Page 58 of Hidden Falls

Lei suppressed a surge of irritation. “Of course you do, but that’s not going to help anyone but you, and we’ll have to breathe your secondhand smoke.” She exhaled her frustration; picking a fight with Harry wasn’t going to improve anything about their situation. “Find us a smaller jug of water than these five-gallon monsters, will you? I’ll get the frying pan and some oil.”

Harry moved away.

Lei located a Teflon-lined frying pan, a spatula, and a small bottle of cooking oil. She turned on a vent over the gas stove and lit the burner.

“Seems like this is venting out somewhere,” she said. “I can’t smell the propane.”

“I’m sure the drug dealer thought of whisking cooking smells away from his lair,” Harry said as she presented Lei with a liter of water. “And now that you’ve got the vent on, I’ll have that smoke.” Her eyes glinted defiantly as she lit up.

Lei didn’t take the bait to argue. She measured water into the dry ingredients she’d poured into a glass bowl and whisked it in with a little oil. The pancake mix had small blueberries in it that plumped up to full size when the water hit them; the batter crackled and bubbled appetizingly as she measured it by spoonful into the pan.

Cruz pushed back his headphones and sniffed audibly. “Yum. I’m almost ready to send my email to my contact with Ramirez. Harry, come take a look at the wording.”

Harry exhaled a stream of smoke into the fan, set her cigarette on the rim of a saucer near the vent, and hurried over to Cruz to read the email from behind his back.

Lei focused on the frying pan: waiting for the bubbles to come up through the pancakes and begin to set. Waiting for the smell of the cigarette to dissipate. Waiting for a calm that didn’t come.

She flipped the pancakes at just the right moment. Fixing breakfast five days a week before school for Kiet and Rosie had taught her those basic skills; she hadn’t grown up with a mother who cooked—or provided breakfast in any regular form. Her father Wayne had done that; he’d always had an affinity for cooking, and that served him well now as the owner of a farm-to-table lunch restaurant, Ono Grindz, in Kahului.

“The wording seems okay,” Harry said. “Lei, want to take a look?”

“No. Whatever you two come up with will be fine, I’m sure.” Lei glanced around and found a couple of plates, then placed a short stack of cakes onto each of them. “Harry, if you don’t deal with your cancer stick, I will.”

Harry swooped back and tapped off the lengthy ash. “Sorry. My girls hate that I smoke, but it calms me down when I’m stressed. Helps me think.”

“It’s bad for you, Harry. But then, you know that.” Lei measured more pancake batter onto the griddle. After the next batch was going, she found a squeeze tube of butter and a bottle of real maple syrup; she set the items on the table as Harry and Cruz conferred one last time over the email and then sent it.

“Food’s up,” she said, a phrase borrowed from her father Wayne’s restaurant that he called out when the items from the kitchen were ready to be served.

As Lei flipped the next batch of pancakes, she smiled. Who knew that when she started out as a beat cop with serious emotional trauma issues, she’d someday be in a bomb bunker in a foreign country, the unofficial nurturer of a trio of deadly operatives.

Because Cruz’s charm and Harry’s impatience aside, that’s what they were—and Lei had done her share of killing too.

“Always better to lay waste to an enemy on a full stomach,” she said, joining her companions at the table, and she was rewarded with a smile from both of them.

26

DAY FIVE

Malia

I woke up feeling an unfamiliar sensation on my hand. I lifted it out from under the fancy pink quilt covering me in the four-poster bed.

The ruby ring Hector Ramirez had given me weighed down the ring finger of my right hand.

Oh yeah. I was in Mexico somewhere, a prisoner in my bio dad’s house.

Maybe I could get the thing onto my middle finger, and it wouldn’t wobble so much.

I sucked my finger briefly to get it slippery, then shoved the ring over my knuckle. Now the ring was really on. “Reminds me of pirate treasure.”

Actually, the heavy gold and deep ruby red stone seemed more like something a king or queen would wear. But I was no princess, though the bed I lay in, covered with carvings and gold, was fit for one.

I got up and headed for the shower. I had another day of getting used to a new family to deal with, and BO was not the way to go.

The bath had one of those rain spouts, and lots of hot water poured over me waterfall style from the handheld gizmo. I didn’t want to love all the fancy soaps, body lotions, hair products, perfumes, and a hot towel on a rack in the big bathroom—but I did.

I’d decided I was going to cooperate, make nice, and wait for my chance to run for it. It was okay to enjoy the things that I could smile about while I was here.

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