Page 41 of Talk Story

“Three hours. It was great.” Lei’s voice had the flat brightness of a cop running on caffeine and case momentum. “Santos talked. Or—his lawyer let him talk, once they understood what we already had. Smart move, actually. He’s trying to get out ahead of the worst of it by giving us details about the Changs.”

I frowned. Beside me, Keone scowled.

“Give me the deets,” I said.

“The short version is Santos laid out Victor Chang’s whole plan for the valley. The development was always a front. What Chang actually wants is the archive—the rest of the documents Hannah Chang wrote about, the ones tied to that royal land decree. The petroglyph theft was cover: strip the site of anything that could get it protected, slow down the cultural designation, buy time to find the papers.” A pause, and the sound of Lei moving. “Based on what Santos gave us, I went to a judge first thing. I’ve got a warrant for Victor Chang’s arrest.”

“That’s huge, Lei.” I held my fist up and Keone bumped it. “We got him.”

“It would be,” she said, “if we could find him. Nobody’s seen Chang since your little tea party at Pearl’s yesterday. He’s not at his Wailea house, not at the development office, not at any of the numbers we have. Madison’s gone too. The Escalade hasn’t pinged a plate reader since yesterday afternoon.” Her voice sharpened. “So I’m calling everyone who saw him last. Kat—you were in the room with him. Where do you think he’d go?”

I stood up, suddenly on my feet at the deck rail, gazing out at the bay without seeing it, because the answer had come up from somewhere underneath the thinking part of me, the way intuition did—fast and certain and a half-second ahead of the reasons. “The valley,” I said. “He went to the valley.”

“Awawakapu? Why would he? He’s a wanted man, why would he go somewhere he could be trapped . . .”

“Because the warrant doesn’t matter to him yet. He doesn’t know about it. As far as Victor Chang knows, he walked out of Pearl’s clean yesterday—we had nothing concrete; he said so himself, and he was right.” The certainty kept building as I talked, each piece clicking into the next. “Pua told him, right to his face, that the decree was real, and the protection was coming, and his development was dead. So the development’s gone. He knows that. The only thing left that’s worth anything to him is the archive—the papers that could either save the Chang land position or sink it. That’s the whole game now for him.”

“And the archive’s in the valley somewhere,” Lei said slowly.

“Still hidden in the caves. Hannah’s journal pointed at it but never said where. Chang’s had people combing that valley for weeks. Pali’s been searching for it too.” I was already moving, scooping my plate off the side table; the lazy gold morning was evaporating like it had never been. “He’s not running, Lei. He’s digging. He went to get the thing before anyone else can.”

A silence on the line, which meant Lei considering my theory. “That makes sense with why he’s seemingly disappeared,” she said. “Dang it, that tracks.” Her voice dropped into the clipped register she used when she started giving orders. “I’m not sending units up that valley road blind; if he’s in there and spooked he could do anything, and someone already caused boulders to fall. Those caves are a maze. I’ll get the department helicopter, get eyes from above, and gather a team.”

“Keone and I will meet you at the trailhead area,” I said. “Contact Malia Peahi and her guys to meet us there.” Beside me Keone was already pulling on a shirt; our ‘boring day’ was folding itself away without a word of complaint. “We know that valley better than anybody you’ve got in Kahului. We can guide your approach from the ground.”

“One hour,” Lei said. “Don’t go in without me, Kat. I mean it. You find him, you watch him, you wait for the bird to arrive.”

“One hour,” I agreed, and didn’t quite promise the rest.

I ended the call. Keone handed me my flip-flops and my keys and a final piece of toasted sweet bread for the road, because some things you do without being asked when you’ve loved someone long enough. His face held no resentment, but the determination and hint of excitement that I’d fallen for in the first place. “So much for boring,” he said.

“Rain check,” I said. “I swear. The whole nothing. Swim, nap, lying around.”

“I’ll hold you to it.” He kissed me once and grabbed his own keys. “Come on. Let’s go catch a developer.”

Below us the bay had already gone from silver to hard daytime blue, and up the coast, miles away in the green folds of the mountains, Awawakapu waited in the light with its stolen heritage and secrets.

13

Keone and I got to the unmarked trailhead leading into the valley first, but we’d barely climbed out of his truck when Malia Peahi’s Hana Police Department SUV came nosing up the rutted track behind us, followed by a second unit. The reddish island dust we’d raised hung in the slanting light and drifted slowly over the grass.

Malia got out, adjusting her duty belt, her dark hair scraped into a regulation knot. She did not appear to be a woman who’d been pulled off her Saturday for nothing; she was ready for action.

Behind her, a younger officer I half-recognized from the Hana station unfolded himself from the second cruiser—lean, watchful, with a tight jaw. Lei had done the right thing, calling in Hana PD. This was their case. I caught Keone’s eye and saw he’d landed in the same place. We were interested parties who knew the situation, but we weren’t the law.

“Officer Daniel Souza,” Malia said, by way of introduction. “He’s solid. Lei called me on the way to the airfield—said you two made the connection about Chang being in the valley. I hope you’re right.”

“Kat did,” Keone said. “She’s usually on target.”

“But I’d feel better about this if the Changs’ Escalade was here to confirm my guess,” I said. “You’re running this op. Keone and I know the trail and the cave layout—we’re here for support, but it’s your scene and your call.”

“Well, of course.” But something eased fractionally in Malia’s shoulders; she’d evidently been braced for me to be a problem. “Appreciate that. Walk me through what we’ve got so far while we gear up.”

I gave it to her clean and short: Lei’s warrant, Santos giving up Chang’s hunt for the archive, Chang unseen since Pearl’s, my read that he’d come here for the documents before the cultural protection lockdown closed his window for good. Malia listened, not interrupting, her eyes going distant as she fit it against what she already knew, while Souza pulled vests and a coil of rope from the cruiser’s trunk.

“Lei’s bringing the airship,” she said when I finished. “ETA—thirty minutes. She wants eyes from above before anyone goes into the caves.” She stared down the green throat of the trail where it dropped away into the folded shadows of the valley. “But thirty minutes is a long time if he’s down there moving around.”

“Don’t forget his daughter Madison’s with him,” I said. “She might slow him down.”