Moon over Maalaea Bay

by H. L. Wegley

  Lee stopped when he saw the two large words, “Amber Alert.” Another message scrolled across the screen. He maneuvered between two taller men to read it. “Teenage girl abducted from Kihei shops at 7:00 PM. Description Asian, five foot one to five foot three, sixteen or seventeen years old, last seen wearing a red tank top and white shorts.

  It was Jennifer’s description on the screen. Being petite, she could have easily been mistaken for a younger person. He glanced at his watch. 7:15 PM. She had disappeared at 7:00 PM. With his heart pounding out the tempo of terror, Lee sprinted towards the ominous lights of the police cars.

  2

  Lee ran towards two policemen engaged in conversation beside the nearest patrol car. As he approached, they spun to him, their hands simultaneously reaching for their guns.

  He stopped, shoved his palms towards them, and yelled between breaths. “The kidnapped girl!”

  The tall officer had drawn his weapon, but kept it pointing downward.

  The shorter policeman met his gaze and studied his face. “Do you have some information about her?”

  “Yeah. She’s not a girl. She’s my wife, Jennifer Akihara, now Jennifer Brandt. We’re here on our honeymoon. One second she was here, then she was gone.”

  “And you are?” The taller officer said, holstering his gun.

  “Lee Brandt.” His trembling fingers struggled to pull out his wallet. He took one agonizing look at the photo then handed them the wallet-sized, engagement picture. “Here’s a picture of her.”

  The two officers studied it for a moment.

  “Matches the description we got,” the shorter one said.

  “I’ll say it does, but not many women can match her.” The taller officer pursed his lips as he turned towards Lee. “Let me give you some advice. It’s not a good idea to run up to officers here like you’re going to attack them. There’s Maile Amber Alert; we’re in the process of locking down this entire area.” He paused. “Now, can you tell us anything else about her disappearance?”

  What had been circulating on the periphery of Lee’s conscious mind suddenly became an intuitive conclusion. Whatever the consequences, he decided to go with it. “Officer, this isn’t a random abduction. And she’s an adult. She’s twenty-six.”

  The shorter officer flashed him a glance. There was sympathy in it. The first encouraging thing he had noticed in the last half hour.

  “I’m Officer Yagi, Mr. Brandt.” He stuck out a thumb at the taller guy beside him. “This is Officer Kaai. What makes you think this was a targeted attack?”

  Lee took a calming breath. How should he tell them this story? He just needed to state the bare facts. “Jennifer and I recently amputated one arm of an international sex-trafficking ring—a fifty-million-dollar-a-year arm. Somebody’s unhappy about what—”

  “Yagi, it’s that babe, uh, lady from Seattle. This story broke a few weeks ago.”

  “I remember her. Who could forget?” Yagi looked at Lee and pointed to his patrol car. “We’ll need you to come to the station with us. This case is going to get elevated in a hurry. I’ll call in what you’ve told us and send the picture ahead while we’re on the way. We will need to get the FBI invol—”

  “Call the Seattle Field Office.” Lee interrupted. “Agent Peterson there has been on the trafficking case from the beginning.”

  “I’ll pass that on. But there are official channels we need to use for notifying other agencies.” Yagi opened the back door of the patrol car and gestured towards it.

  “Fine.” I’ll use my own channel. Lee pulled out his cell and climbed into the back seat, a cage that felt like a prison. Being locked into the confined space was getting to him. He needed air and used his call to keep his mind off the rising panic.

  With Kaai driving, Yagi’s words flowed in a long, steady stream as he passed information to the local police.

  Lee hit Peterson’s FBI cell number on his speed dial, placing a call the agent would answer if at all possible. There was a long delay while the call went through to the mainland. The delay was followed by several rings.

  Come on, Peterson, answer.

  “Agent Peterson here.”

  Lee looked out the window and up into the night sky. Thanks.

  “Peterson, Lee Brandt. Someone abducted Jennifer here on Maui and—”

  “What!” Peterson boomed out, followed by a rare expletive. “You two are on your honeymoon. Who would…”

  “It’s got to be an international component of the trafficking ring. I think they’re trying to make Jennifer an example. But someone here thought she was a teenager, so there’s an Amber Alert out for her.”

  “That’s a good thing. Using the alert, I can lock down the whole island. All of the islands if I have to. Where are you now, Lee.”

  “In a patrol car on the way to the police station in Wailuku.”

  “Good. Tell them everything you know and even what you only suspect. We need to get every law-enforcement wheel turning. I have to go now, so I can notify the appropriate people. If this plays out like I believe it will, you might see me very soon. Whatever it takes, we’ll get Jennifer back.”

  “Thanks, Peterson.” Lee closed his cell. Peterson might come. Lee prayed he would.

  Officer Kaai’s eyes were staring at him in the rearview mirror. “Who were you talking to, Brandt?”

  He stared back at the shadowy face in the mirror. “Agent Peterson, FBI in Seattle. The guy I told you about.”

  Kaai dipped his head. “Guess it can’t hurt. I’m just not used to seeing people make cell calls from the back of my patrol car. Makes me a little nervous.”

  Lee looked at the reflection of the officer’s eyes in the rearview mirror. “If I know Peterson, he’s about to make all of us a little nervous.”

  A few glimmers of hope had been tossed to him, but the darkness of his circumstances sent Lee to a place he couldn’t bear to visit. He fought against the pictures invading his mind, but he relived those moments when he had nearly lost Jennifer six weeks ago. Though he was sure he’d lost her, God had rescued Jennifer, and He had used Lee to help in her rescue. In less than two hours, he had gone from the depths of despair to elation. Would that happen again? Could he be as fortunate a second time?

  Reality set in. These were wealthy, international criminals. Their attack had obviously been well planned. Someone had closely watched Jennifer and him. The abductors had chosen their time carefully and grabbed her at an opportune moment. These facts alone told him the odds were long that he’d ever see Jennifer alive.

  As despair set in, he held onto one hope. Jennifer was twenty-six years old, so the traffickers hadn’t planned for an Amber Alert. At least one monkey wrench had been thrown into their plan. But would it be enough to save Jennifer?

  3

  While the patrol car rolled across the island towards Wailuku, Lee tried praying, but questions interfered—a myriad of questions. However, they all led to the same one. Why?

  The knots in his writhing stomach and his panic brought on nausea. Soon, fighting the urge to vomit also interfered with each attempt to pray. And then the questions returned.

  Why on their wedding night? Why did God allow it? Jennifer was so brilliant, so beautiful, so full of compassion for lost and oppressed people…why her?

  Dark fields gave way to dark, shadowy palm trees. Soon scattered lights appeared on the hill to the left, and the lights of the city lay only a short distance ahead. A few more minutes and he—a thought jarred him. How could he have forgotten to ask?

  You’re an idiot, Brandt! An INTJ idiot. The Meyers-Briggs personality assessment made him understand himself a lot better. It sometimes even led to an intuitive, brilliant leap of logic.

  He leaned forward. “Officer Yagi.”

  Yagi twisted in his seat. “Yeah, Brandt?”

  “An Amber Alert means there was a witness. Who saw the abduction? What did they see?”

  Yagi looked at Kaai and waited.

  After a f
ew seconds Kaai nodded.

  Yagi turned back towards Lee. “A tourist, a middle-aged lady, saw two men overpower and abduct your wife.” Yagi sighed. “It happened at the back of the shops. They came out of the dark parking area in the rear of the shops, grabbed her, and left the same way, into the dark parking lot.”

  “Anything else? Any other witnesses?”

  Yagi shook his head. “No. Just one lady saw it.”

  Jennifer would have fought them. She was fast, smart, and she knew some karate. Why didn’t they mention that? “What about descriptions of the two perps?”

  “Perps?” Yagi glanced his way and shook his head. “You watch too much TV.”

  “I seldom watch TV, Yagi. Now tell me about the perps!” Lee’s frustrated voice surprised even him with its intensity.

  “Settle down, man. I was getting there. Two strongly built men wearing dark clothing. That’s all we have to go on.” Yagi turned back towards the windshield. He was done.

  But there had to be more. Lee wasn’t ready to quit his interrogation. “What kind of dark clothes? Shorts? T-shirts?”

  “The lady was so upset by—” Yagi cut off his sentence and paused.

  What was he about to say?

  “It upset the lady so much that’s all she could give us for a description. Now, the police station is a couple of blocks ahead. You can expect a lot of questions, Brandt. If we’re going to help you, you’re going to have to give us everything you know about Jennifer, a complete core dump.”

  Unlike the core dump you just truncated.

  Yagi had omitted something that further upset the lady. Lee would find out what it was…somehow. The little things that seemed to be missing bothered him. Was there more to Jennifer’s abduction than he suspected? His gut said yes. His gut also said he should vomit. He tried to ignore his gut…on both counts.

  Lee sighed. “Core dump. You must be into computers.”

  Yagi nodded, then shrugged. “But that was before I got hooked on law enforcement.”

  Kaai turned into a parking area adjacent to a building that appeared to be a beehive of activity.

  “Here we are,” Yagi announced. “Brace yourself, Brandt.”

  ****

  An hour later, Lee sat alone in the room where he had faced a fever-pitched interrogation for forty-five minutes. Detective Ramirez of the Maui Police Department, MPD, was good and thorough. He’d asked Lee a lot of questions, but only allowed him a few in return. He understood. Ramirez was probably under intense pressure from the politicians. Tourism could be severely—

  His cell rang. The number was blocked. Lee answered.

  “Is that you, Brandt?”

  Peterson. He prayed for good news. “Yeah. Lee here. Have you—”

  “Just listen for a second, because that’s all I have. Some people in very high places are concerned about Jennifer falling into the wrong hands, and they’re—”

  “Peterson! She’s in the wrong hands now!”

  If the tall FBI agent were here, Lee would be in his face. He needed to be in somebody’s face.

  Peterson sighed. “I know. But hear me out. They’re pulling out all of the stops. That’s a good thing. In fact, I’ll see you in about four and a half hours, so—”

  “Four and a half hours? That’s not possible. What—”

  “Lee, I told you they’re pulling out all the stops. Don’t ask anymore because I can’t tell you.” Peterson paused. Someone in the background spoke. “Make that four hours. Sit tight and try not to worry. We’ll find Jennifer.” He ended the call.

  The words “We’ll find Jennifer” replayed in his mind. But the thought of how they might find her brought more nausea.

  Was Peterson coming on something supersonic? A military plane? He said Uncle Sam was pulling out all the stops. But going to such lengths to get him on the ground in Maui meant that the FBI agent knew a lot more about this incident than he was telling.

  The attention Jennifer was getting was comforting, the reasons behind it, disconcerting.

  Lee’s stomach roiled and he leaped from his seat, ran out the door, and headed towards a sign in the hallway that pointed to restrooms.

  After five minutes of violent retching, his stomach settled. He washed his face, and then his mind cleared. Now a new thought dominated all others. With all of the pressure being brought to bear on them, her abductors couldn’t move Jennifer. As the search continued, at some point they would probably kill her rather than risk being caught red-handed.

  He tried to come up with a plan—his plan for finding Jennifer. He would rather die trying to save her than sit idly by and let some goons kill her. The police wouldn’t take kindly to his meddling, so he wouldn’t tell them what he was doing. But he hadn’t a clue yet what he was going to do.

  Before he formulated his plan, Lee needed to make a phone call. It was a call to the man who had given Jennifer away to him earlier that day, a call to the man who trusted Lee to protect her, a call that filled him with dread.

  4

  Lee stood in the hallway outside the men’s room in the Wailuku police station and pressed Granddad’s number on his speed dial. He sought words to break the news. The right words wouldn’t come, only feelings of horror and loss. That wasn’t the message he wanted to communicate. He needed to give them some hope, but right now, hope was in short supply.

  You can’t give what you don’t have.

  “Hello.”

  Granddad’s voice. He sounded cheerful. Probably having the time of his life with Katie, playing chess, throwing baseballs, and teaching her karate. It was all about to change.

  Lee and Jennifer were in the process of adopting Katie. The paperwork was completed. But if something happened to Jennifer, what would happen to their plans? What would happen to Katie? It was too much to contemplate all at once. So much hung in the balance for the people he loved most.

  “Hello. Is anyone there?”

  “Granddad, it’s Lee.”

  He had to wake up, stop letting his mind wander.

  “Lee, you should be enjoying your honeymoon, not calling me. Katie and I are having a good time. She—”

  “Granddad, I have bad news.”

  Silence.

  He took a breath and related the facts of Jennifer’s abduction, including the Amber Alert and Peterson’s involvement. “The Amber Alert will help—”

  “We killed all of them! How could they have taken Jenn?” Katie’s voice. She must have picked up the other phone.

  He sought a reply, a way to explain the unexplainable to a girl who worshiped the ground Jennifer walked on. “Katie, you told us a girl helped the traffickers when you were taken. She’s never been apprehended, so there has to be more to this trafficking operation than we know about. When we killed Boatman’s and Trader’s cohorts, maybe we drew the anger of the international syndicate.”

  “We’ve got to find her.” Katie’s voice was full of determination. This strong, bright, and beautiful fifteen-year-old could not be deterred. At least he’d never been able to when she was on a crusade. She was a great girl, but keeping her out of danger would be a full-time proposition. He couldn’t handle that and implement his own plan for—

  “Did you hear me, Lee? I’m coming to help find Jenn. And you aren’t—”

  “We’re both coming.” Grandfather interjected in his trump-suit voice. “Katie, rest assured you will be coming with me, so please hang up the phone while I convince Lee of that.”

  A click sounded. Good. At least she respected Granddad’s authority. Lee’s first look at the small, fit, seventy-year-old man who held a sixth-degree black belt in karate had also commanded Lee’s respect. But on this, he had to oppose Granddad.

  “Now, Lee, you—”

  “No. You can’t endanger Katie. I won’t let—”

  “Please, Lee. Listen for a moment.”

  “OK. I’m listening.” But you’re not gonna change my mind.

  “I don’t believe it will, but if this turn
s out badly and you keep Katie from helping, do you realize what that would do to her? Katie and Jennifer are closer than most mothers and daughters even though the adoption hasn’t been finalized. It would kill Katie if…”

  Granddad was right.

  Lee might keep Katie safe physically, but emotionally, it could destroy her. Maybe all this would be over even before they arrived. “OK. Katie comes on one condition, Granddad. She stays out of the line of fire.”

  “And who determines where the hooligans’ guns are aimed?” Granddad asked.

  Lee had never tried to assert his authority over Granddad. He was the authority figure in Jennifer’s family. Not knowing what to expect, Lee replied, “I do.”

  Granddad sighed. “As you wish. I’ve got to go now, Lee. I have relatives on Maui to contact, and we’ve got to pack. We’ll catch, what is it you call it, the red-eye? Katie and I will be there in about ten hours.”

  When he terminated the call, Lee had won one battle, but it felt like he had lost the war. Worry went viral in the neural network of his mind, worry about Katie, and worry about Jennifer. Both were brilliant, geniuses. But intelligence could only do so much against men with overpowering strength. Men full of evil, evil that knew no limits.

  There was One Who was all-powerful, One full of love, grace, and mercy that knew no limits.

  Lee closed his eyes and took his concerns to that all-powerful source.

  Footsteps grew louder, and he ended his prayer. A uniformed, male officer sauntered down the hallway towards him. The officer passed by Lee and entered the men’s room.

  Lee walked to Detective Ramirez’s desk, reflecting on his personal plan to find Jennifer. Lee was unsure of his next move. But move he must, or the part of his sanity that remained would evaporate like a drop of water at noon in the Sahara.

  To find Jennifer, he must first find her captors. The only source to tap for more information was the lone eyewitness to the abduction, the lady Yagi had mentioned. To find her he would need to find out where—