The Miranda Contract by Ben Langdon Page B

see anything out there except the stars above, but the rolling waves soothed her.
    “Can we go home?” she asked.
    “Soon,” he said. “But you must be ready, Miss Brody. The dangers are not left back in Indonesia, they circle even now.”
    “More protests?”
    “Perhaps.”
    “You think it might be worse?” she asked.
    Sully drew in a deep breath.
    “I have changed the times for your plane tomorrow, just as a precaution. I do not trust Mister Christie at this moment. He is reckless with your safety.”
    “He’s just an industry man.”
    “He wants to capitalize on you, and that puts you in danger.”
    Miranda turned around and leaned against the balustrade. She looked up at Sully and frowned. He rubbed at his beard.
    “There is more,” he said slowly. “I do not know what plans are afoot, but something terrible will happen and I will not allow you to be involved.”
    “What are you talking about?”
    He turned away but she grabbed his arm and held him there. She’d never seen him so tense, not even after the Jakarta concert.
    “Sully, you can’t just tell me my life is in danger and walk away. What is it?”
    “I promised your father that I would keep you safe on this tour, and Suleyman never breaks his word.”
    “Have you talked with the police?”
    “No,” he said. “This danger comes from within. At the end of this tour we shall speak with your manager and renegotiate a balance. This is no life for one such as you.”
    She let his arm go and he walked away. Down below, the party continued, but Miranda didn’t know those people. She was a musician, yes, but she wasn’t a celebrity.
    Things would change.
    The real Miranda would come back. Somehow.

Chapter 12
    Dan
    I t was the smell of coffee that finally woke him, and he followed it upwards from the fading dream like a swimmer kicking for the surface of the sea. The dream he was leaving behind tasted of the sea, too; of salt and sunshine. And he was leaving someone behind down there in the dream, someone he needed to talk to, someone he didn’t want to leave behind, not again.
    But the coffee’s aroma infiltrated his senses and snared his dream self, wrenching it upward, shattering the feelings of abandonment and regret into myriad shards that blinked in the light from the lopsided venetian blinds.
    Dan sat up and jammed the balls of his hands into his eyes to clear away whatever it was he had been dreaming. There was a weight on his left wrist and he realized he was attached to a briefcase. He shifted in the bed and looked at the girl perched on a chair beside him, her legs crossed and her hands cradling a plastic cup. He didn’t know where he was, or who she was, or why there was a briefcase attached to his wrist. He shifted again and realized he was naked, and out of all the revelations that last one unsettled him the most.
    “Where’re ma clothes?” he mumbled, turning away from the girl and sliding out to put his feet down on the floor. It wasn’t his floor. “And what time is it?”
    He breathed in as the girl sucked at her cup, and he felt for the little electrical pulses around the room: the wiring in the walls, the appliances connected to the larger grid, even the wireless internet system that usually provided a constant hum inside his head. But everything was quiet. The system was down. And he had a thumping headache.
    “You went off,” the girl said, sounding more amused than anything. “Had to get coffee from across the highway.”
    Dan looked for his clothes. His black t-shirt was bunched at his wrist, twisted off as much as the briefcase would allow.
    “Was a crazy night,” she said. He caught a glimpse of elfin eyes, sparkling under short tussled hair. “You’re a keeper, sparky. In case you were concerned.”
    She kept smiling at him from behind the cup, long tanned legs crossed, but Dan ignored her and pushed his senses further, spreading his awareness beyond the hotel room and its disabled systems. He could sense