CHAPTER 9
AS DARKNESS FELL AND IT BECAME CLEAR RESCUE WASN’T IMMINENT, Ness found herself in the candlelit kitchen trying to decide how to divide two stale croissants, three protein bars, and two apples among eight ravenous people.
They’d piled their paltry resources on the counter that afternoon. She’d made a list, scribbling on the back of a gas receipt she’d found in her wallet:
· 21 bars of various kinds (ranging from protein to granola to date-and-nut combos that tasted like someone forgot to add whatever was supposed to make them taste good)
· 6 packages of peanut butter crackers
· 1 large packet of turkey jerky
· 6 apples (4 thoroughly bruised)
· 1 orange, abused
· 2 croissants, smushed
· 12 chocolate-coated granola bars, melty
· 8 premixed cocktails
· 7 bottles of light beer
· 16 bottles of water
· box of assorted scavenged alcohol
· 1 cheese sandwich
“Do you think there’s a freezer somewhere in this place? I just want to lie in it for a little while,” Coco whined from what had quickly become her spot at the breakfast bar.
“No. But here.” Ness slid a gin and tonic in a mason jar across the dusty, cracked countertop.
Coco picked it up and rolled the glass between her hands. “This is the same temperature as my panties.” She twisted the lid open and took a cautious sip. “Disgusting.” She took a more generous mouthful and set the jar down as Daisy came in from the balcony.
“Too dark to see the cards anymore and the mosquitoes are killer,” she said, scratching her neck. “I think the guys are just bullshitting each other now to see who gives up first.” She settled on the stool beside Coco, and Ness watched, intrigued, as Coco’s shoulders changed from casual slump to something she could only identify as posturing.
As Ness hacked at an apple with a tiny Swiss Army knife someone had produced from their bag, Hayes, Bradley, Ian, and Tyler came through the door, hovering around her like a horde of teenagers after school.
Ness batted them away. “Can you back off until I’m done? Why don’t you go find the wine cellar or something?”
“Yes! Genius!” Ian headed to the table where they’d piled most of their light sources, which now included two dozen black pillar candles, three flashlights (only one of which actually worked), seven books of matches, and a battered yellow lantern with a hand crank. He grabbed a candle and went through four matches before getting it lit and nestling it into a gothic-looking lantern enclosure.
The light cast a spooky glow onto Ian’s face as he hoisted the lantern in front of him. He smiled ghoulishly at them. “Who’s coming?”
Bradley dropped to the floor and started doing push-ups, launching himself high enough to clap after each one.
“Pass,” he said, exhaling with a grunt.
Hayes rolled his eyes and snagged another candle. “Sure. Why not?” He raised his hand to accept Ian’s high-five before turning back to Bradley. “At some point you might want to conserve energy. There aren’t that many calories to burn around here.”
Bradley held a plank long enough to extend one hand with a raised middle finger. “We all cope differently, Captain America,” he said through clenched teeth at the top of the next push-up.
Hayes shook his head and turned to follow Ian.
“I’ll come!” Tyler said eagerly, swiping the flashlight.
“Whoa, not the flashlight. We’re saving that for emergencies.” Hayes waited until he’d put it back down and prepped his own candle, then the three of them disappeared into the darkness of the hallway.
Libby, who had been reclining in the adjacent living room, sashayed in and surveyed the offerings.
“Is there anything less processed?”
Ness looked around. “There’s a cheese sandwich.” She held out the package.
Libby stared at it, her lip curling in disgust at the sight of the sweating cheddar. She sighed and pinched the plastic delicately between her fingertips. She examined the offering with disdain before dropping it back onto the counter, where Daisy’s manicured hand scooped it up.
“Split it?” she asked Ness and Coco, tearing into the wrapper. Ness’s hand was out to accept her third before Daisy was done shaking the sandwich out of its prison.
Bradley, who had moved on to jump squats, eyed his ex-wife with suspicion, as if she was one smooth arm motion away from spraying perfume in his sweaty face.
Libby huffed and looked like she was going to make her way back into the gloom of the living area, but she settled onto the red daybed on the perimeter of the kitchen. Not quite participating, but not entirely excluding herself.
Ness laid out their sad dinner in individual piles spread across a cracked wooden tray she’d found and wiped clean. Beside it, she arranged the remaining mason jar cocktails.
“Dinner’s served, I guess,” she announced, eyeing the lackluster spread. Tomorrow she’d at least try fishing.
* * *
Ian, Hayes, and Tyler returned as Bradley was finishing his last set of burpees. He transitioned into weighted squats, snagging an elaborate metal side table and holding it to his chest, ornate legs sticking out. He exhaled as he lifted into a calf raise with each rep.
“Idiot,” Libby said under her breath.
Tyler raised an eyebrow. “I, for one, applaud Mr. Isaksson’s commitment to his physique. I have no doubt you’ll be in front of the cameras imminently—we can’t let everything slide because of this unfortunate turn of events.”
Libby ignored this completely, Tyler’s chatter nothing more than an annoying bird chirping nearby, and went back to her perch on the daybed, having grudgingly, and in a move that Ness would never have anticipated, accepted a slice of apple and a portion of a croissant at Daisy’s insistence.
The intrepid wine explorers had returned empty-handed, having failed to locate anything resembling a wine cellar, much to Ian’s chagrin.
“I know there’s one here. There were pictures of it in that article.” He demolished his dinner in under a minute, still grumbling. “It was all stone walls and moody lighting. Looked like a vampire’s bedroom.”
“I was thinking tomorrow we should light a fire on the balcony,” Ness ventured, studiously ignoring Bradley’s condescending huff of laughter. “Toward the edge, obviously, and far from anything flammable, but it would make a pretty obvious signal since we’re so much higher than the beach.”
“It’ll be even more obvious when we burn this place down.” Bradley looked at the tray Ness had prepared. “These portions are too generous given our limited—”
“Resources,” Ness finished for him. “Got it. But being hangry isn’t going to help anything, and we should use up the perishables first. Tomorrow, we can go fishing and then walk around the island. Get a sense of what else we can use here. We haven’t even been to the far end yet. There might be another island close enough we could make a raft and paddle there.”
“You’re talking like you expect to be here a while,” Ian said around a mouthful of orange, peel and all.
“You’re both overreacting,” Tyler interjected, before Ness could reply or Bradley could launch into the details of how he survived on kangaroo urine and mud pies during his time with Wolf MacKenzie. “We can make a fire on the beach, if we’re not already picked up by then. Can you imagine the liability to the network if we cause damage up here? Untold pain for everyone involved. I’m sure no one wants to have civil suits brought against them.” He looked at them expectantly.
“Who would sue us for trying to survive?” asked Daisy. She cradled an untouched old-fashioned in her hands.
Ness wondered if they should be saving liquor to disinfect wounds or something. Would that work with the bitters and sugar? Or would it just make them more delicious when they died and the local fauna feasted on their remains? She gave her head a small shake and set her own drink, some kind of limey tequila concoction, aside.
Tyler looked at Daisy with something akin to pity. “Who would sue us? Maybe our pal Freddy Maltravers? Or whoever currently owns this place.” He tapped an index finger to his temple. “Think, Ms. Payne. We’re trespassing. Regardless of the circumstances, we need to protect ourselves from all angles, legal and otherwise.”
The candles flickered and sputtered. Someone coughed quietly. Ness wondered if it was too early to go to bed.
“Jeez, Tyler. Way to bring the mood down,” Coco said, crunching into an apple slice. “I thought we were already scraping the bottom of the barrel, but no. Let’s bring lawsuits into it. Why not? Anyway, whatever the Porn King of Wisconsin or wherever tries to get from us won’t touch the out-and-out windfall we can get from Good Things for this snafu.”
Ness watched Tyler’s eye twitch at the mention of legal proceedings against his beloved network, but he pressed his lips tightly shut and refrained from commenting.
Coco wiped her forehead with the back of her hand. “That’s what’s keeping me warm at night. Well, that and the sweltering heat. I didn’t know I could sweat this much through all the fillers.”
Libby had retrieved a candle, which flickered beside her, casting a dramatic shadow. The couch squeaked as she shifted to put her feet up.
“While I refuse to bail Ness out if she sets the island on fire—”
Ness made a strangled sound in the back of her throat. “I’m not going to burn everything down!”
Libby made a fake shocked face. “My mistake. I thought that was kind of your thing.”
“Have you considered a role as a supervillain?” Ness asked. “Or aged mean girl?”
“After this, I won’t need to consider acting ever again,” Libby said casually, waving a hand through the air. “Kim Beauty is about to take off. This is a final hurrah, if you will. A rather lucrative one.” She sipped a glass of champagne the temperature of bathwater. “These network budgets have gotten obscene.”
Ness felt a twinge of unease start to build in her chest. As far as she knew, the budget was being spent on shooting this episode on a private island. And maybe on Hayes, because movie stars didn’t come cheap.
The movie star in question was savoring his mouthful of chocolate mint protein bar.The entire dinner was equivalent to a quarter of a snack on his bulking diet. Luckily, in the flashbacks for Turning Tides, he was supposed to be critically ill. A little weight loss would add to the realism.
“How did they get you here?” Ness asked him before she could stop herself. She glared at her nasty little jar of tequila and screwed the lid back onto it. “I thought you were already triple-booked or something.”
Hayes leaned his forearms on the counter. The candlelight shimmered over the silver in his hair and made his cheekbones even more ridiculous. Ness suppressed an appreciative sigh.
“I wanted to be here,” he said simply.
“Because of the money?” Ian asked. “I’m buying a place on the coast when this is done. I’ve always wanted to learn how to surf.”
Ian was sipping something clear, but Ness hadn’t been paying attention to the contents. Someone had broken out a bottle of vodka unearthed in the earlier search and it had been passed around enough that more than one of them was unsteady. She wondered if there was an appropriate way to ask if alcohol was part of his sobriety journey and whether they should be paying more attention. This didn’t seem like the time to bring it up, but she quietly gathered the rest of the unopened jars and nestled them back into the second cooler.
“Nah,” Hayes said. “I just wanted to see everyone.” He was looking only at Ness. She felt her cheeks flush and was glad for the poor lighting.
“It feels like they’re really taking a gamble on this,” Daisy said. Her lids were heavy, head resting on Coco’s shoulder. She sat upright as the group’s attention turned to her. “I didn’t even make this much for Omaha Fancy,” she said, naming a dark comedy series that had been a runaway hit a couple of years earlier.
“Oh, I loved that one,” Libby said from her dimly lit corner, shocking everyone. “What?” she said at their surprised looks. “It was a great show.”
“How’d they lure you back, Ness? Must’ve taken a lot to make you wade back into the fray after all this time.” She knew Coco meant it kindly and was trying to include her in the conversation. The sad thing was, it had taken very little to get her to sign on. Once she’d gotten over the shock of an opportunity like this even existing, she’d known she’d say yes no matter what they offered.
“I heard you really held out until the end,” Ian said. “Must’ve bargained hard. I bet you’re making the most of all of us.”
Ness was not—that was a certainty. She hadn’t held out; she’d been an afterthought.
“They thought you wouldn’t be interested,” super-agent Audrey had told her when they’d found out the show had been written without her character being included. “But then someone pointed out that you’d be a big draw, the mysterious Ness Larkin and all that, and here we are. Someone’s got an angel on their shoulder, it seems.”
The first offer had been disconcertingly low, but she’d been ready to sign. Audrey, freshly recruited to Team Ness (an embarrassingly small team), had held her off, gone back to play hardball and returned with an improved number. Nothing life-changing, at least not monetarily, but she’d be able to do some of the renovations she’d been putting off. If she really budgeted, she could even scrape together the down payment on another property. She’d figured her pay must have been in range of the others’. Apparently not. Not even close.
Everyone was still waiting for her answer.
“Always with the mystery, this one,” Ian joked.
He looked around for another drink and came up empty. He harrumphed and stared out the window. “I’m going to stargaze and air myself out. Anyone want to come?”
“Does bourbon work as mosquito repellent?” Coco wondered.
“I think your BO is doing that already,” Tyler said, his filter relaxed by the alcohol. There was a muffled “Ouch!” as Coco punched him in the arm.
Ness watched them start to trail out onto the balcony, then grabbed a candle and went to find a quiet place to fall apart.
June 2002
If there is one celebrity couple the world needs now, it is Hayes Beaumont and Ness Larkin. The longtime painfully platonic duo were spotted together Friday night leaving what appeared to be a dinner with friends at Taco-Taco. From there, they went to a much more interesting destination: a tattoo parlor that seems to have stayed open for a special appointment.
Eagle-eyed observers report each received some new art—Hayes on his ribs and Ness on her hip—before posing for a photo with their artist and leaving separately just after 2:00 a.m.
What does it all mean? Are they already filled with regret? Only time will tell.