The Picture Kills (The Quintana Adventures)

by Ian Bull

  “Are you okay?” I ask.

  “Thumbs-up,” she answers.

  I smile in the dark. “Is Bernard there?” I ask.

  “I am right next to her, darling,” Bernard whispers up to me. “It was very hard to sneak her past all the men in dark clothes wandering around.”

  “How are you two getting along?” I whisper down.

  “She’s wonderful,” he says, “But I have a problem.”

  “What’s that?” I ask.

  “I’m falling in love with both of you,” he whispers. Trishelle giggles.

  “You’re not in love. It’s just the excitement of being on a movie set,” I say.

  “You are so jaded, Julia. I have feelings for you, yet you toy with me.”

  “You love it,” I whisper back. “Trishelle, where is your room?”

  “Same floor as yours, but in the main building. Above the kitchen, overlooking the pool,” she says.

  “Don’t you want to know where my room is?” Bernard asks.

  “You’ll get your fun with us, soon enough,” I tease.

  “Come down now, we can all walk on the beach together,” whispers Bernard.

  “You two have fun,” I say. “But tomorrow night I want to do something special.”

  “What?” Trishelle asks.

  “I want to go skinny dipping under the stars,” I say. I hear Bernard sigh.

  “Bernard, I want you to go get the swim fins out of the gardener’s shed now, and leave them in the bushes right there. Then I’ll meet you both on the beach tomorrow.”

  “When?” Bernard asks.

  I look at my watch. It’s 2:30 a.m. “Same time tomorrow,” I say. “Can you sneak away?”

  “But of course,” whispers Bernard. “It’s what I am good at.”

  “Be careful tonight. I want us to have fun tomorrow,” I whisper.

  “I’ll explore and I’ll find a perfect spot for the three of us,” whispers Trishelle.

  “For that I will find a way past a hundred men in dark suits,” Bernard whispers.

  I hear them rustle out of the bushes and then nothing more. They’re headed down to the beach. Trishelle saw my hand signals so she knows everything is not right with me. But if she can’t get answers from me, she will get them from Bernard. She will hold his hand, hear his story, let him kiss her and more, then pull all the knowledge she can from him. I am thankful for her expertise in sexual politics.

  I walk back inside and fall on my bed.

  The water will be warm but not if we’re in it for a long time so we’ll need to bring some clothes. I need some plastic garbage bags to keep them dry. Maybe I can get them from Wardrobe somehow. Our canisters can hold fresh water, but we’ll need food. I need to steal candy bars and peanut butter from the set today.

  The more food, water, clothes and supplies we have, the better our chances of survival. But the more days we stay on Elysian Cay, the bigger the risk of getting caught.

  I’ll know when it’s time to go. Until then, I have to gather supplies.

  Chapter 29

  Steven Day 10: Saturday, Before Dawn

  I’ve been at the helm for five hours, staring at endless dark water in front of me, beneath a billion stars. The GPS tells me I’m doing fine, but the boat is doing all the work anyway. All I know is that Cuba is straight ahead of me over the horizon, and somewhere to the left is the tiny island of Elysian Cay.

  We’ve used a third of our fuel already, which worries me, but the boat has a small mast and sail if we need to catch the wind, and there’s an extra drum of diesel fuel on the back deck.

  I finish the last book Carl gave me between glances out the front window. There are no blips anywhere near us on the radar screen. We are alone in the inky blackness...except for a trail of glowing green water streaming behind the boat.

  I step on the back deck and realize it’s bioluminescence—the water is full of tiny animals that light up as our engines churn past them. I look to the east. The sun won’t rise for two hours but the light is already creeping in, shifting the water color from black to grey. There’s one cloud far to the east, backlit by a distant sun that has yet to rise.

  I almost enjoy the view, but I can’t—just like I can’t quite enjoy the sunrise while surfing in Tivoli Cove back in Malibu. My shoulder aches, reminding me again of my injury, the boy, my anger and regret, and Caballero.

  I move back into the wheelhouse and sit, alone with my thoughts.

  That’s when I see it in front of me, barely visible in the weak light. It’s a strange kind of sloshing, like water moving everywhere in a bathtub. The water is even a slightly different color. It’s a thin line a good hundred yards away, but it’s definitely there.

  I pull back on the throttle into neutral, but we’re still coasting forward at about six knots. I step outside and onto the foredeck. Glancing over the edge, I can see straight down through clear water to sand. We’re in less than twenty feet of water. No—fifteen.

  I run back into the wheelhouse and slam the engines into reverse.

  “Carl!” I shout, but he’s already on deck. He grabs the wheel from me and spins it hard to the left.

  I move to the back of the stern and see that we’re now in less than six feet of water and the boat is not turning fast enough. Carl puts the motor into neutral and I grab the railing and wait for the impact. We hit the sandbar on the front starboard side, and the boat lurches to a stop. Everything not bolted down keeps going forward, flying everywhere in the cabin, including Carl. He then spins the wheel the opposite way and slams the motor in reverse, but we’re stuck.

  “Jump over and push!” he yells.

  I run to the bow and jump off but land in only a foot of water, which surprises me so much that my knees buckle. I stand up, dig my wet shoes into the sand and push against the high wooden bow. I feel the engines struggle and see sand whirling around me. The boat rises up off the sandbar and drifts back.

  Carl eases the boat back until he’s thirty yards away in deeper water. I walk higher on the sandbar, and at its shallowest point I am in six inches of water, but nowhere does the sandbar break the surface. This underwater mountain of sand stretches hundreds of yards in front of me, and the only clue that it’s even here is the slight ripple in the water at its summit.

  “We need to find a way through! The cay is still to the southeast!” Carl shouts.

  I walk along the ridge for five minutes, parallel to the Gollywobbler which motors along thirty yards to my left in deeper water. It’s strange to be wading like this, with nothing but water around me in all directions. I’m in a bathtub at the end of the world, with only dark clouds slowly lighting up pink in front of me to give me a sense of direction.

  My brain clicks and I remember facts from one of the books Carl tossed at me. “Sandbars often hug the Bahamian Islands on the Bahama Bank, pushed by the wind and currents. There are famous sandbars in the Bahamas, like Mackenzie Sandbar or Corman Sandbar, which are closer to the larger islands.”

  A black triangle cuts the surface of the water two hundred yards to my right, clearing my mind instantly. It disappears, but a moment later reappears as a thick black shape in the darkness only ten yards to my right. It’s a bull shark, about six feet long. It’s the third most dangerous shark in the world—another fun fact from my reading. There was nothing written about how to stop them with your bare hands. The shark swims parallel to me, unable to come any closer.

  “There’s one behind you too!” Carl shouts. Behind me, there’s another black shape coming close and soon I have two six-foot bull sharks keeping pace with me.

  I am grateful that I’m standing on a hill of sand with the Gollywobbler on one side and the sharks on the other, but they could probably scrape their bellies across this ridge and bite me if they really wanted to.

  Carl finally waves for me to come back and I wade deeper out on the safe side and then swim to the boat like an Olympian. Looking over my shoulder, I’m relieved to see that no black shap
es crossed over the sandbar. Carl helps pull me aboard.

  “They showed up fast,” I say.

  “Fishermen toss over their fish guts and bait, so when they hear a boat motor they’ll show up and follow it for miles.”

  The wind blows and makes me shiver, so I grab a towel to dry off. The clouds to the east glow pink on their lower edges, reflecting sunlight that still has not peeked over the horizon. We still have more than an hour until true sunrise, but there’s enough light for us to see how long and dangerous this sandbar really is.

  “Good eyes, Quintana. You’re more water wise than I thought,” he says.

  “I see that surfing, but close to shore.”

  “It’s not on the map either. It may disappear in six months when the squalls come.”

  “What would have happened if we’d really hit it?” I ask.

  “It could’ve busted this hull wide open. And it’s the Sahara desert out here. People sometimes abandon their wrecked boats, thinking they can follow the sand to an island. But the sands are always shifting and have different finger paths, and once you lose sight of your boat, you’re screwed. And then the bull sharks come.”

  We motor alongside the sandbar for five minutes before we spot a rivulet in the sand deep enough for the Gollywobbler to pass through, and I hang over the port bow and point which way Carl should turn the wheel until we ease through the tiny passage. Our bull shark friends are there to meet us on the other side.

  Carl pulls back on the engine so the boat idles south. We move inside and he notes our location on the GPS, and then moves to the map. “Elysian Cay is ten miles away, just over the horizon. What’s the name of the cay just north of it?”

  “Nurse Cay. About a mile long and half a mile wide, not much vegetation, but a good anchorage on the north side.”

  “That’s where we’re headed. The delay set us back, so we don’t have time to head south and come from below. We’ll come above Nurse Cay so they can’t see us, anchor, and head ashore with one raft. Then we cross Nurse Cay on foot and swim to Elysian Cay.”

  I make the mental calculation. It’s about three hundred yards between the two islands. We’ll both have backpacks and rifles strapped to our backs, but we’ll also be kicking with swim fins. We should make it across in five minutes, ten if there’s a current.

  “It has to be daytime?” I ask.

  “We lose any time advantage if we wait until nightfall. By tonight people on Long Island will know the jail is empty, or someone will notice the Gollywobbler is gone. People may follow us. But if we move now, we’ll be on Nurse Cay in less than an hour and on Elysian Cay by 6:00 a.m. The estate is on the south side of the island and they can’t be looking everywhere. And they’ll be looking for a boat, not two guys swimming.”

  “Sounds like a plan,” I answer.

  “What can you tell me about Elysian Cay?” Carl asks next.

  “Elysian Cay is three miles long and half a mile wide, with thicker trees, including coconut palms planted in the 1930s by former owners hoping to start a plantation. There’s a blue hole on the north end, which may be their fresh water supply, or it may be too brackish.”

  Carl listens to me while he goes through the packs I prepped yet again. He examines each flashlight, water bottle, first aid kit and power bar. He picks up the rifles last, and looks right at me.

  “How many men are we facing?” he asks.

  I flash back to my final photo session in the Miami harbor when Constantinou was walking with Julia Travers down the dock on the way to his yacht. I remember the camera frame and the photo shutter clicking:

  There’s a skinny unshaven white guy with a cigarette…

  There’s a tall muscle-bound blond guy…

  There are two Latin types, with darker skin…

  There’s a black guy, but he’s not American. He’s either Bahamian or Jamaican…

  There’s another tall guy, American-looking, with dark brown hair. He’s maybe Italian…

  Finally, there’s Caballero, tall with the dark hair and the streak of white.

  “There are six I know about, plus Caballero,” I finally answer.

  He then hands me what looks like a tiny cell phone with a flip top—but it’s not a phone—it’s a WorldTracker GPS location device. He holds up his own and explains.

  “Our devices are linked, so your screen displays both your location and mine. But no maps are loaded, so your screen shows only a bird’s-eye view of our direction and distance from each other, nothing else,” Carl says. “If there’s a mountain or a coral reef between us, it won’t show up.”

  “What about communication?” I ask.

  “It’s also a two-way radio,” Carl says, pointing to the side of the device. “Your headset plugs in here. The battery will last eighteen hours. If we have to separate, we check in every hour. Two short clicks means everything’s good. One click means things are bad. We go in, find her and get out. No full sentences until we’re back on this boat.”

  “Do you have standard walkie-talkies?” I ask as I clip my WorldTracker to my belt.

  “Why would you want standard walkies?”

  “If they’re really making a movie, a crew uses 13-channel walkies and they’re chatting the entire time. If we have one we can listen in and even ask a thing or two.”

  Carl closes his eyes, then remembers. He goes to the bulkhead on the starboard side, moves the cushions and lifts the lid to a storage box and rummages around inside. He pulls out an old black walkie-talkie with an old wire plug-in headset with microphone. “It’s so dead the battery is rusted on,” he says.

  “I’ll take it. All I need now is some canvas work gloves, a baseball cap, a roll of duct tape and a foot-long piece of rope.”

  Carl smiles, digs deeper in the bin and comes up with a roll of duct tape, a sweat stained baseball cap that says “Gone Fishin’’ and a small roll of rope. He hands it all to me. He goes to another bin, lifts the lid, rummages some more and hands me a pair of oil stained work gloves.

  “Anything else?” he asks.

  “Got any gum?” I ask back.

  He goes to the steering wheel, opens a drawer and tosses me a half pack of spearmint.

  “Now I’m ready,” I finally say, and force them into my pack.

  “Let’s get to Nurse Cay then,” Carl says. He steps back behind the wheel and pushes the engine throttle. We leave the bull sharks behind and head east toward the pink-edged clouds. We’re moving fast now.

  I look at Carl and he grins.

  Chapter 30

  Julia Day 10: Saturday Morning

  Just before dawn I twist the doorknob, but it’s still locked. Diego opens the door and sticks his face in the crack.

  “You need something?” he asks.

  I push the door closed and hear him curse on the other side. It’s 5:00 a.m. I have one hour before my call time, and my day is supposed to run fifteen hours.

  I leaf through the script to see what scenes are left to shoot, and where I can stall for time and snatch supplies today.

  Scene 25: I find a local doctor to bandage Mike’s stab wound. Mike then leaves to pursue the murderous Nicholas despite the doctor’s warnings.

  We shoot this on the patio first thing today. I could maybe steal some bandages.

  Scene 26: While Mike pursues Nicholas, I search my husband’s computer and discover he is an assassin, and he always returns to this island after a killing.

  This is me alone in a room, staring at a screen. I also shoot this scene today, but I don’t see the chance of lifting much. It will be too crowded.

  Scene 27: Mike chases Nicholas and catches up to him in the harbor, trying to board a seaplane. Mike and Nicholas fight on the pontoon of the plane, and Mike pulls Nicholas into the water before he can escape.

  They’re supposed to shoot this scene tomorrow. There will be a dozen camera setups for this, and I’m only in two of them. I run down the dock and watch the fight happening out on the water and they need my wide sho
t and close up. There will be more opportunity to gather food, garbage bags and sunscreen amid the commotion, but that means waiting a day and not leaving tonight. I don’t know if I want to take that risk.

  After that stunt, there are only a few more scenes:

  Scene 28: Mike handcuffs Nicholas in his room, then comes to my room and asks me to return to New York to testify against Nicholas. I say I’ll give him an answer in the morning, along with Nicholas’s computer.

  Scene 29: Alone again, I dig into the computer files. The whole island is on Nicholas’s payroll. He comes here after every paid murder, and the island helps him hide and get away. I recognize names, including the doctor. They all profit from murder.

  We also shoot both these scenes today, with duvateen to black out the windows so we can play day for night. It’ll be tight quarters, with all eyes on me, so again there’s little chance for me to lift anything.

  Scene 30: I rush to Mike’s room and discover that the islanders have helped Nicholas escape his handcuffs, and he’s about to kill Mike, but I burst in and shoot Nicholas first.

  Scene 31: I’m on a plane (a mock-up) and bringing both men back to New York, in bandages and on stretchers.

  This is the climax and end of the film, which we shoot the day after tomorrow after the seaplane scene. We must be gone by then, or Trishelle and I may die.

  My choices are clear. I have to gather as much water, food, and garbage bags that I can today. If I get enough, we can leave tonight. If I don’t, I must wait to do my collecting during tomorrow’s seaplane shoot, when my chances may be better. Then we have to leave tomorrow night, no matter what. I close the script.

  I still don’t get it. It’s a decent story with a good twist at the end, but Xander is deluded. This is no blockbuster hit. It’s a typical cop thriller, which can earn $50 million at the box office if there’s a star attached, but I’m not famous enough to draw that many people to the movie theater. If it’s a flop it could slowly make its money back from DVD, Internet and TV sales over the next five years, but that can only happen if he has a studio and distributor backing him. That’s the worst case scenario, but even that can’t happen.