Page 138 of Our Last Resort

Holy shit.

Their car.

That beautiful red rental, gleaming in the desert heat, the purr of the engine when William pulled up to the entrance lounge. A car fit for the man who once wooed his wife by sending her a couture gown and princess gloves. A reminder of how charming he could be, back when he was courting her. Love-bombing her.

The cops must have overlooked the car until it was too late and William had lawyered up, blocking any chance of a warrant.

Whereishis car?

The Ara offers valet parking only. Clearly, it keeps its own fleet of cars nearby, too. When I asked Catalina to call one for me yesterday, my ride showed up within a minute, air-conditioned and with bottles of water at the ready.

So there is a garage.

Where?

I’ve taken enough steps around this compound to picture its map in my head: the entrance lounge, the main building with the lobby and the dining room, the row of suites. Nothing but the desert around us.

Which leaves only the ground beneath my feet.

William Brenner’s vehicle must be hidden below this very hotel.

But where’s the entrance? I haven’t seen it.

From a distance, I circle the property.

Nothing.

Think.

The Ara would never stoop to the brutally utilitarian aesthetic of regular parking garages, with a barrier and a largeExit Onlysign.

No. The beautiful minds who designed this hotel would have figured out a way to hide it. In fact, they might have boasted about their ingenuity online. A hidden parking garageentrance—this is exactly the kind of novelty a place like the Ara would highlight. Exactly the sort of feature they would show off to, say, a group of influencers whose stay they’re comping in exchange for visibility.

Please let me be right about this.

I look up “Ara hotel hidden parking entrance.” Nothing. Maybe I need to stay closer to home. “Ara hotel Madison.”

Our very own influencer in chief’s YouTube channel crops up. Unfortunately, she doesn’t have any video labeled “INSANE garage opening” or “Check out INVISIBLE garage door at luxury resort.” Instead, she has an “Ara hotel tour pt 1,” an “Ara hotel tour pt 2,” and, of course, an “Ara hotel tour pt 3.”

Jesus Christ, Madison.

I try the first video. It’s forty minutes long.Are you kidding me?No time to watch it in full. I swipe the cursor to the right and watch Madison’s tour unfold at high speed in a preview window. Nothing that looks like a garage. “Ara hotel tour pt 2” is mostly devoted to the spa.

Something catches my eye in the last third of “Ara hotel tour pt 3.” Was that a car?

Yes.

I scroll back a minute and let the video play at normal speed.

“And look at this, you guys—how cool is that?”

Madison turns her camera. On the screen, Catalina swipes something—a key card—in front of…one of the lanterns that dot the Ara’s pathways, in which a reader is evidently camouflaged.

Where are they standing?

It’s impossible to identify their location going by the lantern alone. There are dozens of those around the compound. I keep watching. In Madison’s video, the ground moves. A patch of the desert—a hidden, trap-style door—rises at an angle through the air. Madison faux-gasps as she adjusts the angle of her camera.

That’s when I spot it.

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