Lincoln didn’t answer, so she hoisted herself back onboard. “What is wrong with you?” she scolded him. “Just because not everyone is a billionaire like you doesn’t mean they aren’t worth helping. Jeez. That poor pilot. Is he injured? Or she?”
She made her way across the slanted floor into the cockpit. There, she found an unconscious man in one of the pilot’s seats. She crouched next to him. He was dressed pretty casually for a pilot, she thought. Did pilots usually wear thick, expensive hoodies with monograms?
“I gave him my sweater,” Lincoln explained, having followed after her. “I was worried he might go into shock. As far as I could tell, he has no injuries. I put him in this seat because there’s more space. I made sure his airway was clear and that he could breathe. But he’s been unconscious since we crashed. Do you have any first-responder training?”
“I have some knowledge.” Everyone on the research team was required to pass a basic first-aid course. “It sounds like you did everything right,” she added grudgingly. “Not bad, for a CEO.”
“I’ve watched my share of medical shows.” Lincoln flashed her a smile, then immediately retracted it. Like, it disappeared off his face in less than a second. He seemed awfully wary for a guy who had just survived a plane crash and was incredibly lucky that rescuers happened to be nearby.
“Look, dude. I promise we’re not here to strip all the chrome fittings out of your plane, or whatever you’re worried about. You can relax. We came to see if anyone needed help. There’s no cell service here, and I promise you that no one can see your plane from above the jungle. It’s either us or the wild boars. Your choice.”
She sat back on her heels and glared up at Lincoln Kerr. For a moment, she thought she’d made her point and he got it.
And then Robert had to interfere. He poked his head into the cockpit. “Is there maybe some kind of reward cause you’re a rich dude? Champagne bucket’s like a down payment?” He’d tucked it under his arm like an oversized gold-plated football.
Mathilda nearly burst out laughing at the expression on Lincoln’s face, as if he was regretting ever considering a trip to Hawaii. “We don’t need a reward.”
She shot Robert a glance to warn him away from any more jokes. He loved to tease. Then she reconsidered. Hell, this man had lots of money. They always needed lots of money.
“Although if you chose to make a donation to our research camp, we wouldn’t say no,” she said primly. “But that’s a different story that we can get into later on. We can transport your pilot here to our camp if you like. One of our current team is a medical doctor. She specializes in native medicinal plants, but she’s dealt with all kinds of situations since she’s been with us.”
“Healed my pinkie toe,” said Robert. “I broke it on some lava. The ancestors must have laughed.”
Lincoln looked between the two of them, clearly weighing his options. She could see it from his perspective—two random, machete-wielding, jungle-muddy strangers deserved some caution. She wouldn’t mind leaving the billionaire to find his own way out of trouble, but the poor pilot deserved her help.
“All right,” he finally said. “I think there’s a backboard we can use.”
A backboard. Again, odd that he would know about such a thing. Even odder that he knew exactly where it was, in a compartment packed with a defibrillator, an oxygen tank, and a few other pieces of equipment she didn’t recognize.
He must have noticed her quizzical expression, because he said, “This plane cost me nine million dollars. Of course I know everything about it.”
“Really? I bet you don’t even know the pilot’s name.”
“Rory Baker,” he said instantly. “Age thirty-one, lives in Silver Lake, Los Angeles, the best pilot on the West Coast.” He dug out the backboard and handed it to her.
“You hire only the best, is that it?”
“You know me so well.” Again, that dry sense of humor had her doing a double take. “He’s also extremely popular with women, so don’t go falling in love.”
“But unconscious men are impossible to resist. They’re so much less annoying than the conscious ones.”
He snorted as he poked around in the compartment. “Cute. Funny. Do we need anything else from in here?”
“Is there a neck brace?”
“There’s everything. I—Rory advised me to keep the plane fully stocked with emergency supplies. I always listen to Rory.”
She caught an undertone in his voice that she didn’t quite understand. As if he was laughing at some private joke. “I don’t know, I have a feeling Rory isn’t all he’s cracked up to be. He did crash your plane, after all.”
“That wasn’t his fault,” he said quickly. “There was a storm.”
“Okay. No need to get so defensive. We caught the storm too. We had to wait it out under a breadfruit tree.” She’d quite enjoyed watching the intense torrents of rain drench the vines and ancient mangoes and African tulip trees—which were invasive, so she disliked them on principle, but enjoyed them on an aesthetic level.
He extracted himself from the compartment, a padded neck brace in hand. “Rough one, right?”
“Sure.” Storms like that came through here all the time, but she didn’t know what it was like to fly through them. “I’m sure your pilot did the best he could, poor thing.”
She didn’t understand why he set his jaw in that way. Wasn’t she agreeing with him?
