by Toby Neal
“I’m at the airport. Got the first flight out this morning at five a.m. Can you drive? Come get me.”
“You are? That’s great.” He pushed his hair out of his eyes. “What time is it?”
“Eleven a.m. Hawaii time. Want me to get a cab?”
“Hell no. I just need fifteen minutes to get in the shower and get on the road. On my way.” He closed the phone and pushed himself upright. He staggered to the shower and remembered the bandage on his ankle, unwound it before he got in. He was dismayed to see the florid bruising around the swelling.
It ended up taking more than fifteen minutes to shower, swill aspirin and cold coffee from the day before, feed Keiki, and let her out, and get outside onto the front porch. One of the guys must have driven his truck home for him because it was inside the gate, and his keys sat on the porch rail under a note: Drink lots of water and take anti-inflammatories today. Gerry. He crumpled the note with a smile in spite of the pain pulsing at him from various points. The guys had been the perfect distraction last night.
He rolled the gate open, blinking without seeing in the overly bright sunshine, and unlocked his truck with the key fob. He lifted the Bronco’s door handle, his back to the gate, and something hit him hard on the back of the head.
Stars exploded in his vision as he staggered forward, collapsing against the truck, dimly aware that he’d just turned his head to open the car door and that had probably saved his life.
Stevens used the truck for leverage, shoving back from it with all his strength into his attacker. He heard a grunt, but what he felt was liquid fire in his right side. He’d just been stabbed, his brain told him, pain waking him up into full alert. He felt the knife skitter off his ribs, unable to sink in with his forceful movement and turning body.
Tucking his head, Stevens spun toward his attacker, ignoring a bolt of pain from the bad ankle, bringing up his left fist to connect with the man’s body—but his attacker had moved out of the way, leaping backward out of range, a knife held in his right hand.
Stevens hunched over the wound in his side, his back against the truck, assessing. An Asian man, dressed all in black with golden-brown skin and a slender build, five foot ten in height and moving with easy grace, took a martial arts stance in front of him. He held a wicked six-inch combat blade in his right hand.
The man leaped forward with athleticism Stevens had already noticed. Stevens heaved to the left, bringing his right fist around to smack the man’s head as he got into range—being taller was his one advantage, but he was barely able to connect a glancing blow before the man was gone again.
There was no sound but their panting breaths, and Stevens felt his stomach hollow out with fear. This guy was well-trained. Fresh and uninjured, he moved like a ninja. Stevens felt like an ox headed for slaughter: huge, slow, unarmed, crippled by a hangover and a sprained ankle.
The man made another leap, knife extended, and Stevens used his arm to deflect the blow upward—but felt an instant, searing burn on the outside of his forearm.
He’d been cut again.
This time, as the man retreated, he yelled.
“Anchara, my wife!” The man struck his chest, eyes glaring. “I kill her! I kill you!” He paced back and forth with catlike grace, eyes narrowed. Bared lips showed a chilling smile as he took in Stevens’s level of impairment. He paused, gaze intent on Stevens, and lifted the knife. He drew a finger along it and licked off Stevens’s blood, taunting him.
He was enjoying this.
“Sick bastard!” Stevens said, his arm tight over his wound, hunched against the truck. “I never knew she had a husband, but I can see why she ran from you.”
In Stevens’s wildest imaginings, he’d never thought the “Asian man” who’d bought the shrouds was the abusive man Anchara said she fled Thailand to get away from. She’d left out the minor detail that she was married to that man.
Stevens considered his options. Try to get into the car. Dive underneath. Run into the house for his gun. Nothing appealed because everything left him exposed to a killing strike, and he didn’t have the speed or mobility right now to go after the guy with his bare hands.
“Keiki!” he bellowed, remembering the Rottie was in the backyard. She usually went out, did her business, and took a nap back inside the house.
Seconds later the big Rottweiler came barreling around the side of the house, huge and deadly as a missile. A rumbling growl in her deep chest powered blistering speed as Keiki launched herself from at least six feet away onto Stevens’s attacker.
He saw the dog fly through the air, heard the man’s startled scream.
Saw the blade flash as the man went down, hard.
He heard Keiki’s fierce growls as she got her teeth into him, and they tussled back and forth on the ground.
Stevens hobbled as fast as he could into the house, his right arm clamped against the stream of blood running down his side. He clomped at top speed to the bedroom, grabbed his Glock, and ran back out the front door.
Keiki was standing on the body of her enemy, jaws locked around his throat. Still growling. The man wasn’t moving.
“Keiki. Come.” Stevens’s short-circuited brain couldn’t remember the word Lei had told him would unlock Keiki in attack mode, but the dog let go. She backed off the body and turned toward Stevens—and now he saw the man’s knife protruding from her side.
She took a couple of steps toward him, whimpered, and collapsed onto the ground.
He crashed down the steps, fumbling his phone out of his pocket. “Need an ambulance! Now! Three victims down!”
He spat out the details of his badge number and location as he tore off his shirt and ran to the dog’s side. She was breathing in little pants, her eyes still open. Blood oozed around the hilt of the blade. It wasn’t all the way in, and he couldn’t see any bubbles, which was good. He wrapped the shirt around the entrance wound and held it in place with pressure—it was never good to remove a knife from a wound in the field. Hopefully, the blade had missed her lungs and vital organs.
“Just rest,” he whispered. “Good job, Keiki. You saved me, girl.”
He’d begun shaking with shock. He gritted his teeth to keep them from chattering as he leaned on the dog. Kneeling, pressing on the dog’s wound, he looked over at Anchara’s husband, wondered if he was alive. He couldn’t bring himself to care.
He lay down very slowly beside Keiki, his arm tight to his side to keep pressure on the bleeding, eyes on his attacker.
He and Keiki couldn’t die now. Lei and Kiet needed them.
He shut his eyes a moment, trying to imagine how Lei would deal with losing her aunt, her dog, and him all at once, while trying to raise Kiet. It was so alarming an idea his eyes popped back open.
The ninja was sitting slowly up, his hands over his throat, his eyes so wide white showed all around brown irises. Blood oozed between his fingers, but only a trickle. Keiki must have pinched his carotid artery until he passed out. Stevens, one hand on the dog’s side and the other holding the Glock, brought the gun up, just enough to aim at the man’s midsection.
“Lie down.” Stevens’s voice was raspy. Instead, the man looked wildly around and began to get to his feet.
Stevens fired the Glock. Keiki made a convulsive movement under his hand at the loud report, and he pushed her down as hard as he could, eliciting a yelp.
The ninja collapsed back onto the ground. Stevens had fired to miss, but he wouldn’t miss next time. The wail of sirens was a relief, but he didn’t lower his weapon until Ferreira, in one of the responding squad cars, leaped out and restrained the man.
“This dog needs skilled first aid,” Stevens said when the paramedics tried to help him. “Don’t worry about me. Take care of her.” He refused treatment until an emergency vet had been called and one of the technicians sat with Keiki, keeping pressure on her wound and administering oxygen. Finally, Stevens collapsed, feeling weak and dizzy. They took his vitals and loaded him onto a gurney.
Ferreira
came over. “I called the captain. She said she was dispatching McGregor and Chun to take your statement about what happened here. I gather this is the guy they’ve been looking for in connection to your ex’s murder.”
“Would have been nice to have a heads-up about that,” Stevens said, watching the paramedics from a second unit finish bandaging the man’s throat. Other than minor cuts from Keiki’s attack, he appeared unharmed.
Stevens suppressed an urge to lift his weapon and plug the man in the chest. Instead he handed his Glock to Ferreira. “Discharged this once. He must have been waiting outside our yard for me to open the gate. Caught me unawares and unprepared. If Keiki hadn’t saved the day, I wouldn’t be talking to you right now.”
He lay back, and they loaded him into the ambulance, inserting an IV. “Don’t let anyone leave until Keiki is taken care of!” he yelled back at Ferreira.
The doors shut and the siren turned on as the ambulance pulled out.
Stevens remembered that Lei was waiting for him at the airport. He insisted they dig the phone out of his pocket.
“Where are you?” She sounded irritated. “It’s been a really long fifteen minutes.” He opened his mouth to answer. Instead, his vision narrowed to a tiny black dot and winked out.
Chapter 30
Lei frowned at the phone, buzzing static at her. “Hello? Hello?” Stevens’s number had appeared when she answered, but it seemed like he’d been cut off. She tried the number back, but voicemail came on.
Lei paced back and forth at the curb beside her suitcase, a route she’d already walked multiple times. Something was wrong. It had been an hour. Even with a hangover, it wasn’t like him to delay. She’d been so eager to surprise him. She frowned and bit her lip, the restless Maui wind tossing her curls into disarray as she called her oldest friend, Pono.
“Pono, I’m here on the island, at the airport,” she said. “Stevens was supposed to pick me up, and I can’t reach him.”
“Lei, dammit. There’s something going down. I heard a distress call going out to your address. I’m trying to find out what’s going on.”
“Come get me!”
“I’ll know what’s up by the time I’m there. See you in fifteen.”
Lei hung up and yanked her suitcase over to the cement surround, lifting it up. She unzipped it and took out the molded-plastic gun case holding her weapon. Popped the clasps and took it out.
She heard a shriek. “She has a gun!” Lei took her badge out of the case where it rested with her weapon, held it up.
“Maui Police Department. I’m preparing to respond to an emergency—not at this location.”
Airport security came rushing over, weapons drawn, and Lei rolled her eyes, putting the Glock back into its molded foam carrier. “MPD,” she said, holding up her hands and her badge. “Call in my number, please. My partner’s on his way.”
The drama of getting her weapon out at the airport was just settling down as Pono pulled up beside the curb in his lifted purple truck, the cop light on his dashboard strobing. Lei carried her bag and weapon case over. He hoisted them into the truck bed and Lei climbed into the cab and buckled on her shoulder holster, sliding her weapon into it. “Pono. What’s happening?”
He peeled the truck away from the curb. “Stevens was attacked when he opened the gate to leave the house. Asian man, apparently Anchara’s husband from Thailand. The suspect McGregor and Chun have been looking for.”
“She was already married?” Lei knew she shouldn’t be focusing on that irrelevant detail, but she couldn’t seem to help it. “What?”
“The perp was armed with a knife. Stevens and Keiki are alive, but injured.”
Lei’s eyes went so wide that they felt strained. She turned to her ex-partner. “Both of them?”
“According to Ferreira, who was at the scene, Keiki saved Stevens’s life. He was already injured from yesterday’s raid, had a hangover, a sprained ankle, and was unarmed. A sitting duck.”
“Is he okay?”
“Don’t know. About either of them.”
“Oh God,” Lei said, and felt a return of the nausea that had plagued her on and off throughout the flight. “I’m gonna barf.”
Pono didn’t slow down. Instead he handed her a McDonald’s bag, an empty fries carton still in the bottom. “Here.”
She put her face in the bag, sucked some breaths until the nausea passed. The smell of French fries was oily and thick.
How quickly things can change, she thought. Nothing is for certain, especially when someone wants you dead.
They pulled into the emergency area of Maui Memorial, and the truck had barely stopped moving when Lei leaped down and ran inside to the intake booth, shoving people aside and banging her badge against the window. “Lieutenant Stevens. Where is he?”
The startled receptionist rattled her keyboard, searching, and looked back up. “He’s in surgery. Third floor. You can wait outside.”
Lei was standing in front of the elevator, tapping her toe, when Pono arrived. He threw a meaty arm over her shoulder. “He’s going to be okay. Ferreira says his wounds were bleeding a lot, but he didn’t think it was terminal.”
Lei shook her head. “And Keiki?”
“She was taken to Kahului Animal Hospital.”
“I’ll call.”
Looking up the number and calling gave Lei something to do as the elevator arrived and took them to the third floor. Lei was able to find out that Keiki was also in surgery, having the knife removed from her side. They had no further report on the dog’s progress.
Lei’s clothes felt too tight, her shoes pinching, her heart pounding. The doors opened on the third floor, a barren square of chairs and a stack of battered National Geographic and People magazines marking the waiting area. No one was at the nurse’s desk behind a glass window.
“We just have to wait,” Pono said, squeezing her shoulder. “Sit. Breathe.”
Lei sat and breathed, putting her head down between her knees, her mind racing. There was so much she didn’t know. There was nothing she could do right now but pray. She folded her hands and rested her forehead on them, murmuring the Lord’s Prayer over and over.
Pono worked his phone on the other side of the room, finally coming back. “I’ve got news for you.”
“What?”
“Gerry and Torufu tracked down the two suspects we’ve been trying to nail for the Norwegian’s murder. Guess where they were?”
“No idea.”
“Hiding out at Manuel Okapa’s house. Apparently, the three of them did the Norwegian.”
“Talk about misdirected anger.” Lei frowned. “Now they’ll spend the rest of their lives in prison. How is Stevens’s recruit, Mahoe, doing?”
“He’s recovering. Gonna be okay.” Pono sat down beside her. “Things seem to be wrapping up on the heiau case. Marcus Kamuela brought in Councilman Muapu, who is denying everything, of course. But Esther Ka`awai has also given her testimony, and she even knew the location of the artifacts on Oahu. The team went and found them all. So he doesn’t have much of a leg to stand on.”
“Good,” Lei said, pressing her fingers into her eye sockets. “God, let them be okay, please.” She knew her father would want to support her, but she lacked the energy to call him and tell him this latest development—it was too hard to even speak the words.
Swinging doors opened and a doctor came through, holding a chart. “Leilani Texeira?”
“Yes?” She sprang to her feet and almost keeled over, spots circling in her vision. Pono steadied her as the doctor approached.
“Michael Stevens is your husband?”
“Yes.”
“I’m Dr. Salvato. Your husband’s going to be okay. I had to order a transfusion because he’d lost a lot of blood, but the knife wound was shallow. It cut along his ribs under his arm, about six inches in length, but didn’t penetrate any organs. His arm was also cut, but no permanent damage.”
“Oh, thank God.” Lei had to sit down aga
in.
The doctor frowned. “You all right?”
“Yeah, just relieved.”
“He’s going to have a few more scars to add to his collection, is all. We strapped up his sprained ankle, too.”
“When can I see him?”
“Now. He’s still sedated, but comfortable.”
Lei followed the doctor, but glanced back at Pono. Her former partner made a shooing motion with his fingers, telling her to go on.
The first thing she noticed was how pale Stevens was. His tan lay over his skin like a layer of paint. His cheeks were hollow, his dark hair mussed, and his long frame barely fit on the bed. She felt a surge of love so powerful it made her gasp.
The doctor hung the chart on the wall and nodded that she could approach. She took one of the molded-plastic chairs, dragged it over next to Stevens, and picked up his hand—the one with the wedding ring on it, still shiny and new.
He opened his eyes. “Lei?”
“I’m here.” Her throat closed over the words, and she cleared it. “You sure took your time picking me up from the airport.”
His mouth quirked up on one side. “Got held up by a ninja.”
“I heard you’re adding to the scar collection.”
“Glad that’s all it is. If it weren’t for Keiki, you’d likely be a widow right now.”
She lifted his hand and lay it against her cheek for a long moment. She pressed a kiss into his palm. “I love you.”
He curled his hand away, lifted it to stroke her hair. “Missed you. Come here and kiss me.”
She stood from the chair, and leaned down to give him a peck on the lips. “There.”
His hand, still tangled in her hair, tightened. His arm flexed, pulling her down onto him. She lost her balance, sprawling across him, and he gave a hiss of pain—but now his hand used the grip on her hair to turn her head, and his mouth met hers with hungry intent. Their kiss felt as necessary as CPR, and as life giving. Lei’s body went slack and her eyes closed in surrender, even as she smelled the sweat of near-death on him—and maybe because of it.
“Ahem.” A throat-clearing from the doorway.