CAP MARTINET, IBIZA
By the time the police and the hospital get done with Carson, it’s past noon when Sebastian finally escorts her into the mansion.
He’d called ahead. The entire posse is there, waiting. When she walks through the front door, they all cheer and clap.
“Knock it off! Jesus.” Carson’s cheeks heat up. Applause isn’t something she gets often.
Now they press in, touching her hands and arms, asking “Are you okay?” “Does it hurt?” “Why did you do that?” and generally getting between her and the kitchen. It’s nice they’re worried about her. But she hasn’t slept in over a day, she hasn’t eaten in fourteen hours, her fasting hypoglycemia is drilling huge holes in her stomach and skull, and the topical anesthetics are wearing off.
She grabs Sebastian’s arm and whispers in his ear, “Get me to my room.”
“I will.” He holds up a hand to the crowd. “Please. Lisa needs some sleep. She’s been up since yesterday morning. She’ll come talk with you when she’s rested.”
Carson collapses on the edge of her bed and sighs. Sebastian sits next to her. She lays her head on his shoulder. “Thanks.”
“Ah, go way outta that.” He takes her hand. “How’s your side?”
“Feels like someone’s turned a cigarette lighter on it.”
He places a small brown bag on her lap. “Here’s your pain pills. I’ll get you some water.”
She’s dry-swallowed her two tablets by the time he’s back, but she gulps the water anyway. Pulling off the hospital scrub top is as unpleasant as she expected. The cops took what was left of her bodysuit for evidence and shot pictures of her wound. Thank God she wore one of her new bras.
Sebastian asks, “Do you want anything?”
“Food. I gotta eat.”
“Sure. I’ll get it.” He stands, then bends to kiss her forehead. “I’m proud of you.”
“Lisa?”
Carson turns toward Celeste’s voice. She’s standing in the bedroom doorway, biting her upper lip. “What is it?”
“Can I help you?”
“Um, thanks. I’m just gonna eat and go to sleep.”
“You should not be alone.” Celeste shoots Sebastian a glance that has more ferocity than Carson figured the girl had in her.
Sebastian gets the message. “I’ll raid the larder, then let you be.”
Celeste helps Carson undress, puts her underwear in the washroom basin to soak out the blood, then takes her trousers out to get cleaned. Carson pulls on a long, sky-blue tee she’s been using as a cover-up when she can’t be bothered to dress. Sebastian brings back a thick jamon iberico sandwich on crusty bread, piled with veg. She wolfs it down with a pitcher of water, then crawls into bed. Celeste curls up in the armchair in the corner.
Moments before she fades to black, Carson’s cloudy brain throws up one last thought: where in hell was Vicki?
Carson wakes a bit after seven, muzzy and achy. She rubs the gunk out of her eyes, then sits up.
Celeste unwinds from her chair and sits on the bed’s edge. “Hello. Do you want anything?”
Dom would do this. When she was seventeen, Carson caught a bad case of flu that kept her in bed for three days. Dom would park on a chair in the corner and keep watch over her. Payback for all the times she sat with him when he was sick.
Carson strokes Celeste’s hair. “You’re a good watchdog.”
Celeste giggles and blushes.
“Hey, when I came back, I didn’t see Vicki. Was she here?”
“No.”
Asking the next question takes some serious thought. “Is she here now?”
“I will see.” Celeste marches out the bedroom door, closing it silently behind her.
Carson throws on some clothes, rinses out her underwear, then hangs it in the shower. There’s no sign her wound opened while she was asleep. She brushes her teeth, fluffs her hair, and avoids focusing on the big dark circles under her eyes.
Her door opens and closes. “Celeste? That you?”
Iris appears in the washroom doorway. “It’s me. Disappointed?”
“Looking for Vicki.”
“Ah…yeah.” Iris scrunches her face. “We need to talk about that.”
A rock falls into Carson’s stomach. “She’s gone again.”
“Yeah.”
“Fuck.” Carson shoulders her way past Iris and starts pacing along the end of the bed. She’d kick something if she wasn’t barefoot. “Where’d she go?”
“I don’t know. Don’t look at me like that! I don’t. After the cops let us go, we came back here and the next thing I knew, some BlaBlaCar was hauling her off with her stuff.”
Carson may kick something, barefoot or not. “She said she’d stay. For once.”
“She was totes freaked. Maybe she panicked.”
“I don’t see Vicki panicking.”
“She usually doesn’t, but people don’t get stabbed in front of her much, either.” Iris hugs herself. “I’m sorry, I should’ve asked. How are you? How’s your side?”
“Cut’s messy but not deep. They glued me back together again. It aches. I’ll survive.” Carson stops pacing and takes several deep breaths. This isn’t how she’d wanted to wake up. “She coming back?”
Iris throws up her hands. “I don’t know! I didn’t know she was leaving until she left. That’s how much we talked about this.” She sighs. “Look. She always comes back. She usually tells me when she’s going, but she always comes back. Maybe she just needs to get her head together.”
“Yeah. Except she told me on our trip yesterday that she’s not going back to Russia.”
Iris’s lips form an oh. Gears turn behind her eyes. “You think she used the confusion to run off before her dad tells you to take her home?”
“I would if I was her.” The toothpaste can’t cover up the sour taste in Carson’s mouth. We won’t solve this now. “Who was that guy?”
“Which guy?”
“The one you were talking to way a long time. The one who got stabbed.”
Iris’s eyes narrow. “Were you watching me?”
“I was dancing in front of you. What the fuck else am I gonna look at?”
“I don’t know. The gorgeous guy you’re dancing with?”
“I know what he looks like. That’s probably the longest I’ve ever seen you spend with a guy. Who was he? Why’d somebody want to stab him?”
“I…” Iris’s mouth works without any sound coming out. “Okay. His name’s Trent. I know him from the clubs. We come here maybe three-four times a year. We get to know people. He’s got a thing for me. Like, maybe he can flip me to the hetero side? I like winding him up. And…I don’t know why somebody’d want to try to kill him. Somebody doesn’t like him?”
“You think?” Carson paces more. “Was he dealing?”
“I don’t—”
“Cut the bullshit. Was he dealing?”
“Well…probably. I mean, almost everyone is, one way or another. Why are you attacking me?”
Heavy sigh. “We’re being shadowed by a gang. Last Sunday, a drug dealer got stabbed to death at a club we were at. Last night, a drug dealer got stabbed right in front of us. What does this sound like to you?”
“I…” Iris’s head droops.
Carson stalks toward her and lifts her chin with the backs of her fingers. “Sounds like you guys got in the middle of somebody’s drug war. You wouldn’t know how that happened, right?”
Iris shakes her head. She looks like she’s about to cry.
“Figure it out. Next time you go to a club, somebody might try to shank you or one of the others.” Carson steps back and glares. “That’s not happening on my watch.”