by Toby Neal
“Hey, Sweets,” her dad called from the kitchen. “He’s excited to see you.” Lei heard baby Kiet yell, “Ba-ba-ba!”
“I’m coming!” Lei exclaimed, slipping her shoes off onto the rack beside the front door. “Let me just drop off my weapon.” She padded quickly to the bedroom, draped the shoulder holster over the headboard of the king-sized bed, emptying her badge and accoutrements into a basket on the side table. She and Stevens were going to have to start locking up their weapons soon, but they had a few months more until Kiet began crawling around and getting into everything—and soon they’d have a second baby to manage as well.
Lei was eager to take a shower, but Kiet was waiting. She hurried across the polished wood floor of the living room to the kitchen and broke into a smile at the sight of her stepson in his baby carrier on the table, waving his hands, one tooth shining like a pearl in the big grin he gave her.
“Who’s my handsome boy?” She smiled into Kiet’s jade-dark, smoky green eyes. His shock of black hair always stood on end, and it quivered like a rooster’s tail as she unstrapped him. The baby immediately grabbed her curls with both hands, giggling as she lifted him and blew on his tummy. He kicked his legs and giggled some more, and she hugged him close, turning to her father. “He’s in a good mood, Dad.”
Wayne was checking something on the stove. By the smell, she guessed it was teriyaki chicken. “He’s had a great day. Now that the tooth is out, he’s back to being our happy boy.”
Lei put the baby on her hip and took one of his chubby hands in hers, then pretended to waltz around the kitchen. Kiet squawked with excitement.
“Don’t get him too riled up before dinner, or he’ll spit up. Remember what happened last time,” Wayne said.
“Oh yeah.” Lei snuggled her face into Kiet’s delicious neck and blew, and he giggled again. “I’ll calm down. I have to go shower anyway, in a minute.”
“He’s not going to want to let you out of his sight.”
“Is that so?” Lei swung Kiet around in front of her, and he laughed again.
“I’ll give him his bath in the sink. That’ll distract him.” Wayne turned on the water.
“Until Daddy gets home,” Lei said. Stevens had a different way with Kiet than she did, but the baby seemed to enjoy being with his dad just as much.
Wayne ran the sink full of warm water, and Lei undressed the baby, stripping off his onesie and diaper. Wayne, his smile indulgent, checked the water temperature with his wrist and gestured for Lei to bring him over.
“Come on in. The water’s fine, little man,” he said, taking his grandchild, but the minute Kiet’s feet touched the water, the baby drew them up against his body, squinching his face. “Oh, not warm enough?” Wayne added more hot water, holding the baby close.
Lei left them sorting that out and went back to the bathroom off the master bedroom. She showered, and as she did these days, checked in with the changes in her body. Her breasts were a size larger and tender, and her belly had a fullness to it that had tightened the waistband of her jeans. Another thing no one had told her about pregnancy—how taut her uterus would be, like she was growing a coconut in there. Other than occasional nausea and an acute reaction to smells, Lei felt great.
It was a strange feeling that her body knew what to do all on its own. She still felt surprised that this was the direction her life had gone—marriage, motherhood, living in a house with her dad as the “manny”—but she couldn’t imagine another life now. The grief that she wasn’t sharing this with her beloved aunt still came over her in waves, and this time she shut her eyes and turned her face into the flow of water from the shower, letting the sorrow move through her.
She was out of the shower and playing with Kiet out on the porch when Stevens drove up in his brown Bronco. Sitting in the old porch rocking chair, she turned Kiet outward as Stevens got out of the truck. The baby flexed his legs, hopping and leaning toward his father.
“Hey, little man.” Stevens came up on the porch, leaning down to kiss the baby. Lei drew back, sniffing, before he could kiss her.
“Yuck. Shower first. Been near a fire?”
“Yeah. You saw the smoke earlier?”
“Sure did. Another cane fire. It was out by the time I passed it.”
“Fire caught a body this time. I’ll tell you when I’m out of the shower and you’ll let me kiss you.” He winked as he went inside. Kiet bounced and strained after his father as Stevens disappeared into the house.
Lei spun the baby around. “He’ll be back. In the meantime, you’ll have to make do with me.”
Kiet grinned, grabbing a handful of her hair and putting it in his mouth. She was still detaching it as she made her way back to the kitchen. “Can I help you with anything, Dad?”
“Nope. Tell that husband of yours dinner’s ready in fifteen minutes.” Wayne was tossing a salad. He’d learned kitchen skills in prison, where he’d been on kitchen duty for years. He prepared healthy meals for the family five nights a week, kept the house picked up, and took care of the baby during the day. Lei insisted on paying him a small salary, and he had his own cottage. So far the arrangement seemed to be working out. As far as Lei was concerned, it was close to perfect, and keeping busy with the baby seemed to be helping Wayne stay distracted from the loss of his sister.
“I’ll go tell Stevens,” Lei said. She tried to put the baby in his bouncy seat, but he grunted and writhed and arched his back, so she toted him back into the bathroom, opening the shower to say to Stevens, “Dinner in fifteen. Is your brother still coming?”
“Said he was,” Stevens said, not turning around. She took a minute to enjoy the view of his long, muscular back as he rinsed his hair under the flow of water. Then Kiet pulled her hair again, and Lei sighed as she turned away. Chances to join Stevens in their oversized shower were few and far between nowadays, with the baby to keep entertained and her father always around.
She heard the beep-beep-beep on the control panel by the front door that told her someone had punched in the code and activated the gate—probably Jared. Only a handful of friends had the code. Lei felt her spirits lift—she enjoyed Jared’s company, and his presence at their family dinners livened things up.
She walked out onto the porch as Jared drove up in the lifted tan Tacoma he drove, the pipe racks on the truck stacked with his “toys”—a couple of surfboards, a stand-up paddleboard, and a single-man canoe.
“Hey, bro,” Lei called as he got out of the vehicle. She held up Kiet’s hand and waved it at Jared. Her brother-in-law grinned, walking toward her with the swift grace he shared with Stevens. He had the same height and the same blue eyes, but his features were more regular and chiseled, and he had a leanness that looked whipcord strong. As a firefighter, he spent time working out that Stevens didn’t put in. When he wasn’t at the station, he was out enjoying the ocean sports of Maui. All that added up to spectacular.
“Hey, sis. Hope you weren’t the one cooking,” Jared said with that wicked grin that Lei knew had kicked a lot of hearts into overdrive. She pretended to punch him in the rock-hard midsection, and he folded comically, making Kiet laugh, a burbling sound Lei loved.
“You know better than that,” Lei said. “Take your nephew, please. He’s eating my hair again.”
“He has good taste,” Jared said. “Hey, buddy.” He pried Kiet’s hands out of Lei’s hair and lifted him up. “How’s my favorite future firefighter?”
“He’s going into something safe. Like accounting,” Stevens called from inside the house. “Stop that evil talk.”
Jared grinned again, heading into the house with the baby, and Lei racked her brain for who she could set him up with. Sophie Ang? Her friend was still single, though it had seemed like Sophie had a crush on Alika Wolcott, her MMA fighting coach…Lei tried to imagine her serious FBI tech agent friend with dar
edevil, fun-loving Jared. They were so different, it just might work.
She followed Jared into the house and helped set the table while Jared and Stevens discussed the fire and the “human chicken wing” found on the side of the road. “What do you think of the new fire investigator? Tim Owen?” Stevens asked.
“Seems to know his fire science. I’ve taken him out stand-up paddling. Since we’re both new to the island, we’ve been getting out on the ocean together.”
“I envy your schedule,” Stevens said. It wasn’t the first time he’d said that, Lei thought. Maybe the time had come for them to just work the hours they were supposed to—but she doubted either of them would be able to stick with those kinds of resolutions the next time a big case came along.
“Thanks, Dad,” Lei said, kissing her father’s leathery cheek quickly as she took a large casserole dish from him. “This looks so good. So what about that fire victim? Any ID?”
“No. A John Doe at this point,” Stevens said.
“Hey, Mr. Texeira, this looks great!” Jared said, eyeing the food. He’d handed Kiet off to Stevens and now he took the pot of rice from Wayne. “Thanks so much for having me.”
“Always room and food for family,” Wayne said. “Hope you brought that dessert you promised me last week.”
“Oh, yeah, thanks for reminding me. I left it in the truck.”
Jared set the pot of rice on the table and took off. Lei quirked a brow at her father. “What’s he bringing?”
“Surprise. Let’s sit down while the food’s hot.”
They gathered around the picnic table on the covered back deck, mercifully screened from mosquitoes, and Stevens was able to get Kiet into his seat.
“My turn to feed him tonight,” Stevens said.
“His rice cereal’s in the microwave,” Wayne said, carrying a big wooden bowl of salad past Lei to set on the table as she fetched the baby’s bowl of cereal. Jared returned, with something in a brown paper bag that he stowed in the freezer.
They ate, sharing snippets about the day. Jared told them about the rash of arson cane fires. “There’ve been four of these, as you guys must have seen in the news. But now that there’s been a homicide, it takes things up a notch. With you guys working with Tim, I hope we’ll get the arsonist sooner rather than later.”
Wayne shook his silver-shot, curly head. “Homeless guy had to be pretty desperate, sleeping in a cane field.”
“Yeah, I hate even going in them. Kind of claustrophobic, the way the cane grows so high,” Lei said. “He was out of luck once the fire started.”
“Just what I thought,” Stevens replied. “It’ll be interesting to see if there’s more to it than just in the wrong place at the wrong time.” Lei watched him feed Kiet a mouthful of rice cereal with the soft plastic baby spoon. Kiet smacked his thighs in excitement, then flailed his hand in an attempt to catch the spoon. “Catch it with your mouth, little man,” Stevens said, smiling as he got another bite into the baby.
Lei put her hand on Stevens’s thigh, kneading the muscles there. His patience and tenderness with Kiet made her love him in new ways. But happy scenes like this always reminded her of Anchara, Kiet’s mother and Stevens’s ex-wife, who’d been murdered a few months ago. The baby’s presence with them was wholly due to tragedy. Her killer had been caught, but Lei still thought there was more to the picture than the man had ever confessed.
But maybe Anchara’s killer had been the shroud killer. After he was taken into custody, things had gone quiet. For more than four months there had been an escalating series of events, but since the arrest, there had been nothing further. Lei took a bite of salad, wondering if she could get away to her computer after dinner. She had a secret she was working on—and there would be hell to pay if Stevens found out about it.
Chapter 3
“I need to do some office work after dinner,” Lei said to Stevens. “Can you keep him busy until bedtime?”
“No problem—right, buddy?” Stevens said, getting another spoonful into the baby, who smacked his gums happily.
“I’ll see you tomorrow, bright and early,” Wayne said, getting up and clearing his plate. “Good night.”
“Not staying for dessert?” Jared said. “Let me clear the table and I’ll get it.”
“Oh yeah.” Wayne sat back down. “Wouldn’t miss that.”
“Give me a few minutes. Let me earn my meal.” Jared cleared the table efficiently, and Lei, sipping her glass of water, thought how nice it was that not one of the men in her life had a problem with just doing what needed to be done around the house. She’d heard enough grumbles from Tiare Kaihale, her former partner Pono’s wife, not to take it for granted.
Ten minutes later Jared reappeared with a bowl piled with translucent white orbs. Lei bugged her eyes at him. “Are those lychee?”
“Got a tree in the stationhouse yard,” Jared said. “Your dad told me to chill them and that they make a great dessert.”
“Oh my God, yes!” Lei exclaimed, grabbing one of the delicious bite-sized fruits and popping it into her mouth. Sweet-tart flavor with an exotic fragrance burst across her tongue. She shut her eyes to savor as she chewed, then spit the small brown seed into her palm. “Chilling them really does make them even better.”
They dug into the bowl until the lychees were gone. “Aren’t you glad I told you those funny-looking fruits were good to eat?” Wayne said. “Soon as I knew what firehouse you were at, I had my eye on getting some off that tree.”
“You and everybody else,” Jared said. “I had to fight the guys off to get even this many once they were ripe.”
Lei had discovered the knobbly red fruit, with its tender white flesh, was a prized delicacy seldom found in stores when she’d tried to buy some.
“Well, I better get to bed. Gotta be back here early in the morning,” Wayne said, rising.
She got up and gave him a hug. “Thanks, Dad, for another great dinner.”
“Thanks, Wayne,” Stevens and Jared echoed. Wayne waved casually as he took his leave, shutting the front door behind him.
“So I better get to my office work. You boys have fun with Kiet,” Lei said, feeling a prickle of guilt and suppressing it. “Jared, see you next week—if not sooner.”
“Wouldn’t miss it,” Jared said. “Mike, let’s put on the game. Never too early to get Kiet following football.”
She left them arguing over which team jersey they should order in Kiet’s size.
Kiet’s room was right next to theirs, and their home office was on the other side of it. She went inside and closed the door. After a moment of hesitation, she locked it. Stevens would be suspicious if he discovered she’d locked him out, but she’d plead confidentiality on a sensitive case. That was at least partially true.
Lei sat down at her computer, booted it up, and put on earbuds. She worked the knob of the safe under her desk and took out a file, then Skyped one of her friends at the FBI, tech agent Sophie Ang.
“Lei.” Sophie’s close-cropped, elegant head appeared as she answered the call. She was just as riveting on-screen as in person, her tawny-brown skin glowing on the monitor. “What’s new?”
“Nothing much, but I’m getting ready to go to the Big Island on a case. I thought I’d take care of some Chang business when I’m over there,” Lei said.
“I’m not sure about this whole thing. Marcella and I were talking about it today, and we’re both worried.”
“I know.” Lei blew out a breath. “But I just don’t believe Anchara’s killer was the guy behind the shrouds. I don’t think we’re going to be safe until we have the real shroud killer locked down. With a baby or two to protect, I’m just not willing to sit on my ass until he attacks us again. You don’t have to help me. I won’t talk to you any more if you want out.” She pinched the web of flesh betwee
n her thumb and forefinger, an old stress-management technique. It was scary to think of investigating Chang completely solo. Just knowing her friends were there, monitoring from the technology end, had helped.
“No. We just don’t want you moving on it until you’re sure it’s Chang, and so far, I don’t have anything on him showing a connection to the shrouds.”
Months ago, Anchara’s killer had bought three shrouds—and only two of them had been accounted for. The man Lei suspected was really behind the attacks, Terence Chang, still hadn’t been identified doing anything but running a small, legitimate import-export business in Hilo. Rumor had it that he was the new head of the Chang crime empire, and business was booming—but even Ang’s best FBI online tracing hadn’t been able to identify a clear trail to that.
Sophie went on. “I think he’s onto our taps. I suspect he’s gone completely old-school, keeping everything off-line and maybe even using radios and pagers. You should talk to some of your old friends in Hilo PD when you’re there. I also know, from that other case, that Chang has the skills to build a firewall I can’t get through. Though more likely, he’s masked himself behind multiple hidden identities.”
“I have been in touch with Hilo PD, and they’re still looking at him for drug dealing, prostitution, cockfighting, and gambling. You know what the new illegal gambling craze is over there?” Lei said.
“No, what?”
“Mah-jongg. They’re opening these ‘parlors’ in houses. You can go to play and gamble. Someone’s organizing it and getting a cut.”
“Interesting. Well, thought you should know Marcella’s on the Mainland, testifying on a case.”
“How long is she going to be gone?”
“Up to a couple of weeks. You feeling okay?” Sophie asked, her brows drawn together.
