Henchgirl (Dakota Kekoa Book 1)

by Rita Stradling

  “So what you’re saying is: that you think I’m stupid?” I said, dropping back to lean away from him in the seat. I shook my head slowly. “No way, no how, am I owing you. Fifty thousand delivered to me in cash the morning after I succeed in my mission to find Honua alive.”

  “Besides the stipulations I have already agreed to, here is what I offer: I will pay you fifty thousand in cash but won’t hand any money to you until the day after you recover Honua alive and deliver her to me. And… I will not hurt Keanu Hale for the time you are searching for Honua or three days starting tomorrow, which ever time ends first, unless my sister has been killed or I find out Keanu Hale played some willing part in her disappearance. If she is recovered alive during that time and he played no part in her disappearance, I won’t punish him. If he did, I will kill him.” His face lost any trace of the flirtatiousness or teasing as he said the last part.

  I knew that was the best offer I was going to get from the half-dragon. So, I opened my purse and set my gun in, then offered my hand.

  The moment his fingers wrapped around mine, I felt a buzz of energy flow between us.

  I had to fight to not automatically pull my hand back. I wasn’t sure if the buzz I felt was the bargain we were making actually physically crackling between us. Or, even more frightening was the idea that this feeling stemmed from a connection I created between us when I absorbed a piece of his soul and simultaneously coiled a piece of my soul into him.

  Both would be horrible if true, but worse still was how my hand did not seem to want to let go of the contact, my head was screaming, ‘this is bad! Really, really bad!’ Yet all the while it did not feel bad. No, the contact sent little sensations dancing up my arm. I wanted to explore his hand, play my fingers along the calluses and explore the dips between fingers as the energy coursed between us.

  It could be something he was doing to me; he could be sending this sensation into my arm. The moment the idea occurred to me, my mind clutched it. That had to be it. Half dragons loved to screw with your mind, make you think that the bargains you made with them had some physical manifestation, some supernatural binding to them. Being manipulated by half-dragons I could deal with, whereas I was not sure I could wrap my mind around any of the alternatives.

  When I pulled back, his fingers did not seem to want to unwrap from mine either. I still did not give him the satisfaction of showing how much the contact rattled me. I unhurriedly returned my hand to my lap and did not let my fingers drum across my leg or stretch, even though they ached to.

  Wyvern turned from me, backing up the little sports car into the road, making a utility truck screech on its brakes to avoid smashing into us. Poor guy probably just saw his business flash before his eyes almost hitting a Vervari like this.

  “Wyvern you are a jerk,” I said. I waved an apology at the driver because Wyvern had not even blinked in the man’s direction.

  Wyvern gave me a smirk and turned quickly back to the road.

  Good, that was where I wanted his eyes anyway.

  Looking ahead, at least I had clear deadlines; five days until we were evicted by the police, three days until Wyvern killed Keanu, and probably fifteen seconds until my head spontaneously combusted.

  “Where to now?” Wyvern asked, shifting into gear.

  “My house, I can’t go anywhere until my uncles return with my dampener. But after that, I plan to look over what is left of the Hale estate.” I pulled out the notebook that I had hidden in my purse; it would have been a little obvious that I was going to accept the case no matter what if I had let him see it.

  I had a collection of the little black covered notebooks at my house. I used a new one every assignment, then gave them to Glacier for his ridiculous, to the point of anal, record keeping.

  “Okay,” I said, clicking the back of my pen to open it. “Tell me everything about your sister, even things you would assume I already know.”

  The story was shorter than the car ride back, and Wyvern sped the whole way.

  He only discovered that he had a living mother and sister two years earlier. Wyvern had hired a private detective to find out his nationality for a homework assignment of all things. I wrote the private detective’s name down in bold letters, Mr. Ferguson Hodge. Mr. Hodge not only obtained a full record of Wyvern’s Mabi heritage, he also retrieved phone numbers for Kali Alaniu and her daughter Honua. Wyvern contacted them to find out if they had enough money to survive and Kali responded with seventeen years of returned letters as she had been trying to find him the whole time.

  Wyvern learned that after his father had seduced his mother, he had not visited during the pregnancy. He showed up on the day of Wyvern’s birth and just took him. The dragon had given no way to contact him, just left a suitcase of money with her parents, assuming Kali would not survive.

  Then Wyvern’s story became confusing.

  “Kali said she’s a… were-boar,” Wyvern said.

  “Come again?” I said, not writing the information down. “There’s no such thing.”

  “She told me she had been born a were-boar because she was a descendant of Mabiian royalty,” Wyvern said. He shifted gears as we turned onto a residential street; he was still going too fast though. He looked over at me and in response to my skeptical expression he said, “I had not heard of that either.”

  “Yeah, but I’ve lived here my whole life, I’m one fourth Mabiian. There’s no such thing.”

  Boars were the Mabiian Island chain’s own brand of predator. I knew most people did not think of pigs as predators, but if you put a human and a five-hundred pound boar with two-foot tusks in a pen and watch them fight it out, you would see who ended up becoming dinner. Boars were also smart; some people estimated they had almost a human level of intelligence. A were-boar would be a pretty terrifying creature, but there was no such thing, the were-animal infection came from dragons and there was no boar-dragon. Just to be sure I asked, “There isn’t even a boar dragon… is there?”

  “No, I checked,” he responded. “And I know Kali is human.”

  I would check into it still, but more than likely it was a delusion of a traumatized mind. A big fat dead-end. “Anyway, if she was any kind of were-animal before you were born, then she would’ve been unable to have you, dragon-infected humans can’t have dracon babies. That, I know is true. Okay, let’s move on, tell me about Honua.”

  Wyvern continued to tell me about how he and Honua had corresponded over frequent emails, through a secure server he set up. She told him about her school, her classes and her friends.

  “What friends did she mention?”

  He looked over at me, that flash of anger that he had shown me in the party resurfaced. “You, mostly. I’m surprised you don’t know who her other friends are. She sent me a picture of you two together; she told me how you learned sign language for her. But I guess it makes sense you don’t know, you weren’t really her friend.”

  I turned to Wyvern. “I’m going to make this really simple so you can follow: I’m going to school on an assignment. Honua isn’t part of that assignment.” I should have ignored the jibe, just focused on this assignment, but my fist wanted to slam into his well-defined jaw.

  This was why he had something against me from the very beginning, I realized. He was angry because I wasn’t the friend Honua cherished so much. It was because in his mind I had betrayed the devotion that Honua had wrapped around me.

  “You wouldn’t understand,” I said, swallowing. “You dracons who give the orders never understand what it’s like to have to follow them even when you don’t want to.”

  The smile he gave me sent a shudder through my whole body.

  “Look,” I said, clicking my pen rapidly and turning back to my notes, “Let’s stick to Honua, okay? Her other friend’s names?” I wrote down three, Brian who was in her math club, Rachel who was a hypochondriac and Amy; I knew none of them off hand and Wyvern knew no last names.

  “Who is Honua’s father, is he in the p
icture? Is he human?”

  “I know he’s Mabiian and I know he’s a low life that left them when Honua came out bleached white and deformed. He decided that Honua wasn’t his baby and just left,” Wyvern said this with so much anger, much more than he had for me that I was glad I wasn’t Honua’s absentee father.

  “His name?” I asked.

  “Patrick Dabu.”

  I wrote it down. “So, your father does or does not know you’re in contact with your mother and sister?” I asked.

  “Does not, he doesn’t even know Honua exists. I’ve hidden her from him,” he answered as a look of pride crossed his face. My guess was he was proud of outsmarting his father, like it was a high-stakes game he was winning.

  “What would your father do if he found out about Honua?”

  “I’m not going to let him,” He stated, a smug smile on his face.

  Lo and behold, my first suspect, Wyvern’s dear old dragon dad. I did not write his name down, I did not know his name or want to. I did not know what aspects the dragon had only that if Wyvern only inherited half of them, he was one powerful dragon. For all I knew, just thinking his name could call him to me or something equally bad. The best way to avoid the notice of the dragon was to avoid anything to do with him. For as long as I could…

  “Who suggested this vacation? We only knew Braiden was coming…”

  “I don’t ask permission to go anywhere and neither does my father,” Wyvern said, glancing over at me.

  Well, isn’t it great to be the master of the universe?

  He continued explaining, “My father is a sort of surrogate father to Braiden and his sisters, they were chosen as fit companions for me. My father visits much more often than their father Farris does. Father gave Braiden the vacation home for his eighteenth birthday and came along to show him around. I came along because I wanted to finally meet my mother and Honua.”

  The hole in that could swallow a shopping mall. Could Wyvern really be that over-confident that he could conceal his human family from a full-dragon? He led the dragon right to his family.

  “Where and when did you meet with Honua?” I asked.

  “I know what you’re thinking, but you’re wrong,” he said as he pulled up in front of my house. “Honua disappeared from a human house. My father doesn’t even employ anyone who could pass through those wards.”

  That he knew of.

  “And,” he continued, “We met in places my father would never go to, human movie theaters, the mall, a diner.”

  I grabbed the door handle.

  Wyvern said, “We will tell everyone we are dating.”

  I sunk back into my seat and turned to him. “No,” I said, but what I wanted to say was, ‘no freaking way in this world or any other.’

  See, I could be diplomatic.

  He met my gaze with a slow, arrogant grin spreading across his face. “It is the best explanation for why we will be spending so much time together,” he said, as if it was obvious.

  “How about the truth or some variation of it? That you hired me to find something?”

  “You have not been paying attention, Dakota,” he said, “I don’t want anyone to find out about Honua unless they need to know. I’ve thought it through; we will be a couple.”

  “No one would believe it,” I said, trying to keep eye contact with him.

  He looked me over, just like last night on the dance floor, appraising me. “You’re a bit skinny, not my usual type,” he gave me roguish smile, “But people expect men like me to go slumming on vacation.”

  I intertwined my hands, squeezing them together, a technique I employed to stop myself from jabbing my fingers into his eyes. “Thanks,” I said, dryly, knowing he probably thought he just complimented me, “but, I meant my family wouldn’t believe that I would go out with you.”

  “Yeah they would,” he said, completely confident. “I’m rich, powerful and attractive, people will easily believe it.”

  “You forgot modest and charming, but no—they won’t. First of all, I don’t date, and second—if I did, it wouldn’t be with someone like you.”

  “So Keanu isn’t your boyfriend?” he asked.

  “Not that it’s any of your business, but no, he isn’t,” I said.

  “Good,” he said, “Don’t kiss him again. It wouldn’t be appropriate if I was dating a dracon that goes around kissing humans.”

  “We’re not—”

  “Even if we don’t tell people that we’re dating, they’ll assume that we are at the very least hooking-up,” he interrupted, “We’ll be spending a lot of time alone together.”

  Why did I feel like I was sinking deeper and deeper into quicksand? I needed to do some research on Wyvern and on dragons. I needed to see how badly I had screwed my life up by wheeling and dealing with him.

  I opened the car door and said, “Let people think what they want, but I’m not going to pretend we’re anything other than…acquaintances who tolerate each other…barely. I have your phone number now; I’ll call you when I find out something.”

  Translation: don’t call me, I’ll call you. I shut the car door and walked toward the house.

  “I’ll see you in a couple of hours, baby,” Wyvern called out of his open window, and he took off before I could manage a response.

  Chapter Twelve

  The spray of the water as I turned on the faucet in our guest bathroom soaked through my shorts and dripped down my legs. I hated our guest bathroom; it stood for everything I despised about my life. It was cluttered with extravagant, non-functional furnishings, like the wrought-iron towel rack filled with expensive never used white towels that might even collapse if you actually tried to pull a towel out. The worst part was the lotions, some of them had two hundred dollar price tags ‘accidentally’ left on.

  I was only using it because Mele and I had raced for my bathroom and I lost. Another three-quarters of the gallon of tea down and I was feeling like an over-used faucet. At least I was not suffering alone.

  When I returned from my drive with Wyvern, I found Mele sitting on the couch with her arms crossed. “That was him, wasn’t it?” Anger had emanated from her like smoke.

  When I did not respond, she continued with, “So, let me get this straight: that thing beats you until you’re half dead, almost eats you then kidnaps you. Then you decided to go on a Sunday drive with it?”

  “Is it Sunday?” I had said, slumping on the couch.

  “So not the point,” she said, staring at me as if there was some sort of answer she could drag from my expression; she did not know that I trained to prevent that for years. “What is going on?”

  I opened my mouth to lie; lying was usually my first reaction these days. An image flashed in my mind, Mele armed with only a knife, stabbing the dragon, its blood showering her. Mele deserved at least some of the truth, she had earned it.

  “He gave me three days to find Honua alive, or he’ll kill Keanu.”

  She just stared at me for a prolonged silence. Then she asked, “Do you think he’ll do it?”

  “There’s no doubt in my mind that he will.” I tried to think of a way to explain it to a human and said, “He thinks that if he leaves Keanu alive then it’ll be a sign of weakness; in his eyes it’ll be his responsibility to kill Keanu unless he finds the true culprit of Honua’s kidnapping. My guess is that the only reason he did not already kill Keanu is because he needs my help to find Honua; Wyvern can’t enter the school or the Hale estate, and those are the places with all the clues to her disappearance.”

  “You mean he needs us to find her,” Mele said.

  “No, I didn’t,” I said.

  “Um, yes, you do. You need my help.” She re-crossed her arms, stubborn as a house cat when its dominance over the couch was threatened, and about as fragile. “First of all, I know more people than you and most of them are scared of me. Second, my mom has worked for Senator Hale since before I was born, Keanu is like my brother. I know you and Keanu have this thing goin
g, but he means as much or more to me; you’re not leaving me out of this.”

  We were both distracted by Mele’s phone ringing and there was not much more that I could think of to say. As much as I balked at the idea of having any human be involved in a ‘mission,’ Mele was right, at school, she was the one with the power and influence.

  The phone call was the first in a long stream of responses we received back from our friends. Ophelia reported that everyone who had hidden in the basement had escaped without a scratch. She did not know about Keanu and Hunter who ran out as soon as Keanu came to and recovered from his disorientation.

  I had completely forgotten that I knocked out Keanu last night.

  Ophelia had not seen him when the fire-crews evacuated the group from the basement and no, she had not talked to anyone this morning. The other people who called were even less helpful.

  When I called Honua’s mother’s phone number, an older woman’s voice answered with, “Are you calling on behalf of Honua?”

  I said, “No, my name is—”

  “Sorry, we’re keeping this line open,” the woman said, interrupting, and then I heard a click.

  When I called again the phone rang until an answering machine picked up. There was a recorded message from Honua’s mother saying that if anyone had information on Honua to call her mother on her cell phone number immediately. Every time I called the number she gave for her cell it went straight to a message.

  I gave up calling her as I finished the last of the tea and I was finally allowed to shower off the rubble that still clung to my hair like giant lice.

  After my shower, I did a quick internet search on Patrick Dabu, Honua’s biological father. I immediately found a record of him; Patrick Dabu was currently on Waibibi halfway through serving a one-hundred and five month sentence for selling stolen firearms.

  Patrick Dabu was definitely a low life and also definitely not our kidnapper.

  I had shut down my computer and quickly headed downstairs. Even though I took over an hour upstairs, when I came down Mele still had not heard from Keanu.