Page 1 of Shark Cove

Chapter One

Nothinginteresting ever happened to Stacey Emmitt. “Seriously. Why is my life so boring?” The fifteen-year-old walked home from Maui High School, muttering to herself as the hot afternoon sun beat down on her head. She kept her eyes on her phone as she read posts from her favorite student gossip site, Wallflower Diaries. The kids written about on the site, especially homecoming king Blake Lee, seemed to have nonstop action going on in their lives.

“Ouch.” Stacey tripped on a tussock of untrimmed grass, catching herself on some thorny, overgrown bougainvillea spewing out of a nearby garden—there was no sidewalk in this run-down part of Kahului. “Ow!”

“Need a ride?”

Stacey glanced up, startled, sucking on her pricked thumb.

A guy was speaking to her.

“Uh . . . I’m okay.” Guys just didn’t pull alongside her in fancy cars and speak to her; she didn’t attract attention, hiding any looks she had under baggy jeans and oversized tees out of shyness. But yep, a guy was speaking to her: a hot guy, in a cherry red Mustang.

She shouldn’t get into a car with a stranger, no matter how cute he was, or how nice the car.

“You sure? You look awfullyhot.” He drew the word out flirtatiously.

Stacey blushed. “I’m not supposed to accept rides from strangers. My parents would kill me.”

“Do I look like a serial killer?” The guy had a dimple, perfect teeth, and nice muscles. He laughed. “C’mon. I’m just trying to do a good deed here.” He told her his name. “What’s yours?”

“Stacey,” she stammered.

“See? Easy. We’re not strangers anymore.” The guy pulled the beautiful car into the grass ahead of her, jumped out, and opened the passenger door. “Your chariot awaits, Stacey.”

She got in, hugging her heavy backpack. “Thanks.”

He ran back around to his side, got in, and pulled the car onto the road. “I just went by the store and bought some cold sodas.” He dug in a small cooler at her feet and pulled out a bottled Coke. “Can you open mine since I’m driving? You’re welcome to one, too.”

“Sure.” Stacey unscrewed the bottle and handed it to him, then took one herself. She drank thirstily, draining it halfway, then hid a burp behind her hand. “You’re so nice.”

“That’s what all the girls say.” Hot Guy winked.

Five minutes later, Stacey Emmitt had passed out, her head slumped forward to rest on her backpack. The red Mustang drove out of her neighborhood, heading in another direction entirely.

Something interesting had finally happened to Stacey Emmitt, and she would never be the same.

Twenty-four hours later:

Teen girls were disappearing on Maui. The broad daylight abduction of fifteen-year-old Stacey Emmitt was the latest in a case that had been going on for months.

“I have to find whoever is doing this,” Sergeant Leilani Texeira muttered aloud to her partner, Pono Kaihale, frustration tightening her jaw as she pushed through glass doors into the urban ugly rectangle of the Kahului Police Department building. “We have to get a handle on where these girls are going!”

“We’re doing all we can,” Pono said. “It’s not all on you.”

“I know.” Lei blew a curl off her forehead. “I have to drop this info off to Gerry and Abe.”

Usually, Lei headed straight for the elevator to the third level, where she and her partner were lucky enough to have an office on the same quiet floor as her husband, Lt. Michael Stevens—but today, she had to stop by her teammates’ cubicle.

“I’ll get your computer started,” Pono said. Lei’s aged desktop was the butt of continual jokes.

“Thanks, bro.” Lei peeled off from Pono and headed onto the open ‘bullpen’ area, where Maui’s detectives worked on everything from vice to homicide in a maze of modular units.

Gerry Bunuelos was in his unit with Abe Torufu, and Lei paused in the doorway to smile; she always enjoyed the sight of her mismatched friends together.

Bunuelos was a little over five and a half feet and a hundred and fifty pounds of wiry Filipino; he couldn’t have been more different physically than massive Tongan Abe Torufu, who topped six and a half feet and two hundred fifty pounds of solid muscle. The two were engaged in animated conversation with a tall, slender, dark-haired woman wearing a detective’s badge on her belt.

A visceral sense of recognition hit Lei as she gazed at the unknown detective, but when the woman turned to her, Lei couldn’t place her face. “Sorry for interrupting,” Lei said. “I can come back if this is a bad time.”

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