Zero Island (Blessid Trauma Crime Scene Cleaners Book 2) by Chris Bauer (mobi ebook reader .TXT) 📗

says stay away from them. Plus, if it comes to it…” She dropped a hand onto her aluminum gun case. “Protection of the innocent by whatever means necessary. I have something for you.”

Kaipo made space on the table, lifted out a second tray from the case. “Here. Keep it in the house.”

Vena shook her head. “I… no, I don’t think I can…”

“Yes, you can. It’s light, it’s easy to operate. A quick lesson and you’ll be good to go.”

Looks passed between them, Vena finally getting it. She picked up the gun from its tray, got wide-eyed while she held it.

Kaipo would drive the seriousness home. “Look, Wally might think he’s doing good here, putting money in the pockets of people who need it, but it’s too risky. He’s ruthless, and that makes him dangerous. I’ll spend a few nights here with you to get a feel for things myself, then I’ll head back, guns and all. I promise not to eat much.”

She held up the empty chip bowl, gave it a playful shake. “But you need to keep the chips and salsa flowing.”

The gun back in its tray, Vena’s expression lightened. Her phone rang. A FaceTime request. No new tortilla chips on the horizon for Kaipo.

“Let me take this call. It’s from my Love Your Lava Beach Club girlfriend who’s suddenly fifteen grand richer. Hold on… Hey, sweetie,” she said into the screen. “What’s up?”

Vena suddenly pulled back, shocked by an image. Then came the recognition. “Oh no. No, no, no…”

Kaipo moved behind her, leaned in for a look. Flashing red lights from police vehicles lit up the screen’s background, their sirens gaining strength. Her friend was streaming footage from the front of the restaurant. She began speaking in a panic. “You seeing this, Vena? I’m on my break… oh my God… do you see this?”

The streaming image zoomed fifty or so feet closer to focus on the restaurant’s circular driveway. A body lay on the blacktop, an adult male in remnants of a clown outfit, thrown from a moving vehicle. The blanket covering him had unraveled when it hit the asphalt and rolled. The body was now face up. The video footage zoomed farther in. The chest and abdomen were eviscerated, the holes packed in gauze tinted scarlet that hadn’t stayed in place. Restaurant customers were starting to gather, the police were arriving, and Vena’s friend stopped talking, started gagging…

Vena shouted at the screen. “That’s Ichigoo! He’s a street performer who works that restaurant. Oh mymymy…”

“A friend of yours?” Kaipo said. She helped herself to the phone, taking it from a distressed Vena. The footage was sickeningly gruesome, but a little less so for Kaipo, considering her avocation. The man’s entrails were exposed on the blacktop.

“Everyone on Kauai knows him,” Vena sobbed, “but I know him personally. He’s from the island…”

Miakamii again.

“I… I think I need to show you something else.” Vena grabbed her phone back, started keying. “Look.”

She’d pulled up a news story. “Another murder, only days old. A research doctor dead from a home invasion.”

“What’s special about her?” Kaipo quickly scanned the post, saw no mention of missing organs.

“She was the Navy outpost CO’s fiancée. I don’t know the details, but she’s another Miakamii native. What the hell is going on?”

11

Ella pulled her bicycle out of the tool shed next to their horse barn. A 1970s Schwinn, the bike was greased and oiled in all the right places, with only a little rust on the spokes of each wheel and the frame, and one of the foot pedals missing a rung. A mechanical marvel based on age alone, and maybe the most useful tool they had on the island, quite acceptable as a transportation supplement to their horses. She climbed onto the seat.

Seven a.m. It promised to be a warm day, prompting her to load her water bottle with ice from the solar fridge before filling it with water from the depths of their well, preparing for her ride with Ben. A spin around the island took two hours. Ahead of her on the path, Ben waited in front of their house with one foot on a bicycle pedal, one foot flat on the dirt. She pedaled up the short incline to reach him at its crest, the two of them in shorts and sleeveless tees made from homespun cloth and thread, the exposed parts of their bodies bronzed from decades of soaking up the Miakamii sun.

“Did you bring water for yourself today, Ben?”

“I most certainly did, love,” he said, patting his backpack.

“Let’s go, then. We’ll tend to the honey when we get back.”

They pushed off, leaving behind their utilitarian two-story A-frame, its weather-beaten siding in a soft white, its shingled roof covered in solar panels, and two gas-powered generators hardwired to the house. They let their bicycles coast slowly down the winding path, needing to use the brakes to control their descent. They passed a tiny cornfield that surrounded their farm’s two beehives on three sides, the hives in boxes the size of steamer trunks, sitting waist-high atop stacked cinder blocks. Houses of similar minimalist construction with smaller beehives lined the road, their windows beautified with white café curtains that were hand-stitched, Ella knew, in reds and blues and yellows. Near each home was an adjacent shed or barn or both, or multiples thereof, all the properties quaint and rustic, all well-kept. Older thatched houses, or halepili, rounded out the residences they passed, dotting smaller properties in between the larger ones.

“We must remain vigilant,” Ella said to her husband, needing to raise her voice only slightly, their ride quiet, serene, idyllic, no one else on the path at this hour.

“We do, love. Our helua,” he said, meaning self-defense, “remains primary.”

“We appear so vulnerable to the mainlanders, Ben. Like children.”

“And to those on Kauai and on the other pukoo, too. And to Douglas as well.”

“All our na mea kaua need to be at the ready, dearest. I feel a storm is coming.”

“The island’s knives and spears,”