Chapter 16
Waylon snored. Loudly enough Fletcher worried it would give their campsite away. Fletcher seriously considered jotting a note to herself to contact a specialist to prescribe him a CPAP machine.
She had been wide-awake since her watch shift started an hour ago. Then, it had still been night black, but now the day’s first golden rays speared through the blue dawn. In the early-morning quiet, she did what she did best: prepared.
With the map from the cigar lounge spread out in front of her and the lantern turned to its lowest setting, she traced a path from the river’s banks through the jungle.
The staff building had been buried so deep in the trees no guest would ever accidentally spot it. It wasn’t enough to be waited on hand and foot. The Cartwrights wanted to believe help appeared out of thin air and vanished all the same.
Although…
Her gaze lingered on Waylon’s sleeping form, the way his sleeping bag balled up with knees pulled toward his chest. Gut twisting, she’d really have to reckon with the knowledge that it hadn’t just been her scarred by their first meeting. They’d both hurt each other.
Maybe not all Cartwrights were cut from the same cloth.
His apology cycled through her head, genuine-sounding enough. Would it be so bad to forgive him? It had all worked out, hadn’t it?
She hadn’t kissed him.
She hadn’t been fired.
She…was stranded on a private island and being drained of her life force by mutant mosquitoes while keeping watch at four a.m. because their coworkers might pop out of the woodwork to prison-shank her with an elephant tusk.
On second thought, she could stay mad.
Something rustled in the grass a few yards down. Frankly, Fletcher was surprised she heard it at all with Waylon snoozing nearby. At the very least, she’d sign him up for a Breathe Right Subscribe yesterday was objectively the worst day of her life; and clearly Jackie intended to make today just as bad, because she aimed the barrel of her pistol at Fletcher’s forehead.
“Where is it?” Jackie asked, little more than a hiss.
Her finger curled around the gun’s trigger. The red polish on her index fingernail had split. Fletcher broke a light sweat, but she couldn’t decide if it was from the gunmetal or the botched manicure.
She’d never seen Jackie so unmade. The longer they spent on the island, the wilder she became. They needed to get off Lydell before she lost herself entirely. Which meant Fletcher needed the boat key, but…
“I’m working on it,” she answered.
Jackie scowled, a guttural rumble coming through gnashed teeth. Just what every woman wanted to hear with a gun pointed at her skull. “Why is it taking so long?”
“The key wasn’t at the estate, so—”
“Spence, was that you?” Waylon’s sleep-heavy voice called.
Fletcher recognized the look in Jackie’s eyes because she’d worn it herself when her name hadn’t appeared on the Lydell invite list. Betrayal.
She knew what this must seem like to Jackie. Fletcher, a lying double agent. The key, probably already shoved in her pocket. Waylon, about to take Jackie’s spot on the escape boat.
“What is he doing here?” Jackie stalked forward as if to hunt Waylon down and skin him alive, just like she did Bertram.
“Don’t!” Fletcher said. Instinct took over, and she grabbed Jackie’s arm. “He’s with me.”
“That much is obvious.” Jackie’s gun found its way back to Fletcher’s temple. Lovely. “I thought we had an agreement, Miss Spence.”
A few gulps of air and Fletcher regained her composure. She was Fletcher Spence. Competent, capable Fletcher. Always in control. She could handle this. Even if this was a head shot away from being vulture breakfast.
“We do. I’m working with—I’m using him.”
Few things in this life did Jackie Caldera love more than using people to get what she wanted. The buzzword worked like Fletcher hoped—Jackie paused. A curious if disbelieving look crossed her face. Mouth pinched, eyebrows drawn, head tilted. “Using him?”
“He knows where the key is, so he’s guiding me to it but won’t tell me where it is.
I need him on my side until I have the key in hand, so I told him he could leave with me.
I know, I know. But it had to be done. So, he”—Fletcher pointed over her shoulder—“can’t know about us.
And you can’t shoot him. I need him in one piece. ”
Jackie’s frown grew deeper by the second. “A pity. I thought you had what it takes to get ahead.”
Ambition was Jackie’s greatest weapon. The youngest editor in chief in Jet-Setter history wasn’t a title easily earned. There was nothing she wouldn’t do—no one she wouldn’t kill—to get what she wanted.
The alliance they’d forged was the only thing keeping Fletcher’s brain inside her skull.
“I do. I swear I do. I’ll get you your key.” Fletcher’s stomach settled. She’d told so many half-truths that the whole truth came easily. “I want that promotion, Jackie. It’s all I’ve ever wanted. He thinks I’m on his side, and he has to believe it.”
Judging by the way the gun bit into Fletcher’s skin, Jackie had never believed a person less. But she didn’t have a choice. For once, everyone was playing by Fletcher’s rules.
Beyond them, Waylon’s sleeping bag crinkled. He yawned, so loud against the quiet morning Fletcher felt it in her teeth.
“Leaving without me?” he asked, and Fletcher imagined him rubbing at his eyes, his sharp features softened with sleep.
“You have to go,” she urged Jackie. “Don’t let him see you.”
Jackie didn’t budge, her trigger finger all too ready. “You’ve got one day left. Get me that boat key, whatever the cost, and get rid of Waylon. If you don’t kill him, I will. And if you try to pull anything, you’ll be next.”
Fletcher’s mouth went so dry she could sand walls with her tongue. Whatever makeshift truce she and Waylon had come to, Jackie didn’t need to know about it. “Understood.”
The pressure of Jackie’s gun vanished, and so did she. A few moments later, the engine of her Jeep rumbled to life, headlights streaking through the grasses and steering into the depths of the jungle. No doubt off to beat Fletcher to the marina to make sure she didn’t go back on her word.
And she wouldn’t.
It wasn’t like she and Waylon were going to see each other ever again after this godforsaken company trip ended.
He didn’t deserve to die here, but he wouldn’t.
The rescue crew would come. She’d step off the boat ramp with a wave or maybe skip goodbyes altogether, knowing they’d stay on their separate sides of the Hudson.
Although, he was helping her, and maybe she could repay the favor by figuring out how to vouch for his asylum once she had the key—and some leverage.
“Don’t steal my covers, Spence,” Waylon said, drowsy and slurred as Fletcher broke through the brush.
Where she promptly froze in her tracks.
Waylon wasn’t alone. He’d rolled over onto his back, and squatting on his belly was a…rat monkey?
The creature was mostly eyeballs and fur. It had toppled over their bag of fruit, feasted efficiently but thoroughly, judging by the bite marks in the strawberries, and now crouched on Waylon’s torso, a hunk of tangerine in its paws. Claws? Rat monkey fingers.
“Waylon, I need you to not freak out,” Fletcher said, sounding admittedly freaked-out.
A drop of juice dribbled onto Waylon’s cheek, and he swiped it away. Eyelids heavy, still stirring, then snapping open at once.
He screamed at eardrum-bursting decibels, louder than Fletcher when held at gunpoint.
At first, he tried to stand, but his legs got trapped in the sleeping bag, and he toppled over.
The furry invader took the opportunity to cram a chunk of fruit in its cheeks before tearing off another from their wine cellar spoils.
What was that thing? Fletcher scrambled through her mental backlog of Nat Geo, trying to find any recollection of a creature like this.
The blob of fur skittered up Waylon’s pants, his shirt, and onto his shoulder. More primate than rodent, actually. Long tail, saucer-wide eyes, a ball of brown-gray fluff…
“I think it’s a bush baby,” she said.
Waylon scowled as he tried—and failed—to shrug off the creature now eating citrus on his head. “Don’t call me baby when I’m being attacked.”
Fletcher flushed. “Not you. The tiny monkey. It’s called a bush baby.”
“I don’t care what it’s called—ow, ow, ow!” The bush baby dug its little critter hands into Waylon’s scalp, holding on for dear life. “Get rid of it.”
As she stepped closer, the bush baby crouched, half its body beneath Waylon’s curls and its tail dripping down the back of his neck. With little warning, a warbling screech erupted from the animal. Its head twisted and kept twisting until its eyes were where its chin was supposed to be.
“Oh my god, and it’s possessed,” she whispered, trying to clamp down on her own panic. There was enough radiating off Waylon for the both of them.
What Waylon should have done was remain perfectly still and let Fletcher reach up on her tiptoes and remove the unwanted mammal.
What Waylon actually did was hop around like he was actively being overtaken by a violent, if affable, poltergeist who died in a heavy metal mosh pit. Head banging wasn’t enough to fling the primate away from him. The bush baby stayed put, alternating between ear-piercing howls and unfazed chewing.
Fletcher needed holy water. Stat.
“Calm down, you’re going to alert the whole island.”
Waylon ceased thrashing only long enough to glare. “Me? Try taking that up with the car alarm on my head.”
Fletcher caught Waylon by the cheeks, palms pressed to each side of his face. “Listen to me. I need you to bend your knees.”
He did.
His eyes were replaced by two orange orbs, reflecting the first drops of pale sunrise.
“Hi, there,” Fletcher said to the bush baby.
“Oo-oo-oo,” the bush baby responded.
“Is that so?”
“Stop trying to befriend the damn thing and get it off me, Spence,” Waylon growled.
Right. Fletcher scooped the bush baby up with fingers wrapping around its middle and tried not to think about how most primates were omnivores, which meant that as much as he was enjoying his contraband fruit salad, he probably wouldn’t mind a piece of Fletcher Steak.
Before it could try to eat her or give her rabies or both, she lobbed it toward the acacia trunk. The primate leaped toward the branches with a full belly and a hell of a story to tell its weird monkey friends.
Arms spread wide, Waylon crashed into Fletcher with renewed force.
With her face smooshed up against his chest, she could feel the riotous rhythm of his heart.
Gone was the lingering scent of the manor’s cedarwood-and-amber soap.
Instead, he was earth and salt and the charcoal deodorant she saw him swipe on after their river water baptism.
“Are you hugging me?” Fletcher asked, muffled against his shirt.
Yes. The answer was yes. His arms coiled around her back, their bellies pressed together, and his cheek rested on top of her head. It was, by definition, a hug.
And she…didn’t hate it.
It was so Waylon. The confident way his hand came to rest on the back of her head, nudging her closer to his collarbone. His grip firm and self-assured as warmth seeped from his skin to hers and the thump-thump of his heartbeat as it slowed, steadied.
But at her question, Waylon arched back, as if only then realizing what he’d done. His arms fell away from her sides. She shivered in their absence. Around them, morning dawned pastel pink, and the same hue flared across his cheeks, though he tamped it down as quickly as it rose.
“Did I hear you scream earlier?” he asked. His usual gruff tone returned, but this time it wasn’t at her expense. It was for her. Concern etched into his brows on her behalf.
“Oh, I—” What? Had a predawn stand-up with Jackie Caldera to discuss some urgent agenda items? “Yeah. About the bush baby. Terrifying creature. We should get out of here before it comes back with friends.”
Waylon practically ran. “Way ahead of you.”