Page 27 of Omega

“I’ll talk to Harris and Roth. We’ll figure something out. Get a security detail on you, or something.”

She laughed uproariously at that. “Can you even hear yourself? Talking about getting me a security detail like you’re the fucking president or some shit. God, you’re funny. You’ve changed, girlfriend.”

A silence lingered. Eventually, I broke it. “I have to ask one more thing. You and Harris, on the flight over—”

She cut me off, standing up abruptly. “Nope. Nopenopenope. Not going there.” She sucked her cheeks in and pretended to do a doggy paddle. “Look at me, I’m a nope-fish, swimming in a sea of nopes. Nothing happened. There’s nothing to talk about. I don’t know about you, but I think a bottle of wine or four is in order, to celebrate being on dry land.” And then she was walking away again.

God, she was difficult. I let her go. I felt like I’d taken one step forward with her, and two steps backward. I knew why she was acting pissy with me, but I still had no idea what the deal was with her and Harris—and therewasa deal, no matter what she said—especiallybecauseof what she said. And I also had no idea how to keep her safe while letting her live her own life. She may have grown up in Detroit—I did have some idea what a childhood like that entailed—but she hadn’t been through something like I had. Drug dealers, pimps, bullies, assholes, prostitutes, teenage pregnancy…all that was rough and difficult and hellish to grow up in, I was sure, but it wasn’t the same as dealing with international black-market criminals like Vitaly Karahalios.

I was supposed to be planning a wedding. Yet, after that conversation with Layla, I didn’t really feel like shopping for wedding dresses. Not without my best friend at my side.

I sat on the beach, thinking about a lot of things, as the sun slowly dipped below the horizon, a fiery red ball that seemed a lot like Layla herself.

6

THE DRESSMAKER AND THE GUARDIAN ANGEL

I watched in fascination from one of the rear seats of the twin-engine floatplane as Harris walked Layla through the takeoff checklist. She had on the headphones with the mic, and she was flipping switches as Harris pointed them out, checking them against the clipboard balanced on her thigh. They were close together, shoulders brushing, Harris’s right arm propped on her seat back. Once, as Layla shifted to reach a switch, Harris caught the clipboard before it fell, and his fingers brushed her thigh when he rebalanced it on her leg.

I watched her body language through the whole exchange, and she was digging it. Digging him. Letting him get physically close, letting him touch her. Little, innocent touches, incidental contact. But for Layla, letting him that close was a big deal.

Roth sat beside me engaged on his phone call, so he was oblivious to everything going on up front. But I wasn’t missing a thing—they had my rapt attention.

“Okay,” Harris said to Layla. “We’re up and running. We’re untied, we’ve been through the checklist, and now we’re ready to go. Hold the yoke with one hand, and gently—and I mean millimeter by millimeter—push the throttle forward.”

Holy shit. Harris was letting Layla do the takeoff? Not just take the controls while we were in the air, but actually take off? Harris was a control freak, I was pretty sure, so this was a big deal.

The seaplane inched forward as the sound of the engines increased to a deafening roar. Harris talked her through guiding the plane away from the dock and out into the bay, toward the open water.

“Now gradually throttle up, bit by bit. Keep the yoke straight and level, pedals even. Great, doing great.” He had his hands on the controls, too, I noticed, ready to take over. That made me feel a bit better. But, having flown a good bit with Harris by this point, I knew Layla was doing really well. “Okay, now you feel it pulling? She wants to lift, so all you’re really doing is letting her do what she wants. Help her up a little, pull back. No pedal, no tilt. Just pull it back, inch it back. Nice and easy, no sudden movements. And…we’re airborne! That was awesome, Layla. Very smooth.”

Layla glanced back at me then, and she had a huge, shit-eating grin on her face. “Did you see that, hooker? I took us off! Me! I’m flying a plane!”

“Yeah, and you have to focus, or we won’t go far,” Harris said. “Hold our angle of ascent right here, nice and shallow, and when we reach two thousand feet, level us off and bring us around to a southwest heading.”

After that, it was a fairly uneventful flight. Layla was at the controls the whole way, Harris explaining and lecturing the entire time, pointing out dials and explaining their purpose, quizzing her on things he’d already explained. We were on our way to St. Thomas for the day, as Roth claimed the shopping on St. Thomas was better than on Grand Turk.

When we were about one nautical mile from St. Thomas, Harris took over, calling in our arrival over the radio, and then talking Layla through the landing, explaining what he was doing, how, and why. She was rapt, soaking it all in, hooked on every word.

Nothing going on, my ass.

* * *

Roth and Harris trailed behind Layla and me as we ducked into store after store, shop after shop, trying on clothes, jewelry, hats, and trinkets. Neither of us bought anything, though. I was too irritated with Roth to be focused on shopping; he’d been sucked into his phone the whole time, physically present but mentally absent.

Finally, an hour and a half into the trip, he stuffed his phone into his pocket, looked up at our surroundings, checked his watch, and then set off at a quick pace, grabbing my hand and tugging me after him without a word.

“Roth! Where are we going?”

“We have an appointment,” was all he’d say.

He pulled me into a shop, taking me to the back and up a narrow flight of ancient, rickety stairs. There was a door with white peeling paint at the top, a brass doorknob. Roth knocked three times, and then entered without waiting for a reply. I followed him in, curious.

The room beyond the door had a high ceiling, three wide-blade ceiling fans turning lazily, stirring the air, the three fans connected to each other via a long tube, one fan turning the other two. The walls had once been wallpapered in white and pink stripes, but the paper was so old and faded it was nearly invisible. The floor was faded as well, smooth and shiny in places from long wear. There were several seamstress dummies around the room, two stools, rolls and rolls of fabric stacked on the floor, leaning against the walls, and hanging on homemade wire racks that were screwed into the walls. There were clear boxes of pins on the windowsill, and at least one pair of shears that I could see, and measuring tapes everywhere.

“Ella!” Roth called out. “We’re here.”

A door opened somewhere, then closed, and a woman appeared. She was short and thin with black hair going silver at the temples, and a pair of glasses hung from a cord around her neck. She had a measuring tape in one hand, a mouthful of pins, and a length of fabric trailing behind her.