Chapter 4
Rory spent the trek through the jungle imagining how he was going to explain this to Lincoln—assuming his boss did regain consciousness at some point.
I was trying to protect us. I figured if they thought I was a powerful billionaire, they wouldn’t mess with us. Besides, I wasn’t sure if you were going to stay alive, and if you died, I had a promise to keep. How would I do that if some strangers were carrying your dead body?
You’re saying that doesn’t make any sense?
Well, I hit my head too, you know. I might not have been at my best. And those people surprised me.
Would you have expected a big Hawaiian guy and a gorgeous blonde to show up at your jungle crash site?
And I mean, Mathilda is flat-out beautiful, especially with those boots.
So hot. Yes, I know it’s Hawaii and there’s lots of Hawaiian dudes and blondes.
So maybe it wasn’t a stretch. Just shut up and go back to your coma, please.
His thoughts shifted to his surroundings, savoring the living green of leaves the size of elephant ears and ferns taller than him.
Every tree trunk seemed to have a vine climbing up it, some with fringed leaves, some heart-shaped, some with flowers.
Occasionally, unearthly squeals and grunts from somewhere in the jungle made him jump.
“Wild pigs,” Robert explained. “We got wild horses too, but not in this valley.”
He recalled what he knew about the seven valleys of the Big Island.
Ancient Hawaiians had lived in these valleys.
Hadn’t King Kamehameha been born in one of them—the Valley of the Kings?
Was that nearby? His recollection was that today they were mostly uninhabited. So why were Mathilda and Robert here?
A cloud of mosquitoes buzzed around his face. He tried to shoo them away by blowing air at them, since he couldn’t let go of the portable backboard.
“Annoying, yeah?” said Robert, who was holding up the rear end of the backboard. “Your people brought those here.”
“Excuse me?”
“Mosquitoes. The missionaries didn’t like how us Hawaiians didn’t wear much clothes.
Made them uncomfortable because of our beauty.
They brought mosquitoes into Hawaii to make us cover up.
Before that, we had no bloodsucking insects here.
Now we all got to itch, white folks too. There’s a lesson in there, no?”
“Oh come on. That can’t be true.” Rory shook his head violently, disturbing a horde of mosquitoes that had settled on his hair. “Is it?”
“That’s the way we tell it. Mathilda, what do you say?”
Mathilda, who was a few yards ahead of them, slashing at vines with her machete in an insanely sexy way, just shrugged.
“I’ve heard that story too. I also heard the whalers released the mosquitoes as revenge against the missionaries.
But most likely they were brought here by accident, like a lot of things. ”
A large plop of water landed on the back of Rory’s neck and slithered down his shirt. He looked into the upper canopy, where leaves the size of umbrellas glistened deep emerald from the rain. “It’s hard to imagine a jungle without mosquitoes.”
“Well, see, that’s the thing about Hawaii.” She hopped over a vine twining across the ground. “Everything came here from somewhere else. Not too long ago, it was just a pile of lava in the middle of the Pacific.”
“And when you say ‘not too long ago’…”
“About thirteen million years, give or take a century.”
He narrowed his eyes to keep sight of her as she slashed her way through the thick jungle growth. She seemed so comfortable with that machete, very swashbuckling. “What are you, an Indiana Jones type?”
From behind him, Robert gave a belly laugh. “Don’t get her started on Indiana Jones.”
Mathilda whirled around and faced them, machete still gripped in her fist. “I will hear no Indiana Jones slander, despite the inaccuracies and fallacies that riddle those movies.”
“Yes ma’am,” Rory said, while Robert just laughed.
“She wrote the director with some suggested changes,” Robert whispered, after they were all underway again. “He even answered.”
“The director. You mean Steven Spielberg?”
Robert shrugged; Rory could feel the entire backboard move up and down. “I don’t know. He said that she should consider archeology as her field of study. She wrote back that she was only nine and definitely wanted to be either a biologist or an ornithologist.”
Okay then. He was dealing with a full-bore science nerd. That was much better than looters. “So she’s one of those?”
“She’s a graduate student.”
“Studying what? Mosquitoes?”
“I hear your mockery and refuse to accept it.” Up ahead, Mathilda brandished her machete in the air. “Especially from someone who only cares about money.”
“You mean me—right. Me. The CEO.” He had to focus so he could keep his story straight. “Money makes the world go round, right?”
“Actually, the earth rotates because it was born that way,” said Robert, suddenly sounding like a guest lecturer at a science expo.
“The nebula that predated the solar system started spinning when it collapsed. That created eddies of dust and gas, and those coalesced into the sun and the planets. The earth has always been spinning because there’s no resistance in the perfect vacuum of space to slow it down.
The only thing that affects it is the gravitational pull of the moon. ”
Rory nearly dropped his end of the backboard as he swung around to give Robert an astonished look. “Let me guess. You’re an astronomy grad student?”
“Archeoastronomy. Us Hawaiians have our own constellations, but the stars are the same for all of us.”
Okay then. Make that two full-bore science nerds. Were they a couple? He didn’t get that sort of energy from them, but maybe that was wishful thinking because Mathilda was pretty darn cute.
Up ahead, he could see Mathilda’s shoulders shake with laughter. Well, he probably deserved that. He’d seen Robert as some kind of bodyguard because of his size. Never go by first impressions.
For instance, if he’d met Mathilda anywhere else, he would have written her off as a pretty face.
She was the kind of girl he would have crushed on in high school, maybe a little tomboy-ish, someone who played soccer and hung out with her friends and got good grades and was gifted a new car with a big bow on top for her sweet sixteen.
Maybe all that was real, and she’d taken a wild left turn somewhere along the way. Whatever the case, he was most definitely curious about her.
“How about you? What’s your field?” he called ahead to her.
“If I tell you, will you consider making a donation? We can always use more funding.”
Donation… As Rory Baker, he could spare a few thousand. But of course she was asking Lincoln Kerr, not Rory. “We have a team dedicated to philanthropic requests. I can put you in touch with them.”
Mathilda muttered something like “typical,” while Rory racked his brain for the name of the executive director of the company’s philanthropic wing.
She’d flown on the Citation X a few times, trying to sell Lincoln on various projects.
Her name wasn’t coming back to him, but hopefully it would by the time it really mattered.
He realized that it was getting darker. He kept tripping over roots. It was a good thing that Mathilda was blond and wearing light-colored clothing, because she was serving as a kind of beacon in the darkening jungle.
“How much farther is it?” he asked Robert. His injured arm was throbbing with pain.
“Need a break?”
“No! I just want to get there.” He could only imagine the swarms of mosquitoes that would descend on them if they stopped.
“Mathilda! Billionaire needs a break,” Robert called.
Mathilda turned and hurried toward him. “Let’s switch for a while.” She tucked the machete under her arm while she dug around in her backpack. “You can have this,” she said as she pulled out a headlamp.
She tucked the strap around his head. Her nearness made him a little woozy, though maybe he was just woozy in general at this point. Were her eyes green? Or were they just reflecting the jungle?
She nudged him aside so she could take the handles of the backboard. Then she angled her body to offer him the handle of the machete.
“Just follow the trail.”
“There’s a trail?” He peered ahead into the dimness.
“Your feet will feel it. It’s not too much farther. The trail is more established at this point. Need some water?”
“Yes please.” His heartfelt response drew a smile from her.
“Side pocket of my backpack.”
He found the water, along with a plastic baggie of trail mix. “Is, uh, this up for grabs?”
“Help yourself. Just remember us at donation time.” She winked at him.
“Million-dollar trail mix, got it.”
“Oh, we don’t need that much. Fifty thousand dollars will keep us going.”
Good Lord. Lincoln Kerr had paid that much for one dinner with some CEOs he was trying to win over. That was pocket change for him.
The trail-clearing turned out to be much more fun than carrying the backboard, so long as he used his uninjured arm.
He swung gleefully at every thick vine that tried to hit him in the face—and even won some of those battles.
He lost a few, too, so by the time the trail widened into a clearing, he was sure his face was probably black and blue.
Whatever. It went with the whole plane-crash aesthetic.
He slashed aside the last branch that stood in his way and stepped into the clearing, ready to deal with whatever human interaction stood between him and a shower and a bed.
The encampment was a collection of wooden platforms with white canopy tents perched on them.
Smaller tents were set up underneath the canopies.
A larger canvas yurt seemed to be a central gathering place, along with an outdoor picnic table and a fire pit made from lava rocks.
Lights were strung from the yurt to various trees around the perimeter.
The hum of a generator mingled with the sounds of chatter.
“Wait…is this it?” He turned to face Mathilda and Robert.
In the glare of his headlamp, he saw that she was sweating under the weight of the backboard.
They were both moving more slowly than at the start of the journey, and he felt bad that he’d allowed her to take over the burden of carrying Lincoln.
“Sorry, we had to move out of the resort.” Mathilda tossed her hair over her shoulder. “Those pesky funding issues. Too bad, because we usually work out of the Four Seasons.”
“Okay, I get it, you can lay off the rich guy jokes,” he grumbled to himself. But just to himself. Right now, he wanted them to think he was rich, jokes included. More loudly, he said, “Please tell me there’s some kind of shower.”
“There’s some kind of shower,” Robert told him. “What kind, that’s another story.”
Rory stepped aside so they could take the lead, since he had no idea which tiny tent they should head for. As they entered the clearing, the beam of his headlamp played across a wooden sign that read, “Nahele Research Camp.”
Fancy name for such a barebones operation.
After a few more steps, he caught the smell of grilled meat, which made his mouth water. His last food had been many hours ago—not counting the million-dollar trail mix.
“Sasha,” Mathilda shouted as she and Robert carried Lincoln toward the canvas yurt. “We have a patient for you.” She looked over her shoulder at Rory. “You come too. She’ll need all the information you can give her about your pilot. If you have any.”
Oh boy. This could be trouble. Lincoln was pretty private about his medical history. He’d just have to suck it up and play the clueless, oblivious employer. That would be one more strike against him in Mathilda’s eyes.
He wasn’t sure why it mattered what a random jungle scientist thought of him. So far, she seemed highly unimpressed with Lincoln Kerr, as played by Rory Baker.
With a sigh, he trailed after the others, wondering at the strange twists of fate that had brought him to this moment.
He was supposed to be drinking a mai tai at the resort bar in Maui while Lincoln took care of business.
Not asking his exhausted brain to keep track of a lie that he could barely remember why he’d told in the first place.