Zia pushed her mind beyond thought, her heart beyond fear, her muscles beyond exhaustion. Everything hurt, a deep, pulsing hurt, but finally she was crouched in the undergrowth peeking out from behind a gigantic fern at the manicured landscaping of the villas. She counted them, tried to place herself on her mental map. The ocean was that way. The volcano was this way. That meant the tennis courts were over there and the pool should be up the path that snaked under the long pergola covered in verdant bougainvillea. Zia forced herself to wait there in the bushes for five minutes, but the guards must have already cleared this area and she couldn’t see any drones, although she could hear their plaintive whines over toward the beach.
The minute she stepped out of the bushes, the risk of recapture would skyrocket. If a guard so much as glanced up the path, they’d see her. She’d be exposed to whatever surveillance systems oversaw this place. Whatever slim advantage her escape had earned would crumble away to nothing. But staying in the jungle only meant that she was safe enough to die alone, and maybe not even that. If they wanted her badly enough, she wouldn’t be able to evade K9 search teams. No, her escape hadn’t bought her cover, it had bought her time. She needed to invest that time wisely to have any chance of getting out of here alive. And any investment that could generate a real return meant taking real risks.
Zia glanced back and forth to confirm there was no one around, wiped the mud from her hands, and stood up. She stepped quickly out of the bushes but once her feet were on the path, she slowed to a nonchalant stroll as if she were just taking a walk around the neighborhood. After the muck of the forest, the flagstones were smooth and firm beneath her feet. The air was thick with the scent of jasmine. Birds twittered in the branches of manicured trees. The second she reached the cover of the pergola, Zia sprinted up its entire length. Inside, it was a different world, a floral wormhole lit by pinpricks of light that might just lead her a step closer to freedom. The passage curved up and to the left between two villas and Zia was panting by the time she reached the other end.
Zia paused before reemerging into sunlight. Pulling back a vine, she peered ahead. Yes, her mental map had been sufficiently accurate. There was the fork that led right to the tennis courts and left to the pool. Kids were still wading around the shallow end under the watchful gaze of their mother. The swimmer was pulling himself out, muscled skin glistening as water streamed off him.
A drone was working its way over the rooftops and the hum of its propellers sent a jolt of adrenaline through her system. Zia stepped out and walked purposefully up the path. Left. No lock on the gate to the pool. Quick turn into the small locker room before any of the residents noticed how muddy and bloody she was. The locker room was plush and smelled of chlorine and shampoo. Smooth jazz played at low volume. Zia stripped down quickly, folded her ruined clothes, and stuffed them into the trash, palming the needle. Then she snagged a thick robe and fluffy towel and hung them on hooks in one of the shower nooks. She dropped the needle into the pocket of the robe, turned on the shower, and stepped under the steaming water.
The water washed away blood, grit, and tension. Zia trembled and her teeth chattered despite the heat. What was happening to her? She couldn’t keep this up. She was supposed to be sitting in a meeting coordinating the efforts of various local nonprofits right now, not escaping the clutches of mysterious kidnappers. This kind of stuff only happened in stories like The Princess Bride, which Zia had read and watched over and over again on long-haul flights so many times that she knew all the dialogue by heart. Westley, Inigo, Buttercup, they would know what to do in this kind of situation. They would use a combination of charm and expertly applied violence to escape and expose whatever secret lay at the dark heart of this facility in the process. Too bad watching adventure films didn’t help you absorb the skills of the protagonists.
Now that Zia was out of the forest and in what could have been a spa, the idea that armed goons were out there looking for her seemed utterly ridiculous. Maybe her abduction was a theatrical stunt organized by well-meaning friends forcing her to take a vacation. She laughed at the prospect—that’s it, meet fear with silliness—and water poured into her mouth, reminding her of how thirsty she was.
Shampoo. Soap. Rinse. Move.
Turning off the tap, Zia rubbed herself down with the towel and pulled on the robe. When she looked at herself in the mirror, she saw everyone she’d ever known staring back, one face flickering into the next too fast to be recognized until the apparitions collapsed under their own weight. Thick black hair, terracotta skin, graceful curved nose inherited from a Mayan ancestor, haunted eyes the color of smoky quartz, small scar along the cheekbone from when she’d taken a fall chasing a lob across a hard court. No matter how disassociated she might feel, that was her. She tried out a smile, summoning everything she’d learned about acting from playing at politics. A good smile was all about the eyes. She turned up the collar of the robe to cover her bruised neck. Then she snagged a fresh pair of slippers from the neat stack near the door, popped one of the breath mints from the basket on the counter into her mouth, and walked out onto the pool deck projecting the air of unassailable entitlement she had spent years shrugging off.
The family didn’t give her a second glance as she rounded the corner of the pool and headed over to where the swimmer was finishing a post-workout stretch. He looked up as she approached and she donned an embarrassed grimace. Time to channel Daniela, who had once charmed her way into Beyoncé’s greenroom at an arena show.
“Sorry to bug you,” she said.
“No problem,” he waved off the apology. “What’s up?”
“It’s just—” She bit her lower lip. “Oh my god, this is embarrassing.” She shook her head and let color rise in her cheeks. “I forgot which locker I put my stuff in. I’ve checked a few and now I think I’m going crazy. Is there any chance I might be able to borrow your phone so I can call mine and figure out where I stashed it? I promise it won’t take more than a couple minutes.”
He grinned. “Sure,” he said. “Let me just grab it for you.”
“Thank you so much, I just feel so silly.”
“Not at all,” he said. “I don’t want to admit how many times I lose my keys.”
She laughed, and saw a guard walking up the path past the pool. She turned slightly so her back was to the guard and hoped that the swimmer wouldn’t be able to hear her pounding heart.
“So, what program do you work on?” he asked as he collected his things from a chaise lounge.
“Oh, that’s classified,” she said, injecting enough flirtatiousness into her tone that she might or might not be joking.
He glanced at her over his shoulder and she winked.
He laughed. “Aren’t they all?”
That gave her cover to treat his question as rhetorical. “I really appreciate you helping me out,” she said. “I’m just having one of those days.”
He stood, unlocked his phone, and offered it to her.
“I swear I’ve seen you around,” he said, cocking his head to the side.
“Maybe,” she said, hoping against hope that her captors hadn’t sent out some kind of APB. Dissemble. Context was everything. “Small world, right? I’m Joanna.”