The Beautiful and the Wicked

by Liv Spector

  CHAPTER 27

  THE TAXI DROPPED Lila off at the North Miami storage facility with plenty of time to spare, which, she thought as she walked toward the bleak, industrial building, was both a good thing and a bad thing. The first time she’d entered that meager box of a room to return to the present, she’d been frantic, seconds away from missing the deadline for returning to her real life, in grave danger of being forever stuck in the past. She was glad she didn’t have to go through that again. But there was a downside. Now, with a full two hours before her scheduled journey to the present, all she had was time to think. And think. And think.

  She unlocked the door to the storage unit with the key she’d kept around her neck and sank down to the hard cement floor, her back pressing against the rough cinder blocks. She took a giant inhale, bringing the room’s stale air deep within her lungs, and closed her eyes. She could still feel the phantom rocking of the gentle Caribbean Sea beneath her. A sense of dread began to build steadily, threatening to consume her.

  Her mission had been a failure, and now she’d have to explain it all to Teddy.

  The silence, the solitude, and the stress of the moment combined to produce a surprisingly sedative effect. She felt tired on the cellular level as she began to crash from the previous night’s traumas. Every hair, every pore, every inch of her needed rest. And she gave in to it. After enduring so much panic and heartbreak, she could no longer fight the physical and emotional exhaustion. Her eyelids dropped heavily over her eyes as she lay down against the cool concrete floor and fell asleep.

  Lila awoke in a panic as a high-­pitched screeching sound pierced her eardrums. She looked at her watch: 4:16 P.M. She quickly scrambled into the hazmat suit she’d discarded when she arrived and stood in the center of the room. This was it, her ride back to 2019. She’d been here before, but that never made it any less terrifying than the first time.

  She pressed her hands against her ears, trying to block out the horrible whirring noise that kept growing in volume. Suddenly the world around her began to blur. Straight lines bent and wavered as known objects broke apart into tiny molecules and scattered around the room. Everything pulsated with an atomic energy. It was as if the world she thought was real was only a reflection in a puddle that someone had just stepped in.

  Then silence. Darkness.

  Her own body began to lose its form as it melded into the shattered world surrounding her. She felt like she was on the brink of total obliteration. Then came that terrible, sickening feeling of endless falling as she was plunged into the quantum vacuum of dark matter, where she stayed, floating, melting, drifting, in a hidden dimension where space and time had ceased to exist.

  Then finally, sound. Light.

  As if she were being birthed back into the world, Lila saw the dark void retreat and was thrust into the physical realm. The light blinded her. Her body felt solid, once again subject to gravity and the familiar world of Newtonian physics. Blinking her eyes open, she gasped for air as her lungs remembered to expand and contract.

  Her fingers gripped the armrests of the seat in Teddy’s time-­traveling contraption. She had made it.

  Then just as quickly came the forgetting. She looked around, confused, panicked. A blankness settled over her mind until the door to the time machine began to lower. Standing there was Teddy Hawkins, waiting for her with a relieved smile on his face. He rushed up the stairs toward Lila, and forced to hunch over in the tight confines of the cockpit, he put his hand on hers.

  “Welcome home,” he said. Just as they had done before, the memories came rushing back. The warmth in Teddy’s voice made Lila’s heart swell even as the dread sitting in her stomach sharply twisted within her.

  Teddy helped her out of the time machine and escorted her to a large laboratory adjacent to the control room. Lila could feel his curious eyes on her, trying to read how the mission had gone from her body language. But she couldn’t look him in the eye.

  “Sit here and relax,” he said as he eased her into a reclining chair. “Conrad is going to check your vitals. I’ll lay out some clothes for you. Wash up, change, and meet me upstairs. Then we’ll catch up.”

  Lila slowly nodded, keeping her eyes down.

  “Love the hair, by the way. Very Jean Seberg. Very Parisian chic.”

  Lila self-­consciously pulled at her blond pixie cut. It would serve as a reminder of her failure and her sister’s guilt. She wanted her old hair back, but more than anything she wanted her illusions back. The truth was too painful. She closed her eyes and lay back in the chair.

  “That’s right, Lila. Just rest,” Teddy said.

  “It’s good to hear you say my name.” She slightly opened her eyes, watching Teddy watch her.

  He nodded. “See you in a moment, Lady Day.”

  Then Conrad came into the room to perform a battery of tests. He took her pulse, several vials of her blood, and ran her through an MRI, EEG, and a CT scan. When all his probing was completed, he brought her into the guest room upstairs that she had come to think of her own room. She saw a pair of her jeans and one of her tank tops laid out on the bed.

  “Take your time,” Conrad said. “Mr. Hawkins will be waiting for you in the main room.”

  No matter how shitty she felt, the cavernous bathroom with its claw-­foot tub overlooking Biscayne Bay remained one of Lila’s favorite spots. She took a long, hot shower in a slate-­tiled stall that was actually bigger than the tiny cabin she had shared with Sam for those weeks at sea.

  As she prepared herself to face Teddy, she went over in her mind what she’d tell him, working out ways to try to make the mission sound like anything other than a total disaster. But every time, no matter how vociferously she fought on her own behalf, Teddy won each of her imagined arguments. She felt sick.

  Clean and dressed, Lila walked barefoot down the stairs to join Teddy and curled herself into the chair next to his. The two of them looked out at the peaceful turquoise water.

  Teddy was the one who broke the silence. “It didn’t go well, did it?”

  “No,” Lila said softly. Once she was faced with the conversation she’d been dreading, she realized that she didn’t want to defend herself. She was too tired. “You were right.”

  “About what?”

  “About my sister. About me. I went into it not seeing anything clearly.”

  “I warned you.”

  “I know.”

  “So you’re saying that your sister shot Jack Warren?” Teddy asked.

  “Not exactly,” Lila said hesitantly. It was so much more complicated than that.

  “What do you mean?” Teddy turned toward her, looking at her for the first time since they started talking.

  Then Lila rushed into an explanation. She told Teddy about how the snub-­nosed .38 at the scene of the crime actually belonged to Captain Nash. She told him about the hundred grand in drugs that she brought on board. About the LSD-­fueled game of Russian roulette. About taking the gun from Nash.

  “You took the murder weapon, but Ava still managed to kill Jack?” Teddy asked.

  “Yes,” Lila whispered.

  “Do you have any idea how many rules you’ve broken? How much possible damage you could’ve inflicted on the very fabric of the world? What if Jack hadn’t died?”

  “It wouldn’t have been the end of the world, would it? At least my sister could have had a life.”

  “That’s not the point!” he said. She’d never seen him so angry. “You can’t play God, Lila! There’s no way to calculate how your actions could’ve impacted the world.” Teddy got up and walked over to the bar in the corner. He grabbed two crystal tumblers and filled them three-­quarters full with bourbon. He handed one to Lila.

  “Please don’t tell me that Ava saw you,” he said.

  Lila stayed silent.

  “Should I take that as a yes?”
r />   Lila nodded.

  “Did she recognize you?”

  “I think so, she said my name. But she was so out of it, Jack. Something was wrong with her that night.”

  “Something other than the fact that she’d just committed murder?”

  “It was more than that.” Lila was instantly transported back to the yacht, seeing the flash of recognition as her sister’s eyes took her in. She remembered Ava, frightened, shivering, covered in her lover’s blood.

  “This whole thing was too risky. I knew it from the start. I blame myself for letting you go.”

  “It’s my fault, Teddy. Let me own that, okay?” She picked up the glass of bourbon and took a big gulp, relishing its comforting burn. “There’s something else I have to tell you.”

  Teddy rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands and let out a big, exasperated sigh. “From the look on your face, I think I’d better sit down for this.”

  Lila gathered up her courage. “When I was in the past”—­she paused for another sip of bourbon—­“I visited you.”

  “You what?” Teddy was aghast.

  “Jack was working on a computer code that I couldn’t decipher. I thought it might be a clue, but I needed help.”

  “So you came to see me? Lila . . . I . . .” Teddy fell into a flabbergasted state of silence. He didn’t know what to say. “Of course!” he exclaimed a moment later, slamming his fist down onto the table. “I remember. You stopped by my office and showed me that beautiful piece of code. Then it annihilated my hard drive. I can’t tell you how many times I thought about that gorgeous woman over the years. And now to find out that you are the mysterious woman that disappeared from my life . . . astonishing. You’re astonishing.”

  Lila knew he didn’t mean this as a compliment. “I didn’t know who else to turn to!”

  “You shouldn’t have turned to anyone! Don’t you realize? That encounter could’ve permanently altered the course of my life. What if that meant I didn’t build a time machine?”

  “But you did. From what I can see, nothing changed.”

  “That is not the point, Lila, and you know it.”

  “Isn’t it?” Lila asked. “But I know you’re right. Anyway, that source code was just one more dead end in an endless string of them.”

  Teddy sat back into the chair and stretched out his long legs. He closed his eyes. “I can’t do this with you anymore. You don’t get it.”

  “Teddy, please.”

  “No, Lila. You’ve got to listen to me. You’ve got to listen to someone. Have you ever heard the saying that life can be a double-­edged sword?”

  “My mom used to say that all the time,” Lila said.

  “So you know what it means. Every strength can also be a weakness and vice versa. Well, that’s what I see in you. You’re so insightful as a detective, so devoted, that you can go blind to the world around you. And your single-­mindedness stops you from seeing all the damage you’re doing. But that’s not the worst part. The worst part is that I don’t think you value your own life. And that makes you too dangerous, because it means you don’t value anything.”

  “That’s not true!” But even as Lila spoke these words, she feared Teddy was right. There was a strain of recklessness in her, one that she’d always known and felt, that scared everyone in her life. It even scared her sometimes. And now it had finally scared off Teddy, the one person she finally trusted.

  Lila turned to face Teddy, but he kept his eyes on the window, looking out to the ocean. She could see the muscles in his jaw clench. All she felt was hopeless. Teddy was too good a man to burden with her baggage. She should let him live his life. It’d be better off without her around.

  “Fine,” Lila said. “I’ll go.”

  “That would be best,” Teddy said in a small, sad voice that made Lila’s already pummeled heart wince in pain.

  As she headed to the door, Lila turned back around, figuring she might as well deliver the rest of the bad news. “I haven’t even told you the worst part, Teddy.” He didn’t say anything. She forced herself to continue. “I’m the one who helped my sister escape. I’m the one who got her into that boat to make a getaway. I gave her the passport. I even gave her my money.”

  “You mean my money.”

  “Right,” Lila whispered.

  “So, let me get this straight. I gave you money to help you prove your sister was innocent. And you gave that money to her when you found out she was a murderer?”

  “I’ll pay you back . . .”

  “Stop!” Teddy yelled, his eyes closed. “Lila, for once in your life, know when enough is enough. It’s over. Now, please, just go.”

  CHAPTER 28

  A WEEK PASSED, maybe two. Possibly three. Lila couldn’t be sure. Things began to blur.

  Her final conversation with Teddy had unleashed a tsunami of regret and loss, which had knocked her down, pulled her under, and left her stranded in some dark, unknown place. She felt empty and numb. Without a case to obsess about or Teddy to ground her, she felt lost. There was nothing calling her out into the world, so she stayed holed up in her apartment with the blinds drawn and a bottle of Wild Turkey always within reach.

  She didn’t fight the self-­pity she felt engulfing her. Her mother was gone; her sister was a murderer on the run; and the one true friend she’d grown to love had just told her that she was too dangerous to be around. Lila thought she’d bottomed out before, but she now knew that she’d been mistaken. Here, right now, was the bottom, and Lila wondered if she’d ever be able to crawl out from this emotional muck.

  As the days slowly crawled by, she started to digest what had happened on The Rising Tide, working through the details of the case and finally accepting the new, harsh reality that her sister had killed Jack. She felt foolish and betrayed. But the most acute feeling was loss. In one terrible moment the illusion that had kept her going—­that her sister was innocent—­had vanished. With her faith in Ava dashed, Lila now saw her undying belief in Ava’s innocence for what it was: a crutch. And she was shocked to see that she could barely stand on her own two feet without it.

  Everything she thought she knew about herself had been wrong. Everything she once believed to be real was only a shadow of her hopes and dreams. Her sister, Ava, wasn’t an innocent victim. She was a murderer. And Lila wasn’t some brilliant detective. She’d been average at worst, and lucky at best. In fact, Lila now considered that maybe she wasn’t even as honorable as the rotten and corrupt cops she’d spent her career detesting. At least they were honest with themselves and with everyone else about who they were. They didn’t delude themselves into thinking they were working to save the world, like Lila did.

  The person she once believed she was—­a good cop, a moral person, a caring friend—­had wound up being just a bunch of false hopes, and Lila felt deeply ashamed.

  And then there was Teddy.

  Meeting him had saved her life. That was one thing she still knew to be true. His faith in her allowed her to, once again, have faith in herself. But she’d played fast and loose with his trust and had lost it. Now he would never give her another chance to go back in time. And without that—­without the mental challenge of solving those cold cases—­what would she do?

  Inside her head an unrelenting voice cataloged her failures: not seeing her sister for who she was, pushing harder than she should have, forever falling for the wrong guys, alienating anyone who ever cared for her, and on and on and on. To pull herself away from the self-­flagellation, she turned on the TV, flipping mindlessly from channel to channel.

  The television comforted her. She stayed on the couch for hours, guzzling Wild Turkey as her brain was soothed by the TV’s undemanding companionship. As she was flipping channels, an image caught her eye—­a grand sailboat racing along a choppy sea underneath the Golden Gate Bridge.

  Lila paused at th
e sight. The boat looked just like the one that Ben and Jack designed with that master builder, Kingston S. Duxbury, in the Caribbean. It had that telltale sail, which looked like an airplane wing. The wing sat stiffly atop a giant, space-­age catamaran that hydroplaned along the water. It was a mesmerizing boat. Lila watched, her head firmly pressed against the sofa cushion, intrigued, but not enough to sit up.

  A blond reporter standing in Golden Gate Park walked toward the camera in that slow, purposeful pace they must teach ­people in journalism school. Spreading her arms out in front of her, she said, “Crowds have gathered with eager anticipation to witness the final leg of this year’s America’s Cup, held in beautiful San Francisco. Our country’s hopes are pinned on one man, Ben Reynolds, the skipper and helmsman of the American team.” Lila couldn’t believe her ears.

  The camera then panned to Ben. That was enough to make Lila sit up. “What the fuck?” she said, her face creased from hours of being squashed against the pillow, her voice slightly slurred by whiskey. Ben looked almost exactly as he had in 2008, which for Lila was a mere two weeks ago, not the eleven years that had actually passed. His face was a bit narrower and the lines in his tanned skin were carved deeper. A few strands of gray hair could be seen in the riot of his dark curls.

  Astounded, Lila watched as Ben brought the reporter onto the boat. But her heart nearly stopped when she saw another familiar face from The Rising Tide: Asher Lydon. Startled, she jumped to her feet. “Holy fuck,” she said as she turned up the volume to a near-­deafening level, anxious not to miss anything. Asher was only on camera for a fleeting second, but it was undeniably him—­the corn-­silk-­blond hair that he had kept boyishly long despite being a decade older, the affable smile, those model-­perfect features.

  Asher and Ben, together? Lila couldn’t believe what she was seeing. How was any of it possible? How did Ben achieve his dream of being skipper on his own multimillion-­dollar boat in the America’s Cup despite the death of his only patron? And how was Asher, who was a sworn enemy of the Warren clan, sailing on a boat that had meant more to Jack Warren than practically anything in his life?