Page 52 of Shark Cove

Her friend lay flat in the back seat as Malia pushed the Prius’s accelerator all the way to the floor. Malia ran over the kidnapper’s gun with a satisfying crunch. She stayed low, her head barely raised enough to see out the back window, steering with difficulty from that awkward position. A thud and thunk of bullets hit the Prius as she jetted backwards down the narrow access road as it looped to join the main highway.

The kidnappers would probably be expecting her to go back toward Lahaina, so Malia would go the other way. That steep, curvy, mostly one-lane road around the empty windward side of the island plunged into deep clefts of untamed jungle or sheer drops to the ocean, and there was only one tiny village for miles in any direction.

Malia had to get them as far toward civilization as she could before the kidnappers caught up.

The Prius careened down the road as Malia clenched the wheel with both hands.

“Malia!” Camille’s voice, raspy and dry, came from the back seat. She’d pulled the tape off her mouth.

“Are you okay? Are you shot?” Malia couldn’t spare a glance behind her; the twisty route was too challenging at the speed she was trying to keep up.

Camille crawled between the seats into the front passenger side, attempting to free her hands but failing. “Holy shit, Malia! You saved my life!”

“I don’t know about your parents, though,” Malia said, with a quick grimace to her friend. “I hope they’re okay.”

Camille’s eyes were huge and gray with shock, her mouth trembling. “I saw Mom dive under the Escalade, but Dad—they shot Dad.”

Malia concentrated on driving, unable to think of anything to say. From where she’d been sitting, it’d looked like Leonard William brought the whole thing down on himself.

Chapter Twenty-Three

Lei hadno attention to spare for Shark Cove’s beautiful deep bay with its rocky beach and lush jungle entrance as Harry powered the Honda across the bridge at the bottom of the gulch where that beach was accessed, and up the road on the other side. The turnoff to the Shark Cove overlook’s parking area with its bathroom and surf observation hut appeared abruptly; the Honda skidded onto the junction as Harry nearly lost control of the little SUV. The vehicle righted itself, surged forward, then screeched to a stop in front of two uniformed officers who were in the process of putting up crime scene tape, circling it ahead of where an ambulance was parked with its back doors open.

Harry leaped out of the vehicle, charging past the officer holding the sign-in log. “Where’s my daughter? Where’s Malia?”

Lei exited the vehicle more slowly, following her friend and signing in as Harry reached an area of total carnage, a scene like something out of a war zone. Fallen bodies lay everywhere between and around two large, bullet-riddled SUVs with their doors hanging open.

Harry stopped in the middle of the battle zone, her hands on her hips, her eyes wild. She spun to face Lei. “Where’s Malia?”

Lei kept her voice calm as she confronted her friend. “She’s not here. That must mean she’s safe. Take off your ‘mom’ hat and put on your ‘cop’ hat. If you can’t do that, leave now, before you screw up this crime scene.”

Harry’s full lips tightened, and her brown eyes flashed as she bit back an angry response. She turned to survey the bloodbath, then said deliberately, “Yes, sir.”

Lei outranked Harry, and Lei had just given an order. Her friend brushed past Lei and headed toward the officer holding the log.

Maybe Harry would get herself together and stay; maybe she would leave to look for her child. That didn’t matter—Lei had a job to do here.

Lei checked in on radio with Captain Omura, confirming that they’d arrived and updating her with the situation at the scene. Omura told her that Harry’s partner, Pai Opunui, was on his way, as were Dr. Gregory and Dr. Tanaka, Maui’s medical examiner team. Becca Nunez and a crime scene intern were also en route.

But Lei and Harry were the first detectives on the scene, and it was imperative to find out what had happened from the one witness left alive: loudly moaning Regina William, lying on a gurney near the black Escalade and being attended by paramedics.

Lei turned to one of the officers as he approached her, a man she recognized from the station. “All of these others are dead? She’s the only survivor?” Lei confirmed.

“Yes, sir.”

Lei took out her phone camera and began shooting reference photos; these weren’t the official crime scene documentation, but for her own ease of recollection. She headed toward where Regina William lay. The woman’s cream-colored outfit, covered in blood spatter and dirt, testified that she had taken cover under the Escalade. That had likely saved her life.

Lei studied the ground as she moved forward carefully.

A set of narrow tread, street type tire tracks led between the two vehicles that had faced off. Lei shot photos of the tracks. They stopped abruptly between the cars, then doubled back over themselves. Scuff marks near the Suburban indicated some sort of struggle on that side.

Lei photographed everything, including a masked, bullet-riddled male vic, lying face down just in front of where the tracks stopped.

Someone had zoomed right into the middle of the confrontation, hit this man, and reversed back out of it. That someone was no longer here.

Malia.

Harry’s daughter had charged into the fray in whatever she’d been driving, and rescued someone—likely her friend Camille, because this scene had all the earmarks of a kidnap exchange gone wrong.

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