The Attraction: House of Illusion by Rick Polito

Author:Rick Polito [Polito, Rick]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781953944153
Publisher: Wise Wolf Books
Published: 2021-11-17T16:00:00+00:00

We didn’t talk for a while. I heard Mia take some deep breaths and then exhale really slowly, and I fell into rhythm with her. It was relaxing, which I guess is the whole point of going to the beach. I imagined I was at a real beach, like an ocean beach, and our breaths were the waves breaking and receding. I also listened to the real water going by and thought about that day on the canoe with Mia and her lesson in “not everything about the Delta sucks”. I felt ready to doze off in just a few minutes, which is pretty amazing, given the Evan and Chloe intrusion. Even when she put her hand on mine, I didn’t have that sudden rush of wondering what it meant and if I should make a move on her and how soon we were going to be making out and all of that.

We were just being in a place, settling into the quiet.

That’s what made the whirring noise so suddenly jarring.

We both stood up. It was electric. That’s all I could tell. The whine reminded me of a dentist drill. “What the hell is that?” Mia asked.

A shadow passed over us.

I looked up and saw a drone, bigger than a toy drone but not like some scary death-ray drone. It zipped across overhead, and it was obvious whoever was running it had a camera because I could see it change course when it became obvious that we saw it. It zipped around the back of what had been the biggest water slide and hovered there for a moment, just out of sight.

Then it came flying right at us, and I flinched into a half crouch before it banked wide and zipped back, past a row of dead palm tree trunks lining what had been the front gate and snack bar area.

I wasn’t sure what to do, but Mia grabbed my arm and pulled me with her toward the front gate. When we got closer and could look through the metal bars and the sun-ravaged remains of a canvas tarp, I saw a mammoth gray SUV and two guys standing next to it. One of them was piloting the drone. The other one was talking on a phone. They wore black jeans and black polo shirts, less like they’d just gotten off their shifts at a fast-food restaurant. They were older than us but not by a lot.

“Who the hell is that?” Mia asked.

“I don’t know, but they don’t look like they came out here by accident. They sure as hell don’t look like security guards either.”

“I don’t like it.”

“Neither do I.”

The drone pilot landed his craft on the hood of the SUV and started packing it into a big plastic case, stopping to unclip what looked like a thumb drive and shoving it into his pocket. The guy with the phone nodded when the drone guy said something I couldn’t hear. The phone guy never took his eyes off us, even as he opened the door of the SUV and got in.

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