Chapter 24 #2
At some point, Jackie had commandeered a golf bag that now teetered in the back seat, clubs sticking out over the bumper. That thought alone ramped Fletcher’s nerves up another notch. It meant Jackie had circled back. Looking for them.
“What are you doing here?” The words left Fletcher’s lips with a bite. They had a deal. This wasn’t part of it.
Flicking her wrist up, Jackie read her watch. “You’re thirty-eight minutes late. When I assign deadlines to my staff, I expect them to be met.”
The harsh curve of Waylon’s mouth wrinkled in her periphery. “Fletcher, what—”
Jackie turned, as if only now noticing Waylon’s presence. Which was statistically improbable given both his formidable height and the tsunami waves of hurt and confusion radiating off him. She grinned, flashing the vicious incisors of her too-white veneers. “I thought I told you to get rid of him.”
The contents of Fletcher’s stomach curdled. She pressed herself in front of Waylon, hardly a shield, given he neared twice her size. “And I thought I told you I’d meet you when I had…it.”
“Had what?” asked Waylon.
The editor in chief giggled behind her hand like a schoolyard mean girl.
Sterner: “Had what, Fletcher?”
“A key to your dad’s boat,” Jackie answered when Fletcher couldn’t. “So we can get out of here, and you can wait for whatever half-rate rescue crew is coming in a few days to ship you back home. If you live long enough.”
Could you be strangled by your own guilt? Fletcher was about to find out.
Waylon closed the space between them, and no matter how outraged he was, Fletcher didn’t flinch. Somewhere, deep down, some part of her knew Waylon Cartwright enough to know he wouldn’t lay a hand on her she didn’t ask for. “What is she talking about?”
“I told Jackie I’d help her get off the island, but I didn’t know about…” Fletcher trailed off, lest she give Jackie an even better reason to maroon them. “If I helped her, she’d make me a photographer.”
He’d understand. He had to. It was the one thing Fletcher wanted most in the world.
Instead, the muscles of Waylon’s jaw twitched. “I thought we were a team.”
“We were.” The vulnerability stung. “We are.”
But it wasn’t enough. We didn’t exist anymore. We was ancient history because she’d betrayed Waylon.
Waylon winced and recovered with a steely stare. “Was any of it real?”
Fletcher swallowed. He’d seen every part of her—every rough edge, every soft curve, every daydream, every nightmare. If what they had wasn’t real, nothing ever would be.
“Yes,” she admitted. Each word burred against her throat, snagging on its way out. “For me, it was.”
There was a fraction of a second where a carousel of emotions flashed across Waylon’s face—surprise, relief, hope—but it was gone as soon as it came.
Tucked neatly beneath that hardened shell he always wore so well.
Fletcher hadn’t realized how nice it had been to see the real him until it was gone.
It was worse to have to guess what was going on inside his head.
His breath was hot on her face when he said, “I would have saved you.”
“I was trying to save myself.” Fletcher swallowed hard, staring up at him. She wouldn’t apologize for it.
He didn’t ask her to. Just nodded and swiped a hand over his face. “And how’d that work out for you?”
Fletcher’s gaze cut hard back to Jackie. When she answered, her voice was two steps lower, hushed but no less urgent. “She put a gun to my head. What did you want me to do?”
“I wanted you to tell me the truth, Fletcher.” Waylon shook his head in disbelief. The distance between them reduced to inches but stretching miles. “But you couldn’t do that because you were biding your time with me to get what you wanted, exactly like everyone else.”
“I wasn’t,” Fletcher said, reaching toward him, but he shrugged her off. Slipped through her fingers.
“Oh, my mistake. I thought that was what it was called when you lie to someone, lead them on, and then turn around and stab them in the back. Is it not?” There was no answer except the truth. A truth Fletcher couldn’t bring herself to say. He already knew, anyway.
The vein in Fletcher’s forehead pulsed with a vengeance. “If anyone taught me to be selfish, it was you. You’re exactly the Cartwright you never wanted to be.”
“You used me.” Something split wide open on Waylon’s face. Hurt, raw as an open wound. “You’re exactly like Eliza. Like all of them.” His head tipped back, blue eyes skimming the sky. “What are you waiting for, honestly? Finish me off yourself.”
Before Fletcher could say anything, a driving iron slammed over Waylon’s head. He folded in on himself as bright red bloomed from a gash on his forehead.
“Don’t mind if I do,” said Jackie on the follow-through. She propped an elbow up on the edge of her club.
Waylon didn’t move.
Was he breathing? Oh, god. Fletcher couldn’t tell.
And if he wasn’t breathing, what did that mean?
He was dead? A wave of nausea brought her to her knees.
She crawled toward Waylon, shifting his bleeding head into her lap.
At the base of his neck, his pulse…existed.
There was too much panic in her body to decide if it was a normal, healthy pulse or a tiny, fragile pulse.
The point was: He had one.
He also, most definitely, had a concussion. A minor inconvenience, given he hadn’t died.
The editor in chief clicked her tongue against her teeth. “Stop groveling. I told you this business was cutthroat. You said you had what it takes.”
Fletcher fought to find her words. Whatever manipulative, Machiavellian pieces built Jackie Caldera, Fletcher knew with sudden clarity she was not made of the same stuff. “And what is that, exactly?”
Jackie click-click-clicked her chipped nails along the driver’s grip. “Ambition. Drive. Tenacity.”
Gumption, she heard Dyer’s echo say.
Those? Fletcher had. In spades.
But she knew better now. It wasn’t just about being ambitious or driven or tenacious.
Unspoken qualifiers attached to those values.
Adjectives that tricked unsuspecting victims who simply wanted to succeed into selling their souls to corporations: ruthless ambition, merciless drive, and selfish tenacity.
A willingness to put yourself before others.
To push down your colleagues if it meant climbing higher faster.
Fletcher had let other people define her for so long. Kent, Dyer, and now Jackie. Look where that got her. She had acted as cold and calculated as the rest of them. Only looking out for herself in the end.
Now her brain veered straight into survival mode, like she had walked into the boardroom during a quarterly exec meeting. Jackie had said this was kill or be killed.
Fletcher really, really didn’t want to be killed.
Luckily, if Fletcher’s lasting legacy was going to be anything, it was that she always had a plan, a backup plan, and a backup to the backup plan.
So she sucked a breath into the deepest corners of her lungs, steeling the tender parts of her heart, and prayed Jackie believed her when she said, “I do. Have what it takes.”
If Jackie’s eyebrows hadn’t been Botoxed within an inch of their life, one would have quirked up in disbelief.
“I’m here, aren’t I?” said Fletcher.
Here, with Waylon’s head in her lap, his eyes shut and forehead bleeding and his mouth still turned into a frustrated frown. Here, on this ridiculous private island, where greed gave her colleagues brain worms and convinced them to commit a little first-degree murder.
Jackie’s lips pulled into a flat line, unimpressed and unconvinced. “What about the key?”
“It’s in a lockbox at the marina.”
“Fine. Hurry up,” Jackie urged. “You’ve got a promotion to earn.”
A promotion. As if Fletcher cared about that anymore. Right now, all she cared about was making it back to Manhattan—preferably not in a body bag.
“We can’t leave Waylon.” Then, to appease Jackie, who was already frowning with clear intent to do precisely that, she added: “The lockbox might be biometric or something. Dyer left the island to him, remember?”
Irritation worked through Jackie’s shoulders. “If I’d known that, I would have used the putter.”
Fletcher hefted one of Waylon’s arms around her back, and Jackie grabbed the other side. Together, they Weekend at Bernie’s-ed Waylon’s limp body into the passenger seat of the Jeep.
While Jackie went around to the driver’s side, a palm slamming on the hood for dramatic effect, Fletcher pressed her forehead against Waylon’s. Please wake up and don’t hate me. Or wake up and do hate me. I’d deserve that. Whatever you do, wake up.
Before Jackie could drive off without her, Fletcher flung herself over the back tire and into the back seat next to the club bag.
They sped across the driving range, the air tinged with sea spray and freshly cut grass. Jackie didn’t bother swerving out of the way of the tennis court, and the net wrapped around the front bumper as she barreled toward the clubhouse with its gaping windows and oceanfront view.
Blessedly, Jackie cut the engine before crashing through the double doors, but only barely.
A quick sweep of the layout put the clubhouse with panoramic windows to their left, and the marina to their right.
Farther out into the waters sat a fuel station and a floating concierge, where she envisioned staff members radioing to coordinate the arrival of megayachts.
Most of the marina was empty, reserved for guests, but there, bobbing at the far slip, was one lone ship.
No one had ever been quite as happy to see a boat as Fletcher was at this moment, barring maybe the Titanic survivors, teeth chattering in their lifeboats.
Spinning back to Jackie, Fletcher said, “Help me get him inside.”
“Is that how you speak to your soon-to-be manager?” Jackie asked.
The thought of joining Jackie’s staff should have churned up some modicum of excitement. A week ago, it would have. Today, not so much. All she cared about now was getting her and Waylon off this island, whatever it took. And if that meant kissing Jackie’s ass, so be it.
“Sorry,” she grumbled. “Could you please help me get him inside?”
“Much better. We’ll have to discuss communication styles at your first review.”
Waylon was deadweight between them, head lolled against his chest. Glass doors wiped open automatically with a cloud of stiff air-conditioning that smelled like lemon disinfectant and aerosol deodorant.
Whoever designed the clubhouse deserved jail time.
There was not a single flat, soft surface in sight. Everything was polished black marble and sharp chrome edges, another gaudy chandelier dripping from the ceiling over a massive staircase that led to rows of expensive equipment, cable machines and stationary bikes and Pilates reformers.
The only two chaises in the lounge were carved from angular stone, clearly intended for looking at and not sitting on. Great.
A groan filtered through Waylon’s lips, and Fletcher felt herself take a full breath for the first time in a trillion years. He’d wake up soon. Even if he hated her guts, they could work out their apologies over bagels and lox as soon as they got off this devil island.
“Almost there,” she crooned, the same way her mother would address a scabbing knee, soft and fibbing. The nearest chaise would have to do, uncomfortable as it looked.
Finally, they heaped his body on it, propping him into a seated position, but the second Fletcher pulled her hands away, his clothes slipped against the polished granite and his spine settled into a zigzag line that would require serious massage therapy to iron out.
Fletcher slumped their backpack on the ground next to him, fishing through it to retrieve her canteen and take a long swig.
Jackie dusted off her hands on her blouse.
She leaned on her golf club, and it might as well have been Dyer leaning on his grandfather’s ivory cane, tapping the handle impatiently against the tile.
“I’m going to tie up a few loose ends. Stop fussing with that brat and get me that boat key or neither one of you will live to see sunset. ”
Fletcher had no doubt Jackie meant it. Her eyes had gone dark, pupils blown out with untempered greed. Whatever borrowed time Fletcher was living on, the hourglass sand was running out, fast.
“I’ll be right back,” she told Waylon’s unconscious body before creeping on quiet toes down a too-fluorescent hallway. Any key that warranted a lockbox wasn’t going to be tucked inside one of the drawers at the waterfall reception desk.
One of these rooms had to be the main office, ocean-facing so it had a clear view of oncoming ships.
With each opened door, Fletcher’s hope shriveled—a waterfront yoga studio, an infrared weight room, an indoor soccer field, and a smoothie bar.
Then, the plaque on the last door kick-started her heart again.
Crew Lounge.
Inside, there was the typical stuff. Keurig. Television. A ten-foot swordfish mounted above an equally long dining table. At the back, a fogged glass door led to the manager’s office, plainly decorated but the dark-wood cabinets could have been solid gold for the way Fletcher’s pulse accelerated.
The middle cabinet swung open to reveal a gray metal panel with an electronic PIN pad. With shaking fingers, Fletcher thumbed in Dyer and Tiffany’s wedding date. The numbers blinked. Red. Red. Red.
Green.
Fletcher tugged on the handle, the latch lifting with a mechanical chug, and she heard herself gasp with relief. There, dangling off a hook, was a slim silver glint.
Boat key. Singular.
Fletcher knew what she had to do. She had to be quick, and she had to be precise. It wouldn’t be long before Jackie—
“I knew you wouldn’t let me down,” Jackie said behind her. She snatched the key into her palm. “And to think, Dyer tried to spare you all the fun of this week. He always spoke so highly of you and your ability to get a job done right. I’m not disappointed.”
In the back of Fletcher’s brain, an alarm flared. The key was in Jackie’s hands. She’d finished her assignment. Why did she feel like she was going to throw up?
“You did it, Miss Spence. Congratulations on your new promotion!”
Something wasn’t right.
Another wicked laugh bubbled out of Jackie. “You’re Jet-Setter’s newest photographer.”
Realization settled over Fletcher like a smothering pillow. This was all she had been promised. To live long enough to see her promotion.
“Jackie, please—”
Before she could change her fate, her skull snapped back with a sharp blow. The edges of her world frayed, split, cracked open into bleeding black nothing.