by Toby Neal
“What do you mean?” Stevens ran a hand through his hair, immediately agitated at the mention of Lei’s bomb squad duties—her recklessness on cases had caused him loss of sleep and temper many times. He’d loudly opposed her change in duties, to no avail. “What does it mean they didn’t do too well? That sounds ominous.”
Omura snorted a laugh. “I’ll leave that to your wife to describe. When I assigned her to IED, I knew you wouldn’t like it. Fortunately, that’s not my concern.” She hung up briskly.
Stevens hung up more slowly. He’d been put in his place, reminded who was boss, and that both he and Lei answered to Omura.
That didn’t mean he had to like it.
Chapter 3
Stevens was barely done putting the case file with photos and notes together for Omura when his phone rang again. He picked it up automatically, still typing. “Lieutenant Stevens.”
“Aloha, Michael. This is Wendy Watanabe from KHIN 2 News. How are you today?” The TV reporter’s voice was bright and cheery. She dressed and acted like a perky parakeet, he thought, until she got you where she wanted you—then she was pure tiger. He and Lei had learned the hard way to respect Watanabe’s skills at pursuing a story.
“Lieutenant Stevens,” he said gruffly, correcting her overly familiar use of his name. Might as well establish a tone. He looked around to see whom he could dress down later for not running interference on the call, but the watch officer was away from his desk, which explained how she’d gotten through.
“Okay. Lieutenant Stevens, then. That tells me you’re not happy about having me call to ask about the recent heiau desecration in Haiku?”
“Ask your questions.” Stevens’s voice was cold. His modus operandi with reporters was to volunteer nothing unless he had to.
“I’m taping you, for the record. Tell me about the destruction you found this morning at the heiau.”
“I don’t hear a question there.”
“All right, then.” Watanabe’s cheery tone was giving way to annoyance. “We have had a report that two petroglyphs were chiseled out of a sacred dance heiau on the Road to Hana. Can you confirm?”
Stevens shut his eyes, put his finger and thumb against the bridge of his nose and squeezed. It was a matter of public record, anyway, but the news going out wasn’t going to allow them much time to get their special team in place, let alone follow up on any trace he’d collected this morning. Stevens softened his tone. “Listen. Wendy. Can you hold off on this story until the ten o’clock news at least? We’re trying to move fast and hard on this to protect the heiaus. If you run this right away, I’m concerned our leads will get leaked and the community will overreact.”
A long pause. Stevens could almost hear Watanabe’s clever brain working. “Tit for tat,” the reporter said. “What can you give me to boost the story?”
“Well,” Stevens hedged.
“Seriously, Michael? You want me to sit on this without giving me something?”
“Okay, I will.” He paused, drew a breath, and blew it out. “Another reason we’re concerned is that the job appears to be done by pros. That infers it’s connected to the Oahu cases.”
Watanabe snorted, a sound like a kitten sneezing. “That’s obvious. Give me something more. Like a person of interest you’re looking for.”
“Too soon for that, though I do have a nugget for you. Who gave you the tip about the heiau?”
“I can’t reveal my sources.”
“We’re at an impasse, then.” Stevens went back to hard.
“Okay. I don’t have a name, but the call came in an older man’s voice. Rough pidgin.”
Okapa.
“Thanks. For that, and for holding off, here’s another reason we’re worried about press coverage inflaming the public—there’s a vigilante group forming to protect the heiaus. We’re worried that citizens taking the law into their own hands could backfire.” Stevens spoke carefully, aware he was being recorded and might well be quoted on TV.
“That’s a good lead,” Watanabe said, her voice going perky again. “What’s the police response to a vigilante group?”
“Island-wide, as a department, we hope to work with the citizens’ group to protect Maui’s most sacred places.”
“Nice sound bite for tonight’s ten o’clock report,” Watanabe said, her tone acid.
“Thanks for your cooperation with the Maui Police Department.” Stevens’s tone matched hers. He hung up.
An hour later, Stevens pulled his older Bronco up to the locked gate of his and Lei’s little cottage in Haiku. Keiki, their Rottweiler, trotted back and forth in front of the gate, whining an eager greeting. He put the SUV in neutral and got out, opening the gate and giving Keiki an ear rub. “Eat anybody today, girl?” The dog licked his hand in answer, and he pointed to the porch. She turned and trotted up onto the worn wooden steps, turning to plunk her cropped behind on the top step and watching as he pulled the truck in and locked the gate behind it.
A hassle, to have the fence and gate, but they’d been attacked in their home more than once. Making that a little harder was never a bad idea.
Stevens’s energy was sapped by the long day: processing the evidence from the heiau (prints not in the system), departmental meeting in Kahului organizing the heiau protection task force, and a long conference call with Detective Marcus Kamuela and the other HPD staff on Oahu already working on the desecrations on their sister island.
As he came up the steps, the light inside the kitchen outlined the slender figure of his wife. She was stirring something on the stove, her tousled curls gilded by the overhead light. The sight brought a draft of energy back into him.
He was usually the one home first, cooking. “I’m marking this on the calendar,” Stevens said, walking across the room to take her in his arms from behind, rubbing his cheek on the crown of her head. “Lei Texeira cooking. I might have a heart attack.”
She elbowed him in the sternum even as she snuggled against him. “I can work a can opener. Got some chili going. And cornbread. Aunty gave me the recipe over the phone.”
“This I gotta taste.”
She pointed down. “You’re still wearing your shoes. And your gun.” But she turned in his arms to kiss him, and that kiss promised more later.
Stevens went back to the front door, unlaced the lightweight hiking boots he wore for work. Sometimes, even after years in Hawaii, he forgot the customs that people here kept as a matter of course, like not wearing shoes in the house.
“Did you get enough sleep?” he asked, unstrapping his shoulder holster while heading for the back bedroom. He hung his weapon, still holstered, from the headboard of their king-sized bed. Lei’s was slung across her side. Married law enforcement, sleeping under their guns. There was something endearing about it—or maybe he just liked being married. He went back into the kitchen.
“I did get enough sleep. Technically.” Lei yawned, still stirring. “I’m sore, though. They worked us hard for a solid twenty-four hours.” She tapped the spoon on the side of the pan, then opened the oven. “This is just about ready.”
He cracked the top on a Longboard Lager and sat down at the little table. “I hear you and Torufu didn’t win the competition.”
“Who told you that?” She bent at the waist, looking at him over her shoulder. She looked unbelievably sexy with that ass, covered by a pair of worn jeans, pointed at him and a potholder in her hand. He tried to remember what he’d been saying.
“Never mind.” He didn’t want to get into it now, ruin the mood. “What can I do to help get this food on the table?”
The chili was edible and the cornbread truly delicious, slathered in butter and kiawe honey from a local apiary.
“I could get to like this.” Stevens tilted his chair back on two legs, rolled the Longboard Lager bottle back and forth across his belly, eyes on his wife. He winked when he caught her eye. “Come here. I think you deserve a reward.”
Lei laughed as she cleared the table. �
�I think you deserve the reward. This is the first time I’ve been home to make dinner since we got married.”
“Yeah. And I mentioned I could get used to it.”
She plucked the bottle out of his fingers, set it on the table, and straddled him on the chair. He never got tired of looking at her triangular face. Her brown, tilted eyes were where her half-Japanese heritage showed, bracketed by level brows. Those freckles he loved and she hated, tiny cinnamon dots across her nose. A big lush mouth, full of sass and sensuality. Curling hair, a-frizz at the moment, a halo the color of fallen leaves around her well-shaped skull.
Stevens knew exactly what that skull looked like, from when she’d shaved her head for a case. He didn’t know any woman but Lei who would do that.
Stevens circled her lithe body with his arms, squeezing her hard, because he could never resist doing that, as if he could crush her close enough that they’d merge into one person. He buried his face in Lei’s neck and inhaled her scent, feeling his hunger intensify. Her hands stroked through his hair, slid along his shoulders as he held her even closer, and he heard her whisper, “I love you so much it scares me.”
“I know. Me too.” His words were muffled against her skin, which tasted a little like salty coconut as he nibbled her neck. “Let’s go to bed.” He stood up with her in his arms and took her there.
He settled Lei on the bed, and when she reached up to undo his shirt, he caught her hands, stretching her arms above her head and holding her wrists in one of his. “Close your eyes,” he whispered into the curls beside the curve of her ear. “Just feel everything.”
Lei smiled and shut her eyes obediently. She relaxed beneath him, her arms going soft. Her utter trust, something that had taken so long to win, brought a surge of powerful feeling flashing over him. He kissed that mouth, that luscious, expressive mouth, until it opened beneath his and gave up all its secrets.
He took her clothes off, lifting her shirt over her head but leaving it around her wrists, a mock restraint, as he loosened her jeans and shimmied them off her long runner’s legs. He took a moment to enjoy looking at her body, trim and toned. The skin of her stomach was a subtle ivory the texture of silk, contrasting with her tanned arms and legs. Her small breasts were tender, pert rounds. That ass he adored was temporarily hidden, but knowing it was there, and that he’d get to it in due time, increased his desire.
She wasn’t vain. She didn’t know how beautiful she was. It was one more thing he loved about her. He leaned over and licked the tiny bowl of her navel, and she giggled.
Lei. Giggling.
He wished he could stop time, trap this memory in amber so that he could take it out and savor it again later. He tickled her just a little, causing her to gasp, and he turned it to kisses and she sighed, all the while leaving her hands where he’d put them, her eyes shut.
“You’re perfect,” he said, and watched her smile again, the smile of a child on Christmas morning, full of hope and excitement, her lips trembling a little as she made herself wait for him. For whatever he would do to her. That smile made him want to dive into her, cast aside control—but he had something more interesting in mind.
He tore his own clothing off in a few utilitarian gestures and lay down beside her. He used his lips and tongue and fingers to explore and awaken every inch of her body, beginning with the scars of old pain on her wrists, white lines that reminded him of lacy spiderwebs.
Her past. Her story. But not painful any longer. Those scars were dear to him, because they were part of her. He kissed and laved them with his tongue, nibbled them with his teeth, and she moaned.
He wanted to make sure she felt how beautiful she was, in every way he could show her, with his hands and lips and body. It went on a good long while.
In the end, they fell together into the deep sleep that only follows ecstasy.
“You told me to get you up for the ten o’clock news.” Lei shook him awake. “I hate to wake you for someone like Wendy Watanabe.”
“I gotta see what she says about my case.” Stevens stood up from the bed, still naked, and Lei handed him the pair of old LAPD sweats he slept in. He sucked in his belly, conscious of her eyes on him as he pulled them on.
Lei gave him a little punch in the shoulder. “Not bad, old man,” she said. “Think I’ll keep you.”
“Hey. I can still wear you out.” He tried to smack her butt, but she darted ahead of him, laughing, into the living room, where Wendy Watanabe dominated the screen in a bright fuchsia suit.
Stevens sat on the couch, reaching for Lei and pulling her against his side as he focused on the diminutive reporter. “Maui’s finest are hard at work on a case that looks like an extension of the looting that has plagued Oahu’s sacred places.”
Stevens frowned as they rolled clips of the looted Oahu sites, feeling his stomach churn at how extensive this case looked to be.
Wendy reappeared, and he noticed her lipstick was the exact color as her suit, an annoying detail. He focused on her words as a series of photos, dramatically enhanced, showed the desecration of the hula heiau here on Maui. “Someone has extracted these petroglyphs quickly and professionally. Mr. Okapa, guardian of the heiau, is here to tell us what went on in the early hours of this morning.”
Okapa’s rugged face filled the screen, his long gray hair whipping in a breeze off the cliffs. He’d worn a cloth kihei robe printed in traditional patterns, and a polished kukui nut lei encircled his neck. He looked almost regal as he recounted the story Stevens had heard from him earlier. “I goin’ tell you straight, anyone come here again going get it!” Okapa finished his tale with a threatening wave of a carved staff.
“Well, Mr. Okapa, we appreciate your passion.” The reporter covering the story for Maui held a microphone to Okapa’s mouth. “Tell us about the citizens’ group you are a part of.”
“All these folks who care about the heiaus, we getting together one watch patrol, da Heiau Hui.” Okapa held up a T-shirt in forest green with a graphic of a petroglyph warrior on it, spear raised. “You see this shirt? We going wear ’em, and we going camp out in shifts at the sacred places. And we going get that book banned!”
“What book is that, Mr. Okapa?”
“Maui’s Secrets. We get one grant for buy all the copies. We going burn ’em. Then we goin’ picket the stores that carry ’em.”
“Whoa,” Stevens breathed. “Shit.”
“Yeah,” Lei said beside him. He felt the tension in her body, too. “This could turn ugly pretty easily.”
“This case could become a lightning rod for resentment,” Stevens said.
“Lightning rod?” Lei turned, reaching into his lap with a grin. “I think that’s a good name for my friend here.” She was trying to lighten the atmosphere, but it wasn’t working. He removed her hand.
“Funny. And this isn’t. I gotta call Omura.”
Meanwhile, Wendy Watanabe had moved on to other disasters as Stevens speed-dialed Omura’s cell.
“I wonder if you’re calling me because you just watched the news,” Omura said in lieu of a greeting.
“Exactly. Okapa was complaining about this Maui’s Secrets book when I interviewed him, but this is the first I’ve heard about some sort of backlash against it.”
“I think we need to get some more detectives on this case, but I already don’t have enough manpower. Let’s call Oahu again tomorrow and see if we can pool our resources, maybe get that book pulled from the shelves temporarily as a sign of goodwill.”
“Goodwill toward who? The Heiau Hui? My guess is, whoever’s targeting the heiaus already has the artifacts they want mapped out. Taking down the book is closing the barn door after the horse is gone.”
“Still. It might placate people like Okapa, who blame the book for exposure.”
“Okay, you’re the boss. Did you want me to try to contact the publisher?”
“Wasn’t that what I said?”
Stevens blew out a breath. “Yes, sir.”
Stev
ens hung up. He felt wired with worry and annoyed by Omura’s directive. It could give this vigilante group a message that they had more power than they should, and he worried about where that could go, not to mention dealing with the book publisher’s response. He doubted they’d want to pull the profitable book for revision.
MPD needed eyes and ears in the Hui, to monitor it. His old war horse detective Joshua Ferreira was way too well-known. So was Pono, and any of the other detectives he could think of. Even though Okapa knew Mahoe was a police officer, perhaps Brandon could pretend sympathy for the cause enough to believably join.
Stevens got up to wash the dishes for something to do. Lei came up behind him this time, reaching around his waist to put her hands into the dishwater with his. She played with his fingers until they twined together in the warm, soapy water, distracting him. He closed his eyes, savoring the feeling of her pressed against his back, the solidity of her presence.
After so long, she was finally his.
“I’m sorry you’re stressed,” she said, muffled against his back. She kissed his shoulder blade, nibbled his spine.
“I’m really worried about this case. Nobody’s died yet, but I have a bad feeling. Okapa’s threats are the tip of the iceberg. Why don’t you talk to Pono about what the Hawaiian community is saying? He’s always got his finger on the pulse of things.”
“All right.” She pulled her hands out of the suds, shook them, and wiped them playfully all over his front. “But let’s go back to bed soon.”
He finished the dishes, listening to her one-sided conversation with her ex-partner, a burly Hawaiian with the truest “spirit of aloha” Stevens had ever met—a man he was now proud to call a friend.