5. Marc #2
“You need to convince them that Malati must be saved.”
“Isn’t the Indonesian government responsible for that decision?”
“Yes, but even governments back down in the face of fifty thousand TikTok videos. Those tourism dollars are important.”
“I don’t actually have a TikTok account.” Serena spoke up for the first time, her voice shaky. “I only have BuzzHub, and I’m on a five-day ban at the moment.”
Really? Serena was always polite online, even when people were dicks to her.
“What did you get banned for?” Marc asked.
“I told Marissa her make-up slayed, and the auto-moderator didn’t appreciate the word ‘slay,’ apparently. I mean, on the plus side, there are fewer trolls there, but on the minus side, I can’t even admire my future sister-in-law’s lipstick.”
“Did you appeal? They have human moderators too.”
“Yes, and the last time I looked, I was, like, three thousandth in the queue.”
Havana clapped his hands. “Let’s stick to the game plan. Your account doesn’t really matter, Serena.”
“Excuse me? It took me years to get thirteen thousand followers.”
The blonde tsk-tsk-tsked. “Unlucky for some, I guess, but I’m with Serena on this. We shouldn’t belittle her social media efforts.”
“Are you being snarky?” Serena asked.
“Not at this moment.”
The guy heaved out a sigh. “Fine, I’ll rephrase. In the grand scheme of things, Serena’s BuzzHub follower count is inconsequential. Marc here has one hundred and thirty million, plus more on the other platforms.”
Yes, but that was only because he used to take his shirt off in the early days.
Half of those hundred and thirty million had probably moved on to younger, hotter actors who showed more than their feet.
Would making a propaganda video tank his account completely?
Who even cared? More than once, he’d considered deleting the whole thing, and when he finally quit Hollywood, he planned to quit social media too.
“In principle, I wouldn’t mind making a video, but there’s a problem. Two problems, actually. What happens if the Indonesian government refuses to cooperate? Will you dump us in the ocean?”
Serena tensed again. Dammit.
“They’ll cooperate. Those in charge have no morals, and their only agenda is to get as rich as possible.
How do you think the resort got the go-ahead in the first place?
Developers have deep pockets. But international reputation is harder to buy, and politicians also need votes if they want to stay in office. ”
“So say they back down… What then?”
“Then the eastern side of Malati becomes a wildlife preserve, and a species is saved.”
“I don’t want to sound insensitive, but right now, I’m more concerned with my safety and Serena’s than a herd of lemurs.”
“A conspiracy,” the blonde said.
“Huh?”
“The collective noun for lemurs is ‘a conspiracy.’ A conspiracy of lemurs.”
“Is that a joke?”
“Is anything about this funny? Maybe the way you started shrieking on the beach, I guess.”
“I was not shrieking,” Marc snapped. So, she’d been one of the raiders?
“Yes, you?—”
Again, Havana held up a hand, silencing her. “We won’t harm you. We don’t believe in hurting any living creature, even humans.”
Serena found a scrap of courage, and the strength in her voice was good to hear. “Excuse me if I’m sceptical, but you just shot up our set.”
“We mostly used blanks.”
“Mostly?”
“We made a few holes in the buildings for effect. Everyone was too busy panicking to notice.”
“I saw a background actor bleeding, and a crew member fell on the beach.”
“Ah, yes, that was unfortunate. The blood came from a ricochet, nothing more than a scratch, and the crew member tripped over a sound boom. But don’t worry, he’s been ferried to the hospital, and the doctors pinned his ankle back together.
Did you know they have universal healthcare here? There are some positives.”
Wait a second… They knew details of the victims’ medical care? How would they find out? Did they have a contact at the hospital? How would they even know which hospital the guy had been taken to? Unless…
“They were part of your gang?”
“We prefer the term ‘collective.’ And it was our lucky break when the casting people began recruiting for background performers in Kuta. Fifty pounds a day, plus food, board, and transport to Malati. I guess they thought backpackers would jump at the chance. Anyhow, enough small talk—we need your passwords.”
“That’s the second problem; I don’t know them anymore.”
“I don’t believe that.”
“Believe what you want, but a couple of years ago, someone tried to hack my BuzzHub account, and my publicist made me change all my passwords to long, complicated gobbledygook that I forgot.”
“Do you think I was born yesterday?”
No, but the man clearly hadn’t done his homework. Marc hadn’t handled his own social media for years.
“Of course not.”
“Can’t we reset the password?” the blonde asked.
Marc shrugged, because how should he know? “I’ve never tried doing that before.”
“Well, do you know the password for your email?”
Yes, but Marc didn’t particularly want to share it.
Some things were personal. Plus these people swore they wouldn’t kill him or Serena, so maybe he could refuse to give them the information and wait for the rescue team to arrive?
There would be a rescue team, right? Cops, the military, an army of true-crime podcasters.
Although he did recall Dylan Young saying as they read through the script yesterday that if the Indonesian police were tasked with solving the mystery on Malati, the culprit would never be caught.
Had Dylan been joking around, or was there an element of truth in his words? Marc wasn’t sure he wanted to know.
Besides, did it really matter if this “collective” read his emails?
It was probably just a bunch of spam. Once he’d reached ten thousand unread messages, he’d deleted the app from his home screen and never looked at it again.
His accountant paid the bills, his personal assistant did the shopping, and his lawyer looked after the contracts, so it wasn’t as if Marc would miss anything important.
But perhaps he could use the collective’s demand as a bargaining chip…
“Fine, I’ll give you the password, but first, you have to prove that nobody died in your raid on Malati. Show me a news bulletin or a media report.”
He expected some pushback, but Havana just rolled his eyes again and shrugged.
“Go ahead,” he told the blonde.
She pulled a phone out of her pocket and held it in front of Marc’s face. It wasn’t as if he could grab it with hands still tied behind his back. He thought of trying a “Hey, Siri,” but then he saw it was a Samsung. Did Samsung have a voice assistant? Undoubtedly, but he didn’t know its name.
The blonde scrolled through a BBC report.
Nobody dead, three people hospitalised with non-critical injuries.
A twenty-four-year-old assistant cinematographer named Ricky Dunkley had suffered a fractured ankle, fucking traitor.
When Marc made it back to civilisation, he’d make sure that asshole got arrested, injured or not.
“Now, what’s the password?” Havana asked.
“‘Phae always comes first,’ all one word with a capital P.”
“A capital… Where does the P go?”
“Phae with a P-H. P-H-A-E.”
“Are you messing with me?”
It was the blonde’s turn to roll her eyes. Was it contagious? “No, dummy. Phaedra, daughter of King Minos, cursed Cretan princess, one of the most complex and tragic figures in Greek mythology.”
Complex and tragic… Yes, that about summed up Marc’s history with Phae.
“I’m not familiar with that story.”
“She fell in love with her stepson, and long story short, she died by suicide.”
Thankfully, Marc’s Phaedra was still very much alive.
No, it was Booker who’d taken his own life, and his father’s.
At least, that’s what Marc suspected, and it was the one secret he’d kept from Phae.
Guilt still ate away at him, but better for her to think her beloved older brother had died in a tragic accident than find out Booker might have known what he was doing when he steered his car into that tree.
Havana turned back to Marc. “So, who’s this modern-day Phaedra?”
“How is that relevant to this situation? I’ve given you the password—do whatever you need to do so we can all get out of here.”
Marc felt rather than saw Serena looking at him. He’d never talked much about Phae in front of her, but she knew he still hauled around a semi of unresolved feelings when it came to his ex. And that was the way it would have to stay, seeing as she’d been avoiding him for over a decade.
Ten minutes and at least three bug bites later—bug bites Marc couldn’t scratch because his hands were still bound—the kidnappers had access to Marc’s BuzzHub account and his millions of followers. Well, this would be interesting.
“I took the liberty of preparing a script,” Havana said.
“Can you at least untie us? The rope is cutting off my circulation.”
“No, we need this to look convincing. We’ll give you a moment to read through your part while we set up the camera.”
“What about Serena? Which parts are hers?”
“Serena can just sit there and look suitably afraid.”
“That shouldn’t be hard,” she muttered.
“Don’t you think that’s a little sexist? Serena’s an accomplished actress in her own right.”
“The video will be on your social media accounts.”
“And I’m a sharing, caring kinda guy.”
“He has a point,” the blonde said.
“Fine. Fine!” Havana threw up his hands in exasperation. “Divide the lines up amongst yourselves.”
Their two captors disappeared from the room, leaving the script on the floor in front of them, and Marc leaned forward to read it.
“This is crazy,” Serena whispered. “How the hell are we supposed to get out of here?”
“I figured we’d just wait for the rescue squad to show up. These guys don’t seem too professional, and they haven’t tried to hurt us.”
“So far. They haven’t tried to hurt us so far . And how will a rescue squad find us?”
“They’ll make appeals. Maybe someone saw the boat when we came ashore? The Indonesian authorities will be searching, our embassies will be screaming for action, and don’t forget your brother’s a private investigator.”
“Heath? Heath’s in England.”
“I bet he won’t sit this out.” Marc lowered his voice another notch. “Wasn’t he special forces?”
“He told you that?”
“Liam might have let something slip.”
“Nobody’s supposed to know about Heath’s old job, and besides, he retired from that stuff.”
“If my sister had been kidnapped, I’d go full John McClane.”
“How many Die Hard films were set on a tropical island?”
“It was just an example.”
“A bad one.”
“People are going to be looking for us. You saw that news article—the whole world knows we’re missing. Now all we have to do is make a video or two and avoid antagonising these crazies.”
“You really think it’s that easy?”
Honestly? No. If this were a movie, there would be an earthquake or a tidal wave, possibly a plague of locusts. Did they have locusts in Indonesia? Marc didn’t put his worries into words—there was no reason to scare Serena any more than these motherfuckers already had.
“They didn’t kill anyone on Malati, and if they harm a single hair on my handsome little head, then a hundred and thirty million rabid women will hunt them down and post their demise on BuzzHub.”
“Yes, well, I don’t have a hundred and thirty million groupies on my side.”
“You can borrow mine. Hell, keep them.”
Marc squinted at the script that would lead to their eventual freedom. Hopefully.
For decades, humans have been slowly killing the planet we live on, the planet we share with millions of other living creatures. Overpopulation, overdevelopment, overfishing. Plastics in our oceans, trash on our land, pollution in our atmosphere.
Mother Earth is dying.
We’re almost at the point of no return, and as I speak, LM Developments, Incorporated is preparing to raze the jungle on the Indonesian island of Malati to the ground and replace it with a soulless hotel complex, destroying the only habitat of the Tarsius malata.
Enough is enough. Developments of this kind have to be stopped.
Our planet has to be saved, one small piece at a time.
Mother Nature’s future hangs in the balance, and so does the life of Marc di Gregorio and Serena Carlisle.
Someone had added Serena’s name as an afterthought in pencil and forgotten to correct the rest of the sentence. So Marc had been the only target, originally? Serena was merely a bonus? Well, shit.
Only when the permit to build on Malati is revoked and the island’s survival is assured will Marc and Serena be released by the Wild Roots Collective and returned to their families. You have three days.
Once again, Serena’s name was an afterthought, and Marc hated that for her. She was part of the main cast of Whispers in Willowbrook while he was just a guest star.
Havana and the blonde returned with a buddy, a tall, wiry guy who smelled of tobacco smoke. He began fiddling with the tripod and the camera mounted on top of it.
“Is it working?” Havana asked.
“I think so. Ricky was supposed to be here.”
“Hush! No names, remember.”
Marc didn’t mention that he’d already worked out the Ricky connection, but he sent silent thanks to the stand-in for confirming it. Ricky Dunkley wouldn’t be able to run far, not with a broken ankle.
“This has to be the performance of your life,” Havana said. “No pun intended.”
He chuckled to himself, and Marc swallowed down his anger.
“If you want us to star in your little movie, how about you don’t insult us?”
“He did win a bloody Golden Globe,” Serena pointed out, and Marc was glad she sounded stronger now. He would have given her hand a squeeze if he’d been able to.
“Yes, yes, I understand that.” Havana looked vaguely apologetic. “Are you ready?”
There was no point in delaying. The sooner they made the damn video, the sooner they could get out of there.
“We’re ready.”