St. Barts
The hotel was perfect. The food was perfect. The weather was perfect.
The sex was… weirdly enough… perfect.
The Fleur de Lis, where they’d stayed twenty-one years before for their honeymoon, had closed. But early April wasn’t peak season, and Brian found them a deal at one of the island’s fanciest resorts. Their villa had a private terrace overlooking the white sand and blue-green sea of St. Jean Bay. The most beautiful place Rebecca had ever seen. If water could be soft, this water was.
For two days they hardly left their room.
When he reached for her on the third morning, she shook her head. “I can’t. I haven’t been this sore in a really long time.”
In the bathroom she stared herself down, her frown lines, gray roots, the little stress chip in her top right front tooth. But their sex had made her young. Temporarily.
How many orgasms had she had with him over the years? Thousands, surely. Do the math. Ten thousand? Couldn’t be that many. That would be more than one a day. Two thousand, three, four? So many bursts of pleasure, so many little deaths. Adding up to nothing at all. Even his were more useful. For him they carried his seed.
Yet these two days reminded her of the power of sex. Especially good sex. It might not mean anything in the long run. But in the moment it was everything. They’d been tender to each other. They’d cuddled and spooned. They’d watched the sky turn pink from their terrace. Not saying a word, just being present. The afterglow was real. The halo.
Sex had bound them. Then children, its fruit.
What bound them now?
Lies. Did he know that she knew? He couldn’t; she’d covered her tracks, hadn’t written anything down. But he could suspect. He would suspect. He’d be a fool not to suspect, and he wasn’t a fool.
He opened the bathroom door. He looked good. His arms were big. Like he’d been working out.
Getting ready for something.
Lucky for her, she’d been working out too.
She ran her hands over his biceps.
“Babe. I’m going to rent the boat. I’m thinking maybe get one with a decent-sized cabin. So if we spend the night on the water it won’t be a problem.”
“Stay out for the night? Considering what we’re paying for this room.”
“Might be fun. Blast from the past.”
A few minutes later she was showered, dressed, alone on the terrace. A warm subtropical breeze tickled her wet hair.
A boat ride, then.
Rebecca had never actually been involved in a water case. The local cops or state police handled those, sometimes with the Coast Guard. The FBI involved itself only in exceptional situations. Still, she knew investigating accidents at sea was notoriously difficult. No witnesses except fish. Not much physical evidence. Bodies disappeared. When they didn’t, they were waterlogged, in bad shape. Even fires left more evidence. At least arson investigators could usually tell if they’d been set on purpose.
Still. Twenty-one years ago they had rented a cruiser, spent a night on the water. Slow, passionate sex as the stars swam slowly overhead. No one to hear her, so she could give full voice to her pleasure. It was possible she’d never felt more connected to Brian than she had on that boat. She thought she’d gotten pregnant with Kira that night. Her body had felt different even the next morning. Richer. Fuller. Something new in her. How could she know? And yet she had. She’d told Brian but he’d always seemed skeptical. Pointless to try to explain to a man, pregnancy was something you had to live.
Maybe Brian remembered too. Maybe he wanted to bring them together. Maybe he thought he could survive forever as a Russian spy and as a husband and father, that now that they had Kira back equilibrium had been restored.
Maybe.
Back inside the room. This was the first time he’d left her alone, the first time either had left the room without the other. She went to his suitcase, which wasn’t a suitcase at all. He still traveled with the battered soft-sided blue bag he had used for a decade or more. Brian wasn’t a clotheshorse and he wasn’t a snob. When he found something that worked for him—a pair of sneakers, a haircut, a bag—he stuck with it.
Maybe his loyalty to his possessions substituted for love of other human beings.
The bag was in the closet along with her Tumi suitcase. She felt through it. Mostly empty. A couple of novels—John Sandford, the hard-boiled thrillers he liked these days—and a navigational guide to St. Barts and the eastern Caribbean. No knife, no Taser, no pistol, no handcuffs or gloves. Really, what had she expected? Then, tucked in the corner, she felt a plastic bag, something thick and flat inside.
She pulled it out.
A black bag, taped to conceal a bundle. She pushed at it. No give. But when she twisted the ends they flexed. She wondered if she needed to tear it open to be sure about what was inside, decided not to bother.
What object with these physical characteristics could this bag be hiding? Could it be… a bundle of US currency?
She turned the bag over in her hands, feeling its heft. How much money? If the bills were hundreds, maybe twenty or thirty thousand in all. She had to assume they were. Otherwise why go to such lengths to hide them? And where had he come up with them? They had a joint bank account. No way could he have taken out that much money without her knowing.
Even more important, why so much? He couldn’t need it to pay for the trip. The resort preferred credit cards, and paying in advance. They’d talked about going to the casinos on St. Martin. But if he planned to pay thousand-dollar-a-hand blackjack, or whatever, he’d have to do it when she wasn’t watching.
Yet thirty thousand dollars wasn’t thirty million. It wasn’t like Brian could buy a new life with it. Maybe… an insurance policy? A way to make unexpected problems disappear? And give him a head start if he had to run.
Whatever the money was for, it wasn’t reassuring.
She tossed the bundle in the bag, stuffed the bag in the closet, went to his dresser. Underwear and socks in the top drawer, the hipster T-shirts and raggedy shorts he preferred in the second. He took care folding his clothes. A subtle rebuke to her; her suits and skirts were expensive and she had to admit she didn’t always take the best care of them, didn’t always hang them when she came home. Then again he hadn’t been the one working twelve-hour days, was he?
She sorted through the undies and socks. Nothing. She ran her hands through his T-shirts, his shorts.
Felt plastic.
She pulled it out. A tiny orange bottle, no label. When she unscrewed the cap and flipped its contents into her palm, she saw the pills weren’t pills at all. They were tiny white bars, sectioned in halves. Xanax bars. Xanax was a prescription benzodiazepine, a cousin of Valium.
She counted the bars in her hand, six… seven… eight.
Benzodiazepines were powerful drugs. Two two-milligram Xanax bars would get an average adult seriously high. In combination with an opioid or alcohol, benzos could kill. By themselves, they didn’t depress breathing enough to be lethal except with a massive overdose. Rebecca didn’t think eight bars would be enough to kill her. But they would knock her out for sure.
Thirty K in cash and sixteen milligrams of Xanax. Curiouser and curiouser.
How long could she wait? How clear would the signals have to be? For now she was still paralyzed. She was operating under strict rules of engagement. Until she knew he planned to hurt her, she couldn’t do anything except watch and wait.
She wondered if her rules would get her killed.
So be it. She had never thought of herself as a martyr, but she couldn’t make herself move first.
She heard steps on the path that led to the villa, Brian whistling tunelessly. She tilted the bars from her palm back into the bottle. One slipped onto the floor, visible against the polished wood. She nudged it under the dresser, stuffed the bottle back in the drawer. Hoping she hadn’t ruffled dear hubby’s T-shirts too much, hoping he hadn’t counted his benzos.
She popped open the privacy lock just as he reached it, realizing how stupid she’d been to lock it in place. The door swung open and there he stood. His eyebrows rose when he saw her.
“I thought maybe I’d get a massage.” She kissed him. “Since I’m so sore.”
“I got us a boat. For tomorrow.”
“I can’t wait.”