Chapter Five

The number on display was unfamiliar, with a California area code. Hani got into his vehicle before answering his cell phone, looking around to make sure he hadn’t attracted any unwanted attention. People around here recognized him, even if they didn’t know his name. All his best customers lived in Happy Valley. “Yeah.”

“This Hani?” an unfamiliar, Spanish-accented male voice asked.

“Who’s this?” he demanded, suspicious.

“Name’s Juan.”

He didn’t know anyone named Juan. “How did you get this number?”

“From Pedro. You heard about him, right?”

Hani set his jaw. Yeah, he’d heard about Pedro. His Veneno supplier. Well, former supplier. Pedro had been executed with two bullets to the face sometime last night. Police had found his body floating amongst the rocks this morning at Turtle Town, down in Makena. “What do you want?”

“Calling to tell you there’s a new boss in charge. From now on, you answer to me, cabrón.”

Hani didn’t like his tone, or the attitude. “Who’s in charge?” Although he was afraid he already knew. With the former lieutenant Ruiz in prison and awaiting trial, it opened a turbulent and dangerous power vacuum back in Mexico.

“Let’s just say, the rumors are true.”

Nieto. God damn… “Since when?”

“Since this morning. I’m flying in tomorrow. I want a face to face meeting.”

So “Juan” could have one of his enforcers kill Hani? “I’m busy.”

Juan laughed. “Better clear your schedule then. Because you either do business my way, or you don’t do business at all.”

The implied threat was clear enough, but Hani didn’t trust that Juan wasn’t simply planning to off him at this meeting anyway.

“And don’t bother trying to leave the island. I’ve got eyes everywhere. You try to run, I’ll find you.”

Hani itched to hang up on the cocky son of a bitch, but didn’t have the guts. “I’ll be here,” he muttered.

“Good. How’s your grandma, by the way? Heard she’s been slowing down lately. And any word from your cousin?”

A chill spread through his gut. “Haven’t seen him in years. And leave her out of this. She’s got nothing to do with my business.”

“She’ll be fine as long as you play by the rules.”

Juan’s rules. Whatever they were. Hani would have to learn them in a hurry.

“As for your cousin, he’s made a real name for himself recently.”

“What?” Kai had cut contact with him years ago with an invitation back into his life if Hani ever went straight, but last he’d heard, his cousin had gotten out of the Marines and was in some sort of law enforcement job back on the mainland.

“Oh, yeah. He’s big time now. With the DEA, on one of its FAST teams.”

Hani closed his eyes and cursed silently. He knew what FAST teams did, because it was his industry they went after. The news wasn’t welcome, but in some ways it wasn’t a complete shock, either. Didn’t surprise him that his cousin had made the DEA’s tier one unit.

Kai had always excelled at everything he did. He never quit. While Hani had wanted the easy life, the get rich quick life, and been sucked down to the place he found himself now. It hurt like hell to learn that his lifelong idol was now his nemesis.

“Yep,” Juan continued in an oily tone. “Ruiz put a bounty on your cousin’s head before he was captured. New boss says he’ll honor it if any of us takes him out. Had someone staking out his old place for a while, but never saw him. So if you see him, you could wind up a rich man. You can tell me all about him when we meet up. And we will meet up in person, Hani.”

“I said I’d be here,” Hani snapped.

“Yeah, I’m not worried.” Juan hung up.

Hani exhaled hard and dragged a hand down his face. This business could make you rich. It could also kill you in the space of a single heartbeat.

There was no point in trying to hide. The island was a small place, and even the most remote places here weren’t big enough to allow him to hide for long. Word amongst the locals spread fast, and the place was crawling with tourists. Leaving wasn’t an option, because the Venenos controlled the ports and had people inside the airports as well.

But he wouldn’t run anyhow. Even though he’d chosen this path, chosen to live on the wrong side of the law and make money off others’ misery, he would never knowingly jeopardize his tutu. His grandmother had raised him and Kai, had sacrificed so much to give them a loving, secure home. The only love and security they’d ever known, except for each other. Hani couldn’t leave to save his own skin and risk something happening to her in retaliation.

Reaching for the key in the ignition of his brand new F-150, he froze, his pulse stuttering when he caught sight of his grandmother on the sidewalk out in front of the grocery store. It had been weeks since he’d last stopped in to see her at her place in the upcountry. She must be here for her weekly grocery run and to visit friends from the old neighborhood.

Hani sighed, torn. He loved her, and she still loved him, even though his choices had broken her heart. She still refused to give up on him, told him she prayed every night for him to give up the life he’d chosen and be the man she knew he was meant to be.

He didn’t deserve her faith. The man she wanted him to be didn’t exist. Maybe he never had.

Her wrinkled face brightened when she spotted him, making his heart twist in his chest. She made a beeline for his truck, three bulging grocery bags in each small fist.

Guilt smothering him, Hani got out and rushed to take them from her. “Hi, Tutu,” he murmured, bending to kiss her papery cheek as she threw her arms around his shoulders.

“Been too long since I saw you,” she chided, squeezing him tight. It hurt him, deep inside. She loved him so fiercely, and he didn’t understand why.

“I know. Been busy. Come on, I’ll drive you home.” He hated that she wouldn’t drive. He’d offered to buy her a car so many times, but she’d refused unless the money he paid for it with was clean money. So she stubbornly continued to take the bus into Kahului three or four times a week, carrying her groceries and supplies home with her. Today, she’d come to Happy Valley instead.

He put the groceries into the back seat and helped her into the front, lifting her slight frame into the leather seat.

“New ride?” she asked, her tone making him groan inwardly.

“Yeah,” he muttered, shutting her door quickly before she could start in on him about where he’d gotten the money. She knew exactly where he got it.

She eyed him with those piercing, dark brown eyes when he slid behind the wheel and started the engine. “I heard they found a local boy down in Makena today. Shot dead by someone. Police say he was a drug dealer.”

Hani hid a wince. Pedro. He’d been far more than a simple drug dealer. “I heard that too.”

“I don’t want it to be you one day, Hani. I couldn’t take that.”

The sadness and fear in her voice made him squirm inside. His whole downward spiral had begun with hanging out with the wrong crowd in middle school. They’d shown him how to earn money. Fast money. Lots of it. Stealing stuff, delivering drugs, selling it.

Some had died since then, others moved away or become addicts themselves. While Hani was still here, stuck in the rut he’d created for himself. Sometimes he dreamed about getting out, starting over someplace new. But he couldn’t without the cartel coming after him. He was trapped.

“I know. Don’t worry, I’ll be fine.” He cleared his throat, changed the subject before she could continue. “So, what’s the latest with you?”

“Kai’s coming home.”

Hani’s entire body stiffened. “What?”

“Called me the other day. He’s going to Oahu for something, and then he’s coming to spend a few days here after.”

Panic burst inside him. “When?”

She shrugged. “He wasn’t sure of the dates. Maybe within the next week or so.” She shot him a sidelong look. “He’ll be staying with me. Would be nice if you would be there too.”

Him in the same house with a DEA FAST member who had a bounty on his head? “Tutu, I don’t know if it’s a good idea for him to stay with you.”

She frowned. “Why not? I barely ever get to see him anymore.”

Because the Venenos are gunning for him, and he could put you in danger.

We both could.

Hani wracked his brain, but couldn’t think of a good reason to give her without incriminating himself. Dammit.

“Will you come see him?” she pressed. “You boys were so close for most of your lives. It breaks my heart to see this rift between you.” She reached for his hand, pried it from the steering wheel and folded it between hers, her skin papery against his. “Please. For me. I’m getting older. I don’t know how many years I have left, and I need to know you boys are both going to be okay after I die. I need to know you’ll both look after one another.”

The plea undid him. This woman had given him so much, and she’d never asked him for anything, except to turn straight. She was almost eighty. Didn’t have much longer on this earth.

His conscience pricked at him like hot needles. He’d denied her everything else. He couldn’t deny her this too. “Yeah, all right. I’ll come by.” He’d figure something out.

Even as he said it, an ominous weight settled in the pit of his stomach. If the cartel found out that Kai was here on Maui, Hani would be put in the position of either watching someone kill his cousin…or becoming a target himself.

****

The boat bobbed gently on the waves, the water beneath it a deep, cobalt blue. In the distance, the shoreline of Lahaina was just visible.

Diane stood at the stern of the charter catamaran with the alabaster urn in her hands, alone as the warm, salt-tinged breeze blew around her. The captain and first mate were both inside the wheelhouse, giving her total privacy.

Bailey had loved the ocean. She’d loved sailing, surfing. Even just sitting on the lanai looking out at the water. Making this her final resting place seemed the most fitting spot.

Diane gazed out over the distant horizon, her heart heavy as lead in her breast. There were no more tears. Her grief was too deep, too terrible. All that was left now was the need for vengeance, and deep, aching emptiness that would never go away.

Taking a deep breath, she lifted the lid off the urn and reached out over the side of the catamaran. “I love you, sweetheart. Sleep well and be at peace.” Every time she saw the water from now on, she would think of Bailey.

With trembling hands, she tipped the urn. A stream of white ash spilled from the vessel, falling toward the rippling surface of the water. The wind caught it, spreading it into a fine mist. She reached up and closed the fingers of her right hand around the locket hanging from her neck. The one containing a tiny amount of Bailey’s ashes.

Her mind remained blank as she stared at the film of ash while it settled onto the water and vanished. After a respectful amount of time, footsteps approached behind her.

“Mrs. Whitehead?” the captain asked. “Are you ready to go back now?”

She nodded without turning around, her gaze fixed on the spot where her daughter now rested, mixing with the wind and waves.

The ride back to shore passed in a blur, but as the shoreline became clearer and clearer in front of them, her mind began to whirl. Bailey had been laid to rest. Her suffering was over.

But for the people who had wrought this pain, their suffering was about to begin.

In the parking lot she changed clothes, in the privacy of the shadows alongside the building that the charter boat rides were run out of. There were no security cameras here. The rental car she’d secured under a fake name was nondescript, her outfit of capri jeans and a plain gray T-shirt chosen because they wouldn’t draw attention.

Everything else she needed was already in the trunk.

Funny now, to think that the one positive thing from her childhood—her marksman father teaching her how to shoot—would pay off this way. It had been the one thing they had in common, though she’d done it only to spend time with him. Over the years she’d become an expert shot. Today, that same skill would become her weapon in meting out the justice Bailey had been denied in life. She had nothing left to lose. She was willing to go to jail as long as she could kill at least one monster responsible for this.

Diane had failed her daughter while she was alive. She’d be damned if she’d fail her in death too.

Ten minutes later she pulled into the parking lot of the medical building and parked in a spot off in the corner, closest to the exit. There was only one other car there, a silver Mercedes that belonged to her target.

She’d done her homework carefully over the past several days. Doctor Bradshaw’s last patient was a seventy-one-year-old woman scheduled for seven o’clock. He generally ran behind at the end of the day. His staff left out the front of the building, and he always came out the back, where his Mercedes was parked beside the steel door.

His parking spot was ideal. The security cameras installed on the building had a view of his car, but only the front of it. The trunk, where he always placed his briefcase before climbing behind the wheel, was out of view. And with the trunk up, it gave her the perfect amount of concealment.

Her hand was damp but steady as she gripped her pistol, hidden in her handbag. The plastic, disposable raincoat she wore would keep her free of any splatter.

Movement in her peripheral vision caught her attention. An elderly woman with white hair came out of the rear entrance, leaning heavily on the cane. Dr. Bradshaw’s final patient.

Diane’s heartbeat quickened as she waited, her gaze locked on the steel door. She’d killed pheasants before. An occasional deer. But never a person.

Her conscience pricked at her, but she wrestled it back. This man was a monster. There were no real consequences for people like him, for the people who made and sold and prescribed the drugs that destroyed so many lives. The world would be a better place with him gone.

Minutes later the lights on the second floor turned off. She slid out of her car, careful to remain in the shadows and out of view of the camera, or anyone who came out the back door.

It opened. Heart in her throat, she stared at the opening. The good doctor himself emerged, briefcase in one hand. He didn’t bother looking around as he locked the door behind him and made for his car.

Diane shoved her nerves back and stalked toward him on silent feet, the pistol grip solid in her hand. She was twenty feet away and Bradshaw still hadn’t noticed her. As if in slow motion he hit the button on his keyfob that unlatched the trunk and turned toward it, his back to her.

The moment the trunk swung upward, Diane acted.

“You killed my daughter,” she said in a low voice, raising the pistol. It was like an extension of her hand, the weight and feel of it perfect in her grip.

Bradshaw whirled to face her, his startled expression turning to fear when he saw the weapon pointed at his chest. He jerked his eyes to hers.

It was what she had been waiting for. That moment of recognition.

Grip steady, she fired three fast shots. Each bullet hit their mark, dead center in Bradshaw’s worthless chest.

She barely saw him hit the ground before she whirled and hurried away in the shadows. The shots had been loud, but necessary. People would come to investigate at any moment.

Pausing at her vehicle only long enough to strip off her plastic raincoat, she stuffed everything in the beach bag and drove out of the lot at an unhurried pace even though she was scared to death of being seen. Of being caught on some security camera she didn’t know about.

Her heart hammered in her throat, a queasy sensation roiling in her stomach. If Bradshaw wasn’t already dead, he soon would be.

Diane drove through the quiet streets back to the motel she was staying at. She couldn’t risk going home yet, in case anyone suspected her. Home was the first place they’d look.

With each passing mile she fought off the instinctive rush of guilt, the terrible knowledge that she’d just taken a human life.

He deserved it. They all did.

One down, so many more to go.