Shattered Palms (Lei Crime Series) (30 page)

“
What about Rinker and Kingston’s arrangement? Did you know about that?”

Head shake.

Stevens reached them. He took one of Takama
’s arms, but his eyes had gone straight to Lei. “You okay?”

“
Bruised knee is all. This backpack’s heavy and I’ve got this bow—it’s bulky. Can you help?” She handed him the backpack, and they hiked on through the dark lit by their phone flashlights.

“
Time to face the music, Takama,” Lei said as they reached the ascension area. The man’s proud shoulders sagged. Lei realized she’d never heard his first name. He was so completely identified with his identity as a ranger that he didn’t seem to have one.

But that identity was over now, and Lei felt a pang of something like regret as she handed him over to the officers who’d descended the cliff.

Stevens took the wheel of her truck for the drive down the mountain, his jaw set. The sunset was long gone, and the headlights of the truck cut through velvet darkness, following the narrow winding ribbon of road leading down the volcano. The adrenaline from Takama’s capture had drained away, leaving Lei shaky and exhausted. She hauled the cooler bag out of the backseat, unwrapped a sandwich, but the movement of the truck had begun to make her queasy.

“
I’m feeling carsick—I kind of get that way on this road. Can we pull over and eat? There’s no hurry now.”

“
Shouldn’t you follow them to the station? Help book him?”

“
Nah. I told the responding officers to take care of that.”

“
Okay, then. We need to talk, anyway.” Stevens drove until they reached a pullout. He parked the truck.

“
I need some fresh air,” she said, opening the door. “There’s a towel or two behind the seat.” Lei made her way through the steel barrier of the overlook and onto the rolling grassy hillside that made up most of Haleakala. With the lights from the truck off, the stars blazed overhead, tossed like glitter into the vast black void. Way to the north, the moon was just beginning to come up. Distorted by the horizon’s atmosphere, it was cartoonishly gigantic, casting a silver path on the surface of the ocean.

“
I think I see the man in the moon, and he’s fishing into the sea,” Lei said, pointing. Her attempt at whimsy didn’t appear to move Stevens. He spread the towels on the tussocky grass. It was cool, almost cold enough for a sweater, and Lei was glad she’d packed her parka shell as she sat down with the cooler bag. Her knee had begun to throb, and she retrieved the reusable ice pack she’d stowed in the cooler bag and put it on her straightened leg.

“
You should probably get that looked at,” Stevens said.

“
You can kiss it and make it better.” She handed him a sandwich, unwrapped hers, and bit into it. She’d made sliced teriyaki chicken on Hawaiian sweet bread, and it was delicious.

“
Stop trying to be cute,” Stevens said, but his mouth was full.

“
I’m too hungry to fight with you,” Lei said, and bit into her sandwich.

A few minutes went by
as they devoured the meal and sucked down the bottles of root beer she’d included. Finally, biting into sweetly sour starfruit, Stevens said, “You pull a stunt like that, it won’t only be your knee that’s hurting.”

“
Gonna spank me?” Lei teased.

“
No. I’m going to put you in restraints and call for backup to deal with whatever the situation is, and we’re both going to be embarrassed as hell. But I’m not going to lose my wife in some damn-fool situation that could have been prevented!” By the end of his sentence, his voice was raised. She couldn’t see his eyes but knew the flat steely look they’d have.

Lei felt
something a lot like shame hollow out her stomach. She’d known he was going to be mad, but when she was honest with herself, she realized she hadn’t really slowed down to consider his feelings at all. Capturing the suspect was all she’d had in her mind when she spotted Takama down in the gulch—not the first time something like this had happened.

In fact, t
his was an argument they’d had before. Lei’s impulsiveness and lack of a sense of personal safety frustrated Stevens. She knew it was because he was afraid for her, and wouldn’t let him protect her. She hadn’t told him how close Takama’s bow shot had come to her head, and she didn’t plan to.

A chain of cars, pairs of golden eyes, wound down the mountain and pas
sed them on the road.

“
This is an old argument,” Lei said. “I’m sorry I freaked you out, running off like that, not waiting. But he’d have gotten away.”

“
You could have called in a suspicious sighting. Checked on Takama and Rinker’s locations again tomorrow. Taken dogs and done a manhunt, run this thing safely and with the same good results, and we could have enjoyed the sunset and our picnic on the summit. But no, you always have to do it now, do it your way, and you know what?
I’m
the one who suffers when you get hurt. I need to find a way to stop caring; that’s what I need to do.” He stood, an abrupt uncoiling, and walked off into the darkness.

Lei bundled the leftovers back into the cooler bag and carried it up to the barrier
. She wrapped herself in one of the towels and stood waiting, looking into the darkness, but he didn’t return.

Maybe he was giving her a taste of her own medicine. He
’d done that before, too.

She
could just drive off and leave him up here, but he’d be angrier than a cornered mongoose when he finally got off the mountain. She remembered he had the keys, so it was a moot point. Sitting, waiting, looking out into the picturesque blackness, Lei was reminded of the shrouds. Just like now, there was nothing to do about them but wait.

Stevens had found no useful trace in the box he’d bagged and brought home. The lengths of white linen remained, a spooky threat, in the evidence room in a box labeled Texeira-Stevens
Harassment Case # 45336.

Texeira-Stevens. Is that what they’d name a child, if they had one? Or did it sound better the other way around? Lei muttered both names out loud, decided either way was too much of a mouthful. She
spread one towel on the grass below the raised turnout and lay down on it, covering herself with the other towel and looking up at the stars. She tried to spot some constellations, and felt her eyes grow heavy.

It had been a very long day.

Someone shook Lei awake, and she sat up so abruptly her head cracked into Stevens’s forehead.

“
Ow!” they both exclaimed, and then Lei laughed and heard Stevens give a rusty chuckle.

“
Are you still mad?” she asked him, rubbing her head. “Or did you cool off?”

“
Cooled off so bad I’ve got hypothermia,” he said, his teeth chattering. “Let’s go home.”

“I’m sorry,” Lei said.

“You always are. And I’m sorry I lost my temper.” He slung an arm around her and kissed the top of her head as they stumbled through the bunchy grass toward the truck.

They blasted the heater
, but Lei had to keep the window down because of her churning stomach. The cool night air raced by her face, a lacy net of tiny colored lights filling the valley and marking Kahului far below. She could see the black negative space of ocean on either side of the “waist” of the island, and she noticed a feeling she’d never felt before: contentment, a love for the land that felt connected.

“
I don’t know why, but I feel like Maui is home.” Lei tilted her face in Stevens’s direction. “It’s so beautiful here. This island is the perfect size—more action going on than Kaua`i, fewer people than Oahu, spacious but not sprawling like the Big Island, big compared to Lanai and Molokai. Room to explore and have adventures but not so big you get lost. I love it here.”

“
I’m glad, because we should have moved to Oahu last year if we were going to. Oahu’s where you go to get ahead in law enforcement in Hawaii. But I’ve had the big city. I’m ready to settle here, see if we can stay married now that we made it to the altar.”

“
And past our first fight,” Lei said. “That same ugly fight we’ve had before.”

“
Well, I made you a promise. You will be embarrassed if you run off without me again. It’s for your own safety. You’ve been warned.”

“
And I take that seriously. I just have a hard time remembering in the moment. Let’s hope this situation never happens again, because if you were the one going after a perp and I put cuffs on you, you’d be pissed as hell. At least some of this is because I’m a woman.”

“
I don’t think so. It’s because I love you and don’t want you dead,” Stevens said. “If the shoe’s ever on the other foot, you have permission to take me down.”

“
Good. I will.”

Silence prevailed until they pulled up at the cottage. They got out
, and Lei rolled the gate shut behind the truck.

“I love you,” she said. He didn’t answer, just turned around and swept her up, throwing her over his shoulder. Lei shrieked and laughed, pounding on his back, and Keiki jumped and barked at this new game, cavorting beside Stevens as he climbed the steps, punched the alarm, and opened the door. The door banged shut behind them, and the lights went out.

Lei yawned repeatedly at the staff meeting the next morning. She had a brace on her knee and a pair of crutches she
’d borrowed from the supply closet.

“You should get that looked at, Lone Ranger,” Pono said. “Thanks for busting Takama. No thanks for doing it without me.”

“Did you find anything at Takama’s house?” Lei had called Pono and had him search Takama’s place with a warrant last night.

“Yeah. Got some promising trace on his boots, and he had pictures of the poachers in his phone—pictures of them before and after they were shot. Not definitive, but close. With your testimony, we ought to be able to make that case.”

“
Texeira and Kaihale! My office,” Omura snapped, sweeping by them on a waft of sophisticated scent. Lei hobbled into the captain’s office behind Pono, and Omura closed the door herself and went back behind her desk.

The captain
steepled her fingers. “What the hell is going on? First I get a call that Takama’s been captured and charged with murder when I didn’t even know he was out of jail; then I get a call that Rinker’s in Canada, resisting extradition, and has published Kingston’s bird research in
Avian Journal of Science
.”

Lei and Pono looked at each other.
“It’s better than where we were yesterday,” Lei said. “After my deposition, I felt like we were back at square one, and I for one am happy if that research can help the native birds, even a little bit.”

“
Texeira.” Captain Omura steepled her fingers and leveled hard, dark eyes on Lei. “I’m busting you down a rank. You’re a sergeant as soon as this trial is over—I don’t want to give the defense any more ammo by putting it in your file before that. I’m taking too much heat about you, and I’m afraid a workshop isn’t going to be enough to satisfy Mayor Costales. I’m sorry, but you’re clearly not ready for the responsible behavior called for by the rank of lieutenant. Also, your reports are consistently behind. I need someone in the lieutenant position who wants to train and develop others.”

Lei
’s mouth opened and shut. She thought of Consuelo, whom she was mentoring, and Officer Cantorna whom she’d wanted to train. She
did
like to train and develop others, but as usual, her difficulty with protocol was getting in the way.

“
Yes, sir.” Lei’s whole face felt numb and tingly. She wished she could disappear.

“
In addition, you’re both also being reassigned to new partners and different duties. I feel this particular pairing isn’t helping either of you grow professionally.”

Lei was already frozen in her
seat, but Pono spoke up. “Sir, I disagree. Lei and I have the highest closure rate of any team.”

“
Yes, but at what cost? I want both of you alive to pull down a pension in twenty years,” Omura said. “I’ll let you know when I have your new partners figured out. Dismissed.”

Lei crutched her way back to
the cubicle in stunned silence. She didn’t respond to any of the cheerful razzing about Takama’s capture and her knee from colleagues through the office.

“
I think I’ll go get my knee checked out,” she said to Pono, her eyes on the ground, when they arrived at their cubicle.

“
It’s going to be okay,” Pono said. “You didn’t like all the lieutenant paperwork anyway. It’s not the end of the world.”

“
I don’t care about that, really. Demotion’s embarrassing, but I’ll survive, and we’ll be okay for money. I really don’t want a new partner, though.” She looked up at her oldest friend, pulled a sad face. “I might have to…you know. Be nice and get to know someone new.”