The Beautiful and the Wicked

by Liv Spector

  “I expect nothing less from Jack,” Poe said, with a dreamy-­eyed slur. “He always surrounds himself with the most beautiful women. Doesn’t he?” He grabbed Lila’s hand and gently kissed it. His skin felt cold and clammy despite the heat. From his tiny, pinprick pupils and the slack, rag-­doll heaviness of his arms and head, Lila guessed he was on heroin, or some other opiate.

  “What’s your name, gorgeous?” Daniel said to Lila as he grabbed the tiny ass of the model who was closest to him.

  “Nicky Collins, sir,” Lila said.

  “Will you be with us the whole trip?” Paul asked.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Delightful. Absolutely delightful,” Daniel said, giving her a wolfish look. “Then we’ll have all the time in the world to get to know each other.”

  Lila wanted to punch this perv in the throat, but she controlled herself. She needed to stay on the boat, and even if that meant putting up with the creepy advances of Daniel Poe, she’d do it. For Ava, she’d do anything.

  “Of course, sir,” she responded, giving both Paul and Daniel a demure nod. The men walked with their harem into the boisterous party.

  Once the majority of the guests were on board, Mrs. Slaughter informed her that she could leave her shoe duty to help Sam and the rest of the crew with ser­vice. But Lila found out quickly that she wasn’t much of a waitress. Carrying those heavy silver trays laden with food and drink as she navigated around the tipsy and mingling revelers was more difficult than she expected. Her arms were shaking from the strain.

  And then, out of the corner of her eye, she saw her sister far across the room.

  Lila felt her heart jump into her throat. She hadn’t laid eyes on Ava in more than ten years. And here she was now. A gaggle of dancing models moved right in front of Lila, obscuring her view. She dodged them with the ease of a running back and cut quickly across the room toward Ava. How her sister could have boarded the boat without her noticing was something she didn’t even question. Then Lila saw her again from behind, walking toward the side deck all by herself. It was unmistakably her—­the long, flowing strawberry-­blond hair, the pale, almost alabaster skin. Lila, burdened with the tray, hurried after the woman who was quickly weaving through the crowds.

  She wanted to shout out her sister’s name, but she knew she couldn’t. After all, how would the conversation go? “Hi, I’m your sister from the future. I’ve traveled through space and time in order to save your life.” This was an instance where the truth was stranger than fiction.

  “Miss?” Lila called out, deepening her voice so that her sister wouldn’t recognize it. But her sister didn’t hear her. She kept walking quickly with Lila not far behind. Lila’s pulse was pounding in her skull as she finally got within reach. She removed one hand from the tray so she could stretch out her arm to grab her sister. She tried to say something else, but when she opened her mouth, nothing came out. The magnitude of the moment had robbed her of her voice. Mute and terrified, she brushed her fingertips up against her sister’s bare shoulders. But the moment she touched her, she knew it wasn’t Ava.

  She instantly withdrew her hand as if she’d just been scorched. The strawberry blonde whipped around to see who had touched her. Lila’s heart sank. She didn’t even closely resemble Ava. Feeling light-­headed and short of breath, like she’d just seen a ghost, Lila thrust her tray out toward the confused woman, who didn’t understand why a breathless server was chasing her down.

  “Champagne?” she panted, trying to pull herself together.

  The woman grabbed a glass, gave Lila a little frown, and then went on her merry way. Disheartened, Lila quickly turned around and . . . disaster. Upon reversing her direction, she collided with a dark-­haired man who she hadn’t realized was standing directly behind her. She lost control of the tray and glass upon glass of champagne precariously teetered before—­no, no, no, Lila said in her mind—­the whole thing loudly crashed to the ground in an ear-­shattering explosion of smashed crystal. The very revealing, slightly diaphanous dress that she’d been forced to wear to the party was now dripping wet and totally see-­through. Lila held the unwieldy silver tray over herself, hoping to cover up her now very visible breasts. She shifted uncomfortably, hearing hundreds of dollars’ worth of premiere champagne squish around in her one-­size-­too-­small high heels.

  “Are you okay?” she heard a voice ask. She turned to see the very familiar face of someone who was also soaked to the bone in champagne. He was the one she’d bumped into.

  “Ben Reynolds,” Lila said, without thinking. She recognized him instantly from her research. Thirty-­two years old and a lifelong sailor, he was the first officer of The Rising Tide, and from what he and the other crew members were to say in their police interviews, he was the closest to Jack of any of the yacht’s employees.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, looking confused. “Do we know each other?”

  “No, it’s just. I . . .” Lila was tongue-­tied. Though she’d seen plenty of pictures of Ben, his inquiring, kind eyes staring intently into hers worked some kind of black magic on her, rendering her speechless.

  But before she could get a complete sentence out, Mrs. Slaughter came storming toward her, a tablecloth in her hand. Was it possible that Lila saw actual steam coming out of her ears?

  “Take this,” Mrs. Slaughter hissed between her clenched teeth, grabbing Lila by the shoulder and moving her to a quiet corner of the deck. She tore the tray out of Lila’s hands and gave her the tablecloth. “Cover yourself.”

  As Lila wrapped the stiff cotton around her now-­see-­through dress, she whispered, “Sorry,” to Ben.

  “Edna,” Ben said. In the thirty-­six hours Lila had spent suffering under the thumb of the chief stewardess, she’d never heard anyone use her first name. It struck her as some kind of blasphemy, the oral equivalent of looking directly into the sun.

  “Yes, Ben,” Mrs. Slaughter said, keeping her back to him. Despite her polite tone, her extreme annoyance was clear.

  He looked at Lila and gave her a warm, reassuring smile. “This was totally, one hundred percent my fault,” he said. “I ran into . . . um . . .”

  “Nicky,” Lila answered. He was ruggedly handsome, with long, curly, dark hair, heavy brows, and light brown eyes. She felt something close to mesmerized as she stood, wet and humiliated, looking into those long-­lashed eyes of his.

  “Right, Nicky. I ran right into Nicky here and knocked over all these glasses. So, don’t blame her.”

  Mrs. Slaughter straightened her back and turned to look at Ben. “I don’t tell you what direction to steer the ship,” she said. “Do I, Mr. Reynolds? Nor do I give you my thoughts about the route you’ve chosen. Correct?”

  “Nope, you sure don’t,” he replied with a frown as the combination of being soaking wet and scolded quickly stripped away his good mood.

  “Then refrain from telling me how to do my job, please, and thank you.”

  Ben nodded. Lila found it somewhat reassuring that even this strapping man seemed rather terrified of Mrs. Slaughter. At least she wasn’t the only one.

  “I’ll leave you to it, then,” Ben said. “But remember, I’m the oaf who caused this. Nicky, nice to meet you. And apologies. Hopefully next time we run into each other, I won’t make such a god-­awful mess. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got to go to my cabin and slip into something less”—­he paused, holding up his wet arms and looking down at his dripping shirt—­“soggy.”

  Ben and Lila exchanged a smile before he quickly marched across the deck and took the staircase to the lower level.

  Lila was still smiling when Mrs. Slaughter turned back to her. “What are you grinning about?” the older woman sneered. “Oh, Ben, of course. You two are peas in a pod. Neither of you knows the value of respect. You should be aware of the fact that I will discuss this matter with Captain Nash. This subordination will not s
tand.”

  “Please,” Lila begged. “I know we got off to a bad start, but I promise that I won’t let you down again.” She absolutely could not get fired. If she was forced to leave the yacht, then the whole mission would be botched.

  “A promise, then a blunder, then a grovel. That seems to be your flavor of ineptitude and I’m quite fed up with it,” Mrs. Slaughter said. “But I’m too short staffed to lose you tonight. So pull yourself together. Go to your room, change, and then go to the galley. Mr. Liss needs his dinner brought to his room, which is stateroom three on the third deck. Think you can handle that?”

  “Yes, Chief Stewardess Mrs. Slaughter.” Lila stood there, not sure what to do to please this impossible-­to-­please woman.

  “Well, stop standing there staring at me like an idiot. Go do as I say. Then come back here directly.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Lila said as she hurried across the deck to go to the crew quarters.

  She changed into her regular all-­white uniform, then went to the galley to pick up Liss’s food, excited that she’d finally be face-­to-­face with the chief financial officer of Warren Software—­Jack’s second-­in-­command. She’d kept an eye out for him all night, but now realized that he must’ve boarded the boat sometime during the day—­probably when she was doing one of her hundred menial tasks.

  Jack and Seth were polar opposites. Where Jack was famous for his A-­list celebrity friends and million-­dollar toys, his CFO disdained the spotlight and abhorred excess. Even though this fifty-­eight-­year-­old numbers whiz from Wisconsin was a multimillionaire, he lived like a pauper. “I keep my nose as clean as my spreadsheets,” he told Forbes in a profile that detailed how “the frugal millionaire” brought a tuna fish sandwich to work every day, drove an Acura sedan, and lived in the same three-­bedroom house he bought for $325 grand when he first moved to Silicon Valley back in the 1980s. Though Liss’s disdain for Jack’s way of doing things was a well known fact among business-­world insiders, Liss had never publicly challenged Jack’s authority.

  When Lila entered the galley to pick up Liss’s meal, she encountered a snarling Chef Vatel.

  “He’s a philistine,” the chef said, his thick French accent full of disgust as he pushed the tray toward Lila. “A well-­done hamburger with Miracle Whip and this hideous plastic cheese on top. They don’t pay me enough to prepare this travesty.” He paused as his outrage bubbled up out of him. “I am an artist!”

  Lila just shrugged her shoulders at the chef, grabbed the tray, and left. She had enough to worry about.

  As she walked down the hall toward Liss’s room, she heard a voice loudly speaking what sounded like Mandarin. When she knocked on the door, the voice abruptly stopped. Then Liss shouted, “Enter!”

  Lila walked into his room. With a cell phone pressed to his ear, he waved her in and resumed barking Mandarin into the phone.

  He had the second largest stateroom on the yacht, with elegantly curved walls covered in exotic stingray skin. The furniture was constructed out of brass and hand-­stitched leather. The stateroom came with its own en suite bathroom and a large office with a spacious balcony overlooking the water. It was a room fit for a king, a luxury that would have astounded even the one percent of the one percent, but Seth Liss looked far from happy. He gestured toward Lila, pointing to where she could put the tray on the desk, which was heaped with manila file folders, several bound presentations, and his laptop, open to a very complicated-­looking spreadsheet. She cleared a little space on the desk, placed his dinner down, and turned to leave. But Liss waved his hand at her to get her attention, then, putting his palm over the cell phone, whispered, “Stay one minute.”

  She froze in place, watching Liss. He was a hulking bear of a man, six five and around 350 pounds, with a bloodless complexion peppered with rosacea on his jowly cheeks. His small mouth seemed permanently downturned and he was seriously balding, which he tried to conceal by brushing his reddish hair up from the bottom into one of the shoddiest comb-­overs Lila had ever seen. He was the complete opposite of all the beautiful, well-­groomed, charming ­people who were feting his business partner just down the hall.

  After a few minutes, he got off the phone. Without acknowledging Lila, he sat down at his desk and began shoveling the hamburger into his mouth. Lila wasn’t sure what to do. “Does this asshole realize I’m still standing here?” she said to herself silently.

  “I haven’t forgotten about you,” Liss said, as if he could read her mind. He kept his eyes on his food as he talked to her. “Just give me one goddamned second. Or is your time more valuable than mine?” As he was barking at her, a piece of hamburger bun dropped from his open mouth. He quickly picked it up and popped it back in.

  “No, sir,” Lila said, averting her eyes. She stood in the middle of the room listening to the smacking, scarfing, and swallowing as one of America’s richest men inhaled his dinner. She’d been a patrol cop and a homicide detective. She’d gone undercover, assuming identifies that ran the gamut from socialite heiress to down-­and-­out junkie, but never had she been so relentlessly bossed around and shat upon as she had in this job.

  “See that over there?” the CFO asked, brushing crumbs off his pants then pointing to a large pile of clothes by the closet. “All that needs to be pressed and laundered, then hung in the closet. And, see all of these?” He gestured to the many empty cans of diet chocolate fudge soda strewn about his room. “Remove them. And make sure the fridge is restocked.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I shouldn’t be the one telling you what to do, should I? You should just see these things and do them, shouldn’t you?”

  “Yes, sir.” She bent down to retrieve the two cans that were closest to her.

  “Don’t do it now!” he barked, causing Lila to jump back up and drop one of the cans.

  “Sir?”

  “Do it when I’m not in the room.”

  “Will you be joining the party?”

  “Honestly, I’d rather chew glass,” he said. “This is Jack’s boondoggle, not mine. I’m only on this fucking boat to remind His Lordship that we’ve got a company to run, which is something he likes to forget. Though tonight I finally figured it out. It’s simple. Jack just got into the wrong business. Considering how much he loves spending time with all these assholes, I’d say his real calling should’ve been proctology.” He smirked at Lila, taking great pleasure in his joke, which was so stiffly delivered that Lila figured he’d told it hundreds of times before. Her forced smile drained the delight from his pale, waxy face. He turned his back to her, picking up his cell. “Remove this tray and get out of here. The day is only starting in Beijing and I’ve got work to do.”

  And the night was only getting started on the main deck. The guests had progressed from champagne and toro nigiri to shots of Patrón and undulating on the dance floor to the bass-­heavy, auto-­tuned, lip-­synching pop star Allegra Opal, who had just stumbled onto the stage, happy to toss herself around to the beat in order to collect a million-­dollar payday. As the young wives, girlfriends, and mistresses danced, their older companions stayed on the sidelines, happy to watch the parade of young flesh while chomping on their Montecristo cigars and sipping their cognacs.

  While Lila, Sam, and the army of cater waiters made sure everyone’s drinks were refreshed and the tables were cleared, Lila kept an eye out for her sister. But there was no sign of Ava. Lila was both disappointed and thankful. She really wanted to see her, but she didn’t want to think of her sister associating with these jackals.

  As Lila walked around the party handing out shots of high-­end tequila, she saw, smack in the middle of the dance floor, the biggest jackal of them all. The man of the hour, Jack Warren. He was impossible to miss. With his shirt undone down to his belly button, his suit jacket off, and a gloss of sweat covering his beaming face, he looked like he was having the absolute time of his life. He had
a bottle of Cristal in one hand and the ass of a sumptuous brunette in the other.

  Watching Jack murmur something into the girl’s ear as she giggled and squirmed in his arms, Lila was shocked at his lack of discretion. But she wasn’t at all surprised to see, across the deck, Elise Warren staring directly at her husband, her hands balled up into tight little fists, with an unmistakable glare of hatred burning in her eyes.

  CHAPTER 9

  IN THE DUSTY-­ROSE-­COLORED light of early morning, a few party stragglers stumbled down the walkway of The Rising Tide just as the sun was beginning to peek its golden head from beneath the ocean’s blue horizon. The party hadn’t completely wound down until 5:00 A.M. Lila and Sam had been on hand until the wee hours of the morning and then cleaned up after the guests had left, so when their 6:30 A.M. wake-­up call rang out, they’d been able to squeeze in only about five minutes of rest.

  “You shower first,” Sam groaned from the top bunk. “If I have to get up right now, I’m pretty sure I’ll die.”

  Through a haze of exhaustion, Lila showered, dressed, grabbed some coffee from the mess, and headed up to the main deck. There was a pretty good chance that Mrs. Slaughter had complained about her to the captain sometime yesterday, so she had to be on her very best behavior today. She’d start by being the first of the crew up and ready to work.

  The yacht, which had been party central just two hours prior, was now as quiet as a church. Lila was sure that profound and debilitating hangovers were blooming in the heads of most of the sleeping guests at that very moment.

  She was on her way to the dining room, careful not to disturb anyone who was slumbering. As she walked along the side deck, she saw a lone figure descend the staircase from the master suite level. It was Elise Warren with an Hermès head scarf tied under her chin and enormous sunglasses obscuring most of her face. Lila ducked out of sight, waited a few seconds, and then turned around to see Elise exit the yacht and climb into a chauffeured Cadillac Escalade that was waiting for her at the foot of the dock.