9
Dan cracked one eye open, prepared to hit St. Peter with some Foster charm, but he wasn’t in Heaven and that definitely wasn’t St. Peter. He was in a dingy airplane hangar, and that was Rico pushing a rifle into his chest, raging hunger in his eyes.
“Cut it out, Rico,” Lilyanna said. She clutched his boulder of a shoulder and attempted to pull him back. “That’s enough .”
“He attacked me,” Rico said, the rifle sinking further into Dan.
Dan had never attacked anyone before. It was hard. His lungs were burning, he panted like a Doberman. And—Jesus—his back.
“I think you got the better of him, hun,” Lilyanna said. “It’s over.”
Alan appeared and offered a hand to Dan, who lumbered to his feet, leaning on Alan for support. Rico’s rifle remained trained on him.
“I can fix it,” Alan repeated to Lilyanna.
“Good Lord,” Lilyanna said, amused. “We sure kicked a nest, didn’t we, Mr. Sheridan?”
“I don’t think you should shoot them, Rico,” Brody said, a sentiment that would’ve been appreciated a little earlier.
“My name’s Alan Ferris. I’m an engineer. I was with the Air Force for more than ten years. I can get her running.” He pointed at Dan and Lenny. “But if you hurt either of them, you won’t get any help from me. Can we lower the fucking guns?”
Lilyanna waved for her guards to comply. Everyone did except Rico.
Lilyanna chewed the inside of her cheek, thought a second. “You can fix it.”
Alan nodded.
“How long?”
“It needs some work. A week and a half.”
She laughed. “Whole world might be frozen by then.”
“Planes fly in the winter.”
“Reckon you’ll want a seat on the first flight out.”
“Unless you intend to fly it yourself.”
She crossed her arms, tapped her foot, considered Alan more closely. Lilyanna had a way of looking at a person like she was slicing open a Thanksgiving turkey, rummaging through the inside to see what their stuffing consisted of. Alan’s stuffing was probably mostly scrap metal and engine parts, hot diesel, shell casings. Dan’s stuffing was probably—well, just that. Stuffing. Kraft Stove Top, $2. a box. Flour and onions and high-fructose corn syrup.
Lilyanna turned to Rico. “Rico, handcuff Mr. Foster and Mr.—what was it?”
“Fuck you,” Lenny said. He was consistent, Dan had to give him that.
“Mr. Foster and Mr. Fuck You”—she chuckled—“and take them on back to their rooms unharmed. They have jobs in the morning, just like everyone else.”
“Thanks, warden,” Dan said.
“Let me just do this one,” Rico said, his rifle buzzing. “Just this one. He attacked me, ma’am.”
It was the first time Dan heard Lilyanna truly be stern. “ Rico. You and I have an agreement. I won’t say it again.”
As Dan’s hands were forcibly secured behind his back, Alan took a step from the hangar to join his fellow dissenters. Lilyanna placed a hand on his chest. “Nuh-uh. Where you going?”
Alan blinked.
“You’ve got a plane to work on, Mr. Ferris.”
“I’m beat. I’ll be a lot more effective in—”
“I’m sure breaking curfew and sneaking around the island after hours is exhausting , Mr. Ferris, but it’s like I tell my BeachBod girls: you can’t get much done in life if you only work on the days you feel good.” She squeezed the shoulders of another guard. “You’ll get started now. Hunter here is gonna keep you company. Who knows? Maybe you’ll have this girl up and running in a week. We call that a stretch goal.”
Alan shot Dan a look, like, Nice job with the radio, dummy, and Dan gave him a look back, like, Well, maybe you should’ve held on to David’s gun.
Rico shoved Dan between his shoulder blades as he and Lenny were led toward the Jeep. “I’ll tell him,” Dan said to Alan before being tossed in the back seat.
Alan waved a wrench.
Rico uncuffed Dan outside his room.
“You know, Foster, next time I won’t wait for the order. I’ll put a bullet in your ass without hesitation.”
“You’re a monster, got it.” Dan reached for the door handle but turned back to Rico and sized him up once more. Maybe it was the waning effects of the adrenaline—maybe it was the way Rico had threatened Mara—but Dan still very much wanted to hurt the man. “When Brody hired you to be head of security, did the contract specifically state you’d be murdering guests? Or is that out of scope?”
Rico smiled. He had a gold tooth in the back. “Killing you will be one of the only perks of this job.”
Dan tilted his head. “Oh, no. One of the only perks? You don’t like your job? I can actually relate. Hey, what’d you want to be when you grew up?”
The briefest of frowns from Rico told Dan he’d struck a nerve, so like an idiot, he drilled.
“Wait, don’t say it.” Dan snapped and pointed. “A luchador. No? Okay, I’m looking at you, and I’m seeing…artisanal cheesemaker. Wait. A dictator. That’s it. Small economy, somewhere tropical, with one of those little berets that—”
Rico slapped Dan so hard that he thought he might need his own gold tooth. He slunk into the wall and clutched the side of his face. Shit. Rarely were Dan’s jokes worth it, but that one definitely wasn’t.
Rico waved a finger. “Don’t fucking play with me, Foster. I’ll bury you like I buried that pool boy.”
Dan barreled inside and slammed the door before Rico could swing again. Then he remembered something and shouted into the peephole, “David is handcuffed to the bus in the parking lot, but he’s fine. Bye!”
When he was sure Rico was gone, Dan collapsed into bed—it was curiously free of Mara-sized lumps—and tried to steady the spinning room. When he opened his eyes, Mara and Charles hovered over him, their cell phone lights bearing down. Mara hugged him, squealed. She reeked of tequila.
“What happened to your shirt?” Mara asked.
“Alan,” Charles said, panicked. “Where’s Al—”
Dan sat up and explained everything, which was more embarrassing when reconsidered aloud. They’d been caught. Twice. They’d found a means of escape and lost it within the span of ten minutes. Alan was captured. Dan was open-hand-slapped by a Neanderthal. He was a little vague on having been almost executed—for Mara’s benefit.
Charles paced the room, his feet leaving little puddles atop the tile. Mara’s legs were slick too, come to think of it.
“Why are you two wet?”
“We were soaking our feet in the jacuzzi tub and drinking tequila from Alan and Charles’s minibar,” Mara said. “Do you want some?”
Dan blinked. “That water was for drinking.”
“Y’all, I’m so anxious about Alan. What if they hurt him? He gets so grumpy when he doesn’t sleep. She can’t have him working all night.” Charles paused. “So, say he fixes the plane, and then…well, what then?”
“Lilyanna and Simon Cowell or whoever her rich friends are fly to Miami, I guess.” Exhaustion engulfed Dan. “I don’t know. I think we need to keep our heads down for a bit. Pray Alan can fix the plane more quickly than he promised Lilyanna, and we can slip out of here.”
“And leave everyone else to fend for themselves,” Mara said.
Dan stared at her, the familiar pit of disappointment just inside his belly. “I don’t know what you want me to do, Mara.”
She bit her thumbnail. She didn’t know either.
“I’m going to get him,” Charles said, marching toward the door.
Dan and Mara shouted, “No!” simultaneously, and Mara snatched his arm. This broke him somehow, and now a man they’d only met that morning was sitting on the edge of their bed weeping, fanning his eyes with his hands, saying, “I’m okay, I’m okay, I’m okay,” while Mara wrapped her arm around his back and said, “Shh, shh.” There was something unnatural about Charles crying. It was like watching Mickey Mouse sob on the steps of the castle or something—he was just so big and lovable and soft that he wasn’t supposed to be sad. Dan found a box of tissues in the bathroom, and Charles mouthed Thanks while dabbing his face.
“Tequila tears,” he said with a chuckle. “Y’all, I’m just so worried.”
Mara raised her eyebrows at Dan, like, Say something, and Dan raised his eyebrows back, like, I’ve been doing a lot of talking lately, but then she blew air from her nose, which meant she insisted. After a moment, Dan sat next to Charles. His hands fidgeted.
“It’s alright, man. Alan’s going to be okay. They need him. We just—we just need to lay low for a while.” Then, an old faithful: “We’re going to figure this out.”
“We’re going to figure this out,” Charles repeated.
Right. That’s what men say in emergencies, even if it doesn’t mean anything.