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She shifted more upright in the luxurious leather seat. “Catch me doing what?”
I smirked and whispered back, “Staring at me.”
Joshing with Thea was fun. She often took the bait, but never took my shit.
“As if I’d been making a secret of it.”
Secrets. The very reason Aziza had avoided bringing me to the enigmatic island my entire career with Beryl Enterprises. But here I was speeding six hundred miles per hour toward Marakata Cay with my own head full of the bastards. I scowled at the reminder.
“I’m not a secrets kind of woman,” Thea continued, undeterred by my glowering. “I have plenty with my amnesia, no sense creating more.”
I eyed the fat file sticking up from her bag, which contained a very thorough background on her. One I’d had Zaki, which really meant Aziza, compile. “You could rectify that, you know.”
Her only reply was an unimpressed huff.
The tornado had stolen her memories, and Thea had no intentions of retrieving them. In fact, I was surprised she hadn’t already lobbed the file into the nearest trash can.
Plucking a bright red gummy bear from a black vitamin bottle, I nipped its head off before swallowing the rest whole. “You’re still staring,” I muttered with a freshly sharpened edge of annoyance.
“Sorry, I’m just not used to this version of you.” Her amber eyes flicked over me.
Clothed downright sartorially, I was perfectly in step with the opulence of Omar Zaki’s G650, the most luxurious private jet on the planet. The chop of dark waves on the top of my head barely hinted at what had been an unruly, wild mess in the jungles of the Amazon. Now it was short enough to knock out the whorls on the slicked-back sides.
The only remnants of the old me, aside from my blue eyes, were a few scars. They stood as a reminder that despite the exquisite cut of my suit, I wasn’t afraid to get bloody.
I’d given myself the makeover in Denver, because I couldn’t very well show up to Aziza’s island looking like some caveman who’d just spent the past month in the jungles of South America taking out cartel leaders. Almost taking them out. Even though I’d softened his forces and his hold on the Amazon basin, Marco Alvarez was still my problem to handle. The faster I could get my head back in the game, the sooner I could tie that loose end up.
So, yeah, Thea was right—I gave the impression I was the millionaire executive director in OZ’s empire that I was supposed to be. But under the surface, as she was no doubt also aware, I would never really be as civilized as all that.
Still, she’d agreed to follow me on a dangerous job I’d yet to divulge any details of, to an island she wasn’t allowed to talk about, all while a woman we still had no clue how she’d wronged was out to kill her.
Well, technically Thea hadn’t followed me. She’d followed Nik. For all I knew, Thea hadn’t let go of her distrust of me.
I steepled my hands and flashed a smile which I knew showcased my innocent looking dimples at her. “Still think I look like a bad guy?”
She grimaced in apology. Seemed forever ago, not days, I’d attempted to intimidate her with hostile bravado. It worked well when I’d been a SEAL, but didn’t scare Thea.
“Not bad, per se. More like…too good to be true.”
I couldn’t hold back a wide grin. “Touché.”
She held up her cell phone and flashed an image of OZ’s private paradise. “So does this island you’re taking us to.”
There was a scarcity of information on Marakata Cay because all visitors were required to sign lengthy non-disclosure agreements, just as we had before boarding the jet. But that didn’t mean people hadn’t speculated.
The emerald island was alleged to be everything from a player’s paradise to nothing more than a mirage, an inglorious scam of epic proportions. Online searches produced phrases like hedonistic, mystical, and spellbinding, yet none of the stories provided substantive detail. Just like there was no proof that JFK Jr. had faked his death so he could live on the island in blissful anonymity. Or was it Elvis this week?
“Seems to be just another means for the influencers of the world to separate themselves from the mundane,” she read off her phone.
I recognized the quote from a write-up on the yearly Meeting of the Minds held on the island. Much like Google Camp, Bilderberg, and other summits like them, high-profile celebs and global activists converged on Marakata Cay to discuss world issues. From the scant reports, the Meeting of the Minds looked more like a billionaire boat party.
As always, the truth lay somewhere in the middle.
“An internet search about OZ or the island isn’t going to tell you what you really want to know. Just like avoiding the file I gave you but Googling your own name won’t tell you who you really are, Theadora Emelia Gale.”
She glanced down at the cell phone, where she’d spent just as much time researching herself as the island we were headed to. “How’d you know?”
“You’re using the jet’s Wi-Fi. I know everything you’ve searched.”
