The Beautiful and the Wicked (29 page)

 

CHAPTER 26

T
HE NEXT FEW
minutes were a blur. Lila stared out into the empty ocean feeling gutted. Everything she had thought she knew was all wrong. It seemed impossible to believe, but Ava was Jack Warren's killer. She stabbed him and then threw the bloody murder weapon overboard. Lila had
seen
it. And then, what did Lila do? She helped her sister, a murderer, escape.

Ava wasn't who Lila thought she was, but even worse, Lila had become a stranger to herself. She'd spent her life fighting for justice and making sure the bad guys paid for what they did. Now
she
was the bad guy. She'd betrayed her most profound beliefs, and she'd done it almost without thought.

It was a truth so horrifying all she could do was bury it deep down within herself. She stood up and returned to the lower deck.

I
T WAS A
little after 2:00
A.M.
when Paul Mason discovered the bloody scene. He searched each and every room in the yacht, shouting frantically, until he realized that Jack was missing. He roused Captain Nash, who was lying in a fetal position on the main deck, still in the waning grip of his acid trip. Nash immediately radioed the coast guard that Jack Warren was dead. It had been less than an hour since Ava had taken off. Lila thought of her sister speeding her way toward Cuba.

By the time the coast guard boarded the yacht, Lila had showered, careful to scrub every last bit of blood off her body. She had taken her and her sister's blood-­soaked clothes, stuffed them into a bag along with a few bottles of liquor to weigh it down, and tossed the whole thing into the sea. She had really wanted to get rid of the gun, which had her sister's fingerprints all over it, but Paul had found it lying in Jack's blood before Lila had a chance to dispose of it.

She tried to console herself by remembering that the gun had also been handled by Nash and Poe, but Lila knew that the cops would focus on the fingerprints of the woman who fled the scene of the crime. After years on the force, Lila understood how the minds of the police operated. If a case looked cut-­and-­dried, no cop in his right mind would try to make it more complicated. Jack's mistress murdered him, then fled on a boat, case closed.

Unfortunately, for the first time ever, Lila couldn't disagree with this assessment.

At least not in her mind. Out loud, she had to play dumb. And it was nothing short of agonizing. When the coast guard came to question her, she pretended she'd been sound asleep in her cabin. They brought her up to the dining room, where an impromptu interrogation room had been created. A stone-­faced cop sat at the table with a camcorder on a tripod pointed at Lila and a notebook set out in front of him.

She knew what to say. She'd seen nothing, heard nothing, knew nothing. Several helicopters surrounded the yacht, spotlights trained on the water. They were searching for the body. But Lila knew they'd never find it.

After thirty minutes of questioning, they quickly wrapped up her interrogation, and Lila was free to go. She returned to her room, seeing two forensic specialists hurrying to put a sealed tarp over the crime scene, only too aware that the seawater and salty ocean air could corrupt the evidence in a matter of minutes.

Then she watched Elise and Josie, clutching each other, walk with Seth Liss, Paul Mason, and Charity and Clarence Baines up to the helipad. It was clear that Elise and Josie had been crying. Their faces were red and puffy. Paul, Charity, and Clarence were stone-­faced behind them. They all got into the helicopter and flew away.

The yacht shuddered and stopped. Then it began to turn around. Lila climbed up to the bridge, where Nash and Ben were standing behind the large control panel.

“Where are we headed?” Lila asked.

“Back to Miami,” Nash said, staring straight ahead, “as fast as we can. I want the fuck off this damn boat.”

Lila left the room, and just as she was about to go down the stairs, Ben grabbed her shoulder. She was so on edge she almost screamed from surprise at his touch.

“Christ, you startled me,” she said, turning toward him.

“Oh, Nicky,” he said, wrapping his arms around her. “The whole thing is so awful.”

He crushed her body against his, and as her face was pressed to his chest, Lila let out a gigantic sob. It was the first relief she'd had in hours, and once the panic and fear dropped away, anguish stepped in to take its place. So she cried as Ben held her, cried for her sister, for herself, for this whole fucked-­up case.

“I know, I know,” Ben whispered, trying to console her. “I didn't mean to hurt you, Nicky. Elise means nothing to me.”

Lila's crying stopped instantly and she extricated herself from Ben's arms, amazed that he would think her tears were for him. “This isn't about you, Ben,” she said. And then she turned and walked away. And somewhere in her broken heart she had a tiny pocket of gratitude in knowing that despite screwing up this entire case, she at least hadn't fallen for that joker.

“Nicky!” he called out, but she didn't bother turning around. What was the point? All she needed now was to get back to 2019 and, finally, try to move on with her life.

And it wasn't long before she was able to do just that.

As Sam and Lila were packing up, the boat sailed toward the marina. Lila saw that Sam was wrapping her sweaters around the framed pencil drawing by Picasso of a woman's one-­eyed face, which usually hung in the master suite.

When Sam saw Lila shoot her a surprised look, she became defensive. “Let me tell you something, Nicky. You should do exactly the same thing. I mean, you don't think we're still getting paid, do you?”

Lila just shrugged. Of course she hadn't even thought about it. The fact that what Sam was stuffing into her suitcase would probably fetch around two hundred grand wasn't something that bothered Lila either. Let Sam grab what she could. After all, she hadn't been sleeping with Jack out of love. She'd made investments, and like any good businessman, she was now collecting her profit.

More power to her.

When the yacht pulled up to the Miami harbor in the early hours of that gentle September morning, a much greater level of fanfare awaited them than they'd received during the yacht's sendoff. But this time the reporters and the bystanders were there for darker reasons. One of the world's richest men had been murdered, and they wanted to gawk at the spectacle.

Thiago and Esperanza were the first to disembark. It looked as if Thiago hadn't slept all night. The usually dapper bon vivant appeared stricken, almost held up by his tiny wife, who had her arm wrapped around his waist. Lila and Sam watched from the main deck as the ­couple was swarmed by reporters and TV cameras. They kept their heads down and pushed their way past the throng, then climbed into a black Cadillac Escalade with darkly tinted windows.

Daniel Poe, the only remaining guest on the yacht, stood nervously next to his golden phallus sculpture, guarding it like a mother bear guards her cubs. He was waiting for workers from his gallery to arrive so that they could properly box it up and ship it back to his studio. “It'll double in price after what happened,” Lila heard Poe say to some unknown person on the other end of his cell phone. “Let's put it up for auction as soon as humanly possible. Let's put a call into Christie's right now. Got it?” His bloodshot eyes glowed as red as a devil's.

Poe's greed didn't bother Lila. Actually, nothing seemed to matter to her. All she felt was numbness. Jack was dead and her sister was the one with blood on her hands. Lila knew she should be beating herself up for helping Ava escape the scene of the crime, but Ava was family. And Lila had never really had a choice. Still, she wasn't excited at the prospect of facing Teddy. She knew that he would never understand.

Lila and Sam walked down the gangway onto the dock of the marina, where the blinding glare and flash of cameras and the deafening roar of reporters awaited them. They held on to each other's hand, weaving their way through the pulsing scrum of ­people clamoring to get someone, anyone, to say something about the murder that had the world's attention. But the two women kept their heads down and their mouths shut.

Once they reached the street, Sam turned to Lila. “Well, I won't say, ‘Let's do that again.' But I can say it's been nice knowing you.”

“Same here.” The two women stood there, briefly frozen in an awkward good-­bye. “Where're you going now?” Lila asked.

Sam looked around, as if she was making her plans up at that very second. “Can't say I know. I think I'll find a half-­decent hotel for a ­couple nights. Try to fence this drawing. And then I'll come back here and try to get on another charter or something. You know, back to life as usual. What about you?”

“I've got to go meet an old friend,” Lila said with a bit of a smile. She was looking forward to seeing Teddy again, but she worried he'd be less than pleased with her. She had demanded he send her back in time, but the mission had been futile—­one gigantic, heartbreaking failure.

The two women hugged and then parted ways. Lila flagged a cab and headed north, with two hours to spare until she was due to get transported back to 2019.

 

CHAPTER 27

T
HE TAXI DROPPED
Lila off at the North Miami storage facility with plenty of time to spare, which, she thought as she walked toward the bleak, industrial building, was both a good thing and a bad thing. The first time she'd entered that meager box of a room to return to the present, she'd been frantic, seconds away from missing the deadline for returning to her real life, in grave danger of being forever stuck in the past. She was glad she didn't have to go through that again. But there was a downside. Now, with a full two hours before her scheduled journey to the present, all she had was time to think. And think. And think.

She unlocked the door to the storage unit with the key she'd kept around her neck and sank down to the hard cement floor, her back pressing against the rough cinder blocks. She took a giant inhale, bringing the room's stale air deep within her lungs, and closed her eyes. She could still feel the phantom rocking of the gentle Caribbean Sea beneath her. A sense of dread began to build steadily, threatening to consume her.

Her mission had been a failure, and now she'd have to explain it all to Teddy.

The silence, the solitude, and the stress of the moment combined to produce a surprisingly sedative effect. She felt tired on the cellular level as she began to crash from the previous night's traumas. Every hair, every pore, every inch of her needed rest. And she gave in to it. After enduring so much panic and heartbreak, she could no longer fight the physical and emotional exhaustion. Her eyelids dropped heavily over her eyes as she lay down against the cool concrete floor and fell asleep.

Lila awoke in a panic as a high-­pitched screeching sound pierced her eardrums. She looked at her watch: 4:16
P.
M.
She quickly scrambled into the hazmat suit she'd discarded when she arrived and stood in the center of the room. This was it, her ride back to 2019. She'd been here before, but that never made it any less terrifying than the first time.

She pressed her hands against her ears, trying to block out the horrible whirring noise that kept growing in volume. Suddenly the world around her began to blur. Straight lines bent and wavered as known objects broke apart into tiny molecules and scattered around the room. Everything pulsated with an atomic energy. It was as if the world she thought was real was only a reflection in a puddle that someone had just stepped in.

Then silence. Darkness.

Her own body began to lose its form as it melded into the shattered world surrounding her. She felt like she was on the brink of total obliteration. Then came that terrible, sickening feeling of endless falling as she was plunged into the quantum vacuum of dark matter, where she stayed, floating, melting, drifting, in a hidden dimension where space and time had ceased to exist.

Then finally, sound. Light.

As if she were being birthed back into the world, Lila saw the dark void retreat and was thrust into the physical realm. The light blinded her. Her body felt solid, once again subject to gravity and the familiar world of Newtonian physics. Blinking her eyes open, she gasped for air as her lungs remembered to expand and contract.

Her fingers gripped the armrests of the seat in Teddy's time-­traveling contraption. She had made it.

Then just as quickly came the forgetting. She looked around, confused, panicked. A blankness settled over her mind until the door to the time machine began to lower. Standing there was Teddy Hawkins, waiting for her with a relieved smile on his face. He rushed up the stairs toward Lila, and forced to hunch over in the tight confines of the cockpit, he put his hand on hers.

“Welcome home,” he said. Just as they had done before, the memories came rushing back. The warmth in Teddy's voice made Lila's heart swell even as the dread sitting in her stomach sharply twisted within her.

Teddy helped her out of the time machine and escorted her to a large laboratory adjacent to the control room. Lila could feel his curious eyes on her, trying to read how the mission had gone from her body language. But she couldn't look him in the eye.

“Sit here and relax,” he said as he eased her into a reclining chair. “Conrad is going to check your vitals. I'll lay out some clothes for you. Wash up, change, and meet me upstairs. Then we'll catch up.”

Lila slowly nodded, keeping her eyes down.

“Love the hair, by the way. Very Jean Seberg. Very Parisian chic.”

Lila self-­consciously pulled at her blond pixie cut. It would serve as a reminder of her failure and her sister's guilt. She wanted her old hair back, but more than anything she wanted her illusions back. The truth was too painful. She closed her eyes and lay back in the chair.

“That's right, Lila. Just rest,” Teddy said.

“It's good to hear you say my name.” She slightly opened her eyes, watching Teddy watch her.

He nodded. “See you in a moment, Lady Day.”

Then Conrad came into the room to perform a battery of tests. He took her pulse, several vials of her blood, and ran her through an MRI, EEG, and a CT scan. When all his probing was completed, he brought her into the guest room upstairs that she had come to think of her own room. She saw a pair of her jeans and one of her tank tops laid out on the bed.

“Take your time,” Conrad said. “Mr. Hawkins will be waiting for you in the main room.”

No matter how shitty she felt, the cavernous bathroom with its claw-­foot tub overlooking Biscayne Bay remained one of Lila's favorite spots. She took a long, hot shower in a slate-­tiled stall that was actually bigger than the tiny cabin she had shared with Sam for those weeks at sea.

As she prepared herself to face Teddy, she went over in her mind what she'd tell him, working out ways to try to make the mission sound like anything other than a total disaster. But every time, no matter how vociferously she fought on her own behalf, Teddy won each of her imagined arguments. She felt sick.

Clean and dressed, Lila walked barefoot down the stairs to join Teddy and curled herself into the chair next to his. The two of them looked out at the peaceful turquoise water.

Teddy was the one who broke the silence. “It didn't go well, did it?”

“No,” Lila said softly. Once she was faced with the conversation she'd been dreading, she realized that she didn't want to defend herself. She was too tired. “You were right.”

“About what?”

“About my sister. About me. I went into it not seeing anything clearly.”

“I warned you.”

“I know.”

“So you're saying that your sister shot Jack Warren?” Teddy asked.

“Not exactly,” Lila said hesitantly. It was so much more complicated than that.

“What do you mean?” Teddy turned toward her, looking at her for the first time since they started talking.

Then Lila rushed into an explanation. She told Teddy about how the snub-­nosed .38 at the scene of the crime actually belonged to Captain Nash. She told him about the hundred grand in drugs that she brought on board. About the LSD-­fueled game of Russian roulette. About taking the gun from Nash.

“You took the murder weapon, but Ava still managed to kill Jack?” Teddy asked.

“Yes,” Lila whispered.

“Do you have any idea how many rules you've broken? How much possible damage you could've inflicted on the very fabric of the world? What if Jack hadn't died?”

“It wouldn't have been the end of the world, would it? At least my sister could have had a life.”

“That's not the point!” he said. She'd never seen him so angry. “You can't play God, Lila! There's no way to calculate how your actions could've impacted the world.” Teddy got up and walked over to the bar in the corner. He grabbed two crystal tumblers and filled them three-­quarters full with bourbon. He handed one to Lila.

“Please don't tell me that Ava saw you,” he said.

Lila stayed silent.

“Should I take that as a yes?”

Lila nodded.

“Did she recognize you?”

“I think so, she said my name. But she was so out of it, Jack. Something was wrong with her that night.”

“Something other than the fact that she'd just committed
murder
?”

“It was more than that.” Lila was instantly transported back to the yacht, seeing the flash of recognition as her sister's eyes took her in. She remembered Ava, frightened, shivering, covered in her lover's blood.

“This whole thing was too risky. I knew it from the start. I blame myself for letting you go.”

“It's my fault, Teddy. Let me own that, okay?” She picked up the glass of bourbon and took a big gulp, relishing its comforting burn. “There's something else I have to tell you.”

Teddy rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands and let out a big, exasperated sigh. “From the look on your face, I think I'd better sit down for this.”

Lila gathered up her courage. “When I was in the past”—­she paused for another sip of bourbon—­“I visited you.”

“You
what
?” Teddy was aghast.

“Jack was working on a computer code that I couldn't decipher. I thought it might be a clue, but I needed help.”

“So you came to see
me
? Lila . . . I . . .” Teddy fell into a flabbergasted state of silence. He didn't know what to say. “Of course!” he exclaimed a moment later, slamming his fist down onto the table. “I remember. You stopped by my office and showed me that beautiful piece of code. Then it annihilated my hard drive. I can't tell you how many times I thought about that gorgeous woman over the years. And now to find out that
you
are the mysterious woman that disappeared from my life . . . astonishing. You're astonishing.”

Lila knew he didn't mean this as a compliment. “I didn't know who else to turn to!”

“You shouldn't have turned to anyone! Don't you realize? That encounter could've permanently altered the course of my life. What if that meant I didn't build a time machine?”

“But you did. From what I can see, nothing changed.”

“That is
not
the point, Lila, and you know it.”

“Isn't it?” Lila asked. “But I know you're right. Anyway, that source code was just one more dead end in an endless string of them.”

Teddy sat back into the chair and stretched out his long legs. He closed his eyes. “I can't do this with you anymore. You don't get it.”

“Teddy, please.”

“No, Lila. You've got to listen to me. You've got to listen to
someone
. Have you ever heard the saying that life can be a double-­edged sword?”

“My mom used to say that all the time,” Lila said.

“So you know what it means. Every strength can also be a weakness and vice versa. Well, that's what I see in you. You're so insightful as a detective, so devoted, that you can go blind to the world around you. And your single-­mindedness stops you from seeing all the damage you're doing. But that's not the worst part. The worst part is that I don't think you value your own life. And that makes you too dangerous, because it means you don't value anything.”

“That's not true!” But even as Lila spoke these words, she feared Teddy was right. There was a strain of recklessness in her, one that she'd always known and felt, that scared everyone in her life. It even scared her sometimes. And now it had finally scared off Teddy, the one person she finally trusted.

Lila turned to face Teddy, but he kept his eyes on the window, looking out to the ocean. She could see the muscles in his jaw clench. All she felt was hopeless. Teddy was too good a man to burden with her baggage. She should let him live his life. It'd be better off without her around.

“Fine,” Lila said. “I'll go.”

“That would be best,” Teddy said in a small, sad voice that made Lila's already pummeled heart wince in pain.

As she headed to the door, Lila turned back around, figuring she might as well deliver the rest of the bad news. “I haven't even told you the worst part, Teddy.” He didn't say anything. She forced herself to continue. “I'm the one who helped my sister escape. I'm the one who got her into that boat to make a getaway. I gave her the passport. I even gave her my money.”

“You mean
my
money.”

“Right,” Lila whispered.

“So, let me get this straight. I gave you money to help you prove your sister was innocent. And you gave that money to her when you found out she was a murderer?”

“I'll pay you back . . .”

“Stop!” Teddy yelled, his eyes closed. “Lila, for once in your life, know when enough is enough. It's over. Now, please, just go.”