Chapter 4
“What do you know about Zara?” Lincoln asked Benito, the gardener he was paired up with for the day.
They’d been assigned the task of scrubbing a retaining wall made from lava rock.
The mortar holding the rocks together tended to accumulate dirt, which ruined its crisp look.
Since this particular wall was part of the resort’s entrance, the black rock contrasting with the vibrant purple of bougainvillea vines, it had to be cleaned on a regular basis.
He sincerely hoped this would be his last round of mortar scrubbing. It was hard work out here in the hot sun. Sweat ran down his face under the straw hat Benito had lent him.
Us plebes have to stick together.
Why did he keep running back everything Zara had said during that fairly mortifying encounter?
She was even more captivating up close, with honey-gold eyes and an aura of laughter and freedom.
He could still feel her body pressed against his, still smell the fresh coconut scent of her hair.
She’d smelled like the beach, like running across a lawn flying a kite, or diving for the ball during a game of touch football.
“Zara, the girl at the desk?” Benito changed his position so he was squatting. There was no comfortable stance from which to scrub mortar, Lincoln had discovered. You just had to keep changing it up.
“Yes.”
“Been working here for about six months. Every single guy took a shot, even a couple of married ones. They all want to be her sugar daddy. Got slapped down one by one. Not me, man,” he added quickly.
Of course not—Benito was recently married and expecting a baby. His wife packed a lunch for him every day and he always brought flowers home with him. Sometimes he spent the day making up love poems for her.
“Sugar daddy?”
“Yeah, cause of the situation with her family.” Benito rinsed off his scrub brush and shook the excess water onto the grass.
“You mean, her brother and sister?”
“Yeah. She’s their guardian now. Father got in trouble with the law. They say he tried to flee from the cops in a sailboat. Wasn’t too hard to catch up to him.”
The man sounded like a dim bulb to Lincoln, which didn’t fit with what he’d seen of his children.
“So Zara’s taking care of her siblings now?”
“That’s it. Don’t know where Mama is. Heard she’s in a cult.”
He said it so casually that Lincoln gave a double-take. “I’m sorry, a cult?”
“Sure, probably over in Puna. More cults than coconut trees over there. They say she fell for the cult leader and left the family to go live off the land and eat seaweed.”
So both of Zara’s parents had flaked out and left Zara in charge. Amazing that she still had that carefree quality to her, which he’d noticed even in the storage closet as she grabbed a pillow.
“So Zara’s a local?”
“Local enough. She’s not Hawaiian, but she was born and raised here. Maybe on a sailboat? Rings a bell. She left the island for a while but came back when her father was arrested.”
It sounded to him like Zara was the opposite of her mother.
“If you’re thinking about shooting your shot, don’t bother. Like I said, everyone’s tried.”
“I’m not,” Lincoln said curtly.
Something caught his eye, or rather, someone. A black sedan with tinted windows turned into the resort’s entrance, and the silhouette of the driver’s face, just visible over the low lava-rock walls, set off big alarm bells.
He knew that man; he was one of Tanaka’s security guards.
Tanaka…where to even start with Tanaka? Business competitor, rumored crime boss, and a fucking thorn in Lincoln’s side. As the sworn enemy of Lincoln’s father, KiYun Chun, he took their feud to a very personal extreme.
“Bathroom break,” he muttered to Benito. He needed to see what Tanaka’s muscle man was doing here. It couldn’t possibly be a coincidence. They must be looking for him.
Or maybe for the same thing he was looking for.
He tucked his straw hat over his face and followed after the sedan, keeping out of sight by hiding behind the hibiscus shrubs and bromeliads that lined the driveway.
A week ago, he’d known nothing about these plants; now they felt like old friends.
Hello, bright yellow hibiscus, are the aphids leaving you alone?
Idiot, he told himself. No time for whimsy when a Japanese thug might be after him.
Tanaka had been after the CHUM for a while.
Lincoln wasn’t sure why. It was valuable, of course, but Tanaka’s businesses involved arms dealing and other sketchy shit.
Why would he care about some experimental energy source?
Lincoln’s theory—he just wanted to one-up Lincoln’s father.
KiYun Chun was a legend in the South Korean tech industry.
At one point he’d been one of the wealthiest men in the world.
During a business trip to Georgia to check out his new microchip factory, he’d met Violet Kerr, a debutante from one of the oldest families in Savannah.
When the completely unauthorized and inappropriate fling between the married tech tycoon and the equally married Southern belle resulted in a pregnancy, Violet’s family nearly disowned her.
She’d ended the relationship but kept the baby.
KiYun Chun had created a trust for Lincoln and gone back to Korea.
Lincoln had grown up knowing there was something wrong with him, something different.
He rarely saw his father, and when he did, the topic of conversation was always his grades or his performance in track and field.
All he’d wanted, since he could remember, was to win his father’s attention and respect.
That was why, once he’d gained control of his trust at the age of twenty-one, he’d worked so hard to turn a few million into a few hundred million, and then a billion.
Even so, his father kept his distance. He didn’t want Lincoln causing trouble for his real family in Korea.
The sedan jerked to a stop outside hale twelve.
Crap.
There were two kids inside, innocent bystanders who had no clue how dangerous someone who worked for Tanaka could be.
He pulled out his burner phone and called the front desk. “Can I speak to Zara?” he asked when a man answered.
A moment later, that familiar throaty voice came on the line. “This is Zara, how may I be of assistance this fine morning?”
Trust Zara to add flair to even the simplest phone call.
“This is Jim, we met this morning at hale twelve.”
“Man-butt. Yes, I remember. What’s up?”
“Send a security guard to that hale,” he ordered her. “But don’t worry, I’ll make sure your secret is safe.”
“Wait…what? What’s going on? Is everything okay?”
He hung up before he could explain further. The last thing he wanted was to come face to face with Tanaka’s security guy. No—that was the second-to-last thing. The most important was to make sure that man got nowhere near the kids.
He rubbed some mud left from the morning’s sprinkler session over his face. Tugging his straw hat down even farther, he hunched his shoulders and trudged across the lawn toward the hale. Just an ordinary gardener worn out by hard work and heat.
The man in the sedan hadn’t gotten out yet.
He was talking on his phone and paying no attention to the tired-looking gardener passing behind the car.
Lincoln skirted around the edge of the hale to the back terrace.
He rapped on the glass sliding doors until he saw the girl’s—Mia’s—head pop up. He waved his arms to get her attention.
“What are you doing here?” she called through the door, once she’d gotten close enough.
He put his finger to his lips, then beckoned to her. The boy came running up beside his sister. He jumped up and down and waved with excitement. She edged the door open about two inches. Progress.
“Someone’s at the front door. Come with me and I’ll find a place you can stay out of sight.”
The girl stared at him suspiciously. “We’re supposed to trust you? You’re just a rando dumb enough to get stuck under the sink.”
Eddie giggled. Neither of them was taking this seriously.
“Uh…” Good point. “Here, take these.” He handed her a pair of garden shears from the work bag slung across his chest. She opened the door farther to take hold of them. “Feel free to stab me with them if you feel the need.”
“Seriously?”
“I mean, yes, but please don’t stab me. I don’t want to hurt you. I’m trying to keep your sister from getting busted.”
Mia’s eyes narrowed. She looked quite a bit like her sister, although her hair was cut short and dyed black, and she wore an inordinate amount of black eye makeup. “You like Zara? Is that what this is about?”
“No!” He scrubbed a frustrated hand over the back of his neck.
Out front, he heard the sound of a car door open, and then slam closed.
“That’s not it. I mean, she’s fine. Not fine fine.
Well, that too. Come on, you two need to clear out of here and I’m not playing around.
Please. How about a…” He cast around for something two kids might like. “A guava Danish?”
“Oh my God, this is like textbook. We’re not supposed to go anywhere with strangers, especially if they offer sweets. That’s like, red flag city.”
Fuck. He was completely screwing this up. “Fine. I’ll stay right here. I won’t go with you. I’ll just show you the way.”
She rolled her eyes. “I’m just fucking with you. I’m not at all scared of you. I have the loudest scream in the whole state. I once broke a glass just from screaming.”
“Are you supposed to use the F word? Zara really has her hands full, doesn’t she,” Lincoln muttered.
“I heard that. The disrespect.” She shook her head. A thud at the front door shifted her expression. “Come on, Eddie.”
She put her arm around her brother and shepherded him out of the hale. Lincoln quietly closed the sliding door behind them. “Stay quiet,” he told them. “See that bromeliad over there, with the big spiky flowers?” He pointed it out. “Hide there and I’ll meet you in a minute.”
“I have no idea what a bromeliad is, but okay.”
“I had to Google it myself, as a matter of fact.”
“You did? Aren’t you a gardener?” Oops. Now she looked suspicious again.
“Shhh.” He made a shooing gesture, which, fortunately, she obeyed. She and Eddie scurried past the pool and nested themselves behind the bromeliad.
As soon as he was sure they were completely out of sight, he grabbed the end of a hose and crept around to the side of the house and crouched under a window. Hopefully no one would pay attention to the unassuming gardener watering the shrubs.
He oriented himself so he could take occasional glances through the window. Tanaka’s man eased himself into the hale and stood in the entryway. He seemed to be scrutinizing every inch of the place.
Had Tanaka discovered that Lincoln was here?
If so, how? Or had he come to the same conclusion that Lincoln had, that the CHUM had to be somewhere on this property?
This was where it was seen six weeks ago.
It had caused a power outage when it had been exposed to the sun.
All of Kona had gone dark. The woman who’d had it in her possession had gotten knocked into a coma and taken to the hospital.
Lincoln had paid a hefty sum to interrogate the staff at the Kona Community Hospital. None of them had seen any hint of a two-inch tall, jagged crystal-like object, either on Mathilda or in her room. Tanaka had probably done the same thing, and come to the same conclusion.
It must still be here on the property, perhaps stuck in a drainpipe or hidden under a pile of dead hibiscus flowers. Since it was worth literally billions of dollars, of course Tanaka would send his people here to search.
But were they willing to embed themselves at the Royal Leilani the way he was doing?
He watched as the man dug something out of his pocket. Not a gun, but Lincoln couldn’t see what was in his hand. Then the door swung open behind him and a sunburned resort security guard walked in, followed by Zara.
Her hair was in a tight knot at the top of her head, and she’d clearly tried to slick down the strands that wanted to fly free. She wore the hotel uniform of white slacks and a retro Hawaiian-print blouse, with a plumeria flower tucked behind one ear.
Damn it. He hadn’t wanted her to come too. He wanted her far away from these guys. That was why he’d told her to send the security guard.
Note to self: Zara was entirely unpredictable and did what she liked. Two qualities that he considered to be red flags. How was he supposed to deal with someone who just…did whatever they wanted?