Текст книги "Lost"

Автор книги: Chris Jordan

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“I need to use the bathroom.”

The driver shrugs, reluctantly turning north as instructed. Exhibiting a tension that must soon be dealt with, before he calls his dispatcher with suspicions about the passenger, or panics and goes for whatever weapon he has stashed under the seat. Shane keeping an eye on the guy, trying to relax him with small talk, but the driver doesn’t want to play. He wants, understandably, to know what’s going on, why a big white guy who looks like either a cop or a criminal—often indistinguishable from an immigrant’s point of view—would hire a car to take him to a dubious all-night convenience store out in the bad-news boonies.

When they arrive at the no-name store the driver deftly pulls into the brightest circle of lights and quickly slips out of the vehicle before the motor stops ticking. Standing by the door pretending to stretch, or maybe he’s practicing putting his hands in the air, expecting a holdup.

Shane strolls around the front, reaching for his billfold.

The driver sees him coming and freezes, eyes round with fear.

“Hey,” says Shane, holding out the billfold. “No worries. You familiar with that expression? I think it’s Australian. No worries. Nice, huh?”

“What you want?” the driver asks, terrified.

“What do I want?” says Shane. He opens the wallet, extracts a hundred-dollar bill, tucks it into the driver’s shirt pocket. “I want you to relax. Get yourself a soda or a pastry or whatever.”

The driver, for all his nervousness, is reluctant to leave the vehicle.

“Take the keys with you,” Shane suggests. “I’m not stealing the car, okay? Nothing going on here except a slight detour. You’ve already done your part.”

“Not thirsty,” the driver says, as if suspecting an ambush inside the brightly illuminated convenience store. Maybe some cracker confederates ready to feed him to the gators and steal his lovingly polished vehicle.

“Suit yourself,” Shane says, trying to sound soothing. “Fact is, you got me where I need to go. Or in the neighborhood, anyhow.”

“Why you come here, to this place? Nothing here, no, suh.”

Shane flashes a conspiratorial grin, a man-to-man kind of smile. “There’s this lady, okay? Got a place not far from here, out behind the store. Cute little trailer park.”

“A woman?” the driver says, starting to relax.

“Special lady,” Shane says, nodding. “We need to keep it sort of quiet, okay? No strange cars in her driveway. No limousines arriving in the middle of the night.”

“A woman.”

“Yup, a real fine woman. I might be a while. How about if you come back in, say, three hours? Another hundred to drive me back to Miami, plus the regular fee on my card at the hourly rate, keeps the owner happy. Can you do that?”

The driver buys it. Cherchez la femme, that he understands, accepts. It’s agreed that the horny, woman-chasing passenger will call when he’s ready to be picked up.

“Glad we got that settled.”

“Yessuh. You call me, I meet you right heah, this place.”

“Deal.”

Shane shakes the driver’s limp hand, then returns to the Town Car, retrieves his drawstring backpack. The backpack having been left for him at the hotel desk by a former associate—not Sean Healy—in the Miami Division. The backpack’s contents, difficult if not impossible to clear through airport security, and therefore obtained locally, include a KA-BAR fighting knife, military-grade night-vision goggles, and a handheld Garmin GPS unit. Plus a small, powerful flashlight and a hand-dandy roll of duct tape. Because you never know when duct tape will come in handy. He leaves the driver with the impression that the backpack perhaps contains an assortment of sex toys for the lady’s pleasure.

“Better check my batteries,” Shane says with a leer, hefting the pack.

It’s all the driver can do not to roll his eyes.

12. Welcome To The Bat Cave

A few hundred yards behind the all-night convenience store there is, indeed, a small, decrepit trailer park. Maybe thirty units, most of them set on wobbly concrete blocks in the previous century, and now slowly sinking into the dirt and weeds. Half again as many vehicles, high-riding pickups and fat-bottomed sedans, some functional, many under repair or abandoned. The abandoned vehicles have a feral look, as if they might slink away like furtive animals. More likely, they will erode and dissolve into the sandy soil, leaving nothing behind but iron oxide and tinsel-size flakes of chrome.

A few dim lights are exuded from the trailers themselves, but there is no activity that signals wakeful occupants.

No matter, Shane has no business here.

He moves purposefully up the little pathway that winds among the trailers. Actually walking beside it, so as not to make the gravel crunch underfoot. If the Haitian driver happens to be checking out his passenger—unlikely—he will see Shane blend into the shadows, bound for Airstream glory.

On the far end of the clearing, a row of tall, wispy casuarinas that either survived the last hurricane or have sprung up since. Sometimes called she-oak or ironwood, the pinelike casuarinas are more than sufficient cover for a man who wants to vanish into the wilderness, and who knows how to use the patchy shadows as camouflage. Within a few strides the wispy trees give way to a vast scrub of slash pine and saw palmetto, sturdy and sharp, and it will stay this way, Shane knows, for miles and miles. The ground elevation is a crucial foot or so higher than the great river of grass the white folk call the Everglades, and is therefore perfect for sandy pinelands. Which does not mean there will not be a few wet, low-lying spots among the saw palmetto, and pocket gopher holes just right for snapping ankles.

Most of the bigger and more lethal life forms—snakes, gators, panthers—gravitate to the water’s edge. Larger animals aren’t keen on the serrated, bladelike leaves of the well-named saw palmetto. Deer and wild boar sometimes stray into the scrub, but tend to be reclusive, fleeing from the sounds of interlopers. Pythons, the exotic Glades invaders that started out as house pets, prefer thicker vegetation, bigger trees, and tend to feed on various rodents and small pigs. Much more dangerous are the lesser snakes, the diamondback and the coral, which explains Shane’s sturdy, high-cut hiking boots. A panther would have to be crazy with hunger to take on prey Shane’s size, so the big cats don’t worry him half as much as the hidden holes and fissures underfoot.

Now that he’s clear of the trailer park and prying eyes, Randall Shane makes no effort to be stealthy. Better to let the wildlife know he’s stomping through their world, give ‘em a chance to hide or flee. By his calculation, as indicated on Google Earth’s remarkably detailed satellite images, he has slightly more than a mile to the first waypoint.

All he has to do is head straight west for two thousand paces. Nothing to it. Except it turns out he can’t proceed in a straight line, not without cutting his limbs on spiny fronds of saw palmetto. So for every yard west he has to dodge one north or south, or back himself up and find a new path when the scrub gets too thick.

One mile becomes two, and that makes him hurry. At this point he has not bothered to don the night-vision goggles, mostly because he knows from experience that moving quickly in NV gear can be more dangerous than traveling blind. It’s like running while looking through binoculars. Plus there’s a quarter moon a few degrees above the horizon and the air itself, moist and tangy, seems slightly luminous. Hurrying is never a good idea at night, in a dangerous locale, and a low-lurking palmetto frond finally snags him only yards from the waypoint.

Amazingly nasty plant. It sliced right through his jeans just below the knee, and blood seeps from his shin. A mere flesh wound but it itches something fierce. Cursing himself for not being more careful, Shane removes the roll of duct tape from the backpack and quickly wraps it around his leg, molding denim over the gash. Stop the bleeding for now, deal with cleaning up the small but nasty wound later.

Temporary repair complete, he studies the terrain, carefully weaves his way though the last few yards of palmetto, and at long last finds himself standing on a narrow dirt road. Not dirt, actually, but the limestone marl that forms the brittle base of most of southern Florida. He’s pleased to see that the white gravel road—little more than a path wide enough for one vehicle—heads northwest, just as indicated on the satellite imagery.

The hand-held GPS calculates the he’s 3.12 miles from his destination. The same unit also informs him that it’s been fifty-five minutes since he left the comfortable leather seat of the Town Car. In a little less than four hours the sun will rise. Time to put the pedal to the metal.

He adjusts the pack, finding the sweet spot between his shoulder blades, increases his respiration until his lungs are fully filled with the warm, humid air, and then begins to run.

Randall Shane is a large man, too big and heavily muscled to make a good long-distance runner—a marathon is out of the question, it would pound his joints to dust. But with his long stride eating up the yards he figures he should be able to cover a mere three miles in a little less than twenty minutes, no problem.

Half an hour later, lungs aching, heart slamming, drenched in sweat, he finally staggers to the edge of the hidden landing strip, collapses to his aching knees and vomits copiously into the gravel.

From the refuge of the tall grass he surveys the terrain through the NV goggles. It’s no accident that the landing strip doesn’t look like much. Just a slash through the pinelands, a mile in length but less than a hundred feet wide. From altitude it looks like a short stretch of unfinished highway, maybe, or the remains of some abandoned canal or drainage project. Years ago there were dozens of similarly camouflaged landing roads cut into the wilderness west of Miami. Even from the air they were hard to locate, mere slices in the firmament, but if the gravel was packed and graded properly a sizable aircraft could land and take off, provided the exact coordinates were known to the pilot. Some cases it wasn’t even necessary to take off again—the value of the illicit cargo was such that the aircraft could be abandoned, or dragged into the swamp to make room for the next flight.

This is no abandoned airstrip. There are a few weeds poking up through the compacted surface, but the whole thing has a groomed look that doesn’t originate in nature. Someone is actively maintaining the place. Let it go for even a few months and the scrub would take over.

Shane hasn’t seen them yet, but he’s betting there are hidden beacons—flicked on for only moments at a time—that allow night-landing pilots to make fine adjustments at the very last minute.

The secret landing strip is interesting—the only possible use is for illicit cargo—but what originally got his attention on the Google Earth image lies a quarter mile away, and as rushed as he is for time he wants to thoroughly surveil it before approaching. In the satellite imagery the anomaly appeared to be no more than a faint, roughly rectangular shadow, notable only because of its proximity to the mile-long slash that he’d recognized as a possible landing strip. In the lenses of the NV goggles its true form is revealed.

Hangar.

An aircraft hangar cleverly constructed and landscaped to look like a natural slope of ground, and therefore almost completely invisible from directly overhead. Palmetto and slash pine grow from the top of the mound, contributing to the effect, but on the side facing the runway there’s a vertical cut wide enough to accommodate almost any aircraft capable of landing on the narrow strip. As if the builder had been inspired by some of the old camouflage techniques from World War II where, say, what appeared to be a caravan trail in North Africa might actually hide a squadron of fighter planes under the dunes, ready to roll out at a moment’s notice.

This is scrub pineland, not desert, but the effect is the same: hide in plain sight by blending into the landscape. The hangar entrance has been obscured with palm fronds, but Shane can make out the vertical panels of a wide door. A shut-up hangar without cross ventilation, it must be hot as an oven in there.

What’s inside that needs hiding?

He’s approaching the hangar, intent on a closer look, when the high drone of a gasoline motor makes itself known. Coming at speed. Automotive engine, not aircraft. Shane runs full tilt for cover as headlights flicker though the palmettos. He scrambles atop the mound of earth covering the hangar, figuring if he’s on higher ground the headlights won’t pick him up.

A heartbeat later a pickup truck skids onto the runway from the access road, kicking gravel, and heads straight for the hidden hangar.

What happens in the next few moments will depend on whether the sudden appearance of visitors is a coincidence or the result of remote surveillance. Maybe he has unknowingly activated a motion detector or been picked up by an infrared video-cam. Or maybe it’s just time to make the donuts, or check on the drug stash or whatever.

Belly to the ground, Shane edges his way back from the curve of earth that obscures the hangar beneath it. When the truck stops moving, so does he, knowing that a human figure is easier to pick out of a dim landscape when the eyes are quiet, not jouncing around on the stiff suspension of what looks to be a shiny new Dodge Ram.

Moment of truth, Shane thinks as the truck doors snap open, shedding pools of yellow light. Wishing he had a firearm, or lacking that, a Kevlar vest.

The cab spills out three men, two of them young and solidly built, of more or less identical height. The third man, stretching and yawning, is somewhat older and taller, a scrawny, narrow-shouldered guy with a funny, protuberant belly. Like he’d swallowed half a soccer ball. He’s wearing a straw cowboy hat, well broken in, and has a lilting drawl that sounds to Shane like coastal Alabama, or maybe the Panhandle region of Florida.

“In there?” Straw Hat wants to know, loud enough to be heard over the big V-8, which has been left running.

“Pretty cool, huh?” says one of the two younger men, tugging on his cap. “Sort of like the bat cave.”

“Bat cave? Y’all got them fanged little devils out heah in the swamp?”

“Naw. Like Batman from the movies.”

“Oh yeah? Oh, ah gets it, Roy. Good ‘un.”

Shane quickly picks up on the fact that of the two younger men, the one called Roy does most of the talking. It’s also clear that an intruder has not been detected—the men have business having to do with the hangar.

Roy takes out a ring of keys—his face obscured by a ball-cap visor—and approaches the hangar, thereby passing out of sight. Meanwhile the other one—they could easily be brothers—lowers the truck’s tailgate, recovers a coil of thick rope or cable.

Beneath him, Shane hears a big hangar door sliding open.

“Son of a bitch!” the man in the straw cowboy hat exclaims. “Oo-ee, y’all ain’t lyin’! Ah be damned if this ain’t the real deal!”

Very excited about whatever it is inside the hangar.

“Pretty little thang, ain’t she?”

“Ah swear, Roy, she’s givin’ me a bone! Hot damn!”

The leering tone of conversation almost convinces Shane that the two men are discussing Jane Garner’s missing daughter. Until they rig the rope from the front bumper of the Dodge and pull the sexy aircraft from the hangar.

The long white wings of a twin-engine Beechcraft King Air pass directly beneath Shane, looking down from the top of the hangar. Might as well be angel wings. He can’t quite make out the tail numbers, not from this angle, not yet, but he knows in his heart that this is Edwin Manning’s missing aircraft, the very same plane his hotshot son flew out of Long Island, accompanied by Kelly Garner.

Lying on the roof of the hidden hangar, Shane grins into the dirt and mouths a silent Yes!

13. Chasing The Hum Job

Sleeping in chairs is bad for the back. Plus it can give you nightmares. Apparently I fell asleep sitting up, waiting for the laptop to bong, the binoculars cradled in my lap. Dreaming that Kelly is somewhere in Manning’s penthouse but I can’t find her because the binoculars won’t focus. Also I’m late for a fitting and can’t locate the wedding party.

Anxious dreams, but not quite nightmares. In nightmares Kelly would be dead.

My bleary eyes are open for a moment before I register what woke me. Daylight filtering through the sliders? My own internal alarm clock? The doorbell?

Bong.

The warning signal on the GPS! The laptop is telling me that Manning is on the move!

With a sharp little scream I jump to my feet. Eyes skidding wildly around a superluxury, two-bedroom hotel suite, empty except for me.

“Shane!”

Pointless. My half-asleep brain boots up just enough to remind me that the big guy left last night on a mission. A mission he refused to discuss. Some creepy-crawly investigation thing it’s best I don’t know about. Or so he said. For all I know he’s trolling South Beach for leggy lingerie models. Hitting the late-night club scene because, you know, he can’t sleep.

Why not? I know nothing about the man, not really, except that he’s left me holding the bag. What should I do? Grab the laptop, run down to our rented car and try to follow the GPS signal? Stand on the balcony and scream? What?

“Mrs. Garner?”

Shane stands in the bedroom doorway, bare chested, wearing white boxers and a big bandage on his leg. Dark blood seeps from the bandage. His eyes are puffy. Like me, he’s just awakened.

Liar.

“You were asleep!” I say accusingly. “You said you never sleep!”

“Yeah. Amazing,” he responds thickly, shaking his head. “REM sleep, dreams, the whole nine yards. I got back late and didn’t want to wake you and I guess I conked out.”

The laptop keeps bonging. Shane finally notices.

“They’re in motion!” he exclaims. “The Hummer is moving!”

“That’s what I’m trying to tell you!”

“Go,” he says, returning to the bedroom for his clothes. “Get the car out of the garage, meet me on the street. Grab your purse and go!”

There’s nothing more disorienting than waking up to an emergency in a strange place. Not that Miami is particularly strange—okay, actually it is—but it isn’t home, and therefore I can’t rely on a familiar comfort level. It’s as if there’s no bottom or limit for my anxiety. And yet I can’t, no way, I simply can’t let myself turn into a hyperventilating mess.

Cling to that, girl. Make it your religion for just this day, the Church of No Panic Allowed. Focus on not being afraid, because your fear could ruin any chance you have of finding your daughter alive. Don’t think about it, just react. Grab your purse, run to the elevators. Avoid the temptation to bang on the doors or punch the button into oblivion, it won’t make the elevator arrive any faster. Let’s see, twelve stories to the garage level, does it make sense to take the stairs?

Give it a few more seconds. Patience.

The signal dings, the doors open. Empty car. Perfect. Get in, punch G, thumb the Door Close button. There, you’re dropping, going down, gravity never felt so good. And while you’re dropping try to picture where, exactly, you parked the rental car, the precious Crown Victoria. See it in your mind. Recall pulling into the dim garage, slightly blinded, following the signs and arrows. Finding a parking slot three rows from the elevators, feeling proud of yourself as you grabbed your bag from the trunk, headed for the lobby.

Small miracle, the elevator proceeds uninterrupted to the garage level. The door slides open. And right there where you pictured it, the dark green Crown Vic, big as life.

Keys! Are the keys in your purse? How could you be so stupid! How could you not make sure about the keys?

Tears of frustration start to blur my vision, but that stops when my questing fingers grasp the plastic fob to the car keys—a warm pulse of relief—and then I’m in the big sedan, being waved through the gate and onto the street a full thirty seconds before Shane hits the lobby level and spots me waiting at the curb. Bolting through the exit with the laptop cradled under his arm like a football. Who are the big guys, the runners? Fullbacks? He looks like a fullback ready to run over anyone who dares to get in his way. Except for the small problem of his Top-Siders being unlaced, flapping dangerously. And the slightly askew baseball cap.

“Beautiful,” is the first word out of his mouth as he slips into the passenger seat, slightly breathless, grinning at me. “Well done! Go, go! Turn right onto Brickell, then left at the first light. They’re heading west.”

All the panic and hurry turns out to be unnecessary. The flame-orange Hummer is moving at a crawl though morning rush-hour traffic, no more than a quarter mile ahead. Shane can follow it on the GPS map and I can see it with my own eyeballs, big as life and not exactly easy to maneuver in bumper-to-bumper conditions.

“Okay, good,” he says, breathing a sigh of relief. “For all we know, this could be a false alarm. Maybe they’re off to breakfast at IHOP, running an errand, whatever.”

Stomach rumbling, my head begging for coffee, I ignore the reference to breakfast and point out that the Hummer has darkly tinted windows. So how do we know Edwin Manning is in the vehicle? Could be anybody, right?

“Could be,” Shane acknowledges. “Want to turn around?”

“I’m just saying.”

“Sorry. You’re right—all we know is that the Hummer is on the move. We don’t know who, or why, or where it might be headed. Standard tail, we’d have someone maneuver ahead of the target vehicle, confirm passenger identity. But we don’t have that luxury.”

“Because we’re on our own,” I say bitterly.

Shane gives me a glance, and his voice softens. “Maybe not for long.”

“What do you mean, maybe not for long?”

As we slog in the stop and go, the bright orange roof of the Hummer slowly beckoning us onward, Shane recounts what he was up to last night. His better-not-to-know mission. Not pursuing leggy South Beach models or hanging out at clubs, obviously. More like entering forbidden territory, and very nearly getting himself killed in the process. Avoiding sleeping snakes and gopher holes and something called palmetto, which he describes as a palm tree with a built-in machete. All of which he blames on something called Google Earth.

“That’s how I located the strip,” he explains. “By checking out satellite images of the area within fifteen miles of that cell tower. The images aren’t as clear as those available to military analysts, of course, but they’re good enough to identify larger structures.”

“You were trespassing? In the Everglades, in the middle of the night?”

“Figured it was more dangerous in daylight,” he says with a wry grin. “Night you can find a shadow, blend in. Daylight you’re exposed. And it’s not exactly the Everglades, that particular area. Technically it’s pine scrub. More or less dry underfoot.”

“But you found the airplane? The King Whatever?”

“Beechcraft King Air 350. Yeah, it was there. I was able to confirm the tail numbers. Aircraft is registered to Edwin Manning, DBA Merrill Manning Capital Funds.”

“Amazing!” I exclaim, suddenly elated. “Maybe that’s where they’re keeping Kelly, right at the airport!”

“It’s not an airport, Mrs. Garner,” Shane responds, cautioning me. “It’s a very narrow strip of cleared land, suitable for surreptitious landings.”

“But you said there was a building!” I protest, pushing the idea that Kelly might be there.

“A camouflaged hangar. I checked it out after they left. No sign of Kelly or Seth. No indication anyone had been held there against their will. Just an expensive aircraft in an otherwise empty hangar. Wherever they’re keeping Kelly, it’s not there.”

That shuts me up for a while. The giddy spike of hope quickly dissolves into low-level anxiety. Don’t think about Kelly, or what might be happening to her at this very moment, just concentrate on keeping the Hummer in sight.

They’ve gotten one light ahead, but are at the moment frozen in gridlock. We could get out and walk.

“Okay, we haven’t found her yet, but it does mean a lot, identifying the plane,” Shane explains, sensing my plummeting mood. “She’s almost certainly being held somewhere in Southern Florida, probably in a location just as remote as the hidden landing strip. Quite possibly within the Nakosha territory.”

We’re not moving. Slowed to a crawl, now we’re not even crawling. Stuck in gridlock just like the Hummer, what Kelly gleefully calls a Hum Job. Downtown Miami makes the LIE look like a trek in the remote wilderness. I turn in the seat, wanting to look Shane in the eye. “You think Indians did this? Kidnapped Kelly?”

The big guy shrugs, rubbing at his injured leg. “Don’t know. The men who came to inspect the aircraft were white. Redneck white. But the airstrip is right in the middle of tribal territory, so there has to be some sort of relationship. Could be someone in the tribe leases it out to smugglers. Lot of that went on in the old days. Tribe looks the other way, eventually makes some money out of the deal, in a way that can’t easily be traced or connected to the smuggling operation.”

“Is that what this is about. Smuggling? You think Kelly’s flyboy was running drugs?”

“I don’t know,” he admits. “At a glance, yes, it looks that way. Drug deal gone bad. Except that Edwin Manning is involved, and somehow I don’t think a billionaire running a billionaire’s hedge fund is consorting with drugs dealers trying to turn a quick profit.”

I shake my head. “Look, I’m mad enough at this boy to strangle him. Seth I mean. For putting my daughter in danger. But you saw the pictures. He gets his kicks from airplanes and motorcycles and parachutes.”

“Agreed,” says Shane. “Smuggling drugs is low probability. Unless it was for the thrill of it. Like skydiving.”

“Now you’re really scaring me.”

Shane strokes, strokes thoughtfully at his carefully trimmed beard. “Whatever happened, we can know that Manning has been contacted. Demands have been made. He admitted that much.”

“Yeah, but what kind of demands?” I want to know.

“That’s the billion-dollar question.”

I’m grumbling at the stalled traffic when a light goes on over my dim, undercaffeinated brain.

“Give me your hat,” I say, snatching the ball cap off his head. “Take the wheel.”

I put the car in Park, engine idling. In a moment I’m out the door, dodging bumpers. Horns honk at me, but so what? Let ‘em honk. Let ‘em shoot me the digit, who cares?

In a few strides I’m clear of traffic and on the crowded sidewalk, giving a thumbs-up to a very startled Randall Shane as he tries to get his long legs behind the wheel, take control of the vehicle.

Pulling down the brim on the oversize hat, I head for the Hum Job.

14. Planet Ricky

Four miles to the south, more or less, in the gated enclave of Cable Grove, Myla methodically gnaws the glitter off her fingernails and wonders what should she do about Ricky. Munching nails in the cabana because that’s where she’s been hiding for the past five hours. Okay, not hiding, exactly, that’s the wrong word because Ricky hasn’t exactly been trying to find her. More like she moved her butt to the pool cabana because the house is simply too scary to share when Ricky Lang starts conversing with invisible people.

Talking with ghosts or whatever.

It began at three or so in the morning, with Myla sound asleep, snuggled under the covers because the AC is on frosty, just the way she likes it. Hot as a bug outside, where she left Ricky on a lounger by the pool, lying with his enormous forearms crossed under his head, staring up at the stars. Talking about how the stars hold stories of the ancient days, the days when the animal gods roamed the world and spoke to men in their true voices. Which was sort of romantic, until the clouds came rolling in and the rain started and Ricky would not stir from the lounger. Telling her the rain was good for her soul, if she had one.

If she had one. What did he mean by that? Everybody has a soul, right? You get it when you’re born. It comes with. So, feeling a little petulant, a little put out, she’d left him there in the spattering rain and gone to bed. To be awakened hours later by a weird, high-pitched yowl that sounded like a raccoon caught in trap. She was instantly awake, ice water in her veins, skin crawling. Because she knew it was Ricky making the noise.

She found him in Tyler’s bedroom, curled up on the little race-car bed. Hanging off the sides, actually, because he’s way too big. Eyes closed, his high cheekbones glistening with tears. And when he opens his eyes, responding to the light she switches on, he roars, shut that fucking off you bitch! and leaps to his feet, as agile and jumpy as some cougar on bad crank. Brushing her aside with a shrug of his powerful shoulders. Slamming her into the wall—although he didn’t mean to—it was as if she didn’t exist. As if he didn’t know who she was.

Right after the incident in Tyler’s room he starts talking, and not to her. Yakking and gesturing with someone who isn’t there. Pausing for the voices only he can hear, and then arguing with himself.

Myla has no idea what he’s talking about because he’s speaking what he calls pidgin. Nakosha words and phrases mixed with English and then stirred with a Spanish swizzle stick, is how he once explained it to her, bragging about the private language of his clan, understood by less than a hundred people on planet Earth. A planet no longer occupied by Ricky Lang, apparently.

Having no experience or understanding of active psychotic episodes, Myla assumes he’s on drugs. Eating mushrooms or buttons or whatever Indians do. All she knows is that he’s scarier than usual, and that’s when she decides to hang in the cabana for a while, until he calms down.

Hours go by. He never shuts up. Raging and laughing, crying and pleading, mostly in his own private language. Meanwhile Myla makes a nest for herself in the chlorine-smelling cabana, tries to nap on some deck-chair cushions but she can’t get comfortable. She thinks about calling someone—she has her cell—