Chapter 10
The first time Fletcher saw the cigar lounge, she assumed there had been some primal lapse in judgment. A surge of testosterone responsible for the decor so tacky it bordered on outright offensive. As if Dyer had briefly been possessed by the spirit of Clayton from Tarzan.
Mahogany hutches housed hunting paraphernalia, none of it nearly as dusty as Fletcher, upon first glance, assumed it would have been.
Velvet and leather furniture ringed a zebra-hide rug—head still attached.
The kind of place that in Nebraska would be strictly off-limits to women and children during Monday Night Football.
Nestled in a quiet corner of the second floor, the lounge was blessedly vacant when they arrived, although the scent of tobacco and vetiver lingered.
“Cuban or Churchill?” Waylon asked, flicking a lighter between his fingers.
“Neither.” Fletcher’s head was already crammed inside one of the cabinets, scouring for anything that could keep them alive. Growing up on the farm wasn’t enough to qualify her as the Girl Scouts type. And even if it had, there probably wasn’t a badge for Not Getting Eaten by Lions.
“Panatela?”
“No, Waylon. I don’t smoke.” Fletcher cast a sidelong glance at the blond helplessly shuffling through the humidor. “Keep the lighter, though.”
“Suit yourself.” Waylon rolled a cigar between his fingertips, the flame curling its paper. He pocketed the lighter, which meant he was capable of following basic instructions. Good.
Fletcher tried to ignore the way he tucked the cigar between his lips, puffed once, and exhaled a perfect circle. Like a mob boss. Or Foghorn Leghorn. Perfect. Nothing sexy about Foghorn Leghorn.
“Will you start packing?” she asked, her nerves frayed like consigned denim. “I want to get out of here before someone else shows up.”
“Of course.”
“As in, of course you don’t want to meet an untimely demise at the hand of someone making three times your annual salary so you’ll quit messing around?”
Waylon’s shadow blocked the light, and Fletcher reared out of the cabinet, clutching a pair of canteens close to her chest. Smoke sifted off his cigar, too close to the wick of an antique oil lamp for comfort.
“As in, of course Fletcher Spence already has a plan,” he said.
“It’s not a cardinal sin to be prepared,” she huffed.
His eyebrow shifted upward. Antagonizing. “You prepared for this?”
“No, I just am prepared. Like how you just are the human embodiment of a migraine.” Rolling her eyes, she thought she caught a glimpse of her frontal lobe on the way back. “But yes, I have a plan.”
Half her motivation for coming to the cigar lounge was the hand-drawn map of the island that hung framed above the fireplace.
The faint initials in the corner looked like they might have belonged to Waylon’s great-grandfather Egbert Cartwright himself.
Scenery and structures had been etched in careful charcoal—structures that now legally belonged to Waylon.
At the northeastern corner sat the estate. Then there was the staff quarters, deep in the jungle dark. At the opposite edge, another building guarded the marina and its pen-scratched docks. Salvation in a scribbled line.
“These docks,” she said as casually as she could. “You don’t think the staff would have taken the boats there, do you?”
Waylon didn’t budge from behind the growing stack of safari regalia—flare guns, ammo boxes, pith helmets. “Boat, singular.”
Not ideal, but at least it wasn’t: Boat, zero.
“And it’s still there?”
That earned her a measured glance. Hesitant, if a touch suspicious. “Should be. Why?”
“That’s our golden ticket.” She offered a quiet note of consideration. A hum that said this was definitely her first time thinking it. “We get to the docks, grab the boat key, and we’ll sail away. No need to wait for the rescue crew to arrive.”
Easy, right?
Waylon’s rogue eyebrow did that thing again, and Fletcher’s heart trampolined around her chest—against her will, she might add. All he said was, “Sure.”
“What do you mean sure? It’s a great idea.”
“No, yeah. A great idea that everyone else is also having right this second. It’ll be a massacre down there.”
It was Fletcher’s turn to scrunch her face up. “It’s a massacre here. At least at the marina it’s a massacre with an escape route. I’d rather be there than be a sitting duck for the next five days while the rest of the team goes on a murder spree.”
As if that were a totally normal sentence for her to say.
“And besides,” she added, “the estate has amenities. Hot showers, cold plunges, toiletries that cost half my biweekly paycheck. Rick’s the only one ignorant enough to leave the manor right now. Everyone else will wait for someone to make the first move.”
That person had to be Fletcher.
Her agreement with Waylon went only as far as it needed to. As soon as she had the key in hand, she’d join Jackie on the boat and say goodbye to Lydell Island forever. But it wasn’t like she was leaving Waylon to die. With those muscles? He’d fight his way through the week, no problem.
Marigold daylight sliced through the slatted windows and her thoughts. The afternoon was dwindling. Fast. If she couldn’t get him on board soon, they’d be hiking across the island under cloak of night, and Fletcher wasn’t super keen on meeting Lydell’s nocturnal predators.
“Well, we have to do something,” she said, marching back across the room to stand toe-to-toe with Waylon. Nothing riled him up like a challenge. “If you hate my plan so much, do you have any brilliant ideas?”
Waylon hauled a couple canvas backpacks onto the card table and shoveled supplies deep into their folds, including a change of clothes for each of them. “We’re definitely not going straight to the marina.”
Fletcher huffed so hard she coughed. And then tried to cover up her huff-cough with an agreeable smile, despite how her eyes watered. The Waylon histamines were growing stronger, and she didn’t pack any Zyrtec.
“The key to the boat is in a lockbox,” Waylon finally said, taking pity on her. Annoyance and amusement flitted behind his eyes. He enjoyed this, egging her on.
“And the lockbox is…”
“Locked.”
“Right,” Fletcher said. She cocked a hip against the table, hoping her disappointment looked store-brand, not the I’m next in line for the cryotherapy chamber variety. “But you know how to get into the lockbox?”
Waylon shrugged. “Carlotta always did it for us.”
“Do you even hear yourself sometimes?”
Fletcher tried to grab the other backpack to claim it for herself, but Waylon slammed his hand down on the table, blocking her. “I get it. I’m a Cartwright. How long are you going to hold my last name against me?”
“When it stops being applicable! God forbid you’re asked to be responsible for your own boat key.”
Waylon’s cheeks reddened with frustration. “She’s the groundskeeper! She was keeping the grounds!”
“It’s. A. Boat. It’s not even on the ground.”
Fletcher inhaled so steeply she felt it all the way in her toes. Smoothing out her dress, she grasped at any semblance of composure. Which, with Waylon’s oversaturated blue eyes on her, was kind of like trying to fill a fax machine with rice paper.
“Point is,” she said, forcibly moving Waylon’s arm out of her way. It went limp by his side as she gained full control of her backpack. “Carlotta must have the master key, so we can get it and get off this godforsaken island.”
And away from Waylon.
Forever.
Waylon looped a compass around his neck, the brass hitting his sternum. “Of course, let me call her— Oh, wait. She’s gone.”
“Her office isn’t, though.” Fletcher pointed toward the smudged building near the center of the map. “We’ll head toward the staff building. If it’s anywhere on the island, it has to be there.”
She could feel their next steps solidifying in her mind, the satisfying click of fitting into place. The scaffolding gave her something to hold on to, a ladder to climb, a test to ace.
All she needed was the map.
Sourcing a cocktail napkin and a fountain pen she had to dab against her tongue a few times to convince to write, Fletcher started sketching. A curved line there. A sharp peak of the mountain here.
Waylon hovered over her shoulder. “Is now the time for arts and crafts?”
“I’m making a copy of the map so that we can actually find our way. It’s not like we have Google Maps.”
She was pretty sure he laughed at her. But then a pith helmet sank over her eyes. When she nudged the bill so that she could see again, it was just in time to watch Waylon grab a pair of hefty yellow binoculars.
“What are you—”
He swung them into the map’s case.
Glass shattered, sparkling. Waylon reached his hand through the frame’s new gaping hole and withdrew the canvas. Fletcher’s eyes lingered on the scattered glass, the binoculars-size hole. Someone should clean up the mess. Waylon, in a utopian civilization. Her, in reality.
“Here.” He plunked the map down in front of her. Smoke curled off the end of his cigar. It burned all the way to Fletcher’s lungs.
Red laced his knuckles, grooves etched by the jagged case. Two blood splotches dripped near the volcano’s peak. Another by the western shoreline. Three across the jungle. Fletcher’s head spun with every new stain.
“You’re—oh my god. Why would you do that?”
His unrelenting gaze bored into her. “You can’t play it safe anymore, Spence. Safe’ll get you killed. You’ve got to take what you want.”
Waylon could give her all the fortune cookie wisdom he wanted. He was still bleeding on the map.
She scrolled up the canvas as fast as she could.
Mostly to give herself something to do while he grabbed one of the monogrammed handkerchiefs—silk, dark green—and wrapped it around his knuckles, tying it with his teeth.
No sooner than she’d stuffed the map into her backpack were they out the door.
Her mental list wouldn’t check itself off.