I’ll just need to reconfigure the spyware to show me all of her archived messages.
I pull out my computer, and in less than ten minutes, I’ve modified the settings. I click over to email again, refresh, and hold my breath. Nothing.
The captain comes over the intercom, mumbling something about the wind speed or place in line for landing.
“You get your Flannery O’Connor research done?” Arch is standing in the aisle, looking down at me.
I tuck my laptop away and smile. “I can work on it later.”
A flight attendant stops at my chair. “Sir, could you take your seat?”
“Just headed there now.” Arch winks at her and goes.
“Seat up, please,” she says crisply to me. But she’s smiling. Arch always has that effect on women.
I raise my seat, check my phone again, and see a new email. I click on it, and a series of new screenshots downloads.
Oh my God. The archived messages.
There’s a string of them, beginning in April, stretching across several weeks. April, I think, and feel jittery all over. One month after Dad died.
Grand Bohemian. Room 523. 1pm. Xx
I’ll be there.
God, I’ve missed being with you. Why is it so good with us? Xx
Because we understand each other. We let each other be.
The next batch is dated a week later.
Can’t make it today. Maybe tomorrow. xx
I have to see you, S.
S for Sabine, I think. But who’s the person she’s communicating with? I read on.
Sorry. Got to go to Atlanta for a couple of days. FaceTime at 9?
Not as good as the alternative.
We’ll see.
Then three days later:
Just so you know, the strapless dress I’m going to be wearing tonight? It’s for you. And whatever happens to be under it—or not under it—that’s for you as well.
Yes. Go on.
Not now. B here.
B. That must be Ben.
I’m back . . . ready for more?
I’m ready . . .
I force myself to read the rest of the exchange, including body parts and what they want to do with them. I feel lightheaded, sick to my stomach, like I want to retch. I click on the next screenshot.
First deposit rolling in at midnight. Congratulations. We did it. xx
Okay.
Stop moping. Consider this your share.
Jax is going to sell at some point. You’ll be rich.
One day. But I have to make plans for us now. And making plans costs money.
If you say so.
If Jax sold right now my share would be, might be, roughly $2.5mm, and that’s if E doesn’t have a breakdown. I’m not gonna sit here twiddling my thumbs, following the rules, to end up with fucking peanuts for a “might be.” Another two years of this and, I swear, we’re set.
And then we finally start living?
Like kings. xx
The next screenshot is from a week later.
Another deposit! Damn what a high. xx
You’re brilliant, my Hermes, my golden girl, god with the winged feet. The god of thievery and cunning. I would follow you anywhere.
Good thing, it’s my name on the bank accounts. xx
Don’t joke. You’re the most beautiful creature I’ve ever seen. I remember the first time I ever touched you. Eighteen and perfect.
Not 18 anymore, afraid.
Better, my love.
I love you, Arch.
I stare in frozen horror at the messages. I can’t be seeing this.
Arch?
Is that who Sabine is texting with? Arch, my grandfather?
I feel like I may pass out or die or start screaming right here in the plane. My lungs, my heart, my brain—they all feel like they’ve turned into molten objects, burning me from the inside out. My mouth has gone completely dry, so dry I can’t swallow, much less even close it. The plane engines drone louder and louder until they seem to knock around my skull.
Sabine and Arch.
Sabine, Ben’s wife, and Arch, my grandfather, are having an affair.
Arch is the one who said he had to see Sabine. He’s the one who asked her to meet him at the barbecue place in Childersburg. Obviously, their plans changed. Or, who knows, maybe one or both of them recognized Ben’s truck in the parking lot, and it scared them off. But, for whatever reason, neither of them showed that day, and Ben couldn’t confront them. So he tried again at the Grand Bohemian. I don’t know how he figured out that was their regular rendezvous spot, but he knew enough to show up early, before Sabine got there, to confront Arch first.
And I can see why. I don’t blame Ben. All those messages, those raw, intimate words. Arch wrote those words to a woman who wasn’t Gigi. I can’t believe it. Not only that, they’d been involved for decades, ever since she was eighteen. Oh my God. She was Dad’s friend. Ben’s girlfriend. Ben must have been furious when he first figured it out. Heartbroken.
He must be heartbroken now.
I think of all those pictures Arch took of Dad at his track meets. I’d seen them years ago when I was flipping through old photo albums in his office. Did he take that picture of Sabine she kept in her bedroom? The sexy legs one, the one that made her look like a model?
Hermes.
My brain shifts into overdrive. Everything makes perfect sense now. Dele was right. Mom did get sent away to Hidden Sands at a really convenient time. Right after she announced she was going to sell Jax. Right after she blacked out after having one drink. Because, of course, selling would’ve ruined Sabine and Arch’s plan. She would’ve gotten her $2.5 million, but she would’ve lost the easy access to Jax’s customers’ cash.
The timeline falls into perfect, chilling order: I don’t know when exactly Sabine decided to steal from Jax’s customers to finance her and Arch’s new life, but she must’ve set up the process sometime in February or March, because Dad wrote about the error message in his March journal. She skimmed money at least twice in April and August. And probably also in May, June, and July. Which means she’s possibly stolen upwards of two million dollars so far.
Then Mom announced that she wanted to sell, and it threatened to screw up Sabine and Arch’s plan—so they had to get her out of the picture. They had to send her away. Far way. And to get her there they had to make sure Mom did something bad. Like drinking and driving. That’s why they roofied her, just like she kept saying during that stupid intervention, to make sure it looked like they had a good reason to send her away. She said that’s what had happened, but I didn’t listen.
And now she’s contacted me for help. Because she must be in danger. Which means Sabine and Arch weren’t satisfied with tucking Mom away on a remote island . . .
They wanted her gone forever.
They wanted her dead.
Just like Dad.
I am trembling uncontrollably now, my ears ringing. I want to scream. I want to rush up the aisle and grab my grandfather and force him to answer every question that’s running through my head. Did they kill Dad too? Did Arch and Sabine murder my father because he discovered what they were doing? There’s no mention of it in their messages. But if my grandfather killed his own son—or even if he let Sabine do it—that means he’s a murderer. And he won’t hesitate to do the same to me.
My phone dings with a text.
We’re descending, June bug.
I go cold, a chill running through me all the way up to my hairline. I want to cry. I want to die. I don’t know how I’m going to do it, but I have to pretend everything is okay.
Or my grandfather may turn on me too.
46
ERIN
I locate a small rocky outcropping that gives me almost a 360-degree view of the jungle below and a fairly long section of the river. After a day hanging around there, I spend one more night in the shelter of my hollow tree. But the next morning when I wake, it occurs to me I’ll go bonkers if I spend o
ne more minute just passing time—waiting for either Shorie to contact me or Lach to find me and put a bullet through my head. I need to be proactive.
Even if it means putting myself in danger, I’ve got to move.
As I walk, though, I wonder if I’m doing the right thing. I’m overwhelmed with the feeling I’m going in circles around this island, just using different paths. Eventually I stop to rest, collapsing on another high ledge at the crest of a hill that overlooks the lapping green ocean. My body is crying out for a real night’s sleep, but I can’t quit thinking about Deirdre and Agnes. Their discolored, bloated bodies tied to the tree, buoyed up by the river’s current.
According to the spreadsheets on Zara’s computer, this isn’t the first L’Élu III Antonia’s organized. So there had to have been official stories to cover the other missing women. Julie? I heard she ran off to an ashram in India. Such a shame, deserting her children that way, but, if you ask me, they’re so much better off. Rumor was, she was addicted to painkillers. And such a burden to her husband . . .
Whatever the case, Deirdre and Agnes—and probably other women—will decay there by the river, and no one will know those bits of flesh and bone were real people. Actual women with lives and loves, hopes and fears, secrets and regrets and dreams. No one will even care, because their families will just tell their own lies.
My brain keeps rewinding back to the oddest memories, places I don’t want to go. Shorie, two years old, gobbling up steamed cauliflower, all the while crowing, Pah-corn. Perry, standing in front of my study module on the third floor of Ralph Brown Draughon Library, two weeks after Sabine had introduced us. He’d been randomly matched as my calculus tutor, and we’d spent the entire hour saying how crazy it was and trying not to stare at each other in dazed insta-infatuation.
And then my mind fast-forwards to our honeymoon, in the seedier part of Florida’s panhandle:
Perry, hair salty and stiff from swimming in the ocean, freckled shoulders peeling. His sunburned skin makes his hazel eyes the color of seafoam, and his lashes blond at the tips. We’re tangled in the sheets of the thin mattress on the crappy bed of the beachfront condo he insisted on paying for himself. His parents were embarrassed we wouldn’t let them send us someplace fancier, but he told them he wasn’t going to start our marriage by mooching off them.
He smiles down at me, his gaze on my lips. May I, he asks. I say yes, and after he’s done what he wanted to do, he makes another request. I smile and grant my permission. He continues, asking me again and again for my approval, a litany of delicious requests.
May I? Can I? Will you . . .
Every time, I say yes, over and over allowing him to do what he wants to, until the tension becomes unbearable, and I tell him I have a request of my own . . .
It’s light now, and I’m in some part of the jungle I don’t recognize. I’m out of plans and ideas and ways around this. Seems like the only plan I can come up with is to obsessively check my phone, like some mindless teenager. But Shorie still hasn’t seen Lach’s connection request or message—or at least she hasn’t responded to either of them.
I open Lach’s messages and type out another one.
I love you, Shorie. I always will. Mom
I stare at it for a minute. What else is there to say? There is nothing else. She’ll either get it or she won’t. But it makes me feel better knowing it’s there, out in the universe.
I close my eyes, wanting a picture of my daughter to come to me, but all I see is Sabine, my best friend and betrayer. She looks at me, eyes half-lidded, mouth twisted in a mocking smile. She played me. She played Ben too.
I stand and immediately feel a rough hand close on my wrist, twisting me around. I find myself nose to chest with Lach. He is red faced, his wild blond surfer hair loose and blowing around his shoulders.
“Hi, chickadee,” he says. “I thought I told you to stay put.”
I yank away from him. “Where’s Jess? What have you done with her?”
He grabs my neck. “Let’s go.”
He pushes me, and the next thing I know we’re crashing through the dense thicket of jungle, him acting like a human machete, and me, stumbling behind. I know where we’re headed—the French word reverberates in my head.
Volcan, volcan, volcan . . .
Whatever the reason, the best thing to do is to stall. I start talking.
“Why are you doing this?”
He doesn’t answer me.
“You’re the older brother, but your father gave your little sister his favorite hotel. What did he give you? Couldn’t have been much.” I’m out of breath from trying to keep up with his long-legged strides. “You’re out here, chasing me through rainforest and tying dead bodies up in the river. You got the shit detail, Lach. Why?”
He keeps marching.
“How many of these L’Élus have you done? Two, three? Ten? A hundred?”
He keeps walking, pushing me ahead.
“Tell me, Lach. What’s your sister got on you?”
He grabs my shirt and, swinging me around, slams me against a tree. He pushes his face inches from mine, and I suck in a breath. He pulls me toward him and slams me against the trunk once more. I cry out at the pain that shoots down my back into both legs. Lach pushes my face sideways into the trunk, and the sharp bark digs into my skin. I squeeze my eyes shut.
“Antonia knows where my kid is.” His voice is devoid of emotion. “So she offered me a deal. I do three of these jobs for her; she tells me where he is. So I can get my boy back.”
“You don’t need her. Listen—”
“No,” he barks, holding me against the tree. “You listen to me. You have no idea what you’re talking about. Who you’re dealing with. When my sister was six, I gave her a gecko for her birthday. The next morning? Thing was dead. She’d stayed up all night, pinching off its legs, one by one, with a pair of pliers.
“When she was eleven, she stabbed our stepmother in the left eye with a pencil. There was a new stepmother after that, two months later. Then, when she was fifteen, she put a cigarette lighter to her boyfriend’s dick. Third-degree burns. He was too scared to report her.”
He releases me, and I stumble a few feet away. Out of arm’s reach.
“She’s psychotic,” he says. “A fucking nutcase. The only thing my father could do with her was stick her out in the middle of nowhere before she either killed all of us or got herself locked up. She’ll kill my son if I don’t do her dirty work.”
I fold my arms. “So why the hell are we still talking? Why haven’t you killed me?”
He doesn’t answer me, but his icy eyes look flat. Determined.
And then I see it, clear as the crystal Caribbean sea. “You double-crossed her, didn’t you? You said if she didn’t tell you where your son was, you were going to let me go. I’m the asset.”
He doesn’t answer, just lunges forward and grabs my arm. As he pulls me down the path, I can’t help but suppress a small smile. I’m right, I know it. Lach finally got enough of Antonia, and he’s turned the tables on her. He’s going to set me free.
Free.
I try to keep my breathing steady. This is good news. Excellent news, in fact. No matter how things go down. Lach is negotiating with Antonia, and negotiations take time and involve emotion. Which can be a weakness, if that emotion is manipulated correctly. Even if everything goes sideways, there will be a million more opportunities to worm my way out of this situation.
“Where are we going?” I ask.
“Shut up,” he snaps.
I let him drag me along, my mind clicking away a mile a minute. I don’t know what I’m going to do, but I can’t give up hope. Lach’s decision to go rogue is good. And I still have his phone. This is the very best thing. Because it means I still have a connection to Shorie.
47
SHORIE
When we get off the ferry in Ile Saint Sigo, Arch says he wants to eat before we get a taxi and set off for Hidden Sands. They gave us oatmea
l, yogurt, and fruit on the plane, and Arch had a couple of Bloody Marys, so this strikes me as suspicious. Like maybe he’s stalling or something. And that fills me with a whole bunch of extremely negative feelings.
Foreboding, helplessness, pure fright . . .
At this point, I have no real data—no idea why my grandfather came with me, what his plan is, or if he’ll hurt me if I get in his way. All I know is this: I think he and Sabine may have sent my mother down here to die.
But I will die before I let that happen.
For now, though, I need to act like I have no idea what’s going on. And let him take the lead. There’s a restaurant right next door to the ferry terminal, and we duck in. Every wall is painted a different color of the rainbow, and the ceiling is hung with silver Christmas tree garland. It’s hot, only about a degree or two cooler than the air outside. We choose a table near the back, and when Arch excuses himself to go to the bathroom, I whip out my phone.
Banana Crepes—US$3.50, Jax is recommending cheerily. Coffee—US$1.00
I open my messages. There’s nothing from Mom, only that same request I saw earlier from that guy I’d never heard of, Lachlan Erdman. I’d have to approve his request to read the message, but that’s not going to happen. I don’t read messages from people I don’t know. “Lach,” if that’s even his real name, says he’s from Connecticut and has his arm draped around a kid. Bot account, probably.
I put my phone facedown on the table and peruse the menu. Of course, since Jax mentioned banana crepes, that’s all I can think of, so I decide on that with a mango-strawberry smoothie. I drum my fingers on the table and sip the tepid water the server leaves.
My brain feels on the verge of exploding. It feels like I’m in a computer program, and all these hidden processes—previously unknown to me—have been running in the background all along and now they’re shooting out notifications, and I don’t know how to find the original function.
But I should be able to figure this out. At its heart, a program is nothing but a story. And a story is simply a problem to be solved. A progression of if-then-else in programmingspeak. So everything I know thus far—that Sabine and Arch are having an affair, that she’s stealing from Jax’s users, and Mom messed up her plans with her announcement that she wanted to sell the company—that’s the if part.
Until the Day I Die Page 25