Hawaiian Thunder (Coastal Fury Book 4)

by Matt Lincoln

  “I’ll do that, sir.” Maloney rubbed the back of his head. He looked at me. “Please tell those agents I apologize.”

  “I’ll do that,” I promised.

  As we walked out, I heard Maloney start talking with Wyatt about making those plans. Kline and I went to the observation room to talk. I watched Maloney and Wyatt interacting, and damn if the kid didn’t look ashamed.

  “He’s young,” Kline said. “He was also high as a kite when he was brought in that night. I know these trust fund types. They think they’re hot shit until it gets real. When he gets out, he’ll probably go back to his friends and fall off the wagon.”

  “Now you’re the cynical one,” I observed as I dialed Meisha. “I need that warrant ASAP.”

  Kline nodded. “When the judge hears the words ‘federal agents in danger,’ she’ll hop to it.”

  Meisha answered almost as soon as I hit SEND.

  “We got him as soon as Davis is out of there,” I told her. “Get everyone ready.”

  “Ethan, we have a problem.” She spoke in a gentle tone that sent a spike of dread through my belly. “Kyle never got the call. He waited half an hour before going to V’s house. They’re gone, and they left Robbie in the middle of the driveway.”

  “No, no, no…”

  “They airlifted him, Ethan, but it’s bad.”

  “I am going to kill those fu—” I looked at Kline but ran out of words.

  I ended the call with Meisha and flew out to Sadie’s car. I don’t remember the frenzied drive through the rain. All I knew was that I wasn’t about to let my best friend go without a fight.

  CHAPTER 28

  Rainy days were rare in Honolulu. Sadie looked out the dorm floor’s front windows again and shook her head. Daily rain showers were a way of life on Oahu, even on this, the drier side of the island, but a full day’s rain was out of the ordinary. The darkness gave her a foreboding feeling, but she shook it off as her imagination.

  “There’s another one over here,” TJ called from the storage room. “Do you have more buckets?”

  Sadie had already gone through the entire building to find as many buckets and containers as she could. At that point, the only thing that could help was putting a tarp over the roof, but that wasn’t about to happen. She ran down to the first floor.

  “Hey, one of you guys, we need more buckets. There’s a hardware store down the road.”

  “On it,” an off-duty SEAL called out.

  Jerry had lingered after shift change. He’d taken great pleasure in showing her the inner workings of an AK-47 earlier, but she hadn’t enjoyed it. As a paramedic, she saw what the other end of devastating wounds looked like, and she didn’t want to think about the body shatterers those bullets were. The leaks upstairs, nasty as they were, had rescued her.

  “Get, like, ten big ones,” she instructed. He tried to say something, but she cut him off. “Thanks. See you in a bit.”

  She ran back upstairs, where Jo, TJ, and one of the SEALs who was on duty to guard them were all scrambling about to keep the water from getting into computer or lab equipment.

  “Didn’t anyone inspect this place before they bought it?” TJ complained as he hustled another small bucket to the kitchenette sink. “You’d think the roof would be an important part of the inspection.”

  Jo paused in her construction of a tarp-tent over the equipment she had set up. Sadie was amazed at Jo’s MacGyver-type ingenuity. The tarp was angled so that the leaks ran to one of three buckets and kept everything underneath dry. The hard part that Sadie had helped with was anchoring the nylon ropes just so.

  “The city practically handed it over to MBLIS,” Jo told them. Her nose ring glinted in the overhead lights as she moved back to adjusting the tarp over the last bucket. “The agency agreed to bring it up to standards, but they’re doing a shitty job of it so far.”

  Not for the first time, Sadie questioned the wisdom of taking Meisha’s job offer… recruitment, more like. She liked the people, but the instability of the funding worried her. Maybe the fire department paid a lot less, but the job was there and in little danger of going away.

  “What do you want me to carry next?” she asked TJ.

  They were relocating what computer equipment they could down to the two whole cubicles that hadn’t been shot up. The server was too heavy to move, and they’d wrapped it up tight with tarps and a fan to help fight the humidity.

  “This bin has the most important stuff.” TJ pointed to a dark-blue Rubbermaid container.

  Sadie picked it up and started toward the stairs when she heard Meisha start yelling and people running around. She looked at TJ, and he ran over with the container’s lid. Sadie snapped it on and left it. They both ran downstairs with Jo.

  Meisha’s face was red, and tears were running down her cheeks. She’d thrown her phone against a wall. Stark and a SEAL were getting out weapons while the other SEAL ran out into the rain.

  “We need more people,” Meisha said to no one in particular. Her phone rang from the floor. She walked over in mechanical steps and wiped her eyes on her forearms.

  Sadie went over to Meisha, but the director waved her off. TJ and Jo lingered as if they had no better idea of what to do than did Sadie.

  “Yeah, Kyle?” Meisha asked. She nodded. “Okay. I’m gonna call Ethan. You better meet him at the hospital ASAP.” When she ended the call, she raised her voice. “The house is empty. There’s no one there. Davis went in and checked it out as soon as they got local backup and an ambulance on scene.”

  A chill ran down Sadie’s spine and limbs. “Who…?”

  Meisha’s phone rang again. The cracked glass was barely readable from where Sadie stood, but the color drained from Meisha’s face. She took a deep breath as she answered.

  “Ethan, we have a problem.” Meisha spoke in a far calmer tone than Sadie expected. “Kyle never got the call. He waited half an hour before going to V’s house. They’re gone, and they left Robbie in the middle of the driveway.”

  Sadie heard Ethan’s anguished voice saying “no” several times.

  Meisha looked at Sadie as she continued. “They airlifted him, Ethan, but it’s bad…” She held the phone out and swallowed. “He ended the call.” She looked up at everyone who had crowded around Sadie. “I need to go to the hospital. Sadie, you’re driving. The rest of you, secure this place the hell down.” She turned to the SEALs. “Get more of your guys in here. If we end up moving, it’s going to be fast.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” the taller guy said in a sharp tone. “Holm is our brother. If there’s ass that needs whooping, I volunteer.”

  “So do I,” the rain-drenched SEAL added.

  “Me, too,” Sadie growled without thinking. Rather than laughing at her, the others nodded. “I’ll grab my bag and be right with you,” she told Meisha.

  Sadie ran to the now-dry office where she’d stowed her bag and umbrella. So the rain had been a bad omen. She grabbed her things and sprinted out to where Meisha waited with the Impala’s keys. Meisha tossed Sadie the keys, and they made a run for it to the car.

  Meisha didn’t need to tell Sadie where to find Ethan and Robbie. If they airlifted Holm, that meant one place on this side of the mountain. Meisha stuck a blue flashing light in the window, and Sadie sped away from the firehouse.

  “Thank you,” Meisha said in a choked voice. “I’ve known Robbie for years, Sadie. He’s like family. He’s the class clown at the Miami office, and he’s the first to jump and help other people when he can. If we lose him, it’ll be a tragedy for a lot of people.”

  “He’s Ethan’s best friend, isn’t he?” Sadie asked as she focused on the road and cut down a side street that would get them to the hospital faster.

  “Yeah. SEALs and brothers forever,” Meisha told her. “If we lose Robbie, I don’t know what’d happen to Ethan.” She caught Sadie’s eye for a half a second as they swung through an intersection. “I’m afraid, Sadie. I’m really afraid.”

  C
HAPTER 29

  Holm was in surgery for the second time in as many months. I would’ve given my… Hell, I would’ve given anything to be in that room for my partner, my brother. We’d seen too much, the worst and best that humanity could offer, to let some Russian asshole put him in the grave.

  “Ethan…”

  Meisha entered the waiting area. Her eyes were puffy and red. I got up and hugged her. She took a seat across from me and sniffed.

  When she was at our office in Miami, when it was me, Holm, Diane Ramsey, and her, we were tight. Later, when Diane got promoted, Birn became part of the family. We worked a lot of cases together, spent a lot of holidays working, and sprang ridiculous birthday surprises on each other.

  “He’s gonna be in there for a while,” I told Meisha. “I haven’t called his folks. They… they just went through this with him in South Carolina. I don’t think I could tell them about Ronnie.”

  Sadie walked in with three coffees in a holder. She’d stuffed the fourth slot with packets of sugar, sweeteners, and creamers. She looked lost, and I waved her over.

  “I didn’t know what to get,” she said as she handed each of us a coffee. “Here’s a little bit of everything.” She sat in the seat next to me. “You told me that Robbie was hurt a couple months ago. This has to be terrifying.”

  I held the coffee with both hands and let the heat chase away the frigid grip of fear. The waiting area was chilly, like every other surgical waiting room everywhere. I wondered if they kept the rooms chilly so that the families and friends were less likely to get wound up. Heat does that to a person.

  “Whoever beat the shit out of him is gonna pay,” I growled. “The doctor said some of the wounds reopened, and he had internal bleeding. He probably has a concussion, given the amount of bruising on his face and head.”

  An acrid taste hit the back of my throat, and I swigged it down with coffee that was barely cool enough to drink. Across from me, Meisha appeared to be collecting herself. A long while back, I’d wondered if she had a thing for Holm. I’d forgotten, but now that memory resurfaced.

  “What’s the next step?” Sadie asked. She stirred creamer into her drink and sipped at it. “How do we find the people who did this?”

  “Director?” I caught Meisha’s eye. “It’s your call. What do you want your team to do?”

  “Find the bastards any way we can.” Her venom-laced voice was soft but solid. She set her coffee on a nearby side table and dialed a number on her phone. “TJ, find out who owns V’s house. Dig for it. It won’t be in his name because he’s not stupid. Get Jo, Bonnie, and Abby to the scene. I’ll call Kyle.”

  “No need, I’m here.” Davis strolled in with a pair of coffees. He saw we had some and smiled at Sadie. “Your doing?”

  “Yeah, but there’s never enough coffee,” she told him.

  “Indeed.” He set the coffee cups next to Meisha’s cup. He was still dressed in his blue suit and that dang honeycomb pocket square. “Hey, Marston. Your partner is made of tough stuff. You frogmen are hard to kill.”

  “That frogman has taken a hell of a lot of punishment.” I downed the rest of my coffee.

  “I told him it’s against MBLIS Hawaii regs to die,” Davis told me as he sat next to Meisha. “He saw Ronnie. She’s alive. That’s all I got from him because he was in and out the whole time.”

  I leaned back and breathed out long and slow. We needed a plan to get her back.

  “You were so close,” Sadie whispered. “Something happened between the time you met him and when Kyle went, didn’t it?”

  “But what?” Meisha shook her head. “We think he got Robbie last night, so he knew someone was looking for Ronnie, but that shouldn’t have connected him to us. Ethan, did you get a vibe that he was ready to bug out?”

  “No. He was annoyed, but I figured it was because I was being annoying.” I thought through the encounter again and couldn’t peg anything that would’ve tipped him off about me. “Mister V was all about going forward. He stood to get ten or fifteen grand from the deal.”

  “Maybe it wasn’t you,” Sadie suggested. We all looked at her, and she flushed but didn’t shrink back like she might have a few days earlier. “I don’t know how these things work, okay? But I’m thinking that if they showed Ronnie that her brother was going to die, she might have made a deal to get Robbie help.”

  “How is leaving him to die on a driveway helping him?” I snapped. This time, Sadie did shrink back. God, I felt like an ass. “Sorry, I just meant that it doesn’t make sense to me.”

  “Actually, it does,” Davis said. He straightened in his seat. “That was his best chance. If Ronnie told them how we might operate, they’d expect us to arrive sooner or later. Leaving him like that would be better than leaving him inside or taking him with. They sure as hell wouldn’t take him to the hospital when they’re trying to leave.”

  “They knew we’d be going in after them,” I said in a soft voice. “Jesus. They had Robbie and Ronnie in the same damn house.” I stood and paced the room. Anger boiled through my veins. If only I’d known for sure, I would’ve torn down the whole damn mountain for those two. “If Ronnie told them what I look like, that would’ve sealed the deal. She must have talked after I met V.”

  “You said she’s CIA?” Sadie ventured. “She’ll know how to handle that stuff, right? They teach all you military and intel types how to resist questioning. She’s alive, so they haven’t gotten what they want.”

  “Except I think they did,” I told her. “Whatever she told them, it made them get the hell out of Dodge before Davis got there. Kyle, what’d you find? Did you see the antiques room?”

  “I found a lot, man.” Davis raised his brows and blinked. “Yeah, your storeroom with all those antiques was there. I think they took the most valuable stuff with them. You know, take whatever they could carry in a rush.”

  I didn’t want to ask, but I had to know. “You saw the whole house. Did you figure out where they were keeping Ronnie?”

  His slow nod didn’t make me feel any better. “Okay, so you know we don’t do basements because the ground is lava rock. That’s hard stuff and expensive as hell to blast for a basement.”

  “What, they had a basement?”

  “Yes and no. More like they found a natural depression and built down into it. There were three rooms. One was his wine cellar.” Davis snorted. “The other two looked like holding cells. One was full of more antiques and paintings.”

  “Tell me about the third room,” I demanded. By the looks on Meisha and Sadie’s faces, I had a feeling they were dreading the answer, as well. “That’s where they held her, isn’t it?”

  “We think so.” He frowned. “The access was through the master bedroom closet. It was out of the way but not truly hidden. The knob was broken, and the other side looked like someone shot at it.”

  “She tried to get out?”

  “Her or her brother. I couldn’t tell.” Davis got to his feet and took off his blazer and stuck his thumbs in his pockets. He joined me in the pacing, albeit in the other direction. “The room we think she was in had a waste bucket. There was blood on the floor. When we got there, the light was bright as day in there, maybe brighter. There was also an audio system that piped into the room.”

  “Shit,” I hissed. Sadie’s blank look made me wish I had a little of my innocence back, but I had to say it aloud. “Sleep deprivation through noise, cold, and bright light is a technique to get people to talk. It’s not violent, but it can be effective. If he denied her food and water, she’ll be out of it by now.”

  Davis pressed his lips together for a moment. I wondered how much he’d seen. Probably a lot, and probably a lot of the same shit.

  “I didn’t see tools for other techniques,” he told us. He looked around. “The best news is that she’s alive. The not so good news is that she knows our tactics, as well as the CIA’s. We don’t know how much she’s telling them, not unless Robbie heard something.”

  “W
e’ll find out when he wakes up,” I informed them. “And he will wake up. Do not doubt that for even one second.”

  There wasn’t much to say after that. Sadie paged through old magazines, Meisha coordinated team movements, and Davis paced almost as much as I did. I wasn’t sure why he’d come in other than he was the one who found him.

  Meisha’s phone rang. As she pulled it out, I noticed the face was shattered. She had to fiddle with it for it to recognize that she was answering.

  “Director Griezmann.” She listened and sighed. “Hey, Abbie. Yeah, he’s in surgery… I know. I’m going to have Kyle relieve you in a bit. He needed to wind down.” She glanced up at Davis, who was pacing but stopped to listen. “Have Jo and Bonnie found anything useful?” Meisha was quiet for a minute, and her brows rose. “That’s interesting. Get the state police to open their lab. Ours isn’t ready for that… Good, good. Okay, when Kyle gets there, you can get over here… Good work. See you soon.”

  “I take it I’m going back to the scene,” Davis stated with a wry laugh. He turned to me. “We’ll find the bastards who did this, Ethan. I swear it.”

  “I believe you, brother.” I went over, and we did a forearm handshake. “Find something, anything.”

  Davis nodded and left.

  A few minutes after he was gone, a surgeon came out to meet us. His haggard face turned my guts to stone. I hated that look, and whenever I saw it on the battlefield, we knew we’d be sending another box home.

  “He’s not out of the woods,” the doctor informed us. “There was a bleeder that we had to find. I think we got it, but we’re watching before we close him up.” He looked over and blinked. “Hey, Sadie. You know these folks?”

  “Hey, Doctor George.” She turned to me. “Yeah, I’m with them. They hired me as their office medic.”

  The doctor raised a brow. “I heard their place got shot up the other night.” He looked at me and then Meisha. “No disrespect, but I think your old job sounds safer.”