“Manning as in Chester Manning the magazine publisher?” Kane asked.
“Yeah. He was a guest on this cruise. So was a woman. Something about a magazine article. The information on that isn’t very clear.” Wallace visibly gulped. “And, sir?”
“There’s more?”
“Dietz is on the way.”
Kane’s good mood dissolved. “Damn it! Who told him?”
She noticed this news upset Kane more than the idea of missing people and blood. “Who’s Dietz?”
“Internal Affairs,” Kane said, almost as an afterthought.
She knew enough to know that was bad news. It wasn’t a huge leap to figure out that this guy and Kane’s vacation shared a link.
“I guess this Dietz guy shouldn’t find you here,” she said.
Wallace glanced behind them. “Too late. He’s here.”
She turned around, expecting Lucifer to get out of a big black limo and shoot fireballs at them. The real version was a bit of a disappointment. Just a guy. A normal guy. Tall, brown hair graying at the temples, maybe late-forties. No fire, but plenty of sparks.
Dietz saw Kane.
Kane saw Dietz.
Both men tensed.
“Dietz.” Kane’s jaw tightened.
Yeah, there was a history here. A bad one, she thought.
“Travers, I hope you’re not dumb enough to be visiting a crime scene right now. You’re in enough trouble.” Dietz even sounded like a normal guy instead of the leader of the underworld. “Wallace, you wouldn’t be feeding information to your former chief, would you?”
“I’m still the chief.”
“For now.” Dietz rested his hands on his hips in what Annie now recognized as the universal law enforcement stance. “Well, Wallace?”
“No, sir.”
Kane shook Roy’s hand. “Good to see you. I’ll let you get back to work.”
Roy took the hint and jogged in the direction of the marina office. Annie thought about running after him. Seemed safer than standing between Kane and this Dietz guy.
Dietz nodded in her general direction. “Who’s the civilian?”
With that attitude Dietz moved right onto her ass-holes-to-watch list. “I’m Annie.”
“Annie who?” Dietz issued the question like a command.
“Do I have to answer that?” she asked Kane.
“No.”
“Yes,” Dietz answered at the same time.
The wind ruffled her hair. She tucked it behind her ear so she could look Dietz straight in the eye. “A friend of Kane’s.”
Dietz’s eyebrow raised. “Didn’t know Kane had any of those.”
“Which proves you don’t know everything,” Kane said.
“Speaking of knowing,” Dietz wore a look of smug satisfaction, “does this young lady know about you?”
“Technically, I’m not sure I qualify as a young lady anymore.”
Dietz ignored her and focused his anger on Kane. “All I need is ten minutes alone with you.”
“Anytime, anywhere, Dietz.”
“Whoa.” She grabbed Kane’s arm and held him back. She hoped the gesture looked loving. She also hoped he didn’t drag her along with him.
“You should tell your lady to move aside,” Dietz said.
“I’m staying, and nothing is happening here.” She moved in front of Kane and glanced around for Roy. Reinforcements carrying guns would be good about now. “Kane’s showing me the marina.”
“Annie, don’t help.”
She rambled right over Kane’s warning. “We ran into Roy. No big deal.”
Dietz barked out a laugh. “Are you going to let your woman cover for you?”
The guy needed a punch in the jaw. Annie considered letting Kane land one. Just one.
“At least I have a woman.” Kane looked bored, but anger threaded through his words.
The testosterone level kept rising. Any higher and she’d choke. “Gentlemen. Let’s pretend we’re adults, okay?”
The red splotches on Dietz’s face faded a bit as he stepped back and away from Kane’s truck. “The lady’s right.”
“Her name is Annie.” The roughness in Kane’s voice decreased, but with his shoulders stiff and his hips squared, he still looked ready to pounce.
As long as she didn’t get caught in the middle of the pouncing, she’d let this display of masculine puffery go on a little longer. Like, two more seconds. Whatever history these two had was not good, and she wanted to know why.
Suddenly everything about Kane interested her. And any guy who could make Kane’s temper simmer like this was someone she needed to watch.
Dietz took out one of his business cards and held it in front of her. “Annie, may I call you that?”
“You won’t be talking to her much longer,” Kane said.
Dietz ignored the dig. “Do you have a last name ma’am?”
Apparently the obsession with her name extended to all of the males on the island. “No.”
Kane squeezed her arm in what she assumed was a grateful gesture.
“Annie”—Dietz wiggled the card under her nose—“we should talk.”
Kane snapped the square piece of paper out of the air. “Leave her out of this.”
“Anyone who’s messed up with you is in this.” Dietz’s smile turned feral. “Or doesn’t she know?”
Kane pulled her toward the truck. “Let’s go.”
She didn’t fight him, since she was in favor of getting away from Dietz. Her knee had other ideas. When he jerked her forward, a sharp pain shot up her leg, and she stumbled.
“Damn,” she hissed out under her breath.
Kane immediately shouldered her weight. “You okay?”
“Let’s just get out of here.”
“Seems to me the lady has a right to know the type of guy she’s sleeping with,” Dietz called from behind them.
“I’m fine, but thanks.” She plastered a fake smile on her face, trying not to let Kane know how much pain throbbed through her.
Leaving was the priority at the moment. Dietz creeped her out. His hatred of Kane rolled off him, filling the space around them like a living thing.
“Then you don’t mind that Travers here is a killer?”
Her knee buckled as she skidded to a stop. Kane swore and reached for her as she turned back to Dietz. The guy looked pleased. Oh, yeah, he’d scored whatever points he wanted to score and he knew it.
Kane stepped between them so that all she saw was the back of his T-shirt. “You got a problem with me, Dietz, take it out on me.”
“You should be in jail,” Dietz spit back.
“Never going to happen.” Kane grabbed her arm again, this time a bit harder so that her feet barely touched the ground. Even through his haze of anger he must have sensed her pain.
“Running, Travers?”
“Stay away from Annie or you’ll deal with me.” Kane shouted the threat over his shoulder.
“Wouldn’t want that,” Dietz said from behind them.
With shaky legs and a jittery belly, Annie slid into her seat and buckled up. When Dietz appeared at her window, she thought about grabbing his tie and telling Kane to drive off while they pulled Dietz behind them. Somehow, she refrained.
“Yes?”
“Annie, be careful of framers.”
Kane leaned across her lap and threatened in a deadly soft voice. “Get away from my truck.”
She tried to put the window back up, but Dietz stuck his arm inside the car. “You’re not safe with him.”
“Goodbye.” She really meant get lost.
“I’m backing up.” Kane shifted into reverse and started to roll up her window from his side.
“Go faster.” She wanted Kane to gun it.
“Kind of obvious if I run him over, don’t you think?” Kane mumbled his question.
“I’ll testify for you.”
Dietz touched her shoulder to get her attention. “Just think about something, Annie.”
<
br /> “I’ve had enough thinking today. Thanks.”
“Sure, but seems to me if a guy would kill a kid, he wouldn’t think twice about killing his girlfriend.” Dietz finally removed his arm. “You might want to keep that in mind.”
Shock clouded her vision. “Did you say—”
Dietz winked at her. “Call me. And don’t forget what I said.”
Chapter 9
Less than an hour later Kane stared at Annie over the top of his menu. She sat on her side of the red fake-leather diner booth, humming and studying the burger listings while activity buzzed all around them.
Apparently eating lunch with a killer didn’t affect her appetite.
Or improve her singing voice.
He dropped the menu on the table with a thunk. “Okay, spit it out.”
The soft singing sputtered out. “My gum?”
Her response threw him off stride. “Where’d you get the gum?”
“From your kitchen drawer.” She blew a bubble.
“When?”
“This morning while you were on the phone.” She stopped chewing. “What, were you saving the pack for a special occasion or something?”
He had the sudden urge to check for his wallet.
“Did you search every room of my house?”
“I think search is a strong word, don’t you?”
“So is theft.”
She popped a second bubble. “I guess that will teach you to hold a woman hostage.”
“It will teach me not to use the handcuffs.”
He added talk on the phone to the long list of tasks he could perform with Annie in his line of vision. So far, the only time he could trust her was in bed. Not that he’d exactly found peace then either. Tossing, turning, fantasizing and sweating—yeah, those he could manage with her curled up by his side. Not peace.
Every time something about her got stuck in his head, her eyes or her sexy legs or anything, he tried to remember how annoying she could be when she opened her mouth. How argumentative. How dishonest. Even that last one was losing its effect.
“If you try that stupid handcuff trick again, you’ll pull back a stump.” She dunked her teabag in a mug of steaming water.
Good. Eating and conversation, he could handle those. Could even take her smart mouth.
He exhaled, relaxing for the first time since they left the marina parking lot. After the silent treatment on the drive over he figured Dietz’s allegations had scared the hell out of her. Now he knew this woman had plenty of hell left inside her. Along with some spit, venom and whatever hormones made her so damn sexy.
She didn’t push, scream or do any of the typical hysterical woman things he’d expected. Not that Annie qualified as typical. Not at all. Her calm demeanor meant he could settle down and eat.
“You can tell me about the kid now,” she said between sips.
So much for the she-doesn’t-care theory.
“Nothing to tell,” he said, lying to her for the first time.
“Yeah, we all have a dead kid in our backgrounds,” she said in a dry tone. “I was thinking just the other day, ‘Gee, it’s a shame I killed that kid’ and then—”
“Dietz is a dick.” Kane felt the tension roll right back into his shoulders.
“I don’t disagree.” She winced when a song blared over the diner speakers. “The question is whether he’s a lying dick.”
Spilling his guts never came easy for Kane. The public aspects of his job—the forfeiting of his zone of privacy and opening up his life to scrutiny—grated against his nerves. While with the DEA, he blended in. Doing otherwise could have gotten him killed. Certainly would have made him ineffective. Instead, he excelled himself right out of one job only to land in the middle of a police career mess.
But, if he wanted her to trust him with secrets, he had to tell a few of his own. “Ask me what you want to ask me.”
Annie leaned back in her seat, holding her mug with a death grip. “There’s the most obvious question.”
“Which is?”
“Don’t be dense.” She cut off when the hostess walked a party of four by their table. When Annie started talking again, she sat forward, elbows on the table and whispered, “Did you kill a kid?”
He didn’t bother to whisper. Not as if this part of his life was a secret. “Yeah.”
Her facial expression didn’t change. She didn’t condemn or encourage. Didn’t get anxious or scared. She just sat there.
He turned back to the menu and scanned the left side. “Did you see the specials?”
“Kane—”
He kept his nose buried in the sandwich section. “What are you getting?”
“Annoyed.”
He flipped to the back cover. “I don’t see that one on mine.”
She reached over and knocked his menu to the table. “Come on, Kane. There’s more to this kid story than the fact he or she is dead.”
“He, and he didn’t fall asleep at the wheel or drink himself stupid.”
Those cases were bad enough. Parents angry with their kids for not coming home on time turned hysterical as the hours wore on and those kids didn’t reappear. Then the dread settled in. The realization that something awful had happened. Something inconceivable.
Kane had walked that path in his own life when his wife’s car jumped over a guardrail and plunged off the Pali Highway on Oahu to the canyon bottom two hundred feet below. Every time he watched a rescue unit pry a kid out of tons of twisted metal, that ache moved through him, grabbing his stomach in a clench he couldn’t shake. He remembered feeling that useless. Powerless.
“Tell me how he died,” Annie said in a voice so low he had to strain to hear her.
Kane knew then that Dietz had hit his mark. Annie wasn’t going to let this subject drop until she got some answers, and he really couldn’t blame her. This wasn’t the type of information he’d ignore if he were on her side of the table.
“The circumstances won’t change it, Annie. He was seventeen, and he’s never going to see eighteen. End of story.”
“If that were true, Dietz wouldn’t have been so hot to tell me about it.”
“Don’t kid yourself. Dietz would say anything to discredit me. Our feud started long before this incident.” And would continue long after.
Dietz lost someone on the Pali Highway that night. His sister. Then he lost the police chief job to Kane. Faced tough criticism in the press for not uncovering the preppy drug ring and having to depend on Kane and the DEA to do it for him.
Kane reached for the menu again. “The club sandwich is usually good.”
She held it against the table. “You’re pretty desperate to change the subject.”
“You have the basics. The how and why don’t matter.”
Her lips screwed up in a frown. Disgust couldn’t be far behind, so he waited. He’d heard it all before. Hell, Sam’s mother attacked him at the police station the night Sam died. Pounded on his chest until she fell on the floor in an exhausted heap. Kane let her hit and scream because, well, the woman earned the right to mourn. He’d done enough mourning in his life to recognize when a deep, blinding pain held someone else.
Annie finally said something.
Just not what he expected.
“Give me a break,” she said.
“Excuse me?”
“You need to drop the macho bullshit act.”
“Did I forget to tell you I carry a gun?”
She ignored his joke. “Of course the how matters. How is the difference between having a conscience and not. Serial killers kill. Cops sometimes have to kill. Those groups aren’t equal.”
The couple at the table next to them started arguing over which song to punch into the table jukebox. Annie shushed them, and the woman scowled back, even sneered a bit, which was hard to miss since her purple nose ring bounced around in response.
Kane lowered his voice. “Maybe you missed the part where the kid was seventeen? At seventeen someone should have shot m
y smug ass, but they didn’t. Sam didn’t get the same second chance.”
Her frown deepened. “The way I figure it, you had a reason to do what you did.”
He’d known her less than one day. From that short time together, she’d granted him more blind faith than the mayor and Police Commissioner who’d hired him. Never mind that he was a hometown boy. That he’d grown up on Kauai and returned after college. Never mind that one of his oldest friends, the same one who’d convinced him to leave the DEA and serve as Police Chief, cast the first vote against him on the Commission.
Mike Furtado ran the Commission and convinced him a voluntary vacation would look better than an imposed leave. Then Mike stopped talking and turned the file over to Dietz. That hit had stunned Kane the most.
“What makes you think I care about what happens to one kid or another?” Kane asked more to hear her response than anything else.
The couple finally chose a song, then started on a discussion about the cost. A whole dime. The money debate was even louder than the music disagreement.
“Well, tough guy, chalk it up to instinct. There are bad guys out there. Trust me, I know.”
Finally an opening. “You ready to tell me who?”
“No. My point is that you’re not one of them, Kane. You rescued me and never took advantage, though God knows you had the chance.”
After spending his life as the rescuer and getting nothing but crapped on in response, Kane wondered if there was another life out there for him. “Only because you were pretending to be unconscious.”
“I’ll have you know I was plotting my escape in case you turned out to be a nut.” She tapped her nails against the table. “I’m still not sure you aren’t.”
“That’s sweet.”
“I’m not saying we’re best buds or anything. I’m just saying you don’t strike me as a guy who would shoot a kid for kicks. If you shot the kid, there’s a reason. Don’t get cocky about it. It’s a pretty low morality bar.”
The waitress came over and took their orders, leaving a new basket of sugar packets. As she walked away, Kane stared blankly at a spot on the wall above her head.
“She your type?” Annie asked.
“Huh?”
Annie nodded in the direction of the counter. “The waitress. You’re staring at her ass.”
Your Mouth Drives Me Crazy Page 7