Total pages in book: 117
Estimated words: 113051 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 565(@200wpm)___ 452(@250wpm)___ 377(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 113051 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 565(@200wpm)___ 452(@250wpm)___ 377(@300wpm)
“I’m calling the seaplane companies right now. If I have to charter it personally to get you and Dr. Wu out of here as soon as possible, I will.”
He unlocks his door, and we go inside, where he picks up the phone.
“Lines are down already,” he rumbles, throwing the phone down on the receiver. “Fuck. Well, satellite internet should still work.”
He goes to his computer and types away while shooting furtive glances my way as I sit down across from him.
“What? You think I’m going to knock you out with a paperweight and check my email?” I tease.
He grins and slips on his glasses. “It occurred to me.”
I sit back and watch as he types, studying his handsome face. There’s a scar above his eyebrow, but I don’t know where he got it from. His hair is so thick and dark but with a reddish sheen to it, and I wonder if he got that color from his mother or his father. And where were they born? Where was he born?
Everly was right. He’s giving everything up for me, and I know nothing about him.
But do I have to? I’ve had boyfriends before where I did know everything, and all it did was result in me being either bored or brokenhearted. Maybe this time, under these circumstances, I can just learn everything along the way.
Far away from here.
“Well, because we’re not on any regular seaplane route, you can’t just book a charter flight online,” he says with a sigh, typing quickly. “But I just sent a request to Harbour Air, and now I’m going to try some of the private fishing charters. Guarantee that as long as I pay their price, they’ll come here and get us.”
“We could take one of the Zodiacs,” I suggest. “Maybe go to Port Alice. You mentioned Winter Harbor has a road that connects to Port Hardy. That’s a legit town.”
He shakes his head. “The storm might pass, but the swells will be big for a few days. We’re exposed the moment we leave the inlet. There’s a reason why Captain Cook called the peninsula the cape of storms.”
“Then we take the ATVs,” I tell him.
He looks amused. “We’re not escaping a villain, Sydney. ATVs are slow and would be a last resort. Hell, Mithrandir is the last resort if we can’t charter a plane in time.”
But that’s where he’s wrong. He’s so close to it that he doesn’t even see it.
There is a villain here.
And its name is the Madrona Foundation.
CHAPTER 26
The rest of the day is uneventful as the storm continues to roll in. I’m too embarrassed to face my friends, so I go back to Kincaid’s boat with him. My brain keeps on wanting to think about Clayton, to talk about Clayton. I want to talk about the animals in the woods. I want to know if Madrona picked me for a purpose. All of the questions are on the tip of my tongue, threatening to spill, but I decide to deal with it the way I’ve been dealing with everything else. I put it in a box, put a bow on it, and shove it in the back of my head. Once I’m out of here, once I’m free from this goddamn fog and this fucking lodge, then I’ll take all the boxes out and face them. Unwrap the bows and deal with them head-on.
But for now, in order to survive these next few days, I have to focus on the present. If I start opening those boxes now, I will crumble and be of no use to anyone.
Kincaid takes care of me, which makes it easier to concentrate on him. He cooks for me, we have sex, and then I play the role of shrink.
I make him talk.
“Where were you born?” I ask him as we lie beside each other in bed. Above us, rain pelts the hatches, the sound soothing. The only sunshine of the entire day slanted down on us a couple hours ago, a peculiar, deep yellow light from a break in the storms, but the showers have picked up again.
He picks up my wrist and kisses the underside where the belt cut into me earlier when he had me tied up on the floor.
“Vancouver,” he says. “The real one, not the fake one in Washington.”
“What year?”
He pauses. “Are you going to judge me for being old?”
I laugh. “No. I like older men.”
“Fair enough. I was born in 1985.”
“So you’re thirty-seven.”
“Yes.” He hesitates. “Does that count as old?”
“Sure does,” I say playfully. “At least you’re not forty.”
“Heaven forbid,” he says, hand at his chest in a dramatic fashion.
“And where were your parents from?”
“Scotland,” he says. “Aberdeen. When I was younger, I had a Scottish accent because they taught me how to talk. I went to kindergarten sounding like Mike Meyers in So I Married An Axe Murderer. You know, ‘Head! Move! Now!’” He says this in a pitch-perfect brogue, even though I have no idea what movie he’s talking about.