The Heist

her hands again, Balinese-style. Just fabulous, she thought. Another opportunity for sambal to run down her arm and drip off her elbow into her lap.
    “You mentioned you left Bali because you wanted to experience the real Indonesia,” Griffin said. “So everything we’re eating tonight came from this island, even the salt and seasonings, and I asked Chef to prepare babi guling.”
    Kate took a sip of her wine. “I hope that’s nothing barbaric, like someone’s head.”
    “The Toraja were the headhunters. Our chef is Balinese. Entirely different tribes.”
    “That’s a relief,” she said. “I’ll sleep much better tonight knowing I won’t be served for breakfast.”
    “Not breakfast,” Griffin said. “Possibly dessert, if I’m lucky.”
    Ugh! Arrogant cretin, Kate thought. Slime-coated fungus. Diseased monkey butt.
    “Luck won’t have anything to do with it,” she told him, licking a drop of sambal off her finger. “Tell me about our dinner.”
    “Babi guling is an entire pig, stuffed with spices and herbs, roasted on a spit for six hours, and basted in coconut water to caramelize the skin so it’s deliciously sweet and crispy.”
    “Yummy. And you made this special meal for me?”
    “It’s not often I get such an interesting guest.”
    “You flatter me.”
    “I’m trying,” Griffin said.
    Kate smiled, doing her best to continue to look interesting and maybe even mysterious.
    “I’m fascinated by your property manager,” she said. “He seems so local. What tribe is Dumah from?”
    “He’s one of the Bugis, a seafaring people who terrorized the islands of their enemies, arriving by boat in the darkness. It’s where the fear of the bogeyman comes from, at least around here.”
    “Should I look for him under my bed before I go to sleep?”
    “You don’t have to worry about the bogeyman coming for you tonight.”
    “I hope not. I feel so naked without my grenade launcher.”
    That was the God’s honest truth, Kate thought. She’d barter her appendix for a Glock.
    “I’ll do my best to make you feel secure,” Griffin said.
    They ate the pig and Griffin told stories about Indonesia’s history, the wars fought over control of the spice trade, and thedifficulties during the Dutch occupation of the islands. For dessert, the chef served his own homemade recipe for dodol, a candy popular in Indonesia. The pieces of dodol were glutinous globs of rice and cane sugar that looked like saltwater taffy and tasted like a pencil eraser.
    “Yum,” Kate said, choking down a glob of dodol. “Very special.”
    They walked along the beach after dinner, and Kate admired the swaying palm fronds and gently lapping waves, but her focus was on the yacht. Lights were on, and Nick and Willie were at the dinette, obviously having chosen not to eat on the island.
    “It’s a shame about the damage to the yacht. You can kiss your security deposit goodbye,” Griffin said.
    “And let them fix the boat and rent it out again? No way.”
    “What other option is there?”
    “I’ll buy the yacht from them and keep the bullet holes intact as a souvenir of my Indonesian adventure.”
    “It’s not over yet,” he said.
    She held his arm tight against her and looked into his eyes with her best attempt at a mischievous smile. “I think you may be right.”
    A half hour later when they returned to the house, Kate stood in front of her bedroom door and faked a yawn. “I know it’s still early, but I guess the excitement of the day has caught up with me,” she said. “I can barely keep my eyes open.” She pressed her body against his and gave him a soft, lingering kiss. “I’m asleep on my feet.”
    “Would you like me to check under your bed for the bogeyman?”
    “No, but if I wake up scared in the middle of the night, I hope you won’t mind if I come running.”
    “Not at all,” he said.
    She slipped into her room, closed the door behind her, and ran to brush her teeth and gargle with Listerine.
    It wasn’t entirely an act. Kate
was
tired. Radiating hot sex was almost as exhausting as engaging in it. She had to rest up for a seduction, a kidnapping, and an escape into international waters in a bullet-riddled yacht. So she sprayed herself with DEET, drew the mosquito netting closed around the bed, and slipped under the sheets. Getting infected with malaria or dengue fever from a mosquito bite wasn’t part of her plan.
    According to the old-fashioned wind-up clock on the nightstand, it was 10