Chapter 3 #2
We all spun, hands going to our weapons, but it was just Hiro. Tangaloa and I relaxed sooner than Red or Aftermath did. They made their way down the windshield to the hood, where they sat cross-legged.
I didn’t know if Hiro had a genetic disorder that made them so small or that was just the way they were.
They were four-ten and couldn’t weigh more than a hundred pounds.
Their long, black hair was up in a ponytail and they had intense green eyes.
I was fairly certain their father was Japanese and their mom was Columbian.
I crossed my arms over my chest, trying to act like I wasn’t praying to Maui that Hiro didn’t steal my entire life savings again.
If they were, for lack of a better adjective, normal, I wouldn’t hesitate to have tracked them down and demanded my money back.
But there was something about that child-like face that made it impossible for me to get violent with them.
It would be like hitting a puppy. A very deviant, insanely flexible, genius-level brain puppy.
I cleared my throat. “Hiro.”
They just stared at me before turning their head to Tangaloa. “Did he shit his pants?”
“Almost,” my no-longer-best-friend answered. Either he’d told Hiro I was here, or he’d confirmed it when Hiro had asked.
I couldn’t hit Hiro, but I had no issue punching Tangaloa. He grunted, wheezing, when my fist came into contact with his solar plexus. “Fuck, you, man,” he huffed out, dropping down to one knee.
I ignored him and turned back to Hiro, who thankfully looked amused. “It was just clothes? That was it?”
They nodded. The hood of the black leotard outfit they were wearing was pulled down around their neck. “Clothes. Honestly, probably the most boring heist I’ve ever been involved in.”
Tangaloa stood back up. He kept his hands to himself, but his eyes promised retribution. I’d have to keep an eye on him for a while, but it was worth it. “Did you look at the boats?”
Hiro nodded. “Did that first. They’re empty, but they both have a lockable door on their UTD storage.”
“UTD?” Aftermath asked, getting out of the SUV. Red also exited from the other side.
“Under the deck,” Hiro, Tangaloa, and I answered in unison.
“Jinx,” Hiro laughed, pointing at me. “Now you have to give me all your money.” A cold sweat appeared on my forehead and my balls practically shriveled at the concept. But then Hiro added, “Oh, wait, you already did that.”
I scowled at them, to which they blinked their eyes so innocently I would have let them get away with murder. Fuck.
“Incoming,” Red said, holding up his tablet.
We all turned to the right in time to see the other two white box trucks coming down the main road. They disappeared under the ridgeline for a moment and then came back into view when they made the turn into the storage yard.
The first truck parked so it was grill to grill with the other truck, essentially blocking the one with all the boxes of clothes in.
The last one made a quick turn and then backed up on the other side of the second truck.
We all lifted our binoculars to watch as the last truck’s rolling door was lifted in the back.
Well, that explained where all the Bloody Scorpions were. I silently counted as they exited, getting somewhere around twenty-five before they were too mingled to keep counting. All were wearing cuts, had far too much leather on for their current climate, and were armed in one fashion or another.
Some went inside the storage building, clasping each other on the back or swiping a smoke. The others created a line from the back of the second truck to the storage facility’s door. Weird, I thought, until I realized it wasn’t just a line, but an assembly line.
The rolling door opened, exposing a herd of crouching women.
They were all bound with their hands behind their backs, blindfolded, and gagged.
As far as I could tell, none had slippahs, and every single one was in just her underwear and bra.
My grip on my binoculars tightened as I saw one Bloody Scorpion hop into the back of the truck, forcibly pick a woman up and hand her down to the next man, who passed her onto the next, who passed her onto the next, and so on, until she disappeared inside the building.
Again and again, they handed the women down the line.
When they got to the fourteenth, I realized it wasn’t a woman this time, but a very tall and skinny man. He too was bound, gagged, and blindfolded, and he couldn’t have weighed more than a hundred and ten pounds soaking wet.
The only small saving grace was that they were all adults. No kids. I was pissed, and I was furious, that the Bloody Scorpions had come to my island and were stealing my people, but there was a part of me that was exceedingly grateful that no kids appeared to be in that truck.
Two other men, both shorter than the first but just as small, were also passed down. Unlike with the women, when the Bloody Scorpions touched the men, they tossed them onto the next man like he was diseased. They touched and mocked the women, holding onto each one for several extra seconds.
But the last one wasn’t tossed out. Instead, the man inside the truck hefted her onto his shoulder before hopping out.
My eyes landed on her ass as she squirmed in the man’s grip.
He said something that I couldn’t hear and slapped her panty-covered cheeks hard. Her legs kicked. Her long, tanned legs.
Legs that I knew… No, it couldn’t be. Fear like I’d never known seized my heart like a lariat and pulled tight.
I was walking forward, as if that could get me a better view from my distance. The man hadn’t just slapped her ass. Now he was fondling it. I knew that ass. Motherfucker. No! No! No!
“Wait, a minute,” I heard from behind me. “Is that…?”
It did not surprise nor anger me that Tangaloa would recognize Lu from just the back of her legs and her ass.
In the next moment, the man turned towards the storage line, carrying her himself rather than handing her off as he had done the others, and Lu’s face came into view.
Her long, thick black hair was disheveled, her dark eyes blocked from my view, and a cloth or towel was pulled tight between her lips.
“I can’t stay, Aloiki… I’m suffocating here…”
A part of me died the day Lu handed me back the engagement ring I’d given her. I refused to take it, frozen as she stood in my kitchen offering it back to me. Her suitcases were already in her car when I’d come home. She’d been waiting for me.
To this day, I don’t know which would have been worse.
Seeing her leave, or having come home to find her already gone.
At least, I’d had the chance to see her one last time, to hear her reasoning and not read it in some fucked-up Dear John letter, but I also had the image of her walking out my front door seared inside my head.
The man stepped closer to the building. Lu was flailing on her stomach, his shoulder pressed into her belly. His grimy hands were all over her.
“Stop him!” I barely heard Tangaloa’s shout.
My binoculars fell from my hands, crashing to the dirt under my feet.
I was charging towards the edge of the ridge, truly having no plan in mind other than it was the fastest way to get to her.
Strong arms wrapped around me before I got anywhere close to the edge.
I fought like a madman. Kicking, punching, scratching, snarling…
Anything and everything to get the massive arms around me off.
“I’m going to marry you someday…”
Rage tasted like ash in my mouth. My slippahs skidded in the dirt, unable to find traction as I tried to move forward.
One slipped off as I was forced backwards.
I didn’t care. It could burn. It could all burn.
They didn’t understand, I had to get to her.
She was in the hands of that fucking Bloody Scorpion.
He was getting closer to the door. Only steps away! I had to get to her!
Voices around me made little sense, though I was fairly certain I heard Tangaloa say Lu’s name.
He wasn’t hers to say her name. She was mine. All mine. Always had been, always would be.
What could she possibly be doing back here? She’d taken a job on the Mainland. Or, that was what she told me anyway. Had she been here this whole time? So close and yet so far.
Agony pierced my heart like a spear when that fucking storage facility door shut, closing Lu inside with all those Bloody Scorpions. How many had there been? Twenty-six, twenty-seven? And she was in just her underwear, bound, helpless…
Somehow I was wrangled into the back seat of the SUV. The vehicle shook, but it wasn’t until Tangaloa reached between the driver and passenger seat to sucker punch me in the face that my battle paused.
But did not stop.
It would never stop.
Not until she was safe.
And back in my arms.
“Aloiki,” Tangaloa snapped. “Brother, listen to me. You can’t help her. If you go charging in there, you’ll be dead before you even get a chance to find her! She wouldn’t want you to die for her. Think, brother! You need to live to save her!”
My eyes landed on that fucking door. I hated that fucking door. What was happening to her inside? What was she suffering through? Why hadn’t I burned that fucking building down before she even arrived?
A worse, gut-wrenching thought occurred to me. Had she been inside that truck when I’d been tailing it today?
I’d done a lot of despicable things in my life.
Kalea would never know that Tangaloa and I had turned her first boyfriend, who turned out to be an abusive asshole, into living chum.
I’d slit the throats of men who had walked onto sacred ground.
When my neighbor’s daughter was kidnapped and raped, I’d dug an imu pit in my field before roasting her attacker alive like a kalua pig.