“Ready?” her father said. She nodded and followed him as he bounded down the beach, past a bleached-out tree skeleton that had toppled sideways in the sand. She plunged in; the water was the perfect kind of cold. She swam the way she had wanted to all week at the Sagamore. She swam toward the rock, going underwater for as long as she could stand, then surfacing and pulling in big gasps of air before diving back down. When she reached the rock, she found it was steeper than it had looked from afar. With determination, she pulled herself up to the top of it, her arms shaking with the effort.
Her father was already waiting for her there. He offered her a hand up at the last possible moment. “Good job, Lucky,” he said. “Excellent work. I’m proud of you.”
“Don’t,” she said, suddenly ashamed all over again. She moved away from him, preparing to dive into the water again and swim to shore, but he held her back.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I know it wasn’t easy for you to give up something you really wanted, for us. I’m sorry it hurt you. I wish the world were a different place, but it isn’t. The odds are stacked against us and we have to grab what we can, when we can—even if it doesn’t always feel like the right thing to do. This was a real break for us, kid. Money like this means we can indeed start chasing after some of our dreams and not worry about small-time stuff for a while. And it was all because you sacrificed for it. That’s why I’m proud of you—not because you’re a good con artist, but because you did a hard thing. I love you, kiddo.”
She was looking up as she listened to him speak, watching a climber reach the top of a ledge. Once he had made it, he stood on the edge and surveyed his surroundings. When he looked down into that pond, what did he see? Just a normal father and daughter, that was what. Two people who might soon swim to shore, get into their car, and head to their normal house and their normal life.
“I’m doing the best I can on my own,” her father was saying.
“Oh, Dad. I know you are. It’s okay.” She turned to him.
“You’re all I’ve got, you know.”
“You’re all I’ve got, too. Don’t be sad. I’m sorry.”
He reached for her and they hugged, and she tried not to think about how she was the one apologizing to him. Somehow, the tables were always turning.
“You’re tough, Lucky. You can handle anything.”
He was right: she was tough. The odds couldn’t stay stacked against her forever. And when they changed, she’d truly be the luckiest girl in the world.
CHAPTER THREE
Lucky stretched across the king-size bed and ran her hands over its silky sheets, searching for Cary’s warm skin. She lifted her chin and arched her back. “Morning, babe…”
No answer.
She opened her eyes. She was alone in the bed. She caught her reflection in the mirror on the wall: her hair was tangled and matted. Last night’s mascara was making its way down her face. She didn’t look like a person who belonged in a suite at the Bellagio; she looked like she’d crawled out of a dumpster. A wave of nausea hit. Way too much champagne last night.
“Cary?”
Silence.
They had set their phone alarms for four o’clock in the morning so they could be at the airport by five. Hadn’t they? Lucky rubbed her forehead, then her eyes. When they’d returned to the hotel after their night out, there had been a man in the lobby, the same one who had been talking to Cary at the bar in the casino.
“Who is that?” Lucky had slurred. Had Cary said something about the man being his new friend? If he had, in her champagne-buzzed state, nothing had seemed unusual about that.
“Go upstairs,” she hazily remembered him whispering in her ear. “Now. And only open the door if it’s me. Get our bags ready to go, then close your eyes for a few minutes. I’ll be back soon, I swear.”
She had passed out on the bed, expecting he would wake her when he came back up.
Now there was sunshine pouring through the crack between the curtains. The clock on the nightstand said it was 10:23. She was supposed to be on a plane right now. Where was he?
“Hello?”
She listened for the shower: nothing.
Maybe their flight was delayed. Maybe he was getting coffee and breakfast. She walked into the sitting room. His suitcase was still there beside hers by the door. She picked up her phone to try his number. His phone went straight to voicemail.
Her stomach roiled again. She retched as she ran to the bathroom, barely making it before she was sick. What was in that champagne? Had Cary—
No. He wouldn’t. Not Cary. Not to her. This was just a hangover.
Eventually she lifted herself from the cool marble floor. She tried his phone again but it was still off. She turned on the television and switched it to the news channel so she could double-check the time: 10:45 now.
“… David Ferguson and Alaina Cadence,” the newscaster was saying, using the names they had gone by in Idaho. “Wanted for bilking dozens of senior citizens living in Boise out of savings, and laundering money. They were posing as an accountant and a restaurateur and are suspected to have already moved large sums to overseas bank accounts before fleeing. Retirement funds have been emptied out, lives have been ruined—and now the police have announced there are suspected connections to organized crime…”
She turned. Her face was on the television. Cary’s face was there, too.
WANTED FOR FRAUD, EMBEZZLEMENT, RACKETEERING, the news banner below their faces read.
Her panic rose as she listened to the newscasters speak. Video footage showed news vans outside their house in Boise. She stepped closer. Why were they talking so much about seniors? It was a lie. It had only been the affluent, not the elderly. That’s what she and Cary had agreed on. That was what her father had always taught her: steal from the rich, give to the poor—yes, fine, a little like Robin Hood. What was so bad about taking from people who had so much more than they needed? The anchor on-screen kept talking, describing it all wrong. Lucky hadn’t done those things—at least, not all of them. Not racketeering, either.
Cary. What did you do?
Lucky turned the television off. She walked to the safe and peered inside. He hadn’t taken his passport, which meant he’d had another alias lined up, other forms of identification she’d never be able to guess. It meant he had been planning this for months, had never had any intention of escaping to Dominica with her, had always planned to leave her to atone for all this by herself.