The Beautiful and the Wicked (7 page)

 

CHAPTER 7

B
Y THE TIME
the cab dropped Lila off at the entrance to the Miami Beach Marina, it was already five minutes past five o'clock. She was late, just as she'd been warned not to be. As she rushed under the white-­and-­turquoise gates toward the walkways floating atop the churned-­up azure waters, she immediately spotted
The
Rising Tide
. True to Asher's word, Jack Warren's yacht was impossible to miss. Moored at the farthest end of dock, the boat was a behemoth, dwarfing everything that fell in its oversize shadow.

At over four hundred feet, it was as long as ten double-­decker buses placed nose to tail. Though it wasn't the largest superyacht in the world, it certainly was nothing to sneeze at. As Lila approached the yacht, she spotted a man standing on the dock shouting up to several uniformed crew who were scurrying around frantically. She knew from having studied photos of all the crew and passengers that it was Asher. In fact, she recognized everybody she saw on and around the giant boat. And then there was
The Rising Tide
itself—­seeing it for the first time in real life felt surreal, like she was stepping into a movie she'd watched a thousand times.

“Goddamnit, Pedro,” Asher yelled to a slight boy dangling from a rope just above one of the yacht's four decks. Pedro had a giant bucket in one hand and a sponge in the other. A miserable look was locked on to the boy's face as he attempted to wash the many windows of the sleek yacht's exterior.

Asher continued to bark orders. “I told you to handle this yesterday. Now there's no time.”

Lila could only see Asher from behind. He had a perfect back—­broad along the shoulders, descending down into a narrow waist, each muscle beautifully delineated. He had sun-­bleached hair that he wore long; and his skin, which was deeply tanned caramel color, was almost entirely exposed, except for the long surfer shorts that hung low on his narrow hips.

“Excuse me,” she said to his muscular back as she approached.

“What?” he barked, spinning around sharply to show his annoyance at being disturbed during such a busy moment. But the instant he saw a beautiful woman standing in front of him, his stern face transformed into a wide smile, revealing a row of dazzling white teeth. Lila could always spot a so-­called ladies' man. And this guy was definitely a member of that ever-­preening, ever-­attentive tribe.

“I'm sorry,” he said with a playful lilt to his voice, studying her intently with his ice-­blue eyes. He had a smattering of light freckles on the bridge of his nose and full, womanly lips. “How may I help you?”

“I'm Nicky Collins. The new stewardess.”

“Ah, yes.” His grin turned slightly devilish. “Don't you mean the second stewardess?”

“Right,” Lila said. “Of course.” She felt a wave of heat rise to her face. The world she was about to enter was as hierarchical and regimented as the military, and she'd just gotten her rank wrong. She'd have to be more careful.

“Not that I care,” he said apologetically, seeing the flash of embarrassment on her face. “It's just that the chief stewardess does. She runs a tight ship, let me tell you. Anyway,” he said, sticking out his hand toward her, “I'm Asher Lydon, the
second
officer. Pleasure to finally meet you in person.” He shook her hand firmly, keeping hold of it for a beat or two longer than required. They'd known each other for ten seconds, and he was already signaling his interest.

“And speaking of the chief stewardess,” Asher continued. “She was just here a second ago, asking about you. None too pleased, if I can give you a little warning.”

“Perfect.” Lila sighed as she switched her giant bag from her left to her right shoulder. It was getting heavier by the second, and its straps were digging painfully into her skin.

“One thing about starting off on the wrong foot,” he said as he went to grab Lila's bag, “is you can only go up from there. Right?”

“Let's hope so.”

As he slung her bag over his bare shoulder, she noticed he was wearing a Rolex Deepsea watch. Surf shorts and a $10,000 watch. That kind of getup told Lila a lot about Asher. He was a man who liked the finer things in life, but didn't like working too hard to get them—­the type of guy who wouldn't mind being bought for the right price.

“Wow,” Lila said. “Nice watch. Where'd you get it?”

“A friend gave it to me,” he answered obliquely.

“I could use friends like that.”

“Don't worry. On this boat, those are the only type of friends you'll make.”

Just as Lila had suspected, Asher was more than happy to use his looks and charm to cajole his way into the good life.

“Follow me,” he said as they walked up a sturdy gangway to board the yacht's grand back deck. “I'll show you where you're staying so you can change into your uniform.”

Lila was beyond grateful that Asher was being so helpful. It did a lot to quell the nervousness she always felt on her first day undercover.

They walked onto the main level of the yacht, through a swarm of activity as everyone readied for a long voyage. Lila soaked the whole scene up. If she didn't already know Jack Warren was notorious for his limitless appetite for opulence, she'd have figured it out within a minute aboard
The Rising Tide
. There were cases upon cases of Ace of Spades Armand de Brignac champagne being loaded belowdeck. At $6,000 a case, she figured there was probably a hundred grand alone in the bubbly. And it didn't stop there. Crates of wines—­all super-­Tuscans and Burgundy grands crus—­were being handled with the extreme care that their value necessitated. There were tins of Ossetra caviar, boxes of gorgeous fruits and vegetables, macaroons from Ladurée, and goodies from Dean & DeLuca all being stowed away in the lower deck. It was a spread befitting a sultan, a king, or someone who thought he was God.

“It's mayhem now, so I'll give you the grand tour later. Right now I'll bring you into the bowels of the ship, where us lowly crew are stashed.”

She followed him down a narrow staircase into the crew quarters. The moment they traveled from the open expanse of the aft deck to the cramped confines of the lower deck, she began to feel claustrophobic. A wave of nausea and dizziness overcame her as the ground swayed and shifted beneath her feet.

“Are we rocking?” Lila said, feeling out of control as she tried to steady herself against a wall as the boat slightly pitched to the left.

Asher looked back at her and laughed. “You're kidding, right?”

She was seasick and the boat hadn't even left the dock. This was going to be tougher than she imagined. She laughed it off. “Of course I'm kidding,” Lila replied, trying to stand still and straight though her head was swimming. “It just takes me a while to get my sea legs is all.”

“Right,” Asher said, with a wink. “And when that fails, I've got some seasickness tablets for you. Just ask if you need any.”

“I'm sure that won't be necessary,” she said, though she feared the exact opposite would be true.

“Whatever you say,” he said.

They walked a ­couple more feet down the narrow hall, then Asher opened a small door. “And here you are. Home sweet home.” Lila looked into the cabin. It was a windowless box, much smaller than a prison cell, about the width of a double bed, and painted bright white. Two sleeping cots were bolted to the wall with storage drawers under the bottom bunk. “You'll be in here with the third stew, Sam Bennett. Everyone's on the main deck right now, where you should be. So hurry up, get changed, and join us up there.”

Lila knew all about Sam, or Samantha, from the police report. Age twenty-­three, from Belle Glade, Florida. A high school dropout who won enough rinky-­dink Florida beauty pageants to want more from life than the poverty and ugliness she saw around her. She'd been working the luxe yacht circuit since she turned nineteen.

“Great,” Lila said. “I'll be up in a second.”

“Listen,” Asher said, stepping too close to Lila for comfort, given that she was on the verge of blacking out. She could feel the heat of his skin and smell his coconut tanning oil. “I don't know if you know this, but just a few days ago, Jack Warren, the guy who owns this ship, fired absolutely every single member of his old crew with only a few exceptions. I am,” he said proudly, “one of those exceptions. So, I know this guy and I know what a hard-­ass he is.”

Lila wasn't sure what point Asher was trying to make, but she wanted him to hurry up with it. She felt like she was quickly losing her battle with a claustrophobic meltdown.

“I'm telling you this because you seem like a nice person. And you were late today, which means you already didn't listen to me once. So listen to me now. Be ready to work really hard and try not to draw too much attention to yourself. Smile and be a good girl. Got it? Your uniform should be in one of the drawers. Throw it on, and see you in a ­couple minutes, okay?”

Lila nodded. She wished she were upstairs, drinking in deep breaths of sea air.

Dropping his professional facade, Asher relaxed into a boyish smile. “Okay. I'll leave you to it, then.” He dropped the duffel bag on the floor, where it landed with a heavy thud. “Christ, what did you pack? Gold bricks?”

A nervous laugh dribbled out of Lila's mouth, which she had stretched into a fake smile. She was quite sure that the panic in her eyes was impossible to miss.

Just as Asher turned to go, and Lila was lurching forward to shut the door behind him, he turned back around. “Remember, we work like bitches, but we're paid like kings!”

Lila gave him a feeble thumbs-­up. This was going to be harder than she thought. Then he was gone.

“Fuuuuck,” she quietly exhaled once she was alone. This wasn't a bedroom so much as a Japanese nap pod.
And
she had to share it with someone else. Lila slid open the left side of drawers to see all of Sam's stuff neatly folded. Then she opened the right-­side drawers. They were empty, save for three clean and pressed uniforms and one small black dress, which were all folded perfectly. She checked the size. Of course Nicky must have told someone her measurements so that the clothes fit. Lucky for Lila, they were all in her size, a two. In the back of the drawer were a ­couple pairs of white canvas sneakers, one size smaller than her feet, but she'd have to make do.

She quickly shed her clothes and put on the uniform: a starched white, sleeveless, button-­down shirt, a crisp white A-­line miniskirt that barely covered her ass, and a navy-­blue silk handkerchief with white polka dots that Lila tied around her neck.

Now she turned to unpacking her stuff. She locked the cabin door and dumped the contents of her duffel bag onto the floor. Unlike her roommate, Sam, with all of her pastel-­colored clothes, lacy underwear, and tiny bikinis folded into neat piles, Lila's belongings could have her thrown in jail for a decade. She had an abundance of totally damning contraband and absolutely no place to hide it.

She ripped the bottom mattress off its frame, sending sheets and pillows sailing through the air. Her first thought was to stuff everything into the mattress itself. But she didn't have a knife to slice into its heavy fabric. Shit, she thought. She was on the brink of a panic attack as motion sickness and claustrophobia collided into one big neurological clusterfuck in her brain.

There was a loud knock on the door.

“Miss Collins?” a posh British voice inquired.

Lila froze. The extent to which she was completely screwed struck her, only momentarily, as very funny. She wondered if this was something she and Teddy could laugh about once she was safely back in 2019.

There was another, louder knock on the door. “Miss Collins. This is the chief stewardess. We are waiting for you on the main deck.”

“Just a second,” Lila cried cheerfully, her voice calling out with a singsongy lilt that she hoped didn't betray her growing alarm. Behind the door was Edna Slaughter, age fifty-­three, from Bristol, England. She'd been Elise Warren's maid, protector, confidante, and scratching post since 1999 and stayed on with Elise after Jack's death, after her second husband's death, and even after her third husband's death. Lila would bet that no one on the planet, not any of her three husbands, not her child or even her psychiatrist, knew Elise Warren better than Edna Slaughter.

Lila began to frantically arrange the $10,000 stacks of hundred-­dollar bills side by side with wrapped-­up bricks of cocaine atop the mattress frame. She grabbed the gun, released the magazine clip, then put the pistol at the foot of her bed and the cartridge in a drawer. Even though she knew that it would take only a quick second for someone to discover this paltry hiding spot, it was the only solution available to her at this desperate moment, and it would be a temporary one. She reassured herself that she'd find something better once she got a sense of the giant yacht's layout.

Trying to hoist the unwieldy mattress back onto the frame felt like wrestling an alligator into a shoe box. Just as she got it into the proper position, she accidentally knocked the lamp to the floor. The subsequent metallic clang and crash reignited the knocking.

“Miss Collins. Open the door this instant!”

“I'm just changing! One moment!”

Finally, she got the bed on the frame. True, it sat a bit high, but it was less obvious than she feared.

She ran to the door and flung it open. She was short of breath and covered in a light mist of panic sweat. From the look of horror on the face of the woman standing in the hallway, Lila guessed that she appeared fairly deranged.

“I'm Chief Stewardess Edna Slaughter and you are off to a terribly poor start,” the woman said in her English upper-­class accent with its deep rich tones and overly enunciated syllables, as if she was permanently enrolled in an elocution class. From her profile, Lila knew Edna was from a strictly working-­class background, so that accent was as phony as Lila's subservient attitude. Lila reached out to shake Edna's hand but the woman failed to return the gesture. Instead she slightly raised her chin and turned her gaze away in apparent disgust. Lila let her hand drop.