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I risk a quick glance over my shoulder, nearly trip and fall.
In the dim glow of the moonlight, I spy Keahi closing the gap between us at a frightening pace. I don’t know how the woman managed to stay so fit while incarcerated, but I’m definitely not outrunning her. Forget living another thirty minutes. I’m down to about three.
I don’t know what to do. Continue in a straight line, most likely get hacked down in the surf? If I could just make it to the tree line, find someplace to hide.
Fuck it. I make a hard right toward the jungle’s beckoning edge. The sand quickly goes from firm to soft to nearly unmanageable. Scuttling sounds. Crabs racing for cover. I try to track the noise above the terrified beating of my heart. Crabs fleeing left to their dens means zigging right. Sounds from the right have me zagging left.
A thick Pisonia tree looms straight ahead, the nesting boobies scattering as I lurch toward it.
I don’t even register the sound of Keahi’s angry scream until I nearly face-plant on the ground beneath the leafy branches.
“Goddammit!” she howls.
I manage to get up on all fours, tentatively peer out.
She’s down in the sand, blade abandoned somewhere in front of her. As I watch, she drags her left foot out of a hole, then cradles her knee against her chest. Crab den. She might know more ways to kill a man with a knife, but she’s woefully ignorant of the atoll’s local population.
I’ve dropped the sat phone. I reach out blindly with my hand, patting the ground around me as I watch Keahi carefully, waiting for her to shake it off and relaunch her pursuit.
She’s not rising to her feet, however. I can’t make out the state of her ankle in the dark, but whatever she did, it seems to have incapacitated her for the moment.
I realize my own leg is on fire. I reach down tentatively. My right calf is wet from the surf and coated in sand. But then, in the thickest part of the muscle…
I can feel a distinct hole, pouring liquid. Blood. Bullet hole. Shotgun pellet hole? I’ve been shot.
My vision grays. I stay on all fours.
Just as a second form materializes on the beach beside Keahi.
Please let it be Vaughn, please let it be Vaughn, please let it be…
Leilani walks into view, handgun poised before her as she closes the distance between us.
“WHAT HAPPENED?” LEILANI asks her sister, eyes scouring the space around them. I hunker down, willing myself to disappear beneath the leafy canopy of the Pisonia tree.
“Twisted… my fucking ankle. Damn beach.”
“The crabs dig dens underground. The sand is riddled with holes.”
“Well then, fucking damn crabs. Who was that, back there, with the shotgun?”
“Vaughn. One of Mac’s friends and project manager. It’s okay. I shot him.”
Pressed against the ground, I flinch, will myself not to make a sound. Leilani is still standing there, holding the gun while Keahi remains curled on the beach, clutching her leg.
“This is a shit show,” Keahi groans at last.
Leilani doesn’t dispute that. “Do you think I’m broken?” she asks.
I watch Keahi still, regard her younger sister more carefully, maybe notice for the first time that Leilani isn’t magically pocketing her weapon.
“I think you are amazing,” Keahi replies steadily. “I think you’re the best thing that ever happened to me. When I got out of the hospital, when I couldn’t find you… I tore Oahu apart, pua lei. I would’ve done anything to get you back.”
“He kept me away. In New York. The noise, the smells. I missed Hawaii so much. I missed you.”
“I never forgot. I never forgave. All of it, including every single day of incarceration, it was worth it because it brought me back to you.”
“I didn’t lie to Brent,” Leilani informs her sister. “I lied to you. I told him to kill you. And I meant it.”
