Six
Sydney
Sydney felt the rumbling begin again, but when she awoke she was on a different plane. Smaller. A five-point harness held her tightly against a small bucket seat. A cockpit curved around her head. Buttons and gauges dotted the convex shape, flashing red and green lights like a Christmas tree. A large bubbled window stretched out before her.
As she looked to her left, she saw him. Jack. What was Jack doing here? she thought. Sydney opened her mouth to speak to him, but no words came out. She tried again, but her voice was gone. Sydney’s heart began to race. Jack! She tried to say the words: You have to turn back, you can’t go, it’s too dangerous.
Jack wouldn’t look at her. He was wearing the black headset she had bought him for his birthday. He looked relaxed and in control. The plane dipped wildly, sending her hair floating in the cockpit around her like a halo. Again Sydney tried to scream, tried to tell him what was coming. The sun slid into the frame of the cockpit window, and the glare blinded both of them. Its piercing light grew bright and brighter until everything was white.
Sydney bolted upright. She was still in her bathrobe, white bath towel wrapped loosely around her head. She was drenched in sweat. Another nightmare. When will they stop? She touched her stomach and felt a pang of hunger mixed with nausea.
Sydney looked around the room and got her bearings. The television sitting atop the carved wood cabinet was still stuck on the hotel menu screen. She could see her purse in the corner atop her stacked clothes from yesterday’s flight. As she brushed her hair from her face, she remembered why she was there. Poor Lizzy.
Sydney stumbled from the bed and spotted a tiny coffee maker on a small shelf near the bathroom. She dragged her feet in that direction. As the coffee popped and gurgled, she heard a brisk knock at the door. She peered out the peephole and saw the bellman standing patiently with her suitcase. Finally! She nearly shrieked with pleasure.
Sydney needed her armor of makeup, clothes, and accessories to face what was next, whatever that might be. As far as she knew, Lizzy’s killer was still at large. She was determined to take the heat off Marissa and Ethan and help the police find the true criminal.
She pulled the suitcase inside, tossed it on the bed, and unzipped the inside compartments. Her neatly packed suitcase was now a bit disorganized and the contents a tad crumpled, but Sydney was so elated to have a little bit of her life back she didn’t care. The next hour was spent making up the social media image that most of her friends knew her for—chic, put together, and entirely in control.
She quickly applied her signature “Five-Minute Makeup Routine.” In truth, it took fifteen minutes (or more) to create her daily look, but her fans loved it anyway. She pulled on a pair of artfully torn jeans, a fresh white T-shirt, and a buttery-soft long cashmere sweater that dusted her calves. Delicate gold hoops and leather ballet flats finished her look. It felt a little hollow, worrying about what she looked like when she had just lost her friend. But experience told her otherwise. When you felt put together on the outside, it made facing the crazy world a little bit easier to handle.
As she worked her curling wand through her hair, she thought about Lizzy. How could someone so sweet have any enemies, much less someone who would want to take her life? Will seemed too clean-cut to do anything so foul as murder. But he was there, probably drinking alongside her. Maybe he could tell Sydney something about the plane ride that he hadn’t told the authorities. She made a mental note to seek him out as soon as they arrived at the resort.
The inspector had also mentioned Lizzy’s work at the offices of DoubleDownCasino.com. She knew Lizzy hadn’t worked there long, and she had told her several times that the job had been a lifesaver for her financially. But Sydney also remembered her complaining about Alice, Ethan’s secretary. Alice was an older woman in her midfifties. She was pencil thin, with stick-straight red hair that she parted down the center and always kept in a tight bun. Sydney had met her several times while visiting Jack, and she’d always given her an uneasy feeling, like she was hiding something. Maybe Lizzy found out her secret.
Any further ruminations were halted by a sharp knock at the door. Alex was waiting on the other side. He didn’t know it, but she was about to prove to him that Marissa and Ethan were innocent.
Seven
Marissa
The soft but firm knocking was insistent. Marissa thought she was dreaming, but as she pulled the silk embroidered sleep mask away from her eyes and peered across the softly lit room, she realized it was coming from the door. At first, she looked around the carefully decorated honeymoon suite with a sense of peace. It was everything she had dreamed of when they booked El Brillo Azul for their wedding. The morning light was just barely creeping through the slits in the large heavy aquamarine-colored curtains on the far side of the room.
As she sat up in bed, it hit her: Lizzy is gone. She tapped a finger to the bags under her eyes, still swollen from her tears the night before, as if to confirm it was real. A dull ache had formed behind her forehead, a remnant of the shock and stress she had endured the day before. She sat up and looked over at Ethan, who was still sleeping soundly next to her. One taunt, muscular arm was tossed lazily over the right side of his face, hiding the angular cut of his jaw.
Their arrival in Jamaica was met with a fanfare of flashing red lights. Fire trucks, ambulances, and several police vehicles swarmed the tarmac ahead of the jet wheels touching the ground. The paramedics entered the plane and confirmed what they all knew to be true: Lizzy was indeed dead. Though a medical examiner would need to confirm the cause of death, it looked as though she had suffered from cardiac arrest.
Ethan took the news with a stoic nod while Will just stood there with a wild look of shock in his eyes. Marissa nearly passed out—Ethan had to practically carry her inside the airport while they removed the body from the plane. As she sat inside the gated waiting area and stared out the large window, the medics worked frantically to take her vitals.
She felt fine; whatever had stopped Lizzy’s heart was limited to only her. Once the three of them had been checked out and cleared for any signs of illness, the interrogations began. It was clear to her by the way the police handled the situation that they believed Lizzy’s death was not from natural causes.
Will, Ethan, and Marissa were separated into three different rooms, and they each spent hours answering question after question about what happened on the plane. Marissa was so shocked and frankly sad that she barely remembered what she told them. The whole experience was a blur.
There was one particular question, however, that stood out in her mind.
“Miss Shumacher, do you have any reason to believe your husband would want to hurt Miss Ortez?” the dark-skinned investigator asked her with a thick Jamaican lilt. The question had completely caught her off guard; the thought had not occurred to her at all. She knew Lizzy was working in Ethan’s office, but that was the only contact or relationship they had ever had.
“Ethan? Of course not. Lizzy is a dear friend of ours. We loved her.” She stared off to the corner of the room, as the words caught in her throat.
“Of course, of course,” he said and looked back down at the yellow note pad in front of him. She returned her gaze from the corner of the room and noticed he was making notes. She couldn’t read his writing, but the whole exchange gave her an uneasy feeling.