Hustle (Book 1 in The Hunted Hearts) - SYTYCW Winner #action #comedy #romance

Hustle | Chapter 4

She walked towards passport control, noticing Jimmy hovering on the other side of the checkout desk. He was shifting from one foot to the other with a look of concern on his face. Not surprising really, since he was outside of the UK, and she was still inside it.

She was a bit worried herself. This was the moment of truth. Would she be recognized when someone was studying her face? The man behind the counter looked mean, certainly not someone she'd want to mess with. She dropped her passport and ticket on the desk, offering him a polite smile. He picked up the passport and barely gave it a glance before waving her through.

She grabbed the documents and hurried over to Jimmy, breathing a sigh as she stepped into the terminal.

We did it. I'm out of the UK in one piece.

"Let's get to the gate." Jimmy hurriedly guided her through the food court.

"What's the rush? We don't fly for another hour."

He shot her a dark look. "Better safe than sorry."

"Cheer up. We're on our way to Florida!" She grinned at him, the rush of relief and adrenaline fueling a burst of optimism inside her.

"Yeah, but this was the easy part," he muttered.

***

Jacob Hawkins stared down at the prepaid phone in his hands.

Who is Jemma Jenkins?

He had his best security team hunting her down, but even his most adept staff couldn't find any trace of her. She was a ghost. A ghost who'd snuck into his world and evaporated out of it, taking his future with her.

He flipped open the dossier waiting on his desk, narrowing his eyes at the photograph on the first page. She was pretty, with wide hazel eyes and long, dark hair. Her lips had a natural pout, which he was certain got her anything she wanted. She looked like any innocent girl. The file said she was twenty, but she looked even younger than that.

I bet that helps her rip people off.

He clenched the phone in his fist. The screen cracked. Jemma Jenkins was apparently a fake name. So was everything he had thought he knew about her. The only thing that was real was this picture. It matched his memory of her face.

Why did she break the tablet?

Jacob knew very little about the Incan tablet. What he did know was that it was his last link to his father. Douglas Hawkins had been the original 'Hawk'. He had run the Hawkins Shipping empire, but he had also been a treasure hunter. That was before he disappeared.

Jacob had been a boy when it happened. The last time he had heard from his father, the Hawk had been in Peru. The tablet was the last thing he had brought home.

Jacob picked up a piece of the broken tablet. It could be restored, but there was clearly a machine-drilled hole in the fragment in his hand. The tablet had to be fake.

My father knew enough to spot a fake. Why did he bring this home? Why did he guard it like a treasure?

Jacob rubbed his finger along the smooth cavity inside it. He felt sick as he realized what had happened.

She knew it was a fake. That's why she broke it. She knew there was something inside it.

That tablet had been his only hope of convincing the board to keep him on as CEO of Hawkins Shipping. The directors thought that he wasn't serious about the company, that he spent too much time treasure hunting and not enough time focusing on the business. He had planned to donate the Incan tablet—his father's final find—to Hawkins Shipping and make it the first piece in a new museum inside the corporate headquarters. He wanted to prove that honoring the connection between modern shipping and its romantic, swashbuckling past would be good for the company. He wanted to pay tribute to his father's love of adventure while burnishing the image of the company Douglas Hawkins had built. Most of all, Jacob wanted the board to see that he could run the business and take the occasional treasure-hunting jaunt. His father had done it. Why couldn't Jacob?