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  His name was Stuart Vaughn. He was the newest member of the Falcon team, hired three weeks ago, the day after I filed flight plans for the Wheels Up tournament. Being a recent hire, Vaughn hadn’t been in our database long enough for Blitz to make the Bellissimo connection. If they had, they wouldn’t have hired him as security. And as it turned out, they didn’t.

  After having tried a zillion times, I couldn’t hack into Blitz’s Human Resource department and confirm his employment there, so I did the next best thing. I loaded everything from Bea’s camera and spy glasses into the Bellissimo facial recognition software, thousands of images, then loaded Vaughn’s headshot and ran it. The system didn’t find the man at Blitz a single other time. Saturday only. It was hard to believe he’d worked there for all of one day. Just to be sure, I went through the evidence a second time, desaturating all color except the gold of Blitz’s security jackets, conducting a color match search isolating Blitz’s security. That time, he didn’t show up at all. Not once. Not even Saturday, the day I knew he was there. And the reason he didn’t pop up in the color-match search was because he wasn’t wearing Blitz gold. His jacket was gold, but not Blitz issue, so not the right shade.

  He didn’t work for Blitz at all.

  Curious. And disturbing.

  Even more disturbing, I went to the Bellissimo Human Resource database only to find he didn’t work for us either. He was there—Stuart Vaughn, Falcon Flight Attendant—but I couldn’t find where we’d posted the job opening, interviewed anyone, or where he’d even filled out an application. It looked as if Stuart Vaughn had appeared out of thin air. As if he’d walked into the Falcon hangar three weeks ago and said, “I’m your new flight attendant.” Searching his name in the thousands of email exchanges within the Bellissimo system for the forty-eight hours before and after his sudden appearance, I crisscrossed and patched together enough information to determine Stuart Vaughn had pulled it off by telling Denver Sandoval the Bellissimo hired him and telling the Bellissimo Denver Sandoval hired him.

  Why?

  Because he was a Blitz spy.

  He had to be.

  And that was why.

  I ran everyone else on the Falcon crew through the wringer. I had to know if I was dealing with one bad apple or a whole rotten Falcon barrel. Images flew across the screen at vertigo-inducing speed as I ran the pilots, co-pilots, the other seven flight attendants, and the maintenance crew through and came up empty. Or a better way to put it would be everyone else came up clean.

  Stuart Vaughn was the only problem.

  Who was this man?

  Just as it was getting interesting—Vaughn either lost or gave up a job at a bank in Chicago as a financial investigator liaison to infiltrate either Blitz, our Falcon team, or both—a Google Alert dinged into my inbox. Breaking news from Long Island. Cornelius Hampton, IV, the ascot aristocrat Masterpiece winner, the heir to the shampoo fortune, had been the victim of a home invasion. Cat burglars bypassed Hampton’s elaborate and state-of-the-art security system and made off with sixteen million in silver, cash, jewels, and other valuables while he and the rest of his household slept peacefully in his sprawling New York mansion. They woke up to find the place had been ransacked. The wife said, “It was probably Cornelius’s floozy girlfriend. Talk to her. She works at the Cheater Club on Congress.” The lead detective assigned to the major crimes case said, “The only thing we know for sure is the perps aren’t art buffs, because the art collection is the only thing left.” And the claims representative from Equitable National Securities out of Cincinnati said, “This is the single largest personal asset claim our firm has ever seen.”

  Equitable National. Stuart Vaughn worked for Equitable National until three weeks ago when he showed up in Biloxi.

  Equitable National was Cornelius Hampton IV’s bank.

  Which was when I remembered who Mr. Sanders bought the Falcons and the art from.

  Equitable National.

  I took the long way to the nursery.

  The girls were napping peacefully in their cribs. I ran my hand across the top and down the backs of their perfect blonde heads before I sat down in the Mayfair glider opposite July in the exact same spot as yesterday.

  “What’s wrong?” she whispered.

  I rocked for a minute. “I need to go to Bradley’s office. I’ll be out for a few minutes.”

  “Sure sure,” she said. “Can I help with anything?”

  Not unless you can figure out a way to save the Bellissimo.

  But I didn’t say that.

  Something was so wrong. Something with Equitable National, with Stuart Vaughn, with Denver and Robin Sandoval, and I couldn’t let the Falcons take off the next day with so much controversy swirling. Wheels Up was down.

  With my hand on the doorknob of Bradley’s office, I stopped short of turning it when I realized he was on the phone. Talking about me. The first words I heard were, “She did great. I called our driver ten times to ask how she was doing, and every time she was great.”

  I froze.

  “Fifteen miles from home,” Bradley said. “She was gone almost three hours. When she returned, everything was the same as she left it. The girls were fine, the Bellissimo hadn’t closed up shop, and the bad luck she thinks is waiting just outside our door didn’t follow her to the airport and bring down planes.”

  It was sobering, listening to my husband talk about me in a way he didn’t talk to me.

  “Bea.” He said her name on a note somewhere between a laugh and a groan. “Bea Crawford.”

  I didn’t tell Bradley Bea went with me. I didn’t not tell him. I just didn’t tell him.

  Crisp must have told him. One of those ten times.

  Bradley went on to quickly recap the last six months of our lives starting with Mr. Sanders leaving so abruptly. Operating costs trimmed and trimmed and trimmed even more, with the casino still generating nowhere near enough revenue to cover expenses. Every employee in the building doing three jobs. The mind-numbing balancing act of covering overhead and making payroll, servicing the debt, all the while staving off corporate vultures. But now, a little light at the end of the tunnel, thanks to me. He listened at length before he said, “Come on. She’ll be thrilled to see you.”

  A big part of me collapsed with relief. It had to be Fantasy. She was the only person I could think of who Bradley would share that much personal information with. I didn’t know why she’d been so far away from me for so long, but Bradley was right about one thing: I couldn’t wait to see her. My hand slid off the doorknob. I couldn’t stop the Falcons from taking off the next day, in spite of the red flags waving from every wing. Wheels Up was up.

  Plan B. Somehow, someway, I’d have to keep Stuart Vaughn off the Wheels Up run. I wouldn’t ground the Falcons; I’d ground Vaughn. Captain Sandoval was a jerk, no doubt, but his agenda was that of every other pilot: the safety of the souls onboard, starting with his own. He was all business—I’d seen it with my own two eyes—and had a spotless record through three tours of combat missions over Afghanistan. Since then, he’d logged ten thousand hours as a commercial pilot without a single ding on his record. He might be a rotten husband, he could very well be a rotten human being, but by all professional accounts he was excellent in the cockpit. His crew, other than Vaughn, had been with him since the Falcons rolled off the assembly line and had airborne résumés just as impressive. When I reached the end of the Falcon roster, I wasn’t worried about my captain or his staff. I was only concerned with the wild card—Stuart Vaughn.

  I’d take care of him and let Wheels Up go as scheduled. For my husband. For the Bellissimo. For Fantasy, who after avoiding me at every single turn since the day she walked out, was coming to see me, and I didn’t want the first real words we exchanged past hello to be about my latest disaster.

  I slinked back home telling myself it would be okay.

 
As the elevator doors parted to spill me out in my vestibule on the twenty-ninth floor, a Google Alert notification sounded on my phone. Breaking news from Carmel, California, where insurance mogul and Blitz Masterpiece winner Gilbert Templeton’s garage had been broken into. Missing were a McLaren P1, a 1953 Ferrari 250 California, an Alfa Romeo 8C, a Pagani Huayra, a LaFerrari, and a Porsche 918 Spider. The thieves, seen on webcam as a single-file line of hooded shadows in the night, somehow hopped the ten-foot iron fence, bypassed the perimeter, estate, garage, and each car’s individual security devices, started the cars, then drove them past the sleeping Templeton manor and out the front gates into waiting transport trucks. The haul was estimated at somewhere around $250 million dollars. Investigators tracked the luxury and collector vehicles through four additional transfers, the last being onto a cargo container bound for Durres, Albania. The authorities, along with the U.S. Coast Guard, in an impressive display of governmental proficiency, boarded the cargo ship and confiscated the carrier, only to recover the contents of a four-bedroom home, including a ten-person Jacuzzi, belonging to the Salazar family of Pacific Grove. The thieves had sent the authorities on a wild goose chase; the cars were nowhere. A representative from Equitable National Securities, on behalf of Gilbert Templeton’s interests, said his client was heartbroken, and any information leading to the discovery of his beloved car collection would be rewarded with a gently-used 2005 Bugatti Veyron. Black on black. But only if Mr. Templeton’s cars were returned with no additional mileage.

  That was two Masterpiece winners down, one to go.

  Instead of stepping out and going through my front door, I stayed on the elevator. I pushed the button for the twenty-fifth floor. I made my way down the hall slowly. I very hesitantly knocked, a large part of me hoping she wouldn’t be there. The door flew open and Bea said, “What’s up?”

  “I have one last spy job for you.”

  Nineteen

  Friday, Wheels Up Day, my biggest day at work in a year and a half, brought my parents to my door.

  Ding dong.

  I opened it, thinking I’d see July reporting for baby duty, and stood there staring at my parents like I was seeing them for the first time in my life. Bradley had been on the phone yesterday with Daddy. Not Fantasy. Daddy.

  I’d have asked why everyone, including my own husband, kept their visit a secret from me, but I had a sneaking suspicion. And it wasn’t like I could turn them away. I stared at my mother and father, wondering how I was going to turn Equitable National inside out this morning and pull off my first Up junket tonight with them here. What was going on? For sure, they weren’t just in the neighborhood.

  “We were just in the neighborhood,” my mother said.

  Daddy leaned in and gave me a peck on the cheek. “Just for the day, honey. We know you’re busy.” He said it with his hands full of overnight bags.

  I opened the door wider, recovering. “What a surprise! Who’s keeping Anderson Cooper?”

  Anderson Cooper was my cat. My beautiful cat. Mother stayed with us for two weeks when we brought the girls home from the hospital, and she, along with everyone else who came to meet our newborns, almost lost her mind.

  House tracked Anderson from room to room.

  ANDERSON COOPER LOCATION CHANGE TO KITCHEN! ANDERSON COOPER LOCATION CHANGE TO—ANDERSON COOPER LOCATION CHANGE TO SUNROOM! At the end of the second week when Mother left, she took Anderson with her until we could get House under control. I missed my cat with all my heart, but even I had to admit life was significantly easier without House reporting Anderson’s every paw step, because Anderson Cooper was a kitty, and therefore she roamed. (She was stone deaf too. Solid white, icy blue eyes, she looked just like Anderson Cooper, and she was deaf.) And my deaf kitty wandered the house at night.

  It was an insomniacal nightmare.

  Mother said, “Meredith has Anderson.”

  My sister didn’t even like my cat.

  “It’s okay, honey.” Mother patted my arm. “We’re only staying the day.”

  Daddy shifted the weight of the overnight bags. “Where are our girls?”

  My parents swept past me to get to Bexy and Quinn, and I ran for my computer behind the kitchen. I cracked my knuckles over the keyboard and into the server at Wilcox County District Court in Camden, Alabama. Halfway down the list, date-stamped yesterday by the Court Clerk, was a Dissolution of Marriage docket. Crawford versus Crawford. I’m not saying my parents didn’t adore my daughters and wouldn’t be at my doorstep every single day of their lives if they could, but they were here today so that Daddy could serve Bea divorce papers.

  And there went my spy.

  I poured three cups of coffee. I would say I poured three cups of fresh coffee, but that’s a given at my house. I joined my parents in the living room where Mother was playing Pat-a-cake with Quinny while Bex was giving Daddy a thorough ear exam. I sat beside my father. “Please don’t tell her yet.”

  He cut his eyes at me. “Honey, we need to talk.”

  He knew my history with Bea Crawford as well as, if not better than, anyone else. He couldn’t believe we’d been under the same roof, albeit a large roof, for almost six weeks and we were both still alive. He wanted to know why. He knew something was up and he was here to serve her, drag her back to Pine Apple to face the divorce music, and get to the bottom of exactly what was going on with me and Bea. I think he suspected we were up to no good.

  He was right.

  “Where is she?” he asked.

  “I’m not exactly sure.”

  Except I was exactly sure. What I wasn’t sure about was why I hadn’t heard from her.

  The morning dragged on and on. And on. We sat on the terrace and watched the Ferris wheel turn at Blitz and talked about how big and pretty the girls were while I should have been going through Equitable National’s everything. Bex and Quinn showed off while I should have been conducting a deeper background dig on Robin Sandoval. The dogwoods were blooming, and we (Mother) debated which bloom lasted longer, white or pink, while I should have been on the phone telling the third Masterpiece Salon winner to batten down the hatches. We drank iced tea while I should have been checking in with the two Bellissimo chefs who were on their way to Million Air to deliver lobster and caviar to the Falcons. We talked about July, my parents wanting to meet her, while I should have been tracking down Bea Crawford, who still hadn’t called.

  “Davis.” My father patted my knee. “Relax.”

  We had room-service lunch—BLTs and sweet potato fries. Daddy gave the girls their first sweet potato fries, and he was their new best friend forever. Afterward, we had quick baby girl baths and wardrobe changes, thanks to the sweet potato fries. The girls took naps in their grandparent’s arms. Mother and Daddy told me every single thing that had happened in Pine Apple since the last time they were here to see their big girls, and not much had happened. Mother produced my niece Riley’s most recent straight A report card for me to admire, photos of Anderson Cooper sleeping on Daddy’s head, and a stack of Pine Apple Baptist Sunday bulletins so I could catch up. Grass grew. Arteries hardened. Rocks formed. Somehow I made it through the afternoon, and at three thirty, half an hour behind schedule, FlightTracker dinged on my phone. The Falcons had taken off. With or without Stuart Vaughn, I still didn’t know.

  In spite of it all, a very small sliver of me was thrilled.

  Because of it all, a large part of me was terrified.

  It wasn’t until four o’clock that I finally heard from Bea. And I didn’t hear from her as much as I got a text: He’s a biter. Bit the stew out of me. Look what I found in his closet.

  I’d sent Bea to unit 6010 at the Oxford Point Village on East Taylor Road in Gulfport to detain Stuart Vaughn. When she left, she understood the plan. At least I thought she did.

  I told her to park around the corner. Then, in her walking gear, which now included a fitness
pole, a pack stuffed with her spy tools, and a water carrier, to wait for Vaughn to back out of his garage on his way to Million Air for the inaugural Wheels Up run and simply get in the way. I pulled up 6010 Oxford Point on Google Earth and went through it with Bea, step by step. When she saw the garage door lift and his Chevy Traverse rental back out, she was to count to ten, step out from behind the boxwoods, give the car a thump, and make him think he’d hit her. She asked if she needed fake blood, because it would be hard to track down, it not being trick or treat and all. I said making him think she’d twisted an ankle would do. Maybe throw in a few other symptoms like “Ow, my back,” or “Yow, my neck,” but I warned her not to lay it on too thick. Just enough to constitute a potential liability nightmare for him and a possible medical emergency for her. She asked about ketchup. She said ketchup was available year round, unlike trick or treat blood, and she felt it would go a long way toward convincing Stuart Vaughn she was almost dead. We lost another five minutes as I discussed overkill with her. And how much this assignment depended on the opposite of overkill—subtlety. And there was nothing subtle about ketchup. Or her, for that matter. Seriously questioning my own judgement, but too far down too many roads to turn around, I warned her again not to adlib. Stick to the script. Our only goal was to keep him from going to work. He’d be busy with her and he’d have to call Sandoval, who’d make accommodations. Wheels Up could proceed without one of eight flight attendants.

  I stared at my phone. I gasped for air. I felt my father watching me.

  The only part Bea had gotten right was the medical emergency.

  The first picture in my message window was of Stuart Vaughn, bound and gagged, secured to a kitchen chair with what looked like fifty bungee cords. He was also sporting two black eyes, a bloody nose, had a sock stuffed in his mouth, and a very broken arm.