Shark cove, p.1
Shark Cove, page 1
Shark Cove
Paradise Crime Mysteries Book 15
Toby Neal
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Epilogue
Sneak Peek
Acknowledgments
Free Books
Toby’s Bookshelf
About the Author
Copyright Notice
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
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© Toby Neal 2021
http://tobyneal.net
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
This book contains material protected under International and Federal Copyright Laws and Treaties. Any unauthorized reprint or use of this material is prohibited. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without express written permission from the author/publisher.
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Cover Design: Ebook Launch
Formatting: Jamie Davis
Prov. 17:17~ A true friend loves regardless of the situation, and a real brother or sister shares the tough times. (The Message)
Chapter One
Nothing interesting ever happened to Stacey Emmitt. “Seriously. Why is my life so boring?” The fifteen-year-old walked home from Maui High School, muttering to herself as the hot afternoon sun beat down on her head. She kept her eyes on her phone as she read posts from her favorite student gossip site, Wallflower Diaries. The kids written about on the site, especially homecoming king Blake Lee, seemed to have nonstop action going on in their lives.
“Ouch.” Stacey tripped on a tussock of untrimmed grass, catching herself on some thorny, overgrown bougainvillea spewing out of a nearby garden—there was no sidewalk in this run-down part of Kahului. “Ow!”
“Need a ride?”
Stacey glanced up, startled, sucking on her pricked thumb.
A guy was speaking to her.
“Uh . . . I’m okay.” Guys just didn’t pull alongside her in fancy cars and speak to her; she didn’t attract attention, hiding any looks she had under baggy jeans and oversized tees out of shyness. But yep, a guy was speaking to her: a hot guy, in a cherry red Mustang.
She shouldn’t get into a car with a stranger, no matter how cute he was, or how nice the car.
“You sure? You look awfully hot.” He drew the word out flirtatiously.
Stacey blushed. “I’m not supposed to accept rides from strangers. My parents would kill me.”
“Do I look like a serial killer?” The guy had a dimple, perfect teeth, and nice muscles. He laughed. “C’mon. I’m just trying to do a good deed here.” He told her his name. “What’s yours?”
“Stacey,” she stammered.
“See? Easy. We’re not strangers anymore.” The guy pulled the beautiful car into the grass ahead of her, jumped out, and opened the passenger door. “Your chariot awaits, Stacey.”
She got in, hugging her heavy backpack. “Thanks.”
He ran back around to his side, got in, and pulled the car onto the road. “I just went by the store and bought some cold sodas.” He dug in a small cooler at her feet and pulled out a bottled Coke. “Can you open mine since I’m driving? You’re welcome to one, too.”
“Sure.” Stacey unscrewed the bottle and handed it to him, then took one herself. She drank thirstily, draining it halfway, then hid a burp behind her hand. “You’re so nice.”
“That’s what all the girls say.” Hot Guy winked.
Five minutes later, Stacey Emmitt had passed out, her head slumped forward to rest on her backpack. The red Mustang drove out of her neighborhood, heading in another direction entirely.
Something interesting had finally happened to Stacey Emmitt, and she would never be the same.
Twenty-four hours later:
Teen girls were disappearing on Maui. The broad daylight abduction of fifteen-year-old Stacey Emmitt was the latest in a case that had been going on for months.
“I have to find whoever is doing this,” Sergeant Leilani Texeira muttered aloud to her partner, Pono Kaihale, frustration tightening her jaw as she pushed through glass doors into the urban ugly rectangle of the Kahului Police Department building. “We have to get a handle on where these girls are going!”
“We’re doing all we can,” Pono said. “It’s not all on you.”
“I know.” Lei blew a curl off her forehead. “I have to drop this info off to Gerry and Abe.”
Usually, Lei headed straight for the elevator to the third level, where she and her partner were lucky enough to have an office on the same quiet floor as her husband, Lt. Michael Stevens—but today, she had to stop by her teammates’ cubicle.
“I’ll get your computer started,” Pono said. Lei’s aged desktop was the butt of continual jokes.
“Thanks, bro.” Lei peeled off from Pono and headed onto the open ‘bullpen’ area, where Maui’s detectives worked on everything from vice to homicide in a maze of modular units.
Gerry Bunuelos was in his unit with Abe Torufu, and Lei paused in the doorway to smile; she always enjoyed the sight of her mismatched friends together.
Bunuelos was a little over five and a half feet and a hundred and fifty pounds of wiry Filipino; he couldn’t have been more different physically than massive Tongan Abe Torufu, who topped six and a half feet and two hundred fifty pounds of solid muscle. The two were engaged in animated conversation with a tall, slender, dark-haired woman wearing a detective’s badge on her belt.
A visceral sense of recognition hit Lei as she gazed at the unknown detective, but when the woman turned to her, Lei couldn’t place her face. “Sorry for interrupting,” Lei said. “I can come back if this is a bad time.”
Bunuelos stood up. “No, we were just finishing up. Lei, have you met our newest detective, Harry Clark?”
“You look familiar, but I don’t believe so.” Lei advanced, her hand out. “Sergeant Lei Texeira, Homicide.” Clark’s grip was cool and strong; her honey-brown eyes and angular face still seemed familiar. “Have we worked a case together?”
Clark winked and smiled. “As a matter of fact, we have, Lei. About sixteen years ago.”
Lei stepped back, her brows snapping together. “Harriet Vierra? That Harry?”
“The very same.”
Lei swallowed as her throat went dry. She had a history with this woman—a history that came back in traumatic flashes of memory now and again, the stuff of nightmares and bogeymen under the bed. Her mind buzzed with questions, none of which she could ask in front of their eager audience.
Torufu was the first to break the awkward silence. “Sixteen years ago . . . that would put you both at about legal drinking age. I wouldn’t have minded meeting you girls back then.”
“I’d love to hear that story!” Bunuelos chimed in.
Clark grinned. “A girl’s got to keep some secrets, right, Lei?”
“Right.” Lei felt wobbly, ambushed, and a little bit terrified. “We’ll have to catch up sometime.”
“Yep, but now is not the time or place. See you around the office!” Clark sashayed off.
Lei turned to stare after her, watching the brunette enter one of the cubicles on the other side of the room. “She’s working in Vice?” Lei’s voice cracked on a high note.
“Harry and her partner, Pai Opunui, just got promoted to Homicide; she came over to pick our brains about it. She transferred here from Oahu about a year ago. She’s got a good reputation.” One of Bunuelos’s eyebrows quirked up in question. “Spill, Texeira. Did you party together back in the day?”
Best to fend off more questions with a version of the truth, rather than stoke her friends’ curiosity with secretiveness.
“As a matter of fact, we did,” Lei said. “One crazy, unforgettable week down in Mexico. But I haven’t seen Harry since. I’m just surprised to see her again, especially as a detective—and no, I’m not telling you why.” She waggled a finger at their loud groans. “On a bummer note, I came to bring you an updated file on the latest missing girl.” Lei removed a folder from under her arm and handed it to Bunuelos. “I just interviewed Stacey Emmitt’s parents and searched her room—they don’t have a clue what might have happened to her on her way home from school. I’m not happy there’s another girl gone, when we hadn’t made any progress on the one before. Stacey’s details are in the folder.”
“I hate this case.” Bunuelos’s mouth tightened; he was a proud and protective father of five. “Who knows what’s happening to these poor kids.”
“Those ‘kids’ have reached the age of being totally freakin’ annoying to their parents and the community in general.” Torufu swiveled his chair back and forth, beefy fingertips forming a triangle that echoed the tattoos running down his ripped forearms. “Every time I haul in some brat for tagging walls, ripping off cars, or panhandling, I remember why CJ and I decided not to have kids.” The thick gold wedding band on Torufu’s finger was still shiny; he and their station’s chief, Captain CJ Omura, had recently married.
Lei shook her head, smiling. She had two children at home and, like Bunuelos, loved her rich family life. “Thankfully, we haven’t had to cross the teenage hormone bridge yet, though our son is not far from that milestone.” She sobered. “I’ll be in touch after you read Emmitt’s file and we can set up a case review to make sure we’ve got everything covered and divided up.”
“Got it. I’ll pass this on to Abe after I read your notes.” Bunuelos was already studying the folder, topped by a school photo of fifteen-year-old Stacey that the parents had provided.
Lei waved to the guys and headed for the elevator. Her gaze flicked over to Harry Clark’s office in the corner of the room. Whatever had happened to the woman’s adopted daughter, Malia?
The baby they’d found in Mexico during that “crazy week” they’d spent together would be about the same age of the missing victims—maybe now was a good time to warn Clark about the disappearances.
Lei changed direction and headed for Clark’s cubicle. She rapped on the thin, hollow-core wooden door that gave an illusion of privacy in a network of open-ceilinged modules. “Come in!” a woman’s voice called.
Lei opened the door and peered around it. Pai Opunui, a lean, shaggy-haired Hawaiian man she knew from a few cases, sat across from Clark. “Hey, Pai! Can I get a private word with Harry?”
Opunui stood up. “Perfect timing. I needed to refresh my coffee anyway.” He picked up his MPD mug and left, brushing past Lei.
Lei slipped inside and shut the door, sitting on Opunui’s still-warm seat. She met the brunette woman’s light brown eyes. “I want to tell you about the case I’m working on.”
“I thought you might want to talk about our original case.” Harry reached for a silver-framed photo set near her computer monitor, turning it toward Lei. Inside the frame, two young girls smiled. The older one was dark-haired, brown-eyed, with tawny skin and a curvy build. The younger, almost the same height, had rippling light brown hair, hazel eyes and a freckled nose. “Malia, who you met as a baby, is on the right. The one on the left is my biological daughter, Kylie.”
Lei took the frame into her hands to look at the picture more closely. “They’re beautiful!”
Harry leaned back in her chair, smiling. “They’re my reason to get up in the morning.”
Lei glanced at Harry’s left hand—no ring. “Not married? Your last name didn’t used to be Clark.”
Raw pain showed on Harry’s face for a moment as her full mouth turned down. She shrugged, a fake-casual movement. “My husband left us about a year ago. He’s a lawyer and lives in California now.”
“Oh, that must be hard.”
Harry nodded. “The girls have taken it badly. Particularly Kylie—she adored her dad. Malia and I . . . we’re still close.”
Lei set the photo frame down. “I thought I should tell you that Malia is the prime age for a ring of human traffickers that we think are operating in Hawaii. We’re coordinating efforts with the FBI on all four of the major islands since every county is experiencing the disappearance of teen girls, mostly runaways. Yesterday, a girl was snatched on her way home from school.”
Harry’s eyes widened. “Yeah, I heard about the runaways. How is it a homicide case, though?”
“We found a body—one of the runaways who disappeared washed up in Kahului harbor with restraint marks on her wrists a few months ago. Like I said, we suspect these girls are being trafficked. I just wanted to warn you—now’s a good time to keep a close eye on Malia, as well as Kylie.”
Harry frowned. “Why isn’t the case in the news?”
“We didn’t realize this was such a big problem until recently, but with this latest disappearance, a 15-year-old on her way home from school . . . the time’s come to go public. I’m bringing it up to Captain Omura in our next team meeting.”
The color had drained from Harry’s cheeks. “I guess human trafficking isn’t just happening in Mexico.” The experience they’d shared in Mexico lay between them—a dark secret Lei had done a good job of trying to forget.
Lei shook her head. “No. Unfortunately.”
“Well, my girls go to a private school, Paradise Preparatory Academy, and it has pretty good security. They take a bus to and from campus. Neither of them goes anywhere alone in the community, and their father and I have drilled stranger danger into their heads as well as self-defense techniques. I’m sure they’re as safe here as they would be anywhere.”
Lei stood up. “I just thought I should mention it, considering Malia is close to the age of the victims.”
“Thank you,” Harry said. “Hey, any chance you want to come by our house after work? You can meet the baby you first saw sixteen years ago and see how she’s grown up.”
Lei took her phone out of her pocket and checked it. “As a matter of fact, I can stop by. My husband is picking our daughter up from preschool, and our son has a ride home from his soccer game with another mom. I can come by for a few minutes, sure, provided you don’t live too far away.”
“No. We are right up near Wailuku. Not far at all.”
“Then it’s a date. Give me your contact info.” Harry’s address and phone number were soon added to her contacts. “I’m looking forward to meeting both of your daughters.”
Malia hung her backpack on the hook on the wall, toed out of her shoes, and lined them up beneath it. She shrugged out of her favorite giant black hoodie, hanging it over the backpack. She still had some homework, but she’d get to it later after she checked the Wallflower texts and put some new things up on her secret gossip site.
Her sister Kylie had been dropped off earlier by a friend rather than riding the bus, and Malia spotted her backpack, thrown behind the couch. Muttering, she picked it up and hung it on the hook, then retrieved the eleven-year-old’s shoes, kicked across the room, and set them next to hers. If she didn’t, tomorrow morning would be awful with Kylie running around looking for missing items.
It wasn’t just that her little sister was messy—it was as if she shed everything when she reached home, peeling herself like a banana and leaving the skin for Malia to slip on.
“Kylie!” Malia hollered. No answer.
She found Kylie upstairs, lying in the middle of Mom’s bed, eating a bag of popcorn as the sixth grader watched a teen reality show.
“Did you hear me call you?”
“No.” Kylie shoved in another handful of popcorn, chewing, her cheeks bulging like a hamster’s—and she still looked way cuter than Malia would ever be.
Harry had adopted Malia in Mexico and married Peter Clark a year later. They’d thought their family complete until Kylie had come along, a total surprise. It had always given Malia a secret comfort that Kylie didn’t look like Harry; their mom had Hawaiian blood that showed up in olive skin, brown hair and bold features, and Malia looked more related to her than Kylie did.
What had Malia’s birth parents looked like? Who had she inherited her short stature and curvy build from? There was no one to ask; according to her mom, she’d been abandoned at an orphanage as an infant. Meanwhile, looking related to Harry saved a lot of the “I’m adopted” questions, while Kylie was the image of their good-looking dad.
