Page 26 of Shark Cove

“Never thought I’d hear you say that.”

“Yeah, well.” Malia tugged the handle on the door. “Thanks for the ride. We should probably go onto campus separately.”

“Why? Ashamed to be seen with me?”

And that’s how she came to be walking through the quad of Paradise Prep with the most popular, best-looking guy on campus at her side, and when she tried to hide, Blake snatched the ball cap off her head and made her chase him to get it back.

Chapter Ten

Lei heldout a thick case file to Harry the next morning at the station. “This is what we gathered from the last time we had a clear case involving human trafficking. I’ve already duplicated these records and sent them to the FBI; my partners there suggested we contact the suspects who were involved back then and see if we can find anything new.”

Harry took the folder. “On it.”

Lei liked Harry’s can-do attitude as she sat down in Pono’s chair and flipped the folder open, but on closer inspection, her friend had circles under her eyes and her thick hair was piled on her head in a messy bun speared by a pencil. “You look tired. How did Malia take the news about Camille?”

Harry shook her head, dislodging the pencil. She grabbed it and twisted her hair back up. “Malia is still upset. She tried to call the fat camp; she doesn’t believe Camille could be there and wouldn’t have contacted her.”

“There does seem to be something off about Regina William and the whole way that scenario played out, but we have to focus on the other girls right now.” Lei pointed to a couple of bios near the top of the file. “I’ve set up a meeting at the airport with one of my confidential informants, a guy named Nisake. Nisake was involved in coordinating the storage of the women captured by pirates on our last case; he did six months as an accessory but is still here on the island. There might be a connection through him to the Chang crime family and their statewide prostitution ring.”

“Whoa. We dealt with the Chang empire a lot on Oahu. They have ties to the Boyz,” Harry said, naming the notorious Hawaii gang. “That group controls a lot of the construction and transportation unions related to development.”

“I know. The Changs have fingers in a lot of pies. I’ve had plenty of dealings with them in the past.” Lei said. “I’ve also asked Stevens to contact one of his confidential informants, Freddie, to see if that little weasel has heard anything—Freddie has his ear to the ground for anything nasty around transportation.”

Pono arrived, carrying two mugs of inky station coffee. “Ho, sistah, you like my chair or what?” he exclaimed at the sight of Harry sitting in his seat.

“Bruddah, you broke this one in so nice.” Harry grinned as she stood up. “I’m out of here. When is the meeting with Nisake?”

Lei told her the time. “That should give you a few hours to get through that file. We can talk about it on the way to the meet.”

Harry nodded. “Rendezvous in the parking lot.” She left with the file under her arm.

Pono handed Lei one of the cups. “Just how you like it.”

“You da bomb.” Lei stirred dissolving chunks of creamer into the black brew with a red swizzle stick. “I like Harry.”

“I noticed.” He cocked his head. “Angling for a new partner, Sweets?”

“Never.” The two of them banged their mugs together lightly in toast. “But I don’t have many friends, in case you haven’t noticed, and she might become one. At least, I’m hoping so.”

“I like her too. Sharp lady and a hard worker,” Pono said, high praise. “I saw your notes—looks like we can cross one victim, Camille William, off the list.”

“Looks that way.” Lei took a sip of her coffee, swallowing her doubts about Regina William along with the harsh coffee. “I didn’t get a chance to write up the visit we made to the docks looking for any adapted containers yesterday. Just so you know, that’s a dead end too, for the moment.” She filled Pono in on the meet with Agent Aina Thomas and their tour of the shipping containers. “How about you? What are you following up on?”

“Remember that kid Owen Mancuso that you interviewed at that house in Lahaina where runaways were being groomed? The boy’s nineteen now. I’ve been keeping him on my CI list the last couple of years and coaching him at the gym and such.” Pono flexed his considerable bicep, making the scarred tribal tattoo on it ripple. “The kid was kinda stunted when we started, but he’s starting to bulk up. Anyway, he’s got ties into the Filipino community and the cockfighting scene, so I thought I’d touch base with him about the girls, too, check to see if he’s heard anything since he was caught up in that other ring.” He sat in his chair at last. “But first, coffee and departmental e-mail.”

“You read my mind,” Lei said, and began the process of booting up her aging computer.

Lei and Harrygot out of Lei’s silver Tacoma where she’d parked at the windswept private terminal of the Maui airport. The area was reached via a narrow, two-lane road off busy Hana highway, and Harry gazed around the small, unpretentious runway with its simple passenger waiting building. “I’ve never been back here before and I thought it would be glamorous. I know a lot of celebrities fly into Maui on their own jets. This is not very fancy.”

“They also do helicopter tours out of this terminal.” Lei indicated an area where choppers were parked in neat rows. “There’s a bill in front of the Maui County Council to expand this area to accommodate more personal aircraft, but the council wants more private funding to go to the pot so that the local islanders are not paying for it.”

“That makes sense.”

They headed for the terminal building, where Lei had arranged to meet Keone Nisake. Nisake had been caught up in assisting to procure a system of transport for the women captured on Lei’s pirate case a few years ago, and she had kept Nisake as a CI, checking in with his parole officer and Nisake himself as she built a relationship with him over the past two years.

Lei had come to like the young mixed Japanese man. According to Nisake, he had been recruited into the trafficking by a charismatic criminal. He’d not realized that the workers he had arranged to modify a steel shipping container (including Stevens’s informant Freddie) were preparing it for women who’d been taken captive.

Lei raised a hand in greeting now as Nisake, a slender man dressed in board shorts and a surfer tee, came out of the terminal building with a Caucasian man in tow. “Hey, Lei. I brought a friend for you to speak with as you asked.”

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