It was Jasper who discovered Ned—that’s the way Flynn put it, as if Ned was an unknown exoplanet or a distant star. Ned had a YouTube channel where he offered fashion tips to a few hundred thousand subscribers. It was a small audience by social media marketing standards, but apparently Jasper liked Ned’s style and felt Ned could connect with the hip young designers that composed the company’s target market. Jasper proposed a partnership, and Ned became the face of Sinclair Fabrics. His job was to produce sponsored videos that highlighted the company’s products in exchange for a yearlong contract that paid two hundred grand. If Flynn hadn’t stopped by their first video shoot to chastise Jasper for spending a fortune on a YouTube star, Flynn and Ned might never have met.

“So you work together. You and Ned.”

“Not directly,” said Flynn, “but we both work for the business.”

“Sounds like joining your family’s company was a big win for him,” I said. “How’s the video stuff going? I’ve got a teenage niece who’s obsessed with YouTube. She talks about YouTubers like they’re real-life BFFs. Has Ned’s—what do you call it—follower count gone up?” I asked because I needed to find out how the arrangement was affecting Ned’s own business prospects. He was making a killing off Jasper at the moment, but his contract was half over, and the man who’d employed him was suddenly gone.

“We have a strong brand,” Flynn said. “Associating himself with us has gotten him a lot of attention.”

“That’s a good thing, right? More exposure for him means more exposure for you.”

“Except Ned’s getting offers from other brands. Bigger ones.”

Bingo. I waited.

“He thinks we’re holding him back, if you can believe that,” Flynn said. “He got greedy is more like it. And now Ned wants to be released from his contract.”

“And you’re not cool with that.”

“He signed an exclusive agreement with us, so he’s legally bound to the company,” Flynn explained as I recrossed my legs and jotted more notes. “Everyone knows him as our spokesperson now. It’d be devastating for our brand if he walked away—not to mention a breach of contract.”

“A drag for you, too, I bet. Having your hot celebrity boyfriend sashaying around the office is a hell of a job perk.”

It was a risky thing to say. Tim and I, alone on an island full of witnesses . . . we had limited tools to work with. We needed these people to open up to us, and we had no hope of achieving that unless we gained their trust.

Flynn fixed me with a cold glare—but he was still in the room, and I counted that as a win. “I apologize,” I said. “That was unfair.”

“Unfair, and unoriginal. You think Ned’s my boy toy. That I dress him up and take him to lavish dinners in the city just to have a gorgeous guy on my arm. No,” Flynn said as I began to protest. “I get it. You see wealth and status and equate that with power. Why wouldn’t I take advantage of my position to woo a young YouTube star? It’s the only way a man like me could ever attract a man like Ned.”