Page 45 of False Flag

Staci flipped through the Letora Island archaeological inventory and history report she’d been given upon arrival the night before. It wasn’t lost on her that the tech billionaire had provided her with a print copy of the report. This would prevent searching on names or keywords, and given that it was over a hundred pages, sharing the text wouldn’t be easy.

Of course, that was the point. But the instructions that had been waiting for her from Gerard this morning said all Gulf Islands were in the expedition area, as there had been relevant artifacts found in the 1920s in the region. That made Letora fair game for her background research, and she wasn’t the type of person to just accept a report without doing her own fact-checking.

The report was a starting point, not the end point.

She needed to make a copy of the report so she could mark this copy up as she read. Surely there was a printer with a copy function in the office wing?

She made her way downstairs. Her stomach clenched when she spotted Beau as she passed by the kitchen. She’d managed to avoid him all morning, but considering it was only ten a.m., that wasn’t saying much.

She’d been hoping to find the office empty so she could make her copy in peace, but now she hoped Lloyd was there. He might be a zealot, but at least he didn’t give off dangerous vibes.

She’d never really considered how alone she’d feel here. But she’d also never considered the possibility of being stuck on an island with Beau Sommerville.

What the hell had she done in accepting this job? She was a mole embedded in a team that was hostile to archaeologists, stranded on an island in a country that was not her own. All her communication was being monitored. And her hostile and felonious ex-boyfriend had access to every corner of the house and island.

Lloyd was at a computer with his back to the door when she entered the room. She came to an abrupt stop, realizing for the first time that from behind, she could mistake him for Jake if she didn’t know better.

This was strange, because she barely knew Jake, but she had spent a fair number of hours watching him from every angle last Saturday when she was pretending not to look. She tightened her grip on the report in her hands. She was here to do a job, dammit. Not to think about Jake. Or his brother.

Beau wasn’t an excuse to be distracted either. She’d known this job would be dangerous and she’d be without an ally to watch her back. Still, she’d boarded that plane, and she’d damn well complete this mission.

She stepped in front of the copier and hit the power button.

“You need a password to use that,” Lloyd said.

“So give me the password.”

“What are you copying?”

This couldn’t be up for debate. She had to be able to work, or there was no reason for her to be here. “I’m doing the job Gerard hired me to do. Give me the password.”

“How do I know you aren’t doing something that violates the NDA you signed?”

“You aren’t my boss. You don’t need to know. But I need access to the computers and equipment if I’m going to make the contacts necessary for fieldwork. I have yet to receive the research design from Gerard, so delving into the Letora Island archaeological inventory report is the only work I can do. Now give me the access codes to everything—my desktop computer, the Wi-Fi, and the printer—or I will call Gerard and tell him he can kiss his NSF grant goodbye because I, the expert he hired, am being restrained from doing the work that was so damn important I needed to fly across the continent with very little time to prepare so I could start work today.”

She planted her hands on her hips and glared at him. “Now do you want me to tell Gerard you’re the reason I can’t do my job, or do you want to be the one to tell him?”

Lloyd let out a heavy sigh, then wrote something on a sticky note and handed it to her.

She glanced down at the square paper, then met his gaze. “Seriously? You treat me like the enemy when the password is PASSWORD?”

“All caps. That’s important.” There was the slightest smile on his lips. “I’m sorry. I—I know you aren’t the enemy.”

There was a hint of something there. Genuine contrition. The slightest indication he had a sense of humor. “I let what Beau said last night get in my head.”

“He has a way of doing that. We have a bad history. I dislike him intensely. The feeling is mutual. But that can stay between him and me, unless you make it a problem between us.”

“As the expedition’s mapping specialist, I need to work with you, not against you.”

“Good.”

She turned to the copier, which had finished the start-up sequence, and waited for her to type in the magic word. The report had a perfect binding, which she considered destroying, but in the end decided to take her time and hand-place each page on the glass.

Thirty minutes later, she had a perfect single-sided copy, which she then ran through the double-sided printer and collator, making five copies. Next, she took the single-sided version and placed it in the document feeder of the scanner. Again, she needed a password, which Lloyd gave up without a fight.

She saved the scan to a thumb drive.

Admin done, she sat in the empty seat next to Lloyd. “So. Tell me what you’re working on.”