Chapter 13
It turns out Makai Ranch is on the south side of the island, which means another trip in Pele, except this time I’m not the one fighting her up the hills.
Koa is driving, which Pele finds acceptable.
Pele has never once found me acceptable, and I’ve decided not to take it up with her.
She idles for him. She changes gears without editorializing.
I take this personally and say nothing, because the last thing I need is a haunted van who plays favorites listening to me complain.
We checked for stowaways before we left.
Twice. I checked under the seats, Lani checked the cooler, and Ruby checked the very back with forensic thoroughness, because Ruby has lost things in vans before and declines to discuss it.
For once the count came out clean. No Spam.
No Coconut. No surprise gecko delegation.
Just the four of us and a cooler full of Lani’s turnovers, rattling south while the goddess of fire and volcanoes carries us along like she’s decided, just this once, to behave.
The road south does what it always does, which is refuse to let you be indifferent about it.
We come out of the tunnel of trees into the wide golden Poipu sun, and then the ranch rises up ahead looking like a place where things go extinct.
Tall green mountains stand behind it, impossibly lush, draped in mist that explains in one glance why they keep filming dinosaurs out here.
The flatlands roll out gold and green in every direction, dotted with tropical foliage and distant cattle, and there are chickens in the foreground and at least three roosters who’ve appointed themselves a welcoming committee and are already locked in passionate disagreement about how to do it.
Ruby, Lani, and I do the whole obligatory TUNNEL OF TREEEES! thing and nearly send Pele careening off the road because of the heart attack we induced in Koa. You’d think he’d be used to us by now. Or at least be familiar with what our vocal range is capable of.
We end up at the ranch, and by the time Koa eases Pele into park, all forty Miss Mango contestants are geared up near the equipment shed getting their safety briefing.
A ranch hand is walking them through the brake, the gas, and the concept of not flipping the vehicle, and the contestants are receiving all of it with polite blankness.
I have a feeling several of them fully intend to flip the vehicle, and no safety lesson on this island is going to stop them.
Also, precisely the reason I will not let Ruby drive.
A gorgeous brunette comes striding across the yard with dark sugar-brown skin and glowing hazel eyes, very va-va-voom, supernaturally stunning in an unfair way, looking directly past me, and I get a bad feeling two full seconds before it’s confirmed.
“Koa Hale,” she says. “Is that you?”
She launches at him. There’s no gentler word for it. She crosses the last ten feet at dangerous speeds and throws both arms around my boyfriend’s neck and kisses him on one cheek, then the other, then keeps holding on, beaming up at him while he stands there with rigid patience.
My boyfriend is being embraced against his will in front of witnesses, and the witnesses are thrilled. I’m not loving this.
Ruby and Lani, by contrast, are loving it enormously. I can hear them already warming up behind me.
“Would you look at that,” Ruby murmurs.
“I’m looking,” Lani says. “I’m looking real hard.”
“I sense another homicide on the horizon,” I mutter, but no one seems to care.
“Birdie Makai,” Koa manages, getting an arm free and engineering some daylight between them. “It’s been a while.”
Birdie?
“A while?” Buxom Birdie steps back just far enough to take all of him in, hands still on his shoulders, like she’s confirming the merchandise is as advertised.
“It’s been years. You look exactly the same.
You look better. I see the island is treating you good.
” Her gaze finally slides off him and lands on the three of us, and her smile cools by several degrees without losing a single tooth.
“And these must be the little friends you mentioned.”
Little friends. I feel my blood do something it doesn’t normally do at a working ranch on any day that ends in Y.
“Did I just get demoted?” I ask, mostly to Lani.
“You did,” Lani confirms. “I felt it, too.”
“Birdie and I go way back,” Koa says carefully. He knows exactly how this looks, and he has no good options, and we both know it.
“Way back,” Birdie agrees, delighted to take the handoff.
“We dated all through high school. It was serious, too.” She says it to me specifically, and it sounds like a threat.
“I had the whole thing planned. The wedding, the house up the valley, all his babies. Four, I said. He said three. We’d have settled on four.
” She laughs, and it sounds like demonic wind chimes.
“And then he went and met—” she waves a hand and lowers her voice to something discreet “—well. She Who Shall Not Be Named. We don’t ever say the name. ”
“We don’t?” I ask.
“We do not,” Birdie says, savoring it. Not saying the name is clearly one of her favorite hobbies, and she’s had years of practice. “It’s all water under a very ugly bridge. Anyway, that one didn’t last either, did it, Buns of Steel?”
Lani, Ruby, and I gasp at once. I hike a brow at Koa, and he gives a little shrug my way. I mean, the nickname isn’t wrong, but still.
Birdie reels him in closer. “Some women just aren’t built for keeping a man like this.” She pats Koa’s chest. “Took me about twenty minutes to realize the universe was only ever holding him for me.”
I open my mouth. Koa, sensing the approach of hurricane Jinx, clears his throat, and I talk over him anyway.
“I’m Jinx,” I say, because if I don’t introduce myself, I’m going to say something the ranch’s insurance won’t cover.
“This is Ruby and Lani. I manage the Coconut Cove Paradise Resort. Thank you so much for squeezing us in.” I smile with every tooth I own.
“But please. Don’t let me interrupt. Tell us more about your time with Buns of Steel. ”
Birdie doesn’t need to be asked twice. She tells us about the prom.
She tells us about a canoe incident that involved getting naked—very naked.
She tells us about a promise made at seventeen under a mango tree that she has clearly been keeping warm in a drawer for two decades.
Ruby nods along like she’s taking notes for a deposition.
Lani has produced, from somewhere, a mango turnover, and is eating it like she’s at a show.
I’ll admit, I’m getting hungry. Not even a woman actively circling my boyfriend can come between me and my appetite. I don’t know what that says about Buns of Steel and me, and I’ve elected not to run the numbers.
“What a beautiful story,” Ruby says when Birdie finally pauses for breath. “And what’s with the corny nickname, Birdie?”
I shoot her a look. The woman is fully aware that I also sport a corny nickname and wear it loud and proud as my formal moniker.
Birdie clears her throat and delivers something long and elaborate and entirely Hawaiian, a name with more syllables than the safety lesson, a name that takes a running start and a deep breath. “But everyone calls me Birdie,” she finishes, and makes direct, unblinking eye contact with me.
Something tells me this little birdie has spotted her prey. And she isn’t blinking. She isn’t technically licking her lips either, but the intent is fully present and accounted for.
“I can’t believe you’re actually here,” she breathes at Koa, turning the wattage back up. “It’s like I manifested you. And I knew I would.”
Manifested? So the woman is essentially a witch. Wonderful. I’ll add it to the file under black magic.
She nods his way. “Those babies are still coming, you know. I can feel them.”
And then she leans in and kisses him, full on the mouth.
Koa steps back so fast he nearly takes out a fence post. “Birdie.” There’s a flat, final note in it that I’ve personally only heard him use on suspects.
I’m half shocked he didn’t draw his weapon.
He reaches over, takes my hand, and pulls me in beside him.
“This is Jinx. She’s my girlfriend.” He gives Birdie a look that could curdle poi.
The words hit their intended target. Birdie’s smile doesn’t fall so much as recalibrate, the way a hawk recalibrates.
She looks at me with fresh, focused interest, and I give her my warmest resort-manager smile right back, because two can play the recalibrating game, and I’ve had more recent practice.
“All right, everyone!” Pickles’s whistle cuts across the yard. “Helmets on, goggles down, let’s get moving!”
“You’re riding with me,” Birdie informs Koa, brightening instantly, already steering him toward a sleek two-seater parked apart from the rest. Then she turns back to me, still smiling, still aiming her fury at me. “Don’t you worry, ladies. I’ve got a special car set aside just for you.”
I groan at the thought of it. “Something tells me I may not make it out of this alive.”
We’re handed helmets and goggles and pointed toward our vehicle, which Birdie has personally selected, and which turns out to be a four-seater side-by-side with the words MUD HONEY stenciled across the hood in flaking yellow paint, because the universe has a sense of humor and it isn’t a kind one.
Ruby claims the driver’s seat before anyone can stop her.
“Absolutely not,” Lani says.
“Not a chance in H-E-double-hockey-sticks,” I say.
“Hockey sticks are for Canada,” Ruby informs me. “Besides, it’s automatic.” She grips the wheel with both ringed hands and a gleam in her eyes I don’t care for. “I’ve driven worse. My second husband had a boat. Besides, I’ve always wanted to drive one of these suckers. It’s my lucky day!”
And then I see who’s settling into the fourth seat beside Lani—dark braid over one shoulder, calm and quiet and watching everything the way she always does, and just like that the morning improves considerably.
Kali Akoni. Trapped in a moving vehicle with me for the foreseeable future, with nowhere to be and no way out. It might be my lucky day after all.
I glance over and catch Birdie sliding into the two-seater beside Koa, settling in close, already chatting away, and I watch her shoot me one last look over the roll bar that’s pure sugar and pure warning all at once.
Maybe it’s not my lucky day.
Ruby stomps on the gas. Mud Honey lurches forward with a sound like Pele’s angrier cousin, the chickens scatter, a rooster nearly loses a wing, and as we go fishtailing off across the flatlands toward the green dinosaur-like mountains, it occurs to me that I came to this ranch to question a suspect, and instead I may end up being the most homicidal person on the property.
The week’s not over.
And in my experience, Kauai always has room for one more body.