by Reina Torres
“Yeah. Something is ‘off.’”
Train had a mental image of Shado. They were about the same height and they had smiles that were practically interchangeable, but where his own features showed a marked connection to his Spanish heritage, Shado’s face bore the sharper features of his Japanese ancestors, giving his tan a slightly golden tinge.
Both were easy going in general, but when they felt something awry, it sapped the smiles right out of them. Shado, wherever he was, had pulled his necklace out of his shirt, his thumb and forefinger rubbing over the heavy silver pendant etched and enameled with his family crest.
“Train?”
Efrain felt a cold wind pass through him at the sound of Shado’s voice. “Yeah?”
“Where’s Ku‘uipo?”
Train turned his head back in the direction of her cottage and the others followed suit, even the maintenance workers.
The dark night stretched overhead and thousands of stars twinkled against the ink-dark sky, but the sky on the far side of the property was flat. No stars could be seen twinkling in the heavens.
Nothing but a large black void.
“I’ve got to get back to her.”
They all knew what he meant and they all headed in that direction.
Was it New Year’s Eve again?
A deep cough racked through her chest as Ku‘uipo reached a hand up to her face. Growing up on Oʻahu was nice until New Years. It didn’t matter if it was the regular calendar or the Asian one, fireworks were hell for someone like her.
Her hand patted at her hair and around her pillow. When there were fireworks, she always went to sleep with a damp towel over her face to minimize the smoke.
Crack.
Her knuckles hit something hard, round.
That shook her awake and plummeted her from her sleepy musings into sudden terror.
She was in her bedroom at Kailani.
“Efra-” she felt smoke crawl into her mouth and gagged on it. Picking up the hem of her shirt, she lifted it to her face and covered her mouth and nose. “Efrain?”
He didn’t answer her and fear pushed her out of bed. Even with the dark she should be able to see, but the ever-present light of the coffee maker on the counter was out.
The nightlight in the bathroom was out.
Everything running on power was out, including that horrendous smoke alarm she’d been wanting to change out to one with batteries instead of the house current.
Was that going to be her last regret?
“No.” Not like this.
Something crackled behind her and she turned. The walls were treated wood with a coat of varnish and that was starting to bubble and darken.
“Oh my-” the glass of the nearby window cracked and she turned her head away. “No, no… Efrain?”
She moved to the door and saw that the front room was empty.
The bathroom was next. Empty.
Irrationally she wanted to scream at him for leaving her alone, but in the next moment she was weeping in relief.
All she had to do was get herself out.
How was she going to do that?
There were flames at the windows and flames at the door. The one door in or out of the cottage. That old world charm only had a tentative relationship with fire safety.
Her phone!
Turning back around she moved back into the bedroom and saw the empty nightstand beside the bed.
Okay. It’s not there. Where did you leave it?
Her mind was screaming at her. Arguing with her. Berating her!
But her head was stuffy and the smoke. The smoke wasn’t helping.
Water.
She needed water.
Something wet to put over her mouth.
Her nose.
She yanked up the bottom of her shirt again and rushed toward the bathroom. Slipping on the rug she heard the sickening crack of the wood under her foot, but she only sank an inch or two, saved by the rug.
But water.
She needed water.
Yanking her foot out of the depression in the floor she knew she was in trouble. Something pulled out of where it should be or something tore loose. Either way, the pain knifing through her foot and ankle was blinding.
She turned on the sink but the water only sputtered out and it wasn’t enough to do much more than sizzle in the air.
The bathroom window snapped, cracked across the pane and a piece dropped out, falling to the floor. Shards of glass skittered across the tiles and disappeared into the folds at the bottom of the curtain.
“Yes…”
She half-hopped across the space and turned on the water, both hot and cold. She needed coverage. She wasn’t worried about what the water felt like as long as she had enough of it.
But the walls were soon crawling with smoke, darkening and blistering as she crouched lower and lower to the floor.
There was only one chance left to her, unless Train came back to help, but even then, she had one last trick up her sleeve.
The problem was that the sleeve on her nightshirt was maybe six inches long.
Still, she had to try something, because she wasn’t ready to give up.
They say curiosity killed the cat, but in the case of Miles Kirkendahl he just had to make sure the job was done. His mysterious visitor had made it very clear that his future depended on finishing the job that Jenkins hadn’t been able to do.
And while he doubted that Jenkins had been told to get rid of the problem in the same manner, maybe their orders had been different, but Miles knew that he could do it.
That, if all went well, he had done it.
Sitting in the shadows down the street, his skin itching for any number of reasons, Miles watched the smoke climbing into the night sky.
He hadn’t heard any sirens yet.
That was good.
The longer it took for people to realize the place was on fire, the better chance…
And why wasn’t there an alarm? Scrunching down deeper into the bushes, he wrapped his arms around his knees as his mind mulled over the issue.
Something else had gone wrong.
It had to, or the alarm would have woken her up.
A tight smile spread over his lips.
Maybe she’d had a few too many drinks the night before.
That would help him.
Then that could be a cause.
Then again, panic seized his thoughts, pinching that nerve between his shoulder blades, and making his legs weak. What if she wasn’t in her house. What if she’d left before that soldier did?
He’d fallen asleep in the dark and maybe she’d left before-
He was up on his feet and moving a moment later. How was he going to find out without waiting for the news to break? How was he going to know? Because if he failed at what he’d been sent to do, there wasn’t going to be another chance to get to her.
Not for someone like him.
Not for him.
If he failed, it was over.
His career.
Any hope of making the kind of money he needed to support his habit and having the kind of clout to look his mother in the eye would be gone.
There should be sirens, right?
Looking down at his clothes in the moonlight he saw dirt and leaves stuck to the fabric.
“Shit.” Trying to dust off the fabric he realized he was covered and just gave up. He was going to have to walk away and get cleaned up, because the instant people realized what was going on, they were going to come looking for him.
Train was almost to the stairs when he was hauled off of his feet. He swung an elbow back and connected hard.
“Don’t.”
“Baron, let me go, dammit!” Train struggled against his friend’s hold as the other two came running up. A thundering heartbeat later, sirens split the otherwise quiet night around them, warring with the hiss and snap for flames.
“Think, damn you, think!” Baron adjusted his hold. Train could feel the added p
ressure on his back and he struggled to listen to his friend.
Halfway turning around, he bellowed at the other Delta. “I can save her.”
Train lunged to the side, but instead of freeing himself, he almost ran into Mace.
“Hey, buddy, come on. Think.”
“Think?” He nearly threw a punch at Whitford, his vision was a sea of red. “I need to save her!”
Baron clamped his hands down on his shoulders. “Then think. That’s what she would do.”
Thinking was exactly what he didn’t want to do. Thinking meant that he had to admit the possibility that she’d died of inhalation in her sleep.
Thinking meant acknowledging that he’d left her alone and that he was going to lose her because of it.
“Think, man.” Shado was beside him, hand on his shoulder, forcing him to meet his darker gaze. “If she slept through the smoke, the beginnings of the blaze-”
“No.” Train tried to shake his friend’s hand off. “No, I can’t believe it.”
The sirens stopped on the other side of the main building and the whole world seemed to wake up.
“We don’t even have hoses!” Train knew that they were locked up in the groundskeeper’s shed, but for a moment he turned as if that was a viable answer.
Shado grabbed him and spun him around. “Think, Train. How would she get out?”
Train nearly flung his friend through the air as firefighters spilled out from the space between the buildings. “There’s just the one door.” He gestured both ways around the building. “Check the windows.”
They moved away, circling the building in two different directions, but Train stayed where he was to answer questions for the firefighters, but he didn’t stay there after.
He would stay out of their way, but he knew that Shado was right, he had to think.
Something in the middle of the fire crackled and snapped.
Something collapsed.
She was smart.
Too damn smart.
Too good for him.
But he’d be damned if he gave credence to any idea that she was still in there, in the middle of that growing inferno.
“Under!” He grabbed the first fireman he could find and shouted over the roar of the fire. “I think she’s under the house!”
The fireman didn’t argue, he just listened to his words, saw the conviction in his eyes, and shouted out commands.
Baron heard them. Shado too.
Shado caught the gist and gestured to Mace. They’d trained together, worked together, survived together long enough that simple gestures communicated a wealth of information.
Crouching down around the perimeter, ignoring the warnings of the firefighters, Train looked through the wooden slats that paralleled the floor and the foundation of her home.
“Come on… come on… where-”
“Here! Here! She’s back here!”
Train pushed off of the ground so hard and so fast, he nearly planted himself face first in the dirt, but he was only a step behind Baron when he shrugged off a firefighter. The two bent down and reached out their hands to pull off the wooden slats.
He didn’t have to look very hard to see her once he followed Baron’s gaze. The first thing he could see was Ku‘uipo’s hand, pale against the shadows under the house.
Still.
Unmoving.
But he refused to let fear knock him down.
The firefighters brought a backboard to the side of the house and Train was ready to slip underneath the raised cottage, but the Chief kept him behind as one of the men in protective gear slid under the still burning house to rescue her.
Really, that’s all that mattered anyway.
Pulling her out from the space under the house, getting her to a hospital.
Making sure that she was alive.
That’s what mattered, because the woman who was brave enough and resourceful enough to escape a housefire was a woman who he was going to fight for.
Then again, who was he kidding? He knew he was going to fight for her no matter what.
Sixteen
Sitting on the back bumper of the ambulance, Ku‘uipo leaned against Uluwehi’s shoulder and tried to school her features into an expression that was pleasant instead of nonplussed.
“What am I going to do?”
Her friend settled his arm around her shoulders and leaned down to press a kiss on the top of her head.
“You mean ‘What are we going to do?’”
She shook her head. “I’m so sorry.”
“Sorry about what?”
Ku‘uipo tried to ignore the growing crowd of curious onlookers and focued on the firefighters and how they were packing up now that the fire was over. “We were almost there, you know?” She shook her head. “I had my lists. We had everything checked off. Done.” She set her hand on his leg, patting it a few times. “All we had to do today was open up like we’d been gearing up to do for more than year. Open the doors. Smile and greet the guests. Check them in and start the new chapter for this amazing place. Now, I can’t see how we’re going to reverse the press.”
She turned slightly and winced as the shift in her head position made everything ache inside her skull.
Uluwehi touched his hand to the side of her head and the connection allowed her to breathe. “I can’t see how we’d do this if something had happened to you.”
Her instinct was to shake her head, but that was only going to drive home the point that she’d failed. That she couldn’t even keep her own house from going up in flames.
“I wouldn’t be angry if you want out now. You can get another job. You’ve got serious skills, you’re a rock when it comes to the hard times and you’re a lift and boost through all the good. I’m not sure that a recommendation from me would do anything, but I’d write you one in a heartbeat.” Her chuckle was more of a cough, scratching through her throat. “It might do better to tell potential bosses that you were the glue that kept my sorry self from making this whole thing a complete disaster.”
Uluwehi gathered her closer against his side and set the oxygen mask over her nose and face. “You just forget that, girl. You and I? We’re in up to our necks in this place and I wouldn’t want it any other way. Don’t give up yet.”
She squeezed her eyes shut and felt the ache stab through her head. “What else can I do?”
Ku‘uipo breathed in and out, barely registering the oxygen flowing into her lungs. The whole world was tumbling down around her ears.
“What’s going to happen to everyone? All of the people that moved here as interns? The people who end up running this place… I hope they keep them on. I hope they see the value of what we were building. This place deserves to live and share aloha with locals and visitors alike, just not with me here. No matter what happens, I’m going to have to leave.”
“Hey,” Uluwehi gave her arm a squeeze, “don’t you go borrowing trouble. This wasn’t your fault-”
“But what did I do to prevent it?” She pulled the mask down from her face and let it fall to hang around her neck. “What did I do to keep our people safe? It seems like I’m the wick of the candle, you know? I’m the center of this whole problem. I say how much I love this place and yet I’m ignoring the point. If I care as much as I say I do, then I’m going to have to leave and hope that everything else… everyone else can stay here and make this work.”
He blew out a breath and sighed. “You are one stubborn wahine.”
“You do know me so well.”
Train was anxious to get back to Kailani Palms, but Detective Santos had asked them to wait at the station. He understood why.
Apprehending a suspect was one thing when you carried a badge. Of course, it didn’t help that the stupid asshole tried to get away.
Tried to fight.
Managed to get in a lucky foot and a badly thrown punch.
“I need some meds!”
And was taking the pain like a… like a…
“Stop be
ing a wuss!” Baron flopped down in a chair at one of the desks and crossed his ankles. He never let up his glare at the man rocking himself on the bench.
One of the officers nearby chuckled. “Wuss?”
Baron spared him a look. “Yeah? So what?”
Another officer shook his head. “Thought you were going to say girl.”
“You wouldn’t say that if you knew the women we know.” The look Shado turned on them made both officers look away. “Miles here is just a coward.”
Mace sat on the edge of a desk nearby. “You’re probably still safe with crybaby, but that’s about it.”
The front door slammed open and Detective Santos strode into the room, his gaze turning on Miles first and then landed on Train. “Where did you find him?”
Train shrugged. “It wasn’t that hard. He’s going through withdrawal, but I doubt it’s from drugs. Probably adrenaline at this point.”
Shado nudged Miles’ foot. “Didn’t have the good sense to get away when he had the chance.”
“Get away from me!” Miles shook a little as he leaned away. “You don’t know a damn thing!”
“I know enough,” Shado glared at him. “You snuck onto the grounds and tried to kill a woman.”
“My woman.” Train made the statement and took grim satisfaction at the way that Miles’ complexion paled. “You tried to kill my woman.”
“You don’t have proof. You didn’t see a thing. And there aren’t any cameras in that part of the property.”
Santos shook his head. “I don’t even think I’ll need to interrogate him if he just keeps talking, because here,” he jerked a thumb over his shoulder toward the corner of the room, “we have cameras.”
Miles’ gaze swung around to see the rounded cover of a security camera attached to the ceiling. “Fuck!”
Baron barked out a laugh. “That’s exactly what you are, genius. Fucked.”
Train shook his head and focused on the detective. “What do you need from us before we go. I want to get back to Ipo and check up on her.”