DOUBLE KNOT (19 page)

I knew Poppy was someone, but she wasn’t the someone I was looking for; I knew what
her role was and unfortunately for her, I knew exactly where she was. Everything else
pointed to Maximillian DeLuna and his pilot Colby. If I was right and this was about
diverting Knot on Your Life wins, they were only half of the story. The other half
would be at the Cayman bank doing the collecting. If DeLuna was working this end taking
the money, who was working the other end receiving it? I needed to know the names
of everyone benefitting from the con on the Caribbean.

Then what? I was locked in 704.

If I could get to the casino when it opened tonight, I’d track down Fredrick Blackwell
and advise him to dig a little deeper. There was no doubt his V2 was pulling the money
going into the slot machines from his personal bank, but when he won, V2 might not
be giving it back. V2 could be sending the wins somewhere else and lying to him. Showing
him a balance that wasn’t really there. But seeing as how I couldn’t get to the casino
or Fredrick Blackwell, then talk him into letting me have access to his personal account
funding his
Probability
account, I’d need to sneak a peek the hard way. I pulled the laptop closer and wiggled
my fingers over the keyboard. To the collection of ladies around the dining room table
trapped in 704 with me, I said, “I’m going to need a minute.”

Mother poured the Starbucks.

* * *

I couldn’t go straight to the bank. The quickest way to open the door to 704 would
be to hack into the bank processing the Knot on Your Life transactions. Within minutes,
the door could bust open and we’d all be dead. And I couldn’t go the deep web route—banks
were onto the deep web. So I needed a proxy server, a computer application that acts
as an intermediary for users like me who need information from protected computer
systems. Like banks. A non-judgmental cyber middleman who wouldn’t let anyone know
I was asking, didn’t care who I was or what I intended to do with the information,
but would help me gather it with no one the wiser.

“So, what are you doing?”

I was pretending to be Poppy in Firefox, searching the internet for an open HTTPS
transparent proxy so I could bypass filters and censoring, both
Probability
’s and Fredrick Blackwell’s bank’s, which I wasn’t about to explain to Jess.

“Jessica,” Fantasy said, “leave her alone. She’s working.”

“I’m waiting,” I said.

“On what?”

“I’m waiting on a socket, Jess. And I think I found one.”

Arlinda was eyeing her Starbucks martini. “Are there coffee cups?”

“There were,” Fantasy said. “We ran out.”

“Where
are
all the dishes?” Mother slapped the table.

“Listen up.” I looked around. “I found a socket.” Garbled code flashed on the screen.
“Now I have to build a script to get in. This will take a minute.”

“So cool you know how to do this,” Jess said.

“She can find recipes on the interweb too,” Mother told Jess. “Ask Davis for a pumpkin
loaf recipe and she will give you ten.”

“Pumpkins? Ten pumpkins?”

I imported the socket, then the thread module, because I needed the proxy’s functions.
I declared settings, adding a listening port, buffers, maximum connections, translators,
and a connection function so I could shut it down fast if there was any indication
someone out there didn’t think Poppy should be such good friends with a proxy server.

“When you finish, will we be out?”

“No, Jess.” I didn’t look up. “But I think we’ll know who locked us in here. Which
will help get us out.”

I asked the proxy server to find Fredrick Blackwell’s bank. It came back with six
hits, Mr. Blackwell spreading the love around central Texas with five different financial
institutions, but the last on the list was what I wanted. LTWI Trust Company. In Grand
Cayman. I clicked, asking Proxy to sneak me in the bank’s back door, then plugged
in the eighteen digit
Probability
number from his bio.

“What are you going to do when you find them?”

“Jess,” Fantasy said. “When she’s on the computer, you have to leave her alone. The
answer is when she finds them we’re going to kill them.”

Arlinda screamed a little.

“I’m just kidding,” Fantasy said.

“She’s kidding,” Mother chimed in. “I think she’s kidding.”

“So, I think you
should
kill them.”

Paydirt. I was in Fredrick Blackwell’s
Probability
account. I found the withdrawals Arlinda told us about, a long list of $100,000 debits
totaling almost $2,000,000, and that after only one day of playing the Knot on Your
Life slot machines. There were no corresponding deposits. Not a one. Not a penny of
winnings going back into Fredrick’s personal account. I was right and the deposits
were going somewhere else. And that was why we were locked in 704.

I took a breather and sat back. I rubbed my eyes. “No one’s killing anyone.”

Jess’s latest V2 house design imploded.

Arlinda was getting edgier by the minute. “Let me ask you something.”

“Sure.” I sat up and went back to the laptop.

“There are four of you.”

I nodded.

“But she has five V2s.”

Tap tap on the keyboard. “Uh-huh?” I asked Proxy to follow Fredrick’s money. Where
were the deposits going? Who was ultimately behind this? Who was DeLuna working with
or for? Who was stealing from the billionaires? Boom. Fredrick Blackwell’s deposits
weren’t going into his
Probability
account because they were being diverted to an account at the Banco de la Elima,
also in the Caymans. The account was a new one, opened forty-eight hours ago, with
a current balance of $120,000,000. In just one day, the players lost that much money
off Knot on Your Life. If left unchecked, DeLuna & Co. were looking at a billion-dollar
paycheck by the end of the cruise. Give me a name, Proxy. Tell me who (to kill) locked
us in here.

“Mrs. Cole.” Arlinda Smith gently tapped the table beside the laptop with an open
palm, finally getting my attention. “You have five V2s but only four people. Where
is your fifth person?”

My fingers slid off the keyboard.

It was as if someone slapped me and Fantasy.

It happens.

“It’s not where the fifth person is—” I started the thought.

“—it’s where the sixth V2 is,” Fantasy finished.

And that’s how Super Secret Spies do it.

“There are
six
people in this suite?” Arlinda’s head bobbed as she took roll around the table just
to make sure. “Where are the other two people?”

Proxy found the account. It flashed green on the screen and I had a target.

I had two targets.

There were two people on the receiving end of the Knot on Your Life scam.

It was a joint account, registered to Bradley W. Cole and Jessica E. DeLuna. The Cayman
account holding one hundred and twenty million dollars of skimmed
Probability
casino cash was
Bradley’s
. And Jessica’s. Who we never should have let sit in an armless chair on wheels.

She must have been counting V2s, which must have the same effect on her as counting
sheep. She went nighty-night, tipped over, and the rolling chair shot out from under
her. Jess hit the floor and the chair hit the wall, both with a boom. Arlinda Smith
clapped her hand over her mouth and screamed into it. Fantasy and I made a run for
the sundeck. We’d buried Poppy in a Louis Vuitton trunk with a V2 somewhere on her
person. There wasn’t a doubt in my mind Poppy’s V2 worked just fine. And with her
V2, we could waltz right out the door.

EIGHTEEN

It’s not like we could waltz right out the door.

It was the same problem we’d have faced if Arlinda’s V2 had opened the door: We didn’t
know what was waiting on the other side. We knew for a fact the cameras would catch
us, which might set the deadly consequences clause into motion, so we had to get out
the door without the cameras seeing us. The only way we could come up with, over Poppy’s
dead body, was the lifeboat in the closet behind the closet in Burnsworth’s room.

Neither of us was in a very big hurry to revisit Burnsworth’s room.

It’s not every day you search a dead body. We’d passed exhausted hours earlier, and
stripping a corpse to look for electronics had done us in. The dark, cool, absolute
quiet of the deck combined with the hypnotic lull of the sea would have been unnerving
if either of us had a nerve left. We hid, shoulder to shoulder, sharing a blanket,
on the side of a sun chair. Catching our breath. Thinking our next move. Wondering
if we even had a next move. Acting too quickly, as in running out the front door,
might mean winding up dead. Or in the submarine with No Hair. At least we were relatively
safe inside 704. With beds. And a pool. And a computer. But not acting quickly, as
in running out the front door so I could, at the very least, talk to my husband, left
us in jeopardy. And we were sick to death of jeopardy.

I honestly couldn’t believe Knot on Your Life deposits were going into an account
in Bradley’s name. I couldn’t believe Max DeLuna and his pilot were that smart.

“They set Bradley and Jessica up to take the fall for this,” I said. “They have slot
players believing the balance on their V2s, knowing full well that at some point,
one of the players will dig a little deeper, past what the V2 says, all the way to
their home bank, at which point the jig will be up.”

“Probably why the pilot is in on it,” Fantasy said. “Quick getaway.”

“While Bradley and Jessica take the fall.”

“In the time it takes to clear Bradley and Jess, even if it’s only an hour, they’ll
be long gone with the money.”

“And they don’t know it yet, but they got a raise,” I said.

“They don’t have to split anything with Poppy.”

If we had it to do over, we wouldn’t necessarily put bodies in trunks, then put the
trunks in direct sunlight. It didn’t feel hot, tropical breeze and all, but we weren’t
dead and stuffed into Louis Vuitton trunks with the afternoon sun beating down on
us for hours. As it turned out, the walk-in refrigerator would have been the better
body storage choice. We found Poppy’s V2 strapped to her ribcage. And it was disgusting.

“Do you think this is warping my babies?”

“Your baby boys?” she asked.

I’d have laughed at that if I had a laugh left in me.

“Your babies have no idea what’s going on.”

“Neither do yours,” I said.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You need to come clean with them, Fantasy. Tell them the truth. You can’t let them
think the divorce is Reggie’s choice or even a mutual decision.”

“Maybe I’ll worry about that later.”

(Later.)

“It’s hard to believe I can’t call my husband. Just turn on this V2 and dial his number.”

“Poppy would never call Bradley,” Fantasy said. “We’ll get out the door and use Arlinda’s
phone to call Bradley. I doubt anyone cares who Arlinda calls.”

“Right.”

“We have to tackle Burnsworth’s room first.”

“Right.”

Neither of us jumped up to tackle Burnsworth’s room.

“Your mother.” Fantasy said it on the weariest laugh imaginable.

“I know.”

There wasn’t a sound in the world. Not one.

“What I can’t believe is my father.”

“He pulled a fast one on you, Davis. I doubt he meant for her to hurt you like that.
I don’t think
she
meant to hurt you.”

“She didn’t.” Much. “It’s been such a hard part of who I am for so long, to tell you
the truth, Fantasy, it’s a relief.”

“What are you going to do?”

“What do you mean?”

“You have a choice, you know.” Fantasy was hogging the blanket. “You don’t have to
act on the information.” She leaned in and spoke to the middle of me. “Your mommy’s
already a mommy.”

I took a swat at her. “Leave the boys alone.” She sat up and we tipped heads, hers
so pillowy, and stayed there three seconds. “I’m barely older than her,” I said. “I
don’t feel old enough to have an eighteen-year-old.”

“That happens when you have a baby at sixteen.”

“Mother’s mother had her when she was fifteen.”

“I wonder if it’s too late for me and Reggie to have another baby,” Fantasy said.
“Maybe we’d have a girl. Maybe we could start over.”

We were discussing babies—past, present, and future—as if nothing else was happening
in our world. I don’t know if we were avoiding what might be ahead or sharing what
might be our last quiet moments before the deadly consequences. Because we had Poppy’s
V2 and one way or another, we were on our way out the door. And one way or another,
I was calling my husband. And one way or another, we were making a run for the submarine.
Just as soon as we worked up the nerve to tackle Burnsworth’s room.

Our time in 704 was up.

“Are you going to see her?”

“I can’t wait to see her,” I said. “If we ever get off this boat.”

“Davis!” Fantasy took my half of the blanket when she bent over double laughing.

“What?” I yanked the blanket.

“It’s a ship!”

* * *

“I’ll go in,” Fantasy said. “You wait here.”

“No. It’s just blood.” As I said the words I could hear my own blood roaring through
my ears. “Let’s just do it.”

“At least let me throw a blanket over it, Davis.” She had her hand on the door that
led to Burnsworth’s bloody berth.

“His blanket is at the bottom of the sea, Fantasy. Just go.” I gave her a little push.

We stepped around it.

I found the half door on the back wall of the small closet. I slid it open. It was
barely wide enough to pull the inflatable lifeboat out, and the real treasure was
hidden underneath. We found a skinny file with three surveillance shots of Maximillian
DeLuna entering Banco de la Elima in Grand Cayman, opening the account in Bradley’s
and Jessica’s names. At noon on Friday. Four hours before I boarded, seven hours before
Probability
left port. And that’s where the pilot came in. There’s no way he’d have been able
to pull off that kind of timeline without a jet. It didn’t explain why Colby Mitchell
was listed in
The Compass
as our stateroom attendant, but it did explain her role.

Burnsworth knew. Which meant No Hair probably knew. DeLuna ran the clock so tight
No Hair didn’t have time to act on the information before DeLuna took him out of the
equation. And Poppy killed Burnsworth before
he
could do anything, and that meant, like Burnsworth said before he died, it was up
to us.

Me, he said. It was up to me.

“Do we know Banco de la Elima?” I studied the photographs for information.

“Elima is Hawaiian.”

Which didn’t help a bit. Or maybe it did. “Isn’t Jess from Hawaii?”

“What does that matter?” Fantasy asked. “DeLuna opened the account in the Caymans.”

We closed Burnsworth’s door and stepped into the salon where Mother demanded to know
where we’d been. “You went out one door and came back in another.”

Fantasy looked to me for an explanation. “Old Irish superstition,” I said. “Mother
thinks you should come and go through the same door.”

Fantasy scratched her three feet of hair.

“What is that?” Mother asked.

“It’s a lifeboat,” Fantasy said.

Arlinda whimpered.

“Let’s get ready.” I pumped up my words with energy I didn’t have.

Jess popped up from a sofa. “For what?”

“We’re getting out of here,” I said. Arlinda collapsed with relief. “After we lock
up Jessica’s husband.”

Jess looked like someone had slapped her. “Not
here
. Don’t bring him here.”

“How are we going to get him? Are we going to clobber him?” Mother threw an air punch.

“Arlinda’s going to do it,” I said.

“Clobber him?” Mother asked.

“What?” Arlinda cried. “
What
? How?”

“You’re going to tell him the truth, Arlinda. The truth.”

* * *

I could have stayed in the shower forever. I could have slept standing up in the shower.
And as soon as I could talk to my husband and rescue No Hair, I would sleep. I might
climb in my
Probability
bed and sleep until the babies were born. When I finally turned off the hot water,
I’d been in the shower so long Fantasy had showered, dressed, and corralled her hair,
and Mother had cleared the dressing room of the chicken picnic. She’d rifled through
Hers and chosen clothes for me, and they were laid out on the ottoman between Jess
and Arlinda, whose shoes were resting on her bouncing knees. Ready to go. My hair
was pulled back in a wet Bianca blonde ponytail and I’d taken two seconds to swipe
on mascara and lip gloss. No Hair had been through enough. I didn’t want to rescue
him and simultaneously scare him to death.

Mother chose a sleeveless Elizabeth and James ivory tunic and paired it with skinny
black pants, skinny being relative, and when I dropped my towel to climb into them,
Arlinda got her first peek at a Destination Maternity bra. The poor girl would be
scarred for life from the events of the past hour and my pregnancy in her face might
be the worst of it. Mother and Fantasy helped me dress and the question on everyone’s
mind was, just how much bigger is she going to get?

Maybe it wasn’t the exact question on everyone’s mind, but seeing myself in four huge
mirrors, trust me, it flew through mine.

“So,” Jessica said from the ottoman. “You need pearls.”

Her husband had imprisoned her and implicated her in the heist he had going on above
our heads, it would surely take a strong team of lawyers to untangle herself from
this debacle, and in spite of it, she was accessorizing me.

It could be, as my husband believed, there was a lot more to Jessica DeLuna than met
the eye.

Or maybe she just didn’t get it.

Dressed and ready, I spoke to Arlinda. “It’s eleven thirty. There’s a ninety-nine-point-nine
percent chance Mr. DeLuna is in the casino waiting for it to open. It’s where he’s
stealing his fortune. He’ll be there. Go back up the wall, find Mr. DeLuna, and tell
him exactly what happened.”

“Which is?” she asked.

“Your V2 fell through the bottom of your locker and in the process of looking for
it, you found people trapped on the floor below. Including his wife.”

“Then what?” she asked.

“He’ll want to see for himself.”

“You’re sure?”

“I’m positive.”

“Then what?”

“You take him to your changing room.”

“What do I do then?” she asked.

“The locker is in the back of the changing room, right?”

“Right,” she said.

“He’ll want to see for himself. Let him get all the way to the locker. When he does,
close the door to your changing room, zap it with your V2, and walk away. He’ll be
locked in. His V2 won’t open the door to your changing room.”