Kyle turned to face him. “You believe they murdered Rhonda Templeton.”
Travers nodded. “I do. You just need to keep digging, get something for real on Lisa. Some real honest-to-god proof. But I don’t guess I’m telling you anything you don’t know.”
“It’s nice to know I’ve got at least one ally out there,” Kyle said.
“Sure, yeah, you bet. Just hold still there for a second.” Travers raised his phone to his eye and fired off several shots of Kyle.
“What the hell,” Kyle said. “Stop that.”
“We were talking about proof a minute ago, right? When I write my piece, tell everyone I ran into none other than Brandon Kyle sneaking into Arrival’s event of the century, I’m gonna need a pic to back up my story.”
“No,” Kyle said.
But Travers was already tapping away on his screen with his thumb. “You have to understand, I’m an ally. I believe you. But I just can’t ignore that you’re here. A tweet now, the full story later.”
“You can’t do that,” Kyle said.
Travers said, looking down at the message he was composing, “Not getting many bars here. The ferry’s got Wi-Fi, but...”
He was so busy looking at the phone he didn’t see the computer bag coming straight at his head. Kyle connected with Travers’s temple. Travers dropped the phone and staggered backward.
“What the fuck!” he shouted.
The phone had landed on the deck. Kyle dropped to his knees, grabbed it, and lobbed it over the top of the railing. As it sailed through the air, Travers made a futile attempt to grab for it, leaning over the railing and clutching at nothing.
Kyle quickly glanced around.
It was just the two of them back here. This was an isolated part of the ferry. There were visible security cameras on the upper decks, but he’d noticed none down here.
The railing was too high to push someone over it easily. That would be very difficult. But pitching, well, that might just work.
Kyle was already on his knees, and he worked out the physics in his head in the time it would take a Gandalf sat-nav system to figure out the number of miles between Houston and Topeka. Travers was a small man. Five-two, probably no more than one hundred and thirty pounds. All Kyle had to do was give the man a little boost.
Kyle threw his arms around the man’s knees, locked them, then, with everything he had, he pistoned his own legs upward.
All in less than a second.
Travers’s torso shot upward. By the time he realized what was happening, he was too far up to grab the railing. When the man’s upper thigh was level with the top of the railing, Kyle tipped him forward.
And off he sailed. Two seconds in the air before he went into the sea. If Travers made a sound, the roar of the ferry’s massive engines and the wind drowned them out.
Kyle spun around, his heart hammering in his chest.
As he struggled to catch his breath, for his pulse to drop back to the speed limit, he listened and waited.
There were no shouts of “Man overboard!” No alarms were sounded. The ferry did not slow down.
Once he’d calmed himself down, he went back to the upper deck. Time to rejoin the party.
Six
Sandra had to admit, it was a bit of a kick.
Sitting in the back of the car, reviewing her notes, taking a final look at the press kits, all while Gracie did the driving. She leaned back in the seat, closed her eyes, and took a deep, cleansing breath. At times like this, when she was particularly stressed — and she was always stressed after breakfast with her kids, even on days when her entire career wasn’t at stake — she wished she’d enrolled in one of those relaxation courses, or mindfulness, or yoga, or something that would teach her how to let all the tension flow out of her. Back in her teens, she’d thought that was what drugs and alcohol were for.
Sandra Montrose had weaned herself from that coping strategy once she got a little older, and especially after she’d had kids. Back in the day, she and Adam had sure known how to party, and booze and drugs weren’t the only highs that kept them going. Those were some wild days. Sitting on the back of the Harley, holding on to Adam for dear life, going across the country, never knowing where they’d be spending the night, not giving a rat’s ass about what the next day would bring. Sometimes, she’d take the reins and he’d sit behind her on the bike, and when he got his hands in just the right places, well, that, along with straddling all that horsepower, it was all you could do to concentrate on the road ahead of you.
But sooner or later, you have to grow up. Sandra got a business degree. Adam, who liked hands-on work as opposed to sitting behind a desk, landed a job fixing motorcycles while Sandra found a position in a real estate office. Around the time Katie was born, Sandra had made the move to public relations. Adam, still repairing Harleys while working for someone else, dreamed of the day when he would have his own shop, be his own boss.
Shortly after Archie was born, they borrowed a friend’s beach house on Garrett Island for a week’s vacation, and it was an epiphany. They loved it there. Adam found a small engine repair shop that was for sale. That had to be some kind of sign. And a local public relations firm was looking to hire.
Talk about fucking meant-to-be.
Would they like it, living on an island? Would they feel isolated, confined? Well, it was a pretty big island. There was the town of Garrett itself, plus several other smaller communities scattered here and there, and a lot of countryside separating them. Most of the time, you hardly even knew you were on an island. What was it Chief Brody had said about living on an island?
“It only looks like an island from the water.”
So they made the move.
And things had gone just great. Adam’s business thrived. Sure, things slowed down in the winter months, but rather than worry about the seasonal downturn in business, Adam embraced it. He spent more time with the kids, volunteered at their school. Four years into working at the PR firm, the boss decided to retire and turn things over to Sandra.
Things were going along just great.
Until...
Sandra opened her eyes, turned, and looked out the window. A blue Arrival was pulling out of a driveway, a woman in the front seat studying herself in the drop-down mirror, touching up her lipstick, not bothering to check for traffic. It was Dorothy Lansing, who ran Garrett Books, where Sandra bought all her reading material. Sandra waved and Dorothy waved back. Glancing out the other window, she saw a yellow Arrival go by with the Ambersons, a middle-aged couple who ran a law firm together. If they’d looked Sandra’s way, she’d have waved at them, too, but they were busy looking at their phones. That sort of behavior was now deemed legal, at least on the island, during the trial period.
Sandra got out her own phone and sent several texts. One to her AV guy, another to the caterer, another to someone she knew who worked for the ferry. The caterer and the AV people were already on-site and ready to go, and the ferry had left the mainland on time. And yet, Sandra still found it hard to relax. She wouldn’t be able to unwind until this day was over.
And then there was Joe.
What was that luv text supposed to mean? Okay, he was a nice guy. Sandra liked him. But she felt him pushing a little too hard. Or was it just her? Was she resisting a little too much? Here was this decent guy, with a nice job, and a mortgage-free house — with a mother in it, mind you — and he was really interested in her. Shouldn’t she be happy about that?
The car slowed. Sandra peered through the windshield and saw they were approaching a four-way stop. There were Arrivals closing in from the three other directions. And it looked as though they were all going to get to the stop at the same time.