Zero Island (Blessid Trauma Crime Scene Cleaners Book 2) Chris Bauer (free reads TXT) 📖

Ella carried pieces of a broken dining room table out of the thatched cottage at the foot of the ridge, tossed them into a fire, and headed back inside. Ben was nearby in a different home, using a crowbar to knock out a window frame shredded by bullets. He tossed a Victorian stationery desk through the empty frame, two legs of the desk gone, severed by the gunfire. Ella put her back into a vintage armoire carved with Hawaiian royalty figures in plumed headgear, the doors of the chest splintered. She shoved the antique piece out the front door of the cottage toward the roaring flames, the fire calling to all the empty homes, its flames waiting to taste the hundreds of years of island history being fed to it piece by piece, defaced heirloom by defaced heirloom, artifact by artifact, home by empty home.

They were determined not to be sad, determined to embrace the good of it. A new beginning for the island, and for them as a couple, and as individuals, one female, one male, from a long line of native people who rarely got sick, preparing themselves for whatever the other islands, and the mainland, had in store, for whatever miracles that could be found in the volcanic ash, the gentle waters, and in their own flesh, and blood, and organs.

“—its population, gentlemen, numbers only two now. Ella and Ben Waumami. The charade needs to be over. Twelve hundred residents per the 2010 census, eleven hundred ninety-eight fewer people ten years later, some gone for good, to heaven, but the rest living modern lives elsewhere, enjoying visits back there to rekindle their inner Miakamii.

“So Evan. I understand now, because of your fiancée Miya’s research, the island’s importance to medicine. Starting in a few days I’ll have other research doctors brought in to pore over Miya’s work. To move the island into the twenty-first century. And to recolonize it. My family has agreed, but more importantly, Ella and Ben have agreed. It’s time, Evan.”

“Copy that, Mr. Logan.”

“‘Douglas,’ son. Please call me Douglas.”

“Copy that, Douglas.”

“Mr. Logan, sir?” Patrick said.

All eyes went to Patrick, someone who usually spoke only when spoken to.

“What is it, Patrick?” Mr. Logan said.

“I want to stay here on Kauai, Mr. Logan sir. My identity, my home, it’s here. Philo sir, you and Mr. Logan helped me find it. I want to learn more. I can’t leave yet. Can you give me a job, Mr. Logan?”

This could only be an incomplete discussion at this point, but Philo understood, had no choice otherwise when considering the mindset of the former Patrick Stakes—the current and former Patrick ʻŌpūnui—painful as it might be to Philo and his business. Patrick, and his dented noggin, needed to explore more of his roots, to discover more about himself. Mixed feelings swelled Philo’s heart to see his employee near the end of his quest, but in the process losing one of his closest friends.

“Your call, bud. A lot to talk about, but one thing’s not negotiable. There’s no chance I’m breaking the news to Grace. You’re on your own there.”

First leg, she splurged on a business class ticket for her nine p.m. flight. Eight hours of pampering and rest ahead of her. She kept on her sunglasses, leaned back, and melted into the seat that turned into a bed. The doctors in the hospital, or probably the nurses, had undone her cornrows, needing to scrub her head before she went into surgery, where they’d determined there’d been no harm to her internal organs, liver, the intestines, stomach, only muscle damage. The incision made by the Yakuza doctor had been the only damage. She’d lost a lot of blood, but every organ that should have been in there was still in there. Twenty-four hours later, she bolted from the hospital.

She had incision tenderness and pain, and had been prescribed meds for it. Non-narcotic, per her request. Fading into dreamland…

Wally Lanakai. Her mob patron, her cheerleader, her lovesick suitor. He’d gotten her sober. He’d kept her that way, made her think that way. She’d always have him to thank for that. But unless she was willing to sacrifice everything, her independence, morals, and freedom, she could never be with him. Her only choice was to return to anonymity. To allow the news of the demise of one Kaipo Mawpaw to be gruesome, sensational, and final. To let him think he’d lost her forever, and in so doing, break his heart.

And to have her wonder if another person would ever love her that much again.

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2 STREET

Philo Trout's clandestine, Navy SEAL past isn’t coming back to haunt him...it’s coming back to kill him.

A mob war takes center stage in Philadelphia.

Someone is killing the city’s beloved Mummers string band performers—singularly and in bunches.

A few of Philo's friends are Mummers...or were, before they were slaughtered.

And it looks like Philo is next on the hit list.

2 Street

Turn the page to read a sample ----->

2 STREET: Chapter 1

Frank Tisha had two more stops to make tonight. Hands in his pockets, he leaned into the wind-whipped snow caking onto his knee-length cashmere coat as he pushed up Snyder Avenue in South Philly. He entered the corridor beneath the concrete overpass, escaping the blizzard for a moment. The Delaware Expressway rumbled above him: Interstate 95, stretching north and south, but visibility was shitty because of the storm. Hatless, even in this weather, that’s how Frank rolled, so the snowflakes defrosted in his ears and pooled there until the overflow ran down his neck, under his shirt. He brushed off his eyebrows and shook his upturned collar almost clean, stomping his feet as he walked almost a city block, the corridor a respite from the snow. The roar of trucks and other traffic still pounded the salt-treated highway overhead, the echo