Chapter 5 #3
Slowly, the others trickled downstairs. Joplin’s pink curls were wrapped in a silk scarf, Opal still had her rollers in. Melv was fully dressed, his wing tip loafers clicking against the parquet floors. Did he sleep in chinos? It wouldn’t surprise her.
Talk of sales-enablement campaigns and the ethicality of influencer marketing eventually drowned out the sounds of the waking safari. Both things Fletcher didn’t have the headspace for before her first cup of coffee.
When the massive analog clock on the wall struck nine, Fletcher’s stomach grumbled. Breakfast should be served by now. Did she spend all those hours curating the itinerary for nothing?
“Has anyone seen Dyer this morning?” she asked the room.
Most of the group was still bickering about margin percentages and hashtag uses.
But most of the group wasn’t responsible for knowing the CEO’s schedule inside and out.
For greeting him every morning after tai chi with a palm full of multivitamins recommended by his cardiologist. Had he remembered to pack enough?
See, this was why she should have always been invited.
“I’ll go check on him quickly,” she said to no one in particular. It wasn’t like anyone was listening to her. Her role was always best performed on the sidelines. When she did her job right, she vanished entirely, an unseen force allowing operations to run smoothly for everyone else.
Following the vaulted ceilings down a hallway with a built-in saltwater aquarium, she found the executive suite situated at the far end of the east wing. Fletcher squeezed through the massive oak doors and latched them behind her.
Inside, there were pressed-linen curtains and handwoven rugs, a sitting area with a suede chesterfield sofa in front of a mammoth bookshelf stuffed with clothbound books, and a teak coffee table stacked with magazines from Jet-Setter’s backlog.
“Mr. Cartwright?” she called. All the lights were off. Maybe he was still asleep.
A set of double doors separated the bedroom from the lounge, one cracked open. Fletcher inched toward it on quiet feet.
“Dyer? Are you awake?”
No response.
Behind her, the door to the suite opened with a click, and Fletcher yelped in surprise. If Dyer wasn’t awake before, he was now. Her heart thumped somewhere around her jugular as Waylon waltzed in, a loose cotton shirt half unbuttoned and his chest still damp.
“Sorry, I was—” She didn’t need to explain herself to him. Besides, she freaked herself out for nothing. So why did her ribs feel too tight around her lungs? “What are you doing here?”
“My dad asked me to join him for coffee this morning,” Waylon said, raising his hands next to his head in the picture of innocence. “Shouldn’t I be asking you why you’re in his suite? Unless you’re sleeping with him. Do not tell me if you’re sleeping with my father.”
“Gross, no. I would never. I’m just trying to do my job.”
Which. Ordinarily would have included knowing every minute of Dyer’s calendar.
It wasn’t her imagination—something definitely wasn’t right.
The realization must have manifested on her face because Waylon’s brows dipped, something like concern etching through them.
Like concern, but decidedly not concern, obviously. This was Waylon Cartwright, after all.
The look left as fast as it came, being replaced easily by his usual pompous snark. “And we both know your job primarily involves skulking around.”
“I do not skulk.”
“Looks pretty skulky.”
Fletcher barely swallowed an irritated groan. His dickwaddedness at least spurred her back into motion. She eased the bedroom doors apart, millimeters at first and then all at once.
Because Dyer wasn’t there.
On the far side of the room, patio doors had been strewn wide open, their gauzy curtains floating in the breeze. The savanna sprawled beyond a bricked seating area, and beyond that, a boundless sea.
Pillows had been torn off the four-poster bed, the sheets strewn across the floor and stained red. Russet puddled on the hardwood. A few drops at a time. A trail, maybe, but Fletcher was no forensic scientist. She couldn’t even look when she got her blood drawn.
A gasp caught halfway up her throat. “Dyer? Are you okay?”
“Dad?” Waylon asked, hovering behind her. The word sounded unnatural in his mouth, rusted over with disuse.
The room was empty.
Waylon pushed past Fletcher, practically shoving her out of the way. Tension rippled through the broad expanse of his chest. His mouth was fixed in a pinched line, indecipherable. “What happened?”
On the wall next to Dyer’s bed hung an electronic panel—the kind that ordinarily controlled things like motorized curtains and thermostat temperatures. A little red light blinked. And blinked. And blinked.
Fletcher and Waylon gravitated toward it.
Fence disabled. Fence disabled. Fence disabled.
“Look,” Waylon said, shifting.
Dyer’s carved cane leaned against a bedside table. Hooked beneath its handle was a tiny silver drive and an envelope stamped with the company letterhead. Dyer’s slanted penmanship crooked across the lines: To my next of kin.
“You don’t think…” Fletcher started, but a roar snapped their attention outside.
The lions Fletcher had seen from her window were still working on this morning’s kill. Only now, Fletcher noticed the trail of deep maroon marring the soil, the trampled way the grasses bent. Her knees gave out, and she sagged against the doorframe.
The pride male stretched his haunches before digging back into the meat. It stripped flesh from bone, blood staining its maw. Muscle tissue dripped from its chin. An entrail, an esophagus. Bite after gruesome bite.
Fletcher’s heart seized. Her stomach bottomed out.
She wanted to look away but couldn’t.
Because the lion reared with a growl, standing, and clamped in its mouth was a shock of silver hair belonging to the CEO’s mauled head.