by Kim Hornsby
She bit her bottom lip and glanced towards the door. “Noble and I almost had sex one night when I wasn’t drinking anything at all, so...”
“That isn’t the same thing. Sex without consent, or even mumbled consent when one partner is drunk, is a serious offense.” She shook her head and he didn’t know if that meant they hadn’t had sex or she didn’t consider sex with Noble a crime. Regardless, Tina had plenty to be scared about. Noble taking advantage, dream jumping, a ghost in her bedroom, and getting drugged—all on her birthday.
“You can sleep in the bed, Jamey. There’s lots of room.” She said it so casually.
He agreed. A few days earlier, they’d shared the bed. “Okay, but I’ll take the side closest to the door.” If Noble was slipping drugs into her drink and raping her, this game just leapt to a whole new level.
***
Tina and Jamey woke to the sound of the doorknob jiggling, and then Noble’s voice.
“Tina, open the door.” He knocked against the barrier as his voice rose to a frantic pitch. “Tina, open it.”
She lifted her head off the pillow. 7:04. “Noble, what is it?”
Jamey lay awake on top of the covers, fully clothed, watching her, his jaw clenched.
“I just saw Jamey’s jeep parked on the road.” Noble sounded upset.
She sat up in bed. “Noble, relax. You are waking me because you saw a jeep?”
“I don’t trust him.”
“Oh, my God, Noble. There are loads of yellow jeeps on this island.” She was glad that she’d locked the door. Noble was becoming more of a problem every hour. “Start coffee. I’ll be out in a few minutes—now that you woke me.”
Jamey lay still while she shot him an apologetic look. “Headache?” she mouthed.
He shook his head slightly and sprang silently off the bed.
By the time she pulled on a pair of patterned board shorts and a T-shirt, Jamey was inside the
closet. Maybe he didn’t have a headache, but she had a whopper. Ibuprofen would have to come before coffee. Her mouth was parched and her head felt stuffed with cement. She hated this feeling.
She popped some pain relief, poured her coffee and confronted Noble in the kitchen. “I’m hung over and feeling nasty, so just tell me you didn’t drug me to get into my pants last night.”
He looked at her incredulously. “Tina, I’m really worried about you. Things are getting weird. It’s like you don’t know what’s true anymore.” He looked genuinely concerned. She sipped her coffee until Noble spoke. “It might be a good idea to get off Maui. Get some perspective. I mean, look at us. Now you’re thinking these terrible things about me.” His forehead wrinkled.
He could be right. She wasn’t sure anymore. Had she gotten too obsessed with finding Hank’s body? What if she never found it? “Maybe.” She took her coffee and headed for the bedroom. “I’m going to work.”
When she returned to her room, Jamey was gone. Had he jumped out the window with his soldier moves? No sign of him remained. Then the room dropped in temperature. Strange. The windows were open but the curtains were absolutely still. This coolness came from inside the room. And it was not pleasantly cool, like an early morning Maui breeze. More like swimming into a cold patch of water. Acutely alert, Obi whined and sniffed the air. It wasn’t her imagination. Tina looked around the room. She waited. Did this have something to do with Jamey? Or Hank?
A tingling sensation crept up her spine like a centipede headed for her neck. Then the temperature returned to normal and Obi trotted out the bedroom door and raced for the deck. He wagged his tail, looking down the long driveway.
Maybe dream jumps robbed the room of heat. She knew nothing about it, but if she was going crazy on top of this new skill, then she seemed to be taking Jamey with her. Thank goodness for friends. Finally she had someone to witness her bits of insanity.
***
Jamey didn’t want another confrontation with Noble. What was tedious a few days ago had now turned to something else. But as long as Tina coddled the friendship, Jamey had to tread carefully. Before he’d leapt to the garden below Tina’s window, he’d swabbed the drinking glass sediment with a tissue, in hopes of having it analyzed. If there weren’t traces of a sleeping pill, Jamey would be surprised. He suspected Rufinol, the date rape drug, but it could be anything.
Driving away from Tina’s house, he phoned Katie. “What are your thoughts about this Noble situation?”
She sounded slightly panicked. “I don’t really know what to think. I’m not an expert. It’s weird, but I try to stay out of it.”
She thinks Noble’s weird, too. His mind overflowed with questions and concerns. Katie had to go and he hung up. Was he an expert? Tina had jumped Noble’s dream. She’d come back through Jamey’s portal. After a lifetime of dream jumping, Jamey’s learning curve was taking a drastic climb. This was all new territory.
Settling onto Pops’ couch with a cup of coffee, he called his Sixth Force superior, the man he most trusted in Afghanistan,
Sergeant Pete Milton. He’d already spoken to him recently about jumping but this time Jamey needed to get the sediment analyzed and couldn’t just ask the Maui Police.
“I have reason to think a friend was drugged, and I need to have something analyzed.”
Milton paused to think. “I’ll see if I can arrange for that. But Freud, you gotta avoid trouble, y’hear?” He took a drag on his cigarette. “You’re supposed to be lying low.”
“It’s my niece. She might’ve gotten roofied,” he explained. Now wasn’t the time to reveal that he was piggybacking jumps and that he might never be able to initiate his own jump again. That bit of information was his secret for the time being. He’d never tell Milton about shaking Tina’s hand, her fainting, and the possibility of something passing between them. Never reveal that now she was taking him along on her dream jumps, or that he might’ve passed something off to her. Maybe his ability had been lying dormant since the last jump in Afghanistan, waiting to transfer. And if so, why hadn’t Katie been the one? Or his daughters, or Carrie, or Pops?
If he told Milton about all this, they’d want Tina. And they couldn’t have her. Ever.
Next, Jamey called Pops to run everything by him. “I tried automatic writing with a friend’s deceased husband, and I got a drawing that looked like the letters M.O.”
“I don’t know anything about automatic writing, kid. Was it M as in Molokai or N as in Niihau?” Pops asked.
Jamey spilled the cup of coffee on the table in front of him. “Molokai. Wait! You might’ve just solved the mystery.” Staring at the paper with ‘M.O.,’ Jamey phoned the dive shop to verify that Tina was ten miles down the road.
“She just left the shop with her parents. They said something about postponing their flight until tomorrow,” Katie said. “Her truck is still here. Obi too. Tina’s mother was angry with her, but with a really quiet voice. You know. One of those. And Tina seemed really tired and almost like she has the flu. Her dad was trying to lead her around and she let him take her elbow and walk her out to the car, like she was some sort of zombie. I think she’s sick.”
Yup, Jamey thought. She’s hung over from being roofied. He’d send off the tissue, but it would be a few days before they had an answer on what was in Tina’s glass. He hoped Tina had a few days. In the meantime, finding Hank’s body and keeping Tina away from Noble were his top priorities. “Katie, if someone lost a boogie board, say at Honolua Bay or Fleming, could it potentially drift all the way to Molokai? Or is the channel too wide between Maui and
Molokai?”
Katie had no idea, but said she’d ask around.
Jamey flew up the stairs with the writing tablet clutched in his hand. The main room of the house was in a messy state from the night before—bowls of half-eaten snacks, beer cans, plastic glasses on every flat surface and decorations doing the second-day droop. He hadn’t noticed any of this when he’d rushed upstairs the night before.
He entere
d the bedroom. “Hank? I think I understand. It’s Molokai, isn’t it?” He sat in the bedroom chair and drew a ‘Yes’ and a ‘No’ on the page, all the while talking, expecting an answer about
Molokai. “I need to talk to you. Tina’s trying to help you.” Jamey sensed someone in the house. It wasn’t the spirit of Hank.
The presence was coming from outside the bedroom. Not Noble.
Someone was frightened, and moving down the hall towards him. He stood ready. Tina’s mother peeked in the room, fear fixed on her face. “Mrs. Greene. It’s just me, Jamey Dunn. Sorry if I scared you.”
She’d just heard him calling to Tina’s dead husband. “I can explain.” Her facial expression changed to anger in a flash. “You again. Back to get more coffee?” She straightened and looked at his pad of paper. “Get out of here.”
Jamey’s mind searched through all possible explanations, but there were no rational reasons for him to be in Tina’s bedroom calling out her dead husband’s name.
“Leave my daughter’s house, Mr.…”
“Dunn.” He was caught. Damn. What the hell was Tina’s mother doing in her house? Weren’t they just at the dive shop? “Were you looking for Tina, or…?”
“That is none of your business.” She shot him a look. “Don’t think I won’t be telling Kristina you were in her bedroom, calling out to her dead husband. You are as unbalanced as…” Elizabeth caught herself and closed her mouth. She took a quick look around the room and then faced Jamey, like a brick wall.
“Leave.” She arched her eyebrows as if to express her strength of character.
Wow. Tina didn’t have a chance with this mother. Jamey planted his feet, a tactic he’d learned in army training—Body Language 101. “Let’s call a truce. We both have Tina’s best interests at heart.” He covered his heart with his right hand. “You don’t have to like me, but I am a former police officer, a decorated soldier, on leave from
Afghanistan.”
“I think the important words are ‘former’ and ‘on leave,’ Mr. Dunn.” She pointed to the patio door. “Out, or I shall be forced to call the real policemen.”
He was done for now. Jamey pretty much knew that if it was possible for something to float all the way to Molokai, he would be on his way to the airport before sunset. Tina had told him the night before that the only good thing about tomorrow was that her parents were leaving for Seattle. He wished they hadn’t postponed.
Jamey left the house. Although he didn’t look back, he felt the mother’s contempt but something else accompanied her dislike of him that he couldn’t place. Worry, of course, but a feeling more like subterfuge. Something was very wrong, and Jamey was sure that Tina’s safety was not the only thing in jeopardy.
Chapter 21
Tina had thought so much about Noble that her head hurt. Was it rape if the aggressor was someone you’d once led on to the point of almost having sex? And you were drunk? Someone you trusted, and briefly considered to be the father of a future baby? Noble was one of her most trusted friends. It was possible that she’d agreed to or initiated it. He’d never do anything to her she didn’t agree. If they’d had sex, she must’ve encouraged him.
The one thing Tina was sure about was that she felt like shit. Her head was pounding like a sidewalk under a jackhammer. If she’d been as drunk as her hangover indicated, the likelihood of letting anyone have their way was pretty good.
Earlier that morning, her father had recounted what a fool she’d made of herself at the birthday party. “Acting like a Goddamned bar girl,” he’d said. “Dancing around and hugging everyone.” He’d never appreciated her choice in friends, or understood Kristina’s closeness to any of them. No one was good enough, especially if they lived in Hawaii. Her parents hadn’t warmed to Hank when they met him at the wedding, and they had avoided Maui afterwards, choosing phone calls instead. Especially after Philip had the heart attack and couldn’t travel. Then 9/11. The last time she’d seen her parents was just before Hank disappeared. She’d gone to Seattle for a few days when her mother begged or her to come home for a while.
After parking in the back alley of the shop, Tina followed the noise of a hammer rhythmically pounding. A man in dress shorts and a pressed Hawaiian shirt hung a ‘Sold’ sign at Mr. Takeshimi’s place. Her heart squeezed into a tight, hard ball. Mr. T was leaving. Seeing her neighbor at the front window, she smiled, but his gaze was on the sign that told the world he’d be leaving his life in Lahaina.
She waved at him sympathetically, wanting to call out her own proverb to console him, but he turned and walked away without seeing or waving back. Her hopes sank. If he couldn’t stick it out, how could she hope to? He’d been fighting for freedom in America, and then for acceptance in Hawaii, and then for the right to keep his home. She’d only just begun her fight against the elements of her life.
***
Tina and her father sat silently in the waiting room at the Kaiser clinic. The emergency appointment she’d made to appease him about her ‘current state of mind’ would hopefully get her parents off her back and help them get on that plane tomorrow. According to her father, he had enough evidence against her stability to gain a power of attorney over her. “I should know,” he’d said on the drive over.
Tina was tired of fighting with her parents. And tired of feeling hung over. She’d chased some more Advil with a big glass of orange juice, but the symptoms wouldn’t go away. Slumped in the waiting room’s leatherette chair, she thought of how easily the little girl whose judgment was always questioned by her father, had risen to the surface to allow him to call the shots.
Her cell phone rang. Seeing Jamey’s number, she let it go to message. She’d return the call after Doc Chan told her father that she was healing at an admirable rate. Jamey was probably still disappointed she’d gotten drunk when he needed to dream jump. If he found the remains of a sedative in her glass, she’d add that to the growing list of unknowns. Had she drunkenly added a Xanax to the water to ensure sleep? She’d been woozy, that much she remembered. The memory of everyone yelling “surprise!” was her last clear one. Her father handed her a glass of wine after that...or was that Noble? When she called Pepper that morning, she was told she’d been ‘wasted,’ and that “everyone agrees it’s perfectly fine to get drunk at your own birthday party, especially after all you’ve been through this year.”
Finally seated in the doctor’s office, Emily Chan explained that when two people shared a session, she let each person take a turn to speak, uninterrupted.
Philip Greene went first and got straight to the point. “Kristina’s mother and I feel a change might work well for her right now. Quite frankly, Doctor, we were shocked to see how much worse she is.” Her father had a way of nodding while he spoke, to pull the listener into his perspective. “She’s not better, and she is surrounding herself with strange characters.” He held up his hand to count off her problems. “She’s unable to dive, her supposed livelihood; she’s drinking heavily, taking pills, mismanaging her business, and now she tells me she’s having nightmares so she’s not sleeping.” He exhaled. “Frankly, we’re worried sick about her.” He looked at his daughter, who was itching to defend herself. “I’m sure you would agree, Dr. Chan, our daughter would benefit from a change of scenery right now, as well as being around her parents. All we’re asking is for Kristina to come to Seattle for a rest. To get away from all the memories this island holds. Just until she feels stronger.”
Philip Greene was finished for now, but he sat on the edge of his chair, ready to jump to his own defense. Tina knew the underlying threat he hadn’t voiced. And if she doesn’t agree, I will declare power of attorney and take over anyhow.
Doc Chan nodded at him. “Well, I think having people who are looking out for your best interests is valuable, and I’m sure Tina would agree with that. But I have to say that I disagree with you on several accounts, Mr. Greene.” Oh, thank God!
“I think Tina’s progress is admirable. Considering
what she’s been through.”
“We know it’s a process,” he countered. “And that’s why we feel that Kristina’s healing would best be served by a change of location. Namely, home.”
“This is my home, Father.” Tina looked at Dr. Chan as if to say don’t sell me out now.
“And you’ve had a good time in Hawaii, Kristina, but we feel…” He looked like words were fighting to leave his mouth. He leaned forward to take his daughter’s hand. “Mother and I are worried about you, and we feel it’s best if you are where we can offer you our support in the coming months. You are not getting better since Hank’s death. You are getting worse.”
His eyes were misty and she wondered if it was real. Of course it was. “Can I talk now?” She had to defend herself.
The doctor nodded. “Yes, let’s have Tina talk.”
“Father, I know you mean well but Maui is my home. I’m not just having a good time, as you said. This is my life, and this is where I want to live and recuperate.”
“It’s not working, Kristina. Look at you.” He caught himself and backtracked. “All we ask for is a month. Come to Seattle, sleep in your bedroom, see old friends, think about something else for a while.” Philip shot a steely look to the doctor.
“I can’t leave here, Father.” What about Obi and the shop? A month was a long time. “I know it’s hard for you and Mother.” She turned to the doctor and reminded her how the death of her twin brother had made her parents protective of their remaining child. “My whole life, they’ve worried about my safety.” While she talked, her father’s lips trembled and suddenly he looked like a sad old man to her. “I appreciate that you love me, Father, but I won’t uproot my life for you.”
He looked over at the doctor. “I’m sure you would agree that our daughter has been severely traumatized in the last year.” The doctor leaned in and nodded. This quiet sensibility was the very thing her father was known for in court.