“Thanks.” He took it and started to unwrap it. “What is this?”
“Onigiri. It’s a rice ball with seasoning to keep it from being boring and some flaked salmon in the middle for protein.” She loved onigiri and tended to make them for herself whenever she and King were going someplace relaxing for the day. This excursion was work-oriented, but they’d have to do some waiting and the surroundings made it a pleasure.
“Handy.” Jason murmured his approval around a mouthful of rice. “Tasty, too.”
Pride blossomed right below her sternum. She cooked for herself all the time, and it was nice to hear someone else enjoying what she’d made. “Trick is to have a fine sprinkle of salt on your palms when you’re shaping them to have nice flavor on the outside. Not too much, though. They keep all day, depending on the filling. They’re a great meal on the go.”
Talking about onigiri made her hungry so she took one out for herself. This one was of plain rice, seasoned with a light touch of sugar and white rice vinegar to give it a subtly sweet tang. She’d steamed the rice the way she liked it, a little on the wet side but each cooked grain still tenderly distinct as she bit into her rice ball. She got a burst of salty sour as she caught a bit of the umeboshi. She liked to put one of the tiny pickled plums into each of her plain rice balls. They were tart and woke up her palate when she had them for breakfast.
“How are we going to find your contact?”
Thirty seconds earlier, she wouldn’t have been able to answer his question. However, she caught sight of exactly who she’d been looking for and almost laughed. Of course he’d be there. “We’re going to the information booth.”
As she approached, Kenny looked up and saw her coming. He was forever unfolding himself from whatever chair he’d tucked himself into and by the time she reached the booth, she was looking way up at him. He was a tall man with a rangy build, all arms and legs and wiry strength. He reached out a long arm to gather her in and leaned across the counter to lightly press his forehead to hers. “Arin, lovely lady of doom, howzit?”
He gave her the same greeting whenever they met. Considering how they’d met, she did deserve it, so she didn’t mind him calling her what she was. She returned the warmth in his eyes and his smile with one of her own. “I’ve got questions, like I always do.”
Kenny laughed, the sound of it melodic in a soothing tenor. Listening to him speak or laugh or sing was like listening to a cello. “Don’t I know it. Right on.”
“This is Jason, by the way.” Jason had hung back a foot or two, giving her the option to introduce him or not. She appreciated the consideration.
Now, he took a step forward. “Jason Landon.”
“Good to meet you.” Kenny was more reserved with his greeting to Jason, sizing the other man up. Kenny was distantly nice to everyone and truly warm to only a select few. She wasn’t even sure he considered her a friend or someone he was willing to work with from time to time.
There was movement in the shade of the information booth and she glanced past Kenny. “How is Laki allowed down here? There’s no pets allowed in the state park.”
“Aw, now, Laki may not be a highly trained working animal like your noble companion there, but he has his talents.” Kenny continued to smile, looking amused at some internal joke.
She scowled. “A pig who surfs isn’t generally the kind of talent to get an exception.”
“Park manager is a big fan.” Kenny held his hands up. “Who am I to say? This is a good place to volunteer our time for a while. On the other hand, I thought your time was less fluid.”
True. And she deserved being reminded. Still, she wasn’t going to be derailed right away. “You two haven’t been surfing here in Hanauma. How long’s it been since you caught some waves?”
Kenny’s normally coppery brown skin was a shade or two lighter than the last time she’d seen him. Perhaps he hadn’t been surfing as much recently. Not for the first time, she wondered if there was an active reason for Kenny’s nomadic life on the island or if he just liked to be difficult to find on any given day.
“It’s been some time.” Kenny didn’t seem fazed as he gave her his answer. “Now what can I do for you?”
“The trafficking business we were looking into some months ago, it’s under new management.” She tried to avoid exact timeframes. They were holding a normal chat, nothing for anyone passing by to listen in on. It was still very early and only a few serious swimmers or snorkelers were trickling down into the beach area so far.
Kenny clicked his tongue. “That job is not a position to be in for long, apparently.”
“New manager got a few steps ahead of us on Big Island.” She gave Kenny a brief, concise summary of what had happened there. “I need to catch up and even get ahead of him. Who is he beyond his name? Where’s he from? What are his goals? What are some potential next moves? There isn’t going to be a roadmap that gives us a step-by-step breakdown, but if anyone can search out all the whispered information out there and pull the pieces together, it’s you.”
Kenny placed his palm over his heart, long fingers spread wide. “You flatter me.”
“It’s not undeserved.” She placed her hand on the counter between them. “And Kenny, this is about family. There’s a threat to my little sister again. You were there for part of it. I won’t allow them to use her as leverage.”
“Ah.” Kenny’s expression turned sober, his full mouth falling out of the habitual smile. “Ohana is everything. I’ll find what I can.”
“We’ll be here for a few hours, enjoying the sand and water. Maybe we’ll do some scent work with King when the sand gets hotter. It’ll be good practice.” Arin tipped her head to indicate the far end of the curved beach area. “Anything you can find this morning would give me a start, then maybe you could forward anything else you find to Pua?”
“Can do.” Kenny’s smile was back. “I might’ve set up a few laptops in here for just such a request.”
“You’re always prepared.” Arin tapped the counter and stepped back. “Mahalo.”
Jason watched the exchange between Arin and her friend, Kenny. Okay, and he couldn’t help but check out the pig hanging out inside the information booth. Seriously, it had a dark bristled coat and rough features, probably born feral or from wild stock. The pig was small, half the size of King and, apparently, the pig could surf.
He was learning something new today and that hadn’t happened often until he’d met Arin.
Or maybe he was just paying more attention around her.
He waited until they’d left the information center and headed across the beach. “So we’re here for the morning.”
“Yup.” Arin looked out at the water. “We’ll wait to see if he gets any immediate hits. It’d be too much of a giveaway if we came to talk to him and left, so we get a lazy morning. I cleared it with Zu.”
Jason sat on one of the few patches of short, stubborn grass lining the beach area. “Sounds good to me.”
A cat meowed.
Arin had been in the process of unrolling a tightly woven mat she’d carried in her tote. She turned at the sound of the cat. “Hey, Thug.”
King watched but didn’t make a move to go after anything, so Jason turned to check out the newcomer. He let out a low whistle. “That is a huge, fat cat.”
Arin snorted and sat on her mat. The cat strolled over and sat next to her and her tote full of snacks. “There’s some stray and feral cats down here. There’s also mongoose, if you watch for them. This guy has been hanging at this beach a while. I think one of the locals said he’s been around a few years, even.”
“Long time for a feral cat.” He studied the cat, who ignored him and King, pointedly pawing at Arin’s tote.
“He does know where the easy food is.” She didn’t seem to mind, but she also didn’t pet or cuddle the cat. She just sat there, knees drawn up to her chest, leaning forward and smiling at the thing.
He hadn’t pinned Arin as a cat lover, but her
eyes and mouth were softer around the corners. She wasn’t scowling. Thug kitty had worked his way into her heart, and Jason was betting there’d be food for the feline before too much longer. “You’re not a local, so did you grow up on the mainland?”
“Mmm.” She murmured the agreement. “East coast. Normal childhood, nothing noteworthy.”
“You seem to have a loving family, or sister, at least.” He doubted he’d have a chance to chat with her sister, but watching Arin interact with Mali, then Raul, then Kenny, left Jason wanting more. They all had history with her. The time he’d shared with her had either been on the move, life-threatening, or mind-blowing sex. He definitely planned to coax her into more of the last if she was willing, but he also wanted to dig deeper. The bits she’d shared with him yesterday hadn’t been nearly enough.
“I do. We weren’t rich or anything, but Mali and I had what we needed growing up. We also had ambition and we each finished up schooling to get on to other things. What about you? Seems like I’ve been answering all the questions.”
True, and he hadn’t intended to hold back, really. No one had cared to ask him before. He was taken aback and…glad, at the same time, that she had asked.
Her history was a contrast to his childhood. “I grew up in South Africa, in Cape Town. My father was a businessman. We weren’t rich and I definitely didn’t suffer as a little kid, not by standards I’ve seen in other places, but my father lost his job when I was young and neither of my parents could get work again. Life got hard and we had to live without major things like electricity. We didn’t just lose comfort items. My parents turned bitter, fought a lot. Once I completed compulsory education, I just continued with further education, determined to do other things with my life than be at home. As soon as I found an out, I left and didn’t look back.”
She rested her chin on her knees and sighed. “There are advantages to a clean break. I left home and came back for short visits, but never as long as they wanted me to stay. It got awkward. They kept expecting me to be the same, but I couldn’t give that to them. I was even more decisive than they remembered, abrasive, harsh. They wanted me to go back to my old marshmallow of a bed, eat my favorite foods, wear the same style clothes. But I wasn’t comfortable that way anymore.”
He nodded. Service changed a person so they never quite fit back into the life from which they’d come. He would know. “Why did you leave home in the first place?”
Her lips twisted into what might look like a smile. But it wasn’t. Not after he’d seen her real smiles. Her voice grew husky with sadness. “My parents, my sister, they’re kind and gentle souls. They have good intentions and high expectations. But I didn’t fit into the part of the world my parents had carved out for our family. I am neither kind nor gentle.”
“You don’t have to be those things to be a good person,” he said quietly. “There’s also a lot of things we can say about intentions.”
She huffed out a laugh. “Yeah. Road to hell. I definitely took a long road trip and some of the places I ended up in were hell and worse. I was hungry to remake myself. I wanted to go into a crucible and come out free of the violent streak I had inside of me. I’m confrontational and contrary. I tried to get it all out of my system.”
He stared at her until she lifted her eyes to meet his gaze, then he gave her a slow smile and put all the heat and desire he had for her into it. “I personally like all that about you.”
She didn’t answer, but a blush spread across her cheeks and her eyelids dropped to half-mast under his continued gaze. Good. He didn’t want her to fight him on this.
“Those aren’t issues.” He leaned forward and put a hand out on the sand between them. “You tried to burn it out of you, fine. It’s like cutting away a part of yourself. I like what you accomplished instead.”
She blinked and her brows drew together. “What?”
Hah. He was glad she was listening instead of thinking up ways to refute his statements. “You honed your violence, made it something well-balanced and polished. Watching you in action is like watching a once-in-a-lifetime performance in a theater. Sure, other people can say the same words, go through the same motions, but anyone who witnesses you knows the moment is magic. They might never see your equal again.”
She narrowed her eyes. “Possibly because I ended them.”
He nodded. “Soldiers throughout history looked for that kind of ending. They couldn’t think of any better way to go.”
She reached out with one hand and touched a finger to a spot near his hand, drawing circles in the sand. “You make me sound like the Morrigan.”
The what? He scowled. He was being serious, waxing eloquent even, and she had to throw him off his game. It was frustrating, but he also got a crazy kind of happiness out of it. “Here I was proud of myself for keeping up with the conversation.”
She laughed, the sound of it expanding a warmth from his core out to his fingertips. “Brush up on your mythology. The Morrigan is from European myths connected to war and fate and death. My sister and I both had a thing for mythology growing up and I still like to read up on the legends of every place I go, if I get the chance.”
He shook his head. “Always a learning curve with you.”
And he liked it, a lot. He’d been growing stagnant before he met her. The people he worked with had all been the same personality with different names. None of them thought outside the box, but she was challenging in new and surprising ways. She tipped her head back, turning her face up to the sky. “We’re both a long way from where we came from.”
True. And her statement swelled in his chest, better than any “attaboy” from his former colleagues ever had. He liked her profile and wondered if she realized she was picture perfect at the moment. Leaning back, he propped himself up with his hands in the hot sand and enjoyed being near her. “We are.”
“Personal history gets…too personal sometimes.” She raised her head back up and looked out over the ocean. “I mostly avoid it if I can.”
“I appreciate our talks so far, though.” He didn’t want her to shut down or withdraw. She didn’t sound uncomfortable, though. Just introspective.
“I do, too.” The corner of her mouth lifted in a hint of a smile and she actually laughed, soft and almost to herself. “It’s easy to share with you.”
His heart kicked the inside of his chest. Damn, but he liked hearing that.
She looked at him then and her gaze seared right through him. “A little. I’m not keen on an overdose of the chatting.”
He opened his mouth to respond but he had nothing. He had no idea what to say.
She released her knees and stood, brushing sand from her legs. King rose with her, shaking sand from his fur and causing Thug cat to give the big dog a hiss. “Let’s go for a swim.”
He rose with her. “Okay.”
Sharing time was over. It would’ve been awkward to sit with her staring at the ocean or going blind looking out over the sand. Cooling off in the ocean sounded like a good idea.
“It takes a strong swimmer to go out past the inner reef but it’s worth it.” She raised her eyebrow and smiled. “You up for it?”
Glad for the lighter mood, he grinned back. “Hell yeah.”
Chapter Thirteen
The water was warm as Arin waded in. She kept walking forward at a steady pace against the gentle waves. She stepped carefully to avoid the few rocks dotting the mostly smooth sand and headed out until she was waist deep in water. Then she stood there and savored the scent of ocean and the water swirling around her legs for a few minutes. Sharing so much had churned up too many emotions and she needed this swim to buoy her, find her peace with it all again. Even then, she might not have the courage to ask him more about himself. She preferred to learn from his actions as they moved forward and let his history come out without digging.
Jason caught up with her, a set of flippers, mask, and snorkel in each hand. “How did I end up paying for the gear rental?”
&nb
sp; She grinned. “You’re staying at my place for free, aren’t you?”
He gave her a mock glare and handed over the gear.
Once they had flippers on their feet and fitted their masks to their faces, she pointed to the right side of the bay. “There’s a channel through the inner reef that opens out to the deeper part of the bay. Once we get through there, we’ll keep to the right. There’s better swimming to that side and less issues with rocks or changing currents.”
He nodded. “Sounds good.”
That was it for words for a while. They both got their snorkels into place with their masks and started swimming. The water was calm inside the inner reef, but there were already a lot of tourists in the water. That many swimmers churned up the sand and visibility was only so-so. It took some patience to thread their way through small groups of two and three splashing around and exclaiming into the water over the few brave fish feeding in the area.
It got less crowded as they approached the center channel, and they only had to wait for one other pair of swimmers to go by before they could swim through. Once they were clear, the water became cooler as the depth of the bay opened up in front of them. Coral was more vibrant in pinks and blues and there were more fish in this quieter and more wide-open area.
Arin took a moment to enjoy the view, then turned back to confirm Jason was still with her. He hung just below the surface to her right, the wide mask allowing a clear look at his eyes. He gave her a thumbs-up.
The waves were stronger here, pushing them back toward the channel, so she struck out at an angle to the right side of the bay. She loved swimming, stretching her arms forward and cutting into the water, pulling herself forward with every stroke. Water flowed over her skin in a cool caress. Brightly colored fish fed on the coral below them, unconcerned as they passed by.
She paused here and there to admire the sea life and each time, Jason had given her a light touch to let her know he was at her side. He’d run the back of his knuckles over her shoulder and lightly tap her hip. When they saw a sea turtle swim by, he’d run his palm over the back of her calf.
Fierce Justice Page 13