Right Behind You

Chapter Seventy-One: And The Beat Goes On

"And the beat goes on

Just like my love everlasting
And the beat goes on
Still moving strong on and on

Do you ever wonder
That to win, somebody's got to lose
I might as well get over the blues
Just like fishing in the ocean
There'll always be someone new
You did me wrong 'cos I've been through stormy weather.

And the beat goes on
Just like my love everlasting
And the beat goes on you'd better believe it
Still moving strong on and on."

-The Whispers (And The Beat Goes On)

Kae:

"Hey, mom, where were you this morning? You weren't in your room when I knocked?" I asked my mother who had just joined Sabien and I at the front of the front lobby of the hotel as we all gathered and got ready for the snorkeling trip we were going on. We were going to be hiking after that and finishing off the day with a sunset picnic dinner over the Grand Canyon of Musandam.

"Yeah, you weren't even at breakfast either, where did you go?" Sabien who was beside me asked curiously. I watched as my mother fumbled nervously, a steady smile on her face. "I decided to go for a little morning walk... the mountains are quite beautiful during sunrise." She said.

She was lying.

It didn't take much Odyssey training to know that, it was interrogation tactics 101 and she failed. Now the question remained, where she had really gone, and why? I decided to let it sly and play dumb, I'm sure it'd come up eventually. "Okay," I said simply before turning back around and waiting for everyone to get here so we could all be driven to our excursion point. Soon enough, the entire family was here and we went on our way driving to meet our luxury speed boat that was going to take us out to the waters for some fun.

"Ugh.... I think I'm going to be sea-sick." Roxie, Mahid's I guess girlfriend said as she held her stomach nervously. I was the closest one sitting to her, while the rest of the group was sort of spread-out taking views of the ocean as we slowly began reaching our destination.

"Please do not get it on my Chanel slides... I just got these." Ettie who had previously been on her phone taking pictures said to her with slight disgust. Roxie held her hands up, "Sorry... I'll try not too, I just don't go on boats often." She said to her. Ettie rolled her eyes and went back to her phone as if she had never spoken up in the first place.

She had the rudest attitude, like a kid who always had a silver spoon in her mouth.

"Roxie, right?" I asked the girl.

The young Iranian woman looked over at me and nodded, she brushed her dark hair away from her face. "Yes... you're Mahid's sister, right?" She asked me.

I nodded, "And you are?" I questioned her, I wasn't quite sure the reason Mahid brought her here.

"Roxie Moradi... I'm Mahid's friend, we go to a lot of parties in Dubai and London together." She leaned over to me slowly as if she were trying to say something secretive, "Don't freak out but Mahid paid me to be here with him to pretend to be his girlfriend." She whispered to me.

I arched my eyebrow curiously, "Why would he do that?" I questioned her.

Roxie batted her long eyelashes encasing her honey-brown eyes as she looked at me intensely, "He wants your dad to take him serious about something and he told me to just fake it until he bought it." She replied back to me before sitting back up, holding her stomach again. Roxie didn't seem like the "brightest" of girls, she spoke pretty slow like she was counting every syllable of her words, but I wasn't here to judge. What I found interesting was Mahid trying to somehow finesse dad by making him believe he was in a serious relationship of the sort in order to sway him to trust him.