a Touch of the Past (An Everly Gray Adventure) (17 page)

"Pierce’s gift is being handmade…elsewhere. And I know exactly what I want for you. It’ll look perfect with your dress, so no arguing with the bride."
 

Annie cornered an Asian woman with delicate features and a genuine smile. "I’d like to see the Elsa Peretti round collection, please, Miki," Annie said, reading the clerk’s nametag and flashing her a smile.

Miki nodded with a slight bow and led us to a showcase on the other side of the store, then pointed out several disc-shaped pendants. They were awesome.
 

"That silver one with the black silk cord, the matching earrings and—" she looked at me. "What’s your ring size?"
 

"Seven," I muttered as I ran my finger along the cool edge of the silver disc resting on the felt pad in front of me.
 

The earrings and the ring had tiny diamonds set in the silver, and Annie was right, they’d look beautiful with my dress. We left with one of their signature aqua bags that held three Tiffany boxes neatly tied with white ribbon.

I couldn’t stop grinning—until Pierce met us with the Jeep engine running and a cold glare. We stashed our packages in the back seat, and were on our way in minutes.
 

Annie patted his thigh. "Everything is fine. No one approached us, there was no need to fire a weapon, and my wedding is under control." She slid the gun out of her waistband, and tucked it under his seat.
 

I yawned. Couldn’t stop it from escaping.
 

"Back to the Ma Kai for naps all around, then?" There was way too much energy in Annie’s voice.

My phone beeped with a text message. I glanced at it, thinking it was Mitch with information about his arrival date and time.
 

But, no.
 

The backlit letters glowed with menace.
 

Be at Sand Island. Seven tonight. Alone, or Kahuna Aukele disappears.

Fifteen

I’d have to ditch Annie
and Pierce, steal the Jeep, and figure out how to get to Sand Island. No problem with any of those plans. Yeah, right. My stomach twisted with the impossibility of pulling off such a stupid series of moves. The sane thing to do: show Annie and Pierce the message and let them figure out how to deal with it.
 

But I hadn’t told them about my grandfather, and they worked for the government. Both factoids made me twitch. I trusted my friends. But governments were big, political, and I wasn’t going to put Aukele’s life in their clumsy, bureaucratic hands. Pierce and Annie might be the best, but they hadn’t been sharing everything they knew, and their boss scared the living hell out of me. Something was off, and slightly smelly about this whole setup.
 

As soon as I read the text, I’d ducked my head, knowing I couldn’t maintain any sort of inscrutable expression. I deliberately stretched my lips in a parody of a smile and stashed my cell in my pocket. If either of them was watching, I wanted it to look like the message was from Mitch. I chanced a glimpse at them from under my lashes. Their attention was on scanning the area for bad guys. Yes!
 

When her gaze swung back in my direction, Annie gave me a brief eyebrow arch, and Pierce blinked. Twice. Unnerving, but still, my inscrutability crisis had been averted.

I sighed. It made a nice segue into questioning them. "So, do the Powers That Be have a theory about who’s trying to get this formula?" I asked. I wanted to ensure their attention remained on the situation and not the message sizzling on my cell.
 

Annie shrugged. "It’s a crap shoot. They emailed results from the ballistic tests while we were shopping—"

"And you didn’t tell me?" My shriek slammed into the air between us like a load of buckshot.

"Timing was off. Public place, lots of people, and now that we know this is private rather than political—"

"Not terrorists? You’re saying some lone, insane, power-crazy, tyrannical idiot is trying to get my mother’s formula?"
 

I turned to face Pierce, and surprise flicked up my spine. "You’re not sure, are you? You still think this could be some rabid government looking for world dominance?"

"I’m thinking it doesn’t matter who it is. Stakes are the same. Are you thinking it’s more dominance, or money riding the—" He grinned at me, then faced Annie— "insane, power-crazy, tyrannical idiot, a-k-a the Scuzzbutt?"
 

Annie shrugged. "The interrelationship between money and dominance is tight, but my research indicates this is personal. More like a vendetta against Loyria Gray. Everything centers on her and her discovery. Our Scuzzbutt obviously wants the formula for nefarious purposes since it can only cause harm, but surely whoever is behind this must know they’re being watched. Too closely for them to actually succeed in destroying much of anything."

I swirled Annie’s comments around in my mind. "The image I got from the bullet, have you tracked that guy down?"

"By rumor. Local dude. Hires out for wet work." Pierce sounded bored.
 

"You don’t think he’s a threat, then? Remember I had a distinct impression of emotionless killer from the bullet."
 

"He did his job. Scared you, and threw us off track." Pierce cracked his knuckles against the steering wheel.

"So you’re saying he’s a dead end." I turned to Annie. "And you’re saying the government would find an antidote and retaliate fast enough to stop them before too much hell broke loose, right?"

"Yes. People would die, but as soon as we have access to an infected human, we’d begin working on a cure."
 

Annie sounded very sure, and I wondered... "But what if a large population is targeted, or maybe a country? Say, Australia? That’s a lot of destruction and possible lives to forfeit. Enough that I’d put it in the way-too-much category."

"You have a point, El, but these designer bullets are freakishly individual in their markings. I’ve handled a lot of ammo, and I’ve done intense research on these. There’s every indication that the bullet Pierce dug out of Makani Maliu’s house came from a tyrannical despot, even though most political crazies don’t label their ammo so distinctively."
 

I did a quick scan of what I knew, the automobile accident that took my parents, both of them working for the government, my mother ignoring a direct order, and that I’d been watched. Then there was the toxic substance Parker Steele’s cousin used when he tried to murder Parker. That substance originated with my mother.

"But our government has been keeping
me
under surveillance. What do you know about a connection between my grandmother and the toxin used on Parker Steele?" Just saying the words sent a hiss of rage racing along my nerves. I hated that it all came back to my family.

 
Pierce blew out a whoosh of air. "Even I’m on need-to-know with this. Tells me we’re running blind. The situation is over thirty-years-old, so there's been lots of time to tamper with information. And like I said before, they don’t send me out unless it’s a crit sit."

"So, you think our government is maybe hiding something?"

He nodded. Once.
 

I pulled up the image of Parker lying in intensive care, Mitch’s sister, Jayne by his side. "Parker didn’t die."
 

Annie grumbled low in her throat.
 

"Okay. I’m getting sneaky vibes here. If the government has been watching me, they know all about Parker’s brush with a potentially fatal toxin. They probably confiscated those lab reports within minutes of the antidote being titrated into a usable vaccine. Or whatever it is they do in laboratories."

Annie grumbled again.
 

I turned and poked her in the knee. "You know, don’t you? That’s how you’re so sure the Center for Disease Control, or whoever, can come up with an antidote faster than my coaching clients evade assignments they don’t like."

"Not officially. I suspect they’ve been doing work on that substance, but it’s possible it isn’t exactly the same as what they believe Makani Mileu had access to. The knowledge surfaced years apart, and Loyria Gray wasn’t killed until—what—fifteen years after the incident between her and Parker’s mother."

 
The tiny hairs on my arms snapped to attention. There were way too many things that led back to me. "Why are all these people connected to me? I met Mitch totally by chance. Who knew his sister would fall in love with a guy whose family had been friends with my family way back when? The chances of that are almost nonexistent. Aren’t they? And what do you do with someone like me who attracts absurd coincidences—of which there aren’t any. There. Are. No. Coincidences. It’s a Universal Law or something."
 

"Target practice." Pierce’s eyes sparkled, vibrant and oh, so blue.

 
Laughter caught in my throat, escaped, and spilled into the Jeep.
 

"Sorry. Not offering myself up as a replacement for a paper target. So, bottom line, you both sort of agree that the ballistics indicate an unnamed Scuzzbutt, one who is not connected to Parker’s cousin, who either has an issue with my mother, or wants to do in the world for personal reasons? That’s…there are no words."

Both heads nodded.

Our collective minds were functioning as clearly as a demented hamster running on a wheel. We were all wiped from the trip to the North Shore and heaved a collective sigh when Pierce parked the Jeep at the Ma Kai. The decision to crash for a short nap was tacit.
 

"Dibs on the chaise," I said as we escaped from the afternoon heat into the coolness of the lobby.
 

We opted to take the stairs since our rooms were on the second floor. Pierce checked things out in my space, then slipped through the connecting door, leaving it open.
 

I grabbed a bottle of water from the mini fridge while keeping my attention on the sounds coming from Pierce’s side of the open door. Damn. No clink of metal hitting wood, just the swish of clothing landing on the floor. So he didn’t take the keys out of his pocket, but he did take his pants off.

If I could just slip in, palm the keys and take off... What was I thinking? He’d wake up for sure and I’d be in such trouble. No matter. I had to try. Not that I was planning to meet The Scuzzbutt. Seriously, how dumb would that be? But I didn’t trust the people paying Pierce and Annie, and this had become personal. Besides, friends or not, they were keeping things from me.

Guilt settled against the back of my neck, and I rubbed at the itch created by my double standard. My secrets were no less dangerous than theirs. I opened my mouth, needing to confess, but Pierce was in his room, and Annie was halfway out the door.
 

Panic washed through me. If she was wandering around, the chances were better than great that she’d catch me hijacking the Jeep. I swallowed down my confession and the panic. "Where are you going?"

The door stopped moving and she stuck her head back into the room. "Front desk. I should have stopped on the way up, but wanted to be sure you were safe. Sean’ll be here tonight and—"
 

I waved my hands. "No explanation needed. Especially since Mitch will be here too." I glanced toward the connecting door to Pierce’s room. Could be awkward. Very awkward.
 

Annie shot me a grin. "Yeah, well that doesn’t mean either Pierce or I will be letting you stray from our sight. Although I trust Mitch to keep you out of trouble, so nights will be yours. Unless Pierce disagrees."

A chill landed in my belly. "He wouldn’t want to keep the connecting door open, would he? That’s just too—"

"His op. His call. But I doubt it. Pierce trusts Mitch, and as long as we’re in adjoining rooms, it should be okay." She waltzed out the door, a mischievous smile sparkling in her eyes.

Now what? I only had two hours, and had no idea where Sand Island was located. I pulled out my iPad and did a quick search. Not too far away. Depending on traffic, it should be doable in an hour. As long as my keepers nodded off quickly and slept soundly, I could swipe the keys in the next half hour, and sneak out with time to spare. Which suited my plan to watch, but not be seen or caught. I toyed with the idea of taking a taxi, but couldn’t ask the driver to hide the cab and wait while I skulked around. That would be memorable if anyone questioned the driver later.
 

Fabric rustled and faint snores seeped into my room. I tiptoed to the door and peeked around the edge. Pierce’s pants were in a heap on the floor, and he was turned away from me, facing the slider to his lanai. He’d been out about twenty minutes, give or take. It was now or never.

I dropped to my hands and knees and inched toward his pants, well, cargo shorts really. Which made it harder because there were so many pockets. My palms were sweaty, and clung to the rug fibers as I slid along the floor. Ick. Left side. Right side. Left side. Squeak.
 

I froze. Now was so not the time for the floor to squeak. Not when I was within two feet of my objective.
 

Pierce fidgeted, started to roll over.