Getaway

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Michelle Mason tells herself she’s on vacation. A brief stay in the Mexican resort town of Puerto Vallarta. It’s a chance to figure out her next move after the unexpected death of her banker husband, who’s left behind a scandal and a pile of debt. The trip was already paid for, and it beats crashing in her sister’s spare room. When a good-looking man named Daniel approaches her on the beach, the margaritas have kicked in and she decides: why not?But the date doesn’t go as either of them planned. An assault on Daniel in her hotel room, switched cell phones and an encounter with a “friend” of Daniel’s named Gary gets Michelle enmeshed in a covert operation involving drug runners, goons, and venture capitalists. Michelle already knows she’s caught in a dangerous trap. But she quickly finds that running is not an option. If she’s not careful, she’ll end up buried in the town dump, with the rest of the trash. Now she needs to fight smart if she wants to survive her vacation.From the Trade Paperback edition.About the AuthorLisa Brackmann has worked as a motion picture executive and an issues researcher in a presidential campaign. A southern California native, she currently lives in Venice, California, with her three cats. Her critically acclaimed debut novel, Rock Paper Tiger, was an Amazon Best Book of 2010. Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.Chapter OneMichelle dropped the sarong she’d started to tie around her waistonto her lounge chair. Nobody cared what her thighs looked like.Sand burned the soles of her feet as she walked down to thewater. Look at these people, she thought. Foreigners, mostly. Likeher. Older, a lot of them. Sagging, leathered skin, the ones who’dbeen here awhile. Pale tourists, big-bellied, pink-faced, glowingwith sunburn. A family of locals—Mexicans anyway, who knewif they were really from here? Dark, short, and blocky, eatingshrimp on a stick from the grill down the beach, giant bottles ofCoke tucked in a Styrofoam cooler.Out of shape. Lumpy. Flabby. Aging.Nobody cares.And her thighs weren’t bad, anyway.She stood at the water’s edge, watching the rainbow parasailfrom the real-estate company lift a middle-aged woman into thesoft blue sky, the motorboat gunning its engine and heading outinto the bay, avoiding the banana boat undulating up and downas it hauled a load of college kids south toward Los Arcos. Shewatched them gripping the yellow tube with their knees, shriekingwith laughter, several clutching beers, tanned and young andhealthy.They’d drink until they puked, screw each other till theypassed out, go home and post about their awesome vacation ontheir Facebook pages.She waded into the water until it was up to her hips. Warm asa bath, but the surf was pounding. She stood there trying to resistthe pull as the receding waves sucked the sand out from underher feet.After a while she’d had enough and went back to her loungerbeneath the palapa.She tried to read her book. It was about a woman whose marriagehad broken up, and she’d learned to bake bread. Bread andmuffins. After about thirty pages, Michelle was willing to bet thatthe heroine would end up with the overly educated woodworkerand not the stressed-out options trader.“Ma’am? Can I get you something? Something to drink?”The hotel waiter, dressed in a white guayabera and smudgedwhite pants, stood above her, round, sweating tray in hand.Nutbrown, gray-haired, creases marking his face like wrinkles ina crumpled shirt.She thought about it. “A margarita, please.”Why not? She didn’t need to be sober to follow this plot.They’d already paid for the vacation. It still seemed like anextravagance. She and Tom were going to go together. A getaway.A celebration, he’d said.She wondered what it was that he’d wanted to celebrate.She must have fallen asleep for a while. That was sort of the pointwith these vacations. You partied at night. Got up earlier thanyou’d like. Grabbed your palapa while the sun was still lowbehind the eastern mountains, spread out your towel on yourblue canvas chair, put on your sunblock, found your place in yournovel. First cocktail at lunch, to wash down the greasy quesadillasbrought out to you on a paper plate. Try to ignore the vendorsselling jewelry, blankets, offering to braid your hair, massageyour feet. At some point you’d close your eyes, tired as they werefrom reading in the shaded sunlight, irritated from the sunscreensweated into them.When she opened her eyes, it was late afternoon. She’d beendreaming, about something. About being too hot. About . . . whatwas it about? About somebody breathing in her ear. Leaning over,touching her shoulder. A man, but not Tom. Didn’t you forget? he’dasked. Didn’t you forget?A few clouds had come in, but it was still hot, and the sun glaredin her eyes. She blinked a few times. Then something blotted outthe light.A parasail, between the beach and the sun.It took a moment for her eyes to adjust. The parasail was itsown small eclipse, dark against the sun. Now she could see it—thebloodred parachute, white letters glowing.tourism kills! they spelled. In English.Michelle blinked again and stood.An atypical crowd had gathered on the beach. Elegantly dressedmen and women—a wedding party, she thought at first. Waitersrushed to fill shot glasses with tequila. Photographers ringed thegroup, pointing their cameras at the parasail, which was headingback from the bay.Now she could see the person in the harness. Even at this distance,he appeared huge, roughly as spherical as a balloon. As hedescended, she saw that he wore a three-piece brown tweed suitand a red plaid tie.She wished she had her camera. But it was locked up in thehotel’s safe—too valuable to risk leaving on the beach while shenapped or waded.The parasail crew—tattooed, in surfwear T-shirts and baggytrunks—kicked up sand as they staggered under the parasail rider’sweight, trying to guide him to his landing, and for a momentMichelle thought they would all collapse in a heap. But at the lastsecond a third man dressed in a crisp linen suit stepped forward,bracing his hands against the fat man’s chest, pedaling backwarduntil at last the body in motion came to rest.The people in the crowd cheered and raised their glasses in atoast.“That was different.”Michelle turned.The man next to her smiled.“Yes,” she said. “What was it, exactly?”“Arts festival. It’s running all this week.”He was an American, or sounded like one. About her age.Tanned so dark that the creases around his eyes fanned out liketiger stripes.“Should be interesting,” he said, “if you like that kind of stuff.”He wore a pair of baggy swim trunks and a faded batik shirt.Gray flecked his hair and the stubble of his beard, but he wasrangy trim. A fit fortyish.“Do you?” she asked.“It’s kind of fun,” he said with a shrug. “I mean, art, you hang iton a wall or put it on a pedestal. I’m not sure what this is.”“Performance,” Michelle murmured.By now a procession had formed around the fat man: the welldressedcrowd, the photographers, and a group of young musicianswearing matching T-shirts, singing “Paperback Writer” in perfectharmony. Together they set off down the beach, north toward thepier, laughing, drinking tequila. A brown dog followed in their wake.“I was going to get a drink,” the man said. “Would you like tojoin me?”His name was Daniel. “I live here part-time,” he explained. “Got acondo in Amapas.”“Are you retired?” she asked.He drew back, mock offended. “Wow. I hope I don’t look oldenough to be retired.”“Not at all,” she said. “But you never know what people’s situationsare.”“Well, I’m not loaded either,” he said with a grin. “I’m a pilot.The work is sort of freelance. So I have some flexibility aboutwhere I spend my time.”They sat at a table under a palapa, on the sand. The sun wouldn’tset for another few hours; the restaurant staff had just begun tobring tables out to the beach for dinner. Michelle expected thatthe restaurant would not be full, even with the arts festival.Memorial Day weekend was the last gasp of tourist season inPuerto Vallarta, and it was still pretty quiet. Too hot this time ofyear. The crowds came earlier, for Easter and spring break, andlater in the fall, after the rains.“A pilot. For an airline?”“No. Private company. We fly Gulfstreams and Citationsmostly. Rentals.”He scooped up guacamole with a chip, spooned salsa on topof that. “You know, businessmen who can’t afford their own butwant to impress a client. Rich guys who want to get to a golfcourse or a football game in a hurry. That kind of thing.”She nodded and sipped her margarita. They made good oneshere. Not too sweet. You could taste the lime. “Sounds fun,” shesaid.He smiled. “Works for me.”The sun had moved behind a bank of clouds, illuminating themlike a bright bulb in a shaded lamp.“Check it out,” Daniel said.She looked where he pointed. A pair of dolphins surfed at thecrest of a wave. They leaped above its crest, plunged back into thewater, caught the next swell, then shot up again, twisting in midairlike a pair of dancers.“Better than SeaWorld.”She nodded. “It’s beautiful here.”Daniel leaned back in his chair, took a final sip of his drink.“How long are you staying?”“I’m not sure. My flight’s on Sunday. I might change it.”She wasn’t sure why she said it. She had no real intention ofchanging her flight. It was just that when she thought about whatwas waiting for her in Los Angeles, it was easy to indulge in thefantasy of staying a little longer. Of never going back.“Nothing pressing back home?”He was looking at her in that way, sizing her up, what herintentions were, what she might be willing to do.She shook her head.“Are you retired?”She laughed briefly. “I’m between things.”He didn’t ask questions. Michelle wasn’t sure how she feltabout that. She wasn’t ready to talk about any of it, certainly notto a stranger, but on the other hand one does like to be asked.“This is a good place to be,” he said. “When you just want torelax and figure things out.”Maybe that wasn’t such a bad answer.He was a good-looking man, she thought, with sharp cheekbonesand a firm jaw, sky-blue eyes that stood out against his blackhair ...