by Liv Spector
“The plan was to head back to Miami anyway, to restock supplies,” he said. “So we might as well swing by the Cays to grab the statue. We should still be on schedule to land in Miami by tomorrow evening.” All the guests were seated around the table for breakfast with the exception of Liss, which was unusual. Lila had his Tater Tots warming in a chafing dish and his Heinz ketchup artfully concealed in a tiny ceramic terrine, but she wasn’t preoccupied about his absence. She was too busy thinking about Ava, who would board the yacht once they landed in Miami. Just the very idea of it filled her with excitement and dread—excitement that she’d see her sister again and dread for what lay in store.
“Then in four days it’ll be your birthday, Daddy,” Josie said in a treacly, babyish voice.
“The big five-oh,” Paul said, holding up his crystal water goblet to toast his host. “It looks good on you, buddy.”
“Sure does,” Elise Warren said bitterly as she sipped on a spicy Bloody Mary while her breakfast of orange slices and steamed egg whites grew cold on the gold-rimmed china plate set before her. “In a few years, people won’t think I’m your wife. They’ll think I’m your mother.”
An awkward silence fell over the table. Elise’s overwhelming unhappiness often had that effect.
Never one to fear Elise’s rage or sorrow, Jack said, “What my wife doesn’t seem to understand is the only way to stay young is to have a purpose in your life.” He addressed this bon mot to his companions around the table, specifically avoiding eye contact with Elise, who was absolutely glaring at him. Lila was continually amazed by the fact that Jack almost never looked at nor directly addressed his wife. It must’ve made Elise Warren feel like a ghost in her own life.
“Now, now,” Clarence Baines cautioned in a fatherly tone. “No squabbling on such a beautiful day.”
“Yes,” Thiago said, trailing his fingers down the willowy and tanned limb of his young wife. “We must enjoy ourselves.”
“Of course,” Elise said irritably. “I’m having the time of my life.” She downed the rest of her Bloody Mary and tapped the edge of the glass with her nail, which Sam and Lila knew meant that she needed another.
Suddenly the serenity of the morning was shattered by the sound of heavy footsteps and labored breathing coming from the hallway. Everyone turned toward the door to see Seth Liss burst into the room.
He was visibly enraged. A vein in his forehead was throbbing and his nostrils were flared. Everyone was expecting Liss to attack Jack, but it was Clarence Baines he was after. He ripped the Bluetooth earpiece from his head and whipped it at Baines, causing the senator to jump back in surprise, spilling his grapefruit juice everywhere.
“You fucking imbecile,” Liss screamed. “Do you know what you’ve done?”
Charity Baines jumped up from her chair and stood protectively in front of her confused and cowering husband.
“Now, wait just one second,” she said to Liss in a southern accent that was as sweet and cool as a mint julep. Liss didn’t take his eyes off Clarence. He looked like a bull about to attack.
“Seth, control yourself,” Jack said calmly. “Now tell me what this is all about.”
“I just got off the phone with a reporter from the Wall Street Journal asking me about our plans to move Warren Software’s manufacturing out of China and back to American soil. Seems our friend here,” Liss said, pointing an accusatory finger at Baines, “has a new campaign commercial featuring you promising to make our products one hundred percent made in the USA.”
Jack stayed silent and still.
“Tell me this isn’t true, Jack.”
“I can’t do that.”
“But it’ll torpedo our margins. Just a whiff of this hits Wall Street and our stock price will plummet.”
“Sometimes you’ve got to break a few eggs to make an omelet,” Jack said.
“Hear, hear!” Baines cheered.
Liss’s eyes nearly popped out of his head. “An omelet? Have you gone fucking crazy? We’ll lose billions. How could you do this without consulting me?”
“I don’t need to consult you. It’s my goddamn company. This was an executive decision. What kind of leader am I if my politics and my business don’t align?”
“You’d be like every other businessman who’d ever lived on planet Earth,” Paul said. “Listen, Jack. I’ve got to side with Liss on this one. This isn’t the kind of decision you can just make on your own.”
“Big fucking surprise, Paul. Seems like you and Liss and Thiago over here don’t like the way I’m running things. Well, that’s fine by me. For too long I’ve gone against what I know is right. But not anymore. Trust me. It’s all going to change. Starting with this. All of Warren Software’s manufacturing will be moved to U.S. soil at the start of the next fiscal year.”
“Fellas,” Baines said, “I know this isn’t going to be easy. But Jack’s a leader, a maverick. And he’s doing what’s right for his country.”
“Jack,” Liss said. He clearly was trying to restrain his rage. “I know Baines has made some promises to you, but let me tell you one thing. He doesn’t care about our country. He doesn’t care about China eating up our manufacturing jobs.”
Baines interrupted, “Now, wait one goddamn second there . . .”
But Liss continued, totally ignoring the protesting senator. “All he cares about is getting reelected. And he’s using you to do it. He’s taking your money and manipulating you into making decisions that are detrimental to the company you’ve built from the ground up.”
“I must demand that you apologize to me!” Baines said, outraged.
Jack sipped his green tea, with a peaceful smile on his face, an island of calm in a raging sea. “Seth, Seth. You know me,” he said in a measured and belittling tone. “You think Baines here is like, what? Some sort of Svengali that can bend me to his will? He isn’t taking advantage of me. Nobody takes advantage of me. You think you can question my decisions? Well, let me tell you something, my friend. I’m twenty moves ahead of you right now. You can protest as much as you want. You don’t see the big picture, but that’s fine. That’s not your job. You can stay down in the muck shoveling the shit every day. Leave the big-picture thinking to me.”
“You’re going to destroy this company!” Liss shouted.
“I thought you’d be delighted. Now you can add one more thing to your so-called Project King Charles memo that you’ve been sending to everyone in the company.”
Liss looked stunned.
“What, you didn’t think I’d find out about it? The level to which you continually underestimate me just proves how incompetent you are,” Jack said.
“Jesus, Jack,” Thiago said. “You can’t do this. It isn’t just about you.”
“Ah, Thiago, my old friend. You and I both know that you can’t lecture me about doing what’s right. Both of you,” Jack said, looking from Paul to Thiago, “were entertaining Liss’s plan to take my company away from me.”
Jack stood up, grabbing Charity’s half-empty mimosa and holding the glass up in the air. “So, here’s to my so-called friends. May I return your loyalty in kind.”
Seth rushed out of the room, yelling as he left, “I won’t let you do this, Jack. Mark my words.”
Lila, who had been trying to stay as invisible as possible this entire time, watched Jack, amazed to see how centered and how contented he looked. No one was on his side, and he didn’t give a fuck, nor did he feel like he had to explain himself to anybody. That wasn’t the state of mind of a normal man. Then she remembered what Ben had said, that Jack was a control freak who was happiest when everyone around him was in chaos. Well, Lila thought as she cleaned up the spills and clutter quickly accumulated during all the shouting and accusations, mission accomplished.
After breakfast, everyone once again scattered to their various corners. Elise Warren retrea
ted to the gym, where she contorted her lithe body on the Pilates machine that, with its metal springs and leather, resembled a medieval torture device. When Lila walked by the gym to peek in, she was surprised to see how steady Elise looked doing her exercises, despite her breakfast of vodka and tomato juice. Josie was out by the pool with a copy of Franz Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth shielding her face from the hot Caribbean sun. She was constantly flopping from her back to her stomach, as if she couldn’t get comfortable. Stuck out at sea with a bunch of adults and a freshly broken heart, Josie seemed as if she wanted to crawl out of her skin. Sam served her a steady stream of piña coladas, which she sucked down noisily.
Liss was, of course, in damage-control mode. Lila thought up countless excuses to go to his room: to pick up his laundry, to make his bed, to deliver his lunch . . . She needed to know what he was thinking. Was Jack pushing him so hard that he would resort to violence? The only reason Liss’s rage had briefly settled was that Project King Charles was progressing. But now that a corporate coup d’état was impossible, would Warren Software’s ambitious CFO decide to grab power the old-fashioned way?
He certainly seemed angry enough, but more than anything, he looked miserable. Sitting, stooped-shouldered, at his desk, surrounded by piles of empty chocolate soda cans, Liss spent his hours screaming into the phone in English or calmly speaking into the phone in Mandarin. It was obvious he was trying to comfort the Chinese businessmen who were nervous about losing a fortune if Warren Software took its manufacturing elsewhere.
Clarence sought shelter from the storm that he’d created by hanging out on the aft deck by a deep-sea fishing pole, distractedly watching the line drag through the water as he and his wife tucked into oversize gin and tonics.
Lila was refreshing their drinks, adjusting the pillows on the chairs, and setting out snacks for them so that she could eavesdrop on their conversation.
“It’s too late now,” Clarence said to his wife, who looked incredibly worried. “I’ve put all my eggs in the Jack Warren basket, for better or for worse. The man has brought in tens of millions of dollars. Without him I could never get reelected.”
“But I’m worried that you won’t be able to get reelected with him. I think he’s spiraling out of control, my love. And I don’t want you to get sucked into some kind of corporate scandal. Meanwhile, here we are, in the middle of the ocean, when we should be back home on the campaign trail.”
“I know, angel. But I needed Jack to believe I’m in his corner. Otherwise he’ll never pony up the cash we need. And if he withdraws support for my initiative to move his company’s manufacturing back home, then my campaign would never recover.”
“True.”
“If we pull this off, thousands of jobs will come back to our state. And all this will be worth it.”
“Lady Kitty told me that you were going to win, honey.”
“That’s the first time I heard that charlatan say something I can get behind. Now,” Clarence said, looking around and then beckoning Lila over, “sweetheart. Me and the Mrs. need more G-and-Ts, plus can you wrestle up a couple nice shrimp cocktails for us? Might as well enjoy ourselves while we can.”
As Lila was in the galley getting everything Clarence requested, Sam walked in and threw down her silver serving tray in a huff. “Everyone can go fuck themselves,” she said. Her Floridian accent was always stronger when she was angry.
“What’s the matter, Sam?” Lila asked.
Sam’s gaze was fixed down at the tray and her mouth was set in a tight little grimace.
“It’s just . . .” Sam said, gathering a deep breath. “Fuck Jack.” Tears sprang to her eyes. “If I wanted to be treated like trash, I could’ve just stayed in my damn swamp-rat trailer park. I’ve done something with my life. I’m here, after all, aren’t I? But that man can cut me down so quick. Make me feel smaller than I ever felt.”
Lila could tell that Chef Vatel was listening in on their conversation, so she grabbed Sam by the arm and dragged her into the walk-in refrigerator. Both women stood there shivering among the tins of caviar and the fillets of black cod.
“Now tell me exactly what happened,” Lila said, putting a sisterly hand on Sam’s shoulder.
“I won’t be treated like a whore,” Sam cried, her teeth chattering from the cold.
“Who called you a whore?”
Sam quickly explained. When Jack wasn’t busy antagonizing every man, woman, and child he encountered, he had been in his room working around the clock on something. “I don’t know what it is,” she said. “All I know is he sits at his computer typing like crazy basically for the entire night. Like, I don’t think he sleeps. It’s bananas. Whenever I, you know, visit him, that’s what he’s doing. I come into his room, he types. I undress, he’s still typing. Then he gets up, bends me over the bed, fucks me, comes, zips up his pants, and before I’m dressed and cleaned up, he’ll be back at his fucking desk. It’s so humiliating.”
“Wow,” Lila said, but her mind wasn’t on Sam’s sorrow—it was on this new piece of information. What on earth was Jack working on?
“So today, I decide to try to talk to him. Like, I’m not a sex doll, right? I’m an actual human being. So I ask him what he’s typing all the time. He tells me I won’t understand. Nice, right? Like I’m too dumb to figure out what the great Jack Warren is working on. But I press him. I tell him I want to know. He says I’m spoiling the mood. So I stop pushing him. Things progress. I’m down on my knees in front of him doing you know what . . .” Sam gave Lila a knowing look, to which Lila nodded in response. “Then he says to me, and you won’t believe this . . . he says . . . Christ, I don’t even think I can say it . . . he said, ‘You know the best thing about having my dick in your mouth? You can’t ask any questions.’ Can you believe it? He’s lucky I didn’t bite the thing off.”
Lila didn’t say anything. All she could think of was, This is the man my sister loves? This is the man who is about to ruin her life? The more she heard about Jack, the more she believed he deserved to die. Who wouldn’t want to kill that son of a bitch?
But, as she promised Teddy, she couldn’t let her feelings get in the way of her investigation. She needed to stay clearheaded. And what she really needed, more than anything, was to get onto Jack’s computer.
Lucky for her, Lila’s chance to gain unfettered access to Jack’s room came a few hours later, when, on the voyage back to Miami, Jack got the call he’d been waiting for: the golden phallus had finally been recovered. One of the teams of deep-sea explorers he’d contracted to locate Poe’s discarded work of art had just hauled it onto their ship and were about an hour away from The Rising Tide. Soon the two ships would meet in the middle of the Caribbean Sea, and Jack could get his treasure back. Lila decided that while Jack was overseeing the transfer and settling up the small king’s ransom he’d promised to the divers, she’d be in his room, making a complete copy of his hard drive.
CHAPTER 21
LILA WALKED INTO the shaded elegance of Jack’s stateroom and quickly headed toward the giant mahogany desk in the corner. She knew this was a risky move, but it was her only chance. She had to get a copy of Jack’s hard drive, and she had to get it now.
Just seconds ago, she’d slipped away from the guests and crew who had gathered together on the main deck to watch as a giant crane from a rusty old ship transferred Poe’s golden phallus to The Rising Tide. She’d only have a precious couple of minutes before this tender homecoming party disbanded. So she had to be fast.
She grabbed Jack’s laptop from the middle drawer of the desk. Her heart pounding, she inserted her thumb drive and began downloading. It would only take a minute—but, it turned out, that wasn’t long enough.
To Lila’s horror, the door to Jack’s room opened without any chance for her to hide. She flipped around so that her body was concealing the laptop. But she knew it wa
s hopeless. Any chance of saving her sister was falling to pieces before her eyes . . .
And then Sam walked in.
Seeing Lila must have shocked Sam, because she let out a bloodcurdling scream that would have sent someone running in their direction if everyone else on the yacht hadn’t been watching the statue transfer at that very moment.
“Holy fuck!” Sam panted as she shut the door behind her. “You scared the shit out of me!”
“What are you doing here?” Lila asked. She knew perfectly well what Sam was doing, or about to do, in Jack’s room, but she was buying time until the downloading had been completed.
“I came to see Jack,” Sam said with no hint of embarrassment in her voice. “Did you come for the same thing?” she added, eyeing Lila suspiciously.
“Of course not. Sam, you know I would never do that to you. No, Slaughterhouse asked me to come put Jack’s laptop away. She said she forgot to put it back where it belonged,” Lila explained as she deftly removed the drive and turned to reveal the open laptop sitting on Jack’s desk. “See?” she said as she slid the laptop back into the drawer.
Sam was clearly too busy worrying that Lila was also sleeping with Jack to give a thought to the fact that she’d just caught Lila with his computer. Talk about a close call.
“Dinner’s soon, huh?” Lila said as she turned to leave. “Guess I’ll see you up there?”
“Yeah, see you later,” Sam replied.
Just as Lila was shutting Jack’s door behind her, she saw Sam begin to remove her clothes.
LILA HAD TO wait until all the day’s duties were done to examine what, exactly, she’d copied from Jack’s computer. Once she and Sam had retired to their cabin and Sam’s breathing fell into the even rhythm of sleep, Lila was able to dig in.
For the first hour or so going through Jack’s data, she found nothing. But she knew to keep digging. After all Sam said that Jack was constantly working on something. It had to be buried in the files somewhere. As Lila clicked around the travel itineraries and updates from Kingston S. Duxbury about his new catamaran, she started to worry that she’d come to a dead end.
