Chapter Six
“I’m having déjà vu all over again,” Gabe whispered into Lila’s ear as they leaned against the wicker basket and bounced higher and higher, drifting above Mimosa Key.
“You’ve been in a hot air balloon before?” Lila asked.
“Actually, yes. But that’s not what feels familiar.” He put an arm around her, holding tight to his jacket. He didn’t need it, of course, but the jacket made a good cover for the baby blue plastic ball—the only color they could get their hands on at the Super Min. Neon pink would have been better, but it’s what they had.
In the convenience store parking lot, they’d cut open the ball and stuffed with popcorn and wrapped plastic around one tiny egg. The ball also held Lila’s phone, similarly wrapped, so they could track the landing spot. The whole thing was closed with tape and hidden under the folded jacket.
They’d followed the directions they’d scoured websites to find, working fast and hoping like hell they’d chosen to copy from a smart physics student.
“Then what feels familiar?” she asked.
“This. You and me on a mission. Hiding something. Saving someone. Risking life and limb for a cause.”
She smiled up at him. “You miss being a spy, Gabe?”
“I do,” he said, not hesitating one second. “But I like our life now better. It’s safer, smarter, and I have a lot more to worry about than my own ass.” He slid his hand down her back. “It’s yours I worry about.”
“And Rafe’s.”
“Obviously, or I wouldn’t be on fool’s errand number two. But still, this takes me back to China and Greece when we were always on the hairy edge of trouble.”
“You were on the hairy edge,” she corrected. “All I did was translate.”
“What about Pakistan? That wasn’t translating when you had to make small talk in Urdu with the guy at the front desk long enough for me to break into a room and steal a laptop.”
She whistled. “That was a close one.”
“Hey, I got the laptop.”
“But the hotel clerk followed me out to the street.”
“Who wouldn’t? But then I almost had to kill him.”
She nodded at the memory. “You did scare the life out of him jumping out of that alley.”
“Good times, blondie.”
She laughed, leaning her head on his shoulder. “Cuba was the best, though. Not as much cloak-and-dagger stuff at Gitmo, but we had fun in that little apartment.”
“We had sex in that little apartment,” he corrected.
“So much sex,” she agreed.
“That’s when I knew I loved you,” he said softly. “When we woke up that morning, right before you told me you were leaving, I was completely sure. I would have married you that day. But then…” His words trailed off, replaced by the dark memory of how the next five years unfolded.
“Shh. It’s over. We survived, we reunited, and now we’re on another mission, and it’s Rafe we’re saving.”
“Just to set the record straight, it’s your mood and our first night of marriage I’m saving. I don’t think making egg drop soup in a hot air balloon is anything but something the two of us will laugh about on our anniversary for the rest of our lives.”
“I hope you’re right.” Lila glanced past him. “Can you drop it without Zoe and her tech seeing us? We should be getting to the altitude that matches Indigo Hill soon.”
Gabe followed her gaze, staring across the basket at Zoe, who was engrossed in the business of her balloon, talking in hushed tones to another woman, turning the fire power up and down, which made them bounce a little in the air.
“You two okay?” Zoe asked with a playful grin. “Don’t mind a little turbulence I hope.”
“We’re fine,” Gabe assured her. “What’s the altitude?”
She squinted at a gauge. “Just passed two thousand,” she said. “We won’t go much higher today. In fact, we need to head toward the landing site.”
Gabe nodded his thanks and inched over the edge of the wicker basket, looking down at Mimosa Key far below. “This is going to be tricky,” he said. “But we’re headed east. If we stay south of all those trees and brush, we could plop this puppy right in the sweet spot outside of the resort but in the open area south of the baseball stadium.”
“That would be perfect. We could easily find it.”
“But wind could take it into the trees or brush.” He’d already talked to Zoe about the wind speed and direction, feigning interest in balloon technology and meteorology because he couldn’t reveal that his true motives were to thwart a black magic spell.
She’d explained enough for him to get an idea of how far the winds could take a plastic ball that’s been stuffed with popcorn and plastic to protect a raw egg and a phone.
“The farther we get from the brush, the better,” he said to Lila.
“But if we go too far, it might hit the water.”
“Water or brush would suck. We have to aim for the open grass right there.” He pointed toward a field in the distance. “Two more minutes, and we should be there.”
“And then I’ll—”
“We’re going to turn now,” Zoe called. “We have a report of a thunderstorm over the gulf. Not visual yet, but—”
“A thunderstorm?” Lila asked, gripping Gabe a little.
Zoe gave her a bright and reassuring smile. “No worries about your wedding, Lila. It will be here and gone like most Florida storms, and it will leave the air clear and gorgeous for your beachfront vows, I promise.”
“But how far is the storm?” Gabe asked, since they still had to drop the ball, find the egg, and get Lila and Rafe into rushing water. He swallowed the darkest, vilest words he could think of, and they just didn’t do the trick to cover the sheer idiocy of this day.
“We have an hour or so, maybe more,” Zoe said. “But I’m not taking chances. Say your…whatever you came up here to say. I’m moving us back to the landing site as best I can.”
Which would mean in less than a minute, they’d be over the scrub.
“Do we have to find the egg after we drop it?” he asked quietly in Lila’s ear.
“I don’t know the rules, Gabe. But I’ll feel better knowing it worked.”
“Okay.” They had to drop it now.
Gabe glanced at Zoe again, who was still watching them. “Uh, if you don’t mind?” He made a circle with his finger, gesturing for her to turn around and give them privacy. “Lila and I have to…”
“Pray, yes, I heard.” There was just a tiny note of skepticism under her sweet smile. “We aim to please the newlyweds, or about-to-be’s…but we also can’t risk lightning, which is always ahead of a storm. Make it fast.” She and her technician turned their backs.
“Time to pray for favorable winds, blondie,” he whispered, pulling the puffy blue ball out from his jacket and maneuvering their bodies to shield it if Zoe happened to sneak a peek.
Lila checked Zoe again, then nodded. “Now, fast.”
They both leaned over the edge as he held the ball out. The area below wasn’t wide open; there was a road, a few houses, the goat farm and stadium to the north, and, of course, the trees. They’d have to hit a bull’s-eye for it to be easy to find.
He waited, then opened his hand to let the toy ball go.
He watched it bounce on air, suspended for a split second, then flip so the heavily taped side was angled down. Then it fell slowly through the air.
And drift toward the brush and trees.
“Damn it,” he muttered.
“Shhh. We’re praying.”
The ball floated west, right over the edge of a thicket of impenetrable scrub, making Gabe grunt in disgust. How the holy hell were they supposed to get in there?
“Watch, watch,” she whispered, nudging him. “Track it as best you can in case my phone breaks. Remember where it is.”
He knew that and did that, but he wasn’t optimistic.
She looked up at him once it landed, lost in a forest of sharp-edged, thorny brush and spiny saw palmetto plants. “Can we find it, Gabe?”
“Of course,” he said with far more certainty and bravado than he felt.
“And the egg?”
“Will be intact.” He hoped. God, he hoped. Not that he believed in this crap, not one tiny bit of it. He glanced at Lila, who looked at him with love and trust and respect.
He couldn’t let her down.
Half an hour later, Zoe let them down, gently. They were a mile from the scrub field where the ball had dropped, so they accepted the ride to Gabe’s car, then drove up the western road and made it to within walking distance of where the locator on his phone placed Lila’s.
“My phone is still functioning, so that’s good,” she said.
“Would that count for the curse?” Gabe asked.
“You mean if the egg broke? Maybe. Let’s just find it and get home before this storm hits.”
Gabe glanced up at the gunmetal-gray skies, fat storm clouds gathering with purpose now. He shifted his attention to his phone, tracking Lila’s. “Okay, forty feet…that way.” He pointed directly into a thick forest of spiny, sharp-needled brush nature designed to scratch anyone who came close. “And if you say one thing about wearing the wrong shoes, I’ll go in barefoot.”
She just huffed out a sigh. “Please put that jacket on that we had in the balloon. You’re going to get cut by the thorns.”
“I take it that means you don’t want to change your mind about going in there to find the ball.”
She shot him a look. “Of course not. We’re going to find that ball, confirm that the experiment worked, and then—”
“I am going in there, blondie. You’re not getting a scratch on that gorgeous face on your wedding day.”
Exhaling, she agreed with a nod. “And I swear I will be your love slave for the rest of your life.”
“Wait, didn’t you already agree to that? It’s called a wedding.”
She rolled her eyes and nudged him. “Look. There’s a bit of a clearing. Go on, Gabe.”
The jacket did nothing to protect his lower legs, exposed in shorts, but he powered through the thorny bushes, keeping one eye ahead and one on his phone to be sure he was going in the right direction.
“The locater can only get me so close,” he called back to Lila. “Then I have to get lucky.”
“Then get lucky,” she said. “I’m happy to come in and help you look.”
“Don’t even think about it.” He peered at the nearly impenetrable brush, wishing like hell they’d had a neon ball for sale at the Super Min, but the bitchy owner “didn’t like brightly colored balls,” and it had taken everything Gabe had not to tell that old crustface to suck his brightly colored balls.
He covered his face with his jacket-protected arm, cracked a few branches, bloodied his right hand, and gave in to a heartfelt “fuuuuuuck” when a thorn ripped his shin.
When he looked down at the injury, something caught his eye a few feet away. Something small and white and out of place in a Florida scrub patch. Popcorn.
“Come on, Gabriel Rossi,” Lila called, urging him on. “You can do this.”
Popcorn meant he had to be close. It also meant the ball burst open, but they’d expected that. But he hoped all the popcorn and plastic wasn’t gone. He bent down, looking for a trail of white popcorn, but seeing none.
“Gabe?” she called when he didn’t answer. “What did you find?”
More popcorn. A small pile of it. Shit. He shoved back branches and fronds, searching from one side to the other just as the sky flashed white with lightning.
“Gabe, hurry,” Lila called.
More popcorn, some plastic, and…a shred of a blue ball with tape on it. Damn it. This was not good. He’d have to persuade her not to believe in this crap. He had to. She was too smart for this.
“Gabe?”
He took another step and stabbed his hands into some brush to get them out of the way, landing on something soft and…plastic. The rest of the ball.
“Gabe?”
Only then did he realize she’d come closer and was no longer yelling. He straightened and turned, catching a glimpse of Lila’s blond hair when another light flashed in the sky, but no thunder, so the storm couldn’t be that close.
“What are you doing?” he demanded.
She pushed through some more brush. “You found the egg, didn’t you? And it’s broken.”
He looked down, rooting for the words to make Lila see reason, just as she took another step closer. And he spied the egg in the last layer of plastic an inch from her other foot. Intact. One step and—
He dove forward to stop her from taking that step, pushing her to the side just as her foot landed…six inches from the egg. She shrieked, and they both tumbled off-balance, falling into a thorny cabbage palm. He fought to cover her face with his chest, both of them landing half inside the bush.
“You almost stepped on it,” he said.
“Did I?”
“I don’t think so.”
She let out a breath, eyes shuttering as another bolt of lightning flashed. They looked at each other, silent, both counting, until the thunder. “It’s about five miles away, but moving fast,” Gabe said. “I’m going to get up first, then help you up. Don’t move until I have my eye on that egg.”
She nodded, and he pushed himself to his feet, squinting at the spot where he’d seen the plastic-wrapped egg. “Okay. I see it. You won’t step on it.” He reached for her and helped her out of the scrub, brushing a black palmetto bug off her shoulder without telling her what he was doing.
She narrowed her eyes at him. “Roach?”
“Massive.”
“Shit. Get the egg.”
He turned to it, carefully getting on his knees to scoop up the bubble-wrapped egg.
“No yolk,” she whispered over his shoulder.
“No joke,” he fired back, slowly tearing back the plastic to reveal a perfectly unbroken egg. “Son of a bitch, I hope Rafe is that smart in physics.”
She smiled up at him. “Or is as persistent, keen-eyed, careful, and determined as his father.”
“You’re right. That beats the crap out of physics. Now let’s—”
Something buzzed and flashed on the ground underneath a palm frond. “My phone,” Lila exclaimed, bending over to grab it. “I thought for sure we’d never find…oh, there’s a text from Poppy. And Chessie. And Nino. And, oh God, Gabe.”
His heart dropped, realizing he’d been so focused on his task that he’d ignored those texts on his own phone. “What is it?”
“Rafe left the villa and nobody knows where he is.”
Another merciless bolt of lightning flashed in the sky, followed by a deep, deafening rumble of thunder. But Gabe heard only the sound of his own voice as he dropped his head back and howled in fury.