by Edie Claire
As he drove the long way back around the base of the mountain, then caught the single road that headed uphill to the field station, he mulled over his various options. He would report the incident to the Maui County humane authorities. After that, he’d play it by ear. Keep an eye on the dogs. Best case scenario, the man was only mean when he was drunk, and he only mistreated the one dog. Perhaps if the field officers spoke to him, he’d be willing to surrender the mutt for adoption.
Otherwise, the man’s unpleasant confrontation with Wolf today would not be his last.
The long, winding drive up the slope grew foggier as the truck climbed, and when Wolf pulled into the Haleakala field station, which sat nearly 7000 feet above sea level, he was completely engulfed in the clouds. He weaved through the cluster of green-painted clapboard buildings — none of which he could actually see at the moment — by memory, then maneuvered the truck into its usual spot beside another equally sorry-looking vehicle from the same leasing outfit. The other truck still had its lights on, its driver having also just arrived.
Both drivers cut their engines, got out, and began unloading their cargo.
“Hey, Maddie.”
“Hey, Wolf,” the striking woman replied with a smile. “Any new and exciting gases today?”
He gave a casual shrug, even as his pulse rate shifted into high-alert mode. It always did with Maddie; he couldn’t help it and no longer bothered trying. The woman was engaged and strictly off limits, and he respected that. But no matter how grungy her work clothes were or how tightly she braided her long red-gold hair, his fellow researcher was — hands down — the most ridiculously sexy female he’d ever met. He also liked her very much as a friend, which was a damned annoying combination.
“Same old, same old. What’s new in cat crap?” he replied.
Maddie grinned. They’d had this same conversation any number of times over the last few months. Despite the fact that a body like hers should rightfully be modeling high fashion on a runway in Milan, Maddie Westover spent her days crawling all over the island of Maui rooting around under bushes collecting samples of feral cat feces. What’s more, she appeared to enjoy it.
“Mystery awaits in every baggie,” she said with enthusiasm, displaying a handful of plastic specimen containers. Wolf listened with amusement as she went on to describe a frustrating adventure with a particular tomcat as they collected their things and locked up their trucks. “I swear he knows exactly what I’m doing,” she mused. “He’s probably hiding somewhere while I’m setting up the traps, watching and laughing at me.”
Wolf chuckled. Maddie had set out to neuter this particular feral tom months ago, but the wily beast continued to elude her. It was an unusual pale orange color and apparently this made her certain it had fathered dozens of the younger cats that wandered the area.
“That colony will never get a proper caretaker, either,” she lamented. “It’s too remote. The volunteers will be lucky to round up a third of the new kittens, and the ones they miss will have miserable, unnaturally short lives.”
Wolf’s thoughts drifted as Maddie restated her views on the devastation feral cats were causing the island ecosystem. He could understand her passion on the issue. She had a PhD in ecology. But she was also a cat lover, which put her in a quandary when it came to accepting best-evidence solutions. He sympathized with her moral dilemma. But right now, hearing her bleak reports of starving, flea-bitten kittens only made him worry more about the long-haired mutt. He needed to make that phone call.
“Something wrong?” Maddie asked, stopping what she was doing. Her beautiful blue-gray eyes bore into his with concern.
He squirmed under her gaze and looked away. “Nope,” he answered. “I was just thinking about a call I need to make. Got to stash this. Catch you later.” He turned away from her and headed toward the supply closet where he kept his equipment.
“Later,” Maddie called after his back, sounding a tad annoyed with him. That happened sometimes, but there was nothing he could do about it. A casual friendship with a co-worker was all well and good, but Maddie was the type that pushed it, sometimes. He didn’t need that.
He didn’t need anybody.
Wolf groped his way through the fog to the supply room, put away his gear, and headed back toward what was affectionately dubbed “the Hilton,” the long, single-story dormitory at the field station in which he rented a room. The Hilton housed six researchers at a time, for a few months to a few years, as they conducted various biological and geological studies. “The Marriott” housed another four scientists next door, in addition to the small permanent staff. The accommodations were sparse, but functional, and most important, they were affordable on a government grant.
Wolf couldn’t see the Marriot. Wolf could barely see his hand in front of his face. But as he walked around to the front of the Hilton, he could hear another car pulling up and parking in a space farther out.
Wolf grinned to himself. He heard a car door open and shut, but still could see nothing in the thick fog. “Evening, Kai,” he called out.
Footsteps hurried toward him, and the figure of a tall, well-dressed local man around Wolf’s own age emerged from the mists. “How did you know it was me?” the guy asked with amusement once he’d recognized Wolf.
“I know the sound of that worthless pile of crap you drive,” Wolf teased. He held the door open.
Kai chuckled. “Hey, every time that worthless pile of crap even gets me up this mountain, I say a prayer, man.” He hustled on inside the door. “Maddie back yet?”
Wolf didn’t have to answer that question. Maddie appeared in the Hilton’s “lobby” before the door could shut behind them. In the next second she had launched herself into her fiance’s arms. If Wolf wasn’t there, he was pretty sure she’d have thrown her legs around Kai’s waist, too.
Retreat.
The couple remained locked together like teenagers as Wolf skirted around them in the small confines of the shared living area and walked down the hall toward his room. He tried not to hear the various giggling and cooing noises that echoed up the corridor behind him.
They caused an almost physical pain.
He reached his door, went through it, and shut it soundly behind him. That’s better. He pulled off his work boots, sat down in his comfy desk chair, and pulled up his phone.
He felt lousy. Really lousy.
Seeing Maddie and Kai together always did that to him, and every time it happened, he became more annoyed with himself. Maddie was hot, yes, but it wasn’t about his wanting her physically. Volcanologists’ work conditions often forced them to live like hermits for months at a time, and that kind of pain, he knew. But this kind of pain made no sense at all. Kai was a genuinely nice guy. The couple seemed good for each other and Wolf wished them the best. So what the hell was his problem?
He didn’t want to think about it.
He looked up the number to report animal abuse and called it.
Chapter 4
Ri signed her name on the line and handed the lease agreement to her new landlady, along with her first rent check. Mrs. Araki, a friendly Japanese-American woman who carried herself with a comfortable air of wealth, smiled and offered Ri a key to the rental house in exchange. The woman’s outfit was “put together” in the finest detail from her jeweled earrings to the tips of her pedicured toenails, and according to Shelby she lived in a multi-million dollar spread somewhere northwest of Kahului. Yet not only did she seem at ease checking the new intern into what was probably the smallest — although admittedly not the shabbiest — dwelling in the area’s southern outskirts, she was quite chatty about it.
“You have good neighbors on this street,” Mrs. Araki praised. “Nice people. The bus stop’s just a block away and you can get to the Foodland in no time. Waikapu’s close to everything. If you—” Her voice broke off. She studied Ri with a speculative look.
Ri was trying hard to listen politely. Or at least to appear to be listening. But she was s
o very, very tired she was about to fall asleep on her feet. She wasn’t sure what had made Mrs. Araki interrupt herself, but she was afraid that perhaps her eyelids had drifted shut. She must have done something, because up to now most everything her landlady had said had sounded like a rehearsed speech. But what came out of the woman’s mouth next was said in a distinctly different tone. “Are you kama'aina?”
Ri stared. The question was asked curiously, and in a friendly way, rather than accusingly. But she was embarrassed. The word must mean sleepy. “I’m sorry,” she replied. “I don’t know what that means.”
Mrs. Araki’s eyes widened a bit in surprise, but then she laughed lightly. “No, I’m sorry. I just assumed. A kama'aina is a long-term resident. I thought maybe you were from one of the other islands and I was about to waste my time telling you things you already knew.”
Ri snapped back to alertness again. The tiny kitchen in which she was standing — which was barely big enough to accommodate the spindly card table and chairs in its center, seemed to grow instantly warmer and more confining. “Mrs. Araki,” she said earnestly, “please tell me why you thought that. You’re the second person today to say so, and I’ve never had anyone tell me that on the mainland. Is it… I mean…” Her heart pounded as she brought forth the previously ridiculous thought. The thought she never would have dreamed before the DNA test. “Do you think I look Japanese?”
For a long moment, Mrs. Araki seemed to be struck dumb. Then she tossed her pretty head back and laughed out loud.
Ri felt like crumpling into a heap.
“Oh, my dear,” Mrs. Araki said quickly, tempering her humor. “No, no. Don’t be upset. But, no. No, of course you don’t. Why would you think so?”
Ri still felt like crumpling. She knew she didn’t look Japanese. Her own skin was browner than Mrs. Araki’s, and she was half Russian. And whatever it was about a person’s eyes that made them look Japanese, or Chinese, or Asian in general, she didn’t see it when she looked in the mirror. There was really nothing about her that made her look Asian at all. And yet that’s what the damned DNA test had said. Forty-seven percent “East Asian.” East Asian! Not Indian — that was a whole other gene pool. Not African — that was a continent away. But aside from those two exclusions, which shattered everything she thought she knew about her biological father, East Asian was about as broad, as diverse, and as minimally helpful a clue to her identity as possible.
The test results had offered her only one small consolation in exchange for that vagueness. The profile of her supposed fifth to eighth cousin had not included an ethnic breakdown and was not associated with an online family tree. The person did not even have an individual account on the genealogy website, but had been listed by a third party, probably a relative from a different branch of the family. But the listing did have a name. And that name was Japanese.
“I…” Ri began haltingly. But she was too tired to bother with a facade. “I was adopted internationally. I’m not sure why I look the way I look, but I have reason to believe I might have a Japanese ancestor.”
Mrs. Araki beamed with delight. “Oh, I see! Well, you should feel very much at home on the islands, then. Many people here are of mixed ancestry, and from a variety of countries. More are mixed than are not!” She reached out, took one of Ri’s hands in both of her own, and gave it a squeeze and a pat. “You are fortunate to be part Japanese. You be proud.” She gave a wink and a nod, then released Ri’s hand and headed for the door. “Now, you go to bed. You look exhausted, my dear.”
Ri did not need to be told twice. She locked the door after her landlady and walked through the small, modestly furnished living area and on into the far bedroom. The women’s sleeping quarters was barely big enough for twin beds, but Ri was grateful for the relative luxury she and Shelby would be enjoying, since the guys’ room on the other side of the kitchen had bunks. She hoped none of the four of them was a slob, but she was in no position to complain. Mrs. Araki was renting the house as a favor to the Foundation and most likely as a tax write-off, since it was questionable whether what the interns were paying would even cover her taxes, utilities, and upkeep.
Ri had no energy left to unpack her suitcase. She didn’t even bother with a shower. She changed into some comfortable sleep clothes, brushed her teeth, pulled out the single sheet set she’d brought with her, and made up the thin mattress. Though the house came furnished, there was no pillow or blanket, so she pulled out a jacket and a bathrobe and made do. Tomorrow, she’d go shopping. She’d known she would need bedding, but it seemed silly to waste prime packing space with bulky things. She sank down into her improvised nest, closed her eyes, and fell instantly asleep.
At some point in the haze of hours that followed, she was dimly aware of people coming in, of banging noises and loud voices. She managed to rouse herself to a sufficient level of consciousness to recognize that the intruders were her roommates, and therefore no threat to her, and then she was out again. How many more blissful hours of nothingness passed before the screaming, she had no idea. She only knew there weren’t nearly enough of them.
The screaming, in and of itself, was not enough to completely wake her. She’d spent way too many years living on a college campus for that. But somewhere in the middle of her happy darkness, a question mark inserted itself. How to classify the scream? Was it drunken? Stupid? Excited? Terrified? She’d only have to pay attention to the last one.
Ri listened closer.
Dammit.
Her heavy-as-lead body waged war with her brain. She tried to open her eyelids, but nothing happened. It’s on TV, probably. Forget about it.
The high-pitched beeping of a fire alarm pierced her skull. Then a guy’s voice shouted. It sounded like Will. “What the hell are you doing! Don’t—”
A bang and a splash. Sizzles. More screaming. Now there were two guys shouting.
Ri woke up. The smell of smoke hung thick in the air. She clutched her jacket around her and stumbled out into the living room.
Shelby stood in the doorway to the kitchen, still screaming. In the sink was a sauce pan. Water was running from the tap, hitting the pan and sizzling. Flames seemed to be everywhere. They were coming from the pan, flying upward as the water hissed and sizzled. They were all around the sink, from tiny embers of orange glowing on the countertop to a black cancer forming on the roll of paper towels to wild, licking bursts of light erupting on the folds of the linen curtains. Red specks of fiery grease had attached themselves to the floor. The walls. Even the ceiling.
Ri noticed that the oven exhaust fan was on.
Good God.
“Shelby, come out of there!” she ordered. “Come this way!” There were two doors to the house. One was in the center of the living room near Ri, the other in a mud room that connected to both the kitchen and the guys’ bedroom. Shelby couldn’t use the other door without literally walking over fire to get to it.
The girl didn’t move. She had stopped screaming. Her eyes were wide and unblinking.
Ri swore and stepped forward.
Will was standing in the far kitchen doorway holding a fire extinguisher. “Get her out of here, would you?” he shouted to Ri as he struggled to figure out how to use it.
“Never mind!” argued Bryant’s voice from somewhere Ri couldn’t see. “Let’s just get out and call the fire department. That stupid fan is going to carry it everywhere!”
“We’ve got to try!” Will argued back heatedly. “All my stuff’s in here!” He managed to pull out the pin and squirted a small amount of foam on top of his feet. “Get her out of the way!” he shouted to Ri again. Then Ri saw his eyes widen. “Her hand!”
Ri was attempting to pull Shelby out of the kitchen without fully entering it herself by pulling Shelby’s nearest hand, but the woman was resisting her, frozen like a statue. Only when Ri looked around Shelby did she see the flames lapping over the cloth oven mitt on her opposite hand.
Gasping with horror, Ri garnered her strength and
spun the other woman toward her like a top. Caught off guard, Shelby practically tripped into the living room. Ri flung the jacket off her own shoulders and wrapped it tightly around the flaming mitt, then hustled Shelby out the door.
“You need help?” a man said, nearly bumping into them on the small lawn. “Should we call the fire department?”
“Two guys inside,” Ri stammered, trying to think quickly. The man looming over her was shirtless, sweaty, muscular, well over three hundred pounds, covered with tattoos, and smelled of beer, and on any other occasion, he probably would have scared her to death. But right now, she was sure he’d been sent straight from heaven. If he sprouted wings and flew she would not bat an eyelash — she wasn’t even completely sure she was awake and out of bed. “They’re trying to use a fire extinguisher but they need to get out if it doesn’t work,” she explained quickly.
The man took off, but his spot at her side was immediately filled by a woman and two teenagers. “Should we call an ambulance?” the teenage girl asked her mother as the group hustled them away from the house.
“Shelby?” Ri said softly. Her fellow intern’s eyes were still wide and glassy. “Are you okay?”
There was no response.
“She’s in shock,” the neighbor woman announced. “Did she get burned? What happened?”
Ri looked down. She was still holding her jacket around Shelby’s wrist. She slowly began to unroll it. The oven mitt was blackened on the surface, but did not appear to be burned through anywhere. Ri pulled it off Shelby’s hand and saw no obvious injury. But between the dim glow of the neighbor’s porch light and the street lamp above them, it was hard to tell.
The teenager whipped out a cell phone and shone a flashlight on Shelby’s face. “Oh, Mom,” she said fearfully, “Look.”