Until the Day I Die(55)
“Erin?” It’s Jess. “You really think she planned this?”
I flash to Antonia’s wide eyes and pink-flushed face. The privileged young heiress, given the world and the attending belief that she’s above its rules. I sat there in her office, listened to her pitch, amused by the combination of her na?veté and boldness. And maybe impressed by it a little bit, too, if I’m being honest. Because I’ve always gravitated to ambitious women who prefer to apologize rather than ask permission.
But maybe she knew that. Maybe she was just flattering me. I’ve been reading people a long time. Spotting potential, knowing who’s going to be a smart hire and who’ll be a drain on the team. Determining which investor is leading me on and which is worth having one more drink with.
But she showered me with compliments, and I fell for it. In service of my ego, I overlooked the glaring breaches of privacy, the wildly inappropriate offer of the alternative L’élu, and gave the princess a pass. But she knew what she was doing from the moment she came strolling into the dining room to fetch me. She knew.
Oh, hell yes. Antonia Erdman is the ringmaster of this circus.
“Erin?” Jess says.
I realize she’s been waiting for my answer. “Yes,” I say. “I think she definitely planned this.” I tell her about Antonia’s proposition to me in her office back at Hidden Sands. About finding the bread tie that Agnes used in her hair and the bone that could’ve been human. When I say that I think Lach probably killed Agnes, too, and that she wasn’t the first, Jess scoffs.
“That’s crazy. Utterly batshit crazy,” she says. “Why would Antonia want anyone dead? Why would she want us dead?”
“I don’t know.” I think for a second. “But Deirdre was running a massage operation. Sex work. Her family gave her a choice—quit or lose them. But maybe she refused to stop. Maybe her family sent her here and paid Antonia to deal with her.”
Jess doesn’t comment. But I am suddenly, horribly, overcome by the truth: I am the major shareholder of Jax. And I just announced I want to sell, long before the big payday we all planned for. I screwed up everyone’s plan to get rich. So someone must have decided to get rid of me—Ben or Sabine, Gigi or Arch, Layton.
One of them wants to kill me.
Jess speaks, her voice small and scared. “What are we going to do?”
“We’re going to solve the problem,” I reply numbly.
Because that’s what I do. I solve problems. Lach may be a lecherous guy with a gun, but still, at his core, he is nothing more than a problem. Anything I’ve ever done as a businesswoman—positioning Jax, strategizing ways to ensure that the company survives the cutthroat world of technology—will be useful to me now. If I can just keep my fear under control.
“Okay,” I say. “They can track this walkie. Which means we have to ditch it. But that’ll help us. It’ll be a decoy.”
“Where?” she asks.
I don’t answer right away. There’s this thing you always hear in the startup business: “Build it and they will come.” It’s bullshit advice, for the most part; customers aren’t going to go somewhere they don’t want to go, use some service they don’t really want. But the point is a lot of folks do stuff on reflex, and I think the concept might apply here. I think Lach might be that essentially uncreative person who will assume that we’ll head someplace we’ve already been.
We stay off the trail, clambering through the underbrush and, after about forty-five minutes, manage to locate the meadow. On the far edge, set just inside the line of trees, three dark mounds rise up in the moonlight. Our shelters are still standing, which I guess means we did a passable job of building them. Up close, Deirdre’s is the most impressive. I remember her weaving some palm leaves into a kind of decorative pattern and laying it out like a welcome mat at the opening.
She’d beckoned Lach with a crook of her finger, and he’d sidled closer to inspect her handiwork. As they stood beside her shelter, he’d let a hand touch her shoulder, then drop down to her bottom. The memory makes me sick. He’d known then that he was going to shoot her.
“Do it,” Jess says.
Just as thunder rumbles over us, and the skies release a torrent of rain, I toss the walkie into Deirdre’s shelter. Then I yell above the noise.
“Remember when we first got to camp, there was a bunch of supplies on the picnic tables? Supplies that Lach hadn’t brought in? There’s somebody else out here, maybe in another house or a warehouse or something, delivering food and equipment directly to the L’élu groups.”
Jess nods. “I was just thinking that. And there’s no way they regularly bring up people who are really detoxing without some kind of access to a clinic or a doctor. Addicts who are in withdrawal would need some kind of real medical help. There’s got to be a building close to us.”
I grab her arm. “When I first arrived, my concierge told me there used to be a sugarcane plantation on this island. This field must’ve been one of the sugarcane fields.”
“Okay.”
“And if there was a plantation, there may be a house.” I think for a moment. “It’ll be on a high point. Maybe overlooking the other side of the island. A base camp for storage, communication, and medical supplies. Hopefully there’ll be a phone or a computer there too. I want to contact my daughter, let her know what’s happening, and warn her not to talk to anyone at Jax. Is there anyone on your end you trust?”