Page 3 of Hidden Falls

“Freakin’ Hawaii. Always so beautiful, as if crap as ugly as anywhere else in the world didn’t happen here.”

“Yeah.” Lei had often thought the same thing. She reached into her pocket and took out the small bone hook ornament she liked to rub. Their son Kiet called the hook her ‘fidget toy.’ “Take me through what you found. Step by step.”

Harry paused to drag on her cigarette and exhaled more slowly. “We had breakfast as a family, the usual rat race in the kitchen. Everyone going in different directions. Kylie wasn’t feeling well—a cough. With COVID still around, we can’t take any chances, so I sent her upstairs to bed, planning to pick up a test for the virus at the pharmacy today. I told Peter and Malia that we’d quarantine when we knew what she had. We’d all take precautions in the meantime and wear our masks.”

“Go on.”

“Malia was eager to get out the door; she has a lot going on at school and she loves it when she can drive there in her own car without Kylie—the joy of being sixteen.” Harry folded her arms over her waist, tightening them to lean forward over her knees, hanging her head in anguish. “My girl is gone. Someone took her. Both of them could have been gone!”

Lei plucked the cigarette from Harry’s fingers and rested it on the rim of a nearby tuna can used for an ashtray. “Pause a minute. Think this through. Why would someone take Malia? Have you had any communication? A ransom note?”

“No.” Harry’s arms tightened further; she rocked back and forth. “I feel sick.”

“You probably need to eat something.” Lei fumbled in the back pocket of her jeans. “Here. My breakfast protein bar. Mm, yummy.” She waved the energy bar in front of Harry, trying to get a smile out of her. Harry shook her head, ignoring Lei, her gaze on some distant point across the parking lot from the station.

“I can’t eat right now, Lei. I’ll puke.” She seemed to be calming down though; she sat back upright and frowned. “Why would anyone kidnap Malia? We don’t have any money.”

“It’s probably too soon for a ransom demand,” Lei said. “That could still come.”

“Maybe. But here’s another possibility. Malia’s been using her blog to flush out crime in the schools since we set her up to be a confidential informant.” Harry met Lei’s eyes for the first time. “Maybe she was taken by traffickers. Like the case we worked on last year. Maybe she was targeted by the Changs as revenge for shutting them down.”

“I guess that’s a possibility, and it’s damn scary.” Lei flashed back to last year’s teen girl kidnapping and trafficking case; Malia’s role in busting the ring had been public, and in the news. “But it’s too soon to zero in on one possibility. We haven’t even begun investigating yet. Tell me what happened next.”

“Okay.” Harry hunched over and put her hands over her face in an attempt to focus and remember. “Malia left, taking her car. Peter took off for his law office, but he turns the opposite direction on our little country road from the way Malia does, so he didn’t see her. Meanwhile, I went upstairs with Kylie and got her settled in bed for a sick day. She’s twelve now, so she’s okay to be by herself for something as simple as a cold, which I hoped it was.” Harry glanced around, spotted her cigarette, and rescued it from the tuna can for a drag. “I got in my car, turned right, went a few hundred yards, and practically ran into Malia’s Prius parked in the middle of the road, both front doors open, keys in the ignition, still running. Driver’s side door window was smashed.” Harry began shaking again.

“What did you do?”

“I looked inside. Didn’t touch anything in case of fingerprints but turned off the key since likely Malia was the only one to have touched it. Looked for blood; there wasn’t any.”

“Good. Hopefully she wasn’t injured.”

“But Malia’s phone was there on the floor with her backpack. She’d never be parted from it short of anything but a total disaster.”

“This situation is a total disaster, so it qualifies.” Lei squeezed one of Harry’s hands that rested on the table. “Then what?”

“I called 911 and put my flasher on my car’s dash to direct other cars around our vehicles. I walked around the area looking for clues until the first responders arrived. Of course, I wasn’t lucky enough to know the guys who came.” Harry’s lip curled back from her teeth. “I had to show them my badge, lose valuable time explaining who I was and why we should take it seriously . . . damn it! I had to convince them the Prius was my daughter’s car, and that she didn’t get in a fight with a boyfriend or something.”

Lei knew that feeling—but it was also true that any officer arriving on a scene had to ask certain questions, had to follow a protocol. A beat went by as Harry stubbed out her cigarette.

“Does Malia have a boyfriend?”

“Yes. You know him. Blake. Sweet kid. He’d never be involved with violence against Malia.”

“You sure?” Lei cocked her head. “I’ve seen some weird things in relationships . . .”

Harry flapped a hand. “I called him right away. He was already at school, looking for her.”

“Okay.”

“My mind is buzzing. Who? Why? And most of all—are they hurting her? Is she scared?” The last was the cry of a mother in agony. “I know she is.”

Lei scooted over and put an arm over Harry. She squeezed her friend hard as Harry shook, tears pouring down her cheeks.

Then, just as suddenly as she’d started, Harry stopped crying. She dashed the moisture off her cheeks and smoothed her hair back. “Let’s stop by the bathroom so I can get my hair under control before I go in to talk to the captain—appearance matters to her, and I want her to take me seriously. Take this seriously. We need an Amber Alert, the whole nine yards.”

“Good plan,” Lei said, relieved Harry had pulled herself together. They got up and headed back inside the building to talk to Captain Omura, nicknamed the “Steel Butterfly.”

3

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