Temptation Island (55 page)

‘You’re making a mockery of me.’

‘No more than you of me.’

And with those words Lori knew she had signed her life away for ever to Maximo Diaz.

He insisted on holding her hand. As they passed down the corridor, Lori felt compelled to turn back. Someone had been watching them; she had sensed it at her neck.

The figure disappeared out of sight, so quick she could have been mistaken. It was a man, hidden in shadow: just a movement, there and then vanished, like the dark wings of a bird.

As far as the patrol on the island was concerned, Juan Romero, aka Enrique Marquez, had never boarded Reuben van der Meyde’s boat in the first place.

As Enrique stepped into the lower deck quarters for a smoke, he reflected on what an easy gig Margaret Jensen was getting. All the old lady had to do was stick to a story.

‘Three minutes, Romero.’ His supervisor collared him on the way past.

With a smirk, Enrique blew out smoke. He’d been playing truant all day, taking breaks without permission, making eyes at the women and giving attitude to the men, anything that gave trouble to the organisers. Later, when he appeared bleary-eyed amid claims he’d fallen asleep on the job, they’d decide it was little wonder he had missed his cue when finally the yacht departed.

Grinding out the cigarette, he made his way back inside. In the galley, signature cocktails were being prepared in sparkling V-shaped glasses. The V formed part of a VDM silver stirrer, on top of which was a
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made of edible jewels.

In reality, Enrique would have worked his ass off like never before to get to dry land. His part required both mental and physical vigour. First, the disposal of evidence: the detonator tossed over the escape boat, the airplug released on the dinghy, his own clothes stripped off and flung wide so they looked like debris thrown from the wreck. Then the final, critical push. He would imagine the gathered panic on the beach as, on the distant horizon, the world’s glitterati perished in pieces on a bomb-wrecked ocean. Margaret Jensen would come rushing, the child’s hand in hers, feigning shock, screaming and crying like the rest.

Under cover of darkness, Enrique wouldn’t be heading to the northern shore. Instead he would swim east, towards the dry, duplicate uniform Margaret had left for him.

It was almost a pity there would be no one to congratulate him on his genius.

Enrique barely noticed as his serving trays were loaded and he turned to re-enter the fray.

JB Moreau passed him on the stairwell. Enrique had to flatten himself against the wall to stop being knocked into. Invisible to the end.

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Lance Chlomsky was terrified of slipping up. A fortnight’s intensive training might have prepared him for the physical work, but being around all these famous people and not tripping or spilling or making an ass of himself? Forget it.

Tonight was a chance to make something of his life. Six months in a correctional facility for bringing an armed weapon into school … well, his mom had told him then that his future was as good as over.
How could you be so stupid, boy?
But he’d only done it because the other kids told him to. They’d said he could be in their gang if he passed the initiation and Lance had never had any friends. He was lanky, scrawny, with a face full of red spots: a loner and a loser.

One night working for Reuben van der Meyde was his big break. It had been a lottery, too many underprivileged kids to pick from, but for once Lance had been lucky.

He put forward his tray and watched as it was filled. Tiger prawns, swordfish and calamari; fish roe, scallops and lobster.

JB Moreau himself was in the galley. Lance felt the stickiness on his brow, the way he’d felt at school when the big boys ganged up on him.

The Frenchman surveyed the space with sharp, appraising eyes that eventually settled on Lance. The kid looked away, embarrassed.

Moments later he heard a voice, an accent, close to his ear.

‘You’re going to do me a favour,’ it said. ‘You’re going to listen carefully to these instructions, and then you’re going to execute them. Do you understand?’

Stevie needed air. She pushed open the doors to the rear deck and emerged straight into the satisfied regard of Dirk Michaels.

It was cold now, almost totally dark. They were alone.

‘I was hoping you’d come,’ he growled, a wedge of tobacco between his fleshy lips.

‘Lay off Bibi Reiner,’ she told him. ‘I don’t want a fuss; I don’t want a scene. And trust me, neither do you.’

He chuckled, a horrid, humourless sound. ‘Trust you? That’s funny. Seems like you know exactly what the broad’s been up to.’

‘I know what you and Linus did to her.’

‘I admit nothing.’

‘Really? I’d have thought it was in your nature to brag about it.’

Dirk leaned in so she could smell his breath. ‘The whore deserved everything she got. She loved every second, was begging us for more.’

‘You and Linus abused her. You made her suffer.’

‘And?’

‘You made her life hell and you know it,’ Stevie spat. ‘Linus tricked her into starring in those movies, then you and he imagined it gave you rights to assault her.’

‘She’s still alive, ain’t she?’

‘You would have ended up killing her. If she hadn’t killed herself first.’

Dirk eyeballed her. ‘I’d watch what you say. There’re plenty people here who’d be
very
interested to know what happened the night Linus died. So much for a heartbroken widow! The bitch is a
killer
.’

‘You blackmailed her.’ Stevie stood her ground. ‘Here, on Cacatra. Van der Meyde allowed it to happen. We know everything, Dirk.’

‘That’s an interesting theory.’

‘Don’t fuck with me.’

He grinned, enjoying himself. ‘Far as I can tell, there’s only one way out of this.’

She shot him daggers. ‘And I’m not going to like it.’

‘Ever since he saw you in New York, he wanted you both. Bibi was only ever half his vision. It was the package he craved.’

‘Linus was sick,’ Stevie told him. ‘And so are you.’

Dirk moved closer. Above, the stars froze like spectators at a death match. ‘We’re businessmen,’ he said. ‘We’re commercially minded. You know he wanted you as well. I made it clear to the mourning widow when we were last in touch. She stays involved in my … projects—’ he shrugged as if it were simple ‘—and she promises to bring you in, too. There, you have my word. The recording is destroyed.’

‘Fuck you.’

‘What option do you have?’

‘I’ve got dirt on this place you’re too thick to even guess at.’

He smirked. ‘I’m sure.’

‘You’d better be. Don’t make me use it, Dirk, because I don’t want to. It affects too many people, innocent people I don’t want to bring into it. You might think you’re tight with van der Meyde but you’re not in on the half of it.’

‘I’m giving you an opportunity.’ He ignored her words, heard them for diversion. ‘I’d take it, if I were you.’

‘Thank God you’re not.’

‘Then be prepared to face the consequences.’

Stevie slid open the door. ‘Likewise.’

‘It’s awful, isn’t it? To lose your husband so soon.’ Christina Michaels lowered her voice. ‘And under
those
circumstances … Bibi Reiner must still be in pieces!’

It was a relief to Xander that Christina appeared to know nothing of her husband’s ploy, though not a surprise. Dirk would hardly want to advertise his extramarital curriculum.

‘I suppose she’s destined for the trash heap,’ Christina mused, with a shade of glee. ‘Imagine that! Burned out and washed up in Hollywood before she’s even begun.’

Xander spotted JB Moreau entering the saloon. He had known this man long enough and well enough to be sure when JB had things on his mind. It was in the way he stood.

Summoning his courage, Xander made his excuses and threaded through the throng. JB possessed radar for incoming challenges, and his eyes landed on Xander’s in accordance.

‘We need a word, Moreau,’ he said when he came close. ‘In private.’

Aurora travelled to the lower deck and through a wood-panelled corridor. It wasn’t anything special and she decided it led to the crew’s quarters. Beyond, through a glass partition, the lavish guests’ accommodation opened out.

Handmade wallpaper, intricate in design, adorned her route. She pushed one of the cabin doors and was surprised when it opened. Inside, a white-silk four-poster bed sat amid ornate bamboo furniture, at the foot of which was a retractable plasma-screen TV. Two gold-framed portholes looked out to night. She stood at one, unable to see through impenetrable darkness.

Aurora lowered herself on to the bed. It was deathly quiet.

She caught her image in the porthole and glimpsed her mother—the woman she had believed to be her mother—before her own, tortured reflection replaced it.

Feeding a hand into her dress, she grabbed the blade and extracted it. It was long and glinting, the grip made of bone.

Aurora pressed the point of it into her fingertip until the soft pad flowered with blood.

Then the tears came, at first because it hurt and then because it seized a deeper ache, one she could bleed out for years and years but never be rid of, and once she started, her head in her hands, she found she was unable to stop.

Lori noticed the kid. He was short and scrawny with a mean-set jaw and a rash of toxic pimples. He’d been hanging around her and Maximo for ages, as if he wasn’t interested in attending to any of the other guests, and it was starting to make her uncomfortable.

She knew why van der Meyde had hired staff from an unconventional
source. It was acknowledgement that he, too, had come from nothing and that chances in life were few.

Or was it guilt?

Did a man like van der Meyde have a conscience?

Certainly the move had been publicised enough: Reuben was shrewd to the last. But this kid was like a bad omen. Each time she steered Maximo away, he followed.

Memories of the hate mail swamped over her. What if that person was here tonight?

What if he was watching her now?

Lance Chlomsky could not stop staring at Maximo Diaz. The actor reminded him that he had been dealt one of life’s great injustices: ugliness. Since his boyhood, Lance had never understood why some people got it all: the face, the body, the height, and how, as if that weren’t enough, those very things fed into life’s twin triumphs—girls and money. While others, like him, spent their lives squeezing pustules in the mirror and pleasuring themselves by their own hand, the accompanying lack of confidence and self-esteem meaning they would for ever be that way.

Maximo alongside Lori Garcia—they had to be Hollywood’s best-looking couple. With dead certainty, Lance knew he would never, not in a million years, know what it felt like to love a woman like that.

It was impossible to take his eyes off them, but all the same it hurt, like trying to look at the sun and catching it only in brief, dazzling bursts.

‘Is everything OK?’ Lori appeared at Stevie’s side.

‘I’m looking for Xander,’ she said, scanning the saloon for her husband. She thought she spotted his dark head
moving among the sea of bodies but was mistaken. ‘Have you seen him?’

‘Not since earlier.’

Stevie crossed the cabin and followed a winding spiral to the upper level. A couple were embracing where the stairs ended and pulled apart self-consciously. Quickly she dipped into the smaller salon and checked the upstairs bar. Nothing.

As a last refuge she travelled to the lower deck, making her way through the guest quarters, marvelling at and repelled by her surroundings. No wonder van der Meyde wanted this part open. He was a show-off and this was about as impressive as you could get.

She was about to turn back when she heard, faintly, the sound of someone crying.

It was a woman. Stevie halted, sharpened her hearing. A girl. The person was young.

Following the sound, trying to trace it, she pressed her ear against each cabin door in turn. The acoustics, all those pockets of space, played tricks, like chasing a feather on the wind.

Eventually, she came to it. Curious, she knocked. The crying stopped and she listened for a response. When none came, she pushed open the door.

At first she didn’t recognise the figure. The white-blonde hair was dishevelled, the dress crumpled and torn and a thin line of blood ran from the girl’s hand and trickled down her wrist.

But the instant she looked up, frantic and bleary-eyed, Stevie knew who it was.

‘Aurora,’ she exclaimed. ‘What’s happened?’

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Margaret picked a path through the dark. The ground was prickly, her shoes impractical. She kept off the lit trails, for people were fickle in their memories. When they were questioned later tomorrow, next week, they would be desperate to find a detail they could cling to.

Fortunately Margaret knew this island better than anyone.

The weight of material was reassuring under her arm: Enrique Marquez’s replacement uniform. Now she understood how men like van der Meyde and Moreau could become addicted to wielding power. She’d had access to everything that made tonight’s stunt possible, from the schedules to what the staff were wearing. Mr V underestimated her. He always had.

At last the east shoreline came into view. Waves crashed in, white froth pummelling the rocks. She hoped Enrique had been right when he’d said he was a strong swimmer.

Wedging the uniform in its designated place, Margaret inhaled the night air. Calm.

She turned and headed back to the mansion, humming softly to herself.

The library was like something from the valiant ships of old. Battered, bruised books and maps crowded the walls. A giant compass, suspended above an arc of glass, pointed out to sea. An impressive antique globe sat alongside a gently flickering fireplace. A clock ticked delicately, matching Xander’s heart, two beats to every second.

JB stood facing out of the window. He held his hands behind his back.

‘You must do something,’ said Xander. ‘You owe me that much.’