by Hester Young
This is getting weirder by the minute. “What direction is that?”
“Don’t waste your time chasing after Elijah Yoon. There are other people you should be looking into. People Lise knew. Her drug friends. Marvel Andrada. Talk to them. Watch them.”
“Sue, I’m not a private investigator. I write for Outdoor Adventures, for crying out loud.”
“You used to work for Cold Crimes,” she counters. “And you wrote a book, a whole book about that missing child in Louisiana. You can do this.” Her upper body is ramrod straight in the chair. “Please. I’ll pay you for your time. You find something, you tell me. That’s all I ask.”
I need to get the hell out of here. Something about this woman and her urgent, unblinking stare troubles me. “No money,” I say. “I don’t work for you. And I’m not following anyone, either. I’ll talk to a few people, that’s it.” I make a beeline for the door.
Outside, it’s getting dark. Students move briskly across the campus, on their way to evening classes. Soon, Sue will teach her students about the night sky, about planets and stars and black holes, explaining in precise terms the mysteries of the universe. What kind of hubris drives a person to try to understand a world beyond the one we live in, a world already replete with mysteries we can see and smell and touch?
Sue herself is a mystery, one I’m half afraid to unravel. Is she a distraught mother, searching for answers, begging me to be her legs? Or was this whole meeting some underhanded attempt to keep tabs on me? There are many reasons she might wish to steer me away from the Yoons, and they don’t all concern Naomi and Victor. I don’t trust Sue. For now, anything I learn, I’ll keep to myself.
* * *
• • •
BACK AT KOA HOUSE, I find Rae reading in the dim light of the rear patio. We’ve scarcely talked today, each of us caught up in our own activities, and she must be wondering about my visit with the Yoon boys earlier.
“Hey, lady.” I flop down in a chair, tired though it’s only seven thirty. The coquís are deafening tonight, a chorus of lonely-hearts searching for a froggy hookup. “You got a minute?”
Rae looks up and drops the open book onto her lap. It’s a romance novel, some shirtless man looming over a woman who hasn’t learned to manage her own cleavage.
“Your heroine could use a good bra fitting, huh?” I joke. “Must be that heaving bosom. I hear they’re hard to contain.”
She doesn’t crack a smile. “You sound like Mason,” she says. “But you know what? I read my Neil deGrasse Tyson on the plane, and I’ve earned this one. Heaving bosoms and throbbing members are vastly underrated.”
I sit across from her in a white wicker chair and kick up my feet. “That explains your interest in Kehena Beach. Were there a lot of naked people running around today?”
“Actually, the nudity wasn’t the most interesting part of the experience.”
“No?”
She flashes me a secret, knowing smile. “I met some very nice, friendly people at that beach. Kalo Valley folks, in fact.”
“People who don’t have jobs to go to on a Tuesday afternoon? Must be hippies.”
“Quit being so judgmental. It was a welcoming and open group. Anyway, I made us plans for tomorrow. We’re going to South Point,” she says. “It’s the southernmost point in the United States. I met a guy who’s going to take us.”
My eyes narrow. “You picked up some weirdo at the beach?”
“He’s a local guy, not some weirdo I brought home from a bar. We hit it off. I told him we’d pay for gas and food.” She’s toying with me, holding something back, but I can’t tell what.
“I’m not sure Mason would love this. Hanging out with some stranger you picked up at a ‘clothing optional’ beach—that doesn’t pass my sniff test, Rae.”
She laughs. “Oh, he’s definitely not a love interest.”
“Well, who is he then?”
A slow grin spreads across her face. “Guess.”
“Wait . . . you’re saying I should know this guy?”
“If you’ve been paying attention to all of the details of Lise Nakagawa’s life? Yes.”
I’m momentarily stumped. “Elijah Yoon?”
She shakes her head.
“Um . . . Jocelyn’s boyfriend? Kai?”
“Getting warmer.”
“I have no idea, just tell me.”
“Brayden Goerlich.” She waits for my look of shock but gets nothing. “Come on. The drug dealer, remember? Brayden! The one dating Kai’s mom?”
“Oh.” I still don’t see what she’s so excited about. I barely remember Kai and Jocelyn mentioning this guy. “That’s odd. You just ran into him?”
“It was a highly orchestrated run-in. I got his name from Thom, and lucky me, turns out Brayden has a habit of making very public plans on the Twittersphere.”
“That’s why you went to Kehena Beach? You stalked him on Twitter so you could stage a meeting? And now we’re all hanging out tomorrow?”
“Correct.”
I’m tempted to tell her we might be taking this Nancy Drew thing too far, but the truth is, I’m impressed. “Damn, woman. You’re turning into quite the detective. I mean, undercover topless—you’re all in.”
“Well . . . I was wearing a shirt when I met him.” Rae gives a modest shrug, but she’s clearly proud of herself. “Sue said she found marijuana in Lise’s drawer, right? I figure she probably got it from this guy. And when Brayden and I got to talking, he said he knew her, that he hung out sometimes with Kai and Lise and their friends, so . . .”
I wrinkle my nose. “What’s some old guy doing hanging out with teenagers?”
“Brayden’s not old,” Rae tells me. “He’s, like, twenty-two? Twenty-three? Kai’s mom must be a total cougar.”
I think it over. This is exactly the kind of person that Sue just instructed me to go after, and Rae’s people instincts are good. This Brayden kid might actually know something. But would he tell us? What kind of guy are we dealing with here?
“Are you sure we want to burn a whole day on this dude?” I ask. “What if he thinks he’s on a date with you? He obviously has a thing for older women.”
“It wasn’t like that,” Rae assures me. “He’s very Peace, Love, and Recycle. So he moves a little weed on the side, who cares? And South Point sounds awesome—big, windy cliffs and a green-sand beach. We’ll have a good time.”
I have mixed feelings about that, but it’s Rae’s vacation, too. I blew her off today to work, and she didn’t give me crap about it, not once. I owe her.
“Okay,” I say. “But I’m bringing pepper spray or something just in case Mr. Peace, Love, and Recycle turns out to be Mr. Duct Tape and Zip-Ties.”
Rae sighs at my general lack of faith in humanity but doesn’t object. “So tell me about the Yoon boys,” she says. “Did you get anything interesting out of them?”
“Not really. Just felt sorry for them, mostly.” I try to explain my protective instincts toward Adam and his brother. “The younger one, Raph—he reminded me a bit of Keegan. Rambunctious but sweet, you know?”
“And the older one, the one who was making goo-goo eyes at you?” She raises a delicate, insinuating eyebrow.
I laugh. “Oh please. If Adam was making goo-goo eyes, it’s because he’s practically a baby. You’d never know the kid was nineteen. He’s so socially stunted, it’s sad.”
We gossip for a few more minutes and I fill her in on my meeting with Sue, but upon review, my day hasn’t been enlightening so much as strange. I leave Rae to her novel, wondering how my coveted Hawaiian vacation has devolved into this: guilt trips from astronomy professors and day trips with drug dealers. And I still haven’t finished my article on Victor.
Back in my room, I drag out my laptop and dutifully begin to type. I fall asleep within the hour, laptop still balanced
on my thighs.
* * *
• • •
IT’S WELL PAST MIDNIGHT when I awake. Through the doors to the balcony, the moon shines bright. I step outside and discover a light rain falling, cool, almost sensuous against my skin. The raindrops hit the surrounding trees in a soft patter. I imagine little Raph, slumbering in his bed at Wakea Ranch. The island is sleeping, I think. Everyone is sleeping except for me and those frisky coquís.
A light blinks in the dark.
“What the . . . ?” I move to the edge of the balcony, staring at the woods.
The light, a flashlight or a lantern, flickers off for a few seconds and then on again, like a giant firefly.
Off. On. Off. Three flashes.
It’s a signal, of course. The same signal I saw one of the Nakagawa sisters making in my dream—right before her stalker revealed himself.
Could it be Jocelyn out there? I peer into the night as if my gaze might somehow penetrate the layers of jungle. Who would she be signaling to at Wakea Ranch? Elijah? Adam? Having seen Jocelyn’s passionate defense of Kai the other night, I find it hard to believe she’d be out on a rendezvous with a Yoon brother. I’ve been a teenage girl. Kai is a babe who exudes social capital. The Yoon boys? Tolerable, if you like the wounded-bird thing.
Still, my stomach is in knots. This could be it, the events of my dream unfolding before me. Perhaps he’s out there, watching in the night, waiting for her, Jocelyn or Lise or whoever she is. I consider waking Rae, the two of us dashing into the woods on some insane rescue mission, and cringe.
And then, another light, this one from somewhere across the woods. Back and forth they flash, two small beacons several yards apart, winking in and out as if in conversation.
I relax slightly. This isn’t a stalker catching someone alone and unaware. It’s a prearranged meeting. But of whom?
I watch one light move closer to the other in the dark, and then they abruptly die. This time, both stay out. They must have found each other, I think, and yet my uneasiness lingers. The more I see, the more I’m convinced that my dream was of these very woods. Which leaves two possibilities.
One, I saw a flash of the future. For whatever reason, Jocelyn will come out here for a secret meeting in the dark, and Stalker Guy will be waiting. Given what I know of Jocelyn, secret night meetings seem unlikely, but she’s a teenager. One never knows.
Two, I saw a flash of the past. Lise Nakagawa came out here, presumably on the night she went missing, to meet up with her boyfriend. She stopped by her house, dropped off the sweatshirt, and walked the couple miles out to Wakea Ranch. But instead of Elijah, she found him. And she never came home.
The rain has slowed to just a whisper, wet air more than actual droplets now. I shiver. Sue told me her daughter was dead, and I’m starting to suspect she was right. But if Lise’s gone, then who was out there tonight, signaling in the dark? How many people roam these woods at night, and why?
I crawl back into bed and burrow myself beneath layers of blankets, answers swirling through my head, none of them satisfying. It’s hours before I fall asleep again.
wednesday
fourteen
I open my eyes to the day’s first dim strands of sunlight and peer at the green and yellow bamboo décor. Home feels so very far away. I reach around the bedside table for my phone to check the time, but no amount of lazy groping produces the device. Reluctantly, I get out of bed. Gotta check my email, make sure nothing important has come in. I rummage through my purse, my luggage, yesterday’s pockets.
Nothing.
I rack my brain for the last time I had the phone with me. My bedroom, definitely, when I called Noah and the girls, and I’m pretty sure I brought it with me to Sue’s office. Less sure I had it on the patio when I was talking to Rae. Perhaps it slid out of my purse when I was driving, lodged itself under the passenger seat somewhere.
A quick examination of the car and patio turns up nothing, and both David and Thom deny any knowledge of my phone’s whereabouts. Trying to stamp down my panic, I head for the Tree Fern Room. The simple way to solve this is to have Rae call me.
Rae, as it turns out, is lounging in bed and playing with her own phone. “Hey!” she greets me without fully looking up from her screen. “Brayden should be by at nine. Does that work for you?”
“Nine?” It takes me a second to remember our date with the weed dealer. “Yeah, sure.”
“I’ll stop by the store and get snacks before they come.” Rae peers down at her iPhone. “Nice Instagram photo, by the way. Kind of arty. You should post some of the volcano stuff.”
“Instagram photo?” I have no idea what she’s talking about.
“That thing you posted.” She flips her phone in my direction. I see my Instagram account name, charcates4473, followed by a picture. A red flower folded inward in the dark, its thin, veiny bloom illuminated by the flash. Hibiscus, maybe—I think they close at night. It posted approximately five hours ago.
I stare down at the image, my arms breaking into goose bumps. “Someone’s messing around on my phone. I thought I lost it, but . . . somebody must have stolen it.”
“Wait, you didn’t post that?”
I shake my head.
“That makes zero sense.” Rae wrinkles her nose. “Why would someone steal your phone and post that?” She peers over my shoulder. “Any chance that it was Noah? Maybe he’s sending you a virtual flower.” She doesn’t actually believe that. We both know how strenuously Noah avoids social media, and flower photos are not his style.
“Noah doesn’t have access to my Instagram.” I frown. “I don’t even know the password to that account. It’s loaded on my phone, but I never use it.”
“How could somebody get into your apps, though? Doesn’t your phone have a security code?”
I chew on my lip. “I took it off for Tasha. She plays games on there.” Noah will be on my case big-time for this. He told me I needed a security code, told me repeatedly, but I brushed him aside in favor of whine-free grocery runs. “Oh God, Rae, I’m so screwed.” I do a mental inventory of all the apps on my phone, trying to gauge what the thief might have access to. Nothing financial, thank goodness, but my email and my personal pictures are up for grabs. I grab my laptop from my room and change the password to my email account.
“Some nice person probably found your phone and wants to get it back to you,” Rae says, ever the optimist. “Here, I’ll try calling you.” She gets immediately bumped to voicemail. “Did you check with David and—”
“Of course I did. They haven’t seen it.” I stare at my laptop screen, trying again to mentally retrace my steps. “I could’ve left it at the university yesterday when I went to see Sue. They had hibiscus on campus, I think.”
“It must be someone who knows you,” Rae muses. “Why would a stranger hit you up with a cutesy flower pic? Sign into iCloud and try Find My iPhone.”
She watches from behind as I fumble to input my ID and password. I’m so agitated I have to reenter them twice, and when I do, the news is disappointing. According to Find My iPhone, the current location of my device is unavailable, meaning my phone is dead, off, or switched to airplane mode. Annoyed, I request the last known GPS coordinates. I draw a sharp breath when I see the results.
Koa House or thereabouts, at 1:48 a.m. Around the time the hibiscus photo posted to Instagram.
Rae shifts uneasily. “Any you chance you’ve been sleepwalking?”
“No.” I rake a hand through my hair as the pieces start to fall in place. “I must have left my phone on the patio out back.”
“Yeah, but who besides David and Thom would possibly—”
“There were people in the woods last night,” I tell her. “I saw their lights. One of them must have taken it.”
Rae’s dark eyes turn deadly serious. “Charlie. That would mean someone was roaming around th
e property outside.”
I nod.
“If that’s true, you need to tell David and Thom about this.”
Downstairs, the table is already set with pineapple slices and a pastry basket. A pair of geckos scurry around the table’s edge, smelling fruit. I can’t reconcile the feeling of danger in my stomach with the sunshine and peaceful flora.
David pops in from the kitchen to greet us. “Morning, ladies! I was just about to bring in breakfast. Did you find your phone, Charlotte?”
“No, actually. Looks like it was stolen.” I nibble at a fingernail. “Listen, I know this sounds bizarre, but . . . I saw some lights in the woods last night. It looked like . . . I don’t know, like people meeting up.”
David sighs. “Oh, that.”
“You’ve seen it before?”
“It’s been going on for months,” David tells me. “I see those lights a lot when I’m up late. Thom and I figure it’s probably just Naomi’s boys screwing around. We thought about mentioning it to her, but . . . I didn’t want to get her kids in trouble. They don’t seem to be causing any problems. Unless . . .” He pauses. “You think they took your phone?”
“Someone did. It was here at one a.m. I must’ve left it out back when I was talking to Rae.”
“Huh. I wonder.” David puts a hand on his hip, considering.
“What?” Rae asks. “What are you thinking?”
David hesitates. “Nothing, I just . . . Naomi called us last night. She was a little upset.”
I groan. “Let me guess. She wasn’t thrilled about her boys’ being over here.”
“No,” David confirms. “Not thrilled. I don’t know if she would go so far as to steal, but . . .” He sees my horrified expression and tries to backpedal. “I shouldn’t have said that. Naomi’s difficult, but I don’t think she’s a thief.”
“You said she called you?” Rae asks. “I didn’t think she even had a phone.”
