“I suppose everything is relative,” Riley said to Wayan Bagus. “Still, it had to have been a long, difficult trip. And how did you manage to get into the house once you found it?”
“The universe provided a way. Also, the door was unlocked.” He turned to Emerson. “I need your help. The island I was using as a hermitage is missing. I think it was stolen.”
“Define ‘missing,’ ” Emerson said.
“Gone,” Wayan Bagus said. “Vanished without a trace.”
“Islands normally don’t go missing,” Emerson said.
“Nevertheless, it is missing just the same,” Wayan Bagus said.
“Fascinating,” Emerson said. “Where exactly did you see it last?”
“It was right where I’d left it. About two hundred miles north of Samoa.”
“And what makes you suspect it’s stolen and not just lost?”
“For the love of Mike, Emerson,” Riley said. “You can’t steal—or lose, for that matter—a whole island.”
“That’s exactly what makes it so intriguing,” Emerson said.
“Last month some men appeared on my island and told me I had to leave,” Wayan Bagus said. “When I objected they forcibly removed me and placed me on a different island. By the time I found my way back, my island was gone.”
“What did these men look like?” Emerson asked. “Did you know any of them? Were they Samoans?”
“They were wearing khaki shorts and funny hats. Only one man spoke to me, and he spoke in English. Another man gave me an injection, and I woke up hours later in the cargo hold of a boat.”
“Was there anything special about your island?” Emerson asked.
“I know of nothing that would be of extraordinary value. It was typical of the hundreds of uninhabited, unmapped islands around Samoa. It had a mountain and beaches and rain forests. It was a very nice place for a hermitage, except for the volcano.”
“I’m quite fond of volcanoes,” Emerson said.
“They are interesting,” Wayan Bagus said, “but I find the energy can be disruptive to meditation.”
When Wayan Bagus was comfortably settled in a third-floor guest room, Emerson and Riley made their way to the cavernous library, with its intricate parquet floor, hand-carved oak bookshelves, and a second-level balcony. Newspapers and magazines were neatly stacked on the floor, and half a dozen whiteboards were scattered about, covered with Emerson’s cryptic notes. Some of the notes were devoted to the tangled estate left behind when Emerson’s father had died under mysterious circumstances the previous year. Most were simply concerned with whatever sparked Emerson’s imagination, ranging from quantum physics to tarantula crossings. A weather-beaten Coleman tent had been erected in front of the massive stone fireplace. Buddhist prayer flags hung from a line stretched between the tent and the fireplace mantel.
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.
“What am I looking for?” she asked.
“The data history. We should be able to use it to track Wayan Bagus’s movements over the past couple months.”