And then, a short while later and after umpteen turns, a house loomed up ahead. It was on a cul-de-sac, a dead end.
Gulp
. Ben pulled in to a semicircular driveway while we pulled off to the side of the road, behind a row of trees, out of sight.
He hopped out of his car and ran to the door, then knocked and waited. And waited. And waited some more. One minute, two, three, five, ten. Nothing. The lights were off, no one was home. He scratched his head and sat on the front stoop. Another five minutes and he drove off. We ducked behind a tree and watched him zoom back the way he’d arrived.
“Well,” I said, with a heavy sigh, “at least he won’t find out that Jed really didn’t call him.”
“Not immediately, but probably at some point,” Briana corrected me.
I nodded. “Hopefully after we rescue Will, when it won’t matter that someone is obviously playing games with Jed’s worker bees. In any case, this truly does bode well for us.”
“Because no one’s home and we have free rein of the place?” Koni asked.
“Exactly,” I told him, a relieved smile forming on my face. “If Will is still in there, we can get him out and be gone before anyone is the wiser.”
Brandon grimaced. “So, Einstein, you have a key to this place?”
My smile vanished in a heartbeat. “Please stop raining on my pride parade, dearest one.”
“Then get off your float, dipshit,” he responded, “and come down to the real world. The door is locked, for sure, and there has to be surveillance cameras everywhere, just like there was at his last hideout. For all we know, there are armed guards lurking about, ones that don’t answer the door unless someone’s trying to force it open. Meaning, we’ve made it to the pearly gates and the angels are away on vacation. Indefinitely.”
I snickered. “Yeah,” I said, “as if you’ll ever be facing those.”
He punched me and started walking up the road to the house.
“Where are you going?” Briana asked.
He paused and turned around. “Three
sisters
and their teenage brother. Lost. Their car broken down on the side of the road.”
“What’s that?” she whispered back. “The plot of some book you’re reading?”
I poked her with my elbow. “He doesn’t read,” I whispered in return, in case there really were security cameras hidden somewhere.
“I heard that,” he said, voice low. “And, no, it’s not the plot of some book. It’s the plot of right here and right now. Real life plotting. Someone had to come up with something. Might as well be me. So let’s go. Time’s a wastin’.”
Reluctantly, our unhappy group approached our supposed leader. “But what if, as you say, the place really is guarded, under surveillance?” I asked.
He shrugged. “So what? They have no idea who we are. If asked, we’re lost, just like I said. Not like we look like we’re up to no good, not in these outfits.”
Which was true. Just as he said, we were three gussied-up broads with a teenage-looking dude in tow. Not exactly the rescue cavalry.
We approached the front door, my heart thumping, my breath ragged. We knocked. We waited. Nothing, just as with Ben. I looked at Brandon, he looked at me. “Well?” I asked, glad to relinquish authority.
“Side fence,” he mouthed, already heading that way.
The house was nice-sized, the fence ultra-high, solid wood, no gaps in the slats. Place cost some mega big bucks, the occupants obviously not hurting for cash. There was a door leading to, we figured, a yard; it was latched, shut good and tight. We knocked, loudly. No reply. And no surprises there.
“We could try huffing and puffing,” I suggested.
Brandon groaned. “I’m all up for blowing, but not a solid-wood fence.” He looked around and spotted our salvation; a decorative rock sat in the corner of a well-manicured garden. He ran over and rolled it our way. “But climbing might do the trick.”
“And doing the trick is your specialty,” I commented.
He let it go, but not without a punch to my arm first. Then he climbed up, his hands just reaching the top rim. We three bent down and hoisted him up, until his padded chest hung over the other side and his legs dangled down.
And then, “Oh fuck,” said he.
“Oh fuck what?” asked we.
And -- cue the dreaded
oh fuck
music -- the gate swung in, Brandon along with it, and we knew in an instant what our friend was
oh fucking
. For there, standing before us, were two of the biggest, meanest, unfriendliest looking Hawaiians I’d ever seen; dressed in black suits and black sunglasses, they were no happier to see us than we were to see them.
“Aloha,” I managed, with a limp-wristed wave.
“What the fuck are you doing?” the larger of the two behemoths asked.
“Our car broke down,” Brandon responded, from high up above.
The Hawaiian glanced his way, and asked, “So you’re breaking in to call a tow truck? What, no cell phones?”
We had no answer for that one, at least not a good one. Clearly, our plan wasn’t that, um, planned out. As usual, it was Briana to the rescue, batting her eyelashes and pushing out her ample bosom. “Sorry, we’re not from Oahu. We didn’t know who to call. We were only hopping the fence because no one answered the front door and we wanted to see if that was because someone was out back and couldn’t hear the doorbell.”
I grinned, moaning internally. “Yes,” I agreed. “That’s why we, um, didn’t use our cell phones. Sorry. Can you, um, can you help us?” I too batted my eyelashes and also pushed out my ample, albeit fake, tits.
The Hawaiians grimaced and turned their attention back to Briana. They shook their heads and slammed the door, flinging Brandon out and down, thankfully onto a soft-ish bush. “Ouch,” he grumbled.
We helped him up. “Hey,” Briana shouted at the door. “That any way to treat a lady?” I pointed to Brandon and myself. “Three ladies,” Briana corrected. I pointed to Koni. “Three ladies and a, um, three ladies.” Still there was no response.
“Wait,” Brandon whispered. “Those black suits, I see them around San Francisco all the time. Maybe those goons aren’t dressed like bodyguards.”
“Huh?” I huhed.
He ignored my huhing, and shouted, “Three ladies on their way to church. The Mormon Temple.”
Again we waited, the silence nearly deafening. Then a sound, a click. The door creaked open, the Hawaiians still standing there, expressionless. They craned their necks down to stare at us. “You four are Mormons?” the bigger one asked, the faintest of smirks appearing on his otherwise stony face.
“On a retreat,” I tried. “From Salt Lake.”
Their faces now lit up. (Well, like a twenty-watt bulb, but at least it was a start.) “You don’t look like Mormons,” said the smaller of the two. “Dress-wise.”
“There’s a good reason for that,” I said, praying some logical reason would present itself.
“Which is?” I was asked.
“Fire,” Brandon blurted out.
“Fire?” both Hawaiians asked. “You’re dressed like that because of a fire?”
And that sent my mind to racing, the logical idea, somehow and miraculously, presenting itself. “Yes,” I replied. “Fire. Our, um, hotel caught fire.” They looked at me, dubiously. “Just a few rooms. Electrical problem. But our usual clothes got smoke-ridden. And you know the kind of stuff they sell in Waikiki.” I pointed to our outfits.
They nodded. “A sin,” opined the bigger one.
Considering what we paid, yes, it was, but not in the way he meant it. “Yes, a sin. In any case, we were on our way to the Temple and got turned around. Then our car broke down over there. Perhaps it was God’s will we ended up here, beholden to the kindness of strangers. Mormon strangers, if I’m not mistaken.”
At last, they shot down full-on smiles, scary full-on smiles, stretched wide across their dark faces. “Takes one to know one, right?” the smaller one asked. “But where are your husbands?”
Ah, the volley was tossed, at last. And now we had the home-court advantage. “Three single sisters chaperoned by their brother,” I said. “Adopted brother, I mean.” I hoped they were too smitten to realize that the three so-called sisters looked nothing alike, not even Briana and Brandon in their wigs.
Still, the door opened wider, revealing a massive courtyard, well-groomed, lush with plant life. The Hawaiians split apart, opening up a tight alleyway between them. For the briefest of moments, I felt like Moses, the sea parting to let us in to the Holy Land. “We’ll call a tow truck for you, ladies. The master of the house is away, briefly, so your stay must be a short one,” said the smaller of the two. (Though it was a bit like comparing the Alps to the Rockies.)
To which the larger one added, “And then perhaps we could meet afterward, say for dinner?”
We three
sisters
looked at each other and nodded. “That would be lovely,” Briana agreed.
They smiled, lowering their menacing sunglasses. “Great,” the larger one said. “Now if you’ll give us a moment, we’ll go call for the truck, then we’ll make plans for later. Okay with you?”
We nodded, walking into a large, sunken living room and then depositing ourselves onto two leather sofas. In an instant, we were alone.
“So this is what a lion’s den feels like,” I quipped. “A lot more luxurious than I would’ve expected.”
The four of us sat there staring at each other, waiting for one of us to come up with something brilliant. Sadly, we’d all had our daily brainstorms and were frightfully tapped out. Then again, it wasn’t brainstorms that were going to save us.
Not this time.
Perhaps not ever again.
It was at that very moment that the owner of the den, the lion named Jed, made his appearance. Four sets of eyes bulged and a couple of sets of now-thankfully-concealed Adam’s apples bounced up and down. Our host scanned the room. “Who the fuck are you?” he asked, his voice echoing off all four walls, deep and threatening, setting every nerve ending in my body on edge.
Like deer caught in the headlights, we froze. “Um, our car broke down,” I tried.
“Your car broke down? A bit off the beaten track, weren’t you?” he asked, an obvious sneer on his angular face. Jed was handsome, but cruel looking, short and bulky, someone you wouldn’t want to run into down a dark alley. I knew in an instant that he didn’t believe us and that flirting would be a lost cause.
I tried again. “We were looking for the Temple and took a wrong turn, then our car broke down. Your men are calling a tow truck for us.”
He sat down across from us, his legs crossed, his head thrown back. “Strange,” he eventually said, startling us. “My
men
were told not to allow anyone inside, ever, under no circumstances.”
The men in question had entered the room, but remained silent. They knew they’d done wrong, and looked, much to my worry, nervous. They outweighed him by a few hundred combined pounds, but were cowering like scared sheep, making us appear like lambs to the slaughter.
“Sorry,” Brandon said. “We’ll wait for the truck outside, then.”
We took our cue, the four of us standing and inching away from the couches. Jed let us get to the edge of the living room, but not an inch more. “Nope,” he said.
We froze, hearing the click of the gun. We turned and saw it pointed our way, moving from side to side, aiming for each of us in turn. “You’d kill three defenseless women and a young boy?” Brandon asked. “On their way to church? Bad karma.”
He laughed. “Trust me,” he replied. “My karma’s already fucked. In any case, I don’t think you were heading for church. In fact,” he continued, now standing up, moving closer, closer still, his eyes narrowing, “I think you somehow found this place on purpose.”
My legs shaking, my heart madly pounding, I countered with, “But we don’t even know you.”
He chuckled, the gun quivering in his grasp, sending a cold chill down my spine. “True. But it’s not me you came to see. Nor my men, I’d imagine.” The men in question cast their eyes downward; we stared ahead, terrified that the gun would go off at any second, one of us taken out before the others’ very eyes. He continued. “No, I believe you’re looking for a certain
guest
of mine. He, too, was looking for me a few days back on another part of the island, for reasons still unknown. You must be pretty good friends to be willing, and able, to come searching for him here. Don’t you know who I am by now? The bad guy? The one your mothers warned you about?” Again he chuckled, sinister as all fuck.
I moved an inch toward him, realizing I had to play the ace up my sleeve. It was now or never. And never wasn’t much of an option. “Will,” I offered.
“Will,” he echoed. “Now we’re getting somewhere.”
My friends looked to me, the terror evident in their faces. But I knew something they didn’t know. That is to say, had something they were unaware of. “Yes, we came to get Will. He called and said that if we could find the person that was out to get you, you’d make a trade. Will for that person. And someone most definitely is out to get you.”
Jed nodded, the gun only slightly pointed away now, but still raised, still a heartbeat away from annihilation. “I allowed the call. Seemed fair. I could’ve killed your friend, but been none the wiser about who, as you say, was out to get me. At least in the short run. And someone is out to get me, for sure, also as you say. You all aren’t the only ones trying to find me, to put me out of business or worse. Still, I knew it wasn’t him, because I didn’t know him. And this island is small, and I already know just about everyone I need to know. And I don’t know you four, either. That’s not to say you’re not my enemies, but it seems unlikely. In any case, you were supposed to wait three days and then we’d trade the information elsewhere. You broke the rules. Tsk tsk.”
I forced a smile. “Will said he’d call in three days. Yes. But we have the information now, the person now. And this is the only place we can offer him to you.”
“In my home, temporary though it may be?”
“In your home, yes. Or, more importantly, while we’re all together. In person,” I told him, my voice quaking, my knees knocking, try as I might to keep them ramrod-straight, to hold me up.
He moved his head from side to side. “I don’t buy it,” he said, the gun again rising, causing me to jump. “If you all are just tourists, as your friend, Will, tried to explain, a group of tourists somehow embroiled in the arrest of my ex, Lenny, then how did you find me so easily? Twice now, at two different houses? The other bad fuckers can’t even find me. And yet here you are. In my fucking living room. Doesn’t add up.”