"It's paradise," were Janet Palmieri's first words to her husband when they'd disembarked on Kai'ulau. At the time, Frank Palmieri had agreed. Standing together on the broken tarmac of the little airfield in the faintly humid afternoon breeze, under a cloudless sky and white tropic sun, the remote island nation had seemed an ideal getaway spot. Tranquil and completely private.
The Palmieris weren't vacationing. They'd come a great distance to do business at the invitation of Novak Global Traders. Still, Frank saw no reason that their fairly simple mission shouldn't allow for time to relax and enjoy themselves. Away from the distractions of the outer world and the pressures of helping to run Blue Oasis, he might even persuade Janet to make one more try at salvaging their twenty-year marriage.
But Janet was enjoying herself far too much, and Kai'ulau had become a nightmare from which Frank was desperate to escape.
He sat this evening on the outer sill of their tower bedroom's tall, narrow window, surveying the landscape below. Their hosts had quartered them in the centuries-old structure that served the Novaks both as home and business headquarters. Locals called it the Hermitage. It had been erected ages ago by the French, using slave labor, for the use of their missionaries. The Novaks had been continually modernizing and extending the original buildings ever since the 1940s. The Palmeris were in a tower of the original building, built out of basalt blocks and overlooking a sheer two-hundred-foot ocean cliff.
Janet was asleep. Frank hoped that she'd stay that way. Seeming to always be in a state of restless agitation these days, she'd taken to resting in short, fitful naps. To get out of this place he'd have to leave her behind. He told himself he'd return for her later--if she even wanted that, at all.
He couldn't make out much of the landscape in the fading orange twilight. It looked like about twenty feet from the sill to the slender ribbon of land that hugged the bottom of the tower directly below. It might be thirty. He could try the trick of tying bedsheets into a rope, but if he came up short and had to drop the last few feet his momentum might carry him tumbling over the crumbling lip of earth onto the surf-swept rocks far below.
If he didn't fall over the edge, he'd have to thread his way around one of the corners of the building, to where the land opened out into a long walled courtyard. The French had built the place more like a fortress than like any religious retreat he'd ever heard of. It stood on the flat summit of Kai'ulau's highest coastal promontory, backed up against the cliffs and commanding a strategic view of the lagoon harbor entrance several miles to the east. The promontory was almost a small island on its own, accessible from the rest of the island by hundreds of stone steps winding down along the ridge of a narrow isthmus.
Those stairs were at the far end of the courtyard on the far side of the compound from where a fifty-year-old, overweight business tycoon sat in a window and contemplated becoming an action hero tonight.
He sighed. The notion was preposterous.
"Frank? Frank...where are you?"
He cursed under his breath. When he backed into the bedroom she was gathered up in the middle of the carved rosewood bed with her chin on her knees, bedclothes pulled loosely up around her to not quite cover the soft points of her pale nipples.
"What are you doing?"
"Trying to find a way out of here."
"What's wrong with the front door?"
"You really think they'll let us go?" Frank snorted in contempt.
"And why not? They invited us here so that we could make a first-hand report to our board about this miracle pill of theirs."
"Exactly. They damn well know that when we get back I'm going to torpedo their fucking scheme so fast--"
"But, Frank...the drug
works.
" Janet giggled.
The mockery in her eyes was too much.
He lunged and grabbed at her wrist. She dodged and darted to the far corner of the bed. Her reflexes were
quick
, not at all those of a confused or drugged woman. That in itself further enraged him. He caught hold of her wrist and yanked her back across the bed, sprawling her naked on her stomach. She yelped and twisted away, scrambling to her knees.
The bedroom door flew open, slamming against the wall. Strong hands gripped Frank's shoulders from behind, pulling him off of Janet, spinning him around. "Here! Here, what is this about?"
Frank glared up at Jakob, assistant to the CEO of NGT. Bracing his forearm across the younger man's chest, Frank struggled unsuccessfully to shove him off. "Fucking stay away from us!"
"It's all right, Jakob," Janet said. "I'm okay."
"You shut up!" Frank snapped. Someone moved out in the semi-darkness just beyond the door. Dominic and big Manate, the two islanders who accompanied Jakob everywhere, were waiting out in the hallway.
Frank hadn't been in so much as a scuffle with someone near his own size since his school days. He couldn't handle one of these men, let alone any two of them. He stopped fighting. Jakob released him and stepped back.
"Please, Frank, calm yourself. I am not certain what is so troubling you." Jakob shook out the sleeves of his light jacket. His strong, white teeth flashed in a soothing grin. He was always so sure of himself and the situation, damn it! Frank wanted nothing more right then than to knock those perfect teeth down Jakob's throat.
"You know exactly what, you son of a bitch."
"I suppose I do." The grin never faded. "But however you may feel about what has passed between us, you cannot have meant to harm your lovely wife."
