Chapter 31
That changed everything. Lincoln stared at the little tin with the Mango Butter Lip Balm label.
“Did you go inside the house with this?”
“Of course. I had to open all the windows to air it out. Wait. No. It was in the pocket of my hoodie, which I left in your Mercedes. This tin never went inside the house.”
“Good. Good. They might have given your dad some kind of sensor to help find the chip. I know he wasn’t telling me everything. We should put this in a safe somewhere. There’s one in this hotel suite, I just have to set the combination.”
She lifted her eyebrows in amusement. “A whole-ass safe just for a tin of lip gloss?”
“Hey, you’re holding the most valuable lip gloss in the world. People might kill for this particular Mango Butter balm.”
Would it be safe here at the hotel? Maureen knew he was staying here, and he still didn’t entirely trust her. Hotel rooms could be broken into. So could safes. They needed to think outside the box, so to speak.
He shook his head. “We need to find some place where no one would ever think to look. A safe is too obvious.”
She tapped her chin as she thought about it. “I still have a locker at the Royal Leilani. Haven’t had time to clean it out.”
“They know about the Royal Leilani connection.”
“Yes, but it’s in the past, and everyone has been searching there forever and found nothing. They probably think it’s clean.”
Good point. That might not be the worst plan. “What about a place that’s completely off anyone’s radar?”
“Well, I could stash it at one of my friends’ places, but I don’t want to put anyone in danger.
A few people owe me favors because I’ve given them free legal advice.
Odessa was babysitting for me before I got this awesome manny.
” She winked at him. “She has probably a hundred tins like this one, either lip balm or surfing wax. We could just slip it in without her knowing. I wouldn’t want to tell her because she can’t keep a secret for shit.
” Then she shook her head. “No, I don’t want to drag anyone else into this.
We need a place with no people. Like—” Her face lit up. “The beach.”
“The beach?”
“Yes, bury it in the sand like treasure in the days of yore. Why not? I do it all the time.”
“You bury stuff in the sand?” It made no sense to him. Wouldn’t it be hard to find once you’d buried it?
“A lot of surfers do. I’m not going to bring my wallet or keys on the water with me, am I?
And I can’t just leave them sitting out.
So I double bag with plastic baggies to keep the sand and moisture out, and I dig a little hole.
Some people mark the spot with a rock or a piece of coral.
Sometimes I use a triangulation technique. ”
“Explain?”
“I find three landmarks, like a kiawe tree, a big rock on the shoreline, or the big banyan tree, and find the spot where they would all intersect. That’s where I dig, and then I smooth the sand over so it looks just like the rest of the beach.
Some people use beach vaults, which can be locked. We could get one of those.”
He could listen to her talk about triangulation techniques forever. “I honestly think we’re safer with this tin. If someone stumbles across it, they wouldn’t think it has any value.”
“No one will stumble across it. I know Banyans inside and out, I can choose a good spot no one will ever find. So it’s a plan?”
He thought about it for a moment. His normal instinct would be to go with the secure safe in this hotel suite. Someone would have to break into the room, then the safe itself, both of which would take some doing.
But that would be the obvious choice, whereas no one would imagine that he would bury something in the sand and walk away from it.
Did Tanaka know that Zara was a surfer who buried her valuables in the sand?
He knew enough to get her father freed from prison.
He knew where she lived. He knew she had worked at the Royal Leilani as a concierge.
Maybe he’d looked into her past and knew she’d been a surfer.
But to jump from that to burying things in the sand?
Who would be crazy enough to do that? Tanaka knew Lincoln well enough to know he’d never be that freewheeling.
“It’s a plan. We just have to make sure no one follows us to the beach.”
“That’s not hard. I know a shortcut.”
“And we have to make sure there are no trackers on us or our clothes.”
She climbed onto the bed and pushed him onto his back. “We should do an immediate inspection. Me first.”
He spread his arms wide as she slid teasing hands across his chest, wondering how he’d gotten so very lucky. “When it’s my turn, I plan to do my inspection with my tongue.”
“Ooh, what a good idea.”
Her mouth closed around his penis, which was just stirring to life. Oh God. Her hair fell across her face and tickled the skin of his hips. Another sensation point to add to the pleasure she was generating with those lush lips of hers.
He lay back and abandoned himself to the experience. It didn’t take long before he was hard as titanium. He positioned her hips over his erection—handy that neither of them had put their clothes back on. “I’d like to keep you naked in bed for the next month,” he growled.
“No looking ahead. We’re right here, right now, just enjoy.”
He could do that. He did that, especially when she lowered herself onto his erection and clenched her inner muscles around him.
He just about lost his mind at that point.
Bucking into her, he clenched his teeth to keep from coming too soon.
He gripped her hips to slow her movements, but it was no use.
Zara was a wild thing, and there was no point in trying to control her.
She fucked him until he came like a supersonic rocket ship.
Then he flipped her over, spread her open and got his revenge by licking her until she screamed with release.
It was only later, when he was cracking open his laptop to check in with his investigators, that he remembered what she’d said about “no looking ahead.” Was that what her father had been talking about? He’d warned Lincoln that Zara never let a relationship go too long.
That ought to be fine for him. His two experiments with marriage hadn’t gone well.
When it came to the work of communication and compromise and all of that—he’d been a complete failure.
He wanted to think it would be different with Zara, simply because everything was different.
He’d never been this entranced by anyone.
Also—he liked the man he was with her. The one who took Eddie to the Urgent Care, who put up with her stoner dad, who wanted above all else to make her happy.
Was this that thing they called “love?” If so, he’d never felt it before, so he had no idea how to accurately identify it. Too bad there wasn’t some scientific method to confirm. A scanner, for instance. A love scanner that would start beeping when it encountered the real thing.
He smiled at the thought, earning a curious glance from Zara, who was brushing out her hair, which had developed an ungodly amount of tangles.
“What’s so amusing?” she asked.
“Not amusing, just…miraculous. Think about the many accidents of fate that brought us to this moment. If I hadn’t crashed in the jungle and lost the CHUM, I never would have been working as a gardener at the resort.”
“And if I hadn’t been forced by circumstances and my father’s shaky ethics to not only work at the resort, but bring my brother and sister to whatever random empty hale was available, I never would have busted you and your cute gardener man butt.”
“You thought I was cute?” He’d never been described that way, so far as he knew.
“I thought you were an idiot. Also oddly arrogant and annoyingly attractive.”
“I can work with that.”
A notification popped up on his screen. He read it quickly. “Oh shit. This is bad. We need to go, right away.”