Somehow at each stop, wherever she turned, however she turned, Ty was there beside her, flirting, teasing, smiling. He stood too close, brushed against her too often, touched her arm or her shoulder, whispered in her ear when a simple comment from afar would do. How he could be so calm when she was looking behind every bamboo shoot for a guy to jump out with a lethal bike pump was beyond her.
Still, in a weird way, she was grateful. His casual attitude and demeanor were calming. And if he could flirt, so could she. She backed into him, smiled at him, stroked his shoulder as she “brushed a bug off.” She cooed and flattered. It had been years since she’d flirted like this and it felt good.
After the arboretum, they jumped back in the van. The highway pulled closer to the coast and water. As they came upon Nuaailua Bay, the road hugged the rugged edge of the hills, winding and curving into two narrow no-passing lanes. A concrete brick barrier, not tall enough or substantial enough for Treflee’s tastes, hugged the downhill side of the road. It looked to her like a person, or vehicle, with enough initiative could topple over it with no problem.
The view—deep blue and green water, gentle waves crashing against volcanic rock below, blue, blue horizon, and tropical vegetation—took Treflee’s breath away. It was both bluer and greener than anything she’d ever seen before.
Though the road was often crowded, this time of day most of the traffic was heading the other way, back to Lahaina.
Treflee relaxed. Though it had been only this morning, the race down the volcano seemed like days ago. “Wow! The view takes your breath away,” she said to Ty.
He smiled and nodded.
“I can see how a person could live here. Live here and never grow tired of this.”
He turned and looked at her. “Can you?”
Wrong thing to say! “Sure. Why not?” Though she was lying and was pretty sure he knew it.
He shook his head and smiled.
Devious girl that she was, Treflee got a wicked thought. He’d been tantalizing and teasing her for the entire trip. It was time to fight back. Treflee had taken her secret agent rearview glasses off several stops back and changed them in favor of her polarizing sunglasses. Now she pulled them out of her purse and swapped them again. In the backseats, the others seemed occupied with the view. Excellent!
She and Ty used to play a driving game to pass the time. No “I spy” or alphabet game for them. Their game had always had a much more sensual edge. It went something like this—she tried to distract him and he tried not to let it affect his driving, not to let the distraction show at all.
She leaned over and whispered, “Want to play a game?” At the same time she grabbed his knee and squeezed.
“You sure? This is a dangerous road. Most fatalities in the state.”
He was mocking her. He wasn’t afraid. He was up for anything she threw at him.
“You think I’m afraid?”
He nodded toward the barrier. “Lots of curves ahead. Not much protection if things get out of hand. Big drop-off. Water and rocks below.”
“Bring it on.” She ran her fingers along the inside of his thigh as he slowed and then accelerated into the next corner. “We’re on the uphill side.”
“Bet hedger.”
She laughed and lifted the edge of his shorts with her fingertips, sliding her hand beneath the shorts, inching upward on his taut, defined leg. She knew this territory well and liked the feel just as much as ever. Just how bold would she be with her cousin and crew in the seat behind her? Good thing she had her spy glasses.
She glanced at the group in her rearview glasses. What handy little devices these were. The girls were all drinking and gawking at the view.
“Oh, shit!” Ty said.
I have him! The thought gave her particular delight. So long without her had made him way too susceptible to her touch.
Just then, Treflee caught a glimpse in her glasses of a car barreling up behind them and realized what his “oh, shit” was really about. “What’s that idiot doing? Is he drunk? Tap your brakes. Make sure he sees us.”
Ty shot her a quick deadpan look. “Oh, sweetheart, he sees us. Think bike pumps. Leis.”
The bright Hawaiian sun felt suddenly cold. Treflee’s mouth went dry. She squeezed Ty’s thigh.
Ty stepped on the accelerator.
The van, definitely not a high-precision driving instrument, hesitated as if it were thinking about maybe moseying along someday. Meanwhile, the other car, which obviously had more horsepower, gained on them. Mercifully, the van lurched forward just as the car behind them came up on their rear bumper, way too close for comfort.
Next to her, Ty locked his arms. She watched him tighten his grip on the wheel.
Ty thinks they’re going to ram us!
In the backseats, the others were still blissfully unaware of the danger.
Treflee started to shake. If this had been a Bond movie, the predatory car would have had some lethal ramming device on the front of it. A whirring saw blade. A stiletto tire puncher. Or it may have been equipped with an antiballistic missile.
She hoped they didn’t have any missiles, tacks, or machine guns. The most lethal thing she had on her was the nail file in her bag. Ty probably had a gun. But how was he going to draw it and shoot with any accuracy while negotiating this tangle of a road?
Carrie had a gun. Back at the plantation. Thank goodness, because at this point of inebriation, she was as likely to hit one of her bridesmaids or Ty as the bad guys.
Treflee scanned the other car, looking for a sawed-off shotgun or a semiautomatic hanging from a window as she dug her nails into Ty’s leg.
He grabbed her hand and pulled it off. “You’re about to draw blood before they do.”
“Thanks for the reassurance.” She clutched the edge of her seat with the same enthusiasm, totally white-knuckling it.
Ty floored it into the next curve.
One of the girls in the back yelled, “Go, Ty! We’re smokin’!”
The others began chanting, “Go, Ty!,” and raised their mugs to him.
Treflee was not amused. “You’re going too fast! The speed limit’s fifteen.” Backseat driver and wife instincts were hard to break.
“You’re worried about a ticket?” He checked his speedometer. “Now?”
“I’m worried about smashing into the side of a volcanic hill at a hundred miles an hour.”
“Calm down. I’m only going sixty.” He glanced in his rearview mirror.
Afraid she’d get carsick if she took her eyes off the road and turned around, she looked in her rearview glasses again. The maniac was still closing in on them. She closed her eyes and prayed.
The girls in the backseats finally caught on to the danger and began swearing.
“Is that Kane? I bet it’s Kane!” Laci’s voice pitched an octave higher in fear and excitement, becoming piercing and slurred.
“Call him, Carrie!” Faye yelled. “Tell him we’ll pull over and talk things out before he kills us.”
“I’m not talking to Kane. He can just go to hell.”
“Either he is or we are.” Carla, who evidently was used to emergencies, sounded calm. Good to know she was a happy drunk. “How good is your first-aid kit, Ty?”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake!” Brandy yelled. “You’re going to talk to the man!”
Treflee opened her eyes and stared in her glasses behind her, trying to calm down. “Does he have a gun?”
Carrie swiveled around to get a look. “Hey! That’s not Kane.”
“Gun?” Treflee repeated.
She watched Brandy squint and shake her head. “No gun. But the driver looks mean.” She paused. “And Chinese. He has a really cool tattoo on his neck.”
“Fuk Ching,” Treflee whispered, but not quietly enough.
“What did you say?” Carrie called up. “Did you just use the F-word?” She broke into a gale of giggles.
Treflee frowned. The things drunks found amusing.
The
car rammed them, jarring everyone inside and shaking Treflee’s teeth. The picnic basket in the back tipped over and crashed against the back door.
Ty punched the steering wheel and cursed. When that didn’t work, he resorted to sweet-talking the van into submission.
“The bastard!” Carrie yelled out as if she’d just realized there was some danger. “He’s trying to run us off the road!”
“No one runs us off the road, do they, girls?” Brandy sounded indignant. She flipped the driver of the car the finger.
“No!” Treflee screamed at her. “You’ll make him mad.”
Ty shot her another one of his understated deadpan looks. “Really?”
“Mad!” Carrie screamed. “I’ll show you mad.” She opened the window and tossed her pineapple schnapps onto the attacker’s windshield.
His wipers went on and he rammed them again.
Carrie cursed and shook her fist at him. “This is war! Battle stations!”
Battle stations?
“You don’t have your gun, right?” Treflee called back to her, fingers crossed.
“Left it at the plantation,” Carrie yelled back. She and the others were waving liquor bottles and pineapple mugs or reaching into their purses. “Ty, how you doing up there? Can you handle the driving? Need me to step in? I’m good at high speeds.”
Oh, boy! Treflee could just see Carrie stepping in. No way Ty would be down with that. “He’s the designated driver, remember?”
“Yeah. Too bad I’ve had one too many.” Carrie sounded disappointed. “I really am great at precision driving.” She opened her window and tossed her pineapple mug out. “Bombs away!”
It landed with a bang on the pursuer’s hood and bounced off into the road. The driver shook his fist at them and pulled a gun from the front seat, taking aim at them as he drove with one hand.
“Duck!” Treflee screamed.
Carrie laughed and cursed. “Damn, I missed the windshield.”
Ty was going too fast. He took the curve wide, straying into the oncoming lane.
The gunman’s shot went wild and missed them.
Treflee took a deep breath, waiting for impact. It took her a second to realize they were still alive. Thank goodness no one was coming the other way.
Their pursuer nearly hit the barrier himself. He corrected just in time and tossed his gun down into the seat next to him. He pulled up on the inside, hillside lane, forcing Ty to drive into incoming traffic.
“He’s going to try to ram us over the barrier.” Ty’s voice was calm, almost unconcerned.
Treflee glanced at the way-too-short barrier. “Can he do that?”
He shrugged. “We have a high center of gravity.” Without breaking his concentration on the road, he smiled. “Don’t worry. I can drive us out of this.”
Male confidence and bravado!
In the backseat, Carrie and the girls had opened their windows.
“He’s dropped his gun! We have him on the run!” Carrie laughed with glee like a commander on the battlefield who smelled victory.
The girls began tossing out an arsenal of items, keeping score as if they were playing a video game as stuff flew out the window. So much for litter laws.
Treflee braved a bout of carsickness and turned in her seat to face them. “Hey, be careful! That guy’s a dangerous Chinese gang member!”
“He doesn’t scare us,” Brandy said.
The rest ignored her.
“You missed him!” Carrie yelled to Brandy. “Watch this use of subterfuge! I can hit him without looking.” She donned her rearview spy glasses and palmed a plastic container of tiny breath mints from her purse. “He won’t see this one coming.”
The Fuk Ching rammed them again, warbling Carrie’s voice. Somehow, Ty corrected and kept them on the road, speeding way too fast around the next corner.
Treflee felt green and sick, certain she was only holding on thanks to antinausea drugs. Thank goodness for Dramamine!
Carrie clutched the mints, taking aim.
An absurd picture crossed Treflee’s mind. “Hey, sober up! Those won’t do any damage.”
Carrie laughed. “Are you kidding? At this speed these babies will be like bullets. Scare the hell out of that guy. Watch this!”
She tossed out the mints. The container broke into a zillion plastic shards. The tiny orange breath mints bounced around like hail against the car.
The driver swerved, coming dangerously close to colliding with the hill. He turned on the windshield wipers to brush the mints away just as Faye scored a direct hit with her pineapple mug. It sounded like an explosion as the guy’s windshield cracked.
Treflee jumped.
Ty grinned. “Nice to have a few drunk cops on hand,” he whispered to her.
“Good one!” Carla clapped and passed around a nearly empty bottle of Hawaiian-made wine. “What’s next? What do you think this will do?”
Ty shook his head as he drove for the relative safety of the inside, and their rightful, lane, cutting the attacker off at the corner.
Carrie and crowd launched another assault round—a flutter of drink umbrellas that had absolutely no effect except to cause another gale of laughter. A shopping bag that went wide, catching a breeze and missing the target. Finally a fluffy Big Auau beach towel did its thing, spreading across the windshield as if for a day on the sand.
“Bulls-eye!” Carrie yelled. “One hundred points for Laci!”
The girls cheered. “Hooray for Laci!”
The assailant lost control of the car. It slammed into the concrete barrier with a sickening screech as they rounded the next corner.
Even Treflee gave Laci silent kudos. She’d probably just saved their lives. Treflee glanced in the rearview mirror and shuddered even though the accident was out of view.
Ty turned to Treflee and whispered, “Don’t worry about him. I’ll call my guys to take care of it.”
She glanced at the bridal girls, feeling a strong sense of camaraderie with them after their life-and-death fight together. Carrie and her friends were real troupers. But she was still a little worried. “Let’s hope none of them think to call 911. They’ll want to give their fellow cops a heads-up.”
Ty picked up his phone from the storage bin next to the driver’s seat and waved it at the girls in the back. “You girls just relax. I’ll let 911 know there’s been a little accident back there.” He hit a speed-dial number she knew wasn’t going to be the cops, and whispered to her, “Satisfied?”
Treflee’s hands shook. “Go, just go. Get us out of here.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Ty pulled into a parking spot at Keanae Park and turned off the van.
“Should we be stopping?” Treflee hissed in his ear, glad he hadn’t gotten them killed while he was driving and talking in code to “his guys” on his cell phone, probably giving them cleanup instructions. At least he hadn’t been texting and driving. Everyone knew how dangerous that was.
“What if our friend back there somehow managed to walk away and called for reinforcements? What if he’s dead and the cops want to question us and bring us in for vehicular homicide?”
“Do you see any cops? Any guns blazing?” Ty winked at her. “Give me some credit. You have to trust me, Tref. My guys have this under control. Don’t worry.”
“Are we there yet?” Brandy called out, laughing at her own joke and interrupting any further argument.
Ty seemed unfazed by their brush with death. He popped right back into tour guide mode. “Keanae Park. About halfway. Time for a snack.”
He whispered to Treflee. “Maybe some food will sober the girls up.” He pointed toward a concession stand across the parking lot. “Banana bread, anyone?”
If the huge BANANA BREAD sign over the stand was any indication, that was their only option.
Treflee clutched her stomach. She wasn’t so certain she wanted them sober. Drunk seemed to be a blissfully ignorant and happy state. Maybe they were better off that way—fewer q
uestions.
Ty gave her a sympathetic look and reached over and stroked her bare arm. Just like he used to do in the good old days.
She swallowed hard.
“It’ll be all right, Tref. Trust me.”
She stared at him a moment. “I hope you’re right.” She took a deep breath and scanned the area. “Are you sure it’s safe?”
Ty glanced around, apparently unconcerned. “Oh, yeah. This park’s a little less touristy than other stops, a bit less crowded, but we’re fine.”
“Meaning?”
“We have a handle on things. Let’s go!”
Before she could protest further, Ty jumped out and opened the van doors.
Not certain she believed him, Treflee climbed out cautiously, relieved to find she could still stand on legs that felt as if she’d just done a thousand squats in a row. She took another deep breath. Something about the smell of the warm, tropical salt air revived her. That and the tantalizing smell of banana bread and coffee. Not to mention the realization they were still alive. For the moment.
“That was fun!” Faye put her hands on her back and arched into a stretch. “And no boring report to fill out afterward.” She shook her head as if amused. “I’d heard the road to Hana was a bore. Go figure.”
Carrie seemed to be coming down from her drunken high and back to reality. “Fun? That was more than just fun. Holy piña colada, Batman! That was a fine piece of high-performance driving back there.” She looked at Ty with admiration and suspicion shining in her eyes. “Ever been to the police academy?”
Treflee froze.
Ty shrugged it off and shot Carrie a humble look that said she was crazy. “I’ve driven that road a hundred times.” He grinned. “Sometimes too fast.” He winked. “Surfers like extremes.”
Carrie didn’t seem totally convinced. She slid her spy glasses off, held her hand over her eyes, and squinted into the bright tropical sun. “What did that bastard want with you?”
Treflee’s stomach flipped.
Standing full-on in the sunshine with Carrie’s piercing look bearing down on him, Ty didn’t even break a sweat. He laughed. “With me?”
“The Fuk Ching certainly aren’t after us.” Carrie crossed her arms.
The Spy Who Left Me: An Agent Ex Novel Page 19