Page 52 of Cuts like a Knife
There. That’s nice, right? I don’t wait for Claire to reply.
Chapter Fourteen
I’m tired and hungry, more than ready to pack it in for a day. If only I had a room.
Oh well. Time to hunt down Drew, I suppose.
At the thought of him, Drew materializes by my size, as if summoned.
“Hey,” he says, as I scramble to get my feet back on the floor. Trust him to show up just when I’m looking my most slovenly. “I’m sorry,” he says. “I’m sure it would be better for you if you could stay and, like, observe the action all night, but I’m actually headed back to the cottage and I think you better come with me. It’ll be impossible to get a cab on your own later, and you don’t know where you’re going. Can you knock off early?”
“I’ve … got what I needed for today,” I say. “I’m starving, though.”
“Oh! Well, I can wait if you want to order a snack from the bar. They have food out here. We can delay going for a half hour or so. It’s fine.” He pulls out a chair and begins to sit down, but before he can, I see Adele Kramer heading in our direction176.
“On second thought,” I say, hopping to my feet and grabbing Drew’s hand. “Let’s go now.” I pull him away from the table and hurry into the lobby. He seems puzzled, but acquiesces easily.
“You’re the boss,” he says, as I drag him along. I make a pitstop at the front desk for my bag, while Drew makes a call on his cell, and minutes later, we’re outside the resort climbing into the back of an unmarked cab.
Cabs here appear to be little more than private cars. This one has a nondescript local driver. No Uber sign. No Lyft sticker. No meter showing how much it’s going to cost. Which means no receipt.
There’s very little chance that Citidaze would reimburse for a cab ride anyway, especially not when they expected me to share a room with Callum, but if I don’t have a receipt, they definitely won’t.
Before I can worry too much about that, Drew’s had a quick word with the driver who he seems very chummy with, handed him some cash, and we’re speeding along in the dark with the windows open wide.
It’s almost magical — speeding along in the dark like this. f I wasn’t so tense all the time — worried about getting enough work done, worried about the mystery email, worried about having to share the same space as those people from Flash, maybe I could enjoy it. Too bad. It’s hard to enjoy things when you’re always on alert.
Still, as the warm air plays on my face and I take a deep breath of the humid night air, I remember my plan to steal a couple of days of tropical freedom and sometimes uncoils in my chest. Just a little.
Drew breaks the silence in the car first. Chatty bastard.
“So you’re still hungry? After that huge meal we had? What did you get? They served us chicken.”
“Not raw, I hope. We got steaks.”
“No. Overcooked if anything. I don’t think Rhiannon and her partner actually cooked it. How was yours?”
“Inedible, unfortunately,” I say, adding.
He laughs.
“It doesn’t bode well for a cooking show, does it?”
“Well, it’s not really a cooking show.”
“Fair enough,” he replies. After a beat, he goes on. “It looked good on screen though. The steaks I mean. Which is good because the food guys are one of our clients.”
“Food guys?”
“Luxury distributors. They comped all the ingredients for the show. Food is a complex issue in the Bahamas. 90 percent of the food on the islands is imported. There’s no farming to speak of here. No real livestock. Which would be fine if not for the tourism piece. Tourists and wealthy vacation home owners want the same access to the same variety they can get at home. It costs a fortune and the logistics are insane. Food importing is a billion dollar industry here.”
“I don’t see what that has to do with you,” I say, somewhat unkindly, maybe, but isn’t Drew supposed to be an ad man? What does he care about the politics of food importing in the Bahamas?
He doesn’t prickle, though, only sighs.
“Nothing really. You’re not wrong. It’s just interesting. One of the only good things about this job is the diversity. In terms of the clients.”
I can’t help it. I snort177.
