Page 59 of A Very Happy Thanksgiving
Phae.
On the couch next to Marc, Serena changed the TV channel as Heath poured a beer in the kitchenette. Earlier, Serena had spent an hour on the phone with Owen in London while Heath called Edie to reassure her. Then they’d both spoken with their parents, with Liam, with Marissa and Eisen and Janie. Then their friends had begun checking in, and Serena complained her fingers were numb from all the texting.
Marc? He’d talked with Owen and said hi to Edie, and then his finger hovered over Kitty’s number, but what would he say to her? Yeah, I’m fine, your stepdaughter ran through a hail of gunfire to rescue me and then she turned into the Grim Reaper. Did Kitty know what Phae did for a living? Where she went after those flying visits home? Marc didn’t think so.
For all those years without Phae, he’d been worrying about entirely the wrong kind of body count.
He’d feared he’d never see her again.
Now he grew nervous that he would.
She was here in the hotel, or at least, she had been earlier. They’d passed in the hallway, him on the way back to his suite after another round of questions, her with three stony-faced men in suits.
Attorneys?
Cops?
Diplomats?
Frank was in the hospital, and one member of the Wild Roots Collective was in a body bag. They’d arrested Katie, who wasn’t Katie but KD, it turned out—he must have misheard the name—plus Frank and their shaken but uninjured colleague. Marc had hired them an attorney, plus one for himself because he’d killed a man, hadn’t he?
He’d killed a man, and he’d never unsee that.
How many men had Phae killed?
How did she sleep at night?
How could he sleep at night?
The answer? He couldn’t. In the early hours, after dinner with Heath and Serena, he left the suite and took the stairs to the roof garden, a surreal oasis that overlooked the city with trees set around a sparkling turquoise pool, a waterfall tumbling among flowers, and lights twinkling between rocks. He tapped one boulder. Fibreglass. Hadn’t he spent his life living a lie? Why did it surprise him that so little in this world was real?
Details of the kidnap plot were gradually coming out, although Marc couldn’t be sure that everything on the news was real. But Heath had his sources too, and apparently, Wild Roots had sourced their weapons via a local environmentalist with connections to the West Papua Freedom Army. Through him—inadvertently, he swore, after he’d gotten arrested—the terrorists had managed to find the stilt house and show up with a plan to kidnap Marc. If they’d succeeded, their demands would have been much harder to fulfil than simply not building on a beach.
And instead of grilled pineapple and a paperback, Marc and Serena would have been facing shackles and solitary confinement.
The top of the glass wall dug into his chest as he leaned over, looking at the street below. Even at this time of night, the paparazzi were lying in wait, along with a few placard-toting folks who could have been fans or protesters. Nobody looked up. Marc was safe, even as he contemplated swinging a leg over the wall and jumping.
Last month, he’d been disillusioned, a ways off happy, but content to keep living the life he’d chosen because sweeping change seemed a step too far.
Last night, he’d realised he couldn’t go back. Couldn’t keep up the pretence anymore. Couldn’t deal with the interview requests or book proposals or demands from his publicist.
“If you’re considering a swan dive, you should know that I have a taser.”
Marc spun to see Phae standing behind him, her shiny brown hair bathed in a halo of light they both knew was a lie.
She was no angel.
“You came up here to rescue me again?”
She shook her head, took a joint out of her pocket, and lit it. The distinctive smell of marijuana floated on the air.
Some things changed.
Some things stayed the same.
“Remember when we used to sneak out to the barn to smoke?” he asked.
“Remember when Booker thought he’d stubbed out his blunt and set the lawn on fire?”
