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

visit, unable to see where they kept their handguns, on their persons somewhere or on their horses—he didn’t know which, maybe both, but they were never visible. He knew this hidden hardware was a Miakamii thing, mostly because the Logan family forbade the island’s inhabitants from carrying firearms on the island itself, forbade firearms on the island, period. The affectation persisted once they’d left Miakamii for the other Hawaiian Islands, including here on Kauai, even though it was understood they would at times carry weapons while providing security for the Logans’ ranch.

Escorting a convicted crime boss, Wally knew, was one of those times.

At ten miles per hour it took them five minutes to reach Douglas Logan’s sprawling home. The cowboys dismounted, stood like sentries while Wally and his protection disembarked the limo. The driver stayed with the car in the circular driveway. The front door to the ranch home was already open. Mr. Douglas Logan, face pinched while sizing up his guests, blocked their path.

“Thank you for seeing me, Mr. Logan,” Wally said, extending his hand.

Douglas Logan’s hands stayed at his side. “Let’s get this over with.” He beckoned Wally and his bodyguards forward. “Follow me. Try to keep up.”

Logan showed them his back and quick-stepped through a large foyer into a long hallway. Wally’s troupe fell in line behind them, and all were silent for the hundred or so feet it took to arrive at an office. They filed inside, their host closing the door behind them, two more of Logan’s bodyguards already there. Muscle faced muscle, all the same ethnicity, Polynesian-Hawaiian, Wally included, except for Mr. Logan.

“Sit,” Logan said.

Each man’s bodyguards crowded the room as its occupants settled, Wally Lanakai’s men in tailored suits and Douglas Logan’s men in denim. The crowding begot nothing worse than benign knuckle-cracking and deadpan facial expressions.

Logan launched into it.

“The judicial system says you paid your debt, Lanakai. I’ll accept that. But I’m not your friend. I respect you only because of the violence you’re capable of. Tell me why you’re here.” He steadied his lean face, went straight-lipped after having scowled through his speech.

Wally would allow this rudeness, was able to control himself around it if it made good business sense, but only to a point. In this instance, he knew what the loss of the Logan helicopter and its Hawaiian pilot meant to Mr. Logan, because Wally had made it his business to learn everything he could about this proud pipi‘i, the Caucasian owner of an island he coveted.

“To offer my condolences, Mr. Logan,” Wally said, “and to reinforce what my associate told you on the phone. I’m not responsible for the loss of your helicopter, or the loss of your dear pilot friend. Not me, not anyone associated with my family. I wish you only good things, Mr. Logan. My offers to you have been sincere, with no plan to ever intimidate you or your enterprises into accepting them. You have my word on this, on all of this. It was not me.”

Logan harrumphed. “Your word. The word of the head of a crime family.”

“Please, Mr. Logan, don’t insult me. I only want to help.”

“How about this, then. A question for you. You own a cigarette boat? Ever charter a cigarette boat?”

“In days past, yes, before I left the islands. Years ago. Not since my return here. No.”

Logan measured the response, drilling his eyesight into Wally’s head, Wally’s soul. Wally knew the territory, something all good businessmen learned to master over time: recognizing tells, searching the faces of one’s competitors and detractors for lies. In Wally’s case, Logan could find none because there were none.

Logan moved on. “I thought Ka Hui was dead. It turns out your family businesses are thriving half a world away in Philadelphia. Go back to Philly, Lanakai. Eat a few more of those belly-bomb cheesesteaks, they seem to agree with you. Hawaii’s doing fine since you’ve been gone. Miakamii is still not for sale, nor are any of its ventures.”

Wally’s custom-made dress shirt suddenly felt tight around the collar. He didn’t need his bodyguards; he could gut this skinny little loudmouth by himself. The hell with Logan’s bodyguards, too; his knives could take care of them just as easily.

But Douglas Logan was grieving. Lanakai’s poking had uncovered the father-son closeness that Logan shared with the copter pilot, a transplanted Miakamiian, and Wally had made it a point to learn all there was to learn about, and swoon over, Miakamii and its inhabitants. He would allow Logan his anger, and his grief, and his rudeness; Wally Lanakai wasn’t an animal. What he was, was practical. And patient.

“My interest in the island is not the only reason I’m here. Again, I had nothing to do with the loss of your pilot friend. I’m here to say I will see what I can find out about it. Are there any leads you can share?”

Aside from the cigarette boat mention, intentional or not, which Wally tucked away.

Logan stood. “I don’t need your help. I don’t need you. But I’ll give you one thing: I believe you’re telling the truth. The problem is, aside from you, I have no idea who could have done this. No motive other than your interest in Miakamii. And that’s all that the police, and the U.S. Navy, have as a motive, too. They know Ka Hui’s back in the islands, and they don’t like it. I don’t like it either.”

Wally, standing now: “Well, they’re wrong, Mr. Logan. I have a few personal things to look into, and I’m looking to reacquaint myself with someone who might have returned to the islands, but these are temporary interests, nothing to keep me here permanently. Rumors of Ka Hui’s resurrection have been greatly exaggerated. Ka Hui is extinct. My former business associates and I are leading a quiet life on the east coast of the U.S. mainland. But I’ll leave you with this.

“I have nothing but the best of intentions regarding Miakamii and the folks who still