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"Like I said, it's private," Nixie said in a clipped voice. "Just let me know if you find anything unusual--and don't let Austin near it. I'm going home and I don't care what he thinks."

She found a laptop in one of the cupboards and started working on work again. There was a lot to do before she left, and the aqua-culture industry needed a lot of reform if the oceans were going to be inhabitable.

Nixie looked up and remembered the girl's injured wrist.

"Oh, I'm so sorry," she cried, jumping up to retrieve a first aid kit from one of the overhead compartments. "I'm not so good at taking care of people--in a personal way. I can do it in business, but I can be a little oblivious one-on-one. I guess that's why I really do need Austin around.

"I heard that," Austin's pleased voice announced over the intercoms. Nixie just ignored him as she opened the first aid kit and pulled out a chemical cold pack and an ace bandage.

Nixie pulled out a small packet of extra-strength ibuprofen and handed it to Kaori.

"Here, this should help. If you want, Austin can warp it when we land. He was a medic in some branch of some military, and he's pretty handy with that sort of thing," she suggested. "Triton knows he's saved my bacon more than once with his triage."

"You might want to try taking a nap," Nixie suggested as she returned to her laptop. "It will be a few hours before we land. I'll wake you up when we land and we'll stop at a little french restaurant I know of before we continue to the chalet."

"The Swiss speak everything," Nixie assured her. "They're like living Rosetta stones. Besides, I speak several languages, so I'll be able to translate for you." She typed for a little while longer and then closed her laptop. "If you aren't going to sleep, do you mind if I take a small nap? I've been going since before 5 this morning, and I'm sure that it will be a late night tonight."

Nixie curled up in her chair and closed her eyes. In no time at all, she was fast a sleep. A few minutes later, Austin ventured back from the cockpit.

"Hey, sticky-finger," he greeted Kaori softly. He rummaged in the small refrigerator until he found a bag of buffalo wings. He dumped them in a big glass bowl and nuked them in a small microwave.

"You want some?" he asked when the timer was up. "I'll arm wrestle you for them."

"Your right on both accounts," he said and set down the bowl on the table. Remembering who he was sitting with, he scooted the bowl out of Kaori's reach. "Let me wrap it," he insisted.

He gently levered her forearm so that her wrist was about two inches off the table, and then took the ace bandage Nixie had pulled out and began to expertly wrap the wrist to restrict the swelling and keep it immobile. As he did, Nixie started to squeak and chirp in her sleep.

"Cute, ain't it?" he asked rhetorically. "That's her version of snoring. Sovenn couldn't stand it. Course, he never knew how good he had it."

Austin shrugged. "It's what she would want," he said. "And my calling in life is to do everything she wants. She deserves better than what she got. She told me once that all she wanted was a poor fisherman and a tiny house filled with children. What she got was a wealthy and hansom philanthropist. Jackpot, right? Except he never really loved her. He used her because she was beautiful and talented and graceful--everyone she met liked her and put up with her S.O.B. of a husband because of it. I was their driver for the last five years, so I got a front row seat to the worst of it."

He finished bandaging her wrists. Then he took back the bowl of wings. He pulled a plate out of one of the locked cupboards and dumped about half the wings on it. He passed it to Kaori.

"I can hear your stomach growling from the cockpit," he said. "I don't want to loose my concentration and crash the plane, so eat up."