Page 30 of Hidden Falls

Marcella let Jenkins take the lead, and he stepped up to the property’s gate. The simple chain-link aperture was secured with a hardened steel lock. One of the officers took the long-handled pair of bolt cutters Jenkins handed him and popped it off quickly. Even after seeing the best lock on the market cut off a hundred times, Marcella was still a little taken aback. Measures people put a lot of trust in could be disabled so easily with the right tools.

The four of them drew their weapons and advanced across the empty blacktop parking lot that surrounded the metal building. As they drew near, Marcella heard the deep thumping bass of rap music. She glanced at Jenkins; his eyes widened. The apparently abandoned warehouse was occupied, and not by anyone who wanted to be detected, or their vehicles would not have been concealed.

The music helped to screen their approach.

Jenkins gestured for the officers to circle the building and cover any other exits. He and Marcella approached a reinforced metal door with a security camera over its lintel. They took up positions: Marcella on one side of the door, and Jenkins on the other.

“Hopefully they’re not watching too closely, or they’d have seen us already,” Jenkins whispered.

Marcella nodded, wishing she was wearing full body tactical armor and a helmet.

“Maui Police Department!” Jenkins roared all of a sudden and kicked the door just under the handle.

He staggered back, grimacing and shaking his leg in pain as the door failed to open—but the music stopped.

“Open up! FBI and Maui Police Department!” Marcella yelled, stepping up to pound on the portal with the side of her fist, making a loud booming sound equal to Jenkins’s kick. “Open this door immediately and come out with your hands on your heads!”

Inside she heard voices, thumps, the sound of something falling, and then another shout from the back side of the building: “Maui Police Department! Put your hands on your heads and get on your knees!”

Apparently, some of the unknown subjects inside had tried to make a run for it out of the back.

A few minutes later, the exit opened slowly. “Don’t shoot,” a young voice wobbled. “We don’t want any trouble.”

“Put down your weapons and come out with your hands on your heads, then get on your knees,” Jenkins ordered in a voice strong enough to take paint off a wall.

Three slender teenaged boys stepped out; their fingers were interlaced on their heads. They wore the wifebeater shirts and butt-sagging jeans of wannabe gangsters, but their faces looked terrified as they dropped to their knees in front of Marcella and Jenkins.

The MPD detective handed Marcella a handful of zip ties. “Restrain them. I’ll go in with the other officers and make sure the building is clear.”

Marcella nodded; she had no great desire to go into the warehouse and expose herself to a hidden shooter. She was only here in a support capacity.

“Lie down. Put your hands behind your backs,” she commanded.

The boys did so. One of them spoke up. “I want a lawyer,” he whined.

She put the restraints on the boys’ wrists and ankles—kids were good at outrunning adults, in her unfortunate experience, and she had no intention of chasing these little hooligans in the hot sun. She rifled their pockets and removed their phones.

“Clear.” Jenkins’s voice echoed inside the barnlike metal structure.

“Did you get any other runners?” Marcella asked the two officers as she went inside.

“Yeah. Two.”

“Did you get their phones? We don’t want them alerting the target,” Marcella said.

“We did. They’re zipped and on the ground,” one of the officers replied.

It was still possible that at least one of the kids had had time to fire off a text and alert Paulson, but they had to make sure they were dealing with the drug operation they thought they were before making a move on him directly.

Jenkins gestured to a table littered with bags, bottles, and boxes. “Looks like a pill sorting operation with a side of meth production.”

“Did you check through the building for Malia?”

“There’s no one else inside that we can find.”

“They might have hidden her.” Tempting as it was to investigate the tables littered with open boxes, scales, rolls of baggies and other paraphernalia illuminated by the harsh overhead lights, Marcella kept her priorities clear. “Let’s check for any hidden compartment or closet where they might have stashed our victim.”

Jenkins sent the two officers to move the captured teens to the cruisers for safekeeping and then returned with a couple of high beam flashlights. “We’ll go over this warehouse with a fine-tooth comb.”

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