“So does napping run in the family?”
The question surprised her out of her hesitation. She stared at him and let him help her out of the car. “Sounds like a non sequitur but yes, it does. How did you know?”
He chuckled as he let Taz out of the car and led her to a crosswalk. They escorted her to the other side of the street, where plenty of people were walking in and out of various shops. “Soldiers learn to catch sleep however they can. Could be a few seconds or a minute sitting straight up or even standing. I noticed Arin could do it. Any time we had to sleep, anywhere, she could curl up in the damnedest positions and nap like a cat. I’m guessing you do the same thing in the car when someone else is driving, whether you look like you’re sleeping or not. Your brain goes someplace else.”
She studied him. He knew her sister well. Even if Mali hadn’t believed it from the beginning, it was sinking in now.
“Were you and she a thing?” Because the idea of being with the same guy as her sister was not appealing to her.
He paused his perpetual scanning of the area around them to glance at her with an upraised brow. “No. We aren’t like that. We’ve let people assume it plenty of times in certain situations, but we’ve only ever been friends. Serving together, we’re both smart enough not to get involved with someone in our own unit.”
“Uh huh.” It was like claiming a person never dated in the same lab or the same office. It wasn’t a good idea, but people acted on bad ideas all the time. She’d done it plenty.
Well, she’d acted on bad ideas, just not dating in the same lab.
Raul snorted. “There wasn’t that kind of chemistry between us. Friendship mattered more, and we both needed it. Besides, what happened between you and me will already earn me a beating from Arin in big sister-mode. I’d be about seven different kinds of out of my mind to go from one sister to another sister.”
“Was it worth it?” The question popped out before she had a chance to think about it, which was odd for her. She thought about everything, over and over.
He paused and leaned in close. “I’d do it again in a heartbeat.”
She froze, caught between laughing and intense awareness of his proximity. He wasn’t joking.
She didn’t want him to be.
“I shouldn’t say that, though.” He gave her back her personal space. “I shouldn’t even be thinking it.”
After a long moment, she thought she might’ve forgotten something, like air. He glanced down and took her hand in his, tugging her along the walkway. “Out in the open is probably not the wisest choice. Let’s get something to cool us both off.”
They reached a courtyard area, and the shaved ice shop had a few people forming a line right out the door. They stepped into line and stood in awkward silence for a minute or two.
“Okay, let’s agree that there’s plenty of potentially complicated situations out there. Relationships are messy.” Mali considered her initial issue with their topic of conversation. “The scenarios where it bothers me are when people take siblings or any kind of fantasy and get creepy about it.”
He held up his hands. “I wouldn’t dare.”
It was her turn to shoot an incredulous glance at him.
“Okay. I think every person, man or woman, is going to imagine it if the topic pops up. Power of suggestion.” He shook his head. “But I don’t go nurturing the fantasy or leering at any women asking them if they’re willing to act it out. I mostly try to burn it out of my mind before those kinds of ideas get me into trouble.”
A smile tugged at her lips even if she wanted to be irritable. It’d been a long day and her skin was tight, still healing from yesterday’s sunburn. A dull headache was becoming more acute. “Confession: I wanted to get mad at you. I can’t. You’re being honest and reasonable. You’re a good guy.”
“Thank you for that.” He sounded quietly sincere and more serious than she’d intended. “But I’m not.”
She didn’t know what to say in response. They moved forward in the line into sweet, cool air-conditioning. She started to study the menu.
“I’m human.” He shifted to her other side. She guessed it was to have a better view of the interior and the windows, but he was also between her and anyone looking in from outside. His vigilance reassured her. “I try to be a good man. I don’t always succeed, but even if I don’t, I at least try to be candid. Truth is, I’ve done too many things, and I can’t ever make up for them. Best I can do is try, day by day.”
There was a lot of weight in his words. That might’ve weirded her out another time, but instead, it steadied her. The silence was comfortable then. Both of them had a small smile. His widened into a grin when she ordered the special.
She was hungry, and the earlier frozen pineapple soft serve hadn’t been filling. As they placed a generous scoop of vanilla ice cream into an edible waffle bowl, she rose up on her tiptoes to watch. Fluffy shaved ice was shaped in a ball over the ice cream, and a generous scoop of red, slightly sweet azuki beans was added on the side. They splashed lychee syrup over the top of the shaved ice and then added a healthy drizzle of sweetened condensed milk. A handful of round mochi balls bigger than marbles were added as a final touch.
Raul held his peace until after they made it back outside and sat under the shelter of a large tree. “Which shaved ice was this again?”
Handing him a wooden spoon, she gave him a brilliant smile. “The ichiban special. It roughly translates from Japanese to the ‘number one’ special. There’s a lot of shaved ice served all around the island, in a bunch of different ways, but this has all the elements I love.”
“You sure you’re not going to pass out from a sugar crash twenty minutes after we eat this?” He sounded dubious, but he dug in and helped her with the huge dessert.
“Maybe.” The word came out barely understandable around a mouthful of azuki beans and creamy ice cream. “The azuki beans are a tiny bit of protein.”
“You’re stretching it there.” He narrowed his eyes at her, his shoulder brushing hers as he leaned in for another spoonful. Electric tingles ran across her skin from the contact, across her collarbone and down over her breasts. “These beans aren’t too sweet but they’re still in a dessert.”
She sucked on her lower lip, trying to hide her reaction to him. They’d just been talking about what a good person he was. He’d been helping her through all of this, at the expense of his own time and business. He had a job to do. She’d taken him away from it. Here they were, sitting and eating as if this was a date. If anyone was leading him astray from being good, she was.
This was another bad idea, and she shouldn’t keep tempting them both with it.
“Hey, wherever your brain went, there’s still a third of this shaved ice left.” His voice broke in on her thoughts.
“Sorry.” She scooped up a mochi and concentrated on chewing.
“What is that, anyway?”
“Hmm. Mochi.” She swallowed so he could understand her better. “They take sweet rice, or I think some people call it glutinous rice or sticky rice? It’s pounded into a paste and shaped into doughy balls. I love them. On the mainland, I’ve seen stores serve mochi cut into bits to sprinkle over frozen yogurt. It’s soft, chewy, and slightly sweet. They also sell mochi ice cream where the mochi is wrapped around balls of ice cream. But I like it best like this, in chewy balls.”
He fished for a mochi with his spoon and lost the battle twice chasing the ball around the mostly empty dish before he came up successful. Once he had it, his expression changed to somewhat uncomfortable as he rolled it in his mouth and chewed.
“So?” She was going to laugh at his expression in another second.
“Not bad.” He worked his jaw some more. “More chewy than I expected. Really mild flavor once you get to the inside of it. Probably not my favorite thing.”
“More for me.” She scooped the last mochi and ate it happily. No need to share.
He laughed. “Not a problem. I think we c
an hit the restrooms, then head back now. We’ve got some thinking to do.”
“About what?” She nibbled at the side of the waffle bowl.
“Your friend.” He sighed. “There were too many red flags about her. It’s good you made the calls to your university about the ransom but I don’t think it’s going to be a simple exchange.”
She’d been hiding from what happened, if only for a couple of hours. She’d tucked it far back in the corner of her mind, pretending this time with Raul was nothing more than an outing. That couldn’t be healthy. Perhaps she’d been mentally protecting herself. But the truth was, she’d been frightened out of her mind by what had happened at the plantation. Who knew what else the man had planned to do? She needed to start to face it.
“The university has us covered by insurance in the event of this sort of thing. We’ve been trained on what to do.” The shaved ice sat cold in her stomach. “There’s even a security consulting group that will handle negotiations once I can give them the information they need. They handle any coordination required with local law enforcement or even discreetly if the ransom demands insist police be left out of it.”
He nodded but his lips were pressed together, and he looked concerned. “The insurance and training are good things, but negotiations handled by a security consulting group can go a lot of ways depending on how good the resources are. I’ve been assigned to missions where the situation gets complicated faster than the negotiators can get ahead of the kidnappers. I don’t know enough about the consulting group your university is working with to judge, but we’ll probably want to look into that group when we get back to the team. Right now, while our talk is fresh in my head, I’m more focused on your contact.”
“Why?” She wanted this to be simple. He was like Arin, looking at shadows and what ifs all the time. Arin couldn’t walk down a perfectly safe city street without asking Mali if she’d checked the shadows around them.
“Your friend had a rough voice for a woman.” He cleared his throat. “And she was wearing a decent amount of makeup. It was blended from her face all the way down her neck and into her collarbone.”
“It’s makeup. It’s supposed to be blended.” She argued, not really sure where he was going with this. “She wears it all the time, and she’s not going to make the mistake of having it end right at her jawline.”
He nodded. “True. But this was heavier makeup, almost the kind models or actresses wear onstage. A lot of women choose to wear it in the kind of lighting clubs and late night bars have but not out in natural light like this. It’s too obvious and has got to be uncomfortable with this heat. I’m wondering if there were bruises hidden under the foundation and powder.”
Oh. “You have a point.” It wouldn’t be unusual in her contact’s line of work.
“A woman subject to abuse like she might be wouldn’t be out on her own.” He continued with his logic in a low voice. The gravity of his words took on even more weight as he continued to keep watch on their surroundings. “She had someone there watching her, making sure she made contact and gave you the message you were intended to have. He was definitely not there just to watch over her.”
Mali sat up straight, angry on her contact’s behalf. “She risked a lot to come meet us. Maybe she didn’t know about him.”
“How did she get to us? Public transportation? A cab? The plantation was more than an hour out of town.” He remained unperturbed, not raising his voice to meet her ire. His tone remained steady as he continued, reasonable and rational. “Someone would’ve missed her if she was gone for hours. Sure, she could probably talk to you in her comfort zone back in town. A few minutes here and there wouldn’t have been as risky. But hours? Someone let her come out here to give you information. They let her lead them to you so they could get a good look at you, gather more intel about you.”
It made sense. Still. “You have the SD card from the camera. They don’t have what they were looking for and she’s not a bad person. Getting into this business wasn’t her choice. She wants to get out and help others. She’s not one of the bosses. She’s a worker against her will, a victim.”
He chuckled sadly. “Whether a person is good or bad can’t be identified by their job title. People aren’t that easy to categorize.”
She frowned at him. “What do you mean?”
“Don’t trust a person just because you see them as a specific role in a situation.” He lifted his chin to indicate the various tourists and locals walking around them. “People automatically put their trust in a doctor because of his vocation. But there are doctors who do awful things in the world. Maybe not things as obvious as conducting horrible experiments. Maybe they just prescribe a less effective medication so they can extend treatment. Maybe they make a mistake in surgery and protect themselves rather than coming clean with the patient and their family.”
“That’s horrible.” She stopped eating her shaved ice, the treat having lost its flavor.
“It is,” he agreed. “Doctors, teachers, religious leaders—they are all vocations with the potential to do a lot of good. That doesn’t make those people automatically good people.”
“You have a point.” She made the admission reluctantly. But her contacts didn’t have that sort of power over their situation or the people around them. “And it applies here because…?”
“Don’t assume that a person who is a victim is innocent.” He tried to keep his words from being harsh. “Some are. But there are a few who created their situation for themselves and would choose to screw you over if they thought they could get what they wanted faster, or they’d do it just out of spite.”
She shook her head and then stopped mid-motion. “I believe you. I just…find it hard to understand how a person could be that way.”
He shrugged. “Because you’re a good person.”
“And you’re not?”
He turned to look at her directly, his gaze unwavering and somber. “I already told you. I’m not.”
Okay. His reply should’ve been unsettling, but instead she was drawn to him and curious. If anything, his frank admission of the kind of person he thought he was made her want to know more so she could argue with him. He was a better man than he gave himself credit for. She didn’t have a lot to support her argument, but she was sure of it.
“So you don’t want me to immediately believe everything she said.” That was reasonable, too.
He nodded, the hard lines of his jaw softening a tiny bit. “Maybe she didn’t realize she was followed. Maybe she thought she was sneaking away, and they let her. We’ll know more once the police question that man back there. Hopefully, Officer Kokua will share what they find out with Todd. But I guarantee you, this isn’t going to be a simple ransom request for some kidnapped academics. I wish I could encourage you, promise you the cheerful version of the story, but I’m giving you the Grimm fairy tale with the lesson buried in it.”
She thought about it for a moment and then slipped her hand into the crook of his arm. “I prefer the Grimm fairy tale version. I want to know what monsters to look out for.”
* * *
It was late afternoon by the time they made it back to the team house. Miller and Kalea weren’t immediately around but there was the ever-present plate of snacks on the kitchen table. This time, it was a mountain of sliders stacked on a plate. Raul lifted the net dome protecting the goodies and snagged one of the small sandwiches. Juicy pulled pork was piled high in each, the savory goodness complemented by the airy softness of the Hawaiian sweet rolls.
“Oh, protein.” Mali nipped one, too. “Mmm.”
Okay, maybe he should’ve made sure she had a more balanced set of meals while they’d been out. It wasn’t exactly the best idea to keep her in various stages of sugar highs throughout the day. Of course, there’d been at least one serious hit of adrenaline, too. If she was this calm now, he’d let her stay that way until the rest of the team returned. Then it’d be time for serious discussion. This wasn’t going t
o be resolved as simply as a paid ransom and return of her coworkers, and he shouldn’t let her keep thinking it would.
“I’m thinking about looking for a good poke place nearby.” Couldn’t get much more protein focused than good raw tuna marinated in one of any number of flavor combinations. “Would you like me to bring you back a poke bowl, too?”
Mali nodded, nibbling at her pork slider. “’S’good idea.”
He chuckled. “Are you even awake? You fell asleep in the car.”
She wrinkled her nose but didn’t argue, instead heading for the refrigerator and grabbing a bottled water. He’d driven a long while, taking a circuitous route back from North Shore. Part of it had been to ensure they weren’t being tailed. Another was the desire to get to know the island better now that it was going to be his home and not just a vacation destination. Mali hadn’t seemed to be in any rush, and she’d been a comfortable road trip companion. Even napping, her presence had been pleasant. Without her, it would’ve been just him and Taz.
Taz was good company, of course. But he wasn’t as easy on the eyes sleeping curled up in the passenger seat with a hip turned up to the sky.
“What are you going to do now?” Mali stood in the kitchen, scratching Taz behind the ears.
The big dog leaned his head against her hip, jaws parting in a broad grin as his tongue lolled out to one side.
“There’s always more cleanup downstairs with kennels.” Raul wasn’t looking forward to it but it had to be done, and it seemed there was an ongoing battle with humidity on the island. Keeping away mildew was an epic challenge. “You can keep Taz here with you, if you like. Otherwise, I’ll probably take him out back for some ad hoc training.”
She glanced around her, uncertain. “I have data to analyze and notes to record, now that I’ve got my laptop. I don’t want to be in the way out here, though.”
“You could always work in Arin’s room.” There was a small desk in there.
Total Bravery (True Heroes Book 4) Page 8
