Birds in Paradise

by Dorothy McFalls

  I needed Pete to want me for me. Not out of a sense of duty or an unpaid debt of honor. And definitely not because I was an object of his pity.

  Pete glared at me and then shrugged. “You’ll change your mind.”

  “When will I get to leave the hospital?” I asked for a third time.

  “Not for a couple of days. You were damned lucky, Kyra.” He pulled his hand through his already mussed hair. “Dammit, what were you thinking? Have you lost your mind? If an anonymous caller hadn’t reported your precise location, you would have bled to death. You could easily be in the morgue right now.”

  He spun back toward the window. Too angry to look at me, I supposed.

  So, an anonymous caller had saved my life. Hopefully, Sally Porter was my mystery benefactor. At least then I would have something to show for all that money I’d paid her.

  “As I was saying,” Pete said, his back still toward me, his shoulders drooping. “The knife blade didn’t hit anything vital. It’ll take time for the wound to heal, but you should be back to 100% soon enough.”

  “That’s me. I live under a lucky star or something. Always have, I suppose.”

  “That’s no excuse to live recklessly.”

  “I don’t live—” I started to argue. But what was the use? To push the issue would only lead us to talking about the one thing we were both avoiding—our having slept together. If we were going to move forward as friends, we needed to talk about it...but not now. Not yet.

  Not ever.

  “I didn’t want to lie to you about what I was doing, Pete. But I couldn’t see any other way.”

  “You could have come to me.”

  “And you would have done what? Told me to mind my own business? Told me to forget about those poor missing girls?”

  “Saving the world isn’t your job,” he grumbled.

  “That may be so, though I wish it were my job. Then perhaps someone would be paying me a steady salary for what I’ve been doing. Obviously I’ve been poking in the right places. I wouldn’t have been stabbed otherwise.”

  “You’re going to get yourself killed.”

  “I’m not going to change who I am just because of a little danger. I can’t, not even if I wanted to.”

  “I don’t understand you, Kyra.”

  “I know.” And that hurt worse than the knife wound. “I’m not going to stop looking, Pete. I need to get to the bottom of this mystery. I need to stop whatever is happening to those women.”

  “There’s no reason to believe that their disappearances are connected,” Blakely said as he slipped back into the room. He had two cups of coffee. He handed one to Pete. He then poured a cup of water for me from a plastic pitcher that had been sitting on a tray near the window. I’d never known him to be so thoughtful. “There’s no evidence to connect one missing girl to another. You’ve lived their life, Kyra. You know how it is. People come and go like the tide.”

  “Not this time,” I said after taking a sip of the water. “Tina, Anna’s sister, wouldn’t have left without a word. I’ve been following up on all four women, questioning their friends. None of them would have run off in the night, leaving their belongings, their money, their lives behind.”

  I glanced at Pete to see if he’d back me up on this theory.

  “It’s not my case,” he said after a long silence. “I work homicide, not vice.”

  Liar. I could see it in his eyes. He was keeping a close watch on this case. I bet he’d been poking around, asking just as many questions as I had, which made me anxious to compare notes.

  But that wasn’t going to happen. Not with Blakely in the room. And not as long as Pete thought of me as someone who didn’t have enough sense to keep from getting stabbed...or shot. Besides, that wasn’t how our relationship worked. He never talked about his cases. The last time I found myself investigating the same crime as him—the murder of a city council member—I had to sneak around behind his back, following him through the ginger-scented streets of Chinatown in order to find out what he knew.

  If I’d thought it would help find the missing women, I would follow Pete to hell and back...as soon...as soon...as I got some energy again...

  ...I must have...lost...more blood...than I realized...

  Chapter 5

  “ARE YOU SURE YOU DIDN’T recognize the man who attacked you?” Blakey asked me three days later. I was still in the hospital, despite my protests. And feeling groggy again. I wasn’t going to be able to pay for this kind of top-notch medical care, but Pete wouldn’t let me leave. Brandi visited daily to read me verses from the Bible, whether I wanted to hear them or not, and to pray over my “poor broken state.” Every morning she appeared in my room, with a cat-like smile that made me wonder if she didn’t enjoy torturing her captive audience. Blakely seemed to like having me under his thumb, too. He popped up every day to grill me about the man who had attacked me. I’m not sure why, I never changed my story.

  He pressed his knuckles against the mattress and leaned in so close I could smell poi on his breath.

  “I don’t believe you. I need you to give me a description,” he said, his hot, stinky breath swirling across my face.

  “It was dark. And it happened so fast,” I lied and gave his chest a push. “Give me some air.”

  He backed up...just a little. “So, you’re saying that you were strolling in the park at—” he checked his notebook “—three in the morning and a man—cloaked in shadows, mind you—stabs you for absolutely no reason and runs off.”

  “I don’t know what he did afterwards. There was a knife sticking in my gut at the time, so I wasn’t exactly paying that close attention to anything else.”

  “But you claim he didn’t rob you.”

  “I didn’t have any money on me.” I’d handed it over to Sally. Blakely didn’t know about Sally, and I wasn’t about to tell him...or anyone. So what if she’d ran off...with my money...and without telling me much of anything.

  I probably would have run away, too.

  Self-preservation isn’t always pretty. It can sometimes be downright immoral.

  “I don’t believe you,” Blakely said. “I have a witness who says he saw you talking with another woman.” He checked his notebook again. “A brunette in her early twenties. Did she stab you?”

  That was new information. He must have been doing his homework. I was impressed, but not impressed enough to spill my guts.

  Oh...bad analogy.

  I fought off a wave of dizziness at the thought of my insides spilling out all over the park. My face felt suddenly clammy and it hurt to swallow. But I wasn’t going to throw up. Not in front of Blakely. It would be a show of vulnerability Blakely might one day use against me.

  “If your witness knows so much about that night, why don’t you ask him to describe my attacker?” The room started spinning. I grabbed the edge of the bed.

  “Dammit, Kyra. You might be able twist Pete around your little finger by batting your eyelashes and looking helpless, but it won’t work with me. I know you. I know what you are.”

  I struggled to sit up in bed. The movement pulled at the stitches, setting off a firestorm of sharp pains through my middle. “And what am I?” I managed to get out from behind my clenched teeth.

  “You’re street trash. A piece of chewed up gum that gets stuck to the bottom of an expensive pair of shoes. A stain on paradise. Get a job. Get a life. Or better yet, get the hell off my island.”

  “That’s enough, Kevin,” Pete said as he entered the room. He was carrying a small travel bag that he dropped on the bed. “I’m taking you home, Kyra. Get dressed.”

  Despite my heavy eyelids, I greedily reached for the bag, but Blakely snatched it up and cruelly held it out of reach. “I’m not done with her.”

  “She’s already given you her statement. It hasn’t changed. Why do you insist on grilling her day after day?”

  “I keep hoping she’ll tell me the truth.”

  “You should trust her.”


  “Why? Because the street rat’s your lover?”

  “She’s given you her statement, Officer. You should leave.” The threat of violence hung heavily in the hospital’s sterile air. The two men squared off chest-to-chest. My goodness, Pete’s chest was much better defined than Blakely’s. When had Blakely gotten so fat? He used to be skinny as a pole.

  Things change... People change... I took another sip of the water Blakely had poured for me. I felt as dry as a salty beach. I couldn’t seem to get enough water. The room was spinning again. And my head was feeling muzzy...again...

  ...Pete was taking...me home. And yet...I couldn’t...remember...why...I...shouldn’t...

  “Pete...”

  “DRUGGED? ARE YOU SURE?”

  “Why do you keep asking me that?” Pete demanded. “It’s been five days since they pumped out your stomach.”

  Five days of sweat-inducing stomach pains. He didn’t have to sound so cheery about it. Apparently, pumping out a stomach causes muscles to contract. Add a stab wound into the mix. Well...I don’t really want to think about it.

  As a result, I wasn’t at my best. Pete had taken advantage of my weakened state and not in the good way. He hadn’t asked. He hadn’t even bullied. He’d simply checked me out of the hospital as soon as I was strong enough to sit up and, suddenly, we were driving toward the beach—toward Pete’s home. And I was finding it hard to breathe. Over the past few days I’d become convinced that if I stepped foot in his home that I’d become a pathetic shell of myself...hopelessly pining after a man who didn’t want or need my love.

  “Once again, you’re lucky to be alive, Kyra. Not many people survive drinking water laced with arsenic.”

  “But who would do that to me?”

  “I think the more important question is why does someone want you dead? You need to start being honest with me. You need to trust me to protect you.” He turned the car down a palm-lined boulevard. The houses on this street were set far from the road and reeked of money. “We’re almost home,” he said.

  My heart thundered in my chest. Every breath was a battle. I couldn’t do this. I couldn’t live under the same roof as Pete and pretend I didn’t love him.

  “Wait!” We still had a pile of issues as high as Diamond’s Head crater to sort through.

  Pete glanced in my direction but kept driving.

  “It...it...was Mr. Fu. The man who stabbed me had said that I needed to keep out of Mr. Fu’s business.”

  Pete eased the car onto the side of the road and turned in his seat toward me. “Are you sure?”

  Words poured out of my mouth like rain rushing down from the mountains after a monsoon. I told him all about the mysterious shadow man dressed all in white, and how I’d tried to lose him, but somehow he’d found me, and had stabbed me and had left me with a message to keep out of Mr. Fu’s business.

  “Why didn’t you tell me this days ago?”

  “Because...because I wanted to talk to Mr. Fu first. He’s not a criminal.” I could tell by the way Pete had raised one dark sexy eyebrow that he was surprised as I was about this turn of events. Mr. Fu had helped us out several times. And we’d helped him. Didn’t that make him a friend...of sorts? “I don’t know what to think anymore. Maybe I’m wrong about him. But if I am, I want to hear from his own ungrateful mouth why he is so anxious for me to die.”

  “I don’t know, Kyra. It sounds too risky. I don’t think it’s a good idea to expose you—”

  “But we’re talking about the same man who said we were the best things to ever happen to him. He’d called us his guardian angels, his children.”

  “Situations change. People change.”

  “I can’t believe Mr. Fu is behind any of this.” Pete was nodding in agreement, so I pushed my luck. “Will you take me there...now?” Facing the devil would be better than going to Pete’s house and immersing myself in those unresolved issues I had with him. Besides, I didn’t think Mr. Fu was the devil. He was simply a kindly old man with a tough reputation.

  I was certain of it.

  Sure, I was.

  I was staking my life on it, so I must have been pretty confident that Mr. Fu wasn’t going to kill me on sight, right?

  Well, facing Mr. Fu was better than going to Pete’s.

  PETE GRUMBLED. And swore. And flipped open his cell phone and called Blakely. Guys, I’ll never understand them. They can be snarling at each other one minute and best buds the next. Though, as I listened in on the conversation, I could hear a lingering tension between them. Pete disconnected the call and then turned his car around and headed back toward the city. I bit the inside of my cheek in order to hold back the triumphant smile gurgling inside me. He might have changed his mind if he’d seen me smirking like that.

  “I’m not going to take you to Mr. Fu and have no one know where we are. Unlike you, I don’t enjoy taking needless risks,” he explained. He was frowning so hard I would have leaned over and kissed him if not for the stitches in my stomach that had made leaning nearly impossible.

  Thank goodness for those stitches.

  Chapter 6

  BLAKELY AND ANOTHER UNIFORMED OFFICER were waiting for us outside Mr. Fu’s house.

  “Told you she was lying to us,” Blakely hissed as I passed by him toward the front door.

  “Can they wait outside?” I asked Pete, purposefully ignoring Blakely and his sour-faced buddy, Officer Grant.

  “No,” Pete and Blakely answered in unison.

  “If Fu is dangerous, we’ll need the backup,” Pete said, though he didn’t sound as if he believed a word of it. His brows were still knitted, a telling sign that he was just as puzzled about things as I was. The evidence so far added up all wrong. Mr. Fu was behind both the women’s disappearances and the attempts on my life? True, he was the one who’d been interviewing new prostitutes. He was the one who had suddenly changed his behavior, refusing to see me. And he apparently had sent the man in the white hat to stab me.

  Still, I couldn’t bring myself to think of Mr. Fu as a killer...or a kidnapper. Although, if his reputation was to be believed, he could very well be both.

  By the time we reached the front door, Mr. Fu’s stoop was crowded with testosterone and police-styled grandstanding. I had to physically push my way past Blakely and Grant in order to stand next to Pete when he rapped his fist on the red and gold painted wooden door. When Fu’s ancient housekeeper opened the door Pete had his badge out.

  “He not here,” the housekeeper rasped before anyone had a chance to demand anything.

  “Are you sure he isn’t dead?” I asked her for a second time, feeling slightly alarmed.

  “Not dead. Just not here,” she said, a sly smile pulling tight her wrinkled lips.

  “Please don’t make me go through the trouble of getting a warrant, grandmother,” Pete said, his voice deceptively pleasant. His white teeth flashed in sharp contrast to his dark skin. And he suddenly looked like a beautiful savage, the idealized kind that might have fallen out of some fifty-year-old Hollywood movie set on the islands.

  “A warrant, huh? Might as well come inside,” the housekeeper said. Her yellowed, watery eyes shifted to me. “She stay put out here.”

  “No,” Pete said, his voice growing even softer, “she stays with me.”

  The housekeeper mumbled something under her breath and moved away from the door. Pete took hold of my arm as we followed the old woman into the house’s dark interior. All the shades had been drawn, and the overhead lights were turned off. The housekeeper moved quickly down a narrow hallway. It was a good thing that we could hear the clapping of her sandals on the bamboo floor or she might have gotten away from us.

  We followed her into a cramped room that was nearly as dark as the hallway. A dim light burned on a bedside table. It shed a little light on the crumpled lump of skin and red silk pajamas in the middle of a large hand-turned teak bed.

  “We need to see Mr. Fu,” I told his housekeeper, thinking that this was another game
she was playing.

  “That him,” she said with a dismissive wave in the direction of the bed. She then plopped down in a chair beside the bed, practically disappearing into the shadows.

  “Mr. Fu?” I couldn’t make sense of what my eyes were showing me. Sure, he was an old man. For all I knew, he’d lived in this house in the middle of what was now a bustling industrial area for as long as there had been an island. But old—heck, even ancient didn’t describe the man who was currently sinking into the mattress of the large bed. Wasting away, fading from life might be more appropriate for what I saw, but only if imagined in the most extreme condition.

  Ashy gray skin hung loose on his bones. His healthy cheeks had completely disappeared into the deep shadows under his eyes. And his long, narrow Fu Manchu mustache was grizzled and tangled.

  “Mr. Fu?” Could this be the same man who had hugged me so hard after I’d saved him that I had thought my ribs would snap?

  “My angel.” He reached out a gnarly hand toward me. “You shouldn’t be seeing me like this.”

  “I need to talk to you about the missing prostitutes,” I told him, trying to pretend that his appearance hadn’t shaken me. It was difficult, considering how my legs weren’t too steady to begin with. I had just checked out of the hospital a few hours earlier...and had been told by the doctor to spend the rest of the day in bed. And at that moment, I was on the verge of collapse.

  It wasn’t just my weakened state. The air felt smoky and moist within the closed up room thanks to a humidifier and several incense pots. The room started to spin as I struggled to breathe in the thick atmosphere. Luckily Pete grabbed my arm before I fell on my face. He led me to a second chair near the bed and deposited me there. I fought the urge to put my head between my legs as my vision swam in and out of focus. Gradually, my body adjusted to the dim light and heavy incense clogging the air.