Little Life Lesson 19: If you drift from the head of Venetian Security’s office and make a left turn and walk across the casino and go out the front doors of the hotel in a total daze, having just discovered that the man of your dreams might be at worst a killer and at best a terrorizer of boys, try to keep your wits about you anyway, because you don’t know when someone is going to yell, “Here she is,” and an arm is going to poke out of a group of people, and you will find yourself being bundled into a gondola as it moves away from land and you will look up and see that you’re sitting across from the dream man/boy terrorizer himself.
This really can happen.
(Little Life Lesson 20: You might also want to have applied lip gloss.)
When I finally realized what was going on, I looked around for an escape route. The gondolier, who was perched behind me, was pushing us out into the middle of the canal that runs in front of the hotel. I didn’t know how deep the water was, but I did know that my lucky (ha!) cowboy boots would not benefit from a dip in it. Which meant I was trapped. In a gondola.
With Jack. Who was wearing a button-down shirt with different-colored green stripes on it, rolled up at the cuffs so I could see his supple, manly wrists.
And the gondolier. Who was not much comfort because she started singing that song “Memory” from Cats really loud. You know the song. The one that makes you want to claw something?
I decided to get right to the point. “Why did you kidnap me like that?” I asked.
Jack looked pleased with himself. “I wanted to see you again.”
“That’s so nice,” I heard my mouth say, and felt myself melt, as he smiled at me with Super Smile and reached out one of his soft firm hands to take one of my—
I said, “No way, buster,” and pulled away from him.
He frowned. When he frowned he got these crinkles by his eyes that made my heart vroom like I’d just eaten an entire package of mini marshmallows.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
“You. You’re a—” I was stumped. “I don’t know what you are. But you aren’t what you say you are.”
Good one, Jas. Monkeys, you couldn’t have stepped in here to at least make me say something clever? Monkeys? Hello?
Total silence from the monkeys.
“Jasmine? What are you talking about?”
“I’m talking about an hour and a half ago, in the casino, with Fred.”
All at once, like lightning, his face changed. “So you knew I was there and did it on purpose. I didn’t want to believe it.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“You’re working for them. Damn, I had hoped—” He leaned away from me and crossed his arms.
“Who am I working for?” I wanted to know. And I wanted a raise. This job sucked.
“Fiona and her hench people.”
And you see, here was an example of how tragic this whole thing was. Because Jack used the phrase “hench people.” I used the phrase “hench people.” It was a sign we were meant to be together. If only he weren’t evil.
Pure evil, as I was soon to find out.
“Wait, you just called her ‘Fiona,’” I said. “Why did you lie to me last night and say that you didn’t know who the family at the pool was?”
“I never said that. I didn’t lie to you.”
Which, when I thought about it, was true. He’d only implied it, sneaky-snake style. “Who are you?” I asked.
He brushed the question aside like it wasn’t important. “If you’re not involved, you should stay away. Stay away from all of them. You have no idea who these people are. They will do anything to get what they want.”
“That’s funny, that is what Mr. Curtis just said about you.”
“You told him about me?”
I hesitated. Jack smiled a very cute and yet sort of, well, malicious smile. “You didn’t. If you had, your precious security forces would be all over us by now.”
“If you’re not dangerous, why was Fred terrified when he saw you?”
“You terrified him. You told him to run into the casino, away from me. You’re the one who gave him the quarter so the guards would come. You were trying to get me caught.”
“No, no, yes, no,” I said.
“Don’t equivocate.”
Equivocate. Was it wrong that at that moment all I could think was, he has such a lovely vocabulary? Yes, it was wrong.
I said, “Look, I don’t know what you want with me, but—”
“I want you to tell me where they’re staying. What room number. Where they’re keeping Fred.”
“Fred is not being kept, he is with his mother,” I corrected. Jack made a very ungracious noise then, but I wasn’t going to be stopped. “And the chances of my giving you their room number are infinitesimally smaller than the chances of you turning into a huge plastic cootie that talks.” Oh! I see the monkeys are back! Hello, pals. Thank you so much for NOTHING.
Jack blinked at me. “This is not a joke, Miss Callihan.”
Why do people always feel forced to point that out to me? “I realize that. I’m not joking. Hasn’t Fred suffered enough? He is terrified of you and I see no reason why I should not be as well. Not to mention, I’m already in enough trouble with my father as it is. I don’t need any help from you and your chase-boys-through-the-casino tactics. In fact, I think it’s time for me to end this little powwow and summon Security myself.”
Jack’s voice got low and serious. “Don’t.”
“I—”
He grabbed my wrist. A piece of one of those plastic things they put price tags on was sticking out of the edge of his rolled-up cuff and scratched my skin. He said, “I’m telling you, don’t do it. Not for my sake, I don’t care about that. For Fred’s sake. If you call them, he will very likely end up dead.”
“What?”
“You heard me.”
I gaped. “Are you threatening him?”
“I am just telling you the truth.”
“So he is right to be terrified of you.”
“Stop saying that. Just give me twenty-four hours. At the end of that time, you can tell your friend Mr. Curtis about me. But not until then.” He let go of my wrist. “Please.”
I said, “Why do you think you can trust me?”
He made some kind of sign to the gondolier over my shoulder, and I felt the boat turn slightly.
Then he leaned very close to me. He was looking deep into my eyes and our noses were almost touching. His lips were less than an inch from my lips and his breath smelled like glazed doughnuts.
Bringing his mouth right next to mine, he whispered, “Because I want to trust you.” And then he—
—left. He jumped from the gondola to the brick walkway next to the sidewalk, bounced over the metal railing there, and disappeared into the crowd crossing the Strip.
I was too stunned to follow him. I was too stunned to move. I’m pretty sure I didn’t even breathe. When I regained my senses—DID I MENTION HE WAS LOOKING AT ME LIKE HE WAS GOING TO KISS ME AND THEN HE TOOK OFF?—the gondolier was singing about how she remembered a time, now past, when she knew what happiness was.
Boy, she could not have been expressing my own thoughts more clearly. For me, that time had been only about thirty seconds earlier, when I thought Jack was going to plant one on me.
But thirty seconds earlier and right that minute were two very different things. Because when the haze from not getting kissed cleared I was forced to face the facts that:
But suddenly I knew what I was going to do. I wasn’t going to turn Jack in. Maybe that sounds like a bad idea, or you think I made the decision based solely on the fact that when he was near me my insides felt like a Slurpee, or because he had an astonishingly cute butt. Astonishingly.
That is not, however, why I made my decision. I was not thinking with my hormones. I was thinking, What if he wasn’t lying? What if my telling on him really would result in Fred’s death?
I decided that was a chance I couldn’t take. Plus, he’d only asked for twenty-four hours. Mr. Curtis had told me himself he was stepping up the surveillance on Fred. The boy would be safe for that long.
Jack said he trusted me; I would trust him.
Little Life Lesson 21: Trust means different things to different people.