Dark Lava: Lei Crime Book 7 (Lei Crime Series) (31 page)

He peeled the truck awa
y from the curb. “Stevens was attacked when he opened the gate to leave the house. Asian man, apparently Anchara’s husband from Thailand. The suspect McGregor and Chun have been looking for.”

“
She was already married?” Lei knew she shouldn’t be focusing on that irrelevant detail, but she couldn’t seem to help it. “What?”

“
The perp was armed with a knife. Stevens and Keiki are alive, but injured.”

Lei
’s eyes went so wide that they felt strained. She turned to her ex-partner. “Both of them?”

“
According to Ferreira, who was at the scene, Keiki saved Stevens’s life. He was already injured from yesterday’s raid, had a hangover, a sprained ankle, and was unarmed. A sitting duck.”

“
Is he okay?”

“
Don’t know. About either of them.”

“
Oh God,” Lei said, and felt a return of the nausea that had plagued her on and off throughout the flight. “I’m gonna barf.”

Pono didn
’t slow down. Instead he handed her a McDonald’s bag, an empty fries carton still in the bottom. “Here.”

She put her face in the bag, sucked some breaths unt
il the nausea passed. The smell of French fries was oily and thick.

How quickly things can change,
she thought.
Nothing is for certain, especially when someone wants you dead.

They pulled into the emergency area of Maui Memorial, and the truck had barely
stopped moving when Lei leaped down and ran inside to the intake booth, shoving people aside and banging her badge against the window. “Lieutenant Stevens. Where is he?”

The startled receptionist rattled her keyboard, searching, and looked back up. “
He’s in surgery. Third floor. You can wait outside.”

Lei was standing in front of the elevator, tapping her toe, when Pono arrived. He threw a meaty arm over her shoulder. “
He’s going to be okay. Ferreira says his wounds were bleeding a lot, but he didn’t think it was terminal.”

Lei shook her head. “
And Keiki?”

“
She was taken to Kahului Animal Hospital.”

“
I’ll call.”

Looking up the number and calling gave Lei something to do as the elevator arrived and took them to the third floor. Lei was able to find out
that Keiki was also in surgery, having the knife removed from her side. They had no further report on the dog’s progress.

Lei
’s clothes felt too tight, her shoes pinching, her heart pounding. The doors opened on the third floor, a barren square of chairs and a stack of battered
National Geographic
and
People
magazines marking the waiting area. No one was at the nurse’s desk behind a glass window.

“
We just have to wait,” Pono said, squeezing her shoulder. “Sit. Breathe.”

Lei sat and breathed, putting her hea
d down between her knees, her mind racing. There was so much she didn’t know. There was nothing she could do right now but pray. She folded her hands and rested her forehead on them, murmuring the Lord’s Prayer over and over.

Pono worked his phone on the
other side of the room, finally coming back. “I’ve got news for you.”

“
What?”

“
Gerry and Torufu tracked down the two suspects we’ve been trying to nail for the Norwegian’s murder. Guess where they were?”

“
No idea.”

“
Hiding out at Manuel Okapa’s house. Apparently, the three of them did the Norwegian.”

“
Talk about misdirected anger.” Lei frowned. “Now they’ll spend the rest of their lives in prison. How is Stevens’s recruit, Mahoe, doing?”

“
He’s recovering. Gonna be okay.” Pono sat down beside her. “Things seem to be wrapping up on the
heiau
case. Marcus Kamuela brought in Councilman Muapu, who is denying everything, of course. But Esther Ka`awai has also given her testimony, and she even knew the location of the artifacts on Oahu. The team went and found them all. So he doesn’t have much of a leg to stand on.”

“
Good,” Lei said, pressing her fingers into her eye sockets. “God, let them be okay, please.” She knew her father would want to support her, but she lacked the energy to call him and tell him this latest development—it was too hard to even speak the words.

Swinging doors opened and a doctor came through, holding a chart. “
Leilani Texeira?”

“
Yes?” She sprang to her feet and almost keeled over, spots circling in her vision. Pono steadied her as the doctor approached.

“
Michael Stevens is your husband?”

“
Yes.”

“
I’m Dr. Salvato. Your husband’s going to be okay. I had to order a transfusion because he’d lost a lot of blood, but the knife wound was shallow. It cut along his ribs under his arm, about six inches in length, but didn’t penetrate any organs. His arm was also cut, but no permanent damage.”

“
Oh, thank God.” Lei had to sit down again.

The doctor frowned. “
You all right?”

“
Yeah, just relieved.”

“
He’s going to have a few more scars to add to his collection, is all. We strapped up his sprained ankle, too.”

“
When can I see him?”

“
Now. He’s still sedated, but comfortable.”

Lei followed the doctor, but glanced back at Pono. Her former partner made a shooing motion with his fingers, telling her to go on.

The first thing she noticed was how pale Stevens was. His tan lay over his skin like a layer of paint. His cheeks were hollow, his dark hair mussed, and his long frame barely fit on the bed. She felt a surge of love so powerful it made her gasp.

The doctor hun
g the chart on the wall and nodded that she could approach. She took one of the molded-plastic chairs, dragged it over next to Stevens, and picked up his hand—the one with the wedding ring on it, still shiny and new.

He opened his eyes. “
Lei?”

“
I’m here.” Her throat closed over the words, and she cleared it. “You sure took your time picking me up from the airport.”

His mouth quirked up on one side. “
Got held up by a ninja.”

“
I heard you’re adding to the scar collection.”

“
Glad that’s all it is. If it weren’t for Keiki, you’d likely be a widow right now.”

She lifted his hand and lay it against her cheek for a long moment. She pressed a kiss into his palm. “
I love you.”

He curled his hand away, lifted it to stroke her hair. “
Missed you. Come here and kiss me.”

She stood from the chair, and leaned down to give him a peck on the lips. “
There.”

His hand, still tangled in her hair, tightened. His arm flexed, pulling her down onto him. She lost her balance, sprawling across him, and he gave a hiss of pain
—but now his hand used the grip on her hair to turn her head, and his mouth met hers with hungry intent. Their kiss felt as necessary as CPR, and as life giving. Lei’s body went slack and her eyes closed in surrender, even as she smelled the sweat of near-death on him—and maybe because of it.

“
Ahem.” A throat-clearing from the doorway.

Lei scrambled off of her husband and turned to face McGregor, his florid face impassive. Chun, his silent shadow, was the one to look a little embarrassed.

“We need to interview your husband regarding the attack,” McGregor said.

Lei sat back down on the chair and picked up Stevens
’s hand again. “Interview away.”

They fetched more chairs. Stevens worked his bed control to sit up straighter, and Lei gave him some water.

“When were you planning to tell me Anchara already had a husband and that he was the one who’d killed her?” Stevens asked. Even with the anesthesia, Lei felt the tension in him, the anger. She squeezed his hand in both of hers.

“
We didn’t know that,” McGregor said. “We did know that a man matching the description of your attacker was the one to accompany her into the motel. We tracked the shroud and knew that he’d purchased the one that was found under her body—and two more. We’ve been looking for him ever since.”

Lei sai
d, “I know where another of those shrouds turned up—draped over my aunt’s body in California. That leaves one shroud still unaccounted for.”

“
We heard about your aunt from Captain Omura,” McGregor said. He made eye contact with her, and it seemed sincere. “Very sorry for your loss.”

“
Thank you,” Lei said. Stevens’s hand tightened on hers in support.

“
Getting back to the attack. Tell us a blow-by-blow of what happened.”

Stevens went through the harrowing moments in detail. Lei looked down at his hand,
a strong, pleasing shape that she never tired of looking at. She concentrated on the tiny hairs on the back of it, the long fingers, the raised map of veins over muscle and bone. She thought of all that hand could do and shut her eyes on imagining it cold and dead, never touching or loving her again.

Focusing on Stevens
’s hand helped screen out how close she’d come to losing him and her beloved Keiki to a jealous maniac with knife skills.

Lei frowned, tuning in to catch the part of Stevens
’s story where the man had identified himself as Anchara’s husband. “Michael. This means you and Anchara were never legally married. Didn’t you check that out?” she asked.

“
She told me she was being sold in marriage against her will to a man who was a known abuser in her village. That’s why she fled and took the cruise ship job, which turned out to be a sex slavery ring. She said she’d never been married before, and I believed her. There was no way to check any of it.”

“
Doesn’t change anything, I guess,” Lei said, but somehow it did. Stevens was hers. Hers alone, and always had been.

“
Back to the suspect. We have him down at the station, and we’re looking for an interpreter, because he speaks limited English. What we want to know is how he knew where to find Anchara and how he knew where your home was. Could he be the one behind the shroud threats? Or do you think there’s someone else involved?”

Lei told them about Terence Chang and the longstanding feud with the Chang family. “
There’s an open FBI case on Chang. I just checked with Special Agent Marcella Scott, who’s working it. She said they haven’t been able to pick anything up. He hasn’t left the Big Island, and they even have surveillance on his Internet activities, without anything new. He’s my best guess at who has the means, motive, and opportunity to go against us this way. He could have found this man, bankrolled his trip, fed him all the information he needed to kill Stevens and Anchara, paid for the nurse who planted the bomb at my aunt’s house—all from the comfort of his back bedroom.”

McGregor and Chun looked at each other. “
We’ll check out the rest of this and let you know what we get from Mookjai with an interpreter,” McGregor said. “But he’s lawyered up already, and he’s a foreign citizen, so we’re not hopeful. We agree someone else fed him information to help him navigate a strange country this well. He had a burner phone on him, and only a few numbers on that. We’re running them down, but so far they’re just other burners.”

“
So I’m guessing he gets deported and nothing happens to him,” Stevens said.

“
We’re going to fight to keep him here and prosecute him for Anchara Mookjai’s murder, but the evidence tying him to that crime scene is circumstantial. We can get him on attempted murder in your case.”

“
On a positive note, you’re cleared of all suspicion,” Chun said. “I thought that might brighten your day. You two will be parents soon.”

“
Yeah,” Stevens said. “I guess so.” He tightened his grip on Lei’s hand.

They left, and Stevens gave her hand a tug. “
Come back over here.”

“
Shouldn’t we talk about the case? I’m not sure we’re out of danger with another shroud floating around out there. And Anchara! She was already married!”

“
I’m a bigamist,” Stevens said, grinning. Lei gave him a little punch. The whole thing was terrible and tragic, but somehow Lei could tell Stevens felt as she did—their vows were only to each other now. “I know why she did what she did—she was desperate. But I never would have married her if I’d known she was already married to Mookjai.”

“
I know.” Lei let him pull her in for another kiss, filled with promises of what they’d be doing when they were able. Finally, she sat back down on the chair. “I need to go check on Keiki.”