“My flask!” Coleman watched it quickly sail high into the blue yonder until it disappeared.
The guys bounced up and down for another ninety seconds, until the operator reeled them in.
The harnesses unlocked. Serge jumped from the ball and snatched his wallet from a plastic bowl. “I absolutely must have the DVD.”
NEW HAMPSHIRE
Agents rushed into the office of the student paper. A morgue. One lone kid in sweats, staying behind to wrap up a three-part series on the education budget.
A badge. “Seen Andy McKenna?”
The student shrugged.
“Know where he might be?”
“Try the dorm?”
Agents ran into the cafeteria. Only two students, both female. Then rounds of all the popular study areas and TV lounges, giving themselves a full self-guided tour of the evacuated campus.
“Let’s check the dorm again.”
They met the agent they’d left behind in the room in case the sophomore returned.
“I take it he hasn’t come back.”
“You mean you didn’t find him?”
“Great.”
“Sir…” The agent gestured at the trashed interior. Papers, CDs, candy wrappers everywhere. Underwear and pizza boxes on the floor. “Looks like someone ransacked.”
“It’s a college student’s room,” said Oswalt. “They all look like this. Mine was worse.”
“I got a weird feeling something’s not kosher.”
“How’s that?”
“Can’t quite put my finger on it. The room just seems light, like stuff’s missing.”
“Anything more specific?”
“Not really.”
Another agent: “Maybe ring his cell again?”
Oswalt flipped open his phone, hit buttons and placed it to his ear. A faint, muffled musical tone came from somewhere in the room.
The agents listened and walked silently, trying to home in on the source. Four of them ended up in a circle, staring at the floor. One reached down and lifted a pizza box. The tone got louder.
“At least we found his phone.”
“I’m not laughing,” said Oswalt. “Let’s go…”
They stepped into the hall. A solitary student walked by with a watering can and containers of fish and bird food.
“Excuse me.” The badge again. “What’s your name?”
“Jason Lavine.”
“You know Andy McKenna?”
He nodded.
“Know where he is?”
He shook his head.
“Any chance he left campus?”
“No… Definitely not.”
“How are you so positive?”
The student pointed into the room with a canister of pellets. “He’s got an aquarium.”
“So?”
“I make a fortune staying behind during spring break, feeding pets. And watering plants-but those are just the girls’ rooms.”
“How does that mean he couldn’t have left?”
The student looked through the open door at guppies. “He didn’t pay me.”
Oswalt sighed.
“Can I go now?”
The agent answered with an offhand wave.
The team trotted down the dorm’s front steps again.
Snowing harder.
Oswalt put his hands in his pockets and stared across the barren commons. “Where can he be?”
MEANWHILE…
Johnny Vegas accelerated his pace up the sidewalk toward his hotel.
“In some kind of a rush?” joked Carrie, clutching his arm harder. A couple of times she reached back and squeezed his ass. He attributed it to the fact she was already halfway in the bag. His kind of girl.
They reached the edge of a parking lot. “Here we are!”
Carrie got on her tiptoes and whispered something in his ear.
Johnny coughed and pounded his chest. “Holy God!” he thought. “She wants to do that” He closed his eyes and mentally pumped a fist in the air: “Yes! I’ve finally done it! Nothing can go wrong now!”
He opened his eyes and began leading her toward the lobby doors.
Suddenly, Johnny felt his arm released. He looked left.
No Carrie.
He looked down. There she was. Lying unconscious on the pavement with a nasty forehead gash. Next to a dented flask.
Chapter Thirteen
PANAMA CITY BEACH
Rood Lear reached a net worth of twenty million by his thirtieth birthday. Which was two years ago. Total now closer to forty. Mansion in the Hollywood Hills, Park Avenue penthouse, private jet on call.
Despite the staggering wealth, Rood still went to work every day.
Rood’s company, Bottom Shelf Productions, had booked the top floor of one of the strip’s finest hotels under his lawyer’s name.
Noon.
The floor’s largest suite was brightly lit, even with curtains closed. Wires and cables ran everywhere, held firmly to the carpet with black electrical tape. Large white umbrellas in the corners filled facial shadows from camera lights.
Rood looked at least seven years younger, because he was so short and had to shave only every three days. He surveyed the suite’s bedroom and bit his lower lip. Something wasn’t up to Rood’s high standards. He found the answer. “Give ’em liquor.”
“I think they’ve already had more than enough,” said his executive assistant.
“I say they haven’t.”
“Sir”-the assistant held a pair of well-worn laminated cards- “I don’t think these drivers’ licenses are legit. See the edges? Someone slit them with razor blades and resealed ’em on an ironing board.”
“You work for CSI now?”
“I’ve seen this trick a hundred times. And we just paid a million in fines.”
“They gave us the IDs, and we accepted them in good faith,” said Rood. “If they’re fake, we’re the victims.”
The assistant turned toward the bed, where a pair of topless, tipsy seventeen-year-olds swatted each other with pillows.
“Harold!” said Rood. “Are you going to give them more liquor or look for another job?”
The assistant walked out the door and slammed it behind him.
“Stop filming!” Rood stomped across the room. “Guess I have to do everything!”
He went to work at the wet bar, ice clanging in a sterling cocktail shaker. Then he approached the bed with two tumblers of his personal recipe: Hawaiian Punch, 7 Up and grain alcohol. “You girls look thirsty.”
Giggles. A feather floated by.
“Bottoms up!”
The first took a big sip. “What’s in this? I don’t taste anything.”
“Exactly.” Rood walked back behind the cameras. “Jeremy, start filming.” Then louder: “Pillow fight!”
Swatting began again.
One of the girls’ knees slipped, and she spilled off the bed.
“You all right?”
The teen stifled more giggling and nodded extra hard.
“Okay, back on the mattress.”
The girl started getting up but fell down again, pulling a sheet with her.
“Jeremy,” said Rood. “Give her a hand.”
The cameraman helped her the rest of the way.
He returned. “I think they’re ready.”
“I think you’re right. Roll camera.” Rood raised his voice toward the bed: “Make out with each other. And I want to see lots of tongue on nipples!”
“Forget it!”
“That’s gross!”
Rood went over to the wet bar.
BOSTON
A buzzer sounded. A belt jerked to life in baggage claim.
Anxious travelers ringed the carousel and bunched near the front where luggage came out, trying to see through the hanging rubber strips as if it would accelerate the process.
People snagged suitcases and tote bags. Some placed them back on the belt when the name tag was wrong. Others were easily identified from a rainbow of ribbons their owners had tied to the handles.
Guillermo saw an orange ribbon and snatched a Samsonite. His colleagues grabbed their own luggage, which came by at random intervals.