The Picture Kills (The Quintana Adventures)

by Ian Bull

  I have to get the raft into almost three feet of water and pointed the right way before it can take all our weight, otherwise we risk hitting bottom and we will have to climb out again. I get it lined up and wave, and they tumble in.

  Carl screams in pain as he falls back into the raft, and Trishelle bounces off the rubber and ends up with her butt in the air—but they’re in, and so am I. We barely fit, and the rubber sides of the Zodiac are only a foot out of the water.

  I yank the cord. The engine sputters but doesn’t catch.

  I yank the cord. Again, the engine sputters but doesn’t catch.

  I yank the cord one more time, and the engine sputters to life. I twist the throttle and the Zodiac putters forward. The engine whines, but we are only moving two miles an hour, tops. I move my hips and my head, as if jerking my whole body will somehow make the tiny boat pick up speed.

  I look back at the island and it’s so close I feel like I can touch it, and when I look in front of me the Bahama Bank seems like a painting that’s too far away to ever reach.

  The water below us finally gets deeper, and the trees behind us do lose their distinct shapes.

  We are one hundred yards out, then two hundred…slowly moving farther away.

  I feel something hot zoom past my cheek and I hear a gunshot from the beach an instant later. I turn and see Diego, aiming his gun. We all duck and bullets hit the water around us.

  “If he hits the Zodiac, we’re screwed,” I say.

  “Hand me my rifle,” Carl says. He turns and sits up on one of the benches.

  Trishelle hands him the rifle like her hands are burning, she can’t get rid of it fast enough. Carl clicks and moves things on it. Another two bullets zip into the water, their long white rocket trails zooming under the raft.

  “Stay down and keep the throttle open,” he says. I drop down even lower in the boat. He aims and shoots three times, then stops.

  I don’t look back. I don’t know if he hit Diego or he didn’t, but Carl lowers his rifle, slides it carefully next to him, and then collapses against the rubber side of the Zodiac.

  The water underneath us changes color to darker blue, and we suddenly leave the sheltering protection of the island and we are in open water. The wind hits us and sends choppy small waves splashing into the boat.

  “Just keep going, girl, as long as you can,” Carl says, and he closes his eyes.

  I smile at Trishelle and she blinks at me. She’s still terrified. I flash her the A-OK sign, and she manages a sad smile.

  Chapter 49

  Steven Day 11: Sunday

  Someone is trying to get in. It’s just one person, I can tell. Whoever it is, he won’t give up. He smashes windows with rocks, then pries at the door, then tries to enter through the window again.

  I pull myself into an Aeron chair and I feel the wound in my hip squirt blood all over the carpet. Pain shoots down my leg and up my spine, making me so dizzy that the room spins around me. I squint my eyes until the desk in front settles and comes into focus again.

  I aim random shots through the thick curtains and out the broken glass. It works to keep him out, but soon I will run out of ammunition.

  I jiggle the mouse on the computer and the screen flashes to life.

  The pounding starts again, and the thick wood door heaves in its frame and splinters on the other side. In moments the wood will split around the metal bolt locking him out, and the door will collapse and he’ll kill me. I want to die knowing the answer.

  A dozen folders appear on the desktop—travel itineraries, production costs, budgets for the film—and then I see the last folder. Investors. I click on it.

  Inside the folder are hundreds of documents, all with names. I click on the top document—Somchai Khunpluem. It’s a one page dossier. Thai businessman and politician. Multimillionaire. Addresses in Bangkok and Dubai. Invested one million. Final payment on September 30th upon delivery.

  I click on the second document—Ali Khalif Galeydh. I remember the name—a Somali warlord who escaped Ethiopia and disappeared. Address in Madagascar. He also invested one million.

  I click on the third document—Semion Mogilevich. Ukrainian Exporter. Addresses in Kiev, St. Petersburg and London. Russian Mafia? He also invested one million.

  I glance at the bottom of the folder. There are two hundred and five documents in this folder, all men who are rich enough and sick enough to pay one million dollars each to see a famous actress die in their own private version of a real Hollywood film.

  The banging starts again, and the door heaves. Whoever is on the other side has an axe or a sledgehammer and he’ll be inside in less than a minute.

  I open the drawer and push aside paper, pens and coins and I spot a flash drive.

  The door heaves again.

  I push in the flash drive in the side slot and it lights up. On the screen an icon appears and I drag and drop the investor folder onto the flash drive.

  The bar appears on screen that shows that it is copying.

  The door splinters. I don’t have time. I yank out the flash drive and pop it into my mouth, fight my own gag reflex and swallow. My only hope is that some Bahamian coroner opens me up and finds it so they’ll know what happened here.

  The door falls off its frame into the room. I aim my pistol and pull the trigger, but nothing happens. Caballero steps in. He has a massive bruise on the right side of his face, and his eye is closed shut and bleeding.

  “You look terrible. What happened to your face?” I ask.

  He kicks my chair over and I land hard on my back. He leans over me and punches my face, then stares at me with his one good eye.

  “Who are you?” he asks.

  “Colombia,” I whisper. “I was there too.”

  Caballero smirks. “US Army Ranger.”

  “I saw you kill a boy in an Arhuaco village. You shot him in the chest,” I say.

  “I don’t remember,” he spits with disgust and pushes down hard on my bleeding hip, which sends an electric bolt of pain through my body.

  He pats me down and finds something in my pocket. He pulls out something black, as small as a cell phone.

  Caballero holds it up, clicks it open, and immediately knows what it is. He shows me the screen and smiles. “What do you say we take a trip and find her?” he asks. “If we can’t finish the movie, you should at least watch her die.”

  He then grabs my throat and pushes down against my windpipe. I have no strength left. Constantinou steps into the room and leans over me. Both his face and Caballero’s fade into a white light.

  Chapter 50

  Julia Day 11: Sunday Afternoon

  We drift, out of fuel. It’s been three hours since the motor sputtered and died and we’ve been floating and baking in the hot sun. Our skin burns.

  I unwrapped a thin blue tarp from the survival kit and now we’re trying to hide under it, but the sun heats it up hotter than an oven. Trishelle and I pop our heads out every minute, trying to breathe, then we flutter and fan ourselves with the tarp, trying to create a breeze. Nothing works.

  I have to do something about Carl’s bandages, but I’m scared. They’re soaked through the duct tape and he’s bleeding again, and he hasn’t moved in an hour.

  I open the first aid kit and find the scissors. I cut away the rest of his pant leg and expose the blood soaked bandages. Some of them have come loose, so I cut them away and toss them into the water.

  I watch gobs of blood dissolve away from the sinking bandage and I remember what Steven said—“Don’t take them off, don’t dump them in the sea. If there’s blood the sharks will come.”

  I find the fresh gauze and my roll of duct tape. I make Trishelle hold the gauze in place while I rip off a long piece of tape and wrap yet another twisting roll around his leg. Carl still doesn’t move. I cover him with the tarp and gently flap its edge to get some kind of air moving across him.

  The hot sun burns the back of my neck and bakes my skin under my dress. I need
shade too, so I prop up the tarp between two packs and crawl in next to him. Trishelle is on his other side holding up her end of the tarp with her arm, and I do the same on my side.

  “A-OK?” I ask her.

  “A-OK,” she answers, but neither of us smile.

  There’s nothing we can do except to stay under the tarp, sip water and conserve energy. Only when it’s dark can we use our precious energy to move around, try to fish, and use the oars to row.

  I stare at the red button on the survival beacon. I want to hit it now. Maybe that police chief from the island is looking for us. Then again, maybe Xander is too. He has that fancy black speedboat, so he must have radar. I feel like he’s watching me right now. I can’t hit the button yet, it’s too soon. I have to wait until nightfall.

  I stare out from under the tarp. I’m in an endless bathtub of flat water that stretches forever under a dome sky, and the two worlds meet in a straight line right at the horizon.

  I peek over the edge of the raft and look down into the water and I’m surprised I can see the bottom. How is that possible? It’s less than twenty feet deep, and the water is so clear I can see the pink sand with its tiny ridges. A few silvery fish dart in and out of the shade of the Zodiac.

  I lean my head back against the edge of the Zodiac and close my eyes.

  I hear a whining noise. It’s a speedboat, coming closer.

  “Someone’s coming! We’ll be rescued!” shouts Trishelle.

  We push the tarp down and look around. The sound seems to be coming from everywhere, but I can’t see any boat near us.

  My eyes find it——Xander’s black speedboat is coming at us full speed, and the whine from the engine gets louder as he pushes it into a higher speed.

  He’s spotted us. I can tell that he has no plan to slow down to stop us or catch me again. He’s going to ram us.

  Chapter 51

  Steven Day 11: Sunday Afternoon

  I feel my body vibrating. Then someone stabs me with a knife in the palm of my hand. I bolt awake from the pain and look around. I am on a speedboat going top speed, and we are bouncing along blue water in the hot sun. Constantinou is driving and Caballero is standing in front of me. He smiles.

  “I wanted you to be awake for this,” Caballero says.

  He holds my GPS locator up to my face and then points out in front of the speeding boat. There’s a dot of the horizon, getting larger. It’s the Zodiac and Constantinou is going to ram them.

  “Still glad you came?” Caballero asks, and he yanks me by the collar up high so I can see, then grabs the gunwale with his other hand and sets his feet to prepare for impact.

  Then I spot a little flicker on the water’s surface. It’s the same little ripple that I saw yesterday morning in the early predawn light.

  I heave myself backward over the gunwale and put my arms up to protect my head from the water. It’s like hitting wet cement, and I feel salt water shoot up my nose, into my ears and even up my ass as I skip over the surface of the water.

  My body finally stops and I sink, then I kick to the surface and look. The boat plows into the sandbar at full speed. Metal and wood explode as the hull slams to a stop, but Constantinou and Caballero keep going and their bodies smash through the tiny front windshield. The boat then flips stern over bow, and for a moment there is a mass of destruction in midair—a motor, broken glass and huge chunks of boat—before it lands upside down right on top of them.

  Past the debris, I can see Julia and Trishelle sitting up in their raft, completely untouched. I wave at them and shout.

  “Hey! Over here!” I yell.

  She waves back as the two women scramble around their tippy little craft. They get oars into place and row away from the flipped speedboat.

  I go under and unlace my boots and kick them off. I swim fifty strokes and lift my head. Julia angles the raft toward me. My toes touch the bottom and I crawl to the top of the sandbar. Again I’m in a foot of water in the middle of a vast sea and I pause for a moment of thanks, then splash over into the deeper water on the other side. I reach Julia and the raft.

  “Are you okay?” she asks.

  “No. But I’m doing a lot better than a minute ago.”

  Trishelle grabs my arm and pulls me into the already overloaded raft. I land on Carl, who grunts with pain but doesn’t move. My extra weight almost swamps the raft and water spills in until I distribute my weight.

  I push aside the bags and coconuts and find his rifle. Julia yanks on one oar and gets the raft turned around, while I spin and look at the wreck.

  Caballero crawls from the wreckage and staggers through the water to the top of the sandbar. He is bleeding and his right arm hangs broken at the shoulder. I spot Constantinou floating face down. Caballero staggers toward us.

  He lifts his left hand and aims his gun. I can’t get the rifle up fast enough.

  He pulls the trigger, but it backfires and he drops it in the water. He plops down in the shallow water of the sand bar like a rag doll and stares at us.

  Julia yanks on the oars and with each blade in the water we move another five yards farther away. Caballero gets smaller and smaller as we move one hundred, and then two hundred yards distant. Soon he is just a dot on the horizon next to a larger black bump.

  “You can hit that beacon now,” Julia says.

  I reach over, flip open the rescue transmitter and hit the red switch. It pulses. I breathe deeply, sucking air into my lungs. Julia, Trishelle and I all look at each other and we laugh and talk all at the same time.

  “Can you believe that?” Julia says.

  “Did that just happen?” Trishelle says.

  “I can’t believe I’m sitting here…”

  I stare at the straight blue line of the horizon. I can’t believe it. I’m alive.

  Something flicks the water’s surface to my right. A black fin descends under the water. I peer over the edge and see a familiar black shape that disappears under us.

  It nudges the raft from below, spooking everyone aboard.

  “What was that?” Trishelle asks.

  The black shape moves out from under the Zodiac and its fin breaks the surface. It’s a bull shark, maybe the same one, and it circles us.

  “Oh shit, we’re going to die,” Trishelle says.

  But then it flicks its tail and swims toward the black dots on the horizon. Ten seconds later another black fin cruises by, and then another.

  “What’s going to happen?” Julia asks.

  “Predator meets predator,” I answer, “While the gazelles get away.”

  “Are we going to make it?”

  “Just keep doing what you’re doing,” I say.

  I lie back next to Carl and feel overwhelming permission to pass out. I grab the edge of the tarp, yank it over our faces and close my eyes.

  Chapter 52

  Julia Day 12: Monday

  A bright light appears in the middle of the night. It’s a helicopter, or a boat. Or two boats. I’m half-conscious.

  Men shout. An engine comes close. Someone shines a light in my face and yells louder. Salt water splashes me and soothes my burnt skin, but stings the open blisters on my hands. I cry out.

  Hands carry me, then I feel solid wood under my feet. I try to stand but my knees buckle. Someone grabs my arm and another person wraps me in a blanket, and I’m whisked inside the boat.

  It’s a big boat, big enough that I can’t feel the water moving under me anymore.

  They put me on a cot. My eyes open and I see a man—a boy really—in some kind of uniform. “Close your eyes and rest, you’re fine now,” the boy says.

  “Is everyone okay?” I ask.

  “Everyone is okay,” he answers.

  “Good,” I answer, and I lay my head back and exhale.

  The boy keeps smiling at me. His face is strange. “What’s wrong?” I ask.

  “I thought you were great in Junk Conspiracy. I’m a big fan,” he says.

  “Thanks,” I say.

>   Chapter 53

  Steven Sixty Days Later

  I’m headed home after a month in a Bahamian hospital and another month limping around Carl’s house, recuperating and helping him repair all the damage to his home. I opened my accounts for all of it—house, fishing boat, hospital bills and rehab—and my nest egg is gone. I’m not retiring anytime soon.

  Carl will walk with a cane for at least six months, but he never mentions it. I’m welcome back any time.

  I still dream of the boy. I also dream of the tall man who I killed, floating in the blue hole, and the final moments in the bedroom. The dreams come every night, and they may come forever. I don’t know.

  One thing has changed, however. I accept them now, and when I close my eyes after they visit I can sleep again, sometimes until morning. Sleep is what I need, and I’m thankful.

  My landlord didn’t mind that I stopped paying rent for two months, and with one call he said I could go back. Maybe my surfboard will still be there. I may stay, I may leave. I don’t know. I look out the window at the Grand Canyon far below. I’m almost to my Golden State. All I know is that I’ll always live somewhere in California.

  I flip the tiny flash drive in my hand. I haven’t plugged it in yet to see what’s there, but when the time is right, I will.

  The plane lands at LAX and I find my motorcycle is still there in the parking lot, in the exact spot I left it two and a half months ago, covered in dust and grime. The parking bill is $800. I hand the cashier my credit card and she runs the charge without blinking.

  “This motorcycle isn’t even worth eight hundred bucks,” I complain.

  “It happens all the time,” she says. “Have a nice day.”

  I drive up PCH and watch the warm autumn sun glinting silver off the ocean. It’s a Saturday and the coast road is crowded with beach goers. I pass Gladstone’s and the restaurant patio is full of college kids drinking. I head farther north and pass the surfers at the Malibu Beach Pier, the Malibu Colony and Pepperdine University. The cool salt air feels different than the Atlantic that I left on the other side. I’m home.