Read Online Exposure by Mal Peet - Free Book Online Page B

if it was possible to go out there. The manager had looked at him a little strangely and said, “Why?” And yes, there is now a faint stream of whiteness beyond it, like low-lying smoke.
    “What’s Diego up to?”
    Cass shrugs. “I dunno. He’s out on his balcony, doing stuff on his laptop.”
    “Working,” Otello says.
    “Or cruising porn sites.”
    “Hey.”
    “Only kidding.”
    Now Otello turns onto his side, supporting himself on his elbow. He studies Michael’s profile. “Listen, are you guys okay? I know Diego was against you coming down South with me, but I thought that was all sorted out. You don’t still have issues, do you?”
    Cass puts his forearms on his knees and stares at the sand between his feet. “Nah, not really. We’re cool.”
    “Good. ’Cause I need him. Honest agents aren’t that easy to come by, you know? You don’t have to like him, Michael, but you do have to work with him.”
    “No problem,” Michael says, keeping his eyes down. “He’s okay.”
    “Yeah. He’s okay. Like, the hustling he did, getting this together. Keeping the lid on where we were going. Persuading the hotel to be ‘closed for refurbishment.’ Arranging the security.”
    “Yep. Guess so.”
    “Which means,” Otello says, “you’ve got it nice and easy, right? Three days in this tropical paradise so far and no reporters disguised as waiters, no guys hanging out of trees with cameras, none of that stuff. Remember that time back home when we went out to Santa Louisa, how on the first morning we got to the beach and there were, what, five boats full of photographers, and you had to borrow an outboard and have, like, a small naval battle to get rid of them?”
    Michael Cass smiles at the memory. “Yeah, I kind of enjoyed that.”
    After a while he says, “Listen, I’m going back up there to sit in the shade. You want me to fetch you anything while I’m on my feet?”
    An hour later, the thatch on the sun shelters begins to rustle and softly hiss. Otello sits up and sees that the horizon now looks slightly pixillated, like an over-enlarged photograph. A couple of guys from the hotel appear and begin gathering up the loungers.
    “Big wind comin’, Señor Otello,” one of them says. “Maybe you wanna go up on the terrace. Soon the sand gonna whip, take the skin off you.”
    By the time Otello has been up to his suite, showered and dressed, and gone down to the bar, Cypress Island has undergone a change. The sea is moving fast and lumpish past the swirling beach, and the palms are swinging their ragged heads. The sun flickers behind veils of racing cloud.
    Sitting just inside the half-closed doors of the terrace, Otello and Michael Cass turn their heads when Diego speaks from behind them.
    “I logged on to the coast guard website. Checked out the weather pattern. This is the edge of a hurricane on its way to beat the Caribbean up. It looks like a damn great tadpole on the map, and this is just the tickle of its tail.”
    “Fairly decent sort of a tickle,” Cass observes as a plastic beer crate tumbles through a flower bed.
    “Yep,” Diego says. “At a guess, I’d say that tonight’s beach barbecue is a nonstarter.” He leans forward, a hand on the back of each chair. “How about a game of cards? Black Maria, say a dollar a point? Okay, okay. Fifty cents a point. Jeez, you tight-fisted northerners. Beer?”
    Otello is almost fifty dollars up, Michael about twenty, and Diego is therefore well down. It interests Otello that someone so cautious about everything else is inclined to bet unwisely on a hand of cards. It is reassuring, in a way.
    The lamps have come on, and Michael is dealing when Diego says, “My God, did you ever see a sunset that color?”
    Beyond the glass the sky is a livid green behind sallow streamers of cloud. It is so unlikely, it might be painted scenery for the last act of a melodrama. Front of stage, the beach is dissolving into sand devils, miniature whirlwinds that set