Crystal Cove (Friday Harbor #4)(5)

A few moments later, she heard alarming sounds from the dining room. A mother’s cry, a clatter of plates and flatware, a chair overturned. Turning swiftly, Justine hurried back and dumped the armload of dishes onto a table.

The younger of the two boys appeared to be choking. His eyes were wide and white with panic, his hands pawing at his throat. The mother patted his back helplessly.

Priscilla had already reached the boy. Locking her arms around him from behind, she jerked her fist upward and inward in a sharp movement. The procedure was repeated three more times, but the obstruction was not dislodged. The boy’s face was gray, his lips moving in spasms.

“You’re hurting him,” the mother cried. “Stop—she’s hurting him—”

“He’s choking,” the father snapped. His fists clenched as he watched Priscilla. “Do you know what the hell you’re doing?”

Priscilla didn’t answer. Her mouth was grim, her face white except for two patches of red color high on her cheeks. Her gaze met Justine’s. “Won’t come loose,” she said. “Might be stuck all the way along his gullet.”

“Call 911.”

While Priscilla snatched up her nearby bag and rummaged for a phone, Justine took her place behind the boy’s heaving body. She tried a couple of steep-angled jerks up into the surface of his upper abdomen, and muttered a few words under her breath. “Sylphs of air I conjure thee, help him breathe, so mote it be.”

The plug of food was abruptly expelled. The boy stopped writhing and began to draw in huge breaths. Both parents rushed forward and pulled him close, the mother sobbing in gratitude.

Justine pushed back a lock of hair that had come loose from her ponytail. She let out an unsteady sigh, trying to quiet the clackety rhythm of her heart.

Priscilla’s black leather pumps came into the periphery of her vision. Justine glanced upward with a weak smile. Relief had drained all the strength out of her until she was as limp as a pillowcase on a clothesline.

The moonstone-blue eyes looked down at her intently. “You sure got a funny way of doing the Heimlich,” Priscilla said.

* * *

After the commotion was settled and breakfast had been cleared, Justine sat with Priscilla in the small office. The entire inn had been rented out for the next five days to a half-dozen employees and colleagues of Inari Gaming Enterprises, an in-house development team of a major software company. The rest of the inn would go unoccupied even though it had been paid for.

“Jason likes his privacy,” Priscilla had explained, which had hardly been a surprise. Jason Black, who had produced the most successful fantasy video-game series ever released, was notoriously elusive. He never attended promotional events. He turned down all interview requests from broadcast media, and only agreed to the occasional print interview with the provisions that his private life would not be discussed and he wouldn’t allow his picture to be taken.

In fact, Justine, Zoë, and the two women who helped to clean the inn had all been required to sign nondisclosure agreements in advance. As a result, they were legally prohibited from revealing details about Jason Black. If they so much as revealed the color of his socks, they would be sued into the next century.

After typing his name into a few Internet search engines, Justine had found reams of information about the gaming company and its achievements, but only a sparse handful of facts about the man himself. He’d been brought up in California and had gone to USC on a football scholarship. Halfway through sophomore year, he’d taken a leave from college and had gone, of all places, to live at a Zen monastery near the Los Padres National Forest. He had dropped off the radar for a couple of years and had never returned to school. Eventually he had applied for a job in the game-development division of a software company. After several successes, he had taken another job with Inari Software to head its gaming division, and he had become the project leader and developer of the top-selling video-game series of all time.

As far as Jason Black’s personal life went, there had been a few discreet relationships, but he’d never been engaged or married. There were a few candid photos of him available on the Net, getting in and out of a car, escorting someone to a social function, but his face was averted in most of them, his dislike of the camera obvious. The best shot of him had been a pixelated blur.

“Why’s he so publicity shy?” Justine asked Priscilla.

“You can ask, but I can’t say.”

“Is he handsome?”

“Too much for his own good,” Priscilla said darkly.

Justine’s brows lifted. “Are you involved with him?”

Priscilla’s brief huff of laughter held no amusement. “Never. My job is too important to me—I’d never risk it for anything. ’Sides, he and I wouldn’t suit.”

“Why not?”

Priscilla began to check off reasons on her fingers. “He’s too used to having his way. And basically I wouldn’t trust him with my left shoe.” She pulled an electronic tablet from her briefcase and brought up a file. “Here’s the updated list for Jason’s room. Let’s go over it.”

“It’s already taken care of. You e-mailed the updated list to me a few days ago.”

“This is the updated updated list.”

Jason Black required a west-facing second-floor room maintained at a temperature of sixty-eight degrees. A king-size bed with high-thread-count sheets and goose-down pillows with no feathers. Two bottles of chilled spring water were to be brought to his room every morning, along with a health shake. He also required two white bath towels per day. Unscented soap and shampoo. An LED desk lamp on the table in his room, wireless access, a white flower arrangement, and a package of foam earplugs on the nightstand. A selection of organic unwaxed fruit. No newspapers or magazines—he preferred digital formats. And every night at nine, two shots of chilled Stolichnaya vodka were to be delivered to his room.