Distant Echoes (8 page)

Heidi looked at her uncertainly as if she had expected Kaia to be mad. “I’ll get the oar. Can I snorkel?”

“We can both snorkel a little while.” Kaia waved to the navy boat that was monitoring Nani. She and Heidi adjusted their masks and pulled on their swim fins. “See you in the water.” Kaia rolled over the edge of the boat.

Kaia’s disappointment in Nani’s performance today left her as she entered the world she loved best. Schools of Raccoon Butterfly fish surrounded her then darted away. She spotted several Orange Bandit surgeonfish, a small school of Hawaiian Cleaner wrasse, and a Hawaiian puffer. Her favorite, the Moorish Idol, swam by and disappeared behind a lava rock. The scores of brilliantly colored fish dazzled her eyes in a display of bright yellow, turquoise, and green.

Heidi joined her and grabbed Nani’s dorsal fin. The dolphin pulled the little girl through a school of wrasse. Kaia wished she had her camera.

A shadowy movement caught her eye, and she turned to see a scuba diver swimming toward her. Dressed in a black wet suit, the man paused when he saw them. Though she was sure he was merely out for a pleasure dive, her orders were to take pictures of any divers or anything unusual. Kaia motioned to Nani, and the dolphin swerved, dislodging Heidi’s grip on her dorsal fin. Her body in torpedo mode, Nani darted past Kaia toward the diver.

Kaia pointed toward the surface, and Heidi nodded and swam to the boat. Once Kaia saw that the little girl was safely aboard the boat, she turned to help Nani. The dolphin was swimming around the man. She could see the camera would get a good look at the diver. The man spotted the camera mounted on the dolphin and swam away.

Maybe it was nothing. He might not have known he wasn’t allowed here, just offshore the naval base. Still, she wanted a look at his face in case the picture in Nani’s camera didn’t come out. Nani raced along beside her, and Kaia grabbed hold of the dolphin’s dorsal fin to let Nani drag her along faster.

Descended from a line of pearl divers, Kaia could hold her breath for four minutes, a fact she hoped would allow her to get close enough before she had to surface. The man glanced back at them then stopped by a large pile of lava rock that had fallen into the sea.

Kaia squinted through her mask. He had something in his hand. Her hold on Nani’s dorsal fin slackened as she realized the man had a dart gun. A dart zipped through the water by her head, and she let out a gurgle of bubbles. Nani paused at Kaia’s sound of distress, then shot forward and plowed her nostrum into the diver’s arm. The dart gun loosened from his fingers and drifted toward the bottom.

He turned and swam away. Too shaken to go after him, Kaia signaled for the dolphin to come to her. Nani pulled her to the surface, and Kaia drew in a deep breath of air and looked around wildly for Heidi. Her breath eased when she saw the little girl still safely in the boat. She grasped the side and rested until her limbs stopped shaking.

“Are you okay?” Heidi peered down at her.

“I’m fine.” Kaia hauled herself aboard. Her legs felt like limp seaweed. She grabbed the ship-to-shore radio the navy had given her and told the sailor on the other end what had happened. He signaled to her from the boat and spoke reassurances to her through the radio, but she glared across the water at the sailors. Where had they been when she, Heidi, and Nani were in danger?

Jesse had promised Nani would be perfectly safe. They’d both nearly been shot with the dart gun. Even worse, Heidi could have been hurt. That guy was no casual diver. She and the dolphin weren’t equipped to handle terrorists.

She dangled her fingers over the side of the boat, and Nani came to her. The dolphin bumped against her hand then chattered, her bright eyes seeming to ask if Kaia was all right. Kaia smiled and patted Nani’s nostrum. “I’m okay,” she told the dolphin. Nani chattered again then plunged into the waves.

Kaia sat back in her seat. “We’re going in,” she told Heidi. “The navy has the coordinates. They don’t need us to wait.” And even if they did, her priority was to get Heidi to safety. Kaia had no idea where the diver had gone. If he came back with some buddies, they would all be in danger.

To be fair, she knew Jesse had thought of these daytime exercises merely as training for real detection that would go on at night. That intruder was brazen to be out here in the daylight. Kaia was sure Jesse never would have let the little girl come out here if he’d thought there was any danger.

She kept an eye out for other boats as she turned on the engine and sped toward home. All she saw was a navy cruiser heading out to where she’d been anchored. They were unlikely to find anything. The diver was long gone, but maybe they could find the dart gun.

Where had the man gone though? She’d seen no other boats around. They were only a hundred yards offshore, but he couldn’t have gone ashore on base. He would have been caught by the navy.

Kaia looked up and down the stretch of Polihale Beach just north of Barking Sands. Nothing there. Na Pali stretched toward the sky just beyond the beach. The verdant green vegetation juxtaposed against the blue sky looked like a picture postcard, too beautiful to be real.

She looked the other direction. Barking Sands gave way to several contract installations. There would be no reason for any of those companies to have divers out here, though she supposed the man could have made it to a safe stretch along there.

She steered the boat toward her home dock of Echo Lagoon. It was dark by the time she and Heidi arrived, and she had to flip on her headlamps. A bonfire lit the beach outside her grandfather’s house, and she could hear the thump of drums and smell the aroma of roasting pig. The familiarity eased her tension. Safe harbor. Nothing could harm them here, not with her brothers about.

Heidi bounced on the seat. “I forgot about the lu’au! Can we still go?”

“If you promise to let me teach you to hula.”

“It’s too girly.”

Heidi was all tomboy. Kaia smiled. “You’ll be hooked before the night is out.”

H
e watched the fish in his tank. Everything he’d ever wanted was close enough to smell and taste. His imminent success should taste like the sweetest pineapple his father had ever grown, but instead it was like mashed taro—much more bland than he’d imagined. Maybe because he had no one to share the joy with. At least that’s what he told himself. Believing that was better than backing out of what he had to do.

He had no choice but to make the tally of lost lives huge. The failure had to be big—big enough to change the course of the trials. He glanced at the wall to the left. Awards his father had won surrounded a large portrait of his father. He stood and walked to the picture and stood staring
into his father’s smiling eyes. “I’m doing this for you,” he said. “You’re going to be so proud of me.”

He turned as his assistant came into the room. “What’s the status? It’s almost time.”

His assistant didn’t meet his gaze. “Remember the dolphin that arrived when the boat exploded? Lieutenant Commander Matthews has hired the dolphin and her trainer to patrol the waters with a camera.”

“So arm our divers with spearguns.” He shrugged. “One dolphin shouldn’t be hard to dispose of.” Nor would Jesse, for that matter. He examined the thought for a moment. Would there be a way to become wealthy beyond his wildest dreams
and
have the revenge he desired?

Five

K
aia had left with Heidi by the time Jesse reached the site. He peered over the side of the patrol boat into the gloom of twilight. The scent of the sea, fresh and invigorating, filled his lungs. Lights twinkled along the shore and in the canopy of stars above his head. Waves ran to the beach and lapped against the sand in a sound that soothed him. He needed soothing after the diver incident.

He had not anticipated an attack in the daylight. Could it be one of the “friendly” nations engaging in a bit of espionage, or was it the work of a terrorist group or some other rival nation? He was going to have to find out.

So far there was no evidence to indicate the disastrous missile test had been anything but a computer glitch—a glitch Lawton said he’d fixed. Jesse wasn’t sure. It seemed too coincidental that there’d been a death, a test failure, and a break-in pertaining to the missile. His instincts said differently, but the navy didn’t listen to intuition. If he recommended delaying the test, Lawton would be howling for proof. And Jesse didn’t have a shred to offer.

He didn’t care that much about the missile—the government was always working on something new—but the thought of civilians at risk bothered him. With sixty thousand residents and over a million visitors a year, there was a lot to worry about.

It was his fault his niece had been out there. Jillian would kill him when she heard about it. He’d been a poor substitute parent these past days. He needed to get his act together. Now. He hadn’t even gotten hold of Kaia’s old nanny. That would have to be the first thing on his list tonight. Donna was a little overeager in her willingness to help, but he needed someone who did this for a living.

“See anything?” he shouted to Ensign Masters.

His aide shook his head. “I’ve got divers ready to go down. The dolphin’s camera only showed the diver’s backside.” He made a cutting motion across his throat to signal the sailor at the helm to stop the engine. The boat slowed, waves lapping against the hull. The gloom made it almost impossible to see more than a few feet down, in spite of the rising moon.

“Send down the divers,” he told Masters.

Masters nodded and gave the order. Three divers dressed in wet suits fell backward into the inky water. The salty spray hit Jesse in the face, but he barely noticed. He stared into the clear water, but the shadowy forms of the divers quickly disappeared from view. One diver carried a camera mounted on his suit, and Jesse watched the monitor. The halogen floodlight illuminated the blackness about thirty feet in front of the divers. Fish darted away from them as they swam. A dolphin moved in to bump against the lead diver’s hand.

One diver moved to the seabed and picked up something. Jesse couldn’t tell what he’d found, but it obviously wasn’t a body. It seemed hours before one of the divers surfaced, but glancing at his watch, he realized it had been only half an hour.

“No divers down here, sir,” the SEAL said, saying what Jesse already knew. “Nothing but the dolphin.”

“Nani?” He was surprised the man recognized Nani.

“It had a camera mounted on it.”

He nodded. “She must have come back out. I wonder if Kaia knows.” Though Nani was free to come and go as she pleased, Jesse was astounded by the dolphin’s desire to be around people. Seaworthy Labs was doing some amazing work. He should stop over and meet the director, Duncan’s brother.

A second SEAL surfaced. “Found the dart gun, sir.” He swam to the boat and handed it up to Jesse.

At least they had that much. “Take me back to shore. I want at least six boats patrolling tonight,” he told the men. The engine roared to life, and the boat bounced along the waves, riding the swells with ease. He stepped to the bow and put his face to the wind. He inhaled the scent of the sea in the breeze. The ocean was as much a part of him as his type O blood. He felt keenly alive and alert, eager to get to the bottom of this problem.

The boat docked, and he stepped off the deck onto the pier. Sailors milled around, and he spotted Lawton, who was headed toward him.

“A patrol just found a body floating offshore,” his captain said. Lawton’s tanned face bore no expression other than grim determination. “A diver.”

“Identity?”

Lawton shook his head. “Nothing to tell who he is.”

“Where’s the body?” Jesse wanted to check this out himself. Lawton nodded toward a group of men near the beach, and Jesse went toward the huddled sailors.

The men stepped aside when Jesse arrived. He knelt beside a man about thirty-five. He was dressed in a black wet suit. The man had removed his tank and buoyancy compensator—or BC—and had unzipped his wet suit.

“Any idea what killed him?” Jesse asked the doctor standing at the edge of the group.

The physician stepped forward and crouched beside Jesse. He pulled back the edges of the man’s wet suit to reveal the diver’s abdomen. A dart was still in the man’s flesh. “You found a dart gun. Maybe ballistics can figure out if that’s the weapon that killed him.”

The more Jesse stared at the man’s face, the more he looked familiar. He bore Hawaiian features. It might be wise to have a lifelong native of the island look at him. Kaia’s face flashed into his mind.

“Get me a camera,” he told Ensign Masters. When his aide brought him a Polaroid, he snapped several photos, taking care to get only the face so it wouldn’t be too graphic for Kaia.

He handed the camera back to Masters. “
Mahalo.
I’ll see what I can find out. Call me if anything else happens.” He pocketed the pictures and headed for his Jeep. Once on the road, he pulled out his cell phone and called Duncan.

“Hey, buddy, you’ve lived here a long time. Have you ever had any day care for your kids?” Too late he realized he should have asked someone else. With Duncan’s kids on the mainland, it had to be a sore subject for him.

Duncan inhaled softly, but when he spoke his voice was still full of good humor. “Not really. My wife didn’t work.” He paused a minute. “You know, my brother’s wife is looking for work. Maybe she would have time to watch Heidi. Want me to ask her?”

“What’s she like?”

“Faye? She’s great. She and Curtis have only been married a year, but they’re nuts about each other. I think she has some kids from a previous marriage and she’s pretty congenial. I think she’d be good with kids.”

“Go for it then, if you don’t mind.” Duncan promised to get back to him by morning, and Jesse clicked off the phone and tucked it onto his belt. If only his problems at the base could be so easily solved.

K
aia closed her eyes and let the beat of the drums reach inside to the woman most people never saw. In the thrall of the drums, she wasn’t the unloved and abandoned daughter of Paie Oana, but a daughter treasured by God and worthy in His sight. The fluid movements of her hands and body told the story of her life and how God had found her. The hula healed the inner place where she was still a child crying for her mother.