Moon over Maalaea Bay (12 page)

“It looks like you didn’t listen to me,” Snake hissed. “You wrists are bleeding again, Snow White.”

Jennifer frowned at his new name for her.

“Puzzled, are we? You shouldn’t be, Snow White. You always knew that someday your prince would come.” Snake expelled a breathy laugh as he rolled her body onto an area rug covering part of the floor.

“We can do this the easy way or the hard way. I’m going to roll you in this carpet and move you to another room. If anyone sees you outside, into the water you go. Mr. James’s orders. So I suggest you stretch out like a stick and be very still.”

Another room might offer more possibilities for escape. She had found nothing here. And the window of opportunity was rapidly closing.

Jennifer stretched out her legs.

Snake rolled her in the carpet, slung her over his shoulder, and carried her out the door.

The combination of the tape over her mouth and the carpet pressing against her face sent her pulse pounding as panic assaulted her rational mind. Jennifer’s rapid breathing through her nose accelerated. Each breath was shorter than the previous one, like the length of unburned fuse trailing from the emotional bomb that would soon send her into a claustrophobic cataclysm.

When she lost it, Snake would drop her on the deck and the carpet would unroll. Her exposure would give James an excuse to drop her in the water. Jennifer exerted a strength of will she didn’t know she possessed to defuse the panic attack. She forced her respiration to slow to long, equal breaths. She willfully made her body relax from its rigid state and prayed she could retain enough sanity to endure her confinement in the carpet coffin for a while longer.

Snake stopped. Then came the sound of a door opening. He moved again.

It grew darker inside the carpeting. She smelled stale cigarette smoke.

He dropped her.

She braced for the impact with the floor. Instead her body bounced on a bed and spun around twice as Snake pulled the carpet from her body, nearly rolling her onto the floor.

With her head swimming, Jennifer lay on the bed in a dim room that reeked of cigarette smoke. She sneezed.

“Sorry if I’ve offended your delicate sensitivities,” Snake hissed, “but all of the nonsmoking rooms have been taken.”

The awful odor in the room and the sense of evil Snake produced threatened to take whatever was left of her breakfast. Jennifer fought the nausea, not wanting to give him the satisfaction of seeing how much he had disturbed her.

He gripped her upper arms, pulled her onto the floor, and then released her. “Now let’s see what we might need to remove from the premises.” Snake scanned the room then stopped, his feet beside her head.

Jennifer followed his gaze to the wall.

“Mirror, mirror, on the wall… Sorry, Snow White, but your mirror has got to go. Wouldn’t want you to hurt yourself before Prince Charming arrives. In about fifteen minutes I get to give you away to him. Nothing fancy, just a simple little ceremony. Then it’s off on your honeymoon.” Snake laughed a breathy laugh as he pulled the mirror from its wall mounts, carried it out, and closed the door behind him.

Unless Snake was just taunting her, fifteen minutes was all she had if she ever wanted to see Lee again. Jennifer rolled onto her stomach and pushed her forehead into the floor. She needed her hands in front of her to make any progress.

Jennifer pulled her knees under her. She rocked backward into a kneeling position. With hands behind her, she surveyed the room for anything she could use to cut through the restraints. She spotted a heavy ceramic ashtray on a nightstand by the bed.

Footsteps sounded at the door. She prepared herself to roll prostrate on the floor again, but the footsteps stopped. She waited. The feet shuffled occasionally, but the person did not walk away. Evidently she had a guard outside. The guard would complicate things. Now she must worry about making any noises.

I’ve only got about ten minutes.

She folded her body against her knees, straining to pull her two hands around her rear to the front side. They wouldn’t go. She extended her arms and pulled downward with her wrists using all of her strength. She toppled onto the floor on her side, sweating profusely. It wasn’t working.

At this point she would have gladly traded her shapely figure for one of those ‘60s beanpole models. Once again she felt the sting of sweat around her mouth as she struggled to return to the kneeling position.

Please, Lord, show me how to do this.

Jennifer took a deep breath and tried to relax her entire body while she released all of the air in her lungs. She rocked back and forth, took another breath, and rocked back as the last of it left her lungs.

Her hands slipped around her seat and caught behind her knees. She was almost there.

More footsteps sounded outside. There were voices. No matter, she couldn’t stop now. She toppled onto her side, slid the ankles restraints as high as they would go on her wrists, and worked her feet, one at a time, through the restraining bands.

The silhouette of the guard appeared on the curtain covering the cabin window. It didn’t move. Maybe he would remain in his spot near the door. But how long would it be until they checked on her again? If they saw her progress, they might drug her.

With the fear of drugs came more adrenaline and more strength.

Standing on her bound feet, Jennifer pulled the tape from her mouth and waddled to the nightstand, where she grabbed the ashtray. It was made of a heavy ceramic material. She waddled to the bathroom door and wrapped one layer of hand towel around the ashtray. She raised it above her head and smashed it onto the corner of the sink.

Only a dull thud. The towel muffled the sound, but it also softened the blow.

Jennifer positioned the ashtray at the precise spot she wanted to strike and carefully raised her hands, like a golfer’s backswing, to a position high above her head.

Please help me do this.

Using all of her strength, Jennifer smashed the ashtray onto the sharpest edge of the sink.

22

From Lee’s vantage point at Waipuilani Park, he could see that all the vessels were either moving through the bay’s shallow blue waters looking for whales or were headed from Maalaea to another destination. Less than twenty minutes after leaving the store at Maalaea, Lee had eliminated Maalaea Bay from consideration.

He left the beach and strode to his car. He pulled out Katie’s map and scanned the Wailea area. There was a parking lot with beach access on the southern edge of the Grand Wailea Resort.

He left the park and drove south towards Wailea.

In about ten minutes, he passed the shops at Wailea and then the Grand Wailea Resort. The road turned to the right and climbed a hill. Near the top Lee saw the beach access sign. He turned in and grabbed a parking spot being vacated by an older couple.

After maneuvering into the undersized space, he glanced at his watch. An hour had passed since he told Katie and Granddad they needed to find the yacht. He had only an hour left if they were going to meet the timetable he had set.

Lee grabbed his binoculars and trotted down the path through the park. He climbed over a grassy knoll and stepped onto a paved beach trail about one hundred yards south of the big resort. To his left, about two hundred yards away, volcanic rock jutted out into the water. Wailea Point. He jogged towards it, passing several slow walkers on the trail.

After reaching the point, Lee stepped off the trail onto an undeveloped area evidently used by the more adventuresome tourists to walk down to the lava outcropping at the water’s edge. With his naked eye, he scanned the water from south to north. From this vantage point he could easily see from Molikini up to Kihei, his remaining area of responsibility.

Lee raised the binoculars and began a systematic search for anything resembling an anchored yacht.

One vessel large enough to qualify as a yacht was anchored two hundred yards south of Wailea Point, on the northern edge of a popular snorkeling destination called Turtle Town. Several smaller catamarans were anchored there, surrounded by the bobbing heads of snorkelers. It was a good place for a boat to anchor and yet remain relatively inconspicuous among the numerous other boats that stopped for periods of time for snorkeling.

Lee explored the yacht with his binoculars for a few minutes. A man sat at a table on the rear deck. A tall slender man seemed to be at his beck and call. Another man occasionally appeared on deck. He was shorter and stockier. There were three cabins on the visible side of the yacht. Probably three more on the other side.

Did one of them hold Jennifer? He prayed his observations would provide enough clues to answer that question.

On a small point a quarter mile to the south, two men stood looking seaward. They also seemed to be watching the yacht with binoculars. But perhaps they were only watching the snorkelers or turtles.

Lee moved behind a six-foot-high bush lining a portion of the trail and maneuvered into position to watch the two men without being seen by them. When he raised his binoculars for a closer look at them, they were gone.

Lee’s cell phone rang.

“Lee, it’s Katie. We finished looking around Lahaina and didn’t find anything.”

“Where are you now, Katie?”

“We’re a few miles south of Lahaina, headed your direction. Granddad’s driving and he’s really got a lead foot. He says to tell you we’ll be there in about twenty minutes. Any calls from Peterson or the Maui police?”

“No, nothing.” Should he mention the yacht? It was too soon to be certain, but they all needed some encouraging news. “But I may have found the yacht.”

“Granddad, Lee thinks he found it.” Katie’s voice rose in pitch and volume.

“Granddad wants to know where the yacht is anchored.”

“Tell him it’s a little south of Wailea Point, at the edge of Turtle Town.”

Lee waited while Granddad talked with Katie.

“Granddad wants you to meet us at the Kihei boat ramp. He thinks we need to get close to the yacht to check it out and, if we have to, intervene to prevent them from selling Jennifer.”

“Getting in close is a good idea. We can’t call Peterson with a false alarm. We have to know we’ve got the right boat when we call, or a lot of bad things could happen. The intervention part…we’ll play that by ear.” If that scenario started to unfold, he would have Katie removed immediately.

“I turned on the speakerphone,” Katie said. “He heard you and agrees. His cousin rents boats at the Kihei ramp and owes Granddad…big time. So he’ll have one ready for us by the time we get there.”

“Great. I know where the boat ramp is. I’ll be there when you two arrive. Tell Granddad he needs to use his lead foot.”

“The speedometer says seventy-five, Lee. You should see this road, twisting and winding above the ocean. I don’t think—”

“He’s got the idea, Katie. I’ll see you in a few minutes.”

Lee stood beside the boat ramp parking area tapping out a snappy rhythm with his foot when Granddad’s rented car turned in. He glanced at his watch. Less than thirty minutes left on Lee’s self-imposed two-hour deadline.

They needed a fast, seaworthy boat to get five miles down the coast in ten minutes. But he’d looked at the sign at the marina, and those babies rented for 140 dollars per hour. Lee glanced out across the water as a moderate breeze ruffled his hair. It was early afternoon, and the trades were picking up. The choppy water would slow them down even more.

He could call Peterson in a few minutes and tell him about the yacht, even if they hadn’t verified that it was the trafficker’s vessel, but if that drew Peterson away from another important lead, Lee might regret his decision for the rest of his life. No. They needed to do this part of the investigation on their own.

Grandfather parked. He motioned for Lee to follow, then he and Katie ran towards the boats in the marina. By the time Lee caught up with them, a short Asian man was handing keys to Granddad. The man pointed towards a small catamaran with two large outboard engines on the back. The boat looked tailor-made for their purposes.

Five minutes later, Granddad had maneuvered the boat out of the marina, and they were skimming the choppy aqua-blue water at better than forty miles per hour.

They still had four or five miles to go. “Can this thing go any faster?”

Granddad responded with his lead foot.

The boat surged ahead, throwing Lee into the back of the boat. Spray flew all around them cooling the heat from the sun while creating small rainbows that appeared and disappeared at the whims of the mist and the angle of the sun.

At this speed, they would be nearing Turtle Town in less than five minutes. Lee glanced at Katie, unbuttoning her blouse. It flew into the back of the boat and she unzipped her shorts. “Katie, what do you think you’re doing?”

“Don’t worry. This is my swimsuit underneath. Oh yes…when Granddad talked to him on the phone, his cousin said the snorkeling gear is in the bin under your seat.”

So Granddad had thought this through already. They could pretend to be snorkeling Turtle Town and get close to the yacht without tipping their hand. He looked at Granddad, smiled, and gave him thumbs up.

Granddad responded with a heavier lead foot.

The choppiness of the water had decreased over the past mile. He scanned the sea around them then looked up at the mountain. They were entering the lee of Haleakala, an area where today the trade winds were impeded by the big mountain. Good. They’d be able to see more while they were in the water than if the swells were larger.

“Where’s your swimsuit, Lee?”

He glanced up at Katie and his breath caught in his throat. Standing there in her two-piece swimsuit, long, blonde hair flying in the breeze, she was a stunning beauty. She would bring a continuous stream of guys to their house. His smart, courageous future daughter was as beautiful as her future mother. Jennifer and he would have their hands full—

Jennifer.

Everything was predicated on saving her. Otherwise, he could lose Katie, too.