“You think you can just buy me off after jeopardizing my laundry?” Realizing how ridiculous that sounded, she added, “Offer accepted. I’m sure the crew will appreciate it.”
“But not you?”
How could she explain this? She had so many thoughts on this topic, based on so many experiences. But Lincoln was himself a billionaire, and therefore without doubt had certain blind spots.
“That’s the problem with all that money. It makes you think it fixes everything and that you don’t have to be accountable for other people’s feelings. Just snap your fingers,” she demonstrated with a snap of her own fingers, “and poof, problem gone.”
He nodded thoughtfully, as if he’d actually heard her and agreed. “You’re not wrong. But it kind of sounds like you’re speaking from experience. Anything you’d like to share?”
“Nope.” Then she pretended to reconsider. “Unless you cough up for a new battery system, too. Ours is so out of date.”
His mouth opened, no doubt to buy her off again. This man was surprisingly easy to extort. He didn’t seem to care about his money at all.
“I’m just kidding,” she said quickly. “My thoughts are not for sale, especially to a self-proclaimed jerk who apparently has a million enemies.”
He winced, then turned to re-tuck his pilot’s mosquito net. “Fair enough.”
And…her heart went out to him again. Why did he have this effect on her? It was as if her libido wanted to ignore everything her brain knew about people like Lincoln Kerr.
10
Why was it always one step forward, two steps back with Mathilda? Just when Rory was making progress in learning more about her, she slammed the door in his face. Technically, she was slamming it in Lincoln’s face, but that was no comfort. Revealing that he was only pretending to be Lincoln would be just as bad.
Luckily, Diane came back early from her morning art session and offered to trek out to the pittosporum patch with Mathilda. He didn’t know if she would be any safer that way—the artsy and ethereal Diane didn’t strike him as great bodyguard material—but two people always had better odds against an attacker than one. Besides, they both carried knives and machetes to deal with the thick vines that could make trails impassable. He told himself they’d be fine, and then hoped he wasn’t lying to himself because the alternative was too horrible to contemplate.
After leaving him a set of instructions that included finishing Mathilda’s laundry and hanging it on the clothesline, the two women left him alone in the camp with Lincoln.
He let out a sigh of relief mixed with worry. The worry wouldn’t go away until Mathilda came back. The relief came from knowing that if Lincoln woke up, he’d be the only one there.
Another bonus—he could try again with the briefcase.
First things first. He couldn’t drop the ball with Mathilda’s laundry again, so he plugged in the cord, then hopped onto the machine before it could dance its way off the platform.
Then he climbed off, because that was ridiculous. Didn’t anyone here have any better ideas about securing the damn thing? He poked around the camp’s storage sheds until he found a collection of tools and some wood he could use to make shims. After whittling them into the right shape and size, he wedged them under the metal feet of the washing machine.
Satisfaction filled him as the beast stayed in one place while it chugged and churned. There! He didn’t even need a million dollars to solve that problem.
Now to his main mission, the briefcase.
Back to the tool collection.
A hammer, a chisel, a screwdriver…any of those could possibly work, but not without ruining the lock. He didn’t necessarily want Lincoln to know he’d broken into his briefcase. The man was unpredictable, and Rory was pretty sure spying on the contents of his briefcase would be a violation of his employment contract.
He needed to break in invisibly. How was he supposed to do that?
The noise of the washing machine stopped; time to hang up Mathilda’s laundry.
As he pegged her clothes to the line, he felt the sun on his face like a sweet caress. Peace hovered over this little research camp like a physical presence. He closed his eyes and listened to the cooing of the doves that nested near the site, and the clucking of the feral chickens wandering around. Mathilda had told him he was welcome to feed them; they kept chicken scratch on hand for that purpose. If he heard a hen launching into a continual loud squawking, he was supposed to look around for a freshly laid egg. The mongoose would get those eggs if they didn’t collect them first.
The air smelled like flowers, though he couldn’t identify them. Were they the lush lemony flowers on the vines that climbed up the tree trunks? Or the brilliant tomato-orange blossoms littering the jungle floor? Or maybe one of the plants in Sasha’s clay pots, part of her research into ancient Hawaiian medicinals?
He closed his eyes and inhaled deeply. The air moved through the camp like a living thing. The towering jungle trees offered some shelter, but somehow the wind found its way through the thick growth. It spoke to him like a friend he’d known forever but hadn’t talked to in a while.
Rory loved the wind. Before he’d become a pilot, he’d been obsessed with kites and paper airplanes—anything that was able to catch the wind.
Harnessing its power with a machine that could fly had struck him as an astonishing, magical invention. Whenever anyone had asked him what he wanted to be when he grew up, he’d said “airplane pilot.” He’d never wanted to be anything else, and the first time he’d put his hands on the controls of a twin-engine plane, a sense of rightness and exhilaration had flooded through him. That rush of energy when the air current curved across the wings of the plane and pulled it into the air—God, how he loved that.
Where had that joy disappeared to? He tried to remember the last time he’d felt it while flying. Definitely during his first job doing overflights of wildfires, dropping water onto precise locations, knowing he was saving homes and possibly lives? And his next job, which was flying search and rescue off the Oregon coast.
