Page 79 of Just My Luck

“Correct.” She shrugged and relaxed. “I’m a botanist, so you’re lucky you have a good answer.”

Rory was looking Malcom up and down with a wary expression. “I don’t know you. Did Lincoln hire you recently? I was his pilot up until a few months ago.”

“I don’t work full time for anyone. I’m my own guy. I’ve been doing investigative work for Lincoln, but I have experience flying helos. That’s why I’m here.”

“Look, I appreciate you all giving this guy the third degree, but he had me at pumpkin,” Zara told them. “Relax. Lincoln’s the one to worry about, not me.”

As she hugged them all goodbye, she hoped she was right about the “not worrying about her” part, and also wrong about the “worrying about Lincoln” part.

And then Malcolm whisked her away on that magic carpet ride back to her previously scheduled reality.

“Could you fly over the ocean so we can look for Lincoln?” she asked him, as the helicopter lifted into the air.

“He said to take you directly back home. He doesn’t want you involved anymore, for your own safety and that of your family.”

Well damn. She appreciated that, and yet it also infuriated her. She was already involved. Besides, she really didn’t like other people making decisions about her life.

We’ll see about that, she thought, but didn’t say it out loud. Malcolm didn’t need to know her intentions. If he did, he might try to stop her.

She wasn’t ready to dump out of this particular wave yet.

39

The first time Lincoln had met Tanaka, he’d been a teenager on one of his rare visits to see his father in Seoul. They’d crossed paths at the most expensive sushi bar in the city, a place that Tanaka was known to frequent when he was in Korea.

“I brought you here to show you that man,” his father had told him, gesturing across the room with his custom ebony chopsticks. “You stay very far away from him in the future. He will try to get close as a way to hurt me. Never make a deal with him. Commit his face to your memory.”

Since Lincoln had wanted above all else to impress his father, he’d followed those instructions to the letter.

Until now.

Tanaka hadn’t been onboard the cruising yacht that had brought the guards to their campout on the cliffs. But that reprieve hadn’t lasted long. The cruiser had zoomed back around the northern tip of the island in record time. Shortly after that, the guards had marched him into Tanaka’s third-floor suite at the Kona Queen.

At least he hadn’t gotten shot and dumped into the ocean. Yet.

Now he and Tanaka were seated at a round café table on the expansive balcony, with the scent of Kona coffee rising from a silver French press. A brilliant array of tropical fruit—juicy fresh pineapple, glistening slices of papaya and mango, a banana boat filled with coconut cream and toasted macadamia nuts—was presented like a work of art on a glass platter.

Tanaka was in his seventies, and although he was still spry, he used a cane when he walked—and, quite possibly, to stab people, Lincoln imagined. The damn thing was probably fitted with a blade or a hidden firearm. He was pretty sure by now that Tanaka wasn’t out to murder him, but he still kept a wary eye on that cane. Things could change quickly.

Tanaka regarded him with shrewd dark eyes set in a deeply lined face. All his hair had gone silver, including his bushy eyebrows. “You see me as your enemy,” he said in lightly accented English.

“My father has warned me about you,” Lincoln agreed.

“KiYun and I have our own history from when we first began our careers. But we are not in Japan or Korea now. And you are neither. You are American, and Americans pay no attention to history. This is the land of new starts. New conquests.” He gestured at the palm trees outside the lanai, their fronds gently waving in the breeze. “Conquest is the way of the world. Hawaii used to have no people, then came the Polynesians.”

“The menehune might have been here first,” Lincoln said, just to be contrary.

Tanaka ignored him. “Then Kamehameha came from this island to conquer all the others and make them one kingdom. Then came the Americans to conquer the Hawaiian Kingdom and make it part of the United States. In this world, you either conquer or you are conquered.”

Lincoln couldn’t argue with that world view, since he himself had held it not long ago. But did he now? No, he realized. That framework felt too rigid. It didn’t account for all the magic and quirks and mysteries and serendipities that he’d experienced since going down in that jungle.

“You haven’t conquered me. I agreed to negotiate with you so you would release Rory Baker.”

“And you wish me to leave the Morrissey family alone.”

Lincoln tilted his head. “Yes. That too.” When he’d gotten onto the boat, he’d relayed that demand as well. The fact that Tanaka had some kind of relationship with Lucky Lou Morrissey meant that the rest of the family was also vulnerable. He couldn’t allow that to stand.

“I have agreed to all those conditions. But you mistake this situation if you think we are enemies. In this matter, we are on the same side.”