The Beautiful and the Wicked (14 page)

 

CHAPTER 11

A
FTER
J
ACK MADE
a brief speech and went through the tradition of breaking a champagne bottle across the bow for the dozen or so members of the press in attendance,
The Rising Tide
set sail on its maiden voyage, at sunset on August 26, 2008. Their first stop would be the Exuma Cays, a little-­known archipelago in the Bahamas where Paul Mason had a small thirty-­acre private island. The three-­hundred-­mile journey would take the grand yacht about twenty hours in total. They were set to arrive sometime the following evening.

As Lila watched the glittering cityscape of Miami recede into the distance, she couldn't help but feel overcome by a sense of melancholy. There had been no sign of Ava. She knew it was better if her sister wasn't on the boat because it allowed Lila to do her job freely without worrying about Ava recognizing her. But in truth, Lila longed to be close to her sister once more. Even if she had to conceal her identity to do it, she was desperate to see her sister's face, and see that smile of hers, which never seemed to fade, even in the worst of times.

But Lila wouldn't have to wait much longer. In just twelve short days, the yacht would return to Miami, and Ava would board
The Rising Tide
, which didn't leave Lila much time. Luckily for her, now that the core group of passengers and all the crew were stuck together on this giant yacht, she'd have an easier time tracking everyone. But she knew she needed to be extremely cautious. Getting caught, even for the tiniest slipup, could cost her everything.

That night, the guests sat down to a light meal of charred octopus and Pinot Noir in the open-­air dining room on the main deck. Being at sea, with the brisk ocean breezes swirling around them, seemed to greatly lift the spirits of both the crew and the passengers, at least for a moment. It seemed there was a collective exhale throughout the entire yacht.

With everyone out of their rooms and seated around the table, Lila knew that now was the perfect time to grab that secret memo off Liss's computer. After she and Sam had finished serving, she told her fellow stewardess that she'd bring some more wine up from the cellar on the lower level. That bought her some time. Instead, she ran up to the third deck, headed as quickly as discretion allowed toward Liss's stateroom. Once she reached his door, she looked around to make sure no one had followed her, then snuck into his room.

It was filthy and smelled of cold french fries. There were clothes all over the floor and stacks upon stacks of financial documents on every flat surface. She grabbed a few of Liss's dirty shirts with one hand while she looked for his laptop. If someone walked in on her, she'd at least be able to say she was there to get his dirty laundry.

After a few minutes of frantic searching, Lila finally found his laptop in the bathroom leaning against a cabinet adjacent to the toilet—­meaning the last time he was on his computer, he was on the can.

“Charming,” she said as she picked up his computer, closed the bathroom door, lowered the toilet seat, and sat down.

The first place Lila went was his email. If Liss sent the presentation to all the board members, she'd be able to find it in his “sent” folder. His email was password protected, but in her present world, in 2019, even a toddler could crack a password this rudimentary. Still, every second that passed put her in more danger, and she knew it.

Then, finally, she was in his email. And there it was: a PowerPoint presentation saved as
Project King Charles
. With her heart racing, she plugged her thumb drive into the computer and copied the file, along with several others that might or might not be useful. The handful of seconds that she waited while the information was transferred to her drive felt like the longest moments of her life.

Then she heard the door to Liss's room open. She froze, moving only her eyes to locate where she could hide. Unfortunately for Lila, the bathroom presented few options. The shower stall was glass and the sink cabinet was too small. Without pausing to think, she pulled the thumb drive out of Liss's laptop, and taking a few wide strides on tiptoe across the tiled floor, she threw herself into the giant marble bathtub.

She lay in it, pressing her body as far down as she could, trying to quiet her panicked breathing while she listened to the sound of footsteps in the bedroom. The anxiety in that moment was further sharpened with the fear of fumbling the most important case of her life. What if this one misstep ended her quest to clear Ava's name?

The bathroom door opened. Lila stopped breathing entirely. Then she heard Edna's voice. “What a cretin,” she muttered to herself. “Just thinks none of us have anything better to do than clean up after him.”

Lila's heart was pounding so hard that she was convinced Edna could hear it. Then she heard the sound of Edna snapping Liss's laptop shut and walking back into the bedroom. A ­couple of minutes later, Edna was gone.

Lila, still feeling the flood of adrenaline pumping through her body, gingerly climbed out of the tub, and noticed the fresh flowers and clean towels that Edna had just dropped off. There were more fresh flowers next to the bed, which had been turned down, along with a little box of Teuscher's Champagne Truffles set on his just-­fluffed pillows.

As she left Liss's room, she finally exhaled, knowing that calls don't come much closer than that.

By the time she got back to the dining room, the guests were starting on dessert.

“Jesus Christ,” Sam said, looking at Lila's disheveled appearance. “It looks like you just got chased by a tiger.”

“Did anyone notice I was missing?”

“I think they're all too drunk to notice,” Sam answered. “They've plowed through all the booze. Where's the wine?”

“The wine?” Lila gave Sam a confused look, then she remembered. She had said she was going to the cellar. “I couldn't find the bottles I was looking for.”

“Okay,” Sam said, smirking. Then she leaned in and whispered, “I think someone might've left for a quickie.”

“What?”

“You've got all the telltale signs! The flushed cheeks, the mussed-­up hair, the lame excuse. Just tell me, who was it with? Mudge? Ben?”

“Oh, stop,” Lila said, with a shake of her head. “You don't know what you're talking about.”

“Don't worry.” Sam grinned. “I'll get it out of you soon enough!”

A
FTER DINNER, THE
guests gathered by the pool, drinking themselves blind, while Lila, her heart rate finally settled after the scare in Liss's room, longed to be back in her cabin. All she could think about was what could be in Liss's files. By the time the guests were drunkenly poured into bed, and Sam and Lila had cleaned up, it was 2:15 in the morning.

Back in their tiny prison, Lila sat cross-­legged on the bed and pulled out her computer to review the files. Sam was off God knows where, probably with Asher. Lila was thankful for the solitude as she opened the files titled
Project King Charles
.

A quick search online told her that Charles I was the king of England who was executed in 1649, and that his death brought an end to the rule of the monarchy. A pretty pointed name for a presentation outlining how to oust Jack from the company he'd founded. Lila began reviewing the presentation, which began with two charts linking Warren Software's waning market share and declining stock price to Jack's dwindling participation in the company's day-­to-­day operations. This was Liss's call to action to murder the king of Warren Software. Kill the tyrant to save the union.

As she made her way down the list of recipients who were sent this presentation, she saw Warren's board of directors, along with the name Urs Hunziker, the person Liss had been speaking with on the phone. Lila had never heard the name before, but a quick search told her that he was a Swiss banker, head of the wealth management division of a small private bank in Geneva, which had been the underwriter for a number of Warren Software's recent acquisitions.

But among the fifteen ­people who received this poison pill of a document, Lila was most surprised to see the names “Paul Mason” and “Thiago Campos.” Two of Jack's best friends and closet advisers were in on a cabal to overthrow him. They were swimming in mighty dangerous waters.

About forty-­five minutes later, as Lila was reviewing some of the company's financials, Sam finally returned. She entered the room smelling of booze and sex, and in the mood to talk. Lila didn't mind. Her brain needed a break. There was so much information to digest and she needed time to let the pieces all fall into place.

“I know it sounds dumb or conceited or whatever, but I always thought I'd be famous. It was just something I believed about myself,” Sam said quietly, drunkenly, as Lila stared up into the dark. “I grew up in bum-­fuck nowhere Florida, where everything was cheap and small and dingy. I hated my hometown like you can't believe. For as long as I can remember, I wanted out. I tried everything I could think of to get discovered. I did beauty pageants. I got a few small-­time modeling jobs where I'd have to do my own hair and makeup. I'd take the bus, even when I was little, to Miami for any open audition I heard about. I got head shots and some crappy agent that didn't do shit. But soon enough I'd spent all the money I had, plus some I didn't have, and I was right back where I started, stuck in hicksville living in my mom's double-­wide with no cable and a busted swamp cooler.”

The ocean was calm that late August evening, and their cabin rocked gently as the yacht headed south. Lila's seasickness and feelings of claustrophobia had mostly subsided by day three on the boat, but she was far from comfortable. If she even allowed her mind to drift toward any tiny thoughts about how confined she was on this boat, a claustrophobic panic would overtake her. Her trick to avoid the anxiety, when she felt it coming, was to focus her mind on the only thing that mattered: Ava.

“It's so tough out in the real world,” Sam continued, her Florida accent deepening the more freely she talked. “In school I was treated like some kind of royalty. I didn't get good grades or anything, not by a long shot, but I was always popular. Prom queen dating the quarterback. You know, that whole thing. And I'm not bragging about it. Trust me. I know enough to understand that it's not much to brag about.”

Lila didn't doubt Sam in the least. Her beauty was indisputable. She had an effortless, healthy, blond gorgeousness that Lila knew was both a blessing and a burden. Lila understood quite well that beauty wasn't always a woman's quickest way to happiness or to power. She figured Sam had learned the same lesson, though neither of them said as much out loud. Few subjects garnered less sympathy than the burden of beauty.

“But it didn't take me long to figure out that I wasn't one in a million. I was just like everyone else. Moments like that can change a person, harden a person, you know?” Sam paused. “When I was a kid there was this amazing carnival that used to come to our town, full of lights and games and rides. It had this fun-­house room that was all mirrors. You'd walk in and all you'd see was yourself reflected thousands of times over and over and over. I don't know why, but it terrified me. My mom said the first time I went, I just broke down into tears, that she had to carry me out. I think I was five or six. Anyway, that's how I felt every time I went to an audition, like I'd just walked into that mirrored room surrounded by thousands of versions just of myself. That's when I decided to call it quits.”

“Is that when you started working on boats?” Lila asked.

“Uh-­huh. A ­couple years ago, I met this girl at one of my auditions. She'd just come off a four-­week trip to Anguilla where she was third stew. She said she'd made, like, five grand in a month, without having to pay any living expenses. Told me that pretty girls could always get a spot on a boat as long as they were willing to work hard and follow orders. I figured I could do that. I was broke, as always, so that kind of money sounded like the answer to all my prayers. She told me to just show up very early at the Miami Marina and walk around saying I was free to work. I got jobs right away. That led to a few steady gigs on charter yachts, then I landed this assignment, which is a dream come true.”

“Is it?” Lila asked. She was surprised to hear that someone thought of scrubbing toilets and ironing linens, all of it under the eagle eye of Edna “Slaughterhouse,” as a “dream come true.”

“Of course!” Sam said emphatically. “Every day we work in the most glamorous world imaginable for some of the most wealthy and powerful ­people alive. How can you not find that exciting? I mean it's not perfect. I do things I never thought I'd do in a million years.”

“Like collecting Seth Liss's chocolate fudge soda cans and hand washing Josie Warren's organic cotton thongs?” Lila asked, which made Sam laugh.

“Yeah, that and other things,” Sam said quietly. Was she hinting at deeds darker than the ones listed in the job description? Lila wondered. Who exactly had she been with tonight?

“But I just keep my mind on the big picture,” Sam concluded, in an artificially cheerful tone. “Whenever I'm down, I think of myself as Cinderella and the other women, like Josie and Elise, as my evil stepsisters. I'm beautiful and deserving and they're the cruel, jealous hags with all the money. One day they'll get theirs and I'll get my prince.”

Lila had never heard anything quite as deluded as that, but she kept her mouth shut. If this childish fantasy allowed Sam to get through these grueling days, then who was she to disabuse the young woman of her dreams?

“You're right,” Lila lied. “That's a good way of looking at things.” There was a long moment of silence as she got up the nerve to ask her bunkmate something rather personal. “Sam, mind if I ask you a rather direct question?”