Page 36 of Safari Murder Party
One Fletcher desperately needed right now.
As much as she hated to admit it, she could use Waylon’s help. She could handle a map herself, but if she was honest, she’d grown reliant on Manhattan’s gridded streets. The Lydell wild wouldn’t be so simple. Waylon would know where to look for the boat keys and how to navigate the island without getting eaten by animals.
Telling Waylon that Jackie flash froze the only person on the face of the planet who could call him Bubbles and live to see another day wouldn’t win Fletcher any brownie points.
For this to work, Fletcher needed to go all in.
An alliance with Waylon. Fake, of course. Normally, the thought of coexisting with him was enough to break Fletcher out in hives. This, obviously, didn’t qualify as normal. She’d neveractuallywork with the likes of him. A womanizing know-it-all with a secret agenda Fletcher was certain existed? No way. At least with Jackie, she knew exactly who she was dealing with.
“I don’t know” was how she answered his lingering question.“Her body’s in the med spa. Locked in one of the cryo chambers. Could’ve been an accident.”
Waylon pinched the bridge of his nose. A string of expletives left his mouth. He started to pace. That was when Fletcher noticed the way his shoulders hiked, the way a vein in his neck strained.
Muttering, he said, “Why would my dad do this to us?”
“You really didn’t know about any of this?”
He stopped pacing. “Of course I didn’t.”
“Well, some people think it’s suspicious how you stayed away for so long and came back into Dyer’s life in the nick of time.”
“Some people,” he said, “or you?”
“Both.”
Probably.
Her, definitely.
Waylon scratched his fingers over his stubbled jaw. Thinking, processing. “And you didn’t know because otherwise you never would have been so offended you didn’t get an invitation.”
“Very aware of the miscalculation I made, thanks.” The sigh was excessive, but after the day she’d had, Fletcher earned the right to be a little overdramatic. “But I am sorry. About Joplin. Really. I know you two were close.”
“The only reason she came on this trip was to get a title change, and now she’s dead. God, what a disaster.”
“You could say that again.”
Agreeing with Waylon Cartwright had to be the first horseman of the apocalypse.
He knew it, too, because he asked, “Okay, what’s going on?”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“Like hell you don’t, Spence. We both know you’d rather run yourself through a paper shredder than show me an ounce of human decency.” He stepped closer, and Fletcher gripped her fingers into themattress to keep from scooting back on instinct. “What are you up to?”
She could still feel the sharp bite of Jackie’s pistol against her skin. Her only hope at surviving was to help a killer inherit an international publishing conglomerate. And she needed Waylon’s help to do it.
He didn’t need to know that part.
“What if I proposed a truce?”
His eyes narrowed.
“Between us.”
Waylon gnawed on his next words. “What kind?”
“The kind where we don’t stab each other in the back. Metaphorically or literally.” She rose to her feet, coming to stand before him. “Think about it. If we work together, we could find a way off Lydell. You get one last ‘fuck you’ to your dad, and we both get out of here alive.”
