The Miranda Contract (8 page)

Chapter 11

Miranda

T
he island resort
was awash with light, pushing out towards the ocean which shimmered and then fell to black. Waves rolled up the white beach as Miranda stepped off the boat. Her bare toes sank into the cool sand and she marveled at the warm water around her ankles.

“Just a few friends?” she asked Sully, as he stepped down beside her. Ahead of them, Miranda saw about twenty people. There was a pool and a white-walled hotel surrounded by trees and soft-white spotlights.

“You are entitled to some time away from the fans,” Sully said. He lifted her luggage from the boat and allowed her to walk ahead. A part of her was worried about who she would meet on the beach. Her real friends had been shunted to the side over the past year or so, and all she had now were these people.

It didn’t take long for the paradise to shift.

“Good to see you, luv.”

Robbie Rogers looked gorgeous and drunk. He had KL with him, the faux-rapper he’d been partying with in Miami while dating Miranda in Los Angeles. She returned his smile but didn’t let him close enough for the kiss.

“Thanks for the flowers,” Miranda said.

Robbie looked confused. He had no idea what she was talking about, no idea that a bunch of flowers had arrived after the Jakarta concert, a bunch with his name on it. It must have been her manager’s idea, or maybe Robbie’s manager.

Miranda had been swept from the stage by security. She remembered being physically lifted away, the burning boy dropping out of reach, and all she could see were lights from the roof and the swirl of colors and smells.

And then in her room all she had was silence.

She sat there for an hour, at least, while the world outside her door plunged into chaos. She called her father and cried into the phone, no words coming from her, just the rack of sobs.

Sully was suddenly there.

And then the plane.

A night evacuation.

Evie sat across from her with the flowers as they flew into Australia. She read the card from Robbie in her lilting voice, her wide eyes watching Miranda the whole time, like she was going to burst into flames as well.

And maybe she was.

She felt a pressure inside her. It stopped her from talking, from thinking, from even moving. But the pressure wasn’t just from Jakarta, from the falling, dying boy. It had begun with the competition, with becoming a national identity. Her body wasn’t hers anymore. She had been remade, over and over, even in the first few weeks.

Miranda Brody was out of control.

The protests had struck her hard. People shouting hatred. Freak Chic was a hit, but it was also a striking match. Uberhumans had been a part of the world for decades, but no one ever really confronted them – they were a part of the world, but also apart from it.

Miranda’s music exploited the freaks, and she knew it. It was all part of the image Thurston Klein and the others had constructed for her. The undulating tentacle girls and the muscled cat men strutting their bodies across the stage while the girl-next-door sang about all the fun that could be had in this new world.

Light music. Empty lyrics.

She hated it.

But that was celebrity, and Miranda wanted to sing to thousands of people. She wanted their eyes on her, their screams for her. It was her stupid dream and she had made it real. Even Robbie Rogers was part of the dream: a member of a British boy band, equally manufactured and equally beautiful.

When Evie left for a moment, Miranda found herself looking at the flowers, the whites and pinks, and she reached across for the card. She remembered how much she’d loved being with Robbie. She remembered how much it had felt like everything fitted together.

And she cried at his words.

Miranda moved through the guests quickly, kissing cheeks and smiling widely at the stories from back home in the States. The gossip, intrigue and industry news washed over her. At last, Sully touched her arm and led her to the hotel. She looked back at Robbie one last time before the doors closed, but then she re-focused herself.

“This isn’t fun,” she said, frowning.

“Was that Mister Rogers?” Sully asked.

“Yeah, not fun, Sully.”

They walked to the second level and Sully led her to a balcony overlooking the beach. She couldn’t see anything out there except the stars above, but the rolling waves soothed her.

“Can we go home?” she asked.

“Soon,” he said. “But you must be ready, Miss Brody. The dangers are not left back in Indonesia, they circle even now.”

“More protests?”

“Perhaps.”

“You think it might be worse?” she asked.

Sully drew in a deep breath.

“I have changed the times for your plane tomorrow, just as a precaution. I do not trust Mister Christie at this moment. He is reckless with your safety.”

“He’s just an industry man.”

“He wants to capitalize on you, and that puts you in danger.”

Miranda turned around and leaned against the balustrade. She looked up at Sully and frowned. He rubbed at his beard.

“There is more,” he said slowly. “I do not know what plans are afoot, but something terrible will happen and I will not allow you to be involved.”

“What are you talking about?”

He turned away but she grabbed his arm and held him there. She’d never seen him so tense, not even after the Jakarta concert.

“Sully, you can’t just tell me my life is in danger and walk away. What is it?”

“I promised your father that I would keep you safe on this tour, and Suleyman never breaks his word.”

“Have you talked with the police?”

“No,” he said. “This danger comes from within. At the end of this tour we shall speak with your manager and renegotiate a balance. This is no life for one such as you.”

She let his arm go and he walked away. Down below, the party continued, but Miranda didn’t know those people. She was a musician, yes, but she wasn’t a celebrity.

Things would change.

The real Miranda would come back. Somehow.

Chapter 12

Dan

I
t was the
smell of coffee that finally woke him, and he followed it upwards from the fading dream like a swimmer kicking for the surface of the sea. The dream he was leaving behind tasted of the sea, too; of salt and sunshine. And he was leaving someone behind down there in the dream, someone he needed to talk to, someone he didn’t want to leave behind, not again.

But the coffee’s aroma infiltrated his senses and snared his dream self, wrenching it upward, shattering the feelings of abandonment and regret into myriad shards that blinked in the light from the lopsided venetian blinds.

Dan sat up and jammed the balls of his hands into his eyes to clear away whatever it was he had been dreaming. There was a weight on his left wrist and he realized he was attached to a briefcase. He shifted in the bed and looked at the girl perched on a chair beside him, her legs crossed and her hands cradling a plastic cup. He didn’t know where he was, or who she was, or why there was a briefcase attached to his wrist. He shifted again and realized he was naked, and out of all the revelations that last one unsettled him the most.

“Where’re ma clothes?” he mumbled, turning away from the girl and sliding out to put his feet down on the floor. It wasn’t his floor. “And what time is it?”

He breathed in as the girl sucked at her cup, and he felt for the little electrical pulses around the room: the wiring in the walls, the appliances connected to the larger grid, even the wireless internet system that usually provided a constant hum inside his head. But everything was quiet. The system was down. And he had a thumping headache.

“You went off,” the girl said, sounding more amused than anything. “Had to get coffee from across the highway.”

Dan looked for his clothes. His black t-shirt was bunched at his wrist, twisted off as much as the briefcase would allow.

“Was a crazy night,” she said. He caught a glimpse of elfin eyes, sparkling under short tussled hair. “You’re a keeper, sparky. In case you were concerned.”

She kept smiling at him from behind the cup, long tanned legs crossed, but Dan ignored her and pushed his senses further, spreading his awareness beyond the hotel room and its disabled systems. He could sense the electricity flowing in the wider world, but his room, and several others either side of him, had been fried.

“Clothes?” he asked for the second time, pulling the shirt over his head, but she stood up and walked into the small bathroom. She was ignoring him, returning the favor, so to speak. He found the rest of his clothes near the door, kicked to one side. The night before was coming back to him, although details were still swimming in the dull thud of a hangover. He was supposed to be body guarding Miranda Brody, or probably just the briefcase. He remembered the briefcase was important. He grabbed his watch and knew he was going to be late. It wasn’t a surprise.

The girl closed the door between them, which he decided was a fair enough version of goodbye, so he hustled his clothes, slipped them on, and left, leaving the door slightly ajar.

He couldn’t find his bike in the hotel’s car park and still had trouble getting clear details from the night before. The sense of urgency was building though, and he redialed Alsana Owens for the third time as he waited for a taxi. Her phone was engaged one moment, then rang out the next. Normally he would have traced the phone through the network, but something had happened in the hotel room and his electrical senses were all over the place. He could pick up the local grid with clarity, but the further he pushed it, the cloudier things got. And the more his head hurt.

He checked the time again just as the taxi arrived. He’d only just make it to the airport in time, and hopefully the man they called Sully wouldn’t be there. Dan couldn’t imagine being cool enough to weather that stare again, especially considering how seedy he already felt.

Thirty minutes later he’d navigated his way to the Melbourne International Airport. As he strode through the airport, he cast his mind back to the previous night, when he partied hard and perhaps had a few too many of everything, although he still didn’t remember the girl from the hotel. Even now, as he shouldered his way up the escalator, he couldn’t quite reconstruct her face in his mind. She’d been mostly blonde, he figured; perhaps in her early twenties, with green almond-shaped eyes, a tinkling laugh. He shook his head, trying to clear it. She was older than him and she knew what she was doing. Dan figured he knew it too, although he would have liked to have more details. The night itself was a complete write-off, except for the dream which nagged at him even there in the airport.

He knew from experience that his dreams had the potential to set him off, that even while asleep he could effortlessly wipe out electrical systems and sometimes even start fires. The morning’s blackout was nothing compared to the damage he’d wrought as a teenager in the early days when he was just getting to know himself and his powers.

Powers.

He laughed as he looked up at the information board all lit up in orange. The numbers of the planes flitted around and a crowd followed its progress like the faithful on Sunday morning, always looking for guidance, always ready for disappointment. A fluttering groan spread through the group as a flight to Brisbane was delayed by thirty minutes. Dan was tempted to play havoc with the board, to plug another 10,000 volts into the system. He smiled but didn’t stop to see how far he’d be willing to go. He was late, and it wasn’t the first time.

Stepping off the last escalator he looked up and down the concourse, his briefcase secured to his wrist with its almost-discreet steel chain. The bloody thing wouldn’t stop rattling, even when he’d looped it around his wrist twice. The airport was crowded with red-faced locals desperate to flee north for the winter. They shuffled along the travelator walkways in herds of four or five, mostly adults with their offspring; or huffed their way past him in his t-shirt and jeans, occasionally bumping into him as he stood and waited. None of them wore smiles, he realized, and they were beginning to irritate him. It was the smell of tourists which was most annoying, of course: the mixture of sweat and fickle dreams for a better, indistinct life which was always ‘somewhere else’. Dan knew he was a bit cynical but it wasn’t really his fault.

He remembered his grandfather was back and suppressed a groan. The problems in his life seemed to be lining up in a neat row.

He sniffed and twisted his head to take in the entire space. There were no signs of obvious fan hysteria and no clogged crowds of teenagers anywhere. No film crew. He was standing in the right place, at the end of the concourse with the dozen or so arrival lounges spreading ahead of him, and the flight from Cairns was just sitting out there on the tarmac, solid and unmoving. He wasn’t that late, surely. The announcer seemed bored, and with a quick, yet somewhat redundant, look at his watch he realized that Miranda Brody was not on the flight. Inside his head, Dan calculated the penalties he would accrue from Alsana and it wouldn’t matter that it wasn’t his fault. It never did.

Dan flipped open his phone and dialed Miranda’s tour manager, Todd Christie, watching the Cairns flight flick away out of existence on the board above his head. The phone line was engaged and with only a slight knitting of his brow, Dan flipped the phone closed and looked down at the briefcase.

“Looks like it’s just you and me for a while,” he said, and gave his wrist a little jangle. Then he turned away from the lounges and walked to the escalator again, stepping back on and enjoying the ride down. A day without celebrity sounded good. He thought he could smell coffee, but the bright sign of a franchise diminished his hopes. They may have the scents right, but it was all just hype. Still, he figured, given the circumstances and the fact that he was at least half an hour away from the center of Melbourne, the expensive cup of beans and water would have to be his companion – at least until he was dragged back into Miranda’s world. The celebrity’s van and driver were waiting out the front of the airport, a reminder of his duties that Dan was happy to put off for a few more minutes.

A screech of tyres from the elevated car park drew most people’s attention, and there were murmurs of interest from tourists and homecomers alike. It was just another annoying distraction to Dan though, and he pushed his way past a woman with a stroller, heading towards Miranda Brody’s empty van, the driver looking bored behind his shades. At least the van was still there, Dan thought. He didn’t have to get another taxi.

His foot got caught on the woman’s stroller wheel and he yanked it free, annoyed. He didn’t mean to be rough with the woman, but she was gawking towards the car park and talking in a careening way that immediately declared the end of the civilized world. He was sick of people like that, so he reclaimed his foot and then guided her a little out of his way, a little shove. She swiveled her elbows around and caught him in the ribs. Then she let loose on him, slandering his mother, criticizing his hair, insulting his manhood. Her eyes were wild, her mouth a fidgeting thing that concealed crooked little teeth. For a moment he just stared at her in disbelief, but then he pushed forward again.

“Shut – up,” he said in two distinct sounds, and stepped through the throng of her family, almost feeling sorry for them to be stuck with such a monster. “I don’t have time for it.”

The screech continued out in the car park, an idiot turning donuts and shredding his tyres. Dan pulled out his phone again and tried to contact Alsana. With the superstar missing, he really didn’t want her to find out from someone else, and he needed to head off any criticism that might be coming his way. He winced at the engaged signal.

The first gunshot went unnoticed.

Most of the people on the side of the taxi and bus ranks were still entertained by the hoon driver, but when the second and third shots rang out some of them began to switch their priorities. A scream pierced the air, a young kid’s scream, and it seemed to grow from one person to the next, quickly blurring into a rush of people moving away from where Dan stood.

Being a little preoccupied, Dan didn’t immediately notice the change in pack behavior, but the fourth shot connected with the bus shelter right behind him, shattering the glass and his reverie.

He dropped down, his hands flat on the concrete, ready to bolt. The phone had gone, forgotten already. In front of him the black van that was supposed to transport Miranda had bullet holes in it. They must have passed right through from the driver’s side. Dan half-leapt towards the van and crouched down again, pressing his body to the ground so that he could look underneath. Beside him, a man in a courier’s uniform sheltered with his hands covering his head, holding it as if it was about to explode.

Looking under the van, Dan saw the road and a pathway leading into one of the big hotels which sat directly at the exit gates. He couldn’t see any shooter.

A part of him began calculating the bullets’ trajectory. The one that nearly collected him came from the van. It must have shot right through both sides and then into the bus shelter. That meant the shooter was roughly at ground level.