I didn’t pause to hear her response. I stalked through the trees and toward the rock ridge, knowing that helicopter was the only way that she would have been able to get to the island so quickly. She fell into step behind me and I could hear her stomping through the undergrowth as Sophie and Edwin called goodbye to me. I actually wished that I could have spent a little more time with them, given them a more complete goodbye, but I didn’t want Lucille to say anything about why I was actually there. Whatever Sophie and Edwin thought of me, I felt the strange need to preserve it. They were the first people I had met who I didn’t feel had a preconceived notion of me and even though I wouldn’t see them again, I liked the idea of there being at least two people in the world who actually looked at me kindly.
Lucille had the decency to wait until we were several yards into the trees before she started growling at me. Maybe “decency” was giving her too much credit. More likely she was too busy trying to fight her way through the undergrowth in shoes that were almost as absurd as the ones that Eleanor had been gripping when she climbed onto my boat.
“I’ll have you know that I don’t appreciate being ordered around by someone who I have hired for a job,” she said. “You are my subordinate and I expect you to treat me with respect.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I just didn’t think that it was a good idea for us to linger around there with them. You want to get this done, we need to get going.”
“Speaking of which,” Lucille said. “You told me that you would explain what was going on when I got here. I’m here. Now tell me why the hell I am paying you a tremendous amount of money to bring Eleanor McIntire to me, and not only did you not do that, but you could have and you just walked away from her.”
“It wasn’t exactly like that,” I said.
“So, what was it like?”
We had nearly made it to the base of the rocks and I kept myself focused on them, telling myself that all I needed to do was get to them. Get to the rocks, get in the helicopter, and this nightmare would almost be over.
“They got up onto my boat before I even had a chance to figure out who they were.”
“They?” Lucille asked, her voice high with her growing anger and frustration.
“There was a man with her. They jumped off of the cruise ship and swam to my boat.”
“What man? Who was he?”
“I don’t know who he is other than his name is Hunter.”
I heard Lucille draw in a breath behind me, the type of breath that told me it was a surprising revelation and she knew exactly who Hunter was.
“Hunter,” she whispered.
“You know him?” I asked.
“That doesn’t really concern you, does it?”
I gritted my teeth and tried to increase my pace.
“By the time that I figured out who she was, she was already on my boat and there wasn’t a lot that I could do. People up on the ship were going to see us if I stayed around any longer.”
“You said that they jumped from the ship. Why would they do that?”
“All they said was that there was somebody after her.”
There were a few seconds of uncomfortable silence and I could almost feel Lucille’s mind working behind me.
“You didn’t tell anybody that I had hired you, did you?” she accused.
“I am more than capable of following instructions. You said not to mention it to anyone, so I didn’t mention it to anyone.”
Not that I had anybody in particular that I would tell.
“Then who could she possibly be running from?”
“I don’t know. They didn’t tell me. They weren’t on the boat very long when a storm came and we were too busy trying not to get killed to discuss our personal backstories. After that we crashed on the island. That’s where they still are.”
“You left her?” Lucille asked, her voice sounding genuinely horrified. “You had her on an island that she couldn’t escape, and you just left her? What the hell do you think that I hired you for? You were supposed to deliver her up to me, not just let her wriggle away from you.”
“I don’t think leaving her on an island that she can’t get off of and very well might end up getting herself killed on is letting her wriggle away from me.”
We were climbing up the rocks now and she paused long enough to get up to the helicopter. A man was sitting in the cockpit, staring through the windshield as if our approach hadn’t affected him.
“Where is she now?”
“Like I said, she’s still on the island. Both of them are.”
“Where is it?”
“Not far from here. It took a few hours on the raft.”
“Fine. The helicopter will get us there much faster than that.”
“You sure are splashing out a lot of money to get your hands on this woman,” I said.
Lucille glared at me, her hands planted on her straight hips.
“I had a very good prenuptial agreement and my lawyer ensured that it was upheld after my divorce. At least most of it.”
There was vitriol in her voice and I wondered if I had stumbled on the reason that she was after Eleanor.
“Is that it?” I asked. “Did Eleanor have something to do with your marriage ending?”
Lucille scoffed, her hands falling away from her hips as she looked away and then glared back at me as if the entire concept was so preposterous she couldn’t even believe I would suggest it.
“Are you serious?” she asked. “That old biddy?”
“She’s barely middle-aged,” I pointed out, feeling suddenly uncomfortable about the way that Lucille was talking about Eleanor. “Besides, if it didn’t have to do with your marriage, what could it be? She seems like a fairly run-of-the-mill rich lady. Obnoxious and pretty well useless in anything even slightly outside of her comfort zone, though she did make a valiant attempt at some baskets and fruit-picking, but nothing that I would think would warrant this kind of treatment.”
“Well, you really don’t have any idea what you’re talking about do you?” Lucille snapped. “And who do you think you are, anyway? You have no right to ask me questions about my motivations. You don’t need to know why I want you to do it, you just need to know that I want you to do it, and then to do it. You are being paid, very well, I’ll point out, to get her and bring her to me. Not to know my personal business and not to know what happens after you hand her over.”
“You’ve already given me half my pay,” I pointed out, “and like you said, even that’s a handsome amount. Your deposit is enough to keep me going for months, so you don’t really have any leverage. I do. I know which island she’s on. So, let’s level here. You tell me what it is about Eleanor that has pissed you off so much, and I’ll make sure you get to her. Then you pay me and we’ll go about the rest of our lives as if this wonderful little relationship that we have going here never happened. How does that sound?”
I told myself that I wasn’t going to do this. This time was going to be different. Mouthing off at my client is what had landed me unable to work for months and I wasn’t really looking to have that happen again. I wasn’t lying when I said that the money she had already given me would carry me through for quite some time, but that didn’t mean that I didn’t want to get the rest of it. Something about Lucille got under my skin, however. I had dealt with some of the lowest, slimiest people I could imagine, and yet few of them had even come close to creating the repellant feelings in me that this woman did. I just couldn’t take any more of it.
Lucille drew in a breath and let it out slowly. I had a sudden flash that it was like someone who had been through extensive anger management therapy. She cocked one hip and tilted her head at me, shaking it slightly. There was the hint of a smile on her lips and it seemed to hold more amusement than I’d ever seen in her.
“I think you’re going to be disappointed,” she said. “It’s really not that interesting a story.”
“Then why are you so determined not to tell me?”
“Fine. It’s not really Eleanor who I’m concerned with. I don’t even know the woman. The only reason I would even be able to tell you who she was if I ran into her in a dark alley is because I met her once during an extremely awkward and uncomfortable cocktail party at my now-ex-husband’s house. Of course, that was before I found out that her brother was the man who was going to snatch my then-husband’s company out from under me and hand it over to her nephew.”
“So, is that it? They took your ex’s business so you’re pissed at her family?”
“No,” she said, shaking her head. “That would be ridiculous. If there was anyone in that situation who I would want revenge against, it would be my ex. No, I’m after Eleanor because of Snow.”
“Snow?”