Page 16 of Just My Luck

“Yes. A million times.”

“I nearly fainted into a bonfire?” Zara finished quickly. “That was the same day I swallowed my own hair and nearly suffocated.”

“You should get back to surfing so you have some new stories to tell.” Mia rolled over and reached for her ancient patched-up backpack, in which she’d stashed her phone, water bottle, snacks, and journal. As she rummaged around in it, she paused.

“I found this weird thing at the resort and I keep forgetting to show you.”

Mia pulled a tiny, perfectly circular object from her pack and set it on her palm. Zara leaned over to look more closely. It glistened in the light like a chip of mica. It was clear but with a hint of rosy pink when the light hit it.

“A gemstone?”

“Maybe, but feel it.” She passed it to Zara. As soon as she took hold of it, a shiver traveled through her, a very subtle vibration. The chip warmed against her skin. She closed her fist around it and the sensation subsided.

“Where did you find it?”

“Remember when we were hanging out in that hale and then the gardener told us to get out, so we hid in the plants? It was after we came back in. You were outside with the gardener for, like, forever. What were you even talking about?”

“My hair got messed up in the…never mind that.” She shook her head. “Where in the hale did you find it?”

“By the front door.”

Right where the intruder had been, the man in black with the Japanese accent. He must have dropped it. But what was it? And more importantly, what should she do with it now?

“Is it some kind of electronics chip?”

“Maybe. Or it could be a crystal. It’s beautiful.”

“I wonder if it’s valuable.” Why would some random intruder have dropped a precious gem in the entryway of hale twelve? “I’d probably know if someone had come looking for it. I suppose I can take it to the lost and found at the resort.”

Mia’s face fell. “It’s so teeny-tiny, they probably haven’t even noticed it’s gone. Can’t I keep it as a good luck charm? Finders keepers?”

Zara thought it over. That man hadn’t been a guest, so far as she knew. He’d claimed to be scouting a vacation getaway spot for his boss, but she hadn’t seen any sign of him since then. No one named Lincoln Kerr had checked into the resort. Maybe the scout had been dissatisfied with the security arrangements, or maybe none of that had been true.

Either way, it seemed pointless to take this tiny object to the lost and found. And the Morrissey family was big on good luck charms.

“Sure, why not?” she told Mia.

When her sister’s face lit up with a rare full-on grin, she decided she’d made the right decision. Lately, Mia had been so down about everything. If a tiny crystal cheered her up, Zara would take it.

8

Avoiding Zara at the Royal Leilani should have been easy because she rarely left the concierge desk, while the gardeners were supposed to stay outside. But somehow Lincoln kept seeing her everywhere…or at least, spotting her from afar and then continuing to think about her as he watered and weeded.

Then there was the time she was helping a couple retrieve their wedding ring, which the wife had dropped into the koi pond that wound its way through the restaurant. Since he was nearby, pruning a night-blooming jasmine, she called him over.

“This is Jim, one of our dedicated gardeners. Jim, any ideas about that wedding ring down there? I can’t quite reach it, and the broom handle’s too big to grab it.”

He could barely see the flash of a diamond past the flexing orange bodies of the koi. “Give me a moment.” He jogged to the garden shed and came back with a long-handled avocado picker. It had a bag that the fruit would drop into, and it seemed worth trying it on a ring.

After some maneuvering and splashing, he triumphantly retrieved the ring and presented it to the overjoyed couple.

“That ring cost me forty K,” the man whispered to Lincoln. “Here, take this for your trouble.”

He tucked a dollar bill into Lincoln’s pocket.

One dollar. For a diamond ring. What was wrong with the man?

“Honey, he was just doing his job,” said his wife. “No need to go overboard. Oh hahaha, I just made a pun! Overboard, did you catch it?”