The Beautiful and the Wicked (28 page)

Ben gave Lila a wide-­eyed look, but Elise, not caring if the help caught her in flagrante delicto, continued to rock and groan upon her lover. Ben said nothing as Elise moved his hands from her hips up to her breasts.

“Don't stop,” she groaned as Lila dashed out of the room.

A sense of dread flooded Lila as she ran back to the main deck. She didn't care about the fact that Ben, at that very moment, was having sex with Elise even though he'd had sex with her the day before. She'd known deep down that Ben was sleeping with Elise when she saw him coming out of her bathroom. What mattered was that her primary murder suspect was currently in her room riding the first officer to her own
petite mort,
while her husband was nowhere to be seen, seconds, minutes, hours away from his own death.

Lila tried to steady herself. It was 12:16
A.M.
, two hours before the police were notified. There was a chance that Elise could still murder her husband, but Lila's gut told her that she had it wrong. A woman being happily fucked at that moment wouldn't turn around, put clothes on, and grab a gun. It didn't make sense.

Another firecracker exploded, momentarily turning the night sky an electric pink. She shot off toward the captain's bridge so she could be in position to observe the murder.

Taking the stairs two at a time, she climbed to the top deck of the boat and went to open the door. It was locked. She pounded on it over and over again, but there was no answer.

“Goddamnit!” She felt her whole plan crumble around her. The panic of the moment gripped her, but she knew what she needed to do. She had to somehow get the keys to the captain's bridge from Nash.

She rushed back down to the main deck. Nash and Poe, two of her other suspects, were facing each other across the bottle-­strewn dinner table. She jumped back when she saw that Poe had a gun pointed to his head. His bulging eyes were staring at Nash. Jack wasn't there, and Clarence, Charity, and Paul were nowhere to be seen. Thiago and Esperanza were slowly swaying in a corner on the other side of the deck, seemingly oblivious to the mayhem surrounding them.

“Do it!” Nash chanted in his now-­slurred Boston accent. “Do it. Do it.”

Poe let out a wild scream as he pulled the trigger. A firework exploded in the sky, making Poe yell even louder. But the gun just clicked; the chamber was empty. Poe's hand shook violently as he put the gun down on the table. Lila saw that the weapon was the snub-­nosed .38 with the cherrywood grip that she'd seen Nash get in St. Barts—­the gun that would soon be drenched in Jack Warren's blood. The murder weapon.

Poe slid the pistol over to Nash. “Your turn now,” he said. His face was a ghostly white, and his pupils were so dilated that you could barely see his ice-­blue irises.

Nash picked up the gun and put it to his temple. Another firework exploded. Pedro and Mudge, who was no longer wearing pants, howled like wolves at the momentarily electric-­pink night sky. Nash and Poe continued to stare intensely at each other.

It was like being in a fever dream, and Lila needed it all to stop. She needed to gain control of this night. She didn't know where Jack was, where Ava was, and she couldn't risk someone killing Jack when she wasn't there to witness it. Even though she knew this broke Teddy's number one rule, Lila decided she needed that gun, for now, just until she could regain control of this future crime scene. So, without pausing to second-­guess herself, she snuck up behind Nash and snatched the gun from his trembling hand.

Both men turned to look at her, wide-­eyed and amazed.

She turned the gun on them both. “Nash, I need the keys to the bridge.”

“Look,” Poe said, pointing a finger at Lila. “I told you an angel would come. If you test God, he sends an angel. A beautiful angel has descended from on high to tell us we won't die tonight.”

“Keys! I need the keys.” Lila felt hot tears come to her eyes. She was running out of time.

“Does that mean that I am chosen?” Nash asked, standing up. His eyes were wide and his face was filled with a beatific radiance. “Does that mean I've been touched by God?”

Lila stepped away, still gripping the gun. “What the fuck is going on here?” she asked no one in particular.

Nash fell to his knees and began to weep as Poe began reciting biblical passages.
“ ‘For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.
' ”

“Don't worry about them,” Pedro called out to Lila as he crouched over a pile of unlit fireworks. “They're both tripping their asses off. Took three tabs each. Give them a few hours, they'll come around . . . I hope.”

She leaned over Nash's body, searching his pockets for the keys, but there was nothing. All he did was roll around the floor and girlishly giggle. She wasn't going to get the keys and she was desperately running out of time. She stepped away from the two men as they began to writhe around the main deck in the grip of major hallucinations. Could either of them commit murder in a state like this? Lila knew it was more than possible. LSD could make ­people do crazy things. But she couldn't wait around listening to them blather on about communing with the divine. She needed to find Jack Warren. She needed to find her sister.

With the gun in her hand, she bolted from the deck and ran up the stairs, back to the crime scene. The whole time she was rushing, hoping it wasn't too late, she heard Teddy's voice in her head telling her not to take the gun.
You're messing with fate. You're interfering with the past,
she heard him say. But she tried to push his nagging voice out of her mind. His cautionary words weren't what mattered now. All that mattered was the throb of panic in her veins as she came to the horrific realization that everything had slipped out of her control. She felt like she was drowning, and the gun was the closest thing to grab on to.

Gripping the rail of the staircase with one hand and the gun in the other, Lila rushed to the second deck, leaping up the stairs three at a time. Just as she neared the top, feet away from her destination, she saw them: Jack covered in blood and Ava standing there, with her back to Lila.

A soul-­shattering scream ripped out of Lila's mouth as her worst fears came true in an instant. Her sister was the killer. Startled by the sound, Ava whipped her head around. Lila saw that her face and torso were covered in blood. Just as the two sisters locked eyes, Jack staggered away from Ava, lost his balance, and plummeted a hunded and fifty feet into the sea.

 

CHAPTER 25

I
N ALL THE
ten years she'd spent thinking obsessively about this very moment, nothing could have prepared Lila for what she saw. It was so surreal, so unexpected, that she couldn't process it. Her sister was the killer. She felt like she was having an out-­of-­body experience, floating above herself and her beloved sister. She'd gone back in time to prove her sister's innocence, only to find out Ava killed Jack after all.

Another firecracker exploded, waking Lila from her trance. She looked at Ava, who hadn't moved. She was standing stock-­still, staring at Lila with a mix of terror and confusion on her face.

“How could you!” Lila roared at Ava. “How could you do this?” Lila's voice caught in her throat as tears flooded her eyes.

But Ava didn't say anything. She was staring at Lila like she was some sort of ghost. Lila had the urge to slap her sister hard across the face—­to wake her up, to punish her, to make Ava feel some of the pain she was feeling. She'd never felt more angry and more betrayed.

Suddenly, as if waking from a dream, her sister blinked quickly. “What is happening?” she stuttered, looking frantically around. “Lila? Is that you?” Ava went to reach for her sister as if to check that she was real, then she saw the gun. She pulled back her hand.

“Who are you?” she asked Lila, her round eyes bulging with fear. “What are you doing here? Where's Jack?” Ava's eyes darted around, her chest heaving in terror.

Has she lost her mind? Lila thought. Had she been drugged?

“Jack is dead,” Lila said, her voice cracking.

Ava looked down at herself. When she saw that her hands and dress were soaked in blood, she began to scream over and over again—­short, bloodcurdling screams that Lila knew she'd never be able to erase from her mind.

A firecracker zoomed into the sky and exploded. A waterfall of purples and silvers arced against the black canvas of sky. Lila saw the light from the sky reflect off something on the ground by her sister's feet. A knife. Jack hadn't been shot. He'd been stabbed. By Lila's sister. It was all too much to bear.

Then Ava dropped to her knees. She held out her bloody hands, staring at them in horror. Her whole body was shaking. She took the knife in her hand. Lila rushed to her sister. But before she could reach her, Ava grabbed the knife and tossed it overboard. Lila knelt down, placing the gun on the ground, and threw her arms around her sister's bare shoulders.

Ava's skin felt ice cold.

“I don't understand. I don't understand,” Ava said. Lila could hear her sister's teeth chattering in her ear as she held on to her.

“Tell me what happened?” Lila asked.

“I don't know.”

“But you were standing right here. You must remember. You have to remember!”

But Ava just blankly shook her head. Lila had never seen her sister like this. What had happened to her? She was more confused than ever.

She took her sister's hands. “It'll be okay,” Lila whispered, though she knew the very opposite was true. From now on, nothing was going to be okay.

Suddenly Ava lunged away from her sister and reached for the gun. Before Lila knew what was happening, she looked up to see her sister standing over her, with the snub-­nosed .38 pressed against her own temple.

Lila spoke slowly. She tried to sound calm even though she felt as if her whole world had just collapsed. “Ava, put the gun down.”

Her sister didn't say anything. Tears were streaming down her face. Her eyes were like those of a trapped animal.

“Ava, give me the gun.” Lila carefully stepped closer, but her sister only pressed the gun harder into her temple. Then Lila's instincts took over. Without thinking, she dove toward Ava, grabbing the gun. As they wrestled, one shot was fired, then another. Then, as Lila knocked her sister down while trying to rip the gun from her hand, Ava squeezed the trigger, and a deafening shot fired into the air as both women crashed to the ground. As Lila tried to tear the gun out of Ava's fingers, one more bullet was discharged.

Four bullet casings were strewn on the ground. Just like the police files said. But nothing had happened the way Lila imagined.

Her sister, flat on her back, began to violently sob. A faint cloud of gunpowder smoke floated away on a tropical breeze.

It wouldn't be long until Paul would climb the stairs and see the bloody aftermath of Jack's murder. Lila waited for Ava to get up. But her sister remained lifeless and weeping, curled up in her lover's blood.

“Ava?” Lila whispered. She didn't understand why her sister wasn't moving. She had to start running now or Paul would discover her. But she just lay there, helpless.

And then Lila realized, Ava wasn't going to escape, not on her own.

Lila scrambled to her feet, grabbing Ava's hands and hoisting her up. She needed to get her sister out of there, and fast. She knew there wasn't much time, and Ava had no chance of fleeing the ship without Lila's help. She had to save her. There was no other choice.

Ava looked at Lila with dead eyes, like there was nothing left inside of her anymore: no light, no joy, no fear, no conscience. Nothing. Lila had never felt so sick in her life.

Taking her sister's hand, she dragged her down the side deck, pulling her step-­by-­step to the first level as Ava limply stumbled behind her. Then, staying out of sight, she brought her down to the lower deck, praying the whole time that no one would see them—­both of them covered in blood, fleeing a murder scene.

Lila threw Ava into the crew bathroom, stripped off her ruined dress, and pushed her under a hot shower.

“I'll be back in a second,” Lila said, but Ava didn't respond. She just stood there, naked and comatose, as water streamed over her.

Lila ran to her cabin and grabbed the passport and license Teddy had made for her in what felt like another lifetime. She also grabbed the thumb drive full of naked pictures and videos of Josie Warren, and jeans, a hooded sweatshirt, and a pair of sneakers, shoving it all into her duffle bag. Then she sprinted down to the lifeboat in the engine room and grabbed Teddy's remaining $10,000 stacks and her gun.

She ran down the hallway and into the bathroom, locking the door behind her. Ava was still standing there, but her hands were pressed against her face, and her naked shoulders were shuddering with every sob.

Lila turned the water off and wrapped a dry towel around her sister. Putting the clothes on Ava felt like dressing a sad, helpless child. Lila had no idea what had happened to her sister. It was like something had broken inside of her.

Taking her sister's hand in hers once more, she brought her to the internal dock at the yacht's stern. They walked by the two-­person submarine, the Jet Skis, and all of Jack Warren's other high-­priced playthings. Then she saw the boat that she knew Ava had used to escape, the fifteen-­foot inflatable boat that police would find tomorrow morning floating off the coast of Cuba. Little did Lila know when she first heard that news that she would be the one to orchestrate Ava's escape.

Lila ran to the control panel on the west wall of the internal dock and pulled a lever to open the transom. With a large mechanical gust of air, the back of the yacht began to lower down, which made it possible for the inflatable boat to be quickly driven out into the sea, like a minnow escaping from a whale's mouth.

As the transom door was lowering, Lila rushed back to her sister's side. Ava was slumped in the driver's seat, her hands limply resting against the steering wheel, her head hanging down on her chest.

“Ava,” Lila said, bending over so her face was just inches from her sister's. “Listen to me.” Her sister didn't move, so she shook her shoulders. “Listen to me!”

Lila threw the tote bag into the passenger seat. “I'm giving you fifty grand in cash, plus a passport and a driver's license. This . . .” Lila said, holding the thumb drive, “this is something you can use only if you're desperate for money. Okay? Are you listening to me?”

Ava nodded, keeping her gaze down.

Lila turned the boat on and the twin engines powerfully rumbled, churning up the water beneath it. Lila pointed to the compass in the yacht's control panel. “Head southwest until you hit land. You want to get to Cuba. It's about a hundred miles away. Go fast, but not too fast, and you'll be there in under three hours.”

Ava slowly raised her head and looked Lila in the eye. She took her sister's hand and squeezed it. “Why are you helping me?” Ava asked.

There was nothing to say. “I don't know,” she whispered. She bit down on her lower lip, desperately trying not to cry. Her sister had broken her heart.

Finally, the transom door was fully lowered. “Okay,” Lila said, still clutching Ava's hand. “You've got to go.”

“I can't do this.”

“You have no choice.” But Ava didn't move. “Go!” Lila screamed. “Go!”

And suddenly Ava throttled the engine and the speedboat lurched forward. She quickly eased out of the bowels of the yacht, cutting through the water like a knife. Then in a moment, she was out of sight.

All that was left was a ripple of wake being pulled back into the ocean's ceaseless current.