by Kim Hornsby
“That’s it!” She shot him a look. “Oh my God, this is the site.” She grabbed his free hand and squeezed. Her heart rate sped up. “We’ll dive here tomorrow. Launch the boat at dawn.” His voice was calm.
Between the hangover, the fatigue, and the shock of finding the dive site, Tina was completely spent by the time the plane landed on the short landing strip back at the West Maui Airport. The last flight of the day was boarding the prop plane to Honolulu. When she saw Mr. Takeshimi and his daughter, Tina ran over.
“Are you leaving now, Mr. T?”
A smile spread across his face. “Life without endeavor is like coming out of a jewel mine with empty hands, Tina.”
“I’m endeavoring, Mr. T” She hugged him to her, even though she felt his resistance. “I’m better for having known you.” Pulling back, she looked into his hopeful face. “We learn little from victory, much from defeat.” He’d said this to her once. They nodded, and then Mr. T and his daughter disappeared inside the plane’s cabin.
“You okay?” Jamey touched her arm.
“Yes. I have to call my parents to tell them I won’t be leaving with them tomorrow.” The overwhelming urge to curl into a ball and go to sleep would have to wait. “The shit will hit the fan with that call.”
“I want you to stay at my place tonight. For safety.” Jamey looked perfectly serious. “Oh, Jamey…”
“Humor me, even though you trust Noble.” He looked hard into her face. “Remember, I found the site, and I haven’t steered you wrong, not so far.”
“I’m okay at my own house. I told Noble…”
“Tina, please. There’s more I want to say about Hank, but not here.” This got her attention.
She looked down the hill in the direction of her house, and thought of what she might need for the night. Not much besides pills and a toothbrush. “Okay, I’ll meet you at Pops’ condo.”
“Ten minutes, no more, or I’m coming to get you.”
Tina thought of saying that she could take care of herself, but she wasn’t so sure anymore.
***
No one takes that long to grab a toothbrush. How had he ever agreed to let Tina go back to her house alone? Especially if Noble knew that they’d taken a flight over Molokai to look for Hank’s body. Had Tina told Noble? After seeing them on the bed earlier and feeling the bond between them, he didn’t want to bet against Tina’s relationship with Noble. It wasn’t just their mutual connection to Hank that he felt. Their friendship was something more. Tina wasn’t telling him everything about Noble, and maybe it was none of his business.
All he knew, as he drove to Tina’s house at the twenty-minute mark, was that she was not safe with Noble. Until he could prove something, it would be hard to get her to believe him.
The drive to her house took less than a minute, seeing he waited at the end of the street. He ran up the stairs, two at a time but didn’t feel Noble’s presence. “Tina?” Obi ran out of the bedroom. Something was wrong.
When he saw her sprawled across the bed, his first thought was to look for blood. His senses quickly reassured him she was asleep. Or unconscious. He knelt at the side of the bed and pulled her to a sitting position. “Tina? Wake up.” This was not exhaustion. This was pharmaceutical. She was out cold. Jamey laid her back down and went to the bathroom to find her pill dispenser. She’d only come back for a toothbrush and pills. He grabbed both, and then returned to lift her into his arms. “Come on, Obi. We’re sleeping at my house tonight.”
Tina woke long enough to mumble something that sounded like
“Thanks.”
The last time he’d carried Tina, many years before, he’d jokingly picked her up to throw her on his bed. He’d stood over her, beating his chest like a caveman and she giggled. “Show me your club, Gronk.” Drastically different circumstances.
Jamey unlocked the condo door and kicked it open with his foot. Remembering that Tina was only asleep, not sick or hurt, he allowed himself the blissful feeling of having her in his arms again. He hadn’t been intimate with anyone in so long he could barely remember what it felt like to have his hands on a woman’s body. Unless you counted the dream with Tina in the cottage, the last time he’d actually made love had been at least eight months ago.
Living and working in Afghanistan had hugely curtailed his love life, if that’s what you called sex when you met someone who was shipping out from Ramstein the next day, and was willing to indulge in one night of frenzied passion. There weren’t many women in Afghanistan, and those who were in service were off limits. Jamey laid Tina’s small body on his bed and covered her with a woven blanket Pops had bought at an upcountry craft market. She wasn’t wearing her wedding ring. Good. For several minutes he stood admiring her sleeping form. She was so goddamned cute. Obi jumped up and snuggled into her side. The dog’s head lowered on Tina’s arm and he heaved a woeful sigh.
“You’re a good boy, Obi.” Jamey patted him and, as he drew his hand away, Tina made a little noise, like a squeak. Her chest rose and fell with each breath. Taking the pill dispenser out of his pocket, Jamey noticed that tonight’s pill had been taken. If the dispenser held a different kind of pill than she thought, she’d be out for the night, drugged again. He contemplated taking her to the hospital to have her stomach pumped but thought better. She’d probably been taking these pills for days. Maybe on purpose. Before he sent one of the last two pills for analysis, he’d ask her if she’d taken a sedative when she woke.
Watching Tina sleep on the very bed he’d vacated twelve hours before led to memories of them together in bed. After all, they’d slept in this bed before. And more than slept. He took a deep breath to rein in his sexy thoughts of Tina who, he reminded himself, was in emotional crisis, drugged and defenseless. But how could he not remember her this way, when she was lying only a few feet away, on his bed, looking like an angel with her head on his pillow? And wearing short shorts and a T-shirt. These days, she was much slimmer than the shapely little dive instructor he’d fallen for, but still very cute. Jamey assumed that pounds had been lost in the months since Hank died. Poor thing. Hell, they had to find the body soon. She didn’t have many more pounds to lose.
The bedroom chair sagged as he sank into it with a beer in one hand and the remote in the other. He’d keep an eye on Tina while she slept. Scrolling through the channels, Jamey found nothing more interesting than his thoughts of Tina, but he settled on a rerun of a cop show, the volume low. When they found Hank’s body, Tina would move on with her life. When that happened, what was he going to do with his life? Go back to Afghanistan to dream jump? He wasn’t even sure he was jumping with his own ability these days.
What had Milton said when he left, months earlier? “I hope to see you back here but, in light of what’s happened, we might not meet again.”
After the last jump, the medical tests turned up nothing unusual to account for his near-death experience. CT scans and MRIs eventually registered normal brain activity, even after Milton said he almost blew up the brain scanner during the jump. The medic on duty had been sure brain damage would result, but, weeks later, all the tests were normal.
“How you lived through that is a miracle.” The medic had shaken his head.
Jamey had no idea what went on in his brain during a dream jump, but many times since the last one, he’d wondered about the repercussions of doing this long-term. Especially after the tortured dreams he entered in Kandahar. There were so many unanswered questions about this psychic shit.
Taking a swig of Corona, he stared at the TV and thought about his recent jumps. The first strange dream had been Tina’s. First he was Hank, and then the shark. Somehow she jumped into Hank’s thoughts and he’d been a part of that.
The second dream, without a headache, had been with Hank and Tina diving to the cave. Jamey leaned forward and grabbed the pad of paper on the nightstand to write all this down.
In the next dream he and Tina were making love. He now guessed that was his own dream a
nd she’d jumped into it unintentionally. It seemed like there was no headache as long as Tina was the jumper.
He’d never known another jumper besides Uncle Don, and they’d never tried to jump together.
The strange thing was that, in Afghanistan, the worst headache came with a straight jump on the prisoner, Atash. Sixth Force was pretty sure that the Al Qaeda knew the Americans had someone who visited dreams. And that Atash was planted to draw out the man who could jump. He’d summoned a monster in the dream before Jamey knew what was happening. But how? That was the million dollar question that neither he nor Sixth Force had been able to answer. He and Milton had talked about it again the other day on the phone. Sure he could’ve been trained to kill the jumper if they found themselves in a dream together but how did he create that fanged monster?
Then it hit him. What if the kid was a jumper, too? The idea sent chills up his spine. Could that be possible? The thought that the other side had someone like him made Jamey’s blood run cold. Now that the prisoner was dead, there was no way to confirm this. He made the call to Sergeant Milton.
It took several tries to reach the Kandahar base, but he eventually connected. “Atash might have been a dream jumper.” While talking, Jamey scribbled question marks all over the page. Milton questioned how Jamey came up with this theory.
“I’m not sure.” Jamey couldn’t tell anyone about Tina jumping, or she’d be courted by Sixth Force to join the military. And, as long as he had breath, he would never let that happen. “I have this idea, that’s all.” Milton was probably accustomed to psychics having bull’s-eye hunches.
“Right now we’ve only assumed he was trained to kill in a dream but this new idea could be the answer we’ve been looking for.” He took a drag on his cigarette. “We’ll need to contact you for more information. Stay available.” The dread in Milton’s voice verified it would be very bad news for the American military if the bad guys had jumpers. And Atash had died before they could study him.
When Jamey hung up, he sat back and took the last pull on his beer. If the Al Qaeda knew about the Sixth Force jumper, he was glad he’d left the Mid-East. If they knew it was him, he’d be dead by now. Or captured. He was sure of this. And beyond that, Jamey had other things to think about. Tina’s jumping and her W.I.L.D. dreams, thinking she was awake when she wasn’t. Probably the diving dreams were Hank’s glimpses and when they were over, she simply kept dreaming on her own.
Jamey was sure this experience was unsettling for Tina, having lifelike dreams that got confused with reality. But, she had other problems right now. For one, she was probably being drugged by Noble. Shit. If she’d taken a roofie when she meant to take a different pill, she might be sick for days. Rufinol not only made you groggy, but nauseated.
Goddamn Noble. Luckily, Tina hadn’t had any alcohol tonight, which intensified the drug. Jamey put a water dish down for Obi, watched another mindless TV show, and grabbed a blanket from the hall closet. He’d find out tomorrow what the pill sediment was, and if it was Rufinol, Jamey would gladly blow the whistle on Tina’s trusted friend Noble.
Chapter 24
The water was surprisingly calm in the channel between islands as Tina steered Maui Dream along the West Maui coastline towards Molokai. Jamey positioned himself beside her, probably waiting for her to crumble. But she wouldn’t. Now that she had hope of putting all this to rest, she felt better than she had in months. She was terrified to find Hank’s body but determined. Turned out, she did want to move on. If Hank was dead, she wanted to know. She’d woken at Jamey’s place with this new attitude.
Passing Kapalua Bay, Jamey pointed to a turtle breathing on the surface. Sea turtles had to breathe every few minutes. Couldn’t stay down forever. Everything was a fricking metaphor for her life even if sinking below the surface was not a possibility now.
Jamey attempted to keep her distracted on the boat ride, pointing out sights, asking questions, keeping it light. Never had it been more important to find closure. He’d know what was at stake for her. What she’d known of Jamey, years before, didn’t equal how much she’d learned about him in the last weeks. He was a complicated man but still small-town nice.
“How did you ever figure out that you were jumping dreams?” she asked as they motored along.
“My childhood friend, Mark, told me about a dream on a sleepover at my house. We’d been fighting some bad guys in the dream, and I remembered the fight. When I told him I was there, he said I was crazy. I shut up after that, whenever I found myself in friends’ dreams. I told my dad, and he told his brother, who was a jumper. Uncle Don sat me down to swear me to secrecy.” He grinned at her like it was a simple boyhood inconvenience, when it probably had frightened him to death.
“My grandmother had strange dreams. Did I ever tell you that? I wonder if this is related in any way. ‘Magic dreams,’ she called them.”
Jamey’s eyes widened. “What are magic dreams?”
“I never knew. She said we needed to have a sleepover for me to have a magic dream with her.”
“You have got to be kidding.” Jamey’s face went white.
“You think my grandmother was a jumper?”
“Don’t you think it’s strange?”
“I do, now that you say that. I just remembered this yesterday.” But she’d never entered dreams before Jamey came back into her life. Not that she knew of, anyways.
“Maybe you got this ability from your grandmother, and it lay dormant until my ability passed to you, or Hank’s ghost did something. I don’t know.” Everything was up for grabs.
As they passed Honolua Bay, the site of Hank’s supposed death, Jamey stepped behind her and wrapped his arms around Tina’s shoulders, his chin resting on the top of her head. He’d always been a touchy-feely guy. She remembered years ago telling him jokingly to keep his hands to himself, and he’d said, “When you’re within touching distance, that is absolutely impossible.”
The wind picked up as they headed across the channel towards the garden island of Molokai. Obi found his usual place on the rubber mat between Tina’s feet. She recalled Obi’s lump, something she hadn’t thought about since the day before. The biopsy report seemed suspect now that her head was clearer, and now that Noble’s integrity was in question. The vet said it would be at least four days before they knew anything. She’d call the clinic when they opened.
See if they’d actually found it benign.
Molokai was not getting larger fast enough for Tina, and she struggled to lower her expectations with every mile. She needed closure but was still frightened. If they found Hank’s body, she’d be an emotional junk pile. And if they didn’t find him, she’d be a different kind of mess.
***
When the boat broke down two miles from the closest Molokai shore point, Jamey tried not to swear in frustration. His knowledge of marine mechanics was somewhat limited. If it was something serious, they’d have to paddle to the nearest shore.
“We’re about six miles from Maui, and maybe two from Molokai.” Tina opened the engine compartment like she knew what she was doing. “You any good with motors?” Jamey was hoping.
She propped open the cover and stared at the engine. “I know my own motor a bit.”
Jamey watched her bend over the engine compartment. “Go for it,” he said. The boat rocked with the push of the wind and waves in the exposed channel.
Obi jumped up on the bow to get a better view of what was out there. The boat was being pushed by the waves, but not towards Maui, or even Molokai, just straight down the widest part of the channel, towards the open water between Lanai and Maui. If they let the boat drift, they’d eventually hit a deserted side of Lanai sometime around midnight, he figured. If they didn’t want to spend the day waiting for that to happen, they’d have to start the engine soon.
Glancing at the compartment over Tina’s shoulder, Jamey squinted. Clean motor. “I’m impressed you know about this stuff,” he said. Tina was checking fluids, half her b
ody upended, like a duck diving for food. He tried not to stare at her butt, just in case she could see his reflection in a shiny engine part. He knew a bit about motors but wouldn’t intervene until she exhausted her knowledge.
From his vantage point, he could see something lying on the floor of the compartment. He reached down and grabbed the culprit.
“It’s the S belt.”
“I just replaced that thing.” She straightened up and sounded temporarily peeved. The serpentine belt was a pretty necessary piece of the motor, but they might be able to jury-rig the thing to get them up and running long enough to reach land. Not the sea cliffs. Risking a trip to the back side of Molokai with a broken S belt wouldn’t be smart.
“Have you got duct tape?” They were drifting farther from their target of Kanaha Rock, and were now headed out into the vast channel.
Tina looked hopeful. “Yes. Think we can rig it?”
Jamey turned the belt in his hand. “Maybe.” It didn’t look worn. Instead, it looked cut. He filed that information in his head under ‘Noble’ and took the duct tape from Tina.
She steered the boat to take advantage of the drift while Jamey taped the belt together. In the distance they could already see the shipwreck on the uninhabited side of Lanai, the pineapple island. He hoped they wouldn’t get much closer.
When the engine was running again, they set a course for Kaunakakai on Molokai. “I know the mechanic in town. He’ll have an S belt.” Tina sounded optimistic.
Jamey fixed the belt one more time on the way and they eventually motored in at the Kaunakakai Wharf just after two o’clock. Three other boats were tied to the wharf, and a small marlin hung alongside a set of fish scales. Jamey jumped to the concrete and tied up Maui Dream. As he stopped to admire the catch, Tina asked some men standing around drinking beer about the whereabouts of the mechanic. No one knew where he was.
