Page 72 of For Better or for Ransom

“Yeah, that!” Fairbanks gave a sharp snap of his fingers. “In any case, I forgot about everything else. Not quite sure who I am or where we’re at the moment. Been doing some rewrites of episode four for I don’t know how long. I may have finally resolved the exposition dump issues I had. No wonder people love traveling. I should do it more often—regardless of how much I hate flying.” The showrunner also looked at the marine horizon ahead of them and sighed.

Luke blinked. What were these people going on about?

“So,” Fairbanks went back to business. “Do I have a leading man yet? Have you guys found Leonardo?”

“He was sighted on the island two nights ago,” Divya proceeded to share the agreed-upon version of the facts.

“That’s awesome! So where is he exactly?”

“We’re still trying to pinpoint his whereabouts.” Divya was vague. “Doing it as we speak.”

Jasper harrumphed. “If it wasn’t because of the clause on my contract, I’d be looking for a replacement star already. But Meshflixx was pretty clear: The Single Dad Situation is only happening if Leonardo is the single dad. What do you think has happened to him? Has he really deserted me like the internet is set on making me believe?”

“We think he may have been kidnapped, actually,” Luke said.

When the otherwise chatty and apparently extroverted Fairbanks didn’t say anything, Luke and Divya grabbed some lawn chairs and sat next to him.

“Kidnapped? By whom?” Fairbanks finally snapped out of his inner thoughts, his features a mixture of bewilderment and fear.

“Still working on that. Could be someone who calls himself FadeToBlack online. Does that ring any bells?” Luke asked Fairbanks.

The showrunner chuckled. “I have several colleagues who swear by the classic transition and won’t even hear about trying anything else. Do you think he’s okay? Leonardo?”

“He was looking healthy and his usual very attractive self when he was spotted two nights ago,” Divya explained.

“Ah, that’s a good sign!”

Luke could understand that for Jasper Fairbanks there was also a lot on the line, like the actual feasibility of his show. Even if with Fairbank’s private jet and five-star luxury hotel Luke was having some issues feeling for the showrunner or empathizing with him. But had Fairbanks really expressed his relief at Leonardo looking good?

“Don’t think I’m totally shallow,” Fairbanks said, as if reading Luke’s mind. “But you see, I’m going crazy here. I keep getting trapped in online forums where users are convinced that Leonardo has abandoned me and my show and he’s decided he wants to do Theo Summers’ Bibliophilia instead. In my show, Leonardo plays a total hunk of a single daddy. For Bibliophilia he was supposed to lose like twenty pounds, and play this emaciated specter trapped between the fabric of books and reality, or something boring like that. So, if he looks good and healthy, it means he isn’t thinking about leaving me—even if we still need to find him.”

“Jasper, do you have any idea why someone would have decided to take Leonardo here?” Divya asked one of the questions that was currently on top of the detectives’ minds.

“He loves islands, doesn’t he? Can’t think of a better way of wooing him.”

42

Sol

While Luke and Divya were on the north of the island trying to figure out whether Jasper Fairbanks had anything to do with Leonardo’s disappearance, Sol had stayed in Palma.

There was a practical—even urgent reason for it—she’d called all the taxi companies and tried locating the driver who’d taken Leonardo and his unremarkable captor from a cocktail bar to somewhere else on the island a couple of nights before. That place could be the very same where Leonardo was right then.

But that hadn’t been the only reason for Sol deciding to pass on a trip to the paradisiacal Cala Formentor and staying in the city. She needed some distance from Luke. After having practically proposed to him the night before, she just wanted to think straight—preferably with Luke and his infinite aura of heightened hormones, musky smells, and charged stares not impairing her reasoning even further.

She’d kept adding to her list of all the reasons why she should and shouldn’t marry Luke. And even though the shoulds simply outnumbered the shouldn'ts, Sol had still so many doubts. Had she allowed him to truly get to know her? Or had she simply given him access to the likable part of her personality, afraid of another relationship blunder if Luke got to know the real, unhinged, extremely flawed Sol.

She’d run a bath in the hope that would clear her mind. So far, it wasn’t helping much other than pruning her fingertips. She submerged her whole body under the water trying to suppress an exasperated scream. When she emerged from it, Luke was inside the hotel room.

“You’re back?” she blurted, only her head and shoulders above water inside the claw-foot bathtub of the open-concept bathroom in their hotel room.

He was standing in the middle of the bedroom, staring at her, his arms crossed at his chest, one of his eyebrows arched, a sexy grin tugging at his lips. “Why don’t you sound happy about it?”

“It’s not that. I’m still soaking in here. I guess I’d hoped to be at least dry and dressed by the time you were back.” Clearheaded too.

“I really like you wet and naked though.” He smirked.

That type of conversation was only going to make things more difficult.