Page 14

13

The twitch has traveled to both eyelids. Flynn convinces me that a prime minister wouldn’t confront her potential attacker in a hotel wine cellar ( fair enough ), so I’m perched in the next room with a pair of headphones and a video monitor, trying to focus on an image of my American roommate—and forget that an international assassin might be buying currywurst in Austria right now, fueling up to kill me.

Easier said than done.

The monitor shows an expensive-looking conference room with plush green dining chairs—and Calvin, handcuffed to one of them. He looks a bit like Houdini, pre-escape from a water tank, wrists bound behind his back. Is it just me, or does he also look…unfazed? So perfectly at ease in this utterly bizarre situation. In the middle of the room, flaky pastries and already-drunk espresso cups rest on what can be described only as an interrogation table. Flynn dismisses the Italian police before stalking forward, repositioning a chair, and situating himself intimidatingly in front of Calvin, who isn’t a big guy. The height difference is striking.

“What do you think is going on here?” Flynn asks calmly, like he’s done this before. Maybe not this exact scenario—body double, Hawaiian-shirted roommate, conference room on the coast of Italy—but close enough that he’s played the part. He knows to clasp his hands together and make just enough eye contact with the guy strapped to a chair.

I increase the brightness on the monitor. Calvin’s considering Flynn’s question with a pensive glance. He’s more sober than I’ve ever seen him—which, honestly, isn’t saying much. His pupils still have the half-glazed look of a Krispy Kreme doughnut. “I think…” he says, closing one eye a smidge, “that I saw Max. In fact, I know that I saw Max. But everyone’s saying that wasn’t Max, which is weird, because that was Max.”

Oh, he absolutely knows.

Flynn switches tactics, approaching him like a kindergarten teacher might speak to a student accused of eating Play-Doh. “Calvin, do you think you can tell us why you are here?”

“I needed to be here,” Calvin says, dead serious, one black curl springing across his forehead. “This hotel is also much nicer than my and Max’s apartment. Did you see that fountain in the lobby? Solid marble. I bet this is the type of place where they give you those tiny pillow mints and the chocolates with the—”

“Calvin,” Flynn says, cutting him off, as I wonder if the takedown gave him a concussion. Or is he being purposefully evasive? “Start at the beginning. Can you please explain why you thought ‘your roommate’ would be at this hotel?”

“Sure thing,” Calvin says, jumping into story mode. “Picture this: a normal morning. I go out, grab some bean juice, pick up some weed—” He pauses briefly, like maybe he shouldn’t have mentioned this particular detail in front of a federal official, but, oh well, cat’s out of the bag now! “When I come back, who do I find? Someone wearing a trench coat, who says she’s from the Maine State Lottery.” He taps the side of his temple. “But I used my noggin, and I thought to myself, ‘Calvin, when you won the lottery, no one came straight to your door.’?”

My eyelashes flit at the monitor. I’m sorry, what?

Flynn, rightfully, questions this. “You mean like a scratch-off ticket?”

“No, I won megabucks, the lottery-lottery,” Calvin says, without so much as a flinch. “Four point two million dollars. Well, just about half of that after taxes, because I opted for the cash payout. That’s what my certified public accountant advised me. He’s my desk-buddy at the tax bureau.”

On-screen, I glimpse Flynn’s dubious expression, which must match my own.

“He’s kidding,” I say to myself, flat.

“You won megabucks,” Flynn says, just as flat.

Calvin’s eyebrows squiggle. “I think I’ve told Max that before.”

This is where I slide off my headphones and stand up, giving a one second gesture to the security behind me. I’ll be right back. Two of the black-suited officers try to stop me, reason with me, but I absolutely insist. It’s ridiculous for me to just sit here and listen; I could get to the bottom of this so much faster.

When I pass through the connecting door between rooms, Flynn doesn’t look surprised to see me—and neither does Calvin. “Heeey, Max,” he says, slowly tipping his chin in my direction.

This familiar movement, the friendly smile he’s giving me, sends a pang of affection straight into my chest. Calvin’s well-meaning, isn’t he? Even if he can’t read the room.

I pull up a chair. “I know I’ve been a little bit out of it lately,” I say, “but I think I would’ve remembered you telling me that you won over four million dollars. Why do you…only buy bargain-brand salad dressing, then? And eat so much cheap frozen pizza?”

Calvin shrugs, unperturbed. “I like cheap frozen pizza. Everyone likes cheap frozen pizza. It’s got the extra crunch from the freezer burn, and you can buy a lot of it with coupons. I have money, but I’m not made of money. I’ve invested a lot of it in Bitcoin.”

Flynn nudges the conversation back into a reasonable direction, clearing his throat. “So you saw the woman in the trench coat and you…”

“Oh, right,” Calvin says. “I decided to noodle that one for a while, when I went to feed my…” He trails off for a second, like he’s said too much and he’s covering his tracks. “My pet.”

“His turtle,” I clarify to Flynn.

Alarm flares on Calvin’s face. “How do you know about Kevin?” Of course the turtle’s name is Kevin. Kevin and Calvin, an iconic duo. Guiltily, he continues, “Our lease doesn’t allow reptiles. Anyway, when I opened the terrarium that morning, I couldn’t find him. Thought he’d escaped. I checked in Max’s room and found the note.”

“I just want to make sure I’m getting this straight,” Flynn says, rubbing his forehead. “You thought your turtle, who probably walks at a pace of a mile every six years, somehow—in the course of a single morning—unlatched the door to Max’s bedroom, either jumped or crawled at a one hundred percent vertical angle onto her mattress, and burrowed underneath her pillow?”

Once again, Calvin shrugs, as if this might be a likely scenario.

The terrible thing is, I believe him. My gut believes him.

Flynn is visibly less sure, especially when Calvin explains the rest—how he traced my phone to the airport before Gail turned off my navigational services. How he knows a guy who knows a guy , made some calls, and paid an undisclosed sum to track me down. Apparently, Calvin thought I’d been taken , kidnapped by the woman with the bagels , and he came here to rescue me like Liam Neeson in that movie .

“We’re going to need a moment,” Flynn says, holding up a long finger, and Calvin’s like Yeah, sure, take your time . In the corner of the conference room, Flynn closes the gap between us and whispers to me, “This is the biggest load of bullshit I’ve ever heard.”

“It could be true,” I hiss back, neck craning up to look at Flynn. “Can’t you just verify his story?”

“Which part? The lottery winning, the illegal reptile, or the privately commissioned black ops mission on foreign soil?”

“I realize it sounds a little far-fetched.” I run my tongue along my teeth. “Did you background-check him?”

“?’Course. Thoroughly.”

“And there was nothing about the lottery?”

“No. To be fair, the state doesn’t have to disclose the winners.” Flynn wipes a hand down his face. “Okay, here’s what we’re going to do. You tell him to stay silent while I secure a noncommercial jet to send him discreetly home. On that journey, he won’t speak to anyone—not security, not press, not his seatmate on the airplane. Not even about his turtle.”

Over the next three and a half minutes, I manage to convince him that mum’s the word. Does he fully grasp that I’m pretending to be a prime minister and he’s just crashed the party? Doubt it. He accepts the terms anyway. As long as I haven’t been abducted, he’s cool. Which sincerely makes my heart swell. Add Calvin to the long list of people I owe.

“I can’t believe my roommate traveled halfway around the world to Liam Neeson me,” I tell Flynn back in the suite.

Flynn’s quiet for a moment. “You just used Liam Neeson as a verb.”

“I did.”

“I like that.” Opening the balcony doors, he steps outside. It’s just shy of three o’clock, the midday sun golden on his skin, as he shoves his hands in his pockets and takes in a view of the sea. He doesn’t turn around when he says, “For what it’s worth, even though I don’t believe a word of what he’s just said—I don’t blame him.”