“See you tomorrow,” Sam had said cheerfully, but other than a quick glance back over her shoulder, she had ignored him.
The phone woofed again, and Sam reached over to answer it, his brain slowly coming back online.
Jaggard had given him a cell phone, and, stuck in the hotel suite, Sam had played around with all the features on it. The phone had a variety of sounds, ranging from buzzes to birds to Mr. Spock from
“This is Sam,” he said cautiously.
“Sam, ya muppet,” Dodge boomed in his ear. “Feel like a swim? We’re going up to the pool.”
“I don’t have a bathing suit …,” Sam started to say, but Dodge had already hung up.
The pool was on the roof of the hotel, protected from the wind by a heavy glass wall that ran around three sides. The fourth side was a plain-faced concrete structure that offered shade to one end of the pool and housed the elevators and washrooms.
It looked more like a meandering curved pond than a swimming pool, surrounded by tall palm trees in wooden tubs. When Sam glanced in the pool, he was astonished to see dolphins swimming around, then realized that the bottom of the pool was actually a large video screen. From the surface, the dolphins seemed remarkably lifelike.
The low afternoon sun hit his face the moment he stepped out onto the roof, and he blinked a couple of times against the glare.
White wicker lounge chairs were arranged in small clusters around the edge of the pool, and it was in one of the clusters, near a barbecue trolley, that Sam found Dodge, Vienna, and Kiwi, lying in the sun, drinking soda. Dodge and Kiwi were shirtless, in board shorts, and Vienna wore a bikini top and shorts.
The bikini top was a green camouflage pattern with a brass center ring and straps that—
“Nice view?” Vienna asked, and Sam quickly averted his eyes.
“Sorry, I was just—”
“Yes, you were,” Vienna said.
“Grab a lounger,” Dodge said. “What kept you?”
“Didn’t have a bathing suit,” Sam replied. “Had to go buy one at the hotel gift shop.”
“Shouldn’t have bothered,” Dodge said immediately. “We’re all going skinny-dipping anyway.”
Sam looked at the others’ faces to see if Dodge was joking, but Kiwi’s face was expressionless, and Vienna’s held only a slight smirk that gave nothing away.
Dodge was surely just joking, Sam decided. Although they were the only ones there.
Sam slipped his shirt off as he clambered onto an empty lounge chair next to Dodge.
Dodge gesticulated in the air, a vague hand gesture, and a waiter in a white dinner jacket appeared from a small gazebo.
“What would you like, sir?” the waiter asked Sam.
“Just water, iced,” Sam said, and the waiter retreated, returning a moment later with a glass brimming with ice and topped with a lime slice.
Dodge raised his own glass. “To Sam’s first day,” he said with a big smile that crinkled the tattoo on his forehead.
“To another day of keeping the barbarians at bay,” Kiwi said.
Sam sipped at his water. “Do they ever get in?” he asked.
“Sometimes,” Dodge said. “Little stuff here and there. We stamp on it right quick.”
“Usually without too much damage and without Joe the Public ever getting wind of it,” Kiwi added.
“Usually?” Sam asked.
“Usually,” Dodge agreed. “There’s been only one serious breach in the last four or five years.”
“Really? What was that?” Sam asked.
There was a silence, and the leaves of the palm tree above them waved gently in a strengthening afternoon breeze. It was Vienna who finally answered the question.
“You, Sam.”
“Anyone for a swim?” Sam asked a little later, feeling that he had gone from medium-rare to well-done in a short space of time.
“You go,” Dodge said. “I’ll join you soon.”
That same smirk was back on Vienna’s face, and Sam wondered why.
Sam walked to the edge of the pool and tested the water with his toe. It was pleasantly cool, not stomach- tightening cold, and he bent his legs, ready to dive in.
In an instant, the playful dolphins disappeared, replaced by a swarm of writhing, circling sharks.
“Whoa!” Sam yelled, jumping back from the edge. The others howled with laughter. In his hand, Dodge held some kind of remote control.
Sam grinned and shook his head.
He tested the water again with his toe, and immediately the sharks converged, thrashing and writhing in a feeding frenzy, right where his toe was, their white underbellies flashing. A redness spread from the center of the pack, rippling through the pool.
He snatched his toe out again.
“What’s wrong with ya?” Kiwi yelled with a grin. “They’re not real.”
Sam looked again at the pool and decided to postpone his swim anyway. Real or not, it no longer seemed like a pleasant experience.
Vienna made a clucking sound like a chicken as he walked back to the lounge chair. Dodge held up the remote device.
“Reprogrammed the hotel pool system,” he said, laughing.
“Then you go swim in it,” Sam said.
“Right you are,” Dodge said, and jumped up, heading toward the pool.
“I thought you were going skinny-dipping,” Sam called after him.
“Right you are!” Dodge said again, stripping off his board shorts and letting them lie where they fell.
He jogged naked toward the pool, then veered off to the left, bounded onto a lounge chair that was pushed up against the glass wall, and sprang onto the top of the wall.
“Dodge!” Sam cried out, suddenly terrified. On the other side of that wall was a twenty-story drop. He glanced around at the others, but they seemed calm and relaxed.
“Done this lots of times,” Dodge said, balancing, stark naked, on the wall. The glass was topped with a stainless-steel rail, Sam saw now, at least six inches wide. Even so, Dodge’s perch seemed precarious, considering the drop that was on the other side.
“It’s a bit gusty up here,” Dodge said, waving his arms about for balance.
“Dodge?” Sam said. “Dodge!”
“Whoooaaa,” Dodge yelled, his arms now flailing as he fought for balance on the narrow top edge of the wall. His foot slipped. One moment he was vertical; the next he was on one leg, leaning backward out over the drop, far too far. Sam jumped up, rushing toward him but knowing with utter horror that he could never make it in time.
Then, with a twist of his body, Dodge executed a perfect somersault into the pool, landing right in the middle of the shark feeding frenzy.
He came up for air and took a bow in the water.
Sam looked around at the others in shock.
“He does that to all the eggs,” Kiwi said, and then explained, “Probationers. One day he’s going to kill himself.”
“Why don’t you stop him?” Sam asked, his heart pounding.
“If he dies, I get promoted to point,” Kiwi said. “In fact, one day I might just push him off the edge myself.”
Sam opened his mouth to say something, then saw Kiwi’s grin and laughed. “You’re all mad.”
“Goes with the job,” Vienna said.
