Chapter 20
Mustang looked at his watch for what seemed like the tenth time.
The Fish Tales was late. He shouldn’t be as worried as he was…
but for some reason, he couldn’t help but feel as if something was very wrong.
Their charters ran like clockwork. In the past, on the rare occasion Elodie was going to be late, she called him.
She had the disposable phone he’d given her and always carried it with her.
The signal was sometimes shitty out on the ocean, but she’d always managed to get through.
His sixth sense had never failed him before, and Mustang didn’t feel at all bad about pulling out his phone and disturbing Kahoni on his day off.
The man had given him his number before he’d been deployed and told him to call anytime.
Maybe Kai had contacted his boss and let him know they were having engine trouble or something.
If anything was wrong with the boat, Kahoni would know.
“Hello?”
“Hi, Kahoni, this is Scott Webber, Melody’s boyfriend.”
“Aloha, Scott. What’s up?”
“I’m at the dock to pick up Melody, but the boat’s not back yet.
I was wondering if you’d heard from Kai about any engine trouble or anything they might be having?
Or maybe their guest wanted to stay out longer?
” Mustang asked, looking for any reasonable answer as to why the boat hadn’t been back at the time it was supposed to be.
“Really? That’s strange. Hang on…I’m gonna patch Perry into the call.”
Mustang waited impatiently for the second boat owner to be added to their discussion.
“Perry?”
“I’m here,” the other man said.
“Scott, you still there?” Kahoni asked.
“Yes.”
“Okay, so Scott says the Fish Tales isn’t back yet. Have you heard from Kai?” Kahoni asked Perry.
“No. Not today. Give me a second and I’ll check the GPS tracker.”
Mustang sighed in relief as he paced in front of his truck. He hadn’t realized the owners had a GPS onboard, one that could be tracked, but he shouldn’t have been surprised.
He waited impatiently as Perry worked on pulling up the location of the boat on his computer.
“That’s weird,” he said.
Mustang stopped walking. “What’s weird?” he asked.
“It’s showing the Fish Tales is at Ko Olina Marina.”
Impatient, Mustang asked, “Where is that?”
“Well, it’s out by Barbers Point. You’re at Ala Wai Harbor down by Waikiki, right?” Perry asked.
“Of course I am, that’s where the boat left from and where it’s always returned.”
“Shit, what the hell is our boat doing out at Barbers Point?” Kahoni asked.
That was what Mustang wanted to know as well. He hadn’t received any calls from Elodie saying there had been an emergency or a change of plans regarding where they were going to dock.
Something was terribly wrong—and he needed to find out what. “I’m headed there now,” he told the men.
“I will too,” Kahoni said. “Although, I’m on the other side of the island at my daughter’s birthday party, so it might take me a while.”
“I can’t leave my kids home alone,” Perry said. “I need to go over to the neighbors’ and see if anyone’s home and if they can watch them. But I’ll be there as soon as I can.”
“Stay in touch,” Kahoni told Mustang.
“I will,” he promised, then hung up. He climbed into his truck and immediately dialed Aleck’s number.
“Yo, what’s up?”
“I need you and the rest of the team to meet me at Ko Olina Marina.”
“Why? What’s wrong?” Aleck asked, immediately going into SEAL mode.
“I don’t know exactly. Elodie’s boat wasn’t at their normal harbor when I got here and when Perry tracked it, it’s all the way across the island at a harbor they’ve never docked in before.”
“Shit, okay, I’ll call the others. You been able to get ahold of Elodie?”
“No.” Mustang’s response was short and to the point.
“Fuck. Don’t panic,” Aleck said, and Mustang figured he was speaking to himself, as much as he was his team leader.
“It’s Columbus,” Mustang said as he drove way too fast toward the interstate.
“We don’t know that.”
“Yeah, we do,” Mustang countered. “Get Pid on this. See what he can find out. We haven’t had any pings on Columbus or his capos. Elodie didn’t sense anything out of the ordinary, and neither have I. If this is him, or more likely someone from his family, they’re better than we assumed.”
“I’m on it. Don’t do anything crazy when you get to that marina,” Aleck warned.
“No promises,” Mustang told his teammate. “If Elodie’s been hurt, someone’s gonna fucking pay.”
“Yeah, they are,” Aleck said. “No one fucks with one of our own. We’ll see you soon.”
Mustang clicked off the Bluetooth and gripped the steering wheel tightly with both hands. This was bad. He knew it. Call it instinct or intuition. But he knew whatever he was going to find on that boat wasn’t going to be good. He just prayed he wouldn’t find Elodie’s body.
It took longer than he wanted, even going fifteen miles an hour over the speed limit. But when Mustang pulled into the parking lot of the Ko Olina Marina, it was chaos. An ambulance was parked haphazardly in a handicap spot near the front of the docks, and there were six police cars there as well.
Mustang ran up to where the cops were blocking access to the dock.
He could see the Fish Tales at the very end of the dock—with a rope tying it to a lamppost. Definitely not normal docking procedure.
“That’s the boat my girlfriend was working on,” Mustang told one of the police officers. “What’s going on?”
The man looked remorseful, and Mustang’s heart just about stopped beating. A stretcher was being pushed down the dock toward them, and he couldn’t tear his eyes from it. The officer lifted the yellow police tape and the paramedics pushed the gurney under the barrier.
Mustang looked down and saw a man lying on the stretcher. Kai. He was both relieved and freaked the fuck out at the same time. “Kai!” he called, but the police officers held him back from getting too close.
Kai’s head turned, and he said something.
The paramedics immediately stopped pushing the stretcher toward the ambulance and motioned for the officers to let Mustang move closer.
“Where’s Elodie?” he asked, not remembering to use her fake name.
“Jumped,” Kai said weakly. “Steven shot me in the back. I pretended to be dead…heard him taunting her. Said he was gonna kill her. She jumped overboard. I passed out before I found out what happened though. I’m so sorry…”
Mustang put his hand on Kai’s shoulder. “I’m gonna find her,” he told the man. It was a miracle Kai had survived a point-blank gunshot to the back, and he prayed they’d get another miracle and find Elodie was still alive as well.
The paramedics decided he’d had enough time to talk to their patient and wheeled him away.
“Sir? We’re gonna need some information on your girlfriend,” one of the officers said, but Mustang was done with them.
His blood ran cold thinking about Elodie jumping overboard to try to escape the man sent to kill her.
Had he succeeded? The likelihood of her being able to get away from a man with a gun, in a boat like the Fish Tales, while she was swimming in the ocean was unlikely.
But he wasn’t going to rest until he knew the truth.
Elodie hated the ocean. She’d joked about it often enough. How she was scared of sharks and killer whales, and the most she’d do was walk in the water on the beach. Hell, she wouldn’t even go in past her knees, no matter how much Mustang cajoled.
But he couldn’t think about that now. He had to concentrate on finding her. Then he’d deal with the man or men who’d dared try to take what was his. And there was no doubt in his mind, Elodie was fucking his.
The police officers were calling after him, trying to get him to stay and answer their questions, but Mustang had spotted Midas and the rest of the team arriving.
He didn’t waste any time in letting them know what he’d learned. “Kai was shot in the back, ambushed. But he’s alive. He told me Elodie jumped overboard to try to get away from the guy. That’s all I know.”
Jag looked up and nodded. “Surveillance cameras. I’ll work with the staff to access them and see who got off the boat.”
“I’ll call my friend who took us fishing and see if his boat’s available for us to use,” Aleck said.
“I’m calling Tex,” Slate said in a low, hard voice.
“What’s he gonna do?” Midas asked.
“He’s gonna find a way to end this Paul Columbus guy once and for all,” Slate said. “We all know he knows people who will be able to make sure that once we find Elodie, this shit doesn’t happen again. Should’ve done it before now and this wouldn’t have happened.”
Mustang agreed with his friend. He’d been lax with Elodie’s safety. It wasn’t that he hadn’t believed she was in danger, he’d just thought that after so much time had passed and when nothing seemed amiss, that maybe the mob had given up on her.
He should’ve known better. It wasn’t a mistake he’d make twice.
But then, he might not have a chance to make a mistake like that again. If Columbus’s goon had managed to kill her, he’d have lost the best thing that had ever happened to him.
Mustang’s phone rang, and he looked down and saw it was Perry calling.
He didn’t want to talk to him right now.
He needed to be doing something other than standing in a parking lot with his thumb up his ass.
He needed to be looking for Elodie, but he also knew the other man was worried about his boat, Kai, and Elodie as well, and had a right to know what was happening.
“Did you find them?” Perry asked as soon as Mustang answered.
He summed up the situation as best he could, and ended with, “But from what I can see, the boat is fine.”
“Fuck the boat,” Perry spat. “I can’t believe that asshole shot Kai—and that Melody jumped overboard! What do you need from me?”
“What do you mean?”
“Kahoni and I aren’t idiots. We know you’re in the Navy, and Kai let it slip that you’re SEALs. I know you’re on this. What can we do to help?”
Mustang couldn’t help but be impressed with the man.