Page 15 of A Very Happy Thanksgiving
“Is that a joke?”
“Is anything about this funny? Maybe the way you started shrieking on the beach, I guess.”
“I was not shrieking,” Marc snapped. So, she’d been one of the raiders?
“Yes, you?—”
Again, Havana held up a hand, silencing her. “We won’t harm you. We don’t believe in hurting any living creature, even humans.”
Serena found a scrap of courage, and the strength in her voice was good to hear. “Excuse me if I’m sceptical, but you just shot up our set.”
“We mostly used blanks.”
“Mostly?”
“We made a few holes in the buildings for effect. Everyone was too busy panicking to notice.”
“I saw a background actor bleeding, and a crew member fell on the beach.”
“Ah, yes, that was unfortunate. The blood came from a ricochet, nothing more than a scratch, and the crew member tripped over a sound boom. But don’t worry, he’s been ferried to the hospital, and the doctors pinned his ankle back together. Did you know they have universal healthcare here? There are some positives.”
Wait a second… They knew details of the victims’ medical care? How would they find out? Did they have a contact at the hospital? How would they even know which hospital the guy had been taken to? Unless…
“They were part of your gang?”
“We prefer the term ‘collective.’ And it was our lucky break when the casting people began recruiting for background performers in Kuta. Fifty pounds a day, plus food, board, and transport to Malati. I guess they thought backpackers would jump at the chance. Anyhow, enough small talk—we need your passwords.”
“That’s the second problem; I don’t know them anymore.”
“I don’t believe that.”
“Believe what you want, but a couple of years ago, someone tried to hack my BuzzHub account, and my publicist made me change all my passwords to long, complicated gobbledygook that I forgot.”
“Do you think I was born yesterday?”
No, but the man clearly hadn’t done his homework. Marc hadn’t handled his own social media for years.
“Of course not.”
“Can’t we reset the password?” the blonde asked.
Marc shrugged, because how should he know? “I’ve never tried doing that before.”
“Well, do you know the password for your email?”
Yes, but Marc didn’t particularly want to share it. Some things were personal. Plus these people swore they wouldn’t kill him or Serena, so maybe he could refuse to give them the information and wait for the rescue team to arrive? There would be a rescue team, right? Cops, the military, an army of true-crime podcasters.
Although he did recall Dylan Young saying as they read through the script yesterday that if the Indonesian police were tasked with solving the mystery on Malati, the culprit would never be caught. Had Dylan been joking around, or was there an element of truth in his words? Marc wasn’t sure he wanted to know.
Besides, did it really matter if this “collective” read his emails? It was probably just a bunch of spam. Once he’d reached ten thousand unread messages, he’d deleted the app from his home screen and never looked at it again. His accountant paid the bills, his personal assistant did the shopping, and his lawyer looked after the contracts, so it wasn’t as if Marc would miss anything important.
But perhaps he could use the collective’s demand as a bargaining chip…
“Fine, I’ll give you the password, but first, you have to prove that nobody died in your raid on Malati. Show me a news bulletin or a media report.”
He expected some pushback, but Havana just rolled his eyes again and shrugged.
“Go ahead,” he told the blonde.
