It was a silvery vision of a car, elegant as something designed by a classical sculptor. Michelangelo, maybe, if he’d worked in metal and sheer engine power. I instinctively took my foot off the gas, staring, because in all my extensive years of car fetishizing, I’d never actually seen anything that cool with my own eyes.
I pulled the Viper over to the side of the road, barely noticing the crunch of tires on gravel, and stared. My mouth was probably hanging open, too. Honestly, David was right—you just did not see that every day. Or, in fact, any day, unless you worked at an Italian car manufacturer, or had $1.7 million to throw around on a set of wheels. “That,” I said, “is a freaking Bugatti Veyron. In the Everglades.” It wasn’t the fastest car in the world—maybe number two?—but it was, to my mind, the most elegantly designed. And, not coincidentally, the most expensive.
David let out a little snort of laughter. “I wasn’t talking about the car,” he said. Well, of course he wasn’t, but I was still adjusting to the fact that there was a Bugatti Veyron sitting there, not twenty feet away from me. A couple of staffers for the shoot were polishing it with soft cloths, not that it needed the help to look its best. I blinked and tried to see what else was in the picture.
Ah. He was talking about the girl. The one in the bikini.
The one in the diamond bikini. Not a bikini with diamonds, not a blinged-out piece of spandex … an actual bikini, made of diamonds. Now that I’d noticed her, it was hard to see how I’d missed her in the first place—the glitter of all those facets was blinding. The girl wearing the thing was getting herself powdered—last-minute primping, just like the car—and she looked almost as sleek and expensive as what she was wearing, and what her backdrop would be. I presumed she was a world-class model, or she wouldn’t be here acting as the prop for all that loot. You didn’t go cheap on the talent in a thing like this.
I blinked as a cloud blotted out the sun. No, not a cloud … a shadow, and then a body, big enough to present a solid flesh barrier to me catching any more glimpses of car, girl, or diamonds. He was, unmistakably, security. I could cleverly discern this by reading the giant letters in white on his black T-shirt, which read SECURITY , but even had he been unlabeled, there would really have been no mistaking him for anything else. He was professional muscle; whether he took it to bodyguarding a star, bouncing a club, or donning an overdone belt as a pro wrestler, he’d made a career out of intimidation.
“Hi,” I said brightly. He scowled down at me from way, way up high. Tall, not only broadly built. “Just wanted to see what was going on.”
“Nothing, ma’am,” he said. “Move on, please.”
“I’m not in the way.” I had no real reason not to immediately put the Viper in gear and drive on, but I didn’t like being scowled at. Or ordered around. “That’s a Bugatti Veyron, right?”
“No idea. Move on.”
“Look—what’s your name?”
“Steve.”
“Steve, I promise, I’m just looking. Give me a second and I’ll go.”
Instead, Steve took a step back and waved a hand, and from somewhere behind me, two uniformed Florida state troopers sauntered over, one on my side of the car, one on David’s. The saunter was deceptive, because I didn’t for a moment believe they were being relaxed about it. “Miss,” said the one who bent over on my side of the window. He had a thick Southern accent, a little too Southern for Florida. I was guessing he was a Georgia transplant. “You need to move along now, unless you’ve got a pass.”
David reached into the glove box and brought out something in an envelope, which he handed over without a word to the officer on his side of the car. The trooper unfolded the paper, read it, and said to his partner, “They’ve got a pass, Joe.”
“They do? Let me see that!”