Touch of Betrayal, A (13 page)

He tilted his head to the side, avoiding my questions. “Makani, your grandmother, knew many things. They were friends from childhood. It is our way to provide protection for family.”

It wasn’t a secret that Millie and my grandmother were close, that they’d gone to the same school, and studied the Huna traditions together. But listening to my grandfather’s exact words was a mistake. He almost always wove his sentences with an undercurrent that held the real message—the one he wanted me to search for and decipher. Reading intent rather than the obvious was a critical ability for a shaman, and an integral part of my training.

I cleared my thoughts and dipped my mind into the hollow space between his words. “Grandmother had the gift of clairvoyance, and Millie’s job while she lived with us was to protect me?” It came out a question that was tinged with doubt. I’d meant for it to be a strong statement.

Grandfather patted my hand, a silent challenge to dig deeper. I turned my hand under his, grazing his palm with my fingertips. Yeah, maybe it was cheating, but a girl’s gotta use her gifts to the best advantage. Or I could ease my guilt by assuming that when Aukele patted my hand, it was shamanic speak for
use your gifts, woman
.

Shock stole my breath, and I fumbled with the silence. “Did my parents know? When they hired Millie and Harlan, did they know about my grandmother’s friendship with Millie?”

Grandfather only smiled.

“Of course they did.” I continued sifting through the random thoughts bombarding me. “Millie must have been around during my mother’s childhood, and that means she was protecting both mom
and
me, because Loyria Gray didn’t study Huna, didn’t become a shaman, and didn’t have the talent to create…distractions.”

Grandfather blinked.

Rapid connections fired through the synapses in my brain. “How did she protect us?”

I didn’t expect a response to my rhetorical question, but irritation still simmered under my words. “Using her skills, she could…” I had no idea what Millie was capable of.

Bang! The unmistakable retort of a gun shattered my concentration.

The glass of lemonade slipped through my fingers and landed with a sharp crack on the table.

Bang-thud. I jumped to my feet.

After many hours on the firing range, the sound was as familiar to me as Merlin’s bark. But it didn’t fit here. No one should be shooting in grandfather’s mini paradise. I should never have left Annie’s without a gun?

I grabbed my grandfather’s shirt, lifting him out of his chair. “Are Millie and Harlan in the house?”

He took my hand, sadness stealing the light from his eyes. “Harlan is here. Follow me.”

It shouldn’t be possible for a sixty-something man to move so quickly, but we practically flew down one of the paths that wound through the maze, and came to an abrupt stop in front of a solid wood door.

With two round holes in it.

My breath came in short, painful gasps. I jerked my grandfather to the side, away from the potential line of fire. “Your house has a lower level?”

The obvious stared at me, bullet holes and all, but my mind had gone wonky with panic.

I needed a weapon. Stupid, stupid, stupid to leave Annie’s house with nothing but a cell phone and a pair of flip-flops. Slippahs. Damn.

Aukele touched my hand. “Use your mind, Granddaughter. It is your strongest weapon.”

What? “This is so not the time for a Kahuna lecture. If you can see what’s going on in there, spill it.”

A far-off door slammed, jarring me into action. Neighbors. They must have heard the shot. I turned the knob and flung the door open. It bounced off the inside wall with a loud thud.

Dead male body.

Panic spun wild, riveting my attention on the fresh blood pooling under his chest.

Not Harlan. I sucked in a shallow breath, but couldn’t get it past the heartbeat pounding in my throat.

Scan the scene, Everly.
I looked up. Harlan stood to the side of the DB, clutching his arm. A steady trickle of red oozed through the fabric of a shirt I recognized. Millie’s handwork.

A full breath made it into my lungs.

Movement to my right.

I whirled, lunging in front of my grandfather.

Pierce stood in the hallway. Classic stance. Gun cocked.

THIRTEEN

Tension crackled and mixed with
the scent
of the dead guy’s fresh-spilled blood, a nauseating odor that would forever taint my grandfather’s house. My fault. If I’d let the professionals deal with this… No. It wouldn’t have made a difference. Searching for my grandfather, Millie, and Harlan might have led the killer here, but he would have been looking for Kahuna Aukele anyway.

Speculation was getting me nowhere fast. Shallow breaths dulled my senses, but underneath the fog a potent combination of despair and rage had knotted deep in the pit of my stomach. I sucked in a deliberate breath, staying silent, waiting for the explosion.

“You know him, Harlan?” Pierce’s words were easy, relaxed, possibly deadly.

“Stop pointing that gun at us, Pierce. There’s been enough blood shed.”

He winked.

I barely managed to suppress a blast of hateful words, managed to swallow the nasty taste of death, and then turned to face Harlan. My heart squeezed tight in my chest. He’d been the one who picked me up when I fell out of my tree house, who held my two-wheeler before I learned to balance, and who had always been there when my parents traveled. And now he stood in front of me, tired, bleeding, and his eyes full of a sadness that aged him by ten years. I ached with the need to cry, and a scream slowly spiraled its way toward my throat. I touched Harlan’s hand, avoiding fingertip contact. “How bad is it? Who was that guy? Why did he shoot you?”

Valid questions, all of them, but I wanted the answers to come from Harlan rather than my fingertips. It was a matter of respect.

Harlan stepped away from me, not responding. His mouth tightened and fear flashed behind his eyes.

I inhaled a deep breath, blew it out with a heavy dose of exasperation.

Although Pierce was the one holding the gun, there was no way he would ever shoot Harlan. That made the dead guy guilty, but it didn’t tell me a thing about who sent him, or why he’d shot a harmless gardener who’d spent his entire life tending my parents’ property. Then again, I had no clue what Harlan had been like
before
my parents hired him.

A .9mm Sig rested on the floor two inches from the dead guy’s right hand. Which was probably why Pierce shot him.

I recognized the weapon, had considered buying one when I purchased my .380, but it had more kick than I was comfortable with. Still, it was a solid weapon and free for the taking. Since Hawaiian gun laws required a waiting period between the purchase of a weapon and being allowed to take it home, and I wasn’t in the mood to wait for legalities, I eyed the gun with intent to confiscate.

Harlan must have picked up on my vibe, because he gave me a shaky smile, and then wrapped his good arm around me, holding me back. “I’m just fine, Miz Everly. This old arm will heal on up in no time.”

Pierce had tucked his weapon at the small of his back, and was leaning over the dead guy, going through his pockets. “Huh,” he said under his breath.

“Huh, what? I want to know what thoughts are lurking under that grunt, Pierce. This is
my
family.” I slipped away from Harlan’s hold, and quickly bent down to grab the .9mm before Pierce worked his way around to the right side of the DB.

He gave me a pointed glare, and for a second I was tempted to hand the gun over. Instead, I checked the magazine, and then slipped it into my shorts pocket. The images that came with it? Those I shoved into my mental filing cabinet for later.

I turned my back on Pierce, and closed my eyes, sucking in a moment of quiet before I faced Harlan. “And you. Strip off your shirt so I can check out that wound.”

He went to work on the buttons, so I squared off with Kahuna Aukele. “What’s going on? I want some damn good answers from one of you in the next few minutes. Grandfather, do you have a first aid kit of some kind so I can bandage Harlan before we take him to the hospital?”

Pierce looked up from checking out the DB. “No hospital.”

Adrenaline pumped into my veins. “What do you mean, no hospital? He’s shot. Probably should have stitches, and—”

“They’ll find him in a public building. Kill him.”

“Who, Pierce? Exactly who are we talking about here?” Terror unfurled in my chest.

He pulled his phone out of his pocket and punched in some numbers, then met my angry stare. “I don’t know, Belisama. That’s the problem.”

“Well, I guess I better find out, then.” The words popped out before I thought about them. I didn’t have a clue how trace the monsters attacking my family, but I’d find them. Oh, yeah. I’d find them.

I whirled to face Harlan. He had his shirt off, and I got a clear look at the bullet wound. A two-inch gash ran along his upper arm, the edges ragged, but too bloody for me to get a good look without cleaning it first. Still, it wasn’t too bad. A graze, not a puncture. “It probably hurts a heck of a lot worse than it looks, but stitches would be good ’cause there’s a flap of skin that’s separated… I’ll wash it off and get a better look. I hope Grandfather has some antibiotic ointment, and I’m sorry I can’t stop babbling. Must be shock.”

Pierce had stopped mumbling into his phone, stood, and touched Harlan on the shoulder. “What can you tell me?”

Guess I wasn’t the only one who wanted answers.

“Millie and me, we think it’s the same people who killed Miz Everly’s mama and daddy. Should have been done and over back then, but the government never stopped watching our girl, here.”

An outraged hiss flew from my mouth. “You’ve known about this all my life and didn’t tell me? Warn me?”

Harlan sagged. “Orders from your mama and daddy, Miz Everly. They built a layer of protection around you. Thought you’d be safer not ever knowing about the poison your mama discovered.”

I inhaled deep and long to squash the pissed-off anger burning in my gut. “You can tell me all about it while I’m bandaging your arm.”

It wasn’t Harlan’s fault I’d been kept out of the loop. Or Millie’s. I hoped.

My grandfather came downstairs carrying a white plastic box with a red cross on top. “You should find everything you need in here,” he said, removing a tube of antibiotic from his pocket. He set it on top of the box and handed them to me.

“Maybe one of us should just, you know, heal him.” It sounded like a good plan, since I had no idea how to put stitches in a person. Heck, I could barely mend a ripped hemline when I caught a heel in it. “I’m not good at sewing, Grandfather.”

Aukele’s warm gaze held my attention. “It requires a lot of energy to heal, so best to use the gift in matters of more importance than a bullet graze.”

I glanced around the empty room. “Is there a bathroom down here?”

“Just behind the stairs. There’s clean towels—”

“You can use the towels, Belisama, but give them to me when you’re done.”

What could Pierce possibly want with bloody towels?

He answered my silent question with a nod, and then added some words. “Have to be kept with the body.”

Corpse disposal. Just an average, everyday, sort of activity that would eliminate all possibility of learning squat. “You can’t get rid of him before we know who he is, who hired him, and why he shot Harlan.”

Pierce focused on me, blue eyes intense. “He’s a hired hit man, didn’t know who hired him, and he was after you. Harlan happened to be standing between him and his target.”

“Right, then.” I didn’t press. It wasn’t the time.

He stood, and nodded toward Harlan. “Let’s see it.”

Harlan held out his arm with a resigned sigh.

Pierce ran his fingers gently beneath the wound. “It doesn’t need stitches. There’ll be some butterfly bandages in that kit. Use them to hold the wound together, slap on a load of antibiotic ointment, and wrap it in gauze. Get it done now. We’re on borrowed time.”

“And you know this, how?” My temper was running thin.

His eyebrows flicked up. “M.D.”

I groaned. “That was bad even for you, Pierce.”

His eyes twinkled before shadows chased the light away. Pierce had deftly avoided answering my real question. The one about borrowed time. But before I could ask again, Harlan took my hand and led me toward the stairs. Burning questions had me looking over my shoulder, following every move Pierce made as he bent over the dead guy again. He slipped something into his pocket just as Harlan flicked on the bathroom light.

“’Preciate you doing this for me, Miz Everly,” he said holding his arm over the sink. “Now, I want you to get on that nice plane Mr. Pierce has and fly back home away from all this nonsense. Millie and me, we’ll take care of things here.”

I touched the butt of the gun in my pocket. I was going to have to explore the images I’d shuffled into mental storage, but it wouldn’t do to give away all my secrets right away. Pierce had undoubtedly made the connection between my fingers and the gun, and would be hounding me for info. Soon. It’d be good to get my thoughts together
before
he started asking questions.