Beneath

Chapter 11 (iii) — What the Water Took

Snipp

What do you mean Kamara is *gone*?" His voice climbed. "Who took her? Who was she last seen with?" -Kes

I need it to tell me Lola is alive. -Barbie as narrator

Kes baking actual baking, with osoji folded into a carrot cake because he clearly thought about what she'd actually want, not just what looked nice is the most quietly devastating apology this book has written. -Barbie as narrator

🏚️

---

(Kamara )

Kamara

The night we met 😭

Drip. Drip. Drip.

The ache in my wrists had intensified but the first thing I registered, before the pain, was the voice.

I knew that voice.

I had sat through good days and bad ones in the sound of it. I had memorized it the way you memorize something you love, before I knew what loving it would cost me.

The chains weighed heavier against my skin than they should have. But it was the voice that pulled hardest deep, settling into a place in my chest I'd built specifically for it.

I tried to speak. Nothing came out.

As though sensing my eyes on him, he said: "Good. You're awake. I was worried you'd sleep through the negotiation."

He brought water.

My throat was drier than the Sahara. I hated how grateful I was for the cool slide of it down my throat hated that even now, chained, frightened, my body still trusted him enough to drink what he offered.

I clenched and unclenched my fists. My breathing went shallow. The room felt like it was folding in toward me.

I took a deep breath.

"Of all people," I said, "it had to be you."

"Surprise," he said.

A cold shudder moved through me.

It was going to be a long day.

---

Kainene

After the call with Lola, I heard Keside's footsteps approaching and dove straight under the covers, pretending to be asleep.

I am not proud of this. It was also the only logical move available to me.

He sat on the bed. Tried to wake me. I stayed perfectly, deliberately unconscious and I hated how loud my own heartbeat sounded the closer he got. Goosebumps spread across my arms like something contagious. The air in the room had gone thick, heavy, made worse by the fact that he had clearly just showered aftershave, a hint of deep vanilla, something underneath both of those I didn't have a name for and didn't trust myself to name.

I felt the bed dip as he sat. Then rise as he left. Then dip again as he came back.

He brushed the hair from my face. Searched until he found my rollers in the dark and set them gently on the nightstand within reach.

Then he said something I did not expect.

"I'm so, so sorry, baby. Please forgive me."

He pressed his lips to my forehead.

Walked out.

I lay there for a long time long enough that he could have counted every sheep in Brazil  before I let myself actually drift off.

---

I woke to calm.

Rain tapped faintly against the roof, a soft rhythm I let myself sit inside for a moment before the day demanded anything of me.

Then footsteps.

I dove back under the covers on instinct. Kes walked in carrying a carrot cake that smelled dangerously good, something underneath the sweetness that I placed after a second osoji, the locally blended groundnut and pepper mix, worked into something it had no business being worked into.

I tried to feign sleep.

Failed.

He'd already clocked it. When I opened my eyes he was standing near the door, watching me with the patience of someone who had been expecting exactly this.

"Thought as much," he said.

"Why are you hiding, Emerald?"

I blinked. "Is that a new name now?"

He was at my side before I'd finished the sentence, setting the plate down, feeding me a forkful before I could object.

"Brought you breakfast. Thought you might need it. After last night." A pause. "Is this the official apology?"

I looked at him. "I suppose it is."

"Thank you," I said. Genuinely startled by how quickly he'd moved from the man in the Brazil villa to this soft, careful, almost sheepish.

*Was Keside bipolar*, I wondered, *or just a man who runs hot and then immediately regrets the temperature?*

It was sexy. It was also slightly terrifying. I didn't let myself feel either all the way through.

He stared at me. I stared back. His eyes moved across my face down to my mouth, lingering there, then my neck and even though he never touched me, it felt like being touched. Heat pooled low and immediate, my body responding to a memory of last night I was actively trying not to relive.

He leaned back against the wall. Scratched the back of his head, suddenly awkward in a way I hadn't seen from him before.

"I'm genuinely sorry about this morning," he said. "About last night. All of it."

"What was that?" I said. "I can't hear you."

He nearly yelled it the second time. "I said I'm so—"

His phone rang.

We both jumped.

"Sorry," he said. "I have to take this."

He answered.

I watched his face change in real time.

"What do you mean Kamara is *gone*?" His voice climbed. "Who took her? Who was she last seen with?"

Cold swept through my body.

*Gone.*

I moved to the coffee table beside the bed, already dialing her number, already knowing what I'd find. Straight to voicemail. Again. Again.

My vision started to blur at the edges. My chest tightened. My heart was moving too fast for my body to keep up with it.

*My sister cannot be missing.*

Keside was beside me arms around me, slightly awkward, like he wasn't sure his hands belonged there but refused to move them anyway.

"Kainene. Breathe with me. Okay?"

I breathed.

Minutes folded into something longer. Eventually it was the doorbell that pulled us back into the room.

---

Oby arrived first.

Then Neato. Somebi. Ugo. Somkele.

We were all gathered, all still in various states of undone, when every phone in the room buzzed at once.

*Now that you're all here. Let's begin, shall we?*

Somkele's phone slipped from her hand and hit the floor.

Somebi screamed pure frustration, pure fear. "This cannot be happening."

"No one tells Mum and Dad," Ugo said. His voice was tight, controlled in the way voices get right before they stop being controlled. "We have seventy-two hours. We find her ourselves." His jaw worked. "What if—"

"Don't," Keside said.

"Don't finish that sentence," Neato said, at the same time.

A tremor passed visibly through both of them.

"Everyone," I said. "Stop. We can't do anything productive in this state."

I set a thirty-minute timer.

"We take a break. We think clearly. Then we pull every piece of information we have." I looked at Neato. "The hotel cameras the ones we just had installed. Can you pull the footage? Smart filtering should narrow down who came near her."

He nodded once, already moving.

I tried to will my mind toward something anything that wasn't the worst possibility.

Somebi turned on the television, flipping through stations with shaking hands.

The newscaster's voice cut through the room:

*"We've received word of an attempted attack on a flight departing for Seoul this morning—"*

I let out a sound I didn't recognize as my own.

*That was Lola's flight.*

I didn't think. I dialed her number before the newscaster had finished the sentence.

---

🍿 Barbie as Narrator — Sets Everything Down

I need someone to physically check on me.

Kamara. Chained. A voice she clearly knows and clearly loved or still loves saying "good, you're awake, I was worried you'd sleep through the negotiation." NEGOTIATION. What negotiation? Who is this? I have eleven theories and I trust none of them.

Kes baking actual baking, with osoji folded into a carrot cake because he clearly thought about what she'd actually want, not just what looked nice is the most quietly devastating apology this book has written. He didn't buy his way out of it. He made something with his hands. That matters.

"Why are you hiding, Emerald?" Sir. A new pet name in the middle of a crisis. The audacity. The romance. I'm furious I love it.

And then the whiplash from tender to terror in under four minutes. Kamara missing. Seventy-two hours. Everyone's hands shaking. Ugo unable to finish his own sentence. That's exactly how real panic moves fast, incomplete, everyone talking over the fear instead of through it.

Kainene taking charge thirty-minute timer, camera footage, calm in the middle of the storm even while her own chest is caving in that's who she's becoming. Not the girl hiding under the covers from a hard conversation. The one steadying a room mid-collapse.

And then the broadcast.

Lola's flight.

I am not breathing right now. I need the next chapter  and I need it to tell me Lola is alive. Please. 🖤🍿