DOUBLE KNOT Page 19

  “What?” (All three of them.)

  I checked the time. “He’s still locked in Arlinda’s changing room.”

  Jess squealed with delight.

  “How is he still in her changing room?” I wondered aloud. He’d had all the time in the world to escape. “Why hasn’t he called anyone to let him out?”

  “The pilot,” Fantasy said. “Why hasn’t he called her yet?”

  A very good question. I asked digiCam to locate Colby Mitchell. Her profile popped up.

  “She’s such a craybitch,” Jess said.

  “Who?” Mother asked. “What?”

  “Crazy bitch,” Fantasy interpreted.

  “Craybitch.” Mother tried it on for size. “I know a few of those.”

  I asked digiCam to find her. It couldn’t. Colby Mitchell was either in her stateroom, which I doubted, not on Probability, which I also doubted, or somewhere completely out of DeLuna’s V2 reach, which I suspected. Otherwise he wouldn’t still be locked in Arlinda’s changing room. It made no sense she wasn’t here. I asked digiCam if Colby Mitchell had ever set foot on this ship. Yes, she had. Boy, had she. The system couldn’t pinpoint her exact location just then, but the evidence of her boarding a week ago with the ship’s crew piled up on the screen. So much footage, it would have taken the rest of the night to watch it. Colby Mitchell and the late Poppy Campbell, dressed in stateroom attendant uniforms, starred in scene after scene moving in and out of 704, the submarine, and the casino, setting Probability traps. I froze the screen on a surveillance shot of them clinking glasses at a bar table Friday night, the night before we sailed. They were laughing. At us.

  “Let’s go,” I said.

  My posse followed me out. One of them barefoot.

  * * *

  Prospect 1000 didn’t look like a submarine at all. It had submarine features, primarily its underwater operation capabilities, but it looked like a mini Probability. Diesel powered, max submersive speed of five knots, Prospect held a crew of six, had seating for thirty-two day passengers, and five-star overnight accommodations for six. With an operating depth of a thousand feet, Prospect was built for Probability passengers who wanted to explore the deep silent subsea in complete luxury. It was sixty-five feet long, twelve feet wide, weighed seventy-two tons, and had one airlocked door. Prospect was bulletproof, bombproof, and a perfect prison.

  Storage and supplies—crates of romaine lettuce and baby carrots inside walk-in coolers, wrapped pallets of a thousand folded Probability pool towels, hundreds of sealed cases of liquor—marked our path from Computer Services to Prospect. The ceiling was dark and low, the floor cold and slick, and eerie florescent drop lights swayed above us, casting odd shadows. Jessica DeLuna’s grip on my arm got tighter and tighter with our every echoed step, and she would surely rip it off before we reached the submarine. We passed a section of replacement deck furniture, the large cage of a workshop, complete with electric drills and power saws, and at the end of the path we stood in from of an eight-foot-long glass aquarium. Inside the aquarium, a thousand live lobsters tried to climb and claw the glass walls, and behind the aquarium was a dark blue industrial rolling steel garage door.

  The entire time, maybe fifteen minutes that felt more like fifteen hours, we didn’t see a soul. In a way, it would have been less terrifying to have happened on someone we had to explain our (predicament) (Anderson Cooper) (Jess in her undies) presence to. It would have been less frightening to have been challenged, detained, forced to pull a gun on someone. As it was, while we made our way to Prospect 1000 at the other end of the ship, we felt like the only people in the world. By the time we made it around the lobsters to the rolling garage door, we’d moved in on one another so tight we were traveling as a huddled unit. I didn’t realize it until we stopped, but Mother, on my right, had wrapped a protective arm around my babies and was holding on with all her might.

  We couldn’t open the garage door.

  We didn’t have the right V2.

  We slid down the blue garage door and sat on the cold floor.

  I waited for Jess to start screaming “So? So? So?” but the second she sat down, she conked out.

  “He has the V2 to open the garage,” Fantasy said. “DeLuna has it.” DeLuna’s wife’s head fell on her shoulder.

  “I wish I could sleep like her.” I didn’t realize Mother and I were holding hands, but we were. “I could use forty winks.”

  “What does that even mean?” Fantasy asked. “I know it means take a nap, but if you’re winking forty times during your nap are you getting any rest?”

  We sat against the garage door silently. Except for Jess snoring. Anderson Cooper purred on the babies.

  Fantasy said, “I guess everyone’s in the casino.”

  “Yep.” I tried to keep my eyes open. “Did either of you see a cart anywhere?”

  “In those coolers,” Mother said. “I saw a cart with milk bottles.”

  “Bottles?” Fantasy asked.

  “I hope it’s on wheels,” I said.

  “Are we going to roll Jess?” Fantasy asked.

  “No,” I said. “Let’s take tools back to our suite.”

  “What kind of tools?” Mother asked.

  “The kind to patch the hole in the wall so DeLuna can’t come down it.”

  “If we have access to tools—” Fantasy repositioned Jess’s dark snoring head, “—let’s break into this garage and get No Hair out.”

  “It’s electric,” I said. “The only thing we can do is electrocute ourselves or tear up the door. We have to have the right V2 to open it.” We needed DeLuna’s V2. I’d taken my one and only shot at the Probability system twenty minutes ago when I deleted our faces from digiCam so we could move around. By now, the system knew it had been breached and was certainly locked down. If I could get back in, I’d reroute his V2 functions to Poppy’s phone. I’d transfer his phone brain to hers so we could get to No Hair, just behind the garage door, so close. The best I could hope for now was an hour’s sleep and enough brain function to hack into Probability’s system through Poppy’s laptop and gain access to his V2 that way. And turn ours on while I was at it.

  Mother’s head snapped up when her chin accidentally hit her chest. “Oops-a-daisy,” she said. “The sandman hit me.”

  “Time to wake her up?” Fantasy squirmed under the weight of Jess.

  “Yes,” I said. “Let’s go.”

  I placed an open palm on the garage door before I walked away. My promise to No Hair I’d get him out. One way or another, I’d free him.

  * * *

  We made it back to 704.

  From the relative safety of the public elevators and companionways, I made four more attempts to reach Bradley with Poppy’s V2. None of the calls made it through. Probability was still dead in the water, so calling anyone in any position of authority still wasn’t an option.

  We couldn’t find the energy to patch the hole in the dressing room wall.

  “We’ll sleep in shifts.” Fantasy pulled up a gun and a chair. “You go first, Davis.”

  And that’s the last I remember of Sunday.

  The next thing I knew, we were up, down, across, curled, spooned, and tangled in my bed when the dawn of Monday morning reached Anderson Cooper’s little eyes. She made several rounds with her pokey little paws until she was sure everyone was awake.

  It took me a minute to process that we’d lived through the night. And at some point while we slept, the Probability engines started up and we were moving again.

  Jess sat up first. “So, how did we get back here? So, what happened?”

  Mother’s bed head popped up. “I could eat a horse.”

  Fantasy’s pushed Anderson to me. “Take your alarm clock.”

  I saw legs I knew, but didn’t know. I lifted blankets a
nd followed the legs to their owner. “Arlinda?”

  TWENTY

  By silent agreement, we moved to my stateroom. Safety in numbers.

  It looked—the sitting room full of everyone’s everything, the bedroom a study in pillows and blankets, the dressing room sprinkled with power tools and scattered Probability server bikinis, the gold bathroom countertops brimming—as if 704 had flipped, shaken, then righted itself.

  We gathered around the kitchen table at nine thirty, two and a half hours until noon, when ninety-nine-point-nine percent of Probability passengers and security would be in the casino, providing enough cover for us to attempt another No Hair rescue. Two and a half hours to figure out how to attempt another No Hair rescue. Two and a half hours and a computer to somehow contact my husband, Mr. Sanders at the Bellissimo, my father, the Coast Guard, Pizza Hut, 911, the Red Cross, GEICO Roadside Assistance, Hawaii Five-O, Aquaman—anyone or anything that could or would help us.

  Mother, freshly showered and dressed in a nautical jogging suit featuring anchors and buoys connected by loopy boat lines, fed us sausage biscuits, a cinnamon pull-apart cake, and cantaloupe. She wedged the food onto the white kitchen table between the laptop, The Compass, her (no signal whatsoever) portable phone, and the V2 we took off a corpse. Then she came at us with two coffeepots. She poured steaming hot coffee into English pub beer glasses for herself, Fantasy, Jess, and Arlinda, and when she got to me, she poured from the second pot. “This is a little bit of the regular Starbucks, Davis, and a whole lot of the Starbucks decaffeinated.”

  Why hadn’t I thought of this?

  Mother stood there in her sailor suit with the two coffeepots and launched into one of her favorite speeches: “The Good Old Days.” The television had three channels, kids played outside, mothers didn’t work, nice young men wearing snappy uniforms pumped gas, empty soda bottles somehow turned into Saturday matinee tickets, and pregnant women drank coffee.

  “So, when was this?” Jess had showered and changed into a clean pool towel, her long dark hair still dripping. “Are you talking about Dr. Phil?”

  I stared at the coffee trying to figure out how to get through the blue garage door. Mother stared at me as I stared at the coffee trying to figure out how to get through the blue garage door. Which brought on another of her favorites: “Keep Your Chin Up.” Don’t meet trouble halfway, every cloud has a silver lining, tough times call for tougher women, paddle the canoe you find yourself in, and the darkest hour is just before the dawn.

  “We have a canoe?” Jess asked.

  My babies rolled and tumbled.

  Arlinda reached for more cinnamon cake.

  “This is delicious.”

  * * *

  The primary bar servicing Probability casino patrons was located directly above 704. Five small satellite bars were strategically scattered elsewhere in the casino for alcohol emergencies, but ninety percent of the cocktails and one hundred percent of the wine came from the main bar. Behind it, the fifty (supermodels) servers, all female, had their own changing rooms and lockers. The changing rooms were cozy personal cubbies with full-length mirrors, lighted makeup mirrors, rolling wardrobes, and shoe racks. Against the back wall the servers had a locker for personal items and valuables. The changing rooms and lockers were V2 access only.

  For the week-long cruise, the servers had a total of twenty-one skimpy uniforms. Three wardrobe changes a day. Their V2s alerted them when it was time to change, and they were allowed eight minutes to put down their trays, hustle to their changing rooms, strip out of one nautical bikini, and tuck themselves into the next, then be back on the casino floor passing out Red Bull and vodka. Between uniform changes the servers weren’t allowed to leave the casino floor.

  When the casino opened at the stroke of midnight after the billionaire married the nanny, no one entered the changing rooms again until the next uniform change at two a.m. So no one knew Max DeLuna was trapped until the V2 alert went out to remind the servers a uniform change was approaching. At eight minutes ’til. Max DeLuna had been trapped in Arlinda Smith’s changing room for two solid hours. He couldn’t break down the door, because one thing Probability did very well was doors, and he couldn’t fit down the passageway in the floor of her locker, had he even wanted to fit down the passageway, which he probably didn’t, because he believed his wife to be at the end of the tunnel. And it was a very safe bet he didn’t want to see her.

  What we hadn’t taken time to anticipate last night when we sent her up the wall to trap him in her changing room was Arlinda’s exit strategy when Max DeLuna escaped. Arlinda had gone straight to work on the casino floor and tried not to think about Max DeLuna locked in her changing room again until she received the second V2 warning to prepare for a wardrobe change. Only then did it occur to her she would have to deal with the aftermath of locking him up. Because she realized, as she passed the main bar, that had he managed to escape, she’d know about it already. He’d have tracked her down first. And throttled her.

  Her pace slowed as she approached the changing rooms, her sister servers flying past, and she was the last one to set foot in the common area. She found a small crowd at the door of her changing room, most in various stages of nakedness climbing in and out of bikinis. One said, “Arlinda, there’s a man in your changing room.”

  She died a little.

  “You need to let him out.”

  He would surely kill her the rest of the way when she opened the door. So she waited until more servers stopped to gawk, several already in bright yellow push-up bras with matching boy shorts sporting embroidered captain’s wheels on the butts, because the more witnesses the merrier.

  “You need to let him out, Arlinda.”

  “Yes, Arlinda.” A man’s voice from inside her changing room. “Let him out.”

  She had no choice but to scan the door with her V2.

  Max DeLuna stepped out, straightened his tie, and found Arlinda in the server crowd. He held out his hand. “Give me my V2.”

  “I don’t have your V2, Mr. DeLuna.”

  “Yes, you do. Give it to me.”

  “No, I don’t.” Her knees wobbled. “I don’t.”

  This went on until server V2s all around sounded the third and final warning and servers began scattering. It got down to the two of them.

  DeLuna said, “Get your things and come with me.”

  “Mr. DeLuna,” Arlinda said. “It was an accident.”

  “Don’t insult me. Get your things.”

  Arlinda went to get her things. But the second she stepped into her changing room she kicked the door closed and scanned it locked. She began sailing her personal belongings down the chute that led to 704 and slid down behind them. She found a pillow and a blanket, then crawled into bed with us.

  Sometime during the night, the path from 704 to the floor of her locker had been permanently sealed, blocking any future 704 exit by bulkhead. But that was okay. Because I’d wiped our faces off the Probability grid and we had Poppy’s V2 to get in and out the door. Max DeLuna thought he’d solved his 704 problem.

  I intended to let him keep thinking it.

  It was ten thirty and I’d finished my third English pub glass of the Starbucks (so good) before Arlinda finished the story. I tried her V2 again. Nothing. DeLuna knew where she was, he knew her V2 had come down the wall with her, and it was just as operable as ours were, which is to say not at all. “Where is Mr. DeLuna’s V2, Arlinda?”

  She shifted in her white seat. “I don’t have it and I don’t know where it is. He pulled it out of his front pocket and passed it to me when he bent over to look in the locker.”

  “You should have given him a little push when he bent over to look in the locker,” Fantasy said.

  “Then he’d be here.” Jess tapped the table. “I’d hate that so hard.”

  I’
d hate that so hard too. Because we didn’t have another trunk. “And then what?”

  Arlinda demonstrated. “I had my V2 in this hand. I had his in this one. I had to get out fast. I didn’t want to get the V2s mixed up so I sat his down.”

  “Where?”

  “I can’t even remember. My shoe rack, I think.”

  “He was in there two hours,” I said. “Alone in a closet for two hours. How’d he miss it?”

  It was a think tank all around the white table, except for Jess, who asked, “So?” Then every chair scraped back except hers and we made a run for the dressing room, Jess trailing behind, holding up her towel, yelling, “So? So? So?”

  We sidestepped the power tools to get to Arlinda’s scattered shoes. Mother found it inside a red leather Fendi ankle boot.

  We had Max DeLuna’s V2.

  TWENTY-ONE

  DeLuna’s V2 had been cleared of personal information, but not deleted from the system. Which meant he had no idea we had it. He might not know where it was, but he didn’t suspect we had it or it would’ve been completely scrubbed. As it was, factory settings and all, the home screen apps were available and the passenger identification information transferred to a different V2. The V2 we found in the Fendi ankle boot wasn’t assigned to anyone. Or anyone’s thumb. I pushed the power button; it lit up. Behind a number pad was the phone application. Behind a question mark was the V2 help desk. Behind a black bow tie, we could make restaurant reservations, beside it a mailbox, then a full moon, which turned out to be an app for shipboard stargazing. Behind a rolled newspaper was the day’s itinerary, and behind a wind rose was our exact location with a countdown clock showing we would arrive in the Caymans in 9:24:02. (9:23:59) (9:23:56) (And so forth and so on.) My favorite was the padlock icon. What was left of his V2 should still open and close the doors it was programmed for.