The Secret of Fire Island (Kristi Cameron Book 1)

by Cynthia Griffith

  “Yes!” The groups split up and grabbed backpacks with water and snacks. The girls and Skeeter waved goodbye as they headed into the trees. There was no chance they would get lost. The path they had carved the day before with the machete was narrow but clear. Steve and Rachel went one way down the beach and Dan and Pete went the other.

  “I don’t know, Steve. Do you think we should have let the kids go off by themselves? It makes me nervous to have them wandering around the island with a kidnapper on the loose.” Rachel trudged alongside her husband through the sand. She looked back towards their campsite. Dan and Pete were already out of sight.

  “Well, Honey, Dan and Pete are big guys and they both are pretty levelheaded. They’re smart kids. I’m sure they’re not going to take any chances. As for the others—they’re good kids, too. We checked the area around the waterfall very thoroughly yesterday. It was deserted alright. There wasn’t a sign of anyone—not even any footprints. I don’t know what Kristi expects to find, but I think they’ll be okay. Besides, they’re in the Lord’s hands. He can take care of them better than we can.”

  Rachel took her husband’s hand and smiled. They kept walking, cautiously crossing each stretch of beach, constantly scanning the trees and bushes bordering the shore. “Have you made a decision yet about the boat, Steve?” she asked after a while.

  “Not yet. I think the Lord will show us what to do when we get there.”

  They arrived at the inlet in good time and were relieved to find the boat still there. It looked like no one had been around since the girls’ discovery of the boat that morning. Steve got in and looked around. Rachel carefully skirted the boat on the narrow bank of the stream. She walked to the front of the boat and suddenly exclaimed, “Steve—look at this!” She held up a rope and said, “Look—the boat’s come untied!”

  A moment later Steve let out a quiet yahoo! “What?” Rachel asked coming back to stand near him.

  “Look at this!” he said triumphantly. He held up a key ring with two keys on it. “The ignition key to the boat! I found it right here under the floor mat!” He laughed. “I’ve been praying all along that the Lord would show us if we should take the boat or not. I think we have our answer! The boat’s already untied, the keys were just waiting to be found. Honey, I think this boat is just begging to go with us!”

  Rachel laughed. “Hey, buddy, could you give a girl a ride? It sure beats the long walk back to camp!” They pulled the boat out of the tiny inlet and once they were out in the surf, climbed aboard. A minute later they were speeding over the waves, hair blowing in the wind, back to their campsite.

  ____________

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  ____________

  Ka Lua Pele

  Skeeter was the first to break through the trees into the clearing. “Come on, you guys!” he called back. “It’s right here!” His voice bounced back from the rocks of the cliff. It was quiet in the small glade with just the songs of the birds and the sound of tumbling water. The waterfall rushed down the face of the cliff, cooling the muggy air of the rain forest.

  “Quiet, Skeeter!” Kristi reminded him. They put their backpacks down and looked around.

  “I don’t know what it is about this place,” Leilani said, “but I get such a feeling of peace just being here.”

  “Me, too!” Robyn said. “I don’t get quiet very often, but this place almost feels like a church. It’s so beautiful!”

  “Maybe that’s why I had such a strong feeling that we needed to come back here,” Kristi said. “I don’t even know what to look for, but somehow, whatever it is, I think we’re going to find it here.” She paused and looked around. “Maybe we should look for some sort of clue, maybe something carved into a rock around the pool. We searched the cliff wall pretty thoroughly yesterday and I don’t think there’s anything there or we would have seen it then.”

  “What kind of clue, Kristi? You mean like a painted picture on a rock, or a carved arrow or something?” Anna asked.

  “I don’t know. I think we would recognize it when we see it. Let’s look at each of these rocks surrounding the pool. You know what? I think maybe we should actually get into the water so we can see the other side of them, as well, and below the water level, too. The water is not deep at all, see? I can touch the bottom with my fingertips when I reach in. I still have my swimsuit on beneath my clothes. How about the rest of you?”

  “I do, too.” “Me, too.” They quickly pulled off their shorts and T-shirts. Skeeter was the first one in. “Brrrr—it’s kind of cold!” he warned.

  One by one they slipped into the pool. The water was only up to their waists, and as Skeeter said, it was chilly, but within minutes they were becoming used to it and it wasn’t so bad. They each took a section of the pool and studied the rocks and boulders along the rim of that section. They turned the small, loose stones and ducked their heads under the water to check the rocks just below the surface. After a half an hour in the water, they had found nothing at all. Frustration was on Kristi’s face when she looked around the pool, trying to think what they could have missed.

  Suddenly her eyes widened in dismay. “Where’s Leilani?” she blurted. Robyn and Anna stared at her. Skeeter spun around in the water, looking for the missing girl.

  “She was right there a moment ago! I saw her!” Kristi exclaimed.

  “I did, too!” Robyn said. “She was just a couple feet away from me!

  They looked around the clearing, and not seeing her, they began calling her name frantically. The water in the pool was so clear they could see every rock on the bottom, but they searched every inch of it with their arms and feet as well.

  “Leilani! Leilani, where are you? Leilani!” their voices echoed around the clearing. Leilani had simply disappeared.

  Leilani wasn’t far away. She heard them calling her, but she was standing in shock at the scene before her eyes. A minute before she had been examining the rock wall near the waterfall once more. The constant flow of water over the years had smoothed the rock to a glass finish. She ran her hands over its surface, feeling for any carvings or niches they may have missed. Finally she stepped under the waterfall itself. It felt like a cool shower, tumbling over her head and shoulders. She could see sunlight shining through the falling water like little diamonds, but her view of the pool in the clearing and of her friends was blocked by the dazzling flow.

  To her surprise, the rocky wall was not flat beneath the water. The space behind the falling drapery of water hollowed out and she was able to step back into a shallow niche where the water did not reach her. It was dark and she couldn’t see much but she continued to run her hands over the rock wall, searching for something, anything.

  Suddenly she felt something. Her hand slipped into a large crack in the wall. She felt along its edges, the length and width of it, and realized that it was wide enough for her to slip through. She hesitated a moment. She had no flashlight with her and she was a bit afraid to go alone. She finally decided to step just inside the crack, where she could still see the daylight coming through.

  There was plenty of room for her slender body to slip through the opening in the wall. She took a step into the darkness and then stopped in her tracks. She had moved into a narrow tunnel, only seven or eight feet long. It was not pitch black as she expected. A flickering light shone through the other end of the tunnel, drawing her forward. She could hear the noise of the falling water behind her, and even the voices of her friends, but her only thought was to see what was beyond the tunnel.

  Leilani moved cautiously through the passageway to the opening. She gazed into a cave. It was large, filled with shadows where the light from flickering torches did not reach. She saw the torches set in the walls, and ten or twelve wooden crates stacked around the room-like space, and then in the shadows at the far side of the cave, she saw her grandmother.

  Leilani stood rooted to the spot for a moment. Her grandmother was tied to a chair, with a gag tied across her mouth. Her eyes w
ere wide, and little sounds came from her as she stared across the space at her granddaughter’s sudden appearance.

  “Grandmother!” Leilani cried as she rushed to her side. “Oh, Grandmother, I’ve found you!” She quickly pulled away the handkerchief that was tied across her grandmother’s face.

  “Leilani!” her grandmother gasped. “Oh, Leilani! How did you get here? How did you find me?”

  “Grandmother, are you alright? Did Michael hurt you?” Leilani asked, frantically trying to untie the knots that bound her grandmother to the chair.

  “No, no! I’m fine, Leilani! Just thirsty and frightened. But how did…?”

  “Oh, Grandmother, just a moment! My friends! I forgot all about them! I have to tell them I found you!” From a distance she could hear them calling her name over and over. She could hear the panic in their voices. “I’ll be right back, Grandmother! I have to get them.”

  She ran back to the tunnel and then stepped through the wide crack in the wall. She burst through the waterfall and called, “Here! Here I am!”

  “Leilani!” Four frightened faces whipped around to look at her in confusion. “Where were you?” “What happened?” they clamored.

  “My grandmother! I’ve found her and she’s okay! Come on, I’ll show you!” Her hair was plastered to her head where she had been pelted with the waterfall, and she was breathing heavily, but she was smiling radiantly.

  They watched in amazement as she stepped back through the waterfall, and then they followed her. Skeeter eagerly disappeared through the crack in the wall, but the girls were a bit more nervous. Kristi grabbed hold of her brother’s arm and slid through behind him. Robyn and Anna brought up the rear. They quickly moved through the short tunnel into the cavern beyond.

  Leilani’s grandmother was still in the chair. Leilani ran to her, kneeling beside the chair and fumbling with the ropes around her arms and ankles. Kristi and Robyn rushed over to help her.

  “Grandmother, these are my friends who have been helping me look for you. You’re going to be okay now, I promise. Kristi’s parents are on the island, too, and they will take care of us. Her dad is a pilot. He’ll fly us back to Oahu and we’ll go to the police then and tell them what Michael’s done.” She stopped and looked around the cave. “Where is Michael, anyway?

  “Leilani, we have to hurry!” her grandmother said urgently. “He’ll be back any minute! He took one of the crates to the boat, but he’ll be back for more.” She clutched Leilani’s arm as the ropes fell away, and then threw both arms around her granddaughter’s neck. They were both crying then in their relief to be back together again. The last time they had seen one another had been on the day Leilani’s mother died. The stress and worry of the following three months disappeared as they wept together.

  Leilani finally stepped back. “Did Michael hurt you?” she asked again as she studied her grandmother’s face. She rubbed the red marks on the older woman’s wrists where the ropes had cut in.

  “No, Leilani,” she said. “But he tied me up and told me he was going to load these crates into the boat and then leave me here tied up when he left the island. He said once he had the treasure loaded into the boat there wouldn’t be room for me, and it would be better just to leave me here anyway so I couldn’t go to the police!”

  “Treasure!” the young people exclaimed looking around the rock chamber.

  “Yes! Leilani, those wooden crates hold the treasure of our ancestor, Queen Lili`uokalani! I’ve looked inside of them! I had heard the stories all my life of the treasure, of course, but never really believed them. Michael believed in it, though, and that is what this is all about, why he stole you away from me, and then kidnapped me when you got away from him.”

  “Yes, and now I have both of you, don’t I? And the treasure, too!” a man’s voice said. Prickles of fear and dismay raced down the arms and spines of the group gathered in the cave. They turned to see Michael Laird step out from the shadows into the torchlight.

  “Michael!” Leilani whispered, her voice trembling in fear.

  “Hello, Leilani,” he said. “I see you found us—and you brought a few friends with you, too. I heard your plane flying over the island the other day. I’ve been expecting you. Oh yes, your grandmother and I were nice and cozy in this cave yesterday when you were nosing around. We heard you, but dear old grandma couldn’t get a word out to call for help could you, old lady?”

  Leilani’s grandmother stood slowly to her feet and faced Michael. She stood proudly erect, as tall as her petite frame would allow her. She looked fearless, but Leilani could feel her legs shaking as she supported her.

  Kristi was on the other side of the older woman, holding her other arm. She looked at Leilani’s grandmother as Michael spat out his ugly words, and saw that she was not really old at all. All this time she had been picturing her as a frail little eighty year old woman with white hair and a cane, maybe. The truth was Leilani’s grandmother was probably not much older than fifty or fifty-five. Her hair was as dark and lustrous as Leilani’s, and her still youthful face was pretty and unlined with wrinkles. She was small—not much taller than Kristi or her friends.

  “Michael, think about what you are doing,” she said in a strong, firm voice. “The situation has changed now. You cannot harm all these young people. Their parents are here, as well, and I am sure they’ll be looking for them soon—and they won’t stop until they find them. They’ll be calling in the authorities, as well, and soon the island will be crawling with police. Why don’t you just take the treasure? Load it all into your boat and leave. I don’t care about the treasure, anyway. I never have. Leave us alone and just go!”

  Michael’s face darkened with rage. “Leave! Take the treasure and just go, you say? Well, that was what I was going to do, old lady, until I came out of the forest near where I’d tied the boat, dragging that crate, and saw their parents speeding away in my boat! They stole my boat! You’re stuck with me now!” he shouted. “All of you! I’ll get my boat back and then I’ll leave you all—including your parents—tied up and left to rot in this cave!”

  Leilani put her arms protectively around her grandmother. “We’re not afraid of you, Michael. I’m not afraid of you! You’ll never get away with this. I’ve learned one thing through all of this—and that is that God cares about me and all my problems! He is watching over me every minute—even when I am deep inside this cave—and He will never leave me or forsake me. He—”

  “Ha!” Michael snarled. “So you’ve got religion now, huh? What? You think these old Hawaiian gods will help you?” He gestured towards the walls and for the first time the young people noticed that there were tiki figures carved into the rock all around them.

  “No, not the tiki gods—the one, true and living God. He is my Savior, and my grandmother’s Savior—”

  “And He’s our Savior, too,” Kristi spoke up bravely. “These tikis are merely carved from rock. They are not alive, they cannot hear if we were to bring our problems to them. But our God does hear our prayers. The tiki gods have no power but our God is all-powerful—”

  “Power? You want to talk about power?” Michael roared. “Well, I’ve got all the power!” He pulled a gun from his pocket and waved it at them. “Look who’s got the power now! Let’s see your God help you out of this little problem,” he laughed. “I’ve got the power—not your God! You’re in my hands now!”

  “No, you’re wrong!” Kristi said softly. “We’re in God’s hands—always have been, and always will be!”

  Before Michael could say another word, the floor of the cave began to shake and a rumble filled the air. Cracks suddenly appeared across the walls and ceiling of the rock chamber, and dust and small stones fell from the spaces above their heads. One of the torches flickered out.

  “Earthquake!” Skeeter yelled.

  “Ka lua pele!” Leilani’s grandmother cried out. “It’s the volcano!” The girls screamed and fell to the floor as it heaved. Skeeter crouched nearby with his arm
s covering his head. Leilani’s grandmother threw herself over her granddaughter, trying to protect her with her own body. The ground continued to tremble, and several of the wooden crates fell from where they were stacked. One of them burst open, spilling jewels and gold all over the floor.

  Michael Laird stood across from them trying desperately to stay on his feet. A look of shock and fear was on his face—fear of far more than a volcano or earthquake. He turned as if to run, and at that moment a boulder broke loose from the wall above him and crashed down upon his head and shoulders. He crumbled to the floor and didn’t move.

  The floor shook for a few more seconds, but eventually the tremors subsided and all was still and quiet in the cavern. Dust filled the air and they stood up one by one, coughing and brushing the dirt and dust from their hair and bodies.

  “Look—Michael’s not moving.” Leilani said.

  They looked at the man on the floor across the chamber. Skeeter cautiously moved forward with Kristi right behind him. She grabbed his arm and pulled him back before he could reach down to turn the older man over. The gun was near Michael’s hand. Kristi kicked it away, and it went spinning across the floor. She could see that he was breathing, but blood seeped from a gash on the back of the head. His eyelashes did not flutter. Michael Laird was unconscious.

  “Quick!” she said. “Let’s tie him up before he wakes up. Hurry, Robyn, bring me the ropes he used on Leilani’s grandmother!” She and Skeeter worked quickly with Robyn’s help tying his hands behind his back and his ankles and knees together as tightly as they could. They checked and double-checked their knots.

  Anna and Leilani were on the other side of the cavern caring for her grandmother. They helped her back to the chair and gently seated her. They found several canteens of water and made sure she drank her fill before they passed it around to the others and took some for themselves. The dust from the earthquake had dried their mouths and they were grateful for the cool water.