“I’m Logan,” he said. “Hey, it’s not too often you meet new people around here. After you find your phone, any chance you’d be interested in grabbing a drink? Donny just got in a shipment of good scotch.”
Zia cocked her head to the side and looked him up and down. “You know what?” she said, with a sly smile. “I’d like that.”
She turned and walked back to the locker room, letting her hips sway in the way her mother had taught her to dance salsa. She hadn’t even had to stab him in the eye with her needle. And then she was back in the locker room with a phone and could hardly believe her luck. Finally she had caught a break. Maybe she’d make it out of here after all.
She stared down at the screen and drew a blank. Her momentary glee collapsed into indecision. Who exactly was she supposed to call? She’d been so focused on getting her hands on a phone that she hadn’t thought about what she would actually do with it. She couldn’t very well call 911. She didn’t even know where in the world she was, let alone what, if any, authorities existed out here. The guards chasing her might well be the highest authorities on this damn island.
Her location, at least, was a question that Zia could solve. She opened a map and zoomed out from her GPS pin for context. She reeled. Nowhere near India. A tiny island in the Indonesian archipelago, not too far from Borneo. Who could possibly want to hold her here? How long had she been unconscious?
She could call Himmat, but what could he possibly do from India except alert Jason? Galang might know what to do, but Galang might very well have been abducted himself. Zia’s finger twitched. She wanted so desperately to sign onto their group chat and declare her emergency. She had friends in moderately high places, maybe they could do something. But they were also scattered all over the world, and what could she possibly say?
Zia was the rock. She was the person other people could rely on. She didn’t need help and wouldn’t be controlled. Her stomach tightened. She was down a set, ad-out, and tossing the ball to serve. She was basking in post-coital bliss when Tommy doused the afterglow by asking why she wasted her time with people like Galang and Kodjo. She was telling the president-elect that she would not serve as her new ambassador to Sri Lanka. She was savoring a mouthwatering croissant when she received the call about her mother and the world turned upside down. Her hand found the needle in her pocket, caressed its slender, menacing line. If only life were so simple, people purpose-built for whatever the world demanded from them.
It was obvious who she needed to call, so glaringly obvious that she had been trying not to see it, trying, despite everything, to avoid a conversation she’d spent nearly a decade not having. She was a fugitive holding a shard of beveled glass connected to the digital infinite via an invisible lattice as dense as the jungle that had concealed her, and she could no longer afford the indulgence of lying to herself. The needle bent in her grip. He had billions of dollars, a global satellite network, and would do whatever was necessary to find her. There was nothing she wanted less than his help. There was nothing she needed more.
Maybe she should just return the phone and surrender to the guards, end this stupid little game. Better to face torture than the shadows that were gathering inside her. Pandora should have left her box closed.
Tears splattered onto the screen as Zia typed in the number.
He picked up on the first ring.
“Papi?”
“Zia? Oh, thank god, thank god. Where are you, sweetie? I stepped out to take a call and when I got back to your room, you had disappeared. We’ve been trying to find you all afternoon.”
+
13
+
Her father’s villa was smaller than the one Zia had woken up in. It was nestled all by itself up on the mountainside, surrounded by impenetrable rainforest. Instead of the beach, it looked out over the airfield where another of those colossal planes was taking off.
Santiago León met his daughter on the wide deck. He had always been thin, but the intervening years had eroded whatever fat had once softened the lines of his face, leaving him gaunt. Large rectangular glasses framed intense dark eyes, and his silver hair was combed back from his forehead. He wore his signature plain white t-shirt, blue jeans, and leather jackboots. The only time Zia had ever seen him wear anything else was on the last day they’d seen each other in person, the day of her mother’s funeral.
He pulled Zia into a hug, voice cracking as he whispered “mi hija” into her ear over and over again. She hugged him back, feeling his protruding ribs, his beating heart, his ragged breath. The familiar musk of smoke, cinnamon, and sweat dredged up memories of staying up past her bedtime writing code together, going on family backpacking trips into remote alpine country, squeezing his hand as tight as she could as a real-life rocket rode an incandescent pillar of fire into the heavens. Relief, pain, confusion, joy, resentment, admiration, longing, nostalgia, comfort, regret, exhaustion, pride, and a dozen subtle and ineffable emotions washed over Zia in a violent cataract. Ten years. It had been ten years.
They disengaged, looking each other up and down.
“I’m just glad you’re okay,” he said, shaking his head. “I was so, so worried.”
Anger coalesced within Zia like an image coming into crystal clear focus.
“What the hell is going on?” she asked, remembering the chirping crickets, shadows glimpsed through the tresses of a pepper tree. “You had me kidnapped? You could have called, you know.”
“What?” A shadow flitted across his face. “No! Of course not.”
“Okay,” said Zia. “Then what happened?”
“We rescued you,” he said, suddenly unsure whether he was supposed to be backpedaling or reassuring. “There were a number of red flags. People attempting to hack you. Sophisticated people. Attribution was impossible. Then my people on the ground spotted a surveillance team following you. At first they just ran counter surveillance but when the bogeys moved in, they had no choice but to take action. Just in time, too. If they hadn’t…” He shivered. “Who knows where you might be? My worst nightmare come true… Anyway, they managed to get you out and bring you here to safety. I was sitting with you waiting for you to wake up and stepped out to take a call but when I got back you were gone and… Oh honey,” he ran a hand through his hair. “I’m just so relieved that you’re safe. Gracias a Dios.”
“And why were you monitoring my accounts?” she asked as certainty settled over her like a winter chill.
“Wait, what?” he shook his head in confusion.
“How did you notice these ‘red flags’ if you weren’t monitoring me remotely? Did these ‘sophisticated people’ message you with a heads up? Or maybe they sent you a pretty postcard saying, ‘we’re trying to hack Zia’?”
“We— I— It’s just that—”
“And your ‘team on the ground’? The ones who so conveniently stepped in to ‘save’ me? Who are they exactly, pray tell? You have people stalking me?”
There it was. The inevitable friction that built up between them as their reactions to each other escalated. Knowing that it was happening made it worse, accelerated the perverse cycle. Her mother had been able to diffuse it with a single chuckle or channel it into something productive with a simple question, releasing the relentless pressure that they brought to bear on each other. Mis alborotaditos, she’d say with a rueful smile. Simmer down, y’all.