His gaze locked on what had her so upset. Ed laid sprawled face down and perfectly still.
Bile rushed up Cal’s throat. “Jesus.”
“Do something.” She sprang up on her knees and grabbed fistfuls of his shirt.
Her desperation made him feel useless. The bleak sadness on her face tugged at his heart and sent an unexpected rush of emotion to his throat.
“Honey, I need you to calm down.” He tried to block out her grief and focus on staying in control. “Call 9-1-1.”
The haze of tears clouding her eyes cleared a bit as she visibly pulled herself back from the edge. Scrambling on her knees to the phone, receiver fumbling in her hands, Cassie made the call.
Cal went to work. His heartbeat hammered in his ears as he reached for Ed’s wrist. Feeling a pulse sent a shot of happiness crashing through Cal. He had not realized how stiff he held his body until his shoulders collapsed in relief.
“He’s alive.” Cal exhaled for the first time since walking in the door.
She repeated his statement to the operator with a sudden giddiness. Cal wanted to celebrate, too, but the pool of blood and the nasty gash on Ed’s forehead did not look good.
She hovered behind Cal’s back, relaying Ed’s status to the person on the other end of the telephone. Within three minutes, sirens echoed in the background. The high-pitched wail grew louder until the door crashed open and ambulance workers poured into the room, towing a cart and instruments behind them. Strangers shouted instructions and asked for information. Cal provided as many details as he could but he didn’t have much of value to offer.
Cassie wrapped her fingers around his forearm and dug her nails into his skin. When she buried her tear-streaked face in his neck, he grabbed on to her and held tight, feeling her body tremble every few seconds in pure agony.
He wanted to spare her, to protect her from all of the violence spiraling around her. Despite attempts to block her view, Cassie refused to look away as the ambulance workers lifted Ed’s limp body onto the stretcher. She watched over him like an avenging angel.
“What happened?” Ted rushed into the chaos and tried to direct the traffic.
From his disheveled appearance, it was clear the deputy chief had been shaken out of bed without warning. He wore his official police officer pants, but the white T-shirt he was tugging over his torso did not look as if it were standard issue. Neither were the baseball sneakers.
“Someone attacked Ed.” Cal pulled Cassie closer, in part to prevent her from turning her wrath on Ted.
Ted shook his head in confusion. “Tell me the details.”
“No idea. He was unconscious when we walked in.”
“I need to go with him.” Cassie struggled to break Cal’s confining grasp.
He was having none of it. “Stay put and let the professionals do their job.”
“Cal’s right, Cassie. It’s better to let the paramedics look Ed over.” Ted patted Cassie’s shoulder in a move awkward enough to be comical. “I’ll check and see if they have a status.”
Ted flashed his badge and shoved his way through the throngs of people milling around. The medical personnel working on Ed and the police officers setting up a perimeter immediately jumped to attention when they realized Ted was there.
“Is Ed going to be okay?” Her voice was so small and vulnerable Cal almost didn’t hear her.
The temptation to lie to her, to give her whatever solace he could, overwhelmed him. But she had a right to know the truth. “I don’t know, honey. Ted should be able to tell us something.”
As if on queue, Ted stalked back to them. He tunneled a hand through his hair before lifting his eyes to meet Cassie’s terrified gaze. “Ed’s lost a lot of blood. That’s not unusual with a head wound, but they aren’t sure how long he’s been here.”
Her hand shot up to cover her mouth. “Oh my God.”
“He’s unconscious but breathing on his own. That’s a good sign. The ambulance is going to run him in now.”
Cassie bit her lower lip and nodded.
“Do you have any idea what happened? A robbery maybe?” Ted asked.
Cal debated telling the truth. “We came back to retrieve the copy of Dan’s list.”
Tension pulled Ted’s facial features tight. “Is it here?”
“We never got a chance to check. We came in and…” Cassie’s words trailed off when she focused on the bloodstain on the floor.
Desperate to give her comfort, Cal kissed her forehead. “It’s going to be okay.”
“Show me where Ed had it,” Ted said.
Cal untangled his body from Cassie’s and walked over to the shelves. The small box was upended on the floor. He crouched down and pointed at the memento. The empty memento. “It was in there.”
“We’ll need fingerprints.” Ted kneeled down, careful not to disturb the crime scene. “Any chance the paper’s here somewhere?”
Cal conducted a quick visual inspection of the room. Crumpled papers littered the ground. Separating one sheet from another was nearly impossible. “Can’t tell.”
Ted used a pen tip to shift the papers around. “I’d bet it’s gone. There isn’t enough money here to warrant a robbery, and no one would hurt Ed just for sport.”
“Damn it.” Cal repeated the word under his breath several times.
“I agree.” Ted echoed his concern in an equally low tone.
An uneasy kinship sparked between them. For the first time, Cal knew Ted was not involved in the illegal activity going on in the area. “This is your town.”
“That’s right.” Ted’s voice sounded deep and harsh, as if he were chewing on gravel.
“Find anything?” Cassie poked her head between their towering bodies.
“The note’s gone,” Cal said.
“The copy is. I still have the original,” Ted said.
Cal’s inclination to bring Ted in on the note had been the right one. Without that, they would be even further behind now. “We should get to the hospital.”
“Since I have the one with the big flashing light, we should take my car.” Ted treated them to a slow grin.
“Better than letting Cal drive,” Cassie mumbled under her breath.
“Why?” The confusion showed on Ted’s face.
“He ignores every traffic law.”
Ted shook his head. “Just what every policeman wants to hear.”
Chapter Thirty-two
“I’ve gone over this a hundred times. The list is gibberish.” Cal walked to the small window in the corner of Ed’s hospital room and stared out at the perfect blue sky.
A steady hum rumbled off the medical equipment. The harsh smell of antiseptic slapped at Cassie, filling her head until she felt dizzy.
“Let me see.” Ted remained calm but his dark eyes turned icy cold.
She felt safer with both of them there. Annoying or not, their considerable size and bone-hard loyalty were hard to beat. She refused to admit it out loud, but Ted seemed okay.
Cal’s actions since finding Ed crumpled in a heap on the floor made her love him even more. Once Cal found out Ed didn’t have any family or all that much money, he insisted on paying for the extravagance of a private room, then harassed Ted to post a guard outside the door. Of course, convincing Ted turned out to be a fairly easy proposition. The only hardship came in persuading Ted that someone other than he should do the job.
“We need to break the code.” Ted turned the paper over in his large hands. “Some of the matches are easy.”
“Let me see.” Cassie hopped off the corner of Ed’s bed and peeked over Ted’s shoulder.
“For God’s sake, Cassie. Give the man some room.” Cal growled at her and glared at Ted.
“What’s your problem?”
Ted glanced up and grinned. “I think I know.”
“Don’t test me,” Cal shot back.
Ted chuckled but went back to reading.
Cassie was not in the mood for laughing. If Cal wanted a fight, she would happily
oblige. Some screaming might ease the ache strangling her chest. Seeing Ed strapped down with tubes and tied to beeping machines made her blood run cold.
So much death and needless violence. She wanted to crawl back to her safe life and never deal with pain and sorrow again. Just existing, not getting involved and never being hurt.
But she knew that life could never be. Even though the Air Force and circumstances had taken Dan away years earlier, she felt his loss as sure as if a piece of her hand died that day in the crash. Like it or not, she was connected. And her newest tie was to Cal. Walking away from him and the challenge he posed for her filled her with a resounding emptiness.
And poor Ed. Except for the rise and fall of his chest, he remained still. He always seemed indestructible, larger than life. Just like Dan. But stretched out in the center of the bed with his hands folded over snowy white sheets, Ed looked frail and small.
“Wait a second.” Ted skimmed the paper again.
“You see something?” Cal asked.
“They’re names. You can make them out. Look.” Ted announced his findings in a near shout.
Cal was at Ted’s side in two long strides. Cassie ripped the piece of paper out of Ted’s hands before the men could study it.
“I was reading that,” Cal pointed out.
“She always this impulsive?” Ted asked.
“Hell, yeah.” Cal reached over and grabbed the paper back. “Let’s all look at it, shall we?”
“Here, I cracked part of the code.” Ted pointed to his handwritten notes in the margin. “If you put these strings together, they spell out names.”
“And these must be addresses.” Cal wrote down his own doodles.
Cassie had no idea what either of them was talking about. All she saw were scribbles in pencil. “Anyone want to clue me in?”
“This is a list of last names and addresses.” Ted had the nerve to talk slow as if she were dimwitted or something.
“Uh, yeah, I got that part. You don’t have to start spelling the big words.”
He had the grace to look apologetic.
“My guess is that these are the victims and this is a blueprint for the stolen items we found,” Cal said.
The lightbulb flashed on in her brain. “I get it.”
From the confused frown on Ted’s face, she guessed his had just burned out. “Good, because you lost me.”
“From the robberies,” Cassie offered.
“Right.” Cal continued to study the list. “Josh didn’t tell you?”
Ted stared at both of them. “Let’s slow down a bit.”
“Better yet, we’ll show you what we’re talking about.” Cal folded the paper and shoved it into his back pocket. “Let’s go.”
“Wait. Ed—” Her voice choked off.
Cal twined an arm around her shoulders and pulled her close. “He’ll be fine, Cassie. Ted has him protected.”
“Absolutely. He’s safe,” Ted agreed. “And you two have my full attention.”
Twenty minutes later they stood in front of the massive door to the NASA building.
“I suppose the broken door is your doing?” Ted cornered Cal.
“Some of my finest work, actually.”
Cassie shook her head. The urge to knock their empty male heads together was tempting her. “Can we go inside? This really isn’t the place for chitchat.”
Ted stood with his legs braced apart and his hands on his lean hips. “Do we climb through a window or use this door?”
“Cal tried the window thing a few days ago at Dan’s house and it almost got him shot. Instead of reliving that moment, let’s walk through the door like normal people.” Cassie pushed her way past them. She tried to block out their voices but she could not help overhearing their irritating conversation.
Cal indicated for Ted to follow. “You heard the woman.”
“You two have an interesting relationship,” Ted mumbled under his breath.
Cal nodded. “You have no idea.”
Cassie ignored them both and opened the door to the inner warehouse. She stopped dead, letting the men pile up behind her. “What happened in here?”
“What?” Ted asked.
She walked into the cavernous room, each step echoing off the walls of the now empty room. “The shelves are gone. The boxes. Someone cleaned the place out. And fast.”
Ted squeezed by Cal and marched through the doorway. He turned in a circle, studying every inch of the huge room. “What am I missing?”
Cal followed Ted’s trail around the room. “Everything, actually.”
“The center of this room was filled with boxes of antiques, an obvious haul from somewhere. We’re talking households worth of rather expensive-looking items,” Cassie said.
The fluorescent lights gleamed off Cal’s dark hair as he paced around the room. Cassie did not know how he could stay so calm. She couldn’t even move her legs.
“When did you see all of this?” Ted’s attention was centered on the floor.
“Last night.”
Ted scanned the floor. Cassie guessed he was looking for footprints or some other sign that life had existed in that very spot only a few hours earlier.
Cal brushed his foot across the dusty floor. “Josh was in here. He probably saw it. Getting a load of that size out of here in such a short period of time would be a huge undertaking.”
“You’d need a few people and trucks, or some other way to move the stuff,” Ted said.
Cassie felt her blood pressure soar. “Are you saying we’re making it up? Just another example of me being crazy, maybe?”
“No.” Ted drew out his answer, making the word last for more than one syllable.
“Don’t be so quick to discount the crazy part.” Cal glared at her.
She scowled back. “It was a legitimate question. Until you came along, Ted didn’t believe anything I said.”
“Cassie.” Cal packed a load of warning in her name.
“Not to state the obvious, but I’m here and I’m listening,” Ted said.
He was. The heat rushed out of her. “So, what now?”
Ted took out his cell phone. “You go back and check on Ed. I’ll send a couple of officers out here to fingerprint the place.”
“What are you going to do?” Cal asked.
“Call Josh and see what he knows.”
“That doesn’t exactly sound promising,” she pointed out before Cal could say something less flattering.
“Then I’ll go back to the office and search out these names and addresses to see if they mean anything to anyone,” Ted added.
She had no idea the police could do that. “How?”
Ted shrugged. “Check police records, that type of thing. The cities are missing but I can tell that most of the street names don’t sound as if they’re from any area in Hawaii.”
“How in the world would you be able to know something like that?” Cal asked.
Ted and Cassie shared a knowing smile.
“You want to explain it?” Ted asked.
She knew Cal would never figure this one out on his own. “The Hawaiian alphabet is an abbreviated version of the traditional alphabet. The Hawaiian one doesn’t use all of the consonants. For example, there isn’t a b.”
Cal’s eyebrows pressed together. “You’re telling me that no street name anywhere in the Hawaiian Islands has the letter b in it?”
Ted grinned.
Cal’s mouth fell open. “Come on.”
Ted clapped a hand on Cal’s shoulder. “I can’t promise you that all streets follow the Hawaiian alphabet, but most do. I’m just saying that many of the words on that list sound like mainland addresses, not Hawaii.”
She couldn’t resist taking a jab or two. “That’s why you can’t pronounce any of the street names.”
“I thought you guys did that to make the tourists feel stupid.”
Ted laughed. “That, too.”
Chapter Thirty-three
“I hate this.”
Cassie sat on the side of Ed’s bed and soothed her hand over his cheek.
The crack to the back of Ed’s head left him with a lump and some swelling, countless stitches, and a rotating watch by the nurses. Cassie stared at Ed as if she could will him well. Her shoulders drooped and her body slumped with exhaustion, but energy still pounded off her.
A sick desperation clawed at Cal’s insides. He wanted to help her, to ease her pain. He had no idea how to accomplish either. The warm, bright light that glowed in her eyes had all but been extinguished in this new wave of grief.
The hard tug of sorrow dragged at him, too. Seeing Ed, once so vibrant, struck down in such a vulnerable condition reminded Cal of the seriousness of their situation, of losing Dan. Cal grieved in his own way, by turning his concern into a lava-flow of anger.
He moved up behind her, resting strong hands on her slim shoulders. “He’s going to be okay. His body suffered a significant shock, that’s all.”
“What kind of animal attacks a nice old man?” Her angry whisper tugged at his heart.
Cal knew Ed was not as feeble as Cassie liked to think. The older man had a gnarled, world-wise way about him. He settled down to live out his days in the relative calm of the Hawaiian tropics, but his life started another way.
“Why Ed?” Uncertainty lurked in her wide eyes.
“Probably in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
“You’re thinking Josh had something to do with this.”
Hearing the guy’s name on her lips made his back teeth snap together. “I want to say yes just because I hate the guy, but I don’t think so. He’s a loose cannon, not a killer.”
“But he’s messed up in all of this.”
Up to his eyeballs. “He’s holding back the information we need.”
“I wonder if Dan liked him.”
The idea made the throbbing in Cal’s head turn into a full-fledged hammering. In the end, Dan had hated him. Had cut Cal out and walked away from their friendship and his career.
With excruciating tenderness, she weaved her fingers through Ed’s and rubbed the back of his hand with her fingertips. “I can’t figure out if Josh is one of the good guys or not.”
The words grated against Cal’s nerves like fingernails on a chalkboard. “The guy is an idiot. Don’t waste your time.”
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