The Beautiful and the Wicked

by Liv Spector

  Another firecracker exploded, waking Lila from her trance. She looked at Ava, who hadn’t moved. She was standing stock-­still, staring at Lila with a mix of terror and confusion on her face.

  “How could you!” Lila roared at Ava. “How could you do this?” Lila’s voice caught in her throat as tears flooded her eyes.

  But Ava didn’t say anything. She was staring at Lila like she was some sort of ghost. Lila had the urge to slap her sister hard across the face—­to wake her up, to punish her, to make Ava feel some of the pain she was feeling. She’d never felt more angry and more betrayed.

  Suddenly, as if waking from a dream, her sister blinked quickly. “What is happening?” she stuttered, looking frantically around. “Lila? Is that you?” Ava went to reach for her sister as if to check that she was real, then she saw the gun. She pulled back her hand.

  “Who are you?” she asked Lila, her round eyes bulging with fear. “What are you doing here? Where’s Jack?” Ava’s eyes darted around, her chest heaving in terror.

  Has she lost her mind? Lila thought. Had she been drugged?

  “Jack is dead,” Lila said, her voice cracking.

  Ava looked down at herself. When she saw that her hands and dress were soaked in blood, she began to scream over and over again—­short, bloodcurdling screams that Lila knew she’d never be able to erase from her mind.

  A firecracker zoomed into the sky and exploded. A waterfall of purples and silvers arced against the black canvas of sky. Lila saw the light from the sky reflect off something on the ground by her sister’s feet. A knife. Jack hadn’t been shot. He’d been stabbed. By Lila’s sister. It was all too much to bear.

  Then Ava dropped to her knees. She held out her bloody hands, staring at them in horror. Her whole body was shaking. She took the knife in her hand. Lila rushed to her sister. But before she could reach her, Ava grabbed the knife and tossed it overboard. Lila knelt down, placing the gun on the ground, and threw her arms around her sister’s bare shoulders.

  Ava’s skin felt ice cold.

  “I don’t understand. I don’t understand,” Ava said. Lila could hear her sister’s teeth chattering in her ear as she held on to her.

  “Tell me what happened?” Lila asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  “But you were standing right here. You must remember. You have to remember!”

  But Ava just blankly shook her head. Lila had never seen her sister like this. What had happened to her? She was more confused than ever.

  She took her sister’s hands. “It’ll be okay,” Lila whispered, though she knew the very opposite was true. From now on, nothing was going to be okay.

  Suddenly Ava lunged away from her sister and reached for the gun. Before Lila knew what was happening, she looked up to see her sister standing over her, with the snub-­nosed .38 pressed against her own temple.

  Lila spoke slowly. She tried to sound calm even though she felt as if her whole world had just collapsed. “Ava, put the gun down.”

  Her sister didn’t say anything. Tears were streaming down her face. Her eyes were like those of a trapped animal.

  “Ava, give me the gun.” Lila carefully stepped closer, but her sister only pressed the gun harder into her temple. Then Lila’s instincts took over. Without thinking, she dove toward Ava, grabbing the gun. As they wrestled, one shot was fired, then another. Then, as Lila knocked her sister down while trying to rip the gun from her hand, Ava squeezed the trigger, and a deafening shot fired into the air as both women crashed to the ground. As Lila tried to tear the gun out of Ava’s fingers, one more bullet was discharged.

  Four bullet casings were strewn on the ground. Just like the police files said. But nothing had happened the way Lila imagined.

  Her sister, flat on her back, began to violently sob. A faint cloud of gunpowder smoke floated away on a tropical breeze.

  It wouldn’t be long until Paul would climb the stairs and see the bloody aftermath of Jack’s murder. Lila waited for Ava to get up. But her sister remained lifeless and weeping, curled up in her lover’s blood.

  “Ava?” Lila whispered. She didn’t understand why her sister wasn’t moving. She had to start running now or Paul would discover her. But she just lay there, helpless.

  And then Lila realized, Ava wasn’t going to escape, not on her own.

  Lila scrambled to her feet, grabbing Ava’s hands and hoisting her up. She needed to get her sister out of there, and fast. She knew there wasn’t much time, and Ava had no chance of fleeing the ship without Lila’s help. She had to save her. There was no other choice.

  Ava looked at Lila with dead eyes, like there was nothing left inside of her anymore: no light, no joy, no fear, no conscience. Nothing. Lila had never felt so sick in her life.

  Taking her sister’s hand, she dragged her down the side deck, pulling her step-­by-­step to the first level as Ava limply stumbled behind her. Then, staying out of sight, she brought her down to the lower deck, praying the whole time that no one would see them—­both of them covered in blood, fleeing a murder scene.

  Lila threw Ava into the crew bathroom, stripped off her ruined dress, and pushed her under a hot shower.

  “I’ll be back in a second,” Lila said, but Ava didn’t respond. She just stood there, naked and comatose, as water streamed over her.

  Lila ran to her cabin and grabbed the passport and license Teddy had made for her in what felt like another lifetime. She also grabbed the thumb drive full of naked pictures and videos of Josie Warren, and jeans, a hooded sweatshirt, and a pair of sneakers, shoving it all into her duffle bag. Then she sprinted down to the lifeboat in the engine room and grabbed Teddy’s remaining $10,000 stacks and her gun.

  She ran down the hallway and into the bathroom, locking the door behind her. Ava was still standing there, but her hands were pressed against her face, and her naked shoulders were shuddering with every sob.

  Lila turned the water off and wrapped a dry towel around her sister. Putting the clothes on Ava felt like dressing a sad, helpless child. Lila had no idea what had happened to her sister. It was like something had broken inside of her.

  Taking her sister’s hand in hers once more, she brought her to the internal dock at the yacht’s stern. They walked by the two-­person submarine, the Jet Skis, and all of Jack Warren’s other high-­priced playthings. Then she saw the boat that she knew Ava had used to escape, the fifteen-­foot inflatable boat that police would find tomorrow morning floating off the coast of Cuba. Little did Lila know when she first heard that news that she would be the one to orchestrate Ava’s escape.

  Lila ran to the control panel on the west wall of the internal dock and pulled a lever to open the transom. With a large mechanical gust of air, the back of the yacht began to lower down, which made it possible for the inflatable boat to be quickly driven out into the sea, like a minnow escaping from a whale’s mouth.

  As the transom door was lowering, Lila rushed back to her sister’s side. Ava was slumped in the driver’s seat, her hands limply resting against the steering wheel, her head hanging down on her chest.

  “Ava,” Lila said, bending over so her face was just inches from her sister’s. “Listen to me.” Her sister didn’t move, so she shook her shoulders. “Listen to me!”

  Lila threw the tote bag into the passenger seat. “I’m giving you fifty grand in cash, plus a passport and a driver’s license. This . . .” Lila said, holding the thumb drive, “this is something you can use only if you’re desperate for money. Okay? Are you listening to me?”

  Ava nodded, keeping her gaze down.

  Lila turned the boat on and the twin engines powerfully rumbled, churning up the water beneath it. Lila pointed to the compass in the yacht’s control panel. “Head southwest until you hit land. You want to get to Cuba. It’s about a hundred miles away. Go fast, but not too fast, and you’ll be there in under th
ree hours.”

  Ava slowly raised her head and looked Lila in the eye. She took her sister’s hand and squeezed it. “Why are you helping me?” Ava asked.

  There was nothing to say. “I don’t know,” she whispered. She bit down on her lower lip, desperately trying not to cry. Her sister had broken her heart.

  Finally, the transom door was fully lowered. “Okay,” Lila said, still clutching Ava’s hand. “You’ve got to go.”

  “I can’t do this.”

  “You have no choice.” But Ava didn’t move. “Go!” Lila screamed. “Go!”

  And suddenly Ava throttled the engine and the speedboat lurched forward. She quickly eased out of the bowels of the yacht, cutting through the water like a knife. Then in a moment, she was out of sight.

  All that was left was a ripple of wake being pulled back into the ocean’s ceaseless current.

  CHAPTER 26

  THE NEXT FEW minutes were a blur. Lila stared out into the empty ocean feeling gutted. Everything she had thought she knew was all wrong. It seemed impossible to believe, but Ava was Jack Warren’s killer. She stabbed him and then threw the bloody murder weapon overboard. Lila had seen it. And then, what did Lila do? She helped her sister, a murderer, escape.

  Ava wasn’t who Lila thought she was, but even worse, Lila had become a stranger to herself. She’d spent her life fighting for justice and making sure the bad guys paid for what they did. Now she was the bad guy. She’d betrayed her most profound beliefs, and she’d done it almost without thought.

  It was a truth so horrifying all she could do was bury it deep down within herself. She stood up and returned to the lower deck.

  IT WAS A little after 2:00 A.M. when Paul Mason discovered the bloody scene. He searched each and every room in the yacht, shouting frantically, until he realized that Jack was missing. He roused Captain Nash, who was lying in a fetal position on the main deck, still in the waning grip of his acid trip. Nash immediately radioed the coast guard that Jack Warren was dead. It had been less than an hour since Ava had taken off. Lila thought of her sister speeding her way toward Cuba.

  By the time the coast guard boarded the yacht, Lila had showered, careful to scrub every last bit of blood off her body. She had taken her and her sister’s blood-­soaked clothes, stuffed them into a bag along with a few bottles of liquor to weigh it down, and tossed the whole thing into the sea. She had really wanted to get rid of the gun, which had her sister’s fingerprints all over it, but Paul had found it lying in Jack’s blood before Lila had a chance to dispose of it.

  She tried to console herself by remembering that the gun had also been handled by Nash and Poe, but Lila knew that the cops would focus on the fingerprints of the woman who fled the scene of the crime. After years on the force, Lila understood how the minds of the police operated. If a case looked cut-­and-­dried, no cop in his right mind would try to make it more complicated. Jack’s mistress murdered him, then fled on a boat, case closed.

  Unfortunately, for the first time ever, Lila couldn’t disagree with this assessment.

  At least not in her mind. Out loud, she had to play dumb. And it was nothing short of agonizing. When the coast guard came to question her, she pretended she’d been sound asleep in her cabin. They brought her up to the dining room, where an impromptu interrogation room had been created. A stone-­faced cop sat at the table with a camcorder on a tripod pointed at Lila and a notebook set out in front of him.

  She knew what to say. She’d seen nothing, heard nothing, knew nothing. Several helicopters surrounded the yacht, spotlights trained on the water. They were searching for the body. But Lila knew they’d never find it.

  After thirty minutes of questioning, they quickly wrapped up her interrogation, and Lila was free to go. She returned to her room, seeing two forensic specialists hurrying to put a sealed tarp over the crime scene, only too aware that the seawater and salty ocean air could corrupt the evidence in a matter of minutes.

  Then she watched Elise and Josie, clutching each other, walk with Seth Liss, Paul Mason, and Charity and Clarence Baines up to the helipad. It was clear that Elise and Josie had been crying. Their faces were red and puffy. Paul, Charity, and Clarence were stone-­faced behind them. They all got into the helicopter and flew away.

  The yacht shuddered and stopped. Then it began to turn around. Lila climbed up to the bridge, where Nash and Ben were standing behind the large control panel.

  “Where are we headed?” Lila asked.

  “Back to Miami,” Nash said, staring straight ahead, “as fast as we can. I want the fuck off this damn boat.”

  Lila left the room, and just as she was about to go down the stairs, Ben grabbed her shoulder. She was so on edge she almost screamed from surprise at his touch.

  “Christ, you startled me,” she said, turning toward him.

  “Oh, Nicky,” he said, wrapping his arms around her. “The whole thing is so awful.”

  He crushed her body against his, and as her face was pressed to his chest, Lila let out a gigantic sob. It was the first relief she’d had in hours, and once the panic and fear dropped away, anguish stepped in to take its place. So she cried as Ben held her, cried for her sister, for herself, for this whole fucked-­up case.

  “I know, I know,” Ben whispered, trying to console her. “I didn’t mean to hurt you, Nicky. Elise means nothing to me.”

  Lila’s crying stopped instantly and she extricated herself from Ben’s arms, amazed that he would think her tears were for him. “This isn’t about you, Ben,” she said. And then she turned and walked away. And somewhere in her broken heart she had a tiny pocket of gratitude in knowing that despite screwing up this entire case, she at least hadn’t fallen for that joker.

  “Nicky!” he called out, but she didn’t bother turning around. What was the point? All she needed now was to get back to 2019 and, finally, try to move on with her life.

  And it wasn’t long before she was able to do just that.

  As Sam and Lila were packing up, the boat sailed toward the marina. Lila saw that Sam was wrapping her sweaters around the framed pencil drawing by Picasso of a woman’s one-­eyed face, which usually hung in the master suite.

  When Sam saw Lila shoot her a surprised look, she became defensive. “Let me tell you something, Nicky. You should do exactly the same thing. I mean, you don’t think we’re still getting paid, do you?”

  Lila just shrugged. Of course she hadn’t even thought about it. The fact that what Sam was stuffing into her suitcase would probably fetch around two hundred grand wasn’t something that bothered Lila either. Let Sam grab what she could. After all, she hadn’t been sleeping with Jack out of love. She’d made investments, and like any good businessman, she was now collecting her profit.

  More power to her.

  When the yacht pulled up to the Miami harbor in the early hours of that gentle September morning, a much greater level of fanfare awaited them than they’d received during the yacht’s sendoff. But this time the reporters and the bystanders were there for darker reasons. One of the world’s richest men had been murdered, and they wanted to gawk at the spectacle.

  Thiago and Esperanza were the first to disembark. It looked as if Thiago hadn’t slept all night. The usually dapper bon vivant appeared stricken, almost held up by his tiny wife, who had her arm wrapped around his waist. Lila and Sam watched from the main deck as the ­couple was swarmed by reporters and TV cameras. They kept their heads down and pushed their way past the throng, then climbed into a black Cadillac Escalade with darkly tinted windows.

  Daniel Poe, the only remaining guest on the yacht, stood nervously next to his golden phallus sculpture, guarding it like a mother bear guards her cubs. He was waiting for workers from his gallery to arrive so that they could properly box it up and ship it back to his studio. “It’ll double in price after what happened,” Lila heard Poe say to some unknown person on
the other end of his cell phone. “Let’s put it up for auction as soon as humanly possible. Let’s put a call into Christie’s right now. Got it?” His bloodshot eyes glowed as red as a devil’s.

  Poe’s greed didn’t bother Lila. Actually, nothing seemed to matter to her. All she felt was numbness. Jack was dead and her sister was the one with blood on her hands. Lila knew she should be beating herself up for helping Ava escape the scene of the crime, but Ava was family. And Lila had never really had a choice. Still, she wasn’t excited at the prospect of facing Teddy. She knew that he would never understand.

  Lila and Sam walked down the gangway onto the dock of the marina, where the blinding glare and flash of cameras and the deafening roar of reporters awaited them. They held on to each other’s hand, weaving their way through the pulsing scrum of ­people clamoring to get someone, anyone, to say something about the murder that had the world’s attention. But the two women kept their heads down and their mouths shut.

  Once they reached the street, Sam turned to Lila. “Well, I won’t say, ‘Let’s do that again.’ But I can say it’s been nice knowing you.”

  “Same here.” The two women stood there, briefly frozen in an awkward good-­bye. “Where’re you going now?” Lila asked.

  Sam looked around, as if she was making her plans up at that very second. “Can’t say I know. I think I’ll find a half-­decent hotel for a ­couple nights. Try to fence this drawing. And then I’ll come back here and try to get on another charter or something. You know, back to life as usual. What about you?”

  “I’ve got to go meet an old friend,” Lila said with a bit of a smile. She was looking forward to seeing Teddy again, but she worried he’d be less than pleased with her. She had demanded he send her back in time, but the mission had been futile—­one gigantic, heartbreaking failure.

  The two women hugged and then parted ways. Lila flagged a cab and headed north, with two hours to spare until she was due to get transported back to 2019.