Page 65 of Just My Luck

“Hm, I like him already. Let’s call him up.”

“Not so easy. There’s no cell service there, not even a satellite phone. I believe he’s at the Nahele Research camp in one of the Seven Valleys.”

“Hmm….road trip?” She arched an eyebrow at him.

“There’s no road.”

“No road, no cell service. Sounds like a pretty good place to hide out, if you ask me.”

“We wouldn’t be hiding out,” he corrected. “We’d be trying to find out everything Rory knows. He might have learned something about this trigger and Tanaka’s weaponization plans.”

“Speaking of which, I guess I should mention…” She crawled out of bed and reached for her hoodie, which she’d thrown over the back of a chair. Riveted by the graceful sway of her naked body, he barely noticed what was in the hand she extended toward him. “I found Mia’s good luck charm. AKA the trigger.”

31

That changed everything. Lincoln stared at the little tin with the Mango Butter Lip Balm label.

“Did you go inside the house with this?”

“Of course. I had to open all the windows to air it out. Wait. No. It was in the pocket of my hoodie, which I left in your Mercedes. This tin never went inside the house.”

“Good. Good. They might have given your dad some kind of sensor to help find the chip. I know he wasn’t telling me everything. We should put this in a safe somewhere. There’s one in this hotel suite, I just have to set the combination.”

She lifted her eyebrows in amusement. “A whole-ass safe just for a tin of lip gloss?”

“Hey, you’re holding the most valuable lip gloss in the world. People might kill for this particular Mango Butter balm.”

Would it be safe here at the hotel? Maureen knew he was staying here, and he still didn’t entirely trust her. Hotel rooms could be broken into. So could safes. They needed to think outside the box, so to speak.

He shook his head. “We need to find some place where no one would ever think to look. A safe is too obvious.”

She tapped her chin as she thought about it. “I still have a locker at the Royal Leilani. Haven’t had time to clean it out.”

“They know about the Royal Leilani connection.”

“Yes, but it’s in the past, and everyone has been searching there forever and found nothing. They probably think it’s clean.”

Good point. That might not be the worst plan. “What about a place that’s completely off anyone’s radar?”

“Well, I could stash it at one of my friends’ places, but I don’t want to put anyone in danger. A few people owe me favors because I’ve given them free legal advice. Odessa was babysitting for me before I got this awesome manny.” She winked at him. “She has probably a hundred tins like this one, either lip balm or surfing wax. We could just slip it in without her knowing. I wouldn’t want to tell her because she can’t keep a secret for shit.” Then she shook her head. “No, I don’t want to drag anyone else into this. We need a place with no people. Like—” Her face lit up. “The beach.”

“The beach?”

“Yes, bury it in the sand like treasure in the days of yore. Why not? I do it all the time.”

“You bury stuff in the sand?” It made no sense to him. Wouldn’t it be hard to find once you’d buried it?

“A lot of surfers do. I’m not going to bring my wallet or keys on the water with me, am I? And I can’t just leave them sitting out. So I double bag with plastic baggies to keep the sand and moisture out, and I dig a little hole. Some people mark the spot with a rock or a piece of coral. Sometimes I use a triangulation technique.”

“Explain?”

“I find three landmarks, like a kiawe tree, a big rock on the shoreline, or the big banyan tree, and find the spot where they would all intersect. That’s where I dig, and then I smooth the sand over so it looks just like the rest of the beach. Some people use beach vaults, which can be locked. We could get one of those.”

He could listen to her talk about triangulation techniques forever. “I honestly think we’re safer with this tin. If someone stumbles across it, they wouldn’t think it has any value.”

“No one will stumble across it. I know Banyans inside and out, I can choose a good spot no one will ever find. So it’s a plan?”

He thought about it for a moment. His normal instinct would be to go with the secure safe in this hotel suite. Someone would have to break into the room, then the safe itself, both of which would take some doing.