The Scam (25 page)

A thick jet of water came out of nowhere and slammed into the side of the lead assassin like a battering ram, knocking him off his feet and sending him sliding across the glass-strewn floor. Before the second man could fire, the blast of water sent him sprawling, too.

Trace turned to see Kate, wielding the standpipe fire hose.

The first assassin sat upright and fired where Kate had been standing, but she'd moved to one side and pummeled him with 250 gallons per minute at a force of one hundred pounds per square inch. It propelled the assassin across the floor and out the window. He fell forty-five stories without screaming because his nose and mouth were full of water.

The second assassin dove for his fallen assault rifle and grabbed it. When he stood to fire, Kate hit him in the gut with the water, smashing him against a wall like a bug hitting a windshield. He slid to the floor, his head hanging at an unnatural angle. He wouldn't be getting up ever again.

Kate switched off the nozzle and dropped the hose. Trace rose shakily to his feet, one leg unable to sustain his weight, and looked at her. He knew with sickening certainty what he had to do. There was no other option.

“Colt Ramsey,” he said.

“Excuse me?” she asked.

“It's the name I'd like to have when you put me into the witness protection program.”

It was close to midnight when Kate let herself into her budget room in the budget motel off the Strip. She'd chosen the motel not so much for the price as for the location. She'd wanted something that wasn't in the shadow of Côte D'Argent. And she'd wanted something that was
her
normal and not Nick's. Not that she didn't love the thousand-thread-count sheets and the complimentary champagne and fruit baskets that she enjoyed when she traveled with him. It was more that she needed to re-center herself to a more grounded reality. It had been an exhausting day. Successful but emotionally draining. Everyone on her team had come through unscathed. Thank heaven for that. They'd been paid off and sent on their way, Nick included. She was never sure where he landed after their assignments were done. He could be in Los Angeles or Tibet or Rome or his house in the south of France.

She closed and locked the motel room door, flipped the light switch, and kicked her shoes off. She shed her clothes and headed for the shower, needing to wash the day's grime off her body and soul. She glanced over at the bed and saw it. The Toblerone bar. It was on the pillow.

“Hot damn,” Kate said, with a sigh and a smile.

She heard movement in the bathroom, and before she could get to her gun, Nick appeared in the bathroom doorway.

“It's a tradition,” he said. “You always get a Toblerone at the end of a mission.”

He looked relaxed and fresh from a shower, wearing only a towel wrapped low on his hips.

“This is embarrassing,” Kate said. “I didn't expect you to be here. I'm sort of naked.”

“Yeah, me, too,” Nick said. And he dropped the towel.

T
he parking lot was full, and cars were parked along the shoulder of the Kamehameha Highway for the grand opening of Harlan's Rib Shack, which was now located in the building that only a few weeks before had been Da Grinds & Da Shave Ice.

Many of the customers wore blue surgical scrubs, because they were either coming or going from the Kahuku Medical Center. The crowd also included quite a few other locals, among them Lieutenant Gregg Steadman, who sat with Kate and Jake at the patio table that had once been Alika's iron throne.

“I don't know how you did it,” Steadman said.

“I didn't do anything,” Kate said. “It was Lono Alika's own decision to walk into the FBI field office in Honolulu and confess to his crimes.”

“He did it because he was afraid for his life,” Steadman said. “He thought the Yakuza would kill him for getting them involved with Evan Trace.”

“He was right,” Jake said.

Trace had agreed to fully cooperate with the FBI in exchange for immunity from prosecution and entry into the witness protection program. Based on his testimony, law enforcement agencies in fourteen countries had arrested 230 people, all of them mobsters, terrorists, or corrupt government officials who'd used the casinos to launder money. The arrests and the closure of the Côte d'Argent casinos had a chilling effect on money laundering throughout the global gambling industry.

“What I don't understand,” Steadman said, “is how Harlan ended up with Da Grinds & Da Shave Ice.”

“The FBI discovered that Alika was using the restaurant as a front to launder his drug profits,” Kate said. “So they forced him to forfeit the property to the U.S. government, who made it available for rent pending an eventual auction. Harlan was the only applicant for the space.”

“Well, that's no surprise,” Steadman said. “There aren't any locals who'd dare move into Alika's place. They'd be too afraid of what he'll do to them when he comes back.”

“He's gone for good,” Kate said. “After Alika testifies against the Yakuza, the witness protection program will relocate him as far away from here as possible.”

“He'll be living in an igloo in the North Pole,” Jake said.

“That'd be Alika's version of hell,” Steadman said. “He's spent his life in Hawaii. He's never experienced an outdoor temperature colder than sixty degrees.”

Harlan Appleton and Cassie Walner came up to their table. He wore an apron splattered with barbecue sauce and carried a platter piled high with spareribs. She was in her nurse's scrubs and carried their drinks.

“Dig in,” Harlan said and set the platter in the center of the table. “For you, it's all-you-can-eat and no charge.”

Jake inhaled the smoky smell of the ribs. “I may never leave.”

“Great,” Cassie said as she passed around the drinks. “Then you can start waiting tables for Harlan instead of me.”

“You're working for Harlan now?” Kate asked.

“Part-time,” Cassie said. “I want to be sure that he makes enough money to pay his share of my rent.”

“You're living together?” Jake asked.

“In separate rooms,” Cassie said.

“Most of the time,” Harlan said.

“And only until his house is fixed up and habitable again,” she said.

Harlan whispered to Jake, “Which may be never.”

Cassie went off to see to another order. Jake watched her go and shook his head with disbelief.

“She's got to be twenty years younger than you and two hundred pounds lighter,” Jake said. “How'd you win her over?”

“My ribs are an aphrodisiac,” Harlan said.

“I'm bringing my wife here,” Steadman said.

The talk of romance prompted Kate to check her watch. She'd expected to hear from Nick by now. His private plane had landed in Honolulu at 4 
P.M.
, and he was supposed to text her after he'd settled in at the beach house. But that was nearly three hours ago and there was still no word.

She hadn't seen Nick since Las Vegas, but they'd stayed in touch by text while she'd led the dismantling of Trace's operation for the FBI. This trip to Hawaii was their first chance to properly celebrate the success of their mission beyond the one unforgettable, sleepless night they'd had together, and they were both looking forward to it. So why had he suddenly gone silent?

Kate sent him a text:
Do you want me to bring you some ribs?

Over the next twenty minutes, she ate some more ribs, had a Diet Coke, and checked her phone again about a dozen times. But still no reply.

Kate looked up from her phone and saw her father regarding her with concern. She tilted her head toward the parking lot. The two of them got up, said their goodbyes to the others, and met at her rented Jeep.

“What's wrong?” he asked.

“I'm supposed to get together with Nick tonight at a house on Kailua Beach. But I should have heard from him hours ago. I'm going over there now, and I could use some backup.”

“I think you can fend off Nick's advances on your own,” Jake said.

“That's not the trouble I'm worried about.”

“Did you pack an extra gun?”

“Of course,” she said. “You can never have too many weapons.”

Jake smiled. “I raised you right.”

Kate and Jake parked two blocks away from the house and approached it from the beach so they wouldn't be seen in case Nick was being watched by a law enforcement agency or by one of his many enemies.

They stayed close to the ocean-side property lines of the homes, which were spaced widely apart from their neighbors and separated from the beach by patios, pools, and lush landscaping. The shadows cast by the trees and hedges were the only cover that Kate and Jake had on the otherwise open moonlit beach.

It was a perfect tropical night. A warm breeze with a rich, floral scent rustled the tall, slender palms and seemed to move in time with the gentle surf. But it wasn't relaxing Kate. Her heart was racing, jacked up with a shot of pre-combat adrenaline. Her instincts were warning her. She glanced at her father to see if he was feeling it, too, but all she sensed from his posture was reluctance.

“Are you sure you need me?” Jake said. “Maybe Nick just wants to surprise you.”

“I've got a bad feeling,” Kate said. “Keep your eyes open.”

She led the way. Tiki torches illuminated the path from the beach to the backyard, where dozens of candles framed the lap pool, the water covered with flower petals. The house was dark and the shutters were closed on the windows. A gas-fed fire was burning in a lava-stone campfire pit, casting flickering light on a wide-pillowed hammock that was strung between two palms.

“It looks like Nick has a romantic evening planned,” Jake said, and started back down the path. “You two have fun.”

“Wait,” Kate said. She spotted a bottle of champagne sitting in an ice bucket within arm's reach of the hammock. She glanced in the bucket and immediately drew her Glock.

“Your sister's right,” Jake said. “You really are afraid of intimacy.”

“That's a five-hundred-dollar bottle of champagne sitting in a bucket of tepid water and the candles around the pool are melted,” Kate said. “What does that tell you?”

Jake pulled his gun out from under his untucked shirt. “That the evening was supposed to get started hours ago but something got in Nick's way.”

Kate moved quick and low to the dark house, her father close behind her, and they flanked the French doors. She reached out with one hand, gripped the door handle, and tested it. The door was unlocked. Jake moved a few steps away from the wall, took a firing stance at a slight angle from Kate, and nodded to her that he was ready.

She opened the door and crept inside in a crouch, ready to shoot at anything that moved in the darkness. Nothing did. But she'd heard shards of glass crunch under her feet and a couch was overturned in front of her. That worried her. So she took the risk of standing up, hitting the light switch on the wall, and making herself a target.

What she saw almost brought her to her knees again. The glass coffee table was shattered and the jagged shards on the bleached-wood floor were splattered with blood. A body had hit the glass. From there, her eyes were drawn to a wide smear of blood that ran from the wrought-iron legs of the coffee table all the way to the front door. There'd been a fight and a body had been dragged outside. Was it Nick? Had he been hurt? Or was he dead?

Jake hurried in behind her and went into the kitchen, methodically moving through the room.

“Clear,” he yelled when he got to the other side.

That snapped her out of it. She went across the living room to the entry hall, then into a bedroom, peering under the bed, in the closets, and the adjoining bathroom.

“Clear,” she yelled.

Together, Kate and Jake swept the entire house, room by room, until they were sure that there was nobody else there. They ended up in the master bedroom, where Nick's clothes were hanging in the closet above his empty suitcase.

“We know he made it here alive,” Kate said.

“There is no reason to think he didn't leave here alive, too.”

“You saw the living room,” she said. “You saw the blood. A body was dragged out.”

“That doesn't mean it was his,” Jake said.

She holstered her gun, went back to the entry hall, and cracked open the shutters to look out the front window. Nick's rented Ferrari was parked in the driveway.

“Who did this?” Jake asked. “How did they know he was here?”

“We stayed here before,” Kate said. “Maybe he was spotted by one of Alika's gang or by the Yakuza.”

“There are no signs of forced entry,” Jake said. “His attacker could have been someone he knew.”

“Or Nick left the doors unlocked for me so whoever it was just walked right in.” Kate surveyed the damage in the living room. “I think Nick was outside, setting things up, and when he came back in, they attacked him…and he was either seriously wounded or killed.”

“Or he fought back, escaped, and whoever his adversaries were dragged away their casualties.”

“Nick's car is still outside.”

“All that means is that he didn't have his keys and had to flee on foot.”

“If Nick escaped, he would have contacted me already.”

“Unless he's still running, or he's unconscious in the bushes or on the beach somewhere, or he's in an ambulance right now, on his way to the hospital,” Jake said. “It's too early to tell what happened or where he is.”

“Or if he's still alive.”

“You can't assume the worst. You've got to assume that he's alive and that he needs you.”

“I need him.” Kate turned away from her father so he wouldn't see the tears welling in her eyes.

“I know you do.”

“I will find Nick, wherever he is, alive or dead and make whoever did this pay. Nothing will stop me.”

“Us.” Jake put his arm around her.

“Us,” she said.