Chapter 19
Stunned silence reigned in the Nahele Research Camp. Rory didn’t know if he should focus on Mathilda, whose opinion he obviously cared about the most, or Robert, who looked ready to knock him on his ass.
“Then who are you?” Robert demanded.
“I’m Rory Baker. I’m Lincoln’s pilot.”
He turned to Mathilda, who took a step away from him.
“You…you lied?” She pressed her hand against her chest, as if he’d just knocked the breath out of her. Her eyes were wide with confusion. “This whole time?”
“I lied. After we crashed, I thought it would give us a better chance of survival if our rescuers thought they were dealing with someone powerful instead of an ordinary pilot. That was before I knew who our rescuers were, of course.”
He still couldn’t tell the whole truth, and that pained him deeply.
All he wanted at this point was to clear his conscience and be truthful.
But thanks to his promise to Lincoln, he still couldn’t entirely do that.
He couldn’t mention anything about the thing he was supposed to guard, for instance.
Which was not gone, in the hands of the kidnappers.
“So Lincoln Kerr…” Robert gazed into the jungle after the vanished commandos.
“Was just kidnapped, yes.”
“That makes a little more sense, anyway. Couldn’t see why they’d grab a pilot. No offense.” Robert shrugged his big shoulders.
“None taken, believe me. Listen, I’m sorry I deceived you all. It seemed like the best thing to do at the time. Maybe it wasn’t. The more time went on, the harder it got to keep up the pretense. I wanted to tell you all—”
“Then why didn’t you?” Mathilda snapped. “At any point, you could have told us the truth.”
He winced, since she had a very valid point. “It’s complicated. I was trying to protect Lincoln. I decided that once he woke up, he could make the call about how to proceed.”
“So he knew you were pretending to be him?” Sasha waved away an early morning mosquito. “I suppose that could explain some of the strange things he said when he woke up.”
“Honestly, I don’t know what he knew. I told him as soon as he woke up, but he was still pretty disoriented.
Obviously we’d have to tell the truth at some point, definitely once we got to the hospital in Hilo.
Before the crash…” He hesitated, choosing his words carefully.
“I got the sense he was worried about something. I didn’t want people knowing he was vulnerable.
But it looks like those guys came in here and knew exactly where to find him. ”
“Biometric signature.” The British accent had them all turning toward the newest arrival, a sleepy, bedraggled Philip Phelps. “Wouldn’t be difficult. I take it the poor fellow has disappeared?”
They all gaped at him. “Did you sleep through the whole thing?” Rory demanded.
“I did indeed.” He yawned widely. “Is there any tea to be had?”
“Diane is our tea purveyor,” Sasha told him. “She has an extensive collection of herbal mixes. Have you tried mamaki? She harvests it up in Waimea and—” She shook her silvery head. “What am I even saying? No tea for you until you tell us if you had anything to do with this.”
“Me? How could I? I just arrived. I didn’t even see what happened.” After those tough, fit commandos, Philip Phelps looked even more ridiculous in his jungle camouflage gear. On him, those clothes looked like a costume instead of a uniform.
Nevertheless, he’d made it to this camp on his own, without the help of a helicopter. It wouldn’t do to underestimate the man.
“That’s Sasha’s point,” Rory told him. “You show up, and then one day later, a whole gang of armed kidnappers appears. Are you working with them? Did you verify Lincoln’s presence for them? Do you know where they’re taking Lincoln?”
At each question, Philip Phelps kept shaking his head ‘no,’ and Rory was inclined to believe him. “If you’re trying to shift blame to me, it’s not going to work,” he said primly. “I do believe you’re the one who’s been perpetrating a fraud, not I.”
“Fraud’s a little strong, don’t you think?”
“Identity theft is a crime, is it not?”
“Sure, but I haven’t spent his money or used his credit cards or—”
“Wait.” Mathilda held up her hand. “You offered to donate equipment and funding. Was that a lie? Or fraud?”
“Lincoln will back me up on all that because I was trying to protect him while he was in a coma.” Rory rolled his shoulders in frustration. This was not how he’d wanted this to go down. What a disaster.
Rory turned to the others to find them all staring at him with various degrees of suspicion.
Cody frowned and folded his arms across his chest. Sasha shook her head with disappointment, while Robert gazed up at the sky, unwilling to meet his gaze.
As for Mathilda…he couldn’t tell if she was more hurt or angry, and maybe she didn’t know either.
“Listen, none of this is the important part. My boss has been kidnapped and I need to notify his security team. Where’s your emergency sat phone?”
None of them budged.
“He has a security team? Then how did he end up alone in the jungle?” Cody demanded.
“He didn’t want them on this trip. He said there was already a contingent waiting in Maui.
” Rory scanned the skeptical faces around him.
“I’m sorry, do you really think I crashed the plane on purpose?
I was injured too.” He waved his bandaged arm in the air, although truth to tell, he’d forgotten it was injured.
It hadn’t bothered him all night. “We both could have died. Yeah, I switched our identities, but that’s it.
I was trying to protect him. I had nothing to do with kidnapping him. ”
None of them looked convinced.
Finally Robert said, “The bad guys raided the kitchen and took the sat phone. They didn’t want us calling for help.”
“Fuck.” He’d have to hike out and find a cell signal, and he’d have to leave immediately. He turned to Mathilda. “Can we talk for a moment in private?”
She nodded reluctantly. Her hesitation made his heart twist, but he’d take it.
He grabbed her hand and pulled her toward the guest tent.
After he’d made things right with Mathilda, he wanted to search it.
The kidnappers had been in a hurry. Maybe they’d left something behind, some clue about who they were, something he could share with Lincoln’s security team.
Once he’d zipped up the tent and they were alone, Mathilda snatched her hand away from his. Her blue eyes were dark with emotion. Maybe disappointment? Betrayal?
“Look, Mathilda, I wanted to tell you a thousand times. I was trying to this morning, right before the kidnapping.”
“You mean after we slept together.”
He flinched. “I thought about it before, too. But that would have been a whole conversation, and you seemed hellbent on…” Ugh, that didn’t sound good. “I wanted to be there for you, put it that way.”
“Put it however you want, it still feels icky. I generally like to know the actual identity of someone I sleep with.”
“Of course you do. But Mathilda, you’ve gotten to know me over the past few days. I’m still that person.”
“Have I, though? How do I know that anything you’ve said is real? If you can lie about something as basic as who you are, you can lie about anything!”
He drew in a deep breath, because that was a deep cut. “Everything I said about my family is real. My brothers, my grandmother. Learning how to cook. The only things I said that aren’t true were related to Lincoln. I had to guess about those.”
“I can’t believe you let me apologize for hiding the truth about my family when you were doing something much worse!”
“You’re right. I’m sorry. But I wasn’t trying to scam you. You don’t even like billionaires. If I was trying to trick you into bed, I would have said I was an…ornithologist or something, not a billionaire.”
“You could never pull that off.” But her glare softened, just a bit. “That is a good point, however.”
“See? My intentions were always good. I didn’t know you and I were going to—”
She interrupted him before he could finish his point. “Oh my God. That briefcase! I caught you breaking into it because you didn’t know the code.”
“Yes, but I had a good reason.”
“Okay…” She tapped her foot, waiting.
“I wanted to figure out if our plane crash was due to sabotage.”
“What?”
“Lincoln keeps things close to the vest. He has a lot of secrets, understandably. I needed to know what this trip was all about and I thought the briefcase might tell me.”
“Did it?” she demanded.
“Maybe.”
When he didn’t elaborate, she rolled her eyes and spun away from him. “You still aren’t telling the truth, are you?”
“Mathilda, I can’t! I’m under an NDA. And now Lincoln’s been kidnapped, and I have to either contact his security or go after him myself. We’re wasting precious time here.”
“Or maybe you’re trying to conveniently flee the scene. Maybe you plan to take over Lincoln’s identity permanently. You do look a bit alike.”
“That’s ridiculous. If I was going to do that, why would I tell you all I was Rory?”
She thought that over, her logical scientist brain kicking in. “Good point,” she said begrudgingly.
“Believe me, I would never want to be Lincoln.” His heartfelt tone caught her attention, and held it.
“I wouldn’t know the first thing about any of his businesses.
None of it interests me. I’m perfectly happy being pilot Rory who likes to fly and feels lucky that he can support his family that way. ”
“His family.” Her mouth dropped open in shock. “Are you married? Is that another lie?”
“No! Good God, of course not. I mean my brother Ethan, mostly. And my grandmother. It’s all very expensive and I’m lucky to have the job with Lincoln. He pays extremely well.” The suspicious way she kept looking at him was getting under his skin. “Let me ask you something, Mathilda.”
“Okay.”
“Did anyone here know you weren’t just Mathilda Wheeler, graduate student and crow aficionado before that lawyer showed up?”
“No,” she snapped. “You know they didn’t. But we’re talking about you, not me. Besides, that’s different. All that stuff was completely irrelevant. I’m here as a researcher, not as a potential, hypothetical…marchioness.” Her eyelashes fluttered; he’d made his point.
He took a step toward her and this time she didn’t shy away.
“You’re right, it is different. We had different reasons.
But neither of us meant any harm. I swear to you, all I wanted was to protect Lincoln.
I was terrified when I saw him unconscious after the crash.
I thought I’d killed my boss. A fucking billionaire.
When I realized he was alive, my only goal was to keep him safe.
Do you believe me? Or can you at least try?
I promise you I’ll be as truthful as I can from now on. ”
He fixed his gaze on her, hoping his sincerity shone through. It was all true, after all. No lies told. He hoped to avoid telling any lies for the foreseeable future, in fact. But that NDA did tie his hands to some extent.
“Okay,” she said slowly. She shook her bed-messy hair away from her face. It caught the light from the tent window, and made her look like an angel. “I’ll believe you if you tell me more about that ‘maybe.’’’
“Excuse me?”
“You said you ‘maybe’ have an idea of what was going on. I want to know what you meant. It’s just a small gesture of your commitment to being truthful from now on.”
Damn it. He should have known he’d end up here—with a choice.
Tell Mathilda what he’d found in the med kit, or respect his NDA.
He couldn’t even remember exactly what the damn contract said.
Wasn’t it more about speaking to the press and revealing things publicly?
You couldn’t get more non-public than stranded in a tent in the middle of the jungle.
He drew in a deep breath, and made his choice.