I had no idea where to begin. Was there even a theme to this?
“A jellyfish with epileptic seizures?” I guessed.
“Jesus, bitch!” Sami shouted. “Are you wiggling your arms or flapping the goddamned things?”
Cricket frowned and I even thought I saw her middle finger go up briefly. She went back to her galloping spasms.
“Johnny Reb with a bullet in the heart?” Silas asked. Wow. How did he come up with that? Maybe everything looked like a civil war reference to him.
“A butterfly!” Isaac called out – bringing my thoughts back to the present.
“A parrot?” Lex asked.
I really wanted that beer. But for the life of me, I couldn’t figure out what the hell she was. I looked over at Inuit and saw Lilliana making some similar movements. Hers made sense.
“She looks like a hummingbird,” I said quietly.
“That’s it! Ottawa wins the first guess.” Julie forced a grin.
That’s weird. I was just looking at the other team and. . .oh my god! They gave us all the same cards! How completely stupid were they? The monkeys in suits did backflips in my head.
I jumped up and took my card. My mind was still reeling from the fact that both teams had the exact same clues. A few yards away, Kit was getting her card. Damn. I didn’t have much time.
The card said I was a volcano. Okay – so there was a theme. I couldn’t tell my teammates that or let them know if they didn’t figure it out by looking at our team to look at the other team.
So, I erupted. Well, as a volcano, that is. Never the one who excelled at party games, I gave it my best shot. After making what I thought looked like a pointy mountain over my head, I crouched down and then kind of shot upwards, flinging my arms open at the top. I even threw in this kind of jazzy move where my arms slithered down like hot lava. I was pretty proud of myself.
Of course, I faced five completely blank faces. So I did it again. Nothing. Not even a guess from Ottawa. Obviously they couldn’t figure out my genius.
I glanced over at Kit. Apparently her team hadn’t yet figured out that we had the same clues and she didn’t know any other way to portray a volcano than I did.
Completely exasperated, I simply made the “v” sign with the first two fingers of my hand.
“Volcano!” Lex shouted.
I smiled at him. What a great guy! As I took my seat and Silas stood up, I whispered what I knew to everyone else. From the shock on their faces, I guessed they couldn’t believe it either. We were just starting to discuss it when Alan shouted out that Inuit got the suggestion. There were now two points for Ottawa and one for the other team. Silas glowered as he sat down, probably because we hadn’t paid any attention to him.
Sami stood up and took the card from Julie. She looked pissed when she read it. So, she turned to look at Brick/Norman to see how he was faring.
Sami got our attention and pointed at the other team. Brick was sliding forward, then back in a weird flowing motion.
Isaac yelled, “The tides! The sea tides.”
Sami grinned and rejoined us, slapping him on the back.
“Wait! That’s not fair!” Julie shouted, her face turning red. “They guessed what the other team was doing. Sami didn’t play, just pointed to Brick!”
Alan looked from us to Inuit and back again. “Well, they did get it right.”
Brick and his teammates looked stunned. I guess they just now realized what we’d known all along.
“I say we give the point to Inuit!” Julie snapped, winning her no favors with us.
“Hey! It’s not our fault you’re too fucking stupid to give each team separate suggestions!” Sami got right up in her face. “We won. We played by your rules and I motioned. Isaac guessed it. Our point.”
Julie took a step back. Maybe she realized that Sami would beat the shit out of her. I had no doubt about it, myself.
“Ottawa wins the point. Let’s continue,” Alan answered.
Isaac rose to take his card for the next round. Julie gave Moe his card but held on to ours.
“Knock it off, Julie,” Alan said when he saw what was happening. But Julie started running in circles, keeping the card out of Isaac’s hands. Inuit was working hard on guessing Moe’s word. He looked like a beached whale, lying on his side in the sand.
By now, Alan had joined in and both he and Isaac were chasing Julie around the beach for the card. The guesses were coming fast and furious from Inuit. We didn’t have much time.
I stood up as Julie ran toward me and clotheslined her in the throat with my extended arm. She dropped to the ground and I stood on her neck until she released the card to Isaac.
Moe was now on his arms, dragging his body across the beach. Isaac hung his arms in front of him and loosely made a clapping motion.
“A sea lion!” Cricket said.
I pulled Julie up to her feet and dusted the sand off her. She clung to her clipboard as if it would save her life.
“Four out of six answers right!” Alan smiled at Julie. “Ottawa wins!”
Julie snapped her clipboard in half and marched off into the jungle.
“Ottawa, you win reward. But there is a twist. You have only two hours to drain this keg before the immunity challenge. If it isn’t completely empty before the challenge – you lose automatically. The losing team votes a member off, tonight.”
Oooh. That was bad.
“Whatever, dumbass.” Sami was already dragging the keg back toward our camp. Isaac and Lex jumped in and soon the three of them were practically running across the beach.
Lex tapped the keg with a speed I felt might have broken the laws of physics, and within minutes we were gulping down the frothy brew. No one spoke. I was actually afraid that someone from the resort would show up and take it away from us. I wouldn’t have been surprised if Alan had swiped it from some vacationing Berliners.
“Mmmmm. . .” I groaned in delight after polishing off another coconut husk of beer. It felt so good going down. We just lay there in the sand, nursing that keg.
Sami filled her fifth mug of beer without any obvious effects of drunkenness. Maybe we could pull this off after all.
Cricket vomited for the third time. Okay. Maybe not. But Lex was doing okay. Isaac seemed a little bombed. Silas passed out after his third.
My buzz was kicking in. This beer was seriously potent. I nursed another mug as I watched Sami go for her eighth. Again, she had an amazing tolerance.
I looked down at the stopwatch Julie had left behind. Only an hour to go and we still had half a keg.
“Maybe we should give up.” Cricket hiccupped.
“How mush had you have?” I mumbled. Okay, so I was more than a little buzzed.
“Oh,” she thought for a few moments, then turned back to me. “Did you shay something?”
“I think we should take a break,” Lex said. “Some of you need to throw up to get this out of your system.”
Oh yeah! He was a barfender. I pictured him in a g-string.
“Especially you.” Two Lexes quivered in front of me as they took the huskkkk out of my fands. Blahhhhchhhh.
“I’m good.” Sami poured herself another one.
Lex led me off down the beach a little ways. I jammed my finger into my throat and puked into the surf. We stumbled back to the rest of them.
Sami, Isaac and Lex continued working on the keg while Cricket, the unconscious Silas and I watched. I plopped backward into the sand and stared up at the clouds, which resembled monkeys in suits for some reason.
“Missi?” I heard a voice murmur in my ear.
My eyes opened to see Lex, a little less blurry and only one of him, standing next to me.
“It’s time to go,” he continued.
I stumbled to my feet as saw that Sami and Isaac were carrying Silas. Cricket just looked green.
“Ish the keg gone?” I asked his lovely blue eyes.
“Yup.”
Jimmy the cameraman grinned and
seemed to have sprouted two heads. Bert and Ernie looked more like the Muppets than themselves. How much did I drink?
We followed the crew into the jungle. Thank god it was a short trip or we wouldn’t have made it. Every single one of us was bombed. Even Sami couldn’t walk straight.
“This is a twisted show,” I complained as Lex walked into a tree.
We came into a clearing with an extremely complicated obstacle course. Oh shit.
The Inuit team took one look at us and smiled. Things were looking up for them. I for one, desperately had to pee.
“Ottawa!” Alan shouted, making us all flinch with pain. “You have to sit one person out. Who will it be?”
Silas answered by passing out, face down in the sand.
“I guess it will be Silas,” I said.
Alan explained the course in some dialect of the Tagalog language, while we struggled to stay upright. I have no idea what he said. I’ve never been to France. Wait. They speak French there. Tagalog is something else. It begins with an fffff. Phillippiano?
They led us to a raised platform where we would begin the course. The stairs were particularly challenging. Alan shouted and we began.
Sami took one step on the balance beam and fell off into the sand below. She didn’t move. Neither did we. If she was dead, we didn’t want to take any chances.
So, we watched as the Inuit team won their first challenge. It was nice to see them jumping up and down together with glee. I was happy for them. And I wanted a nap, a toothbrush, and complete darkness.
Somehow we made it back to camp. It hadn’t really hit us that we had to vote someone off in a few hours, just that the banging of the surf on the sand stop making so much noise. I lay down, pressing my forehead against the cold, aluminum keg. It felt wonderful. The rest of me felt like shit.
At that moment, an annoying little voice in my soggy brain told me there was something wrong. That’s weird. I was usually pretty good about sizing up a situation. Figurative alarm bells were going off and I had no idea why.
Sitting up, I looked at my teammates – all passed out in the sand around me. No one else seemed concerned. I tried to ignore the nagging intuition, but there was no use. Bombays rely heavily on instincts. When you feel that something is wrong, chances are it is.
But what in the hell was it? I leaned against the cold steel keg, my head throbbing. Maybe my senses were overreacting. I mean, it’s not like that hasn’t happened before. Like the time in the pool on Santa Muerta with the sharks. Oh. Wait. There really had been sharks in the pool.
“Get up!” I shouted as I jumped to my feet. No one responded.
“Get up! Now!” I yelled louder, and then grabbed my head as it ached.
Lex leaned up on an elbow. “Missi, can’t you just let everyone die in peace?”
The alarm in my brain was getting louder. Something very bad was going to happen. I kicked, pushed and dragged my teammates toward the jungle. I didn’t know why – a fact that they didn’t seem to appreciate. I had just pushed Isaac into the trees when the keg I’d been leaning against exploded and shot up into the sky.
We all watched as what was left of the smoking metal crashed to the sand. After a few minutes, we emerged from the trees to inspect the bomb that had been in our midst (and inconveniently pressed to my forehead earlier).
“Holy fucking shit!” To my surprise, that came from Silas, not Sami.
I took two of the discarded coconut shells and gingerly turned over the twisted metal. A small, smoldering lump was attached to one side. C4. Somebody tried to kill us using the old “bomb in the keg” trick. This was far more serious than sabotage.
Isaac raced to the resort and found the crew. Bert and Ernie were more than happy to have something to film. . .an enthusiasm I found slightly creepy. Alan contacted the police, and we all sobered up quickly during the interrogation. By the time they left with the twisted wreckage of the keg, our hangovers had turned into exhaustion. Lex talked me into trying to get some sleep.
“I’ll take the watch,” he said.
I looked at him sharply. “Do you think we’re in danger?”
He shook his head. “Most likely someone just wanted to scare us.” I couldn’t tell if he was lying to make me feel better. Eventually I succumbed to sleep, my head in his lap, grateful for his presence.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
“Spartans! Ready your breakfast and eat hearty . . . for tonight, we dine in hell!”
- King Leonidas, 300
I came to as dusk settled on the beach. My head was pounding, my mouth felt like I’d eaten a monkey – fur and all- and I noticed that half my team was asleep out in the sand. I never did well with hangovers, being a lightweight and all. Even though I was sober didn’t mean I didn’t feel awful.
“Missi!” Isaac whispered and I crawled over to where he and Lex were sitting with a bunch of bananas and a couple of coconut halves filled with water. I drank and ate like I’d never had food and water before.
“We’re trying to decide whether to vote off Cricket or Silas tonight,” Isaac murmured. We quickly looked over our shoulders to see Sami, Cricket and Silas still out.
Oh. Right. In spite of the explosion, we still had a game to play. And we still had Tribal Council coming up that night.
“I was thinking we should vote off Cricket.” Lex put his hand on the back of my neck and began to massage. I started to melt.
“But what about Silas?” Isaac pressed. “He’s just as bad as she is. They are both moody, surly and awkward during the challenges.”
Yeesh. I had no ideas for them. “We could pull what Inuit tried yesterday?” I suggested.
Lex shook his head. “No. They’ll be ready for that.”
“But I don’t want to vote anyone off!” I was getting a little whiny.
“Neither do we, but something has to be done.”
Isaac was right. We’d all signed contracts agreeing to play the game as it was. There was no getting out of it.
“Fine. I vote for Cricket then. Silas at least pulls his weight around camp and we can use him in the physical challenges.”
Lex nodded solemnly. “I’ll wake Sami and tell her.”
I felt like shit. I didn’t want Cricket to go home. She had been pretty helpful during the ropes course challenge. But she was also conveniently missing when the shelter caught fire. If she were the saboteur, it would be good to get rid of her. And if she weren’t, at least she’d be safe at the resort. Either way, voting someone off was a bad situation. The beer was wearing off and my tongue was starting to shed, but I still felt awful.
Silas came to and skittered over to me, taking a banana.
“So.” He peeled the fruit slowly and popped it into his mouth. “Who’s it gonna be?”
I didn’t have the heart to mess around. “You are staying. Cricket is going.”
Silas looked at me quietly for a moment. He’d never really spoken to me before. I felt like I was seeing him for the first time.
“Okay,” he said. “How much time have we got?”
Isaac spoke up, “Not long. They should be here any minute to take us to Tribal.”
I wandered off into the trees to clear my head. Birds shrieked, snakes slithered and monkeys chattered – all amplified by my alcohol-addled brain. Within a few minutes I found Monty and Jack’s tree – at least the tree I usually saw them in.
“Boys!” I managed a stage whisper, then looked around uneasily.
“Hi, Mom.” Jackson unfolded himself upside down like a giant, red-headed bat. Monty was hanging next to him.
“You wouldn’t happen to have toothbrushes, would you?” I asked hopefully.
Monty laughed and handed me a bag. Inside were six toothbrushes and toothpaste, six sticks of deodorant and a bottle of aspirin. Damn, I loved those boys.
“We don’t really have any info for you,” Jackson said.
“It’s hard to find out about Isaac. It’s like he doesn’t exist. I’ve found a few refere
nces to an Isaac Beckett who worked in Vegas a few years back, but the info is old and a lot of it is sketchy at best. There’s nothing about the kind of work he did, which is weird. It’s like he tried to have all records of him erased,” Monty finished.
“Well, that would fit his M.O.” I tapped my chin. It was very likely a bad guy would be hard to trace. My fingers itched for my special computer equipment. But unless I knew how to power a laptop using a banana, it would be useless. Now lemons, I could work with. I used them to power radios all the time.
“Hold off till we find something on Vic,” Jack said.
“And there’s something else,” Monty added. “I think one of your teammates is sabotaging the show. I saw. . .” He cut off his words, shrinking up into the tree.
“Missi!” Sami was right behind me. I turned slowly with a grin.
“Hey, Sami.” I tried to be nonchalant. Maybe she hadn’t seen the boys.
“What the hell are you doing here? The dumbasses are gonna come and get us soon. You hear about Cricket?”
I interrupted her. “Sami, what do you think about Isaac?”
She looked up with a grin. “Hell, you want to fuck him too? Damn, bitch, you are greedy.”
I shook my head quickly. “No! No, I mean in the game. I don’t think of Isaac like that.” No. More like dead victim, really. Dead victim I was in danger of liking.
“He’s okay. I don’t think the son of a bitch is all as good a poker player as he thinks.”
“What makes you think that?” I didn’t recall any poker games around the camp fire.
“He’s just not good at bluffing. And he has no poker face. You can read his face like an open book. Like the times you’ve given him the cold shoulder you could see he didn’t like it. Like I said, bastard’s got no poker face.”
I smiled. “Oh, and you do?” I felt a little bad that she noticed my avoiding Isaac. But Sami was a different animal altogether and I had yet to figure her out.
Sami stopped what she was doing and gave me a hard look. “Well, I haven’t made it this long as the only female electrician in my union without bluffing.”
It never occurred to me that Sami might have had trouble in her profession. I mean, I worked in a usually male-dominated field with no worries. Of course, I worked alone and only the Bombays knew what I did. And if they gave me any trouble they knew I was a bitch at paybacks.
Greatest Hits Mysteries Boxed Set (Books 1-4) Page 50
