Wraith (8 page)

"We’ll get out here for a minute," Matt
announced, turning off the main road into a residential area. "It’s called
La'ie Point; you’ll like it."

I wasn’t worried about Matt being a serial killer.
Not really. But as he proceeded to drive through a tight maze of small houses
and tiny residential alleys that looked like they couldn’t possibly lead
anywhere, I felt just enough of a flicker of apprehension to let my eyes stray
behind me.

Zane lounged casually across the back of the sedan,
his hands locked behind his head, his feet stretched out on the seat cushion.
Dressed impeccably in a tailored black business suit, crisp white shirt, and
polished shoes—complete with opulent watch, mirror-lensed sunglasses, and the
unmistakable bulge of a shoulder holster—he was the perfect image of a secret
service agent. Or at least the Hollywood version of one.

His expressionless face swiveled my direction. He
nodded.

I turned quickly back around.

"Rain’s coming," Matt announced, bringing
the car to a halt in a parking area by the vast ocean that had appeared out of
nowhere. "That’s one thing you’ll get used to out here—blue sky one
minute, pouring rain the next. Makes life interesting, I guess. You want to
walk around?"

I opened my door and stepped out.

The weather had indeed changed dramatically. The sun
was gone, occluded by one of the many clumps of low-hanging purplish clouds
that drifted rapidly across the sky. A wicked wind blew in off the water, which
had turned from azure blue to a smoky gray. There were no giant waves here,
just a vast, heaving soup of whitecaps that broke and splashed as far out as
the eye could see.

I grabbed my jacket as I shut the door, cutting off
what was possibly a wind-muffled "I told you so," coming from the
back seat. My chivalrous escort—the live one—came quickly around the car to
help me get the jacket over my shoulders.

"I’ve always loved this place," Matt said
cheerfully, not the least affected by the ominous feel to the weather. He led
me up to the edge of the lot, where gravel and ground changed abruptly to
irregular mounds of lava rock. Ahead of us was a spit of land that led far out
into the ocean like a pier, and which already hosted a couple pickup trucks and
some locals with fishing gear. The view from the end would be fabulous
indeed—nearly 360 degrees of ocean, with the mountains of the windward side
clearly visible in the distance.

Unfortunately, it was starting to sprinkle.

"Check this out," Matt said, tugging my
arm to the left and leading me out onto one of the lava mounds closer to the
car. I kept my eyes down as we went; the surface was like walking on mangled
iron—full of pits, sharp curves, and jagged edges—and my flip-flops were less
than ideal for the task. But before I could sprain an ankle Matt stopped and
pointed out toward the ocean. "Isn’t that cool?"

He pointed to a long ridge of rock several hundred
feet offshore, which rose from the ocean to tower an indeterminate number of
stories in the air. Right through its center was a giant, gaping hole.
"Tsunami punched that out," Matt explained. "All in one day.
Wham
.
Wind and water have got some pretty serious power out here, huh?"

I hugged my jacket tighter around me. The view was
beautiful, but I couldn’t shake a certain apprehensive feel about the place.
Maybe it was the violence of the churning water, or the clearly impending
cloudburst. Maybe it was just the shadows. There were an awful lot of them
here, which made them harder to ignore. Over Matt’s left shoulder, a man in
overalls and no shirt perched precariously on the edge of the cliff, reading a
letter. Half a dozen fainter people in Polynesian garb milled about all over
the rocks, and some hippie types were making out on the land spit, right next
to the secret service guy.  

I blinked. The latter was Zane, of course, taking in
the view. As I watched, he glanced back at me, then gestured dramatically out
toward the open sea. I looked in the direction he pointed, and my heart
skipped. "Look!" I said excitedly to Matt, pointing myself. I had
only seen the movement for a split second, but I had watched enough nature
programs to recognize it. The flash of bold black and white that had appeared
above the churning gray water was nothing less than a breaching whale.

The animal disappeared again for several seconds,
then treated us both to an encore. The fluke of its tail rose high above the
surf, then crashed back into the water with a mighty flick.

"A humpback!" Matt said excitedly.
"Wow. I’ve never seen one of those before!"

"Really?" I asked. "Are they
rare?"

"Oh, no," he answered honestly.
"Other people see them all the time. I’ve just never gotten lucky. Thanks,
Kali. That was pretty cool." He threw an arm around my shoulders and gave
me a friendly squeeze.

"You’re welcome," another male voice said
flatly.

Zane was standing right behind us. "Rain’s
coming, by the way," he muttered.

The words were hardly out of his mouth before the
deluge began. Rain poured down in a sudden torrent as if the sky had opened up
like a sieve, and Matt and I couldn’t help laughing as we hauled back over the
lava rocks as fast as we could—which was not fast at all—to get back to the
relative safety of the car. We arrived dripping wet, but fortunately our
jackets had taken the brunt of it.

"Don’t worry," Matt assured, starting up
the car again and turning on the heater. "The sun will be out again before
we get to Chinaman’s Hat. Promise."

I smiled. Seeing the whale had changed the
atmosphere of the place considerably. Perhaps, in sunlight, I would have found
La'ie Point perfectly pleasant. It was hard for me to tell, sometimes, which
emotions were my own and which I was picking up from something—or someone—else.
The fact that I could feel what the shadows were feeling was an aspect of the
curse I had always resisted, and at times tried to deny altogether. It was an
invasion I found hard to tolerate.

With the car heater running, we dried out and warmed
up quickly, and within a few minutes the skies has lightened and we were cruising
down the highway with the windows cracked again. 

The windward side of the island was gorgeous. Being
created by volcanoes, Oahu had no shortage of mountainous terrain; but I could
see that its most dramatic peaks were along the eastern coast. Here, sharp
points of green and gray stood up acutely, their tops buried in misty purplish
clouds, their sides swooping nearly straight down to the water’s edge. The road
hugged the narrow coastline with spectacular views in either direction, keeping
me well entertained while Matt—who admitted he knew virtually nothing about the
area—told me more about his high school and why I should go there.

Zane remained in the back seat, but said nothing;
and when once or twice I glanced at him he seemed to be absorbed in thought.

Matt stopped the car again near Chinaman’s Hat, an
interesting cone-shaped island that popped out of the water a couple hundred
yards offshore, just begging for a child’s game of "king of the
mountain." His prediction had been correct. The sun was shining again.

"So," he said, settling next to me on top
of a picnic table. "What do you think of The Rock so far?"

"Love The Rock," I said without
hesitation.
If only I could move Kylee and Tara here with me.
My phone
had been buzzing with texts all afternoon,
but I had been waiting for a
moment alone to answer them.

"I was thinking," Matt began, looking at
me hopefully, "are you hungry yet? One of my favorite restaurants is right
around the bay, in Kailua. If we eat an early dinner now, we can skip most of
rush hour in Honolulu. We might not make it back to the North Shore by eight,
though, if you still want to see the high schools and everything."

I worked hard to suppress a grin. My eyes floated
involuntarily toward Zane, who was leaning against a palm tree a few feet away.
He removed his sunglasses and threw me a pointed look.

Told you so.

I didn’t believe that Matt had any real romantic
interest in me—twenty minutes with the football-playing wrestler had shown me
that he was a guy who could take his pick where girls were concerned—and to
date, I had never been anybody’s pick for anything but a gal pal. I was too
tall, too bony, and—according to the undisputed queen of flirtation, Kylee—too
unwilling to feed a guy’s ego with mindless adoration.

Matt, I assessed, was a genuinely friendly enough
sort to enjoy spending an afternoon with "the new girl" for a change
of pace, if nothing else. But his interest would end there. If I did happen to
run into him at school in the fall, I would probably be long since forgotten.

But one never knew.

And I
was
enjoying his company so far.

"Sure," I answered brightly. "I’ll
just call my parents and give them an update. What kind of restaurant?"

"Oh, they’ve got everything," Matt
answered with a smile. "I like the
kalua
pig—that's barbecued pork,
by the way—but you can get burgers, spaghetti, whatever." He sprang up.
"I’m making a run to the restroom. Meet you back at the car?"

I nodded, and he headed off.

Zane looked after him, scowling.

"What?" I demanded. "You don’t
seriously think he’s dangerous, do you?"

Zane looked thoughtful for a moment, then came and
sat down beside me. "No," he answered. "He’s a nice enough
guy."

There was a melancholy tone to his voice that
disturbed me. A gust of wind blew off the water and whipped my hair around my
face; predictably, it didn’t stir his curls at all. I frowned. His transparent
ripples seemed suddenly more prominent.

"Then what’s wrong?" I probed.

He looked at me with surprise. "Nothing’s
wrong," he said more cheerfully. "I mean, other than being dead, of
course. But I’m used to that. Never mind me."

I eyed him suspiciously. "Liar. There is too
something wrong. And it doesn’t have anything to do with Matt, does it? You’ve
remembered something else. About your mother?"

"Wow," he said brusquely, sliding off the
table top. "You’re pretty scary. I think I’d better put these back
on." He replaced the sunglasses, then gestured toward the car. "After
you. Unless, of course…"

"What?"

"Unless you’d rather I left the two of you
alone." I could no longer see his eyes, but his tone had turned serious.
"I will, you know," he continued quietly. "If that’s what you
want."

My mind spun. It was what I
should
want.
Wasn’t it? 

I opened my mouth to answer, but nothing came out.
No-nonsense
Kali
, I reminded myself firmly.
Just tell him the truth
.

"Actually," I said matter-of-factly,
moving toward the car. "I kind of like having a personal bodyguard."

I was walking a step ahead of him, but threw a quick
glance over my shoulder.

He was grinning again.

I could see why Matt, who had only moved to Hawaii a
couple years ago himself, was attracted to the restaurant. A local hangout
popular with military types from the nearby Marine base, it offered a
comfortable blend of Hawaiian traditional and down-home American ambience. A
Polynesian-styled wooden deck, complete with as-yet unlit tiki torches, led
into a cozy dining room and bar that could have been plucked from anywhere in
generica, except that the giant picture windows on one side offered a
pleasantly tropical view of ducks floating on a meandering canal. Matt and I
settled into a table by the window where, much to his delight, I joined him in
ordering the
kalua
pig. After discovering that a good friend of his was
working in the kitchen, he excused himself to go say hello—and to see if he
could wheedle us some extra pig meat.

Matt hadn’t been gone three seconds when Zane, whom
I hadn’t seen since we parked the car, appeared in his empty chair. The secret
service outfit had been abandoned in favor of a Hawaiian shirt and shorts, but
the funky sunglasses remained perched on top of his head, nearly buried by
blond curls.

"He likes you, you know," he announced
matter-of-factly.

I shrugged. "As a friend, maybe."

Zane's eyebrows lifted. "Not if he can help
it."

I shifted my eyes away from him. There was a
compliment in there somewhere, but the whole topic made me faintly
uncomfortable. As did talking to thin air in a crowded restaurant.

No one seemed to be paying any attention, but just
in case, I pulled out my cell and held it close to my ear. "What did you
remember about your mother?" I asked, changing the subject.

He stared at me a moment, clearly aware of my
tactics. "I don’t want to get into it now. But it wasn’t about my mother,
it was about my father."

"What about him?" I asked eagerly.
"Is he… still alive?"

"No," Zane answered. "He’s not. So,
how do you feel about this Matt character? What do you really know about
him?"

I exhaled. Zane’s tone was breezy enough, but I had
the feeling that he was covering—that he was, in fact, quite upset about
something. Something other than Matt. "What does it matter to your
problem?" I challenged. "We were talking about your parents."

He thought a moment. "They’re kind of
related," he said vaguely. "Let me ask the question another way. How
much does Matt know about you? Does he know how many fouettés you can
turn?"

I blinked at him, lost. "And that matters…
why?"

The green eyes that looked back at me were suddenly
awash in sadness—at least for the few seconds I could see them before he
replaced the mirrored sunglasses.

"My father was murdered, actually," he
said flatly. "Shot at point-blank range by an ex-girlfriend as he walked
out of a bar with his current one."