by Toby Neal
Lei let out her breath in a whoosh. She hadn’t even realized she was holding it.
“Thanks, Lieutenant. I think we may be onto something, but we’re going to need to do more interviews, really dig in.”
“Keep me posted on whatever you find out about this House character. Seems like a tie to organized crime. We have a task force at Kahului Station working on the organized gambling in our area; contact them and liaise that connection, see if anyone else has heard of the House.”
She flicked a hand in dismissal. “Keep me apprised. Oh, and there’s no overtime, so you’re off the clock in a few minutes.”
Lei and Pono went back to the cubicle. Lei finally took a sip of her coffee, now cold.
“Thanks,” Pono said. “I know I screwed up back there in Lahaina. I don’t know where we should go with it from here.”
“It’s okay. We’ll think of something.” Lei powered down her computer. “Let’s ‘liaise’ with Kahului tomorrow, find out who’s in the organized crime unit. I’ll ask Stevens tonight.”
Lei hooked her jacket up and she and Pono exited, peeling off to their respective trucks.
I’m still in my office, but everyone is gone for the day when I use the burner to call my MPD mole. It’s unbelievable that Texeira and Kaihale found their way to the gallery—someone must be talking.
He says he didn’t know anything, that they must be off the grid on the investigation because they hadn’t even shown up at the station that day to check in. He has to lay low, he says, but he thinks they might have gotten one of the men rounded up at a cockfight to recognize the girl and tell them something.
“Cockfight?” This squeezes my chest with a new band of stress. The cockfights are House’s thing. He isn’t going to be pleased to have our worlds intersect. At all.
“Yeah, they did a raid, brought in a lot of guys. Texeira was showing the photo of the dead girl around. It’s been ruled a homicide.”
“Why didn’t you tell me this?” I keep my voice controlled. “There is a pretty little girl and her mama who are going to be very disappointed to see the activities Daddy really enjoys when he’s supposedly at training.”
“No need for that. I didn’t realize you wanted daily updates.”
“I told you I was interested in anything to do with that crash. That certainly includes the fact that they’re investigating it as a homicide.”
“I promise I’ll get you anything I can.” He sounds suitably motivated.
“Find out who talked from the cockfight and what they said.”
I hang up the burner and make another call—this one to Healani Chang, our connection on the Big Island. I’ve been wondering if she’s run across Texeira or Kaihale, since they’re from there. Maybe she’ll know something useful or have some leverage on them.
The call is illuminating—turns out there’s bad blood going way back between the Changs and the Texeiras. Healani laughs her smoker’s laugh and says, “I should have taken care of that girl last year. Call House and tell him I know a guy who gets it done. I’ll pay for it myself.”
One more phone call to go. The House isn’t happy to hear from me. He never is.
“What?”
He has a voice like stones rolling around at the bottom of a well. It makes me hot, always has. I like imagining him hanging from my bondage ring, but he isn’t ever going to go willingly. Probably would want me to be the one hanging from handcuffs.
“Giving you a heads-up. I had to take out some trash, and security are on it. They got someone at one of your events to talk. Thought you should know.”
A long silence. The House couldn’t have gotten as big as he is without being cautious. We have a little code going, using “security” for cops and “events” for his cockfights. Not that anyone can trace these phones…but it doesn’t hurt to be careful.
“Healani’s going to pick up the tab on dealing with the security—but only one of them needs to go.” I’ve done my homework. With Texeira out of the way, Kaihale couldn’t detect his way out of a paper bag.
“Keep me posted. Funny how accidents happen.” The House hangs up. God, that man speeds up my blood.
Good luck, Texeira. You’re going to need it.
Chapter Ten
Morning filled the back bedroom of the cottage with soft gray light. Lei’s eyes wandered over the plain white ceiling, lath and plaster that muffled the pattering of rain on the tin roof. It was going to be wet out when she went jogging. Lei had gone to bed early, too tired to do much more than eat leftovers and watch TV with Stevens. She rolled over and looked at the back of Stevens’s head, rumpled and dark beside her, his long body still a country of compelling mystery to her. She so seldom could really look at him—they both were people who stayed in constant motion.
Lei put out her hand and touched his hair. The texture of it was springy and alive, the strands a little coarse under her fingers. The feeling of his hair was an antidote to the slippery feel of a drowned girl’s trailing black silk. The tragic case in Hilo where she’d met Stevens two years ago still haunted her.
Stevens turned over onto his back. Dawn slanted through the big old-fashioned window with its louvers below. Pearl gray and soft, it gentled his rugged profile. He breathed evenly. The long ferny shadows of his eyelashes clung to deep caves of shadowed eye sockets, calling to her. She touched them with the tip of her finger.
Lightning fast, he grabbed her hand—the pressure crushing.
She cried out, and he turned toward her, springing awake.
“What are you doing?” He loosened his grip. Her bones seemed to moan as he released them. She rolled away and sat up, rubbing her wrist.
“Remind me never to touch you while you’re sleeping.”
“I’m sorry.” He followed her, wrapping his arms around her waist, pulling her in, rubbing his face into her side, his rumpled hair silky against her skin. “War reflexes.”
“Two years in Iraq did this to you?” She knew he’d done a tour early on in the war, but he never talked about it. She kept finding things out about him, nuggets he dropped like bread crumbs on the trail of knowing. This was a big one. He scooped her in and pulled her down beside him on her back, propped himself on an elbow to look down at her.
“Between being a cop and a soldier…I’ve been like that ever since. Attack first, ask questions later.”
“Makes me realize it’s a good thing I keep my hands to myself.”
“Not necessarily.” His open hand had begun to wander. Her body woke up, sensation trailing his touch like phosphorescence on the tide. Her nipples tightened, and she shivered under his hand.
“You have really long lashes. It’s not fair.”
“So do you.” He leaned down, kissed her eyelids. Found the ring on its chain at her throat, hooked it up with his index finger.
“I like seeing this on you.”
“It’s a little bulky.”
“It wasn’t designed to wear around your neck.”
She felt self-conscious and closed her eyes. Even in the dim light, she felt like he could see into her soul—utterly exposed and at his mercy. That vulnerability hadn’t stopped being both scary and thrilling.
He explored the stretchy elastic of the soft boxers she wore to bed. Her stomach fluttered and twitched beneath his hand in anticipation. He lifted the cotton tank top and leaned over to string a row of kisses along her sternum, tracing the triangle of her ribs above her abdomen. She bit her lips to stop a moan as he slid the shirt higher, circling her small, tight breasts with his fingers and tongue.
When she reached for him, he caught her hands and covered them with kisses, the faint rasp of his tongue awakening a flood of sensation that rippled up her arms and down into her torso and below, as if her fingertips were plugged into a vital current.
He nibbled and kissed the tender skin of her wrists. “I love you,” he might have said before the song of love he played on her body drove all thought from her mind, replacing it with sensation.
Chapter Eleven
Much later, she rubbed her hair with a towel and reached for her sports bra. He climbed out of the shower behind her.
“Good thing it’s Saturday morning. We’d both be late.”
He encircled her from behind, nibbled on the top of her ear. “It’d be worth it.”
She pushed away with a laugh.
“Insatiable. Thought old guys like you were supposed to be slowing down.”
“Who’s old?”
“Thirties. That’s old.” She pulled on her running clothes. “Wanna go with me for a run?”
“I’m surfing this morning.” Stevens had taken up surfing and, as a beginner, he got pummeled regularly.
“Well, I want to go back out to Pauwela Lighthouse today. See if I can find out anything more showing the photo of the girl around. I have a weird feeling about that place.”
“Doesn’t seem like anyone would know anything more out there. Besides, it’s the weekend and I know you aren’t getting any overtime.”
“Who needs the OT? I just want to get out there while the case is hot.”
She trailed him into the kitchen. He poured them each a cup of coffee from the automatic coffeepot, set the night before.
“I gotta tell you something. Charlie Kwon is out of jail.” She said it fast, spitting the words out.
He turned, leaning back against the counter. “So?”
“So I’m just telling you.”
“Why?”
“You know why.”
“Don’t. Let nature take its course. Scum like that always meet a bad end.”
She turned away, took too big a sip of coffee, burned her tongue. “You know I have to deal with him.”
“I understand you want to confront him. . .”
“I need to confront him. I need to show him he can’t fuck with me anymore.”
“Sad to say you’re too old for him now. Last thing on his mind is fucking with you.”
Lei shot him a glare, pushed through the security door at the front to sit on the weathered top step, looking out into the java plum forest across the street. She could just see a sliver of ocean over the tops of the trees, lighting with the first of the day. A fresh, damp breeze blew down `Iao Valley to cool her hot cheeks and the coffee, but she blew on it anyway.
He followed her out, sat on the step beside her. “I’m sorry. That was a shitty thing to say. What I meant was, you aren’t that child anymore.”
“You got that right. And I need to look him in the eye and put the hurt on him for what he did.”
“You’ve got a career that’s going well. Why endanger it for someone like him? What do you have to prove? You’re you. Beautiful. Strong. Mine.” He’d put down his mug, and his big hands reached out and took her face between them, turning her toward him, tilting her lips up to his.
“Mine,” he said again, breathing it into her mouth as he kissed her.
She melted into him, setting the mug down without even noticing. Charlie Kwon was temporarily forgotten, his touch erased by something better, more powerful—more present.
“Let’s go out to Pauwela Lighthouse together later, after we work out,” he said eventually. “Don’t go without me.”
“Think I can’t handle myself?” As always, the brittle defense leapt to her lips.
“No. I think it’s Saturday, and we deserve to spend some time together. We can take a picnic.”
She smiled and reached out to mock punch his hard stomach. “Ever the romantic.”
“Someone’s gotta be.”
Lei got on the road in her running shoes, turning in the opposite direction from Stevens’s Bronco with its big beginner surfboard lashed to the roof rack. Keiki was in fine form, prancing, waggling, and lunging at mynah birds.
“Guess I need to tire you out, girl.” She cranked up the speed, and they pelted down the street, still damp from nightly rainfall.
Her favorite route, a raised two-lane road that ran alongside a creek to the state park at the end, was empty of traffic. The trees, a mixture of tall, dark-leaved java plum and bright green palmate kukui, were topped with fingers of gold. Sun braised the leaves and dropped coins of light on the road ahead. Wild cocks crowed and mynahs squabbled, a background timpani to the rush of the stream. Early-morning air hinted at the rainfall the night before, the kind of sprinkle that kept `Iao Valley lush all year.
She heard a car behind them and slowed, moving onto the shoulder and pulling Keiki in tight. The car had plenty of room to pass them on the narrow road with its steep shoulder plunging down to the boulder-strewn creek. But instead of passing them, she heard the engine roar. She didn’t have time to do anything but react as the realization hit—it was gunning for them.
Lei dove off the shoulder of the road, Keiki’s leash tight in her fist. She rolled down the stony embankment that ended at the stream, the dog yanked off her feet and tumbling behind her. The car continued on, engine a shriek of power.
She fetched up against a clump of strawberry guava, mere feet away from a boulder. She struggled to suck air back in, the breath knocked out of her. Keiki jumped up, shook off, and planted a warm, wet tongue on her face. She pushed the dog away and sat up slowly, checking for injuries.
The wrist broken a few years ago had been wrenched by Keiki’s leash and gave back some jangles. Bumps and bruises chimed complaints from compass points on her body, but she’d been lucky.
She needed to stop that car. It had to turn around; the road was a dead end at the park. Lei crawled and hauled her way back up the road, wishing she’d brought her cell phone—or the Glock. Preferably both. She and Keiki climbed up onto the road. She looked in the direction the car had taken.
It had to pass her to leave the valley. She could flag it down and make an arrest, or at least get the plates and hunt it down later. She could go home and get her phone, badge, gun, and the truck—but he could get past her and escape if she did, and the asshole had almost killed her dog!
Lei and Keiki walked forward on the light-shadowed road in the direction the car had taken. Lei shook out her arms and legs—she was going to have some mean bruises, but nothing appeared broken or sprained. She looked down the incline to the rocky creek bed and gave a little shudder. Yes, she’d been lucky and her dog, equally so. Keiki glanced up at her, intelligent brown eyes worried. She reached down to pat the dog’s broad head.
“We’re okay, girl.”
She picked up speed to a slow jog, heading up into the valley.
Lei looked into the few driveways off the road, but she hadn’t been able to get even a glimpse of the car, so short of going up and feeling hoods, there was no way to tell if one of the residents had been their reckless driver. She entered lower `Iao Park, and as always, there were some cars parked in the lot, early visitors or broken-down vehicles that had been left for pickup later. A huge spreading banyan tree marked the beginning of the park, and she and Keiki passed under its canopy into shadow.
That’s when she heard the roar of the engine, coming from the left. It had been waiting for them in the lee of the banyan where she couldn’t see it.
She recoiled, yanking Keiki back, and turned to run. The road narrowed as they passed over a culvert twelve feet above the creek. There was nowhere to go.
She ran. Ran like she never had before, adrenaline giving her a superhuman burst of speed to clear the culvert before she felt the smack of the bumper hitting her left hip and propelling her out into space. She flew, arms and legs windmilling, and like a bad dream she couldn’t wake from, landed with a gut-wrenching thud that shocked through her body. The world went mercifully black.
Chapter Twelve
Stevens pushed the wheelchair to the Bronco. The surfboards were still optimistically tied there; apparently he’d been sitting and studying the waves when the EMTs called his cell.
Lei tapped her head, swathed in a bandage.
“That answers what to do about my hair.” They’d had to shave the section on the s
ide of her head where the rock had cut her scalp. “I guess I’m meant to have really short hair.”
“That’s the least of it.” Stevens helped her out and into the front seat, settling the seat belt around her.
“I’m really okay,” she protested, but it was feeble. Just moving caused her to hurt in a dozen places. Being run off the road and hit by a car was a good way to find out all the places that could get bruised.
He shook his head. She could sense something powerfully suppressed in the hard, jerky movements he made as he took the wheelchair back to the attendant and strode back to the Bronco. They’d been at the hospital for several hours as she underwent tests and observation. It had eventually been decided that she had a concussion and a lot of bruises but was okay to go home.
Stevens got in beside her and turned on the SUV.
“So much for our picnic.” Lei looked down at her blood-stiffened running shirt. The head wound had bled a lot before they stitched it.
“So tell me what happened.”
“I already told you. It hasn’t changed since the last time, ten minutes ago.”
“I want to hear it again.”
“Police harassment,” she said, with an attempt at a smile. Perhaps that wasn’t reassuring, because he looked away abruptly.
The hospital wasn’t far from their house, so it wasn’t long before they had to go through the ordeal of getting her inside. She didn’t want to go to bed, so after helping her with a brief shower and then wrapping her in her favorite kimono, Stevens set her up on the nice leather couch they’d sprung for when they moved in. He propped her up with pillows and covered her with the crocheted afghan Aunty Rosario had made so long ago.
Keiki sat beside Lei. The big dog wouldn’t leave her side, and Lei found it comforting to breathe her doggy smell. She trailed her fingers through the dog’s ruff and down to scratch her chest. Keiki set her big square head on Lei’s tummy and gazed at her with soulful brown eyes. Heroine of the hour, the dog had run back and forth on the road, barking nonstop, until she attracted a passerby.
