Oscar “OT” Tisdale watched the woman beside him as he reached for the gear that had been mysteriously dropped back off by his business. Closing his fingers around the fins, he inspected them as he mulled over her question. “Sure it did, but hell, everything she’d done wasn’t exactly above board. I didn’t give it another thought when the items were returned. I’ll admit, it wasn’t the smartest thing, but it wasn’t my place to pry.”
She reached out for one of the gages, narrowed her eyes, and brought it closer. “Do you have a light?”
No way was she asking so she could smoke a cigarette. Fumbling around with his left hand, he finally was able to shove the flashlight over toward her.
She picked it up without looking away from the item in her hand. A noncommittal grunt fell from her full, glossed lips.
No color there like lipstick, not that he was looking, but a clear sheen that continually drew his gaze to them. Her medium nut hued skin and the tight ringlets of hair around her face were one hell of a distraction for him. Even as buttoned up and tense as she was. He knew there was a hellcat beneath it all. “What did you find?”
“You clean this between each use?”
“Always. This wouldn’t go out to anyone until I check over it and make sure everything is in tiptop running shape.” He then noticed a couple on their way up. Leaving the stool, he walked up to the front and rented them some jet skis. While the husband filled out the paperwork, he leaned his side against the edge of the counter.
OT could still see her in his periphery and she worked diligently on the item she held in her hand. He cleared his throat and swiped is thumb along his lower lip as he waited for them to finish their paperwork. Her words—Natasha Zion’s words—wouldn’t leave him. ‘And none of that seemed suspicious to you?’
Damn her!
What people did with their own time wasn’t his concern. He didn’t open this shop to play parent. He had release forms that every renter had to sign. Again, not his job to make sure they actually read through them before signing.
After getting the couple out of the way, he spun back and paused. Natasha still sat on the stool, the gage clutched in her hand, none of which concerned him. No, it was the tears spilling free.
Spinning back toward the door, he called out, “Have fun.” It didn’t matter to him the couple had already walked away, he did it to give her some time. He straightened up the non-existent mess before returning to the back.
Her tears no longer fell although her eyes remained suspiciously shiny,
He gestured with his chin. “What did you find?”
She slid the plate over.
OT stared at it. Brow furrowing, he reached for the grain of sand there. “Sand. Sometimes gets into the equipment.” Even as the words left his mouth, he took a closer look. Something was off. “Black sand.” He shifted his attention to the Natasha.
She waited for his gaze to meet hers. There wasn’t any judgement in her gaze, merely patience for him to expound. Then again, she may have been waiting for him to catch up with her thought process. “The area her body was found, the sand was what color? And based on the currents that day where she could have floated from?”
Damn it.
His investigative skills that had been burned out by his years in CID and lifeless for the past eighteen months flared to full on flames as if just exposed to oxygen.
“That’s what I thought,” she muttered.
His mind raced to the black sand beaches around here. There were a few, the closest being Awahua, what the locals called Black Sand Beach. Dangerous area that was accessible by hiking down a long difficult path. It’s where those who had Hansen’s disease had been kept in days past. The water down there often had dangerous rip currents.
But if she was an experienced diver, she may have wanted to check that area.
Natasha refocused her attention on the gage in her hand while he continued on the rest of the gear. No more black sand. Even more peculiar for there to have been a grain wedged in there, more should be present. Or other grains, instead of being clean. All of it had been cleaned.
The sand she’d found had been overlooked. The question was by whom?
“I need to make a call.” He backed away from the table and pulled out his cellphone. Scrolling through his contacts, he found the one he wanted and pressed the call button. With another look to the woman sitting alone before he put his back to her.
“Chief Warrant Officer Tisdale. I haven’t heard from you in a while. Heard you’d left the Army. But if you’re calling me, you must need something.”
He smiled. “Ms. Shaw. I could use some help in identifying the location of a beach a grain of sand was found on.”
“You’re no longer CID, correct?”
“Correct, I’m not active any longer.”
“Then why would I help you?”
“Because you’re intrigued as to why I’m asking for your assistance.”
She snorted but he knew she’d been hooked. Leoni Shaw had to have been one of the nosiest people he’d ever met. He always figured that as a child, she went around with the question why on her lips. And it was everything she wanted to know more on, not solely one thing.
“Damn you, OT.”
He grinned. No doubt now, he had her. “I want an analysis on a grain of sand.”
Behind him, he heard the stool slide over the floor of his shop and turned back.
Ms. Zion was pacing, allowing his gaze to trail along her curves.
And he approved of it all.
“Why?”
Her question yanked his focus from the dips and swells belonging to one Natasha Zion.
“I’m curious,” OT answered. “I want to know where it’s from. Will you do it?”
“Of course I will. You know I can’t refuse a mystery. Bring it by.”
“On my way as soon as I close.” He ended the call and faced her once more.
Ms. Zion stood in front of his wall staring at one of the few pictures he had up there.
He walked to her side and gazed down at the top of her head. What did her curls feel like? They appeared soft and her hair smelled like lemon and mint. “I have a friend who can check the composition of the sand and narrow down a location.”
“Military huh?”
He nodded unsure why the change of subject. “Yes.”
“Finished honorably?”
“Yes.” What was she getting at?
“Do what you have to. I’m trusting you here because I don’t have another grain of sand. I’ll be by to find out what happened.” She was out the door and into a taxi he hadn’t even seen arrive before it pulled away.
OT went to find the sand right there. He wanted to go now but didn’t close up for a while yet. The remaining hours inched by but once the gear had been returned, he was on his Harley heading to Leoni’s lab. He would head back to work after and clean the rest of the gear.
No too much later, he was leaning against one of Leoni’s lab tables as she carefully inspected the grain.
“This all you have?” Her inky hair sat piled on her head, a few tendrils falling around her face that showed off the stunning blend of Hawaiian and Japanese heritage.
“Only one grain left behind.”
“Better make it count then and not muck it up. What’s so important with this particular particulate?”
“Murder.”
While nothing had been proven that this was a homicide, his gut told him it was precisely that. Because I’m intrigued by Natasha? Is that why? Now wasn’t the time for his focus to be on that.
“Explain. Because there’s been no chain of evidence here, OT, and I refuse to have my name dragged through the mud.”
“I wouldn’t do that. More of a hunch on my end. Just starting to look into this.”
“Your gut’s been spot on since I’ve known you. Plus, you wouldn’t risk my wrath for no reason.”
He crossed his arms and grunted. Leoni’s wrath wasn’t anything to scoff at. The physical form may be petite but with her numerous belts in a variety of marital arts forms, she was a force of hurricane strength.
She slanted her almond gaze at him. “Go. Stop lurking. I’ll notify you when I get something. I don’t want you hovering over my shoulder. It won’t make anything go faster and honestly, it annoys me when people do it.”
He listened. Back on his bike, he took a leisurely ride to his shop, even stopping for a short meal.
He pulled in the parking spot to his shop and killed the engine. As he walked around the front to the door, he stopped short. Beneath the lone light over the door to his place was Natasha.
She faced away from him.
OT cleared his throat, feeling slightly bad when she jumped.
“I’m good, as is my friend, but it’s still far too early for results to be in.”
The cord of vulnerability he saw in her brown eyes raised every protective instinct he had to the highest level.
“My hotel room was broken into.” Natasha wrung her hands together. “I didn’t know where else to go.”
This didn’t make it any better.
αβ
“The composition shows it came from an area around Molokai, not Maui.” Leoni yawned and he heard her moving around in her lab. He agreed, it was late, closing in on midnight. OT flicked his gaze to the woman crashed on the couch in the back of his shop. She lay still as death, beneath one of his button-down shirts.
Then it hit him. Leoni’s words. “Around? Nothing more specific?”
“It doesn’t match one hundred percent to the black sand found in that area. It’s higher composition in one area.”
“Which is?”
“I know you hate technical terms so basically this is closer to the source.”
He walked to the door and leaned in the doorway. His mind whirled. Closer to the source. “Lava tube?”
“It’s not uncommon for divers to find little underwater caverns they can pop into. She may have found one.”
OT wasn’t one who typically put much credence in the whole treasure hunter. He wouldn’t chide you for doing it but it wasn’t his thing. His mind drifted to the woman who’d handed him a chunk of money to not ask questions. She’d been hard. Not in an unfeminine way but her eyes were suspicious. At the time, he figured and chalked it up to a bad past, not because she was worried for her life. Treasure hunters tended to have an enemy or two wanting what they were after. “Where?”
“I don’t know. I haven’t access to the chemical composition of every lava tube around Molokai.”
He picked up on the censure. “I know, I know. Ideas on where to look?”
“Not other than the beach sand it’s similar to chemically.”
That didn’t narrow it down very much. “There’s a hell of a lot of ocean out there.”
“One other thing, Oscar.”
The use of his first name snatched his attention from where it had once again wandered—toward the sleeping woman in his shop. “What?”
“Be careful. I don’t want to know what you are in to but if it is enough for you to start investigating again, it’s bound to include danger.”
Yeah, he had that thought too. “Never knew you cared, Leoni.”
“I don’t.” She was gone the next second leaving him with nothing more than a dial tone in his ear.
He went to a workbench, swiping a map along the way and opened it up. Locating Black Sand Beach, he looked around it and swore, a round of words his mother would have beat him for saying.
This wasn’t going to be easy.
Scrubbing a hand down his face, he left her sleeping there and went outside to clean off the sand from the returned equipment. The area was emptying slowly. A few lingering couples, one food truck that was in the process of wrapping up, and a man at one of the picnic tables who ate.
OT didn’t like him. As he ran the hose, he took the man’s stats best he could without being obvious.
“Hey man.”
Glancing over his shoulder he smiled as his friend, Tully strode up. “’Sup Tully?”
“Hadn’t seen you in a while, thought I’d swing by?”
“After midnight? Shouldn’t you be home with the wife and kids?”
The man’s face shuttered.
OT cleared his throat. “Business is keeping me busy as you can see.” He turned off the water and rolled up the hose, turning the handle on the hose holder easily as he ensured the lay was even.
“I see that. You’re working way late. Time to grab a bite?”
OT nodded. “Don’t know how long that food truck will be there but sure.”
“I’ll go order.”
“I’ll meet you there, let me just put this away.”
Tully strode off and OT made sure he had all the keys out of the jet skis then stepped back into his shop. Natasha still slept and he swiped his wallet before digging for a blanket and covered her. It didn’t matter he wasn’t going that far, he loathed to leave her. After penning a quick note for her and placing it on her purse, he headed to meet Tully.
He’d met Tully the very first time he’d come to this island. He knew the whole family, the wife and their twin girls. Loved them all. Grabbing his shrimp tempura, he lowered himself to the table across from Tully. “How’s everyone?”
A mixed emotion flickered before it was replaced by joy. “Marlene’s expecting and the girls are fine. I’ve been working extra. Some days there’s a bit too many female hormones at my place.”
OT ate and laughed. “You wouldn’t have it any other way.”
“Very true. Now, what about you? Marlene says you need a wife and children.”
OT thought about Natasha ever so briefly. “No, I’m good. Quite happy being single.”
Tully laughed. “I’m sure you are. A different woman each night.”
OT watched the man he’d been suspicious sitting at a picnic table still as he wiped his mouth and dropped his napkin in the trash. He didn’t leave, merely picked up his drink and stretched out his legs.
OT and Tully chatted for a while and set up a time for him to come and see the girls. After their farewell, he strode across the plush grass to reenter his shop. In one hand, he carried a plate of food for Natasha. With one final look to the man in the shadows who played at not watching, he locked the door behind him.
She slept and he set the food on the table. Standing over her, he reached out to touch her shoulder but ended up lifting a fat curl and allowing it to slip through is fingers. Softer than he’d expected. He shut his eyes briefly and opened them to find her brown gaze on him.
“Are you here to kill me?” Natasha asked.