The then is simple: Sabine and Arch need to get Mom out of the way.
I can’t even think about the else, it’s too upsetting. But I can’t help feeling that there’s something more. Some piece of the puzzle I’m still missing. That last bit of information I can’t put my finger on. I keep mentally reaching out, trying to clear my head and balance the equation. But I don’t think I’m going to be able to until I put some distance between me and my grandfather.
And something is niggling at me. I pick up my phone and stare at it. Strange that I just now got this message from some dude I’ve never seen in my life. A coincidence that happens once in a while—bots request connections—but Jax is pretty on top of that kind of thing. Our programs usually weed out the spam. But you know what they say about coincidences. They’re all part of an improbable whole.
I grab the phone and tap on Lach Erdman’s message request. Hit “Approve” and read it once, then again, my heart hammering against my chest and my mouth going dry.
Shorie, it’s Mom. Someone is trying to kill me. This is not a joke. Call the police. Not Saint Lucia police, the FBI. Hurry.
I stare and stare, waiting for the words to shift and reconfigure themselves into something that makes more sense. But they don’t. Nothing changes. Just those same horrible words, over and over again.
So I was right. It is the worst case, after all—someone is trying to kill my mom. And somehow, thank God, she must’ve gotten this guy Lachlan Erdman’s phone and used his Jax to contact me.
With shaking fingers, I type back: Where are you? But there’s no answer. I chew on my thumbnail, thinking, then type one more line. Mom, I’m here, on Ile St. Sigo. Just tell me where you are, I’ll get help.
I dial 911 and wait for the connection.
“What’s your emergency?” a woman finally says on the other end.
“Shorie?”
Arch is standing at the table, and I disconnect the call. He slides his phone into his pocket and sits. “I’m afraid I have some bad news.”
I stare at him, my throat constricting even further.
“I called the woman who runs Hidden Sands. The spa where your mother’s been. It seems she left a couple of days ago.”
“She left?”
He nods. “Yes. Apparently, she took the ferry back to Saint Lucia, and no one’s heard from her since.”
I shake my head dumbly. “She went back to Saint Lucia? I don’t understand.”
“The director of the resort didn’t know, exactly. She just said your mom seemed to be happy, complying with all the rules of the rehab, and then a couple of days ago, she didn’t show up for breakfast.”
“Why would she do that?”
“Shorie, your mom is a very troubled woman, I think. I’m sure she was upset about us sending her away, but instead of handling it in a responsible, adult way, she ran. I’m so sorry. I would do anything to spare you this disappointment. But I’m afraid we’ve got to accept that your mother isn’t the person she used to be.”
“You think she didn’t just leave Hidden Sands. You think she left us?”
He laces his fingers together and looks down at them. “I don’t know.”
His face is so grave, so full of sympathy, that I think I’m going to vomit. It is a lie. He’s lying to me. Mom is here on this island, and she needs my help.
And he knows it.
“I suggest we head back to the ferry, go back to Saint Lucia, and see if we can get a return flight back home.”
“Okay,” I say faintly. I feel like I can’t breathe. I feel like I’m going to pass out. “I have to use the bathroom.” I rise unsteadily.
“Shorie.” He nods at my computer bag. “I’ll watch that for you.”
I pull the strap over my head and drop the bag on my chair. He catches my wrist and pulls me to him, kissing my clenched fist.
“Love you, June bug.”
I smile and pull away. I walk toward the back of the restaurant, into the kitchen, and out the back door.
48
ERIN
The path angles up steeply, slowing Lach and me down. We push through the underbrush and along twisting paths until I’m out of breath and bathed in sweat. Every tree and bush and rock looks the same, and I’m so unbelievably hot. I’m also starting to feel woozy, like I may pass out. I stop, swaying a little against a tree. Lach turns back with a frown.
“It’s been two days, and I’ve barely had anything to eat.” My hand falls against my pocket, covering the phone. It feels like it’s as big as a concrete block. “And may I point out, if I die from thirst, then you’ve got nothing left to bargain with.”
Lach tosses me his water bottle. I drink half, then he takes it back. “Let’s go,” he says.
“Can I just say, I think taking me to the volcano is a bad move. You’re basically telling Antonia that you expect her to give in to your demands.”
He doesn’t answer.
“You’re not playing this smart, Lach. You’re saying you think she’s going to cave, agree to find your son, and that you’re ready to kill me, like she wants you to. You’re insulting her and she’s going to lose respect for you.”
He shakes his head, like he’s shaking off a swarm of pesky bees.
“You have to be tougher than that. Smarter. You should take me back down to the campsite. Or somewhere else.”
“Just shut up. I don’t need advice from you.”
He yanks me back onto the path, but the water’s brought me to life again, and my brain is buzzing. “I have a proposition for you,” I say.
He doesn’t answer.
“You know the FBI still puts rewards out on people? That’s not just old-timey Jesse James shit; it’s the real deal. Murdering four innocent women means several million on your head. At least.”
This stops him. He plants his hands on his hips and fixes me with those spooky light-blue eyes.
I talk fast. “I’m sure cold-blooded murder must seem really badass to you until you realize that, with a jackpot like that, everybody you’ve ever crossed paths with in your entire life is going to be gunning for you. And then”—I shrug—“whoa, Nelly. The whole world after you is not good odds.”
He mops his face with a hand. He’s thinking about it. I feel a tingle, like an electrical charge zipping up my spine, the way I do every time I pull in another investor, every time I hit on a new idea. I have the best product, and I know how to make this sale.
“You know, right now, my company, Jax, is worth at least one hundred million.”
Well, closer to seven, but whatever . . .
I take one step closer to him. “I’m the CEO. I own the highest percentage of shares in the company. I have access to a database of over ten million people . . .”
It’s 1.3, but who’s counting . . .
“. . . a detailed digital trail of every single one of their bank accounts, tax filings, and financial decisions.”
I lift my chin, my eyes never leaving his. “If you let me live, I will get you access to both the money and the data. Any of it. All of it. Whatever you need to find your son.”
He snorts. “You’d never risk your company for me.”
“Not just for you. For me too. For my daughter. Lach, listen to me. Antonia isn’t the only person who can get your son back.”
49
SHORIE
When I’m clear of the restaurant, I cut down a couple of side alleys. Eventually I find myself on a road, unpaved, that’s lined with a series of small cinder block houses painted in pastel Easter egg shades. I duck around the side of one and check my phone.
Lach Erdman’s preferences are set to public, so I’m able to see his transactions (minus the dollar amount) in real time. Although it doesn’t really help me—he has exactly zero transactions as far as I can tell. But a public setting also means his location is traceable, even though after tapping the button, it takes a few minutes for the GPS signal to bounce back to me. When it does, I’m rewarded with a pulsing red
dot on a map of green, all the way on the other side of the island.
Mom.
I shade my eyes. There are no cabs in sight, and the street I’m standing on is mostly deserted. A kid, a boy of ten or eleven, lolls on a banged-up moped on the sidewalk outside a pizza place. The moped’s rack is wrapped with bungee cords for deliveries.
I amble over. “Hey. This your bike?” I casually eye the controls. Kill switch, ignition button, front and back brakes. Daisy’s brother had a scooter, and I learned the basics on it a couple of years ago, but it’s been a while.
He shakes his head, then inclines it toward the pizza place.
“You’re watching it? For somebody in there?” He nods. I reach in my purse. Hold out a wad of bills. “I’ll bring it back, I promise.”
He takes the money and steps back, and I hop on, hit the kill switch, and push the ignition. The engine sputters to life, and the boy takes off down the sidewalk. I hear a voice from inside the pizza place—“Arret!”—and I open the throttle. The moped bumps over the curb and onto the street.
“Arret!”
He’s too late. I’m down the street, swerving around a corner, maneuvering down another alley, and in minutes, I’m lost in the stream of people on a busier street. I feel bad about what might happen to the boy, but I feel worse about Mom, so I keep driving until I find my way out of town. I head down a dirt road, stopping periodically to check Jax’s GPS, eventually whooshing past a long white building with a portico and fountain and a line of shiny black town cars in front.
Hidden Sands.
I don’t stop. But I do think of something, the thing that’s been tiptoeing around the edges of my brain all morning. Something Gigi had said at the beginning of the intervention. Arch had learned about Hidden Sands from a friend. It was his idea to send Mom there.
50
ERIN
I might not have closed the deal, but my pitch does seem to throw Lach off his game. At least just enough that he clams up and makes us start walking again. By the time we stop, I’ve reached a new level of exhaustion. But I don’t sit. I can’t. It’s as if my legs realize what I’m seeing before my mind does.
We’re standing at the edge of a football field–size crater of gray mud, half a dozen pools of bubbling mud belching plumes of white steam. The air is redolent with a funky stench that reminds me of two-week-old rotten eggs dipped in human excrement. It occurs to me I’ve never seen a volcano before. But I wish I never had.
If Antonia agrees to find Lach’s son, he’s going to throw me in that boiling-hot pit.
And then I do collapse, right there in the dirt. I hear a sound, low and constant, and after a second, I realize it’s me. I’m saying no. Wailing it.
After a few minutes, I hear him beside me. “Get up.”
I squint into the burning sun. He’s a blobby black form above me. I think about all the articles I’ve read online about self-defense. How a woman on the ground has an advantage. And I might know how to implement the tactics if I’d just taken that stupid self-defense class with Shorie. But I was busy at Jax.
Too busy and now I’m going to die.
It’s all so awful and pathetic and meaningless, I want to scream.
“Get up.” He kicks me once, hard, in the side. Even though he doesn’t use a fraction of his strength, it still hurts. I groan and roll away from him. But climb to my feet. “Go stand over there.” He points.
My vision swims. He’s pointing at a pool of bubbling gray mud, steam curling up from it. And his gun is out again, the same black pistol he shot Deirdre with.
“You never answered me. I made you an offer.” My voice sounds pathetic, whiny.
“Go stand at the edge,” he says. “Now.”
“I can find him for you. Your son.”
“Move,” he growls.
I walk toward the pool, slipping on the gray scree that slopes into the billowing pit. The smell is so much stronger up close. The soupy mud is actually boiling. In addition to the heat, I feel something like pinpricks all over my body. They are sharp as needles. The physical manifestation of fear.
“It’s almost two hundred degrees in that pit,” Lach says. “It’ll take a while, but eventually, they won’t be able to find a thing.”
“You want more? Fine. I’ll help you find your son, and I’ll give you cash. Right now.”
He laughs.
“I’m going to sell Jax. Some giant tech company who’s going to pay us more money than most people have ever dreamed about. And I’ll cut you in. Whatever you want, the part of my take anyway. You won’t have to depend on your father or your sister, for anything, ever again. You’ll be free to go where you want, do what you want. And you’ll have your boy back. I know we can make this work. Just please, don’t do this.”
I’m begging now. Pleading to be spared. I feel time stop, and I see not my life, but Shorie’s, reel past my eyes. A squalling infant, sticky toddler, gangly adolescent. My grown girl, standing at her desk in her dorm room, arranging a cigar box in its precise spot. Shiny caramel-colored hair with random strands of honey and that one curly section. Her right shoulder hitched up the way it does whenever she’s concentrating. She was so quiet in the hospital the night the doctor told us Perry had died. She waited to cry until we were home and she was alone in her room. I didn’t go in. I wasn’t sure she wanted me.
I drop to my knees.
“Jesus, stop it,” Lach says. “Stand up.”
I pull his phone out of my pocket and show it to him. But no words come out.
He stares at it, then looks at me. “Where’d you get that?”
And then the words come. “I downloaded Jax on it,” I say. “You used to have an account, but you disconnected it. Lachlan Erdman of Old Greenwich, Connecticut. No financial transactions yet. Forty-six new connection requests from other users. Just one from you. To my daughter, Shorie Gaines.”
He stares hard at me.
“I can’t access my own Jax from this phone.” I forge on. “But all I have to do is message her, and she’ll deposit one hundred thousand dollars in your account—transfer it from mine to yours. One hundred thousand, just a deposit, the balance to come as soon as I return safely home. What do you say?”
He doesn’t answer.
“How much is Antonia paying you to kill me?” I say. “Twenty-five thousand? Fifty?”
He presses his lips in a tight line. I’m close.
“Jax hasn’t sold yet, but I don’t care. I’ll give you everything I’ve got right now. A hundred thousand dollars now. Nine hundred more when I get home.”
He stares at me, but I can tell he’s tempted. Come on, asshole. That’s all of my IRA and most of Perry’s insurance money. It’s more than this guy will ever see stuck out here in the jungle working as Antonia Erdman’s enforcer.
He points the gun at me, and instinctively I flinch.
“Do it,” he says.
“What?”
“I said do it. Send the money.”
“Okay, but how do I know you won’t just shoot me then?”
“Jesus Christ, lady. I don’t think you really have a choice here.”
He has a point. I look down at the phone. A bead of sweat splashes onto the screen. I blot my forehead and open Lach’s app, telling myself to stay calm. To focus on the task at hand. There’s a new message—from Shorie.
Mom, I’m here, on Ile St. Sigo. Just tell me where you are, I’ll get help.
Joy courses through me, then alarm. Here? What is she doing here? How did she get here? Is she alone? What if Sabine brought her?
I type as fast as my trembling fingers will allow me.
Shorie, find a computer and transfer $100,000 from my Jax to this account. ASAP. Mom
51
SHORIE
I zip up a series of dirt roads, past houses and fields and tiny little roadside shacks, following the little red dot on my phone. I’d feel like a badass female action hero except my body is shaking—literally shivering like it
’s the dead of winter. Maybe that’s shock from all the horrible information I’ve uncovered in the past twelve hours, I don’t know. But I bet Wonder Woman never peed her pants with fear.
Eventually I turn up a hill so steep I have to lean forward to keep from flipping ass over end. The dot is moving slowly, which makes me think Mom’s on foot. That’s okay, though. At least she’s still moving.
When the forest opens up, I find myself on a large grassy field dotted with yellow wildflowers. To my left, crowning a high knoll, is a massive old white stone house. I shade my eyes. A shit ton of staircases zigzag up the leafy slope to the stone foundation of the house, then up to the wide front porch. Windows shaded with red canvas awnings stare blankly into the hot afternoon sky. It’s been a while since I checked the GPS, so I stop.
But the red dot’s gone.
I refresh the map, but there’s nothing. Like Mom’s disappeared. I spin around in a circle, shaking the phone, like that’s going to help. I mean, how could she have vanished, just like that? There’s no way she left the island. It must be an issue with the signal. I check the phone a second time and yelp. There’s another message from Lachlan Erdman. From Mom. She wants me to find a computer and transfer money into this guy’s account.
I chew on my fingernail. One hundred grand is a lot of money. And probably just the first installment. She has to be in danger. And where the hell am I supposed to find a computer out here in the jungle?
What am I going to do?
What can I do . . .
And then, it hits me, what to do. I place a call and wait. It takes forever to connect, but at last somebody picks up, and I practically scream into the phone.
“Rhys!”
“Shorie, is that you?” It’s Lowell.
“Lowell? What are you doing on Rhys’s phone?”
“He went out. Left his phone at the house. Oh man, he’s gonna be pissed that he missed you. What’s wrong? I can barely hear you. Where are you?”
Until the Day I Die Page 26