Until the Day I Die(87)

And then I do collapse, right there in the dirt. I hear a sound, low and constant, and after a second, I realize it’s me. I’m saying no. Wailing it.

After a few minutes, I hear him beside me. “Get up.”

I squint into the burning sun. He’s a blobby black form above me. I think about all the articles I’ve read online about self-defense. How a woman on the ground has an advantage. And I might know how to implement the tactics if I’d just taken that stupid self-defense class with Shorie. But I was busy at Jax.

Too busy and now I’m going to die.

It’s all so awful and pathetic and meaningless, I want to scream.

“Get up.” He kicks me once, hard, in the side. Even though he doesn’t use a fraction of his strength, it still hurts. I groan and roll away from him. But climb to my feet. “Go stand over there.” He points.

My vision swims. He’s pointing at a pool of bubbling gray mud, steam curling up from it. And his gun is out again, the same black pistol he shot Deirdre with.

“You never answered me. I made you an offer.” My voice sounds pathetic, whiny.

“Go stand at the edge,” he says. “Now.”

“I can find him for you. Your son.”

“Move,” he growls.

I walk toward the pool, slipping on the gray scree that slopes into the billowing pit. The smell is so much stronger up close. The soupy mud is actually boiling. In addition to the heat, I feel something like pinpricks all over my body. They are sharp as needles. The physical manifestation of fear.

“It’s almost two hundred degrees in that pit,” Lach says. “It’ll take a while, but eventually, they won’t be able to find a thing.”

“You want more? Fine. I’ll help you find your son, and I’ll give you cash. Right now.”

He laughs.

“I’m going to sell Jax. Some giant tech company who’s going to pay us more money than most people have ever dreamed about. And I’ll cut you in. Whatever you want, the part of my take anyway. You won’t have to depend on your father or your sister, for anything, ever again. You’ll be free to go where you want, do what you want. And you’ll have your boy back. I know we can make this work. Just please, don’t do this.”

I’m begging now. Pleading to be spared. I feel time stop, and I see not my life, but Shorie’s, reel past my eyes. A squalling infant, sticky toddler, gangly adolescent. My grown girl, standing at her desk in her dorm room, arranging a cigar box in its precise spot. Shiny caramel-colored hair with random strands of honey and that one curly section. Her right shoulder hitched up the way it does whenever she’s concentrating. She was so quiet in the hospital the night the doctor told us Perry had died. She waited to cry until we were home and she was alone in her room. I didn’t go in. I wasn’t sure she wanted me.

I drop to my knees.

“Jesus, stop it,” Lach says. “Stand up.”

I pull his phone out of my pocket and show it to him. But no words come out.

He stares at it, then looks at me. “Where’d you get that?”

And then the words come. “I downloaded Jax on it,” I say. “You used to have an account, but you disconnected it. Lachlan Erdman of Old Greenwich, Connecticut. No financial transactions yet. Forty-six new connection requests from other users. Just one from you. To my daughter, Shorie Gaines.”

He stares hard at me.

“I can’t access my own Jax from this phone.” I forge on. “But all I have to do is message her, and she’ll deposit one hundred thousand dollars in your account—transfer it from mine to yours. One hundred thousand, just a deposit, the balance to come as soon as I return safely home. What do you say?”

He doesn’t answer.

“How much is Antonia paying you to kill me?” I say. “Twenty-five thousand? Fifty?”

He presses his lips in a tight line. I’m close.

“Jax hasn’t sold yet, but I don’t care. I’ll give you everything I’ve got right now. A hundred thousand dollars now. Nine hundred more when I get home.”

He stares at me, but I can tell he’s tempted. Come on, asshole. That’s all of my IRA and most of Perry’s insurance money. It’s more than this guy will ever see stuck out here in the jungle working as Antonia Erdman’s enforcer.

He points the gun at me, and instinctively I flinch.

“Do it,” he says.

“What?”

“I said do it. Send the money.”

“Okay, but how do I know you won’t just shoot me then?”

“Jesus Christ, lady. I don’t think you really have a choice here.”

He has a point. I look down at the phone. A bead of sweat splashes onto the screen. I blot my forehead and open Lach’s app, telling myself to stay calm. To focus on the task at hand. There’s a new message—from Shorie.

Mom, I’m here, on Ile St. Sigo. Just tell me where you are, I’ll get help.

Joy courses through me, then alarm. Here? What is she doing here? How did she get here? Is she alone? What if Sabine brought her?

I type as fast as my trembling fingers will allow me.

Shorie, find a computer and transfer $100,000 from my Jax to this account. ASAP. Mom





51

SHORIE