The stolen paintings had traveled with Kylie and Micah to Monaco, which meant the bag they were in was nearby, too.
And so was Kylie’s phone.
Probably.
Micah had told Kylie to expect staff to be on the yacht, yet another thing that blew her mind. Sure, she could see Atlantic City bellhops porting people’s bags and hotel maids cleaning their rooms because that was the hotel business, but having a guy who hung around all the time to take care of your stuff for you seemed excessive.
And lazy.
Going on vacation was fun, but living with other people poking into your stuff all the time seemed creepy.
And it wasn’t just “a guy” that Twist had working for him, Kylie saw as she explored the yacht, the one in Monaco, just down the street from a mall dubbed the “Billionaires’ Shopping Center.”
Other people were employed on the ship, too, to wash down the sides of the yacht, shine the clear plastic railing around every deck, bring groceries aboard, and talk to each other and point at things from the conning tower on the very top of the ship. When she’d peeked inside the room on the top deck, screens rising from wide touchscreen controls looked more like a starship command bridge than a boat’s wheelhouse. Big radar dishes and globes sprouted from the lookout like the ship might also be used for hunting UFOs.
At least ten people seemed to be employed on the ship, excluding the delivery people.
How could anyone call living like that a home? It must be like staying in a hotel all the time.
Twenty minutes of traipsing around the boat later, Kylie found the guest stateroom they’d been assigned to, for their clothes were hanging in the closet and pressed.
Pressed.
The cabin was decorated in stereotypical nautical blue, white, brass trim, and medium wood. The effect was elegant, as if the superyacht would be precisely what it was expected to be, just like any other servant in a livery uniform.
The boxy suitcase containing the stolen paintings leaned in a corner.
Kylie descended on it in a storm of rage, ready to rip the goddamn black nylon to shreds in her quest to find her phone.
But it was in the first outside pocket she looked in.
She pressed her thumbnail to the power button.
The screen lit, and it told her Hello and 60%.
Messages scrolled up the face as she unlocked it.
So many messages were from Rita, Alma, and Priyanka.
She didn’t bother to read them but just started typing back, I’m okay. I’m fine. I’m with the guy, and everything is going fine. NOT KIDNAPPED.
Texts pinged back at her.
Jesus Christ is Lord where are you?
Salvatore is all over our asses. We’re trying to leave.
We have to get out. Some guys tried to break into my apartment last night but bldg. manager scared them off. I’m packing the diaper bag and our clothes right now.
S Grande knows the info we gave him about you was f’d up. We’re dead if we don’t get out.
The panic in their words was as palpable as if the letters pulsed with terror on the phone screen.
Kylie gave up trying to text and started a group call.
They all picked up.
“What the hell?”
“You gave us false information to tell Salvatore Grande? We’re in such deep shit!”
“He’s going to kill us. Or at least beat the shit out of us. Or make us give him all our money to make up for it, and we’ll be homeless.”
“Seriously, we didn’t know what you told us was fake. We kept insisting it was right.”
“Okay, okay!” Kylie yelled over their shrieks. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know it was fake when I told you. Micah said that stuff to feed it to you, and then he took my phone so I couldn’t warn you that it wasn’t true. I just got my phone back. Like, just now.”
“We are in trouble,” Rita told her with a tremble in her husky whisper. “We’re getting the hell out of AC, but we don’t have anywhere to go and no money to get out with.”
Her girls, her gang, her only nets who had saved her from the bottomless pits of how far a young woman can fall in life, were desperate and in trouble.
Supposedly, Rachele and her mother were somewhere, but Kylie hadn’t seen hide, golden hair, or evidence of life from them. They might be figments of Micah’s imagination and Arthur’s computer.
Her mother and sister were phantoms that disappeared from Kylie’s fingers every time she reached for them.
They weren’t real.
Rita, Priyanka, Alma, and Alma’s kid needed Kylie like never before.
“I’m coming,” Kylie told them, desperate to make it up to them. Alma had a baby who was in danger. She grabbed her purse and spilled out the last few stacks of cash that she’d grabbed from Salvatore Grande’s desk. “I have money. I can get you money.”
“Are you in Atlantic City?” begged Rita. “We need to leave now.”
“I’m—” Very far away. “—not there.”
“We need to get out of here now,” Priyanka told her. “It’s getting really dangerous.”
“Okay, I, um—”
The door opened behind her. Micah’s voice asked, “What are you doing?”
She looked up at him from sitting on the floor with useless wads of cash in her lap and desperate friends on the other side of the world. “It’s my girls. They need this money to leave Atlantic City. This is all I’ve got. I don’t know how to get it to them. I’m here. They’re there. I don’t know how.”
Micah closed the door and locked it. “I told you to stay off the phone.”
“But they’re my friends. I can’t just abandon them. I need to take a plane to AC right now to go with them.” The words felt right as they tumbled out of her mouth. “We were always in this together. I owe them. They’re the only people in the world who give a damn about me, and Salvatore Grande is going to take my lies out of their hide.”
Micah strode across the small room and looked down at her, hot tears smearing her face, her hands cramping around the cell phone where her friends were begging for her help. “Oh, Kylie.”
“I have to go.”
“I need you here. We have a deal,” he said.
“You don’t need me. You’ve never needed me or even wanted me for anything other than to screw and leave.”
He tilted his head. “That’s never been true.”
“They need me to help them. I’m nothing to you. You don’t care about me. You don’t trust me. I’m a tag-along and an easy lay, and that’s all I am to you. You don’t need me.”
Pleading tumbled from her heart in a torrent.
She told him, “They’re in trouble. Grande is after them. If I don’t go there and help them, they might get killed but they’ll definitely get hurt. I have to be there. They’re all I’ve got left in the world. They’ve been there for me and helped me get a fake ID and a job so I wouldn’t be homeless or in foster care or worse. If something happens to them, if Salvatore gets them, I’ll have no one left. I’ll be alone forever and ever. I can’t abandon them. I have to get to Atlantic City to help them!”