Page 71 of Just My Luck

“Then I met Zara and her kid sister and little brother. I became their manny…sort of. I’m not the same person you knew, Rory. I’d already started to change even before we went our separate ways. You know it’s true.”

“Yeah, you went from a total jackass to someone I didn’t hate.”

“See? That’s progress.” Not exactly a huge vote of support, but Lincoln would take it. “Here’s something else. I’ve known for a while you were behind that viral meme campaign. I didn’t try to stop you.”

“Maybe you wanted to see where it led.”

Ouch. Well, Rory did know how his mind worked after all of those years flying his planes. “You know I always have multiple reasons for doing things. It’s not a contradiction. I wanted to see where it led, yes, and also I didn’t go after you and I never will. That’s a promise.” He raised his right hand in a vow.

Rory let out a sigh. “Fine. The crowd-sourcing. You’re right, that’s what I was trying to do. But then things changed.”

“How?” Lincoln’s skin prickled with the sense that he was getting closer to something.

“Before I tell you, I need to know something. Your only interest in the crystal was always to make money off it. You didn’t really answer my question about selling it to that consortium. I can’t support that, and I won’t tell you anything that might help you do that.”

“That deal window has closed. I promise, right now, all I want is to limit the harm. I’m the one that let the CHUM loose in the world. I feel responsible.”

“You feel responsible?” Skepticism dripped from Rory’s voice. “A billionaire taking accountability?”

“Look, I’m not even a billionaire anymore. Or—I might be. I haven’t checked lately. If I am, then yes. I’m a billionaire taking accountability. Is that so impossible?’

Rory cocked his head. “I mean, about as impossible as surviving two plane crashes and a coma.”

Lincoln laughed, and so did Rory.

“You said ‘right now’. What about in the future?” Rory asked.

“I have no future plans for it. Too many unknowns, too many moving parts, too many factors. But I’d like to be involved with the CHUM. It’s… the best thing I’ve ever worked on. The most interesting. I feel connected to it. That’s about as honest as I can be.”

Rory eyed him for a long moment, then stuck out his hand. They shook, and it was just then that Mathilda and Zara came back into the tent.

“Oh good, they worked out their testosterone-fest,” said Zara cheerfully. “Can we get to it now? Everyone’s ready to hike out of here.”

“Okay, but first let me show you what I’ve found.” Rory bent down to tap some keys on the laptop. “Ever since I posted those memes, I’ve been getting reports from around the world about crystals like yours. Like the CHUM. But they’re all small deposits, and on their own they don’t have the power of the vein that you were mining.”

“The one destroyed in the earthquake.”

“Right. These other samples have slightly different chemical compositions. You can tell from the color and the clarity. However, people are starting to make connections with each other. The idea is to see what happens when enough of these slightly different formations are linked together or combined somehow. Maybe they can fill in the vibrational gaps for each other. We’re calling it the Crystal Collective. There are plans afoot to gather somewhere central.”

“Central? What does that mean? What’s the center of the world?” Zara asked—a very legitimate question.

“That’s being discussed right now. So far, there’s no agreement.”

Lincoln threw up his hands. “I’m sorry, but if they can’t agree on where to meet, how can they agree on how to manage this experiment? They don’t sound very organized.”

“They’re not. Why would they be? They’re just a somewhat random selection of people interested in geology or crystals or beach combing. I’m the closest thing they have to a leader, and I’m just a pilot. I’m not an expert in this stuff.” Rory closed up his laptop and slid it into a sleeve. “I know this might sound strange to a CEO, but they’ll work it out among themselves eventually. They’ll come to a consensus and go from there. They hacked into Kerr Enterprises, you know, just for fun. Anyway, we should get out of here now. We have a hike ahead of us.”

Lincoln nodded through his disappointment. He wished he could dive into those forums and read every little scrap of information people had shared about their crystals. It was an interesting thought—that many, slightly different crystal formations could work together to produce the same effect as the CHUM. He wasn’t sure how he felt about that. Where was the profit potential? Who would develop it?

He wished he could still be involved with the CHUM—or the Crystal Collective—after all this was sorted out. But that wasn’t looking likely. His engineers still hadn’t been able to recreate the sample he’d lost. Maybe they never would.

“Are you okay?” Zara murmured as they followed Rory and Mathilda out of the tent.

“I’ll feel better once all these folks are safe. They protected me when I was at my most vulnerable.”

The hike to their “backup plan” site took over an hour. But it was worth the trek down the steep ravine, then back up a lung-busting slope, until they saw the ocean glittering through the spiky foliage of the hala trees.

“There’s a heiau up ahead,” Robert explained. “It’s a sacred place for the ali’i, and also a place of refuge. If a fleeing warrior could make it here, beat the currents and not get smashed on the rocks, he’d be safe. Beat up, but safe.”