Crewcut in particular.
The man who wanted him dead.
The man he planned to hunt down.
CHAPTER 70
Jack appreciated a good Maui sunset as much as he loved the island’s sunrises. That night the sun would set at 6:56 PM. When he carried a bottle of tequila across the street to the beach at a quarter till seven, the sky was already a bright spray of color.
He’d not miss this one.
It was the first near cloudless evening in weeks.
The afternoon had been an emotional rollercoaster with few highs. He was so listless and depressed, he pretty much did nothing productive. Except finish off the beer. And even though he was tired from long fitful nights with little sleep, he wasn’t ready to let go of the day.
One more sunset.
One more sunrise.
Then it wouldn’t matter. He’d say his final good-bye to Dana and be left with one more thing to do. A final act that would set him free.
To make things right.
Crewcut and his two accomplices were laying low. But he knew that wouldn’t be for long. Chiharu Takahashi wanted him dead. And she wanted Robert and Kazuko dead, as well.
Her paid killers would be coming after him.
And he’d be waiting.
He could see the movie play back in his mind. How he would do it. Not caring what happened as long as it got done.
Crewcut and his accomplices would come at him with guns or knives, sneaking up on him in the middle of the night. Him waiting. The click of the hammer on the pistol being pulled back. The knife rising in the air. The glitter of the blade poised to strike. Him seeing and hearing both. His heart pounding. The killers not knowing he was ready for them this time. That he had set them up.
The hunter becoming the hunted.
But he couldn’t expect to catch a fish without bait. In this case it would be two hundred angry pounds of tanned muscle and bone name Jack Ferrell.
There was a sprinkling of sunset watchers standing on the beach, smiling and chatting, their gazes on the horizon. A few stood hand in hand. Some pressed close together. Young lovers embracing each other in the warm evening air.
All very romantic.
A Maui beach at sunset, he realized, was not the best place for someone grieving the loss of a person they love. There were simply too many reminders of the emptiness in his life.
But he remained determined to see this one.
He was no longer a member of their club. He had no sweetheart on his arm. No one to smile at and whisper sweet nothings to.
Not anymore.
Settling his butt onto the sand away from the other people, he sat alone with his thoughts. The sun was a bright yellow ball on the horizon. There would be a green flash. If, in fact, one could be seen from shore. He went to work on the tequila, wondering if people—himself included—actually observed the spectacle, or if the phenomenon was one of those things people desperately wanted to believe they’d seen, so they did.
Like Big Foot, or UFOs.
Either way, he knew the atmospheric conditions had to be just right. And then it is rarely seen by the naked eye. And only by an observer who knows what to look for. That moment when the top edge of the setting sun turns green for a fraction of a second as it slips below the horizon.
Big Foot, he was pretty sure, was a myth. UFOs he wasn’t so sure about.
On this evening, he was certain he saw the green flash.
He continued to work on the tequila through the last blush of evening color and on into the dark of night. Until finally, no one was left on his stretch of beach and traffic on the road behind him died down to almost nothing. His solitude was rewarded with a blanket of stars.
First the green flash, now the heavens had opened up to him.
He carried his bottle down to where the rising tide wet the sand. Water, warmer than the night air and bristling with bubbles, washed up the gentle slope and around his feet before retreating back into the sea. He waited and watched another wave send more water rushing up to where he was standing.
Again, the surge retreated.
As it did, he’d felt sand being swept from under his feet. The tiny grains of silica, coral, and lava to be returned in the next wave or the next. Some to be carried away by the current and deposited someplace else. A natural process repeated over and over, year after year until the end of time as he knew it.
And that made him think.
Just as the tides shaped and reshaped the earth, death had shaped and reshaped his life.
He was learning to believe in fate. Nothing else made sense. But he wanted to believe things could have been different; should have been different.
Some people just don’t deserve to die.
He shook his head in disgust.
Why do I have to be so pig-headed?
He raised his face to the sky, peered into the heavens and searched out the brightest stars among the millions dotting the night canvas. Dana was there, he was sure. And his mother who was taken from him way too early in life. Perhaps even Maiko.
But he didn’t want to think about her.
He regretted having allowed himself to become so easily attracted to her.
It should never have happened.
He turned his thoughts to Dana and his mother. He hoped they had found each other and that together they peered down on him, happy with what he was doing. But deep inside he knew they wouldn’t approve. It just wasn’t their way. Even so, he hoped they could understand.
He took a large swig of tequila and let the thought roll around in his mind. Was he really looking to them for understanding or was it validation he wanted?
An eye for and eye. A tooth for a tooth.
He’d never been one for reading the scriptures and he only saw the inside of a church at weddings and funerals.
But he’d come to swear by that passage.
CHAPTER 71
Jack smacked his lips and ran his tongue around inside his mouth to clear away the sticky film that had collected on the roof of it during the night. He picked up his watch from the bedside table and checked the time. It was a quarter till four in the morning. He’d slept six straight hours.
The most sleep he’d gotten in a single stretch in the past five nights.
And he was hungry.
He took both as a sign he was getting better.
The carton of eggs Kimo had brought over two days earlier was sitting untouched in the refrigerator. The four cans of Spam were stored in the cupboard, along with a bag of coffee and a package of paper filters.
He got the coffee going and climbed into the shower.
There was a sunrise for him to catch.
Scrubbed, shaved, and dressed in a clean Aloha shirt he’d bought to wear to the memorial, and the same khaki bush shorts, he tried not to dwell on the ugliness yet to come. And concentrated on how nice it was to feel as though he was well on the road to being human, again.
Robert had said it: “It might take some time, but you’ll come around.”
Jack wanted to believe the healing would continue. Maybe faster than Robert thought. That he would say one last good-bye to Dana and soon be whole again.
He needed to have his wits about him to finish what he planned.
And his strength.
He scrambled a third of the eggs and fried a can’s worth of sliced Spam. Dana was in his thoughts the entire time. It was impossible for her not to be. But they were happy memories of good times that he recalled without lamenting her loss. She and he had joked about Spam on more than one occasion, but the truth was they both loved it whether the meat was fried, in a sandwich, or on a cake of rice with dried seaweed wrapped around it.
The food he cooked himself for breakfast went down without a hitch. Also, the three cups of coffee he drank. A major accomplishment all the way around considering for days he hadn’t felt much like eating anything.
With time getting away from him, he slid his arms into his yellow, water-resis
tant windbreaker—the only jacket he had with him—and shrugged it onto his shoulders. The Mossberg was still wrapped in the beach towel where he had left it sitting on the counter the afternoon before. He tucked the bundled up shotgun under his arm and stepped into the cool of the early morning. It was still dark outside, but the sky remained clear over Kihei and over the opposite side of the island as well.
Somewhere nearby a rooster crowed good morning.
Indeed, it was.
He climbed into his Jeep with an hour to drive where he was going. More than enough time to get there.
That word again. Everything hinged on time.
He reminded himself there was no need to rush, and started the engine.
When he pulled onto Mokulele Highway, there was no traffic to be concerned about. The night air that washed across the cane fields and swirled around the Jeep’s windshield was heavy with moisture and held some of the heat from the day. Even so, the breeze felt cool against his bare legs and forced him to turn on the vehicle’s heater as he drove along.
It felt good to be moving one step closer to the end of his quest.
In the distance, lights in Pukalani, Makawao, and Kula on the slopes of Haleakala, and those in the neighborhoods along the West Maui Mountains where Dana had lived, twinkled like the stars in the sky overhead. It promised to be a perfect morning to watch the sun come up.
The sight was as tranquil as any he’d seen.
And with the calm, the few doubts he had about what he was going to do slipped away. Soon, the scales of life would once again be brought into balance.
An eye for an eye. A tooth for a tooth.
He’d make things right.
Or he’d die trying.
Except for an old pickup that passed him going the opposite direction, there were no vehicles on the roadway in front or behind for as far as he could see. Only a long, lonely ribbon of blacktop with cane fields spreading out on each side. It saddened him to know pineapple production was virtually gone from Hawaii and that soon the sugarcane would follow, driven to its demise by cheap labor in foreign markets.
Some things just shouldn’t change.
The first blush of morning was lighting the sky when he parked on a bare patch of ground outside the entrance of Hookipa Beach Park. He wasn’t alone there. But he didn’t need to be.
The sun would rise at 5:49.
He’d come to watch the spectacle that attracted so many people.
And hope it wasn’t for the last time.
CHAPTER 72
It was a quarter till eleven when Jack parked the Jeep in a lot across from the Keawalai Congregational Church in Makena. People were starting to arrive. A half dozen vehicles squeezed into the small lot next to the church. Several cars parked next to where he sat in his rental 4x4 watching everyone filter inside.
There were close to three dozen people in attendance. Lieutenant McMasters was there, along with a contingent of high ranking officers most likely from Oahu, and several men and a couple of women of lower grade. All of them wore well-pressed dress uniforms.
The Coast Guard had made a good showing of support, but there were eight or ten civilians there, as well. She apparently had a lot of friends. More than he realized. But not at all surprising.
He should have suspected as much.
He didn’t know Glenna Ann Mores personally, having never had the opportunity to meet Dana’s mother. Nor had he met Dana’s younger sister Cassidy and her husband. Even so, he recognized them from photos he’d seen in Dana’s cottage.
They looked like nice people, and certainly were if they were anything like Dana. He had no idea what, if anything, she had told them about him. But he doubted he was their favorite person under the present circumstances. Still, he felt obligated to introduce himself and walked over to where they were standing next to the church entrance.
When he approached them to offer his condolences, he saw a flicker of anger in Glenna Mores’ eyes, a spark of recrimination. It was only momentary, but it was enough for him to get the impression they knew exactly who he was.
He peered into Dana’s mother’s stare, felt himself swallow hard, and glanced away. He turned back, started to speak, and couldn’t.
She reached for his hand and held it as if he was the one who needed consoling. “Thank you for coming,” she said. “I’m sorry we never got to meet. Cassidy and I know there was nothing you could do to save her.”
The words wrenched his gut more than it already was. They were wrong. He could have saved her. He could have insisted she remain topside while he made the dive. Or not have suggested going after the necklace at all.
It was my fault.
“Honestly,” he shook his head slowly back and forth, feeling the guilt. “I don’t know what to say. I loved Dana. This shouldn’t have happened.”
Her eyes seemed to focus on her hands clasped in front of her. They remained that way, and he could only try to imagine what she was thinking.
She met his gaze a long moment later. “No mother should outlive her daughter….”
He thought about what she said, not knowing quite how to answer. Didn’t know if there even was one that could soothe the degree of loss she felt. A mother’s love for her child that she carried inside of her and brought into the world with wondrous expectations. None of them included having her child die with so much life left ahead of her.
“You can be proud of her.”
“I’ve always been proud of her,” she said. “Dana was our little tomboy. Even as a young girl she craved adventure. Fishing. Hiking. Boating. Looking for treasure she had me and her father hide for her.”
It made sense she had joined the Coast Guard.
He glanced back and forth between Dana’s mother and Dana’s younger sister. All three of them looked so much alike.
He felt his eyes beginning to tear. And saw Glenna study his face.
“We all miss her,” she said, her voice soft and hollow. “The last conversation I had with her was a couple of days before she died. She told me you two had reconnected and that she was serious about you. I’m happy she finally found someone she could love. Even if she didn’t get to live long enough to enjoy the true joy of it.”
He ran the blade of his hand across his eye. That was the day he talked to her on the phone. The day she asked to join him on the boat.
The last time she would hear her mother’s voice.
She wasn’t making it any easier on him. “I really am terribly sorry. If you’ll excuse me. I need to take a walk.”
She forced a shaky smile, and said, “Thank you, again, for coming.”
He offered his hand to Cassidy’s husband without knowing his name. The man gave it a hardy shake. Cassidy smiled and sniffed back a tear. Neither of them introduced themselves or said anything in the way of a friendly parting.
He walked away feeling less than good about himself. Cassidy and her husband were either too choked up to talk, or they did not share her mother’s sentiments. It didn’t matter to him which one it was. Or even if the mother’s comments had been something other than sincere, which he doubted.
Their opinion of him had no bearing on what he planned to do.
He wandered over to the old graveyard and scanned the burial plots. Dana wouldn’t be buried there. Her ashes were in a bronze urn sitting next to a spray of flowers inside the church. He figured they would eventually go home with her family to be placed in a mausoleum near whey they lived. All well and good for her mother and sister. But it seemed more fitting they be scattered at sea.
What she would have requested if she had had the chance.
He turned, walked into the church, and took a seat in the back row away from everyone else.
And prayed.
CHAPTER 73
Jack strode away from the church ahead of everyone else. He felt obligated to stay for the entire memorial, but not a minute longer. He’d shed his tears and said his final good-bye to Dana. And he’d prayed for her understandi
ng.
It was time to make things right.
The number of vehicles sitting in the parking lot had doubled. So had the foot traffic. A gaggle of teenage boys in faded boardshorts loitered around the outside shower watching a well-endowed girl in a two-piece suit that barely held her in, rinse her body in the cold water.
A weekend. A busy beach day.
He climbed behind the steering wheel of his Jeep, took a deep breath and let it out. The need to cleanse his lungs and oxygenate his brain was overpowering.
Fuel needed to keep everything working right.
Two more cleansing breaths and he felt the tension drain out of him.
Dana’s family had done a wonderful job making the arrangements. The perfect location. And a fitting tribute to Dana’s life. And even though it was nice to hear so many great things said about the woman he loved, the service left him hollow and gloomy. He would never see her again. This was not some colossal joke where she would suddenly appear, all smiles, saying, “Jack, the doctors miraculously saved my life. Isn’t it wonderful? This was all just a big put-on. I hope you’re not upset by our little prank. We can be together now.”
The Internet, he knew, was full of accounts documenting medical miracles. A sleepwalker told she’d never have children after falling fifty feet gives birth to a healthy baby boy. A bingo worker dead for fifty-six minutes brought back to life by her deceased husband. A blind man gets his sight back after having a tooth implanted in his eye. A student comes back to life after freezing to death in the snow on his way home from a party.
There was no such miracle for Dana.
It took him all of a second and a half to recognize trouble when he noticed the black Chevy Suburban slow on the roadway in front of the church. A big car for big men. Not unlike the Yukon they’d used. He was surprised Takahashi’s goons had laid low as long as they had. Perhaps it was the obituary in the paper announcing the memorial that brought them out.
He slouched low in his seat.
The good thing about an island swarming with mid-sized rental cars and four-door Jeep Wranglers is you don’t stick out if you’re driving one.
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