Vacation to Die For (18 page)

Before Jack can answer him crudely, I interject, “Sorry, old chap! You’ll have to hit the bar at Eden Key. I’ve got three boys here, who know how to stay in trouble while sober. No need to keep liquid incentive lying around.” 

“Ah, righto! Boys will be boys, eh? And men will be men. Being one of the naughtier ones, I’m off to the Hunt Club, where the women are easy and the bartender now has my martini down pat.”  

“Speaking of business, Dominic, your next task is to get as close to Chiffray as possible. The fact that the representative of Boarke’s largest investor is on the island the same time as Mandrake may not just be a coincidence. Make it your primary objective.”

He winks at me. “I won’t surface until I’ve got the goods.”

“Or Chlamydia,” Jack mutters.

While Abu and Dominic take off, Emma and Arnie open the bone bags and begin the process of sorting and cataloging the samples by text and photo. The bones will be put in a Fantasy Island souvenir box addressed to a safe house owned by Acme, but marked HOLD AT AIRPORT, where Ryan will retrieve it so that the Acme labs can do a full analysis.

While Arnie packs the samples, he looks over at me. “Dominic and you were right next to Mandrake. Why didn’t you grab him when you had the chance?”

I shake my head in disbelief. “Excuse me? The only things in our path were two crocodiles—one of which chased us halfway through the jungle.”

Arnie stares down at his iPad. “No way!”

I stare him down. “Way.”

He frowns and fingers open a new screen on his tablet. “Look, I wasn’t seeing things. Here’s a replay of your GPS coordinates and Mandrake’s, after you split from Abu and Jack.”

My dot is pink, whereas Dominic’s is purple. Mandrake’s is flashing gold. The video tracks us moving west before coming to a standstill. 

Suddenly our dots backtrack on the path. The gold dot follows, but then slows along with ours, which I presume is the place where Dominic fell. 

“Look!” Jack points to the screen. “Your dot and Mandrake’s are almost together.”

“But how can that be?” I ask.

“Maybe living with prehistoric reptiles  is his idea of fun,” Emma mutters.

Jack shrugs. “Yeah, he’s a regular Crocodile Dundee.”

Emma’s eyes narrow in confusion. “Who?”

“Never mind. It’s a pre-Gen Y reference.” He hits the replay button, and we all watch again. 

And again.

Finally Jack says, “Could he have been running after you, to help?”

I shake my head. “If so, he never showed himself.”

“Maybe he was there, but you just weren’t looking for him,” Arnie chimes in.

“In any event, he stayed with the croc, as opposed to following you and Dominic back to the bone yard,” Jack points out.

“Won’t it be sick if he needs the crocs to test the plague bacteria?” Emma wonders out loud. “And maybe the fact that their eggs are about to hatch has something to do with it, too.”

“Yeah, ‘sick’ is the right word for it.” Fear and fatigue weigh on my eyelids. I don’t know what Mandrake is up to, but I do know one thing: it’s dangerous for everyone here on Fantasy Island.

Once again I’m hit with the urge to hug a child.

I open the door to the boys’ bedroom. It’s such a warm night that I’m surprised to see they have the blankets up over their heads. I’m walking toward Jeff’s bed to make sure he’s not too hot when my cell phone chirps. 

Damn it.

So as not to wake them, I scurry out of the room and shut the door behind me.

The Caller ID reads CAMP INCH. Mary must finally be missing me as much as I miss her, and decided to call. “Hello? Mary?”

“No, Mrs. Stone, this is not your daughter. It’s Rebecca Granger, the lead counselor of Camp Inch. We’ve been calling your house all day—”

“Oh my God! Is Mary alright?”

“The only thing hurt may be her pride. You see, she and her cabin mates, Midge and Babs, are no longer welcomed at Camp Inch.”

I go into my bedroom and close the door behind me before sitting down on the bed.  “Ms. Granger, what happened?”

“Last night Mary and her friends were caught with boys in their cabin, playing Spin-the-Bottle. As you know, the camp has very strict rules about that sort of thing.”

“I have strict rules for my daughter, too. Apparently she chose to disobey both of us.” As relieved as I am that Mary is okay, I’m certainly disappointed in her, especially after the talk we had. I guess it’s time for another.

“The parents of the other girls have already retrieved them. I presume we can expect you some time tomorrow?”

 “I…I can’t! I’m out of town.” 

“Oh, I see.” Ms. Granger’s tone reeks of accusation—that I’m the worst mother in the world. 

No, I’m just the mom of a boy-crazy ’tween girl who just so happens to be several thousand miles away and needs me now, more than ever.

“I’ll send her Aunt Phyllis to pick her up. She can be there by eight in the morning.”

Ms. Granger sighs condescendingly. “Our rules specifically state that a suspended camper can only be released into the custody of her parents. Since you’re out of town, I’ll make an exception, but just this once.”

She hangs up before I have a chance to point out to her that there will be no “next time,” since this was to have been Mary’s last year, anyway. I guess this blows it for Trisha, too, when she’s old enough to go. 

Jack peeks through our bedroom door. Seeing that I’m off the cell, he enters the bedroom and flops down beside me. “Who was that?”

“Camp Inch. Mary got kicked out. I’ve got to call Aunt Phyllis to pick her up. I don’t think Mary will be too happy with that arrangement.”

“Certainly not when she finds out Jeff is down here with us.” Jack smiles. “Hey, why not have Phyllis bring her to Fantasy Island? Phyllis can hang here, too, with the kids. That way, Emma is freed up to do her work from Eden Key.”

“Are you crazy? I don’t want Mary here for the same reason I’d like to see Jeff and his pals and the rest of us get off this wretched rock! There may be a mad scientist on the loose, the place is crawling with pygmies who shoot poison darts—and let’s not forget that we don’t know what kind of wild animals are roaming around for those gun nuts in the Hunt Club! Oh, and did I mention that Dominic and I almost got eaten by a crocodile?” 

“You, I can understand,” he says, as he licks the tip of my nose. “You’re sweet as sugar. But Dominic”—he shrugs—“he’s an acquired taste.”

“Apparently so. By many, and often.” I wrap his arms around me.

“Remember, Donna, we’re monitoring the water, food, and air for toxicity. And we’ve come very close to capturing Mandrake, if tonight is any indication.”

“That’s just it: as close as we’ve been, how do we keep missing him?”

Jack shrugs. “For the life of me, I can’t figure that one out.”

Regarding Mary, what choice do I have? None really. “Okay, maybe you’re right about Mary and Aunt Phyllis. I’ll make their reservations for tomorrow morning’s flight. They’ll be here just before dinner. After I get them settled here at Kamp KidStuff, I’ll meet you and the rest of the team over at the Hunt Club. Dominic is right about one thing—it’s where all the action seems to be.” I stretch and yawn. “I’m sure Emma will be happy to leave Kamp KidStuff for Eden Key, once and for all. And I need to have a heart-to-heart with Mary.”

His smile falters. “Just be kind.”

I smack him on the nose. “You know me well enough. Why, would you imply otherwise?”

He rubs out the sting of my slap. “My point exactly.” 

Ah, I get it. “So that’s what you think of me? That I’m too hard on her?”

“I think Mary would like a little more space, yes. I also think we’ve had a very long day. And tomorrow is shaping up to be the same. The double tub in there would be a great way to wash off any crock stank, not to mention the work of collecting a few bones from the recently departed.”

No arguments there.

By the time I’ve made Mary’s necessary travel arrangements, Jack has already started our bath. I watch as he twists the tub’s faucet knobs in order to get the temperature just right. Then he strips down. 

When he sees me staring into space, he takes it upon himself to do the same to me. Off go my shirt, my belt, my pants, my bra, and my panties. He raises my left leg onto the side of the tub so that he can unlace my sneaker and pull it off along with my sock, but he holds my calf for a while before kissing it. His lips inch, kiss by kiss, up the back of my thigh, and beyond the curve of my ass to the small of my back; then up my spine, to my shoulders.

When I think of how close I came to missing his kisses for a lifetime, I want to cry. Instead I graze the top of his head with my lips and whisper, “Never let me go.”

He nods. 

Then we sink together into the water. At least for the next hour I can forget that this paradise is also hell.

Jack sits up in bed. “He’s dead.” 

“What?” I roll over, but I’m so sleepy that I can only open one eye. “Who?”

He turns to me. “Mandrake. He was eaten by that crocodile.”

“In other words, you don’t believe Emma’s theory—that he’s testing his plague on the critter?”

 “It makes more sense that Mandrake was eaten, GPS and all. Full-grown crocs move fast. In order to finish their kill, they’ve been known to toss their prey around in order to break off their limbs. That monster could have eaten a grown man with no problem.”

“Ha! Not to mention a grown woman.” The memory of those jaws makes me shudder.

Jack snuggles down and pulls me close to him. “If Mandrake arrived on the island even the week before us, he’d still be moving through the damn animal’s digestive system. For that matter, the GPS could last forever in the crocodile’s gut—or until it was excreted out of the crock’s body.” He pauses in thought. “I’ve heard that crocs can go four months without eating again. So, if it wasn’t hungry, why did it attack you?”

“To protect the mama croc and her eggs, of course. You’d do the same thing. A more important question is what was Mandrake doing out there in the first place?”

 “Running away,” Jack says through a long exhausted yawn. “But from whom? And when he escaped, did he take the bacteria samples with him?”

 “Good questions. And if not, who has the samples now?”

Jack’s gentle snoring tells me he’s down for the count.

Too bad, because now I’m wide awake.

I spoon Jack tightly. Just knowing that killer crocodile is out there may keep me awake all night.

I wake up to the hum of my cell phone, which insists 
I Only Have Eyes for You
, the ringtone that always announces Jack’s texts. This one reads:

Early rendezvous with Julie. All in a day’s work. Gang will be at Hunt Club for call with HQ after Mary’s flight comes in. FYI: Bring a killer dress. Boarke is treating us to dinner. Xo 

Not a peep in the bungalow. I guess the boys are out too, thank goodness for that. I look at the cuckoo clock on the wall. Oh my God, it’s already ten-fifteen!

My flight tracker app shows that Mary’s plane is running late. It won’t land until four.

In the meantime, I’ve got work to do. I send a text to Arnie:

Need Mandrake’s GPS signal archive from the moment he landed until his signal moved into the VIP reserve for the very first time. Also need guest+ Boarke arrival photos ASAP.

By the time I’m out of the shower, Arnie has emailed back:

Both attached here. LOL Jack almost got caught lifting photo thumb drive from Julie’s computer.  Guess that ain't so funny, but still — A

I smile as I read about Jack’s close call. I can’t wait to find out how he got out of that one.

Then again, maybe I don’t want to know.