Chapter 30 The Note
The Note
Koa: brave, bold, fearless, valiant; bravery, courage
When she returned, the property felt oddly quiet and empty without the Kaupiko brothers, like the soul of the house was missing.
After a quick rinse, Minnow was about to enter the house when she noticed a piece of paper under a lava rock in front of the
door. She bent down to pick it up, thinking maybe Woody had left it for her and she’d missed it earlier since she went out
the other door. But it was not from Woody.
SHARK LADY
GO BACK TO CALIFORNIA
BEFORE SOMETING BAD HAPPENS
YOUR NOT WELCOME HERE
Luna and the recent memory of her father were immediately forgotten as a sharp wind hit her from behind.
She read the paper again, noting the misspelled word.
Had that been on purpose? What kind of nut job would leave a threatening note here on the doorstep at Hale Niuhi?
Someone bold, obviously. She spun around, eyeing the bushes and rocky outcrops, keenly aware of her dive knife on the table with her mask and snorkel.
Slowly, she walked over and grabbed it, taking the blade in the house with her.
On the table was a small, shimmering dead fish.
She leaned in closer to inspect it, thinking at first it was a reef fish.
“Oh . . . my gosh,” she said, picking the little thing up by the tail to make sure it was what she thought it was.
A minnow, of all creepy things.
That someone would go to the trouble to find an actual minnow freaked her out. Did they even have them here in Hawai?i?
Chilled, she tossed the poor fish into the pond, then filled the kettle and set it on the stove. She wrapped herself in a
blanket and lay on the bed with the phone, dialing Nalu’s hotel room even though she knew he wouldn’t be there. She was right.
He and the scientist were probably en route to Hilo to see Lum. Minnow had declined the offer to join them. For a brief moment
she contemplated calling the police but decided to consult with Woody first. No one answered at his main house either. She
looked up Cliff in the phone book, but he wasn’t listed. It figured.
Her mind began to run through possibilities of who might be behind this. Lum and Warren had pushed hard for the hunt, but
they didn’t have much skin in the game, did they? And the note felt personal. Sawyer and the open-water swim officials maybe.
Both stood to lose a lot of money if nothing was done to appease the public. But she’d never gotten an unhinged vibe from
Sawyer. She also thought of Stuart Callahan and his immense grief, and Angela and Zach, but their tragedies had already happened.
Minnow being here would have no bearing on them. Maybe she’d inadvertently pissed off some local who just wanted her off their
turf? Whatever the case, Minnow was not leaving.
When the tea was ready, she took her mug outside and sat on the lanai, watching the whitecaps form on the water. So much had happened in the past few days that it felt like she’d been here for months, years even.
The memory from earlier was still fresh in her mind, and she reexamined it from all angles. The kayak had been left on the
beach by her father the previous evening, and when he ran into the water to get it, she hadn’t been able to hear him. All
she was guilty of was not noticing that the kayak had been swept out and not hearing him.
Two things beyond her control. Six-year-old Minnow moving through life believing that she had killed her father. It was going
to take a while to undo the wound in her soul, but the awareness felt liberating. Because how could you heal from something
you couldn’t remember? The sweaty, heart-thumping nightmares, the isolation, the pushing away of men she thought she loved.
All of it.
A loud bang came from somewhere behind the house, and she startled. It sounded like a door slamming or something big falling.
She peered around the house to the shed out back, but that door was locked. A gunshot? Jumpy and skittish from the note, she
grabbed the machete that Cliff had been using and circled the house. The wind now whipped in a frenzy and she had to pull
the hair out of her eyes to see anything. She wished Woody had stayed.
On the other side of the house, she discovered one of the wooden boards that covered the windows when no one was there had
fallen against the siding. Relieved, she went back inside and pulled it up with the rope, securing it more tightly this time.
Suddenly a thought came to her: There was no one around to hear her if she screamed. She tried to tell herself she was just
being paranoid, but it was hard to ignore the warning, especially with the dead minnow.
Nalu called ten minutes later from a pay phone to tell her that their drive to Hilo to see Lum had been a waste of time, and
he and Chip, the other scientist, were going to grab some food and head back to the hotel.
“I don’t know what Chip was thinking, but he was adamant that Lum might listen to him over you, since he grew up on Maui. A braddah-braddah kind of thing.”
“What you really mean is because he’s a man?”
He paused awhile. “Maybe. Yeah, probably.”
She was about to tell him about the note but decided not to. If he knew, he’d insist on coming over and bringing Chip, and
she wanted to be alone. Needed to be alone. They agreed to meet at five in the morning at the house and hung up.
Not really hungry, Minnow took a Sierra Nevada from the fridge, snagged a half-full bag of Fritos and scrambled out to the
rocks where Cliff had been sitting. Wind blasted in off the ocean, but she’d tied her hair in a tight knot at the base of
her neck and she gripped the bag of chips as though it were a lifeline. Within minutes a thin layer of salt covered her whole
body. She felt like she should be doing something, anything, to put off the shark hunt, but no one would be out there in this
weather. Tomorrow was her last hope.
Here at the far end of the wild Pacific Ocean, she watched the clouds fade from gunmetal to black. She finished the beer and
the chips and thought about her parents and how much she still loved them all these years later. That love had a life of its
own—this astonishing, full-bodied love that ran in her veins. But maybe that was the way of real love: It never left you,
not even in death. Especially in death.
When her clothes became soaked from the salt spray and she realized she was shivering, she fumbled back to the house in the
near-dark. She had just reached the lanai when she swore she could hear the sound of shoes crunching on lava rock. She stood
still and listened.
Crunch. Crunch. Crunch.
Instinctively, she crouched low and ran toward the house, going straight for the machete. It felt heavy and dangerous in her
hand, and she wasn’t sure she could actually use it on a person. But if she had to, she would. Back against the wall, she
waited.
Crunch.
Whoever it was stopped. Minnow held her breath.
“Hello?”
The voice was nearly stolen by the wind. She remained where she was, breathing in time with her heart.
“Minnow?”
Louder this time. That voice, she knew it well.
What the hell was Luke Greenwood doing here?
She had no desire to see him, but his presence was better than some hired thug to send her off with her tail between her legs,
or worse. Maybe if she stayed where she was, he would just turn around and leave. She closed her eyes and willed him away.
“Ah, come on. I know you’re here, I saw you on the rock,” he said, then added, “I got here a while ago. I was just trying
to work up the nerve to talk to you.”
She grabbed the lantern from the table and stepped around to the front, where he stood. Orange light spilled across his face
and he offered up a half smile.
“What do you want?” she asked.
“Sorry to intrude on you, but we need to talk,” he said.
“About what?”
The question seemed to throw him. “About the sharks. And us. Me. There are things I have to tell you that I should have just
come out with on day one.”
“The sharks I want to hear about, but there is no us.”
He bit his lip. “Yeah, I thought you might say something like that. But hear me out at least, please. I need to get this off
my chest.”
Standing there in surf shorts and a long-sleeved aloha shirt with boots on, he looked ridiculous. But there was a new vulnerability
to him. The wind tossed his hair around like dried grass.
“Fine, tell me,” she said.
“Can we go inside?”
Having Luke in the house again was probably not a good idea, but she was cold, so she turned and walked in. He followed. She sat at the table and offered him nothing, motioning to the chair across from her. She flicked on the lantern.
His eyes bore into her as he sank down. “Minnow,” was all he said.
“Yes?”
“You have no idea how badly I’ve screwed things up.”
“Do I really need to know?”
“I think you do.”
“Then I want to hear it all. No more of this vague bullshit. Promise?”
He reached out and pulled the large, smooth cowrie toward him and his hand covered it. “It’s a long story, so bear with me.”
Being in such close proximity to him threw her equilibrium off and she didn’t say anything.
“I studied marine biology in grad school. Orcas, to be specific. And later I worked with a team in the San Juan Islands for
eight years studying and documenting their migration patterns. I loved them as much as you love your sharks. But then there
was an accident.”
He paused and wiped his eye and Minnow wasn’t sure if there was a bug in there or he was crying.
“We were out on a rough day,” he continued, “like this, only way wilder and bitter cold. I was driving and there were three
of us. Me, my research partner Sandra and an intern who wasn’t any good in the boat. He was always distracted and hanging
over the edge and generally unaware of his surroundings, no matter how often you tried to teach him. I didn’t want him with
us, but Sandra was his adviser and thought he could learn. We were looking for a pod of orca and Jimmy must have seen something,