Until the Day I Die(58)

I stare at it for a moment, trying to make sense of what I’m seeing. Of the numbers and names all laid out before me. But really, I don’t need to. I already know what I’m looking at. It’s Antonia’s three experiences, just like Jess described them last night. L’élu I, the real program. L’élu II, the fun fake for VIPs. And L’élu III—the one where you wind up dead.

Right here in front of me, in black and white, are records of everything to do with every incarnation of Hidden Sands’ “restorative experiences.” Balances, vendors, lists of payers. The L’élu I column for just this week is substantial: Akin, Blanchard, Brock, Capone, Curry, Dhanial, Freeman, Haddad, Hardy, Kurkjian, Lawson, Oyinlola, Peterson, Pullen, Shelton, Zabicki . . . There are lists of names in the L’élu II and III columns too, but a lot fewer, and the cash amounts are substantially higher. Like, in the six-figure range higher.

I scan the length of the L’élu III column, searching for the name of one of my friends or family—Fleming, Gaines, Marko. But all I see is a list of the participants’ names. There are sixteen in all. Mine, Jessalyn’s, Agnes’s, and Deirdre’s are at the bottom. There’s not the slightest hint about who paid for our delightful, “one-of-a-kind” experience. But there are several tabs at the bottom of the screen.

I open one, incongruously labeled Landscaping, and another spreadsheet appears with a list of, no surprise, plants. Sixteen of them, which makes my body literally shudder in horror. This is it, it has to be. The plant names are links too, so I pick one near the bottom, ginger lily. It sends me to another page, one that appears to be some kind of deal memo from a company called Cutstone, LLC, purportedly located on the island of Providenciales in Turks and Caicos.

A fake, obviously. This is some shady offshore financial bullshit for sure.

Jesus. I press my fingers into my temples. This is what they mean by a paper trail, I guess. And if I had more time, I could follow it. Possibly even figure out who paid to send me here. But I’m working under the gun here. Literally. My top priority is to get a message to Shorie and get Jess and me the hell out of here before anybody sees us. This database will have to wait.

I minimize the windows and try to open the internet browser, but the screen won’t direct. They must have installed blocks restricting full access to the internet. So Zara couldn’t mess around on Facebook when she was supposed to be working, probably. If Perry were here, this wouldn’t be a problem. If a computer could be compared to a woman, then Perry was Lothario, Don Juan, and Valentino all rolled into one. In other words, when he showed up, computers dropped their firewalls. I, on the other hand, am not that skilled.

I study the task bar at the bottom of the screen. All the basics besides the internet browser—photos, music, calendar, and the whole Office package. And then, a mustard-yellow square with a white lowercase j leaps out at me. Jax.

Whoever uses this computer has logged in to their personal Jax account.

It’s like someone turned up a volume knob on me. My whole body starts to vibrate. My fingertips even tingle. Maybe Perry is here, in some way, after all, watching over me.

I hit the icon. Hi, Zara! the little j says at the top of the screen. Proving my husband’s point that humans are indeed the weakest link in cybersecurity. Zara, in particular, has neglected to log out during her last session, allowing me full access to her account. I scan the allocations, a dozen clean columns of white. She doesn’t make a whole lot, salarywise—she’s using our basic budget, the “essential.”

I log out of Zara’s account and sign in to mine. In my private messages, a clean white bubble pops up. I click on it and type:

Shorie, it’s Mom. Please se

There’s a sharp knock on the door; then, from out in the hall, I hear a clatter of footsteps near the front of the house. I leap up, straining to hear where they’re headed. My heart is doing such a good job of pumping its way out of my chest that it hurts. I need to get out of this office—fast—and try to find Jess.

I hear a woman’s voice, high and girlish. “Ladies, welcome to L’élu II,” she trills. Sounds like she’s near the front door. “May you rest in the knowledge, the confidence, that you are the Chosen.”

Antonia.

Shit. It’s Antonia.

Even though I haven’t completed my message to Shorie, I hit “Send” and log off my account. Thanks to the computer’s automatic log-in being enabled, I can hop back on to Zara’s account. I check the desk to make sure everything’s in order.

“You know and I know,” Antonia continues from out in the hallway, “that we are more than the labels that people hang around our necks. Those labels are like nooses, and we refuse to wear them. We are artists; we are thinkers. Creators of solutions, when they’ll leave us alone long enough to think of them . . .”

There’s a wave of appreciative laughter. There’s more than one person out there, that’s clear. And this is definitely the fun L’élu group, the by-invitation-only L’élu that only special guests who part with a tidy sum of money get to experience.

I peek around the door into the hallway. The front doors have been flung open, and the group has congregated just outside on the wide front portico. Antonia, sleek in a black strappy sundress and stilettos, her white-blonde hair wound in braids around her head, stands in the open doorway before a small group of women. They’re dressed in hiking clothes like our group, except these gals look infinitely more relaxed.