a Touch of the Past (An Everly Gray Adventure)

by Charles, L. j.

  Annie beamed. "Great idea."

  My fingers flew over the keys.

  Yes! Arrival?

  I pressed Send before I could change my mind.

  But what if it put Mitch in danger? My stomach lurched, the Hawaiian stew suddenly heavy in my belly. I stared at Pierce, then Annie. "How dangerous is it? He's like you guys. All of his assignments are iffy. And selfish as it is—" I sucked in a breath so deep it hurt— "I need him."

  Mitch texted back:

  Not sure on arr time. Will let you know. Love you.

  My heart skidded to a stop, then thudded hard against my ribs. I typed:

  No. Changed mind. Will see you in NC.

  Annie grabbed my hand, preventing me from sending the message. "Dangerous or not, you can't hide this from him, El. And you know he'll be here as soon as he finds out what's going on."

  She was right. I erased the message, typed Love you too, and sent it.

  "You were hungry, yah," Kanani said, laying our check on the table. "I can never eat a whole bowl."

  My breathing shuddered, then evened out as I focused on her. "I was starving, and it was so delicious I couldn’t stop eating."

  She patted my hand, and then accepted the pile of cash Pierce handed her.

  I would be forever grateful to Kanani for providing the perfect distraction. It gave me time to wipe the fear from my expression and face Pierce and Annie with a smile. "Nothing’s decided yet. I’ll let you know if and when Mitch is on his way."

  We headed back to the Ma Kai, my best friends processing everything around us. All that food hadn’t dulled their spidey senses one bit. I, on the other hand, felt groggy with fatigue, a full belly, and a major case of guilt.

  Nine

  I wrestled with the Mitch-guilt until we got back to the hotel, and then switched to grandparent-guilt when I handed Annie the letter Tutu Makani had sent my mother. It was best to let her read it, soak in the words, and see if she noticed anything in the verbiage that might be a clue.

  "This is the letter you mentioned when you called?" she asked, gently sliding the paper out of the envelope.

  "Yes. Thanks for being careful, ‘cause it’s the only physical link I have with my grandmother." My heart stuttered. Lonely? I needed to deal with that.

  Annie read without comment, slid the letter back into the envelope, and handed it to me.

  Pierce had sprawled on the sofa, quiet, but sat up when Annie turned her full attention toward him. "You’re working. Is Makani Maliu’s killer on your roster?"

  I spun to face her. "Is that her last name? How do you know that? It wasn’t in the letter or on the return address."

  Annie’s held me in her moss green gaze. "I did some research on Loyria Gray before I got on the plane. Her childhood surname was Maliu."

  My belly lurched. "No. My mom’s maiden name was Madison."

  "That was the name your mother took when she left the islands to go to school. In Hawaii, her name was Maliu. The family kept your grandmother’s name as part of their matriarchal culture. Unfortunately, there was no information available on your grandfather. At all."

  I dropped onto the bed and massaged the ache invading my skull. "You know more about my family than I do." Hurt and confusion settled around me—suffocating and tense.

  Pierce tossed something to Annie, and she caught it on the fly. Nothing wrong with her reflexes, even when she was bone-tired. She turned it around in her hands a few times, then moved under the light to examine it.

  I watched Pierce. "Is that the bullet that almost killed me today?"

  "Yeah." He focused on Annie. "What’s your take, A.J.?"

  "Not good. It’s designer. What do you think is going on here?"

  Pierce nodded, then turned and did a palms-up toward me.

  "You think I know what’s going on? Seriously?" I hugged my knees tight to my body. "I’m feeling a little exposed, surrounded by super spies and all."

  "Retired," Annie said, hooking a thumb toward her chest. "The dotted line to my private inquiry business doesn’t clear me for this kind of work."

  Her gaze swung to Pierce.

  "A.J. can’t work this." He frowned at me. "Shouldn’t even be here."

  "I’ll call in to see if I can get clearance." Annie rummaged in her messenger bag for her phone.

  "That’d be just great," I said, my voice hitting a sarcastic note. "Like I need another government-issued person watching me. I asked you to come here as my friend."

  Pierce gave me the once over. "If A.J. is official—"

  Annie stopped him with a wave of her hand. "Not gonna happen. I’ll avoid the official stuff, and work it out with my handler."

  She turned to me and held out her hand. "Check it out. I’ve got your back, El. Always have. Always will."

  My fingertips fluttered, trembling over the back of her hand. I jerked away. "No. I don’t need to touch you. I know better than to doubt what you say."

  Some of my resentment eased with her offer. Annie had always been there for me, no matter what crazy, stupid things I’d done or how much trouble I'd gotten into. Still, I wasn’t ready to share anything about my grandfather with her—with anyone—especially since my mom had never mentioned him, had never welcomed any questions about her family at all.

  Annie’s eyes shimmered, bright with unshed tears. "I haven’t had many female friends, so this isn’t something I’m going to blow over bureaucratic paperwork. What’s up for tomorrow?"

  "I need to—" I swallowed, sucking in a breath— "get a Hawaiian dictionary, and I have a client scheduled."

  They both blinked at me, a synchronized movement.

  "Well, I can’t very well study with a Kahuna unless I have some facility with the language," I explained. "And I have a potential new client scheduled early tomorrow morning. It’s a prelim phone session to see if we’ll be a good match. Guy whose wife divorced him because she couldn’t bear to have anyone near her she cared about. Sounds like he’ll be a challenge."

  I was babbling, trying my best to spew enough words to distract my keepers even though it bordered on breaking client confidentiality.

  Pierce gave me one of those no-expression looks that meant he’d turned his well-trained, diabolical mind to figuring out what I was up to.

  What little color was left in Annie’s cheeks drained. "Your client’s wife left him to protect him?"

  "Maybe. I haven’t worked with him yet, so I don’t know any details." I gave myself a mental high five. I’d managed to distract her, but what was with the shadows behind her eyes?

  Pierce kept his gaze on Annie, switching to the other topic I’d brought up. "A Kahuna, huh? A real one or the kind tourists hang out with?"

  "There’s a difference?" Damn it all to perdition. I was pulling this story from a brochure I’d spotted on the concierge’s desk. Not a smart move, considering both Annie and Pierce seemed to know a lot about Hawaiian culture.

  Annie shook her head and graced us with a too-big smile. "There is a difference, yes, and you’ll find a true Kahuna to work with. I’m sure of it."

  Whatever was going on with her was way too subtle for my grieving, shot-at, discombobulated brain to figure out, so I moved on. "Good, because I’m staying here until I find out who killed my grandmother. And I’m sure the spiritual community knows things we’ll never be able to find out through normal channels."

  I hoped to hell my grandfather knew enough about being a Hawaiian shaman to fake it.

  Pierce angled his head, contemplating the floor.

  Annie yawned.

  I shrugged. It was an excellent explanation. Close enough to the truth, but still giving me the space I needed to find my grandfather. Or for him to find me.

  Annie toed off her shoes. "Good thinking. I’m going to bed now." She bounced on the bed, rolled on her side, covered her head with a pillow, and dropped into instantaneous deep sleep—complete with a delicate snore.

  Pierce scrubbed his hand over his face, watching Annie, a
nd then he turned those devious blue eyes in my direction. "What’s up with A.J.?"

  "Don’t know, but something’s…different. She turned white when I mentioned my client." I smoothed my fingers over my lips. They were swollen, and I realized I’d been doing way too much lip chewing since I'd arrived in the islands.

  Pierce closed the distance between us, and ran the pad of his thumb over my lower lip. "Let me take care of that for you," he drawled, replacing his thumb with a very talented tongue.

  I wadded my t-shirt in my fists to keep my fingers from reaching out to him. We had to stop this kissing thing. There was Mitch. And I was getting confused. I jerked away from Pierce.

  He captured my face in his hands. "I’m on your side, El."

  "You’re working. Seems like that’d be a conflict of interest as far as your employer is concerned."

  He held out his hand. "Touch me."

  "What’s wrong with you? Two offers to trespass in a matter of days. And you’re working. Touching you would make me…an accomplice, or worse."

  Surely he didn’t mean it.

  "Yeah, well, we need to get this worked out."

  Did I trust Pierce? Nope. That’d be just plain stupid. I tentatively ran my fingers over the back of his hand. It was difficult to separate the feel of his skin, the scent of him, from the images flashing across my mind.

  Whoa, Mamma. I about had an orgasm sifting through the first images that flashed on my internal screen. No doubt about it, the man liked my body, but more than that, he liked me. Probably it wasn’t a good idea to touch him—ever again. Unless he was deliberately showing me embarrassing stuff to distract me from what was really going on. If that had been his plan, it was a success. So far.

  I dragged in a shaky breath and pushed beyond the centerfold pictures. There wasn't a lot there—a rush of meetings, phone calls, and a blast of anger when the bullet zinged over my head. "You care about me. You told them I wasn’t involved, that you were going to protect me."

  He backed off, taking a few steps toward the door that connected our rooms. "You’re in danger. If I’m going to keep you safe, you need to trust me."

  I nodded. "Okay. That’s what you wanted me to see when you grabbed my hand yesterday. I get that now, but why are you pushing it tonight?"

  "Because tomorrow they’re going to exhume Makani Maliu. We have to know the identity of the person buried there, and whether she’s really your grandmother."

  A sob ricocheted in my chest. "No. I…she’s there. I know she is."

  "Documentation."

  The single word stung my mind. Of course they needed proof. I turned toward the inert lump on the bed. "Who are they? And does Annie know?"

  "Military, working under my chain of command." His tone was clipped, cutting off any more potential questions about the people working for him. "And A.J.’s smarter than most, so yeah, she’s probably figured it out."

  "Right." I glanced at the bullet Annie had set on the nightstand. The look that passed between them when Pierce tossed it to her zipped through my mind. "You know who shot at me? Us?"

  He shrugged, too casually. "Not yet, but designer ammo can be traced."

  Secrets. Somewhere in his twisty mind, Pierce had a good idea about who to look for, but he wasn’t talking. Like usual. Two could play at this game. I pushed out of the chair, stalked to the nightstand, and picked up the bullet, rolling if between my fingers.

  "Dark complexion, middle eastern maybe, brown and brown." I glared at Pierce. "Almost black for both hair and eyes. Average height and weight. His hands are distinctive," I said, tossing the bullet in the air, catching it. "There’s a scar running down his right index finger and he has an empty space in his psyche where I’d usually pick up emotions. When he loaded his weapon he pictured me as a target, not a person."

  "Well, damn."

  "I’m part of this team, Pierce. It’s my family. I will stand for my grandmother, find her killer, and see that he’s brought to justice. Try to remember that."

  Pierce set it up so I could give the information to a police artist over the phone, then he emailed me the drawing for corroboration.

  It was a long night. Totally exhausted, I alternated between tossing and turning, scattered dreams, and deep sleep. And to top it off, I woke with a nagging headache pounding at the base of my skull.

  When the bathroom door clicked shut behind Annie, I opened one eye and squinted at the clock. Six-thirty. I groaned, buried my head under the pillow, and then remembered I had that phone session with my potential new client, Brody Williams, and he’d be calling in thirty minutes.

  I hustled through my shower, dressed, and grabbed a mug of freshly brewed Kona coffee from Annie’s outstretched hand as I passed her on my way to the lanai. It was the perfect place to work—private and breathtakingly gorgeous.

  The phone rang at precisely seven a.m. "Brody Williams here. Have I reached Ms. Everly Gray?"

  "You have. I’m looking forward to working with you, and please call me Everly or El."

  He cleared his throat. "Did you have a chance to read my email, El?"

  "I did. I gather you’ve been unable to move forward since your divorce seven years ago."

  "That’s correct. I need to wrap this up, and I’m looking for the best way to confront my ex-wife."

  "Let’s backtrack, so I can get a better idea of what you hope to achieve. Was it an acrimonious divorce?"

  "No. As I said in the email, she was going through a professional crisis, and she axed our marriage in the process." Bitterness clung to every word Brody spoke.

  "What's your former wife’s profession?"

  "Don’t know what she’s doing now, and can’t tell you much about then either. She did confidential negotiations for a corporation out of Washington, D.C. They handled a lot of sensitive contract work for countries outside the States, so she traveled a lot."

  Sounded like Brody was sitting on the other side of a situation similar to one of my favorite client’s—Katelan Finn. She was another negotiator who’d had a bad first marriage. The coincidence prickled over my skin. I’d never believed in coincidence.

  "What do you hope to gain by confronting your ex-wife?"

  "Another chance to make it work."

  "All right. Your assignment is to set a timer for fifteen minutes, and begin writing. Start every sentence with I want, and don’t stop writing until the timer rings. You should have a lot of wants and desires on the page in that amount of time."

  "Uh-huh. I wasn’t expecting assignments." He sound miffed.

  "You’ll have an assignment, homework of a sort, to do with every session. A personal coach is a guide, but it’s always up to the client to do his or her individual work."

  "Gotcha. I’ll write about what I want, but it’ll be a short list. I want my wife back. Period."

  "That might be your first sentence, but what about your goals, aspirations for the future? Let go of what you think you want, and let your subconscious take over. Don’t try to control what your write. This is called free writing because there are no boundaries to your imagination. No rules governing what you want your life to be."

  "Uh-huh. I’ll see what I can come up with."

  Brody Williams wasn’t going to be one of my easy clients. We chatted about the risk-avoidance issues inherent in his plan to reconcile, and then set a date for his next session. Our conversation rubbed me the wrong way, like when you pet a cat backwards. Something wasn’t quite right about Brody Williams.

  Annie stood by the door, messenger bag slung over her shoulder. "I’m starving, and I want to go to the Hilton for breakfast."

  Pierce appeared in the connecting doorway. "Who the hell are you?" he asked with raised eyebrows. "The A.J. I know doesn’t do tourist."

  "I like their fruit platter and the coffee is good."

  Pierce slipped his shades on and headed for the door. "Let’s eat," he said, catching my braid in his hand. "Like your grandmother’s."

  It hadn’t been a
conscious act, but somehow it made my day seem brighter. "Yeah—" I smiled at him— "except her braid was every shade of silver and gray, and mine’s just ordinary red."

  "Not the word I’d use to describe it." His voice bordered on husky.

  We strolled along Waikiki beach toward the Hilton, and I began to understand why slippahs were the footwear of choice in the islands. They slid on and off with no fuss and could be stored in a pocket. We rinsed the sand off our feet at an outside faucet, and then wandered through the Village area of the Hilton until Annie spotted an outdoor café. She ordered the fruit plate and steamed rice for all of us before Pierce and I opened our menus. It was a good choice—fresh pineapple, papaya, mango, avocado, oranges, and grapes.

  Halfway through breakfast, Annie pushed her chair back and looked around with a wild glint in her eyes. Annie doesn’t do wild.

  Pierce stopped eating, scanned the area.

  I did my own quick reconnaissance. Nothing caught my eye, and there were no pricklies running over my skin. "What?" I asked around a bite of pineapple.

  A gong sounded for the second time, its reverberations shimmering in the air around us.

  Annie was up and jogging toward the sound before I swallowed my pineapple.

  Pierce grabbed my arm and hauled me to where Annie had stopped—in the courtyard, her hand shading her eyes, and her attention completely focused on the gazebo. So much for having two bodyguards, and that realization scared the holy hell out of me. Annie was nothing, if not an excellent agent, and this behavior was so far off the norm it belonged on one of those stars with letters and numbers instead of a name.

  "A. J.?" Pierce—impatient.

  Annie didn’t respond. I followed her gaze, and was rewarded with the vision of a young Asian couple dressed in wedding finery. There were photographers and a bunch of people around, probably wedding guests.

  "What’s going on?" I asked.

  "Oh." She turned to me, startled, then looked back at the gazebo. "Wedding. They have a chapel here."

  "And this is important, why?" A rip-roaring case of the twitchies had set in, so I reached toward her with the intention of leading her back to finish breakfast.