me there are a lot of people in the world who find that endearing.” He shook his head. “I doubt you’ll find any of them outside of a bowling alley, but I suppose we all have our niches.”
“Look, dude,” I said. “I’m not quite sure why you’re here or what purpose you serve, but whatever you are, I’d like to request a new one. Because I don’t think you and I are going to work very well together.”
“I’m head of staff, Mr. Lucky. I’ve spent the last fifteen years of my life aboard this ship. It is my home. I know it as well as you might know the inside of a Cheetos bag. You can’t just request a new one of me.”