Dangerous Minds (Knight and Moon #2)(3)

Emerson crossed the room, climbed a rolling ladder, and inched his way along, looking for a specific book in the science section.

“It’s almost two in the morning, and the crazy little monk is asleep in bed,” Riley said. “Why are we here in the library?”

“Wayan Bagus is many things,” Emerson said. “Crazy isn’t one of them. His mental and emotional acuity are exceptional. If he says his island is missing, then it is most certainly missing.”

“And?”

“And we’re going to help him find it.”

“ ‘We’?”

“I’m changing your job description to ‘amanuensis’ so you can assist me in the search. You served as my amanuensis once before, and the results were excellent.”

“We were almost killed!”

“The key word is ‘almost.’ We survived, and, you have to admit, it was exhilarating. This will give us an opportunity to once again marry our abilities.”

“It wasn’t exhilarating. It was terrifying. And I don’t know about the marry thing.”

“I’m using the term ‘marry’ in the broad sense of the word, as in ‘join together.’ I’m brilliant and intuitive, and you’re practical and have a driver’s license. We’re the perfect team.”

“Of course.”

Emerson continued his search. “I thought I should clarify,” he said over his shoulder, “because I recently read a book about body language and nonverbal cues, and I decided you find me irresistible.”

“What? I don’t think so. If anyone is irresistible here it’s me.”

Emerson paused, seeming to have found what he was looking for. “The two aren’t mutually exclusive, but we need to maintain the sanctity of the amanuensis-client relationship despite our deepening physical attraction.”

“Aha! So you do find me irresistible.”

“Not at all. ‘Irresistible’ would indicate a lack of control, and I have control in spades.”

Emerson reached for a book, his shirt rode up, and Riley sneaked a look at the bared skin and perfectly toned abs. She narrowed her eyes slightly and thought that she had pretty good control too. Otherwise her hands would be all over those abs.

“Look through this book for the section on Samoa,” Emerson said, passing Riley a copy of National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration Nautical Maps of the Pacific. “I’ll be right down.”

By the time Emerson joined Riley at the desk, Riley had found the chapter. It was page after page of detailed maps, with information about water depths, latitudes and longitudes, natural and man-made hazards, currents, and anything else you would need to know if you wanted to navigate by boat through the Samoan island chain.

“As your amanuensis, I have to tell you this is insane. A bunch of men wearing khaki clothes stole an island? I mean, who’s your prime suspect? UPS?”

Emerson flipped through the pages. “We would have to consider UPS. They’re always losing things.”

“What of yours have they lost?”

“Ice skates. A volleyball. A sculpture I’d created.”

“And they never found any of it?”

“To be honest, Tom Hanks did personally deliver the sculpture to my house, but that was several years later.”

Riley smacked her forehead. “You couldn’t possibly be confusing your life with the movie Cast Away, could you? And if you are, Tom Hanks worked for FedEx, not UPS.”

Emerson stopped flipping. “That explains a lot. I always thought it was weird that Tom Hanks would just randomly show up at my front door and give me a package.”

“You’re a very strange man.”

“My Match.com profile says I have a quirky sense of humor.”

“You have a Match.com profile?”

“Actually, no,” Emerson said. “I just have a quirky sense of humor.”

Riley stared at him for a couple beats thinking it was a good thing he had great abs because he wasn’t going to get far with the quirky humor. She turned her attention to the book in front of Emerson. It was opened to a map of the Pacific Ocean, showing an area about two hundred miles north of Samoa.

“There must be at least a hundred islands,” Riley said. “Any one of them could be your monk’s island.”

“And those are just the mapped islands. There are probably a hundred more that nobody’s ever bothered to survey.”

“It’s like trying to find a needle in a haystack,” Riley said.

“Then let’s find the needle.”

“You don’t find the needle,” Riley said. “It’s a metaphor for an unsolvable problem.”

“Ah, but the problem isn’t unsolvable,” Emerson said. “When Wayan Bagus told me he was going to spend a couple years living in solitude on a deserted island, I sent him an emergency satellite transponder. Fortunately he brought the transponder back with him, and he gave it to me before he went to bed.”

Emerson pulled from his pocket a small orange device that looked a little like a walkie-talkie.

Riley turned the transponder to the ON position. This one had more bells and whistles than the ones she’d used hiking the Texas backcountry with her father and brothers, but it operated on the same basic principle: to send out a beacon signal with GPS coordinates so that first responders could locate you.