Ben had only monosyllabic responses to any of Storm’s attempts at conversation on the way back to Haleiwa. He did direct her down the street where Nahoa lived, and they crawled past his dark, closed cottage. Two newspapers in their waterproof plastic bags sat on the front step where the paperboy had tossed them. It was obvious no one was home.
Storm dropped him off at the townhouse where he and Stephanie lived and declined a polite, but perfunctory invitation to come in. On the way from Haleiwa to Laniakea, she stopped at the Food Town and bought a few grocery items, but her mind was occupied with whether she’d been as moody as Ben, Goober, and Sunny when she was their age. She’d probably been worse.
At sixteen, she had endured the Big Island police department’s scrutiny for allegedly cultivating pakalolo, which she was definitely doing; they just hadn’t located her patch in the sugar cane fields—yet. Aunt Maile and Uncle Keone didn’t doubt her activities for a minute, so they shipped her to O‛ahu, Miles Hamasaki’s household, and a much stricter high school. At seventeen, she was depressed enough to flirt with the idea of ending the struggle like her mother, with a bottle of pills. If it hadn’t been for the Hamasakis, Aunt Maile and Uncle Keone, she’d have checked out.
With those thoughts, the beach cottage felt empty and lonely. She poured Yoshida’s Teriyaki Sauce over a chicken breast and settled it on the grill, then went back inside to call Hamlin.
“Don’t you ever check your phone?” he asked her.
Sure enough, there were four messages on her mobile phone. “I didn’t hear it ring. But I was running around quite a bit.”
“Were you back in the mountains?”
“Yes, Nahoa’s girlfriend, Sunny, shares a house with some other surfers in Pupukea. The signal is probably weak back there.” She went on to tell him about how Nahoa hadn’t shown up for a date Monday, so she and Ben had gone to talk with Sunny. She also filled him in on her cousin’s reputation with women, the upcoming tow-in surf contest, and Stephanie’s fears.
“When are you coming back to town?”
“Could I talk you into coming out for the tournament?”
“When does it start?”
“From what Stephanie told me, the holding period started today and the surf is coming up. If the swell is big enough, they’ll start the qualifying round Thursday or Friday afternoon.”
“I’ve got two depositions on Friday, but I could leave town around five. Come back and we’ll drive out together.”
“I want to hang around and see if I can find Nahoa. I’m worried about him.”
“You need to talk to the police.”
“I did. I talked to Brian Chang.” She told him about Matsumoto’s injuries and how she wanted to ask some of the locals if he’d received a package like Nahoa’s.
“Storm, I worry about you out there alone, asking questions.”
“Chances are, Nahoa pissed someone off over a woman. He’s probably lying low for a while. I’m mostly just going to surf. If I’m lucky, I’ll see him. At least I’ll see some of his friends.”
“Be careful, okay?”
“I will and I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”
The next thing on Storm’s list was to touch base with Leila and see if she’d been able to pick up Fang. She felt much better after talking to Hamlin, and she unwrapped a musubi she’d picked up at the supermarket. When Leila answered the phone, Storm’s greeting was muffled by rice, Spam, and nori.
“She’s already curled up with Pua,” Leila assured her. They made their usual jokes about why Pua, Leila’s grizzled English bulldog, let the fat cat into her bed.
“Pua can’t see well enough to chase her out,” Leila said.
“Nah, Fang’s like a warm blanket. I should know.”
“And she puts up with Pua’s snoring.”
When Storm hung up, the house felt considerably less lonely. Hamlin would be with her in two days, and the grilling chicken smelled heavenly. After dinner, she’d curl up with a good book and go to bed early so she could make dawn patrol.
Storm slept well until the crash of the surf and the watery morning light, filtering through the narrow blinds, woke her around six-thirty. Wind ruffled the gauzy white curtains and brought the smell of salt and sea into the bedroom.
She brewed a pot of coffee, just to warm up in the cool, damp morning air, and downed a large mug while she waxed her board and pulled a heavier-than-usual rash guard over her head. She still shivered, and contemplated that she’d probably never be able to surf where the water temperature dipped below seventy. Some hardship.
The morning was calm and the water glassy and smooth. There were already a couple of people out at the Laniakea breaks, but no one she recognized, so she tucked her board under her arm and strolled down the beach toward the break surfers called Himalayas. She set her surfboard in the sand and stood to observe for a few minutes.
A tiny rider cut away from a curling wave that looked twice his height. Good move, Storm thought. But that wave was a monster. She picked up her board; the waves were too big for her here, but the morning was beautiful and she’d find a smaller break down the beach a bit. Even if she ended up just going for a stroll, the sky above her was the hue of a fine Tahitian pearl, and it met the horizon in a hazy blue line, where the sun glowed the color of pale hibiscus. In those moments, Storm knew why many of the North Shore population eschewed the bigger salaries and faster pace of Honolulu.
Storm sighed with contentment and picked up her board. She’d heard Ben and some of his friends mention the Puaena Point break, and though she thought the waves might be too big for her, she would enjoy the walk and she might see someone she knew.
Sure enough, when she climbed over an outcrop of lava rock and down the other side to a flat sandy area, she saw Goober and Gabe, ready to head out into the water. Goober saw her and waved. He seemed in a better mood than when she’d seen him the day before.
“Storm, you going out?”
“You think I can handle it?” She squinted at the waves, where they broke about two hundred yards off shore.
“Sure, you can let the big ones go by,” Gabe said. “Get off on the shoulder, or duck-dive under them.”
Storm strained to see the surfers already on the waves. They looked smaller than the ones she’d seen at Himalayas, but she needed to get a perspective of a person’s height against a wave’s in order to judge whether the break was beyond her ability. And even that was no guarantee, because wave height varied within a set.
Storm did not want to get clobbered by a hefty wave that was closing out. She’d been tumbled in the washing machine before, lungs convulsing with oxygen deprivation. She’d also seen surfers lunge to the surface for air, only to have their surfboard, attached to them by the rubber leash, boomerang back to the water and slice the gasping person with a sharp skeg. And then there were the boards that got snapped in two as easily as ice cream sticks.
A couple of women were on the waves, and Storm judged the wave to be about their height. She suppressed a little shiver. “I guess I’ll go,” she said.
“You can do it. It’ll be good for you,” Goober said.
Storm shook her head, but he didn’t see it. Good for her? Sounded like the kind of things guys say to each other before they tried some stunt that would either kill them or give them bragging rights, with nothing in between.
Gabe seemed to pick up on her apprehension. “There’s a channel to our right, and the current will carry you out. The waves don’t break as hard in there. Follow us, but stay on the inside.”
In some circumstances, Storm would have been offended by Gabe’s suggestion. It was sort of like saying, stay out of our way once we get out there. But this time, Storm’s jitters told her it was a good idea. She had no need to go where the break was biggest, and if it weren’t for the two women she could see out there, she wouldn’t have considered following Gabe. Even Goober had shaken her confidence lately.
She plunged in after the guys, and gulped when the chilly water surged around her. There was a stronger current than she had ever felt, and she vowed to be extra attentive. Though the trio waited out a set of four or five big waves before they paddled through the break, going out wasn’t as bad as Storm had feared. When they got to the wave lineup, she looked back at the shore and aligned two objects, a chunk of lava that rose from the sand and a lifeguard stand, so that she’d have a point of reference. A couple of rock formations on her left would serve to make sure she wasn’t being carried out to sea by a rip tide, often undetectable in surging waters.
As Goober had instructed her last weekend, Storm paddled onto the shoulder of the first wave of the set and let it go by. He and Gabe left her there and headed fifty yards to the right, where a small group of men sat on their boards, facing the open ocean and waiting a turn on a wave. The two women Storm had seen were only about twenty yards out from where she sat, and Storm recognized Sunny, in tiny bikini bottoms and a long-sleeved turquoise rash guard, as one of them. Sunny hadn’t seen Storm yet, because she glanced continuously toward the knot of men nearby.
She’s searching for Nahoa, Storm thought, and squinted against the rising sun to try to identify the surfers. Though she couldn’t make out any of them except Gabe and Goober, she was certain Nahoa wasn’t among them. She shivered, then lay on her board to paddle out of the way of Sunny’s friend, who was stroking hard toward her. Storm swooped over the curl as the young woman rose to her feet. Storm saw the flash of white teeth in her delighted smile.
Storm didn’t see Sunny waiting for the next ride, and guessed the two women must have taken off together. Though it was hard to be sure with the water rising and falling around her, Storm assumed she was alone and in position for the next wave. Storm sat up, ready to kick her board around, and saw a flash of turquoise above a rising wall of water. She lay back down and moved to the side to watch Sunny’s takeoff.
The woman was good. Those long, rock-hard legs were in an easy right-angle crouch, urging the short board at an angle across the face of the wave. Storm couldn’t help but feel delight and admiration at the woman’s strength and finesse. It was a big wave, whose vortex and thundering speed sucked air and water droplets back at Storm with a force that made her duck her head and squint. She exhaled with relief that she hadn’t taken it, yet Sunny rode it as if she could handle twice its size.
Storm’s relief was short-lived, though, because a black-clad rider that was hard to see shot out from the side, screaming at Sunny that she was in his way.
“Hey,” Storm yelled.
That was before she realized that the surfer in black was Gabe. He had taken off on the wave a couple of seconds after Sunny, who had the right of way. It was a blatant snake.
Friends often rode the same waves, and safely negotiated their turns in opposite directions so that no one would be startled, or worse, injured. But in the split second after Storm saw Gabe, she knew he was deliberately bearing down on Sunny. It was a game of chicken, and anyone in Sunny’s position with half a brain would bail out, rather than face a high speed collision in turbulent, roiling water.
But Sunny hadn’t seen him yet, and the howl of wind and crash of the wave kept her from hearing his approach. Storm couldn’t tell if he was shouting at her, but she wasn’t going to wait around to see.
“Sunny,” she shrieked, “watch out!”
Some high note of panic in Storm’s voice carried over the rumble of tons of water, because Sunny glanced behind her. Just as Gabe reached her, she launched herself from her board.
Gabe looked back at Storm in surprise, which caused him to lose his balance and windmill his arms in an attempt to stay upright. Screaming a string of foul names, he tumbled backward and was swallowed by the breaking water.
Storm snorted in disgust. That act was just what Nahoa had warned her about, and she’d bet that he’d warned Sunny, too. However, from watching Sunny’s smooth expertise, Storm would have bet there wasn’t much the young woman hadn’t already seen on the waves.
Sunny surfaced a couple hundred yards from where Storm sat. A smaller wave, probably the last of the set Sunny had taken, rose behind Storm. Storm looked around for other surfers, lined up her board, dropped onto her stomach, and dug into the water with deep, strong strokes as the wave sucked her into its crest.
Though smaller than Sunny’s, the wave had excellent form and curled above Storm’s head. Storm crouched, bending her legs as pistons, using her quadriceps to bear her weight and urge the board along its face. She was glad she’d had some experience over the last week on powerful North Shore waves, because she’d never had surf curve above her before. It was a left-hand break, which was perfect for her stance, and she let the board slow so that the water arched above her.
Jesus, she was actually in a tube. She couldn’t believe it, and a moment of claustrophobic panic came over her. No, don’t think about it. You can hold this position, you’re strong, she told herself. And she did. She spurted out the side of the curl, stood upright with an excited whoop, jabbed two fists into the air, and tumbled exuberantly into the water.
When she popped to the surface, her excitement was squelched by the scene before her. Gabe and Sunny were thirty yards from her, and Sunny was ripping mad.
“I’ll have you thrown off the ASP, you gutless fu—.” A surge of water garbled some words after that, but Storm got the message.
So did Gabe. “Stupid bitch.” He gave a cruel laugh. “No one gives a shit what you think. Not even Nahoa hung around for you.”
“You jerk, you can’t even catch a wave unless it’s got a woman on it.” Sunny’s voice quavered, though Storm couldn’t tell if it was with tears or rage. Maybe both.
Gabe narrowed the distance between himself and Sunny, which bothered Storm even more than Gabe’s cruel words. Sunny was a strong woman, but if he got physical, she’d have real problems. Storm began to swim toward the two.
Gabe was within ten feet of Sunny, and Storm was still twenty feet away, with a good view of both of them. Sunny sat on her surfboard, arms crossed over her chest, and glared at Gabe. “Keep away from me, asshole. Always.”
Storm wouldn’t ever want Sunny mad at her, but she wondered why Gabe stopped without saying a word. He appeared to crouch into the water. Storm could see Sunny shift her weight, almost poise herself.
“Gutless bastard,” she hissed at him.
And from under Gabe shot a sharply pointed, fiberglass missile. It was his surfboard, which he’d held underwater so that it would fly out of the water with the force of its own buoyancy. He’d aimed it right for Sunny’s face.
“No!” Storm yelled.
Sunny had known what was coming, though, and she turtled. Gabe’s board clattered on top of her upside down one, which made Storm wince. Sunny was safe underwater, but the clatter verified the violence of the act; both boards were going to need Mo‛o’s ministrations after this.
Sunny popped to the surface, her eyes wide with fury and loathing. “You really are a pathetic wimp.”
By this time, Storm was beside her, and she grabbed Gabe’s board to keep it from doing any more damage in the surging water. Sunny’s eyes flicked to Storm’s and Storm saw relief soften the blonde’s face before she turned back to her attacker.
“You’ll pay for this, you gutless suckerfish.”
Both women stared at Gabe, who glared with unabashed hatred at the two of them. He now treaded deep, blue water, a quarter-mile from shore. No way would they return his board, which he’d just used as a weapon. Storm nudged Sunny’s arm, and without saying a word, Sunny crawled atop her board and both women headed for shore, towing the extra board.
After a few minutes of paddling, Sunny steadied her breathing and looked over at Storm. “Thanks. He could have killed me.”
“Yeah, that was scary. You’re right—he’s a coward.” Storm shook her head. “But you’ve got balls for telling him out there.”
“He needs to be told.”
“You told Gabe, but you didn’t want to tell Goober when he was being a jerk.”
“Goober’s different.”
“Oh.” Storm was about to ask why, but her thoughts returned to the maliciousness of Gabe’s act. If his well-aimed board had hit Sunny as he’d intended, she would have been knocked cold, and probably drowned. Storm remembered Nahoa’s warning about keeping an eye on Gabe. Could Ken Matsumoto or—God forbid—Nahoa have had an altercation with him?
She and Sunny had been making their way toward shore and were now close enough to see a group of eight or ten gathered where jagged black lava rocks formed a small cove. It was an odd place for people to assemble, and some of them were scrabbling for footholds as they grappled with something in the water.
The women paddled toward the group, but Storm had a bad feeling about this particular assembly. She glanced at Sunny from the corner of her eye and saw Sunny did, too. The woman’s normally golden skin was ashen. Both women slowed their approach, glanced briefly at each other, and then away. Neither wanted to confront the dread in the other’s expression.