Chapter 17
Zara wasn’t sure why she’d called on Jim—Lincoln. She was still furious with him. But the kids were more important, and when she’d arrived at her friend Marley’s house and found Eddie, but no sign of Mia, her internal alarm bells had rung.
Marley hadn’t noticed Mia leaving. Eddie and his buddy Zack were deep into a game on Zack’s Switch.
A flurry of phone calls later, she’d really panicked. Mia wasn’t answering. Marley wasn’t answering. None of Mia’s friends were answering. That was when it hit her—had they gotten the crazy idea to take advantage of the storm surge by hopping on their surfboards?
When the Kumquat sputtered every time she tried to start it, she’d dropped her head to the steering wheel and nearly cried.
Her phone had pinged just then with a message from the Royal Leilani. A guest had turned in a schoolbook with the name Eddie Morrissey written inside. Her supervisor had put two and two together.
She was fired.
Fucking wonderful. This time, she did cry.
Where was the limitless well of optimism that had carried her through all the challenges that went with being a con man’s daughter? Right now everything felt impossible. The weight of taking care of two kids, of making a living in this town, all of it felt like too much.
Then she gathered herself together. All that mattered now was finding Mia. She’d figure out the rest later.
She thought about that tank of a Mercedes and how it had charged through the water flowing down the street like Chitty Chatty Bang Bang, so unbothered.
Lincoln owed her. He’d lied to her, he’d deceived her, he’d even put her in danger, if you considered Buzz Lightyear and a blond woman in a cream pantsuit dangerous.
So she’d set aside her anger and called Lincoln.
An impressively short time later, that same Mercedes pulled up behind the Kumquat. Holding her rain jacket over her head, she dashed into the passenger seat.
“What beach?” Lincoln asked, skipping the niceties. She appreciated that. She hadn’t called him to resume their friendship—or whatever it was. All she wanted was a ride.
“Her favorite is Banyans.” She gave him the directions and they drove in silence while he navigated the hazards of streets turned into waterfalls and gusts of wind blowing fallen coconut fronds past the car.
“Is Eddie okay?” he finally asked.
“Yes. He didn’t even know Mia was gone, he was so caught up with that Switch.”
More silence. Geez, this was awkward. Well, what else could you expect when you lie to someone about who you really are? She stared out the rain-streaked passenger window. There were very few other cars on the road. Most people were being smart and staying inside.
The tense silence between her and Lincoln made her twitch. She didn’t like keeping her emotions inside like this. She was more of a “let it out so we can move on” woman. But she couldn’t see how there could be any moving on from this.
“Has Mia ever done this before?”
“Well, she’s a Morrissey, so doing impulsive things is part of her DNA,” she snapped, feeling so irritated that her skin itched. She didn’t know if she was madder at Mia or at Lincoln.
“Impulsive…or reckless?”
Oh, now he’d done it. No matter how pissed she was at anyone in her family, never would she allow someone else to criticize them.
That was her job. “You have a lot of nerve calling anyone else reckless. Isn’t it reckless to pretend to be a whole other person?
No, it’s not just reckless. It’s dishonest. It’s cruel. ”
“Cruel?” Astonished, he looked over at her, then quickly back to the intersection he was navigating. The lights were all blinking red now, and the few cars were trying to figure out who should go first.
“Yes, cruel. You kissed me. What if I’d fallen in love with you? You were playing with my emotions.”
When he looked at her again, she added quickly, “Of course I didn’t.
I’m just saying, you had no consideration for that possibility.
What were you up to, anyway? Slumming it as a gardener so you can see how the other half lives?
Sorry, I mean the other ninety-nine percent?
When did it switch from being half to being one percent, by the way? ”
“I wasn’t doing that, no matter what the math is.” His deep voice held a note of amusement, which made her even more furious.
“It’s all a joke to you, isn’t it? That’s billionaires for you.
Regular people are just playthings, NPCs, we don’t really matter.
” She’d just learned that term, non-player characters, and it had explained a lot about how some people viewed the world and their fellow human beings.
“I’ve seen it so many times at the resort.
The upper echelon don’t even notice the staff.
We’re just background players, we don’t count for anything. ”
When he spoke again, she heard something surprising in his voice. Hurt. “I never saw you like that. Not once. Not even a little. Ever.”
Despite her anger, she believed him. And maybe, beneath her fury, was some hurt of her own.
No one wanted to be lied to. Also, she felt a little stupid.
Shouldn’t she have realized that this man wasn’t who he said he was?
He was a terrible gardener! And all her theories seemed completely ridiculous.
Lincoln Kerr, an ex-con? Lincoln Kerr, an alien?
She wanted to laugh, so badly, because that was how she usually dealt with things. But she didn’t want him to think she’d forgiven him. She hadn’t.
“I’m sorry I deceived you,” he said. “Extremely sorry. Do you think you can forgive me?”
“Are you going to tell me why you did it?” He didn’t answer for long enough that she threw up her hands. “Then no. I don’t forgive you.”
His hands clenched on the steering wheel, his knuckles flashing white.
Maybe it wasn’t such a good idea to have this conversation while they were driving through floodwaters.
“Zara, I swear to you, I wish I could. I’d tell you everything if I could.”
“Aren’t you a billionaire? Ruler of the universe and all that? Can’t you do anything you want?”
“It’s not that simple,” he said through clenched teeth. “There’s danger involved.”
“What danger?”
He didn’t answer. She flashed on the Japanese badass in hale twelve, the one who had said he worked for Lincoln Kerr. “Are you talking about the Japanese security guy?”
Again, no answer.
“Jim—uh, I mean Lincoln—at a certain point it’s more dangerous for me not to know what’s going on. When Mia went missing, for a moment I thought—”
He swung his head toward her. “You thought what?”
“That it had something to do with you, and the mysterious people chasing after you, people who know who I am and where I live.”
“Fuck.” He stared at her while the Mercedes veered to the right.
She reached over and grabbed the steering wheel. “Careful!”
Turning his attention back to the road, his jaw clenched hard. “Fuck,” he repeated.
She saw that the possibility of Mia’s disappearance being connected to him really shook him up. That made her heart soften toward him. He cared about her siblings, and that went a long way.
“Look, it’s very unlikely to be that. Mia has always wanted to surf a storm surge, and I always said no. She’s been acting out lately so this is probably more of the same. We’re almost to Banyans now so let’s just focus on finding Mia.”
He gave a tight nod and focused all his attention on the turnoff she directed him towards. But they got no further than a few blocks before a police barricade stopped them. An officer waved them down.
“Beaches are closed,” he told them after Lincoln rolled down the window. Zara could practically hear the “dumbasses” that came silently after that.
Zara leaned across Lincoln to flash her most endearing smile. “Hello, Officer, thanks for working out in the storm like this. We’re looking for my little sister, we think she might have gone down to check out the surge.”
His expression changed to something more grave. “You better hope not. We don’t have the manpower to chase after anyone foolish enough to surf in these conditions. Our search and rescue teams are overloaded as it is.”
Her stomach clenched. He was right. If Mia had gone out on the water and gotten into trouble, there might not be help available.
Images of Mia tumbling off her board, getting knocked unconscious, or swept away by currents raced through her mind.
Her mouth went dry and all of a sudden she couldn't get a word out. She tried, but managed nothing but a wheeze. Blood pounded in her ears. She readied herself to bolt out of the Mercedes and run to the beach if the officer wouldn’t let them through.
As if from a million miles away, she saw Lincoln hand something to the officer. He said a few words in a low voice, something Zara couldn’t hear through the drumbeat of her fear. Whatever he said did the job, and the officer moved the barricade just enough so they could nudge their way past.
“What…did…”
“Don’t worry about it.” He grabbed her hand, and she clutched it tight. The warm contact grounded her and she felt her head clear a bit. They drove toward the shore.
Banyans Surf Spot was located along the shoreline below a condo complex that was built around an iconic banyan tree.
Usually it was nearly impossible to find a free parking spot at Banyans, but today it was completely empty except for one vehicle.
The sight of it made her heart clench. It was the vintage-model Jeep Cherokee that Mia’s friend Dave borrowed from his parents.
He was the only one of her friends who had his license.
And it was empty.
She stumbled out of the Mercedes and raced down the beach.
All the condos were closed up tight, and the branches of the banyan were swaying and moaning in the wind.
The waves were much bigger than normal, A-frames at least fifteen feet high, topped with white curling foam.
The surfer in her salivated, despite the driving rain. The sister in her screamed out loud.
“Mia!! Dave!”
She shaded her eyes to keep the rain out of them and stared at the relentless parade of swells barreling toward the beach. She didn’t see any surfers out there, or stray surfboards, for that matter.
Was that good or bad? Had they been swept out to sea? Drowned?
A deep voice called her name. She spun around to see Lincoln striding toward her, his hand on Mia’s shoulder. As soon as their eyes met, Mia ran across the wet sand toward her. She flung herself into Zara’s arms and sobbed.
“Dave…Dave got hurt.”
She instantly switched into mama-bear mode. “Where is he?”
“He’s lying down on the back seat of the Jeep. I tried to drive it but I got stuck in the wet sand. I was going to run for help but then I saw Jim and that car.”
Zara didn’t waste any breath scolding Mia for surfing on a day like this. She wasn’t even wearing her rash guard. They all dashed to the Jeep and Mia opened the door to reveal poor Dave bleeding from a gash on his head. A towel wrapped around it was nearly soaked through with blood.
“I told him it was too dangerous!” wailed Mia. “As soon as I saw the waves I said, no way. But he went anyway. I had to paddle out and rescue him.”
Zara’s blood went cold as she pictured the scene. “I don’t want to hear any more details until we get Dave to the hospital. Come on, we’ll have to carry him.”
She and Lincoln took care of that, while Mia bopped alongside them clearing away obstacles. Flying branches from the kiawe trees, cracked coconut husks, that sort of thing.
Lincoln didn’t say a word of concern about some Hawaiian kid bleeding all over his fancy Mercedes. Another point in his favor, she supposed. They raced back to the barricade, where he spoke another few words to the police officer.
This time she saw exactly what he gave the man—a hundred-dollar bill.
“You bribed a police officer?” she hissed at him as they raced toward the emergency room of the Kona Community Hospital. After a pause, she added, “thank you,” in a much meeker voice. Who was she to take the moral high ground here? Her father was in jail for much worse than that.
She’d pay him back, she vowed. As soon as she got another job.