Stolen in Paradise (A Lei Crime Companion Novel)

by Neal, Toby

  She tried Rogers again, left a message that she was outside Kim’s building and planning to go up. What could be going on that he wasn’t picking up? Well, she wasn’t desperate enough to call Gundersohn or Waxman, so she slid the Glock into the loose pocket of the pants and got out and locked the car.

  She looked up at the building. Of course Kim had to live on the third floor, and of course there was no elevator. She sighed and went up the battered aluminum stairs with their sandpaper-striped treads, stopping to pant and recover at each landing.

  The shoulder didn’t hurt so much as her energy was sapped.

  She stood in front of Kim’s door, which was weathered in sunstreaked patterns, pausing on the frayed jute WELCOME mat and thought twice. Kim was represented by the pestilential Bennie Fernandez’s firm. He was bound to have it in for her after she shot his nephew, and here she was on his client’s doorstep with nothing more to go on than a hunch.

  She lived to piss Bennie off. Marcella stuck her finger on the bell.

  Nothing happened.

  She pushed it again.

  Nothing happened again.

  She knocked.

  She heard quick footsteps, and she stepped to the side out of view of the peephole.

  “Who is it?” Kim’s light tenor voice. Well, good, at least he was here.

  “Kelly,” Marcella improvised. “I live on the floor below. I wanted to borrow some…laundry detergent.”

  “Don’t have any,” Kim snapped.

  “Hey, you don’t do laundry? C’mon, man,” she wheedled. “I know you do.”

  “Okay, whatever. Just a minute.” She heard the footsteps retreat. He sure was touchy for a guy being approached by a young female in his building.

  Abruptly the door opened and Kim’s hand protruded, holding a box of Sun laundry detergent. “Keep it.”

  Marcella moved forward, shoved the door in with her good shoulder. “Hello, Mr. Kim.”

  “Oh, it’s you. Get out of my house.” With surprising strength, Kim shoved on the door, knocking her back.

  Marcella rallied and heaved back, groaning as her bad shoulder took some pressure. He let go abruptly, and she staggered forward into the gloom, stumbling.

  Stars exploded into blackness as he hit her with something.

  Chapter 21

  Marcella came around slowly, to discover she was immobilized on the floor, lying on her side—unfortunately on her bad shoulder. It throbbed to the beat of her heart. Her head added more painful thumping. She took inventory with her eyes shut: Her hands were taped—she could tell by the way her palms and legs were pressed together. A slight flexing yielded no results—she was securely bound. There was tape over her mouth too.

  Dammit.

  She kept her breathing slow and even and cracked her eyes open.

  Kim was in the final stages of packing. She must have interrupted him, because he was muttering as he threw a few more items into a bag. All she could see were his jeans-clad legs directly ahead through the bedroom door. He disappeared out of view.

  She wasn’t able to do anything but delay him—perhaps one of her messages would be picked up and Kamuela or Rogers would show up. It would probably be smart not to agitate him further—he’d already assaulted a Federal officer; it might not seem like much more to add murder to the list of charges. But she’d never come down on the side of cautious.

  As if on cue, Kim hefted the black duffel bag and headed back toward her. She shut her eyes, staying limp as he grabbed her feet and hauled her out of the doorway.

  She snapped her legs out of his hands abruptly and lashed out with all she had, getting him in the groin with a lucky kick. He doubled up with a strangled cry, backing away from her. Wriggling like a worm, she tried to move back toward the door. Delaying him. That was all that was needed; that was all she could do.

  He straightened slowly, hands over his pelvic area. He narrowed his eyes with an intentness that she wished Dr. Wilson could see. His normally impassive face twisted, teeth bared, and a flush rose in his cheeks, darkening them, as his hands pulled into fists. Rage was in his face—rage and contempt. And some strange kind of dark hunger.

  She saw the second he made up his mind what would come next.

  Dammit. Oh shit.

  It’s never a good idea to kick a man in the nuts, especially when tied up. Come to think of it—she never should have come. What an idiot. Just the kind of thing her reckless friend Lei would have done. Waxman was going to have a conniption; she’d have proved him right that she was a loose cannon. Well and truly out of bounds this time. Funny, the stupid little thoughts you have before dying. “Oh shit” was the most common response to imminent death. Was that really all she could come up with?

  All these thoughts and more flitted through her mind as she watched him go to his utility drawer and open it. Her breath puffed rapidly through her nose, and her eyes skittered around looking for an escape.

  There wasn’t one. She wriggled into the doorway anyway, pressed up against the door as if by sheer will she could wish herself through it.

  “I would have let you live, you know,” he said conversationally, digging around in there. “But I feel like killing somebody for the way this ended, and it might as well be you. Handy how you got rid of Fernandez—he made such a good patsy. You get to die, knowing you shot an innocent man who didn’t know what to do when he found a murder weapon in his bag.” He extracted a length of half-inch white laundry cord, cut it, doubled it, snapped it between his hands before her wide, hypnotized eyes.

  “Cindy couldn’t believe I’d kill her either. Stupid girl called me over to tell me she knew I was spying for AgroCon. I couldn’t have that. I was ready to give them the formula. It was sad actually. I hated doing it. But I won’t hate doing it to you, nasty, nosy FBI bitch.”

  He stepped over to straddle her, and Marcella rolled and whipped her legs to the side, knocking one leg out from under him with a move she remembered from grappling with Ang. He went down with a grunt, but threw his weight on her torso, pressing down on her wound. Agony had her expelling precious air through the tape on her mouth in a high-pitched scream, the sound of a muffled teakettle. He followed up this advantage, climbing astride her and throwing the rope over her head. She bucked, and he lurched but got the rope around her neck and tightened it.

  She couldn’t breathe, couldn’t make even a peep as the loop dug into her throat. She kept trying to buck him off. The last thing she saw was his face above her, grimly intent, before gray turned to blackness and closed in around her vision.

  Chapter 22

  The blackness retreated the same way it had come—slowly, peeling back to gray, forming into shapes that her brain eventually interpreted. Someone leaned down to blow into her mouth. She wanted them to stop, but her arms wouldn’t move, nothing on her body was responding. The face descended again, and she saw it was Marcus Kamuela, and there were tears on his cheeks. One hit her in the eye. She blinked.

  He paused, yelling, “She’s awake! Rogers, she’s awake!”

  Matt Rogers, a knife in his hand from cutting her restraints, sat abruptly back on his ass. He dropped the knife, mashing the heels of his hands into his eyes. “Thank you, God.”

  Kamuela hauled her up into his arms. “Marcella. Damn you, woman.”

  She couldn’t speak. She coughed feebly. Rogers jumped up and ran to the sink, ran a glass of water, handed it to Kamuela, who held it to her lips.

  Sip, sip, sip. The water felt like ambrosia on her bruised throat. She realized her arms were free, and now pain competed—her head, her shoulder, her neck.

  The door burst open for EMTs and a gurney. Marcella waved her hands impatiently, anxious to ask about Kim, but when she tried to speak, nothing came out but a croak.

  “Just rest,” Kamuela said. “We got him.” He pointed to the couch, where Kim sat, handcuffed and bound, eyes still darkly murderous. She tried to speak again to no avail, and mimed pen and paper. Rogers went to the utility drawer
and dug around, bringing a small spiral notebook and pen over even as the EMTs continued to check her over, redoing the shoulder dressing that had broken into bleeding and poking at the bump on the back of her head.

  He did Cindy, Marcella wrote. He set up Fernandez.

  “Thanks,” Rogers said. “I’ll talk with you later about your cowboy antics in coming here. Let’s go.” He hoisted Kim by the arm and hauled him to the door, where Ching had just arrived. “Got one for your holding cell.”

  NO HOSPITAL, Marcella printed on the notebook. I just want to go home.

  “I can do that,” Marcus Kamuela said, and hoisted her up into his arms and out of the paramedics’ protesting clutches. “Let’s go home.”

  Marcella lay without moving as she woke in the dark, checking in with her body. The aches and pains of yesterday were still there, pulse points of complaint, but minor compared to being overheated. She was downright hot, and that’s what had woken her up.

  A rumbling snore made her smile even as she tried to wriggle away from Kamuela’s bulk. The man was so large, her cushy mattress was sagging in his direction, dragging her into his heat. She thought she’d succeeded in sidling away when a hand slid around her waist and he pulled her in beside him, the length of her bare body touching his.

  Apparently he’d taken her clothes off after she’d fallen asleep under the influence of more pain medication. She sighed a little. At least she was lying on her good side. Her bare behind was tucked against his side, and by the change of his breathing, she could tell he was awake.

  Something else was awake too. It was long and hard and even hotter than the rest of him, and it was just the thing to take her mind off her aches and pains.

  He lay still, probably trying to be a gentleman, and in the dark she smiled as she wriggled her tush against his groin and let out a little moan as if asleep. She heard the hiss of breath past his teeth as he eased away from her, and this time she followed, arching her back to settle her rounded ass against him, stretching in mock sleep.

  The hand that had pulled her in began to wander. It circled around her full breast, pinching her nipple into a puckering point, trailing down her belly, making her shudder and twitch. Gently, so gently, the hand teased at the curls over her mound, a finger sliding down into her slick warmth.

  She gave up the pretense and gasped, pressing her ass back against him, lifting her knee to give him access.

  “I didn’t bring a condom,” he said.

  “It’s okay. I take something,” she whispered. He needed no further invitation. His fullness entered her from behind even as he worked her from in front, and she was moving against him and he into her, the early dawn filling with tiny kitten cries that seemed to be all her damaged throat could emit.

  He pulled her fully against him, his powerful arm a steel band, and she held back to feel the shudder of him coming from the top of her head to the bottom of her feet. And then she let herself go, joining him in breathless oblivion.

  Thank God she was on birth control, because that one would have started the next generation for sure. And man, she felt better.

  She sighed, and stretched, and decided Advil was all she’d need that day—that and maybe a few more orgasms. Way better than physical therapy.

  He got up first, fetching a towel from the bathroom, sliding back into bed with her and cleaning them both without words or fuss. She fell asleep again in the notch of his shoulder, and this time the warmth of his body was profound comfort.

  Marcella sat on her tiny deck. Wind off the ocean fluttered her cotton robe. There was coffee, lots of it, in a hefty mug at her good hand, and Marcus was combing out her hair.

  Life was good, even recovering from being strangled and shot—definitely sweeter because of it. She took a sip of coffee, closed her eyes, and let her head fall against the metal chair back, feeling the warmth of the sun on her face.

  “Don’t tell anybody I did this,” he muttered, spritzing detangler on the damp brown tresses and working the comb gently through. They’d just got done washing her hair in the bathtub with the flexible shower head to avoid wetting her bandage, an ordeal that had left her white-faced and trembling, rethinking just Advil. Kim had hit her on the back of the head with a brass Buddha statue, leaving a goose egg.

  “Ow,” Marcella said as the comb tugged on the tender spot. He dropped it and backed away.

  “Shit. I can’t do this.”

  “If you don’t do it now, it’s going to be worse later,” she said, her heart swelling at his tenderness. He would never hurt her; in fact, she knew, all the way to her bones, that somehow he’d fallen in love with her.

  Tears, falling off his face into her eyes, had told her that.

  He picked up the comb and continued as she relaxed, checking in with herself about this new revelation. It didn’t seem like such a bad thing. Her usual phobia didn’t seem to be rearing its ugly runaway reflex. In fact, she wondered if she might be a little in love too. How had that snuck up on her?

  “I got the tangles out.” He sounded triumphant. “Now I’m going to switch to the brush. It helps it dry nice without getting frizzy. My sisters used to do it that way.”

  “You have sisters?”

  “Two. Older than me. They’d be laughing their asses off to see me now.” The brush slid effortlessly through her hair. Swish, swish. She closed her eyes in pleasure.

  “No, they wouldn’t. They might tease you a little, that’s all.” She felt confident of this—she pictured his sisters, tall, sturdy, competent women with dimples and big smiles. She wanted to meet them someday.

  “All done.” He sat in the other chair beside her, picked up his mug. He took his coffee loaded with sugar and cream.

  “Thanks for helping with my hair.” She took a breath. “I’m dying to know. What’s going on with Kim?”

  “He refused to listen to Bennie Fernandez. Wanted to tell us all about how he shot Dr. Pettigrew when she realized someone was stealing information from the project—then set Fernandez up with the gun, figuring he was a good stool pigeon who’d crumble under pressure and do something stupid—which is exactly what he did. Cindy was going to blow the whistle on him, so he killed her and tried to make it look like a suicide—but planted some of Fernandez’s hairs and trace on her for insurance, and he knew Abed had a thing for her, so he pointed the finger at him too.”

  Marcella frowned. “What about the blogs?”

  “He did those to frame Fernandez,” Kamuela said. “He posted them from Fernandez’s usual workstation as part of the frame-up. He did that again while we were surveilling but then decided to go around and pick up all the notes and get busted. He was such a bumbling criminal, he actually threw us off.”

  “Yeah, I just chalked him up as a thief. He didn’t really cover his tracks. I mean, those deposits, trying to steal the lab books and letting us catch him at that?” Marcella shook her head. “Amateur hour.”

  “It appears he’s studied our system. He thought we’d write him off as a thief, which is exactly what we did, and he wouldn’t get more than a slap on the wrist, and that after AgroCon paid him. He chose well when he set up Fernandez.”

  Marcella’s hand shook as she sipped her coffee. “Jarod Fernandez was innocent and I shot him.”

  “But he shot you first. You didn’t have a choice.” He wouldn’t let her look away. It was time to find out a little more.

  “Listen, I’ve been meaning to ask you—do you still belong to the Club?” She took a sip of her coffee to disguise her nervousness.

  “No. I quit after you dumped me.”

  “I quit then too.” Their eyes met. The wind ruffled her clean, shiny, soft, well-brushed hair.

  “So why’d you belong?”

  “You first,” he said, eyes on his mug.

  “Okay. I had a bad relationship in college. He kind of—burned me for other men. Then I was busy with the Bureau, and sometimes I just wanted to get laid, without all the hassles and games, you know?”
/>   “I do.” He nodded. “And that’s exactly why I went. Between my mama and my sisters, it’s been nothing but setups and ‘oh you’d like my friend Kelly’s cousin’ for years now. I wasn’t ready to settle down, and I was sick of fending off all the family matchmaking. I just wanted to go somewhere and not be me. Just be some guy, any guy, and get laid. My family is such a big deal. You haven’t met them yet—but it’s going to be interesting.” His voice went heavy with dread.

  “You’ve met my parents. How much worse could it be?” Marcella turned to smile over her shoulder at him. “I’m Italian. I’m from Jersey. I can handle a few Hawaiians.”

  “There are more than a few,” Marcus said darkly. He set his mug down, got up to stand in front of her. “Let’s go inside.”

  He was wearing her other robe, a plain white terry cloth that barely covered his knees, and the belt looked like it was going to come undone any minute, an intriguing prospect.

  “Why? I like it out here,” she whispered, and reached out to give the belt a tweak. Sure enough, it came undone. She gave another tug, and he took another step forward to stand between her knees.

  His hands in her hair weren’t as gentle this time as she took him in her mouth, or when he knelt between her thighs and grasped her knees, or when they finally rolled onto the carpet in the living room and he looked into her eyes from above.

  No masks or games or scars separated them, and Marcella was surprised at how good it all was.

  Marcella looked around the gaily decorated, newly repainted interior of Café Italiano. Through the half window she could see her mother, a tiny figure dwarfed by a chef’s hat, manning the great gleaming steel stove, surrounded by several minions. Her father, dapper in a tuxedo shirt, bow tie in Hawaiian print, and black trousers, gestured Marcella and Kamuela in.

  “Welcome to the grand opening celebration of Café Italiano.” He escorted them through the tables to one directly in front of the kitchen window. “Your mama, she want to see you while she cooking.”