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ANGELINE

“Help me get him out of there.”

Mav’s voice sounded as if he was on the other side of thick glass, desperate, pleading, muffled beneath the roaring in her ears and the chaos of her thoughts. There was a stunned feeling that had her limbs heavy; she could barely process the scene, what was happening. She leaned against the rough, cold wall, badly needing to sit or lie down. Bile burned its way up her throat.

“We should leave him,” said Tavo faintly. “We need to call the police.”

His words seemed to come out very slowly and hover on the air.

She wanted to agree but couldn’t seem to find her voice. As much as she didn’t want to leave Alex, her friend, lying broken in a utility closet, alone on the wet stone floor in the dark, that was undeniably the right thing to do. The other day she had watched him eat a slice of pizza with gusto. She punched him playfully on his bony but fully alive shoulder, listened to him laugh at some joke she had made about Mav.

“Fuck no, we’re not calling the police,” said Mav, angry.

No, scared . She knew that pitch, boyish, wobbly.

“Do you have any idea what kind of a shitshow we’re talking about here?” he went on. “We’re in a foreign country. I barely made it out of Mexico, man.”

Tavo blinked at him, his brow knitting.

“ You’re in a foreign country,” said Tavo. “This is my home.”

There was a truth in that, and it made Gustavo seem other to her all of a sudden, not part of what was happening here, maybe not an ally. Maybe there had always been something other about him. He didn’t grow up with the guys. He’d met Maverick at NYU. She watched him now: he seemed like a stranger.

“Shut up and help me,” barked Mav.

The three of them just stared at each other for a long moment, Tavo’s eyes were wide with grief, confusion, shock. Angeline had no frame of reference here, no idea what to do. She never thought she’d be a person who froze in an emergency. But here she was, a statue. Still, already beneath the shock and terror, other thoughts had started to churn. Who did this? Why?

Then, the texts she’d read scrolled back on the screen of her mind. The BoxOfficePlus deal. Which Alex wanted and Maverick did not. The confrontation Alex had planned. Lucia’s concern that he wasn’t safe.

And then, horribly, unbelievably, Maverick and Tavo were lifting Alex in the rug that had been missing from his room, using it like a stretcher. And Alex looked so small, like a boy with knobby knees and skinny arms, but the two of them struggled with the weight as they edged down the long hallway. And Angeline thought about Lucia and their baby and ohmygod this is a dream, and it isn’t happening. Please, please, please.

“What are you doing ?” she hissed, finding her voice. “Where are you taking him?”

She took in their surroundings—the dark exterior hallway, the empty courtyard. She knew there were no guests, that there was not as much staff at the hotel in the off-season. The kitchen and bar crew arrived later to start meal prep; the cleaning people came later in the morning. The owners were sometimes on the property and sometimes not. In a moment of clarity, she scanned the dark corners of the courtyard. They were alone. No cameras.

“Taking him back to the room,” Mav grunted, straining with effort. “So we have time to think.”

How was he so calm? Shock. He was in shock, right?

Mav and Tavo maneuvered the body back into the hotel room and dropped it clumsily onto the floor, where it landed with an unsettling thud. Angeline stared, horror mounting. The only dead body she’d ever seen was her abuela, nicely dressed and made-up, laid out for the endless wake where legions of relatives and friends filed by the casket offering respects, showing their grief. It had been sad but orderly. None of the wild grief of tragedy, merely the expected passing of an old woman. Her body was stiff and unnatural, like a doll. A doll of her abuela laid out so that people could say goodbye.

This? This was chaos, mind-bending, reality stuttering. Alex was dead. Gone. Murdered.

Maverick took the Privacy, Please sign from the knob and hung it outside, pulling the door closed with a decisive click.

The smell—too much blood, something else. Angeline ran for the toilet, barely made it, heaved everything she’d eaten in a disgusting spray. She hung over the bowl, clinging to its coldness, dry-heaving, weeping.

Maverick came in to stand beside her.

“Ange.”

She looked up at him. His face was uncharacteristically still, serious. No hint of his usual smiling mischief. Without the smile, bluster, and bravado he was like someone else. A darker version of Mav. And he looked huge, ripped, muscles straining against his T-shirt. She felt small on the floor at his feet.

“Ange,” he said again, voice icy. “I’m really going to need you to pull yourself together.”

What did you do? she wanted to ask, but she couldn’t force out the words. She couldn’t go there. Once she did, there was no going back. Instead, she pulled herself to her feet and followed him out to the bedroom, where Tavo sat on the bed with his head in his hands, and Alex’s body was covered by half of the rug. She had to keep her eyes off it, off Mav. She walked over to the window and stared at her own reflection. Who are you? she asked the shadow of herself in the glass. What is happening?

“I think we should take him to the plane,” said Mav.

“What?” said Tavo. The energy in the room was electric.

“Just until after the challenge.”

“After the challenge ?” said Tavo. He blew out a disbelieving breath. “I think the challenge is off.”

“It’s not,” said Mav, still in the same cold, hard tone. “It can’t be. We can’t afford not to finish the challenge.”

Angeline turned back to them, and Tavo was staring, incredulous. Mav was right beside Alex’s body. And for a second, Angeline saw the image of Wild Cody with his foot up on the flank of the dead lion, hunting rifle in hand. She pushed the image away, her stomach starting to churn again.

“We’re like a month of expenses away from total bankruptcy,” he said quietly. “We’re running on fumes. Without the WeWatch bonus and sponsor payments, we won’t make it another sixty days.”

“How are we talking about this?” Angeline yelled, the volume surprising even her. “About money? About the challenge? Alex is dead .”

“I know,” said Mav, voice coming up an octave. He moved toward her, and she took a step back, hitting against the cold glass.

“ Someone killed him,” said Tavo, rising, looking at Maverick, dark eyes searing. “And you don’t want us to call the police.”

Maverick looked back and forth between them, put a hand to his heart.

“Wait. Wait.”

The silence in the room was deafening.

“You guys think I killed him?” he said when neither of them said anything.

All their eyes fell on the Alex lump on the floor between them. Angeline felt the rise of bile again, pushed it back. She grappled with the scene before here, Mav’s demeanor, his words.

Finally, she took Alex’s phone from her pocket and started reading off the text chain between Alex and Lucia.

“No, no, no,” he said, interrupting her, lifting his palm. “That’s all bullshit.”

“Why did he think you were stealing money from Extreme, Mav?” Tavo’s voice was gentle, but his gaze was unrelenting.

“I—I,” Mav started, then stopped to take a breath, his eyes falling on Alex. “I have no idea.”

He moved over to Angeline, took both her hands. “You know me. You live with me. Do you think I would steal money from the company I built? From my best friends? Do you really think I could ever…hurt anyone ?”

But it happened all the time, didn’t it? It was probably the most common white-collar crime, embezzlement. The big personality responsible for the initial success of the company thinks that the accounts and the lines of credit are there for his fun and pleasure, to indulge his vices, and starts skimming off the top. Still, when she looked at Mav, she couldn’t reconcile it. Immature. Irresponsible. Okay, yes. But not a criminal. She took another glance at the rug. Not a killer. No way.

She shook her head. “No,” she said. “Of course not.”

Mav looked to Tavo, who stared for an awkward moment, then shook his head. Mav seemed to deflate with relief.

“Then, who did this?” Tavo asked. “Why?”

Maverick sank onto the bed, and Tavo rose, creating distance. Angeline could read his tension in the stiffness of his shoulders, the way he clenched his right hand.

“Did he confront you? You said you fought. Was it about this?” Angeline asked.

Mav nodded reluctantly. Angeline and Tavo exchanged a look.

“I haven’t told anyone,” he said. “I didn’t want to scare you guys.”

He had that blank look he sometimes wore when things got too much for him. When he was too hurt, or too stressed, when he talked about his mother, sometimes even when they were making love. It was like he just kind of checked out.

“Haven’t told anyone what?” Tavo’s voice had an impatient edge.

“Someone’s been threatening me. Threatening Extreme.”

“What are you talking about?” asked Angeline.

“In social, in the comments, on Pop. That person, you know, MavIsALiar with the three skulls? Whoever it is? They’ve been threatening me.”

He fished his phone from his pocket, tapped it a few times, and showed it to Angeline. There was a file of emails, the scroll of subject lines filled with vitriol.

I’m coming for you.

Liar, liar, pants on fire.

I am going to expose all the fraud at Extreme.

You killed Chloe Miranda. And I can prove it.

I’m going to hack my way into your company and destroy it.

Countdown to the end of Maverick Dillan.

Extreme is a virus.

You’re a dead man.

Ready or not, here I come.

It was an endless list of threats and accusations and the dates spanned nearly three months. Angeline felt a shiver, as if the malice leached from the phone into her skin.

“That wipeout at the skate park in Venice Beach last month? Someone loosened the trucks on my board,” he said.

It had been bad. He’d dislocated his shoulder which had needed to be painfully snapped back into place. The doctor said he was just lucky he hadn’t broken his neck dropping into the bowl.

“Before that, when we were skiing in February in the Italian Alps, Tav, and the weather got bad? I skied the black-diamond trail run, barely made it down the visibility was so poor, and got in trouble at the bottom because it was closed?”

“Yeah,” said Tavo. “They were pissed.”

“Except that there was no closing net at the head of the run to say that it had been shut down. Later, they told me that someone took down the sign. They found it in the trees. They thought I did it, wanted to fine me.”

Tavo dipped his head. “I remember.”

“You were there,” said Maverick. “Both times. Then, the scuba-equipment failure in the Keys?”

Tavo was nodding slowly. “Your regulator broke apart in your mouth during the night dive. We had to buddy-breathe to the surface.”

“You saved my life.”

“What are you saying?” asked Angeline.

“I think,” said Mav, “that someone’s trying to kill me. And if they can’t kill me, they want to ruin me.”

He stared at Alex. “Alex confronted me about the money. I told him what was happening. Alex…he didn’t believe me. But he wasn’t going to turn me in. He said he was going to get a commercial flight home, and we’d deal with it next week. When the money flowed in from WeWatch and the sponsorships, he was going to fix the books, and we were going to bring you guys the BoxOfficePlus deal, decide what to do.”

“I thought you said you’d never sell.”

“I don’t want to,” he said. “But…I think we have to. It’s time. We all get a big payout, and we still get to do the things we love, more or less.”

Outside, the wind picked up and knocked some branches against the glass. They all startled at the sound, Mav hopping to his feet.

“He told Lucia that you were blocking the deal,” said Angeline.

“I had been. I had an angel investor in my pocket, thought with the bonus we could dig ourselves out. But then Alex showed me the financials and said it was sell now or hold on and maybe lose everything.”

Maverick ran a thick hand over the flop of his dark hair. “When I left him earlier, he was fine. He hated me. Thought I was lying. But he was going to stick it out and try to fix the books so that we could make the deal. He was…”

Mav’s eyes fell again on the lump, and this time they filled up. She’d never seen him cry. Never. His voice faltered, and he batted angrily at his tears. “He was fine. Angry but fine.”

She wanted to move to comfort him but didn’t, feeling Tavo’s eyes on her.

“Oh, my God, this is not happening,” Mav said quietly. “He can’t be gone. He can’t.”

“Who did this?” Tavo asked again.

They’d talked about everything else, but that was the big question, wasn’t it? If not Maverick, then who? Why? And where was that person? Angeline was still holding Maverick’s phone and stared down at the string of angry emails.

“Whoever wrote these, I’m guessing,” she said, handing the phone to Maverick. “ Ready or not? Does that mean he was planning to come to this challenge?”

Maverick looked stricken suddenly, turned toward the door. “I saw someone when I was heading to the room. Someone on the property—just now.”

Angeline felt a jolt of alarm. “Who? Where?”

“Out by the wall, just standing. I thought it was you, but when I got there—no one.”

“So someone small?” asked Tavo. Angeline clocked his skepticism. Tavo didn’t believe Maverick. In fact, Tavo had been subtly edging closer to her so that he stood between them now, like he was getting ready to defend her.

Did she ? Did she believe Maverick?

“I guess?” said Mav, rubbing at his eyes with the heels of his hands. “I don’t know.”

They all stared toward the door, as if they were waiting for it to burst open, some crazed assailant rushing in.

“In fact,” he went on, “I’ve felt like—a couple times—like maybe someone was following me. You know that feeling that you’re being watched?”

“You’re always being watched. You live for it,” said Tavo, an angry edge to his voice that Angeline hadn’t heard before. If Maverick heard the tone, he ignored it.

“Not like that. On the subway, someone was watching through the cars,” said Mav. “Once when I was heading home late from a bar, I heard footsteps behind me, and when I turned, someone ducked into a doorway. Once when I was leaving the gym, early morning, I thought I felt someone come up behind me, but when I turned—nothing.”

Since when did Mav ever take the subway? They hadn’t ridden the trains together since before Covid.

“You never said anything,” said Angeline. “About any of this.”

“I know. I just…hoped it would stop?”

That tracked. Mav generally took the bumblebee approach to all problems: ignore them and hope they’ll go away.

More scratching at the window, the wind picking up. It was nearly three o’clock. Stress, a deep fatigue, a thrum of fear. The room was tilting with it.

“So you think this person threatening you is the same person following you,” said Tavo, his accent thicker than usual, which happened when he was drunk, or passionate, or upset. “This person is also stealing money from the company. And this person followed you to Falc?o Island?”

He moved a step closer to Mav. It was aggressive. But Mav, much bigger than Tavo, hung his head and took a step back.

“This mysterious person ,” continued Tavo, “killed Alex?”

Mav shouted, “I don’t know! I don’t know. Fuck, I have no fucking idea. But it wasn’t me. It wasn’t . I loved him. He was one of my oldest friends .”

Angeline stepped between them, a coolness, a calm settling over her. It was suddenly clear what needed to be done. What Alex would surely do. He would act to protect Extreme first; she knew that. He would cover the theft, whoever was responsible, and make the deal.

“We need to get rid of his body,” she said.

“What?” said Tavo. “ No. It’s bad enough that we moved him from the closet.”

But Maverick was nodding.

“We finish the challenge, make WeWatch and all the sponsors happy. When we’re flush again, we’ll fix the books.” She looked over at Alex’s laptop. “He was probably already working on it.”

“What about Alex ?” Tavo’s voice was a shocked whisper. He looked at her like she was a stranger. Who are you? his eyes asked.

“He can’t have died here,” she said, surprised at her own coldness. “Not right now.”

“What are you saying?”

“Right now, everyone here thinks he went home, that he quit Extreme.”

“Except for Lucia,” said Tavo, tapping hard on the phone. “She’s frantic.”

Angeline picked it up and started typing, tears falling. Who was she?

Hey, babe, so sorry. I had it out with Mav and crashed hard. So stressful. On my way home. Talk to you when I get on the plane. Love you and the kiddo.

She felt like she captured his syntax, the way she’d heard Alex talk to Lucia. He always used correct punctuation in his texts like a true nerd.

She held it up to Mav who gave her a nod and then she pressed Send. The whoosh sound echoed like an accusation. Had she just done a thing that she could never, ever undo? And why? What was she now? An accessory to murder? Could you be an accessory to murder if you didn’t know the identity of the killer?

Only if they got caught.

“When the challenge is done, we’ll report him missing,” said Angeline.

The phone was ringing then, and a picture of Lucia and the baby popped up on the screen. They all looked at it; she could hear Tavo breathing. She let it go to voicemail. After a second it started ringing again.

“With the money from the deal, we’ll take care of them,” she said. “They’ll be set for life. That’s what Alex would have wanted us to do.”

Tavo looked like he was going to be sick. Mav had retreated to whatever place he went when things got hot.

She went on Alex’s Pop account and turned off his location. She did the same with his Find My Peeps app. Then she shut down his phone.

“Let’s go,” she said, her voice sounding sure, strong. Which she definitely did not feel. She walked over to the door and peered outside. They were alone. For a moment, no one did anything. If Tavo freaked out, if he bailed on them, they were all fucked. But he, too, had a lot to lose.

She didn’t have a plan past get rid of his body . What happened next had not been written yet. The publicity of his murder or disappearance would be a firestorm. There was no way around that. And Extreme being linked to another suspicious event was not good for any of them or their pending deal. She couldn’t get them out of that, but she could delay it, maybe get them off the island before all hell broke loose. And maybe that would be enough to save Extreme, to save Mav.

“It’s clear,” she said, gazing out into the hallway one last time.

Tavo and Maverick hesitated another moment, then each took one side of the rug and maneuvered the body of their friend out the door.

“Where are we taking him?” asked Tavo when they were out in the hallway. He was crying, big tears trailing down his cheeks. But he was cooperating.

The plane was a bad idea. His body would start to smell and could easily be discovered by airport workers. And it wasn’t the place they’d want him found.

“Let’s take him over to the wall.”

The cliff from where Princess Jacintha had thrown herself to escape a loveless marriage to a known brute. The cliff face was steep, with a hundred-foot drop into churning, rocky, deep water, no beach. The island was in the middle of the Atlantic, no other land mass except for the other islands for thousands of kilometers.

“What if there’s someone else here? Someone watching us,” asked Mav. “I mean I saw someone. They could be lurking just out of sight.”

Angeline reflected on this a moment. Did she believe someone was following and had it in for Mav? There were a lot of people who hated him. Chloe Miranda’s family. Moms Against Mav. Petra and her army of thugs. The losers of his challenges that claimed they were rigged before it began. The vitriolic haters who commented on every live broadcast and post, whoever they were. Still, it seemed paranoid and just slightly narcissistic to think he was being followed, that someone had tried to kill him with so much subtlety and creativity from Venice Beach to the Italian Alps. And yet someone had killed Alex. So what did that mean? That Angeline thought Maverick killed Alex and she was doing this to protect him ? She didn’t love that version of herself.

“We’re just going to throw him off the cliff?” said Tavo, ghostly pale, face drawn with strain and horror. “I mean, his body might never be found. What will we tell Lucia? His son?”

She looked between Tavo and Maverick, their eyes on her. They were weak, both of them. And honestly it sickened her a little.

“Do either of you have a better idea?” she snapped.

After a moment, both men shook their heads.

“Then, let’s go.”

Mav had a place where he went. But so did Angeline. There was a place in her brain that was cool and calculating, calm under pressure. They hadn’t killed their friend; they were just trying to save the company. She was sure it’s what Alex would have wanted her to do, because it meant that she could make sure Lucia and the baby would be set for life. She couldn’t bring Alex back, but she could take care of the company and his family.

As they moved awkwardly toward the wall, Angeline followed, scanning the darkness for anyone who might be watching. Petra’s words rang back to her.

It’s too late for them. The sickness has already invaded their spirit. But it’s not too late for you.

The old woman had been wrong. It was too late for Angeline, had been for a while. And even though part of her had been pretending it wasn’t true, a bigger part of her already knew that.