Last Night (5 page)

D
ana held on, her hands gripping the Porsche
'
s seat as Rob drove down the highway. Really, this was more terrifying than bungee jumping. If she didn
'
t need help so desperately she
'
d tell the creep to drop dead. But she needed Rob Tagett.

Hard as that was to believe. He looked nothing like a detective in his grubby cutoffs and a T-shirt that was two sizes too small. She would have to
work with him. That
'
s what happened when you made a bargain with the devil the way she had two decades ago.

Now she had to rely on a man who
'
d already proven how much damage he could do to her career. Was she crazy? Probably, but Garth had convinced her. She had the queasy feeling that she was going to regret this.

They drove along the blacktop road into the outskirts of the old sugar mill village of Kahuku. Wooden homes with rusted tin roofs, roadside vegetable stands with hand-painted signs, boarded-up company stores. Somehow the twentieth century had bypassed Kahuku, leaving a vestige of the island
'
s plantation days.

They pulled into a roadside tavern. Tourists never stopped at grass shacks like Coconut Willie
'
s, Dana thought. It was on the water, but the battered vehicles in the parking
lot and the toilet seats haphaz
ardly nailed to the exterior discouraged tourists who happened to venture beyond their territory to this stretch of the north shore.

The landscaping consisted of old tires sprouting weeds and a lone palm, a dusky silhouette against the night sky. A scuttling noise announced a rat in the dried fronds that hung like a hula skirt from the tree. They followed the well-worn path around the tires and passed by a rusted-out engine partially covered with tropical vines.

Inside, the lights were nothing more than candles planted in bottles of island beer, Primo, leaving petticoats of wax. The scent of mildew and beer was almost eclipsed by the cigarette smoke. Willie's had been there since the war, and it had been that long since anyone swept the floor or sponged off a wooden table. Its saving grace was its location on a tranquil cove whe
re waves tumbled across silver-
white sand.

Dana followed Rob into the bar, whose back wall was a roll of woven bamboo that had been pulled aside so the patrons could stroll out onto the beach or sit at one of the tables outside. The neon
PRIMO
sign over the bar flickered spasmodically, threatening to die any seco
nd. The behemoth bartender, def
initely a descendant of King Kamehameha, greeted Rob as if he were his brother.

"Two S.O.B.s,
"
Rob said,
"
and four orders of
saimin.
"

"
No
saimin
for me,
"
she spoke up, thinking of Garth
'
s delicious veal.
Saimin
was such an island staple that even McDonald
'
s served the noodles, but she
'
d never cared for them.

"
They
'
re all for me.
"
He patted a tummy as flat as Kansas.
"
I
'
m a growing boy.
"
He pointed to a vacant table on the sand.
"
We
'
ll be outside, Willie.
"

Dana let Rob take her arm, not missing the crowded room full of
mokes,
island toughs. There wasn
'
t a designated driver present. Not that anyone in Willie
'
s cared. She
'
d probably prosecuted half these
mokes
on DUIs when she
'
d been a deputy DA. Being in court with them was one thing; being here, another. Women who strayed into dives like this
were inviting trouble. Not that she was straying. She was with Rob on his home turf.

"What's in an S.O.B.?
"
she asked as they sat at a t
able a few feet from the breaking waves. The candle in the Primo bottle was dying an agonizing death, its wick casting nothing more than a dim glow and leaving a smoky mist that drifted into the night air.

"S.O.B.—sex on the beach.
"
He had the audacity t
o wink and roll his eyes toward the water.
"
Okoleha
o.
"

"
Moonshine," Dana snapped, just to show him she knew the score.
"
They
'
re brewing ti roots in a tub nearby. Drink it and you'll be declared a vegetable by the court on Monday.
"

Rob smiled, that narcotic smile backlit by the impish twinkle in his blue eyes.
"
That
'
s it, Dana. Let your temper show."

The waitress, a
tita,
a tough girl who
'
d be more at home wrestling gorillas, slammed the drinks on the table with a
"
sex on the beach"—or anywhere— smile for Rob.

"Okole maluna,
"
Rob said. Bottoms up. He tossed back his drink.

Dana picked up her glass, but didn
'
t drink for fear her brain would be pickled in an instant. The stuff smelled vile. How could anyone drink it?
"
Let
'
s talk about my problem.
"

"
Sure." Rob leaned back, stretching the T-shirt even tighter, revealing a powerful torso. Obviously he took his workouts seriously.
"
Fill me in.
"

"Does this mean we can work together?
"
she asked, all her doubts returning full force.

He studied her for a moment, his hands clasped across his broad chest. "If the price is right.
"

She hesitated, knowing how strained her finances were and that Vane
ssa was rich on paper but a pau
per in reality. "What
'
s your fee?
"

"Forget the article I wrote about you.
"

"What article?
"

"Cut the bullshit. You know what article.
"

"All right,
"
she conceded. "I haven
'
t read a thing you
'
ve written.
"

"Forget whatever you
'
ve heard about me.
"

"
What makes you think I've heard anything?
"

"You won
'
t go out with me because you think I raped that woman. And you're still pissed—big time —about the article.
"

She kept her face expressionless—or tried to—but Rob was right on target. She had heard the rumors and they made her leery of him. Would she ever live long enough to forgive him for his vicious column? "Ever think I won
'
t go out with you because I don
'
t like you?
"

"
Nope.
"
Incredibly, he grinned as if he knew his smile was a lethal weapon. "You like me.
"

Why bother denying it? Obviously the man had a bulletproof ego. "You
'
re okay, I guess.
"

"We can build on that.
"

"
Rob, we
'
re not building anything,
"
she shot back, justifiably proud of her stern tone. "I need a
good detective. Sex isn
'
t included in the job description.
"

"Could have fooled me.
"

She was more than a little overwhelmed by his nearness and the way he was behaving. She didn
'
t like aggressive men.
"
Don
'
t you ever think about anything but sex?
"

"Mmmmm." He pondered the question.
"
Sometimes I think about food.
"

He was something, wasn
'
t he? Obviously he didn
'
t believe she was in serious trouble, or he wouldn
'
t be joking like this.
"
Are you helping me or not?
"

"
I
'
m helping Garth.
"

Oh, God, she was in over her head with this man. Why now, when everything she
'
d worked for was at risk? "Where should I start?
"

"At the beginning.
"

She stared over his shoulder at the surf tumbling lazily onto the shore. She
'
d thought about what to tell him. And what to omit. Driving from Garth
'
s she
'
d rehearsed. There was only so much she was going to tell anyone about that fateful night.

"
I suppose it started when my parents were killed in an auto accident. My sister and I had no relatives, so we were sent to a foster home. It was so bad that Vanessa and I ran away.
"
She looked into his eyes and was relieved to see he was dead serious now. "You may have heard of my sister. She's married to Eric Coltrane.
"

"One of the big-five families,
"
he said with disgust.

The history of the five families was common knowledge. They had achieved so much power that they entered the realm of the mythical Hawaiian gods. The Factors, the Alexanders, the Baldwins, the Cookes—and, of course, the Coltranes—had once had a stranglehold on Hawaiian business and owned most of the valuable land. Their influence had diminished with time, but here, in the islands, they were still powerful. Dana wanted Rob to know what they were up against—should Big Daddy prove to be the blackmailer.

"
It was a little over twenty years ago when Vanessa hot-wired a car and we headed west toward California.
"

Rob listened to Dana's story with interest, convinced she wasn
'
t making it up. She wasn
'
t much of an actress. Her eyes were too expressive. They had a future; she just didn't realize it yet.

He concentrated on what she was saying, trying to imagine two girls, aged fourteen and sixteen, driving across the country with nothing more than a beat-up Ford and a pocketful of change. Apparently they stopped in several towns, never daring to tell the authorities they were runaways. A damn shame someone hadn
'
t helped them.

"
We ran out of money and had to stop in a town so small it wasn
'
t even a wide spot in the road.
"
The downshift in her tone forewarned Rob. This was the heart of the story.
"
Vanessa took a job in a bar
"
— Dana looked around—
"
not unlike this one. We lived in a trailer behind the joint.
"

He didn't like the picture he was getting. He
'
d been a hell raiser, yet he
'
d always had his parents to help him. Pop had died long before Rob set out for Hawaii, but his mother had always been there. She still was. He
'
d brought her to Kauai years ago, setting her up in a new home that she loved.

"
There was this horrible man who worked at the bar. Hank Rawlins was always after Vanessa, saying how mu
ch he liked girls who were…
"

"Were what?
"
Rob prompted, tensing at the raw emotion in her voice.

Dana looked away, her eyes seeking the moonlit water.
"
Virgins.
"

There were sons of bitches like that everywhere. Too often women didn
'
t have anyone to protect them.

"
One night Vanessa didn
'
t come home. I found her in the storage shed behind the bar where they kept beer and stuff. Hank was on top of her.
"
Dana
'
s voice trailed off, but he didn
'
t have to hear the details to know what was going on. He thought of himself as a callous bastard who
'
d seen it all, heard it all, but the pain in Dana
'
s voice and the anger flaring in her eyes made him want to kill the son of a bitch.