They shook on it, and Rory ran out of the office and across the courtyard back to the cottage.
The door stood open. He dashed through it, calling out, “Mathilda! Duncan! Anyone here?”
It was completely empty. Everyone had left. The only person there was a staffer who was busy packing up the suitcases the family had left behind. She was in her twenties, with a vibrant green-and-blue tattoo of a jungle scene that made him think of Mathilda.
Would everything make him think of Mathilda from now on?
“Excuse me, I’m a friend of these guests, can you tell me where they went?”
“They said I wasn’t supposed to tell anyone, especially anyone who showed up in the next few minutes.” She zipped up an overnight bag filled with sundresses and swimsuits.
“I’ll make it worth your while.”
She stopped packing, waiting for whatever amazing offer was about to come her way. The problem was, Rory had absolutely nothing with him.
“That helicopter out there in the courtyard. It’s all yours.”
She burst out laughing. “You must be desperate.”
“I am. This is about…love. The woman I love. I’m worried for her. I just want to make sure she’s okay.”
“Is she the blonde in the yellow dress?”
“Yes, that’s her.”
The staffer’s dark eyes turned sympathetic. “She didn’t look okay to me. They had to carry her out of here. Too much sun or too many cocktails.” She shook her head and went back to her task.
“So you don’t know where they went?”
“Maybe they took her somewhere to sleep it off.” She gave an indifferent shrug. “Tourists. It’s always something.”
He gave up on getting anything useful from her. He ran out of the cottage to see if he could catch up with the Wheelers. Five adults, one of them unconscious…it shouldn’t be too hard to spot them.
Unless they’d left in a boat, he realized, his heart sinking as he reached the part of the property that touched the shoreline. The resort had its own little beach, with longboats loaded onto a rack, a collection of surfboards, and a boat launch. A golden half-moon had risen, offering barely enough light to see.
A boat must have taken off from it pretty recently, because a line of bubbles floated on the still dark water. Philip goddamn Phelps. He must have been hanging out at the bar while the family bonded, or he’d left his speedboat for them.
He sat on the dock and let his feet dangle over the edge. He needed a moment to think, to let everything that had happened catch up with him. The Wheelers cared about Mathilda, obviously, so they were probably on their way to a hospital. She was in good hands, surrounded by her family. What could he do for her that they couldn’t, except possibly put her in more danger?
Lincoln’s people, or the people above Lincoln’s people, might be looking for Rory to question him about the crystal. Tanaka and his crew might be looking for him; he had stolen their helicopter, after all. The last thing he ought to do was draw attention to whatever hospital or doctor they’d taken Mathilda to.
A few moments later, a large speedboat zoomed past the breakwater and stopped at the boat launch in a rooster tail of water. A SWAT team, or something that looked like it, jumped out and ran down the dock.
Lincoln’s team, here to search for the crystal. Eight armed men in black tactical gear and night-vision goggles chasing after one two-inch tall bluish crystal.
He watched them go, relieved that it wasn’t his problem anymore, then lay back on the dock and stared up at the stars. Up there, in the jetstream and the air currents and the wind, that was where he belonged.
But for the first time in his life, the world at thirty thousand feet didn’t hold the same draw for him. He didn’t want to be up there. He wanted to be down here. With her.
32
Something had happened to her. She didn’t know what. But everyone looked very concerned. Her mother kept appearing in her field of vision—if you could call it that. She used to have such crystal-clear vision, but now it felt as if she was looking through a dense layer of white fog that made everything soft and blurry.
All she could hear was a low hum. Words didn’t penetrate through it. She knew that people were saying things, but she had no idea what they were. The effort of figuring it out was too enormous even to contemplate, so she didn’t bother. She just…existed. What a strange thing, this existence. Neither alive nor dead. Neither happy nor sad. Neither fearful nor hopeful. Just…there.
At some point—had time passed? She had no idea—the fog thinned enough for her to know she was in a hospital hooked up to an IV. Her parents were working on a crossword puzzle together. She smiled at the sight. They loved doing crosswords. And they loved doing things together.
Her gaze drifted to the other side of the room, where her brother Jamie was reading a book. His mouth was moving, and she realized he was reading it out loud to someone else. She turned her head and saw another man, blond and lanky, stretched in a chair, arms linked behind his head, listening to Jamie read.
