Hawaiian Thunder (Coastal Fury Book 4) Read online

  I stuck my hand out to the man. “Special Agent Ethan Marston. Gimpy back there is my partner, Special Agent Robbie Holm, and the new Wonder Twin is Special Agent Abbie Stark. We are a very special bunch of special agents.”

  We shared a firm handshake. I couldn’t guess which of us squeezed harder as we met eye to eye.

  “Special Agent Kyle Davis,” he said with a quirk of his brow. “Is this how you are when you’re on duty?”

  “Depends on the day,” Holm said from behind me. “He’s trying to make up for almost getting me killed. I’m supposed to be the funny one.”

  “And you are supposed to be taking it easy, smartass,” Meisha told Holm, and then she softened her voice. “You take shotgun. I need to know you’re okay. I mean geez, Robbie, the minute I leave you and Ethan alone, you guys almost get dead on me.”

  “Two rough cases in a row,” I complained. “My wounds healed pretty fast. This guy needs a bit longer.”

  Meisha gestured to a black Chevy Suburban with tinted windows. Holm saluted me with one finger and a tired smile and then got into the front passenger seat.

  “Let’s get these bags loaded up before airport police get cranky,” she directed.

  “Yes, ma’am,” I said with a grin.

  Back in the Miami office, we were all happy for her promotion, especially after she spent a few months in a location on the West Coast that didn’t suit her. I did not, however, envy the budget crunches she faced while getting the new office squared away.

  “Is this what I hope it is?” Meisha asked with glee. She tugged at the handle of the oversized bag I’d carefully packed. “Tell me it is.”

  “And then some,” I told her. “We found a distillery in Barbados that makes amazing rum. I made sure to bring you a bottle, and before you ask, I got that yarn your mom asked about.”

  I helped her load the precious bag. Booze and yarn. I didn’t understand the two women, but I was happy to help. Davis shook his head and loaded the hard case that contained three sidearms… mine, Holm’s, and Stark’s. There were some things we didn’t leave home without, and it’d been easiest to pack them all into one secure case.

  Meisha took the wheel, which left poor Stark stuck in the second row between a couple of big guys, namely Davis and me. There wasn’t much talk on the way to the office. We all had a lot on our minds, and I figured it wasn’t the time to bring up Holm’s sister.

  After a short drive, we pulled up to an old Mediterranean Revival style firehouse. This was one of the highlights I’d been waiting for.

  “Welcome to the retired Palakiko Fire Station,” Meisha announced. “It looks pretty on the outside, at least.”

  I got out of the Suburban and went across the street to get a good look at the boxy, two-story structure. A tower rose above the roof. Firefighters back in the day had to hang the canvas hoses to dry, and the tower was a relic of that time. The white stucco walls and tile roof were similar to what we were used to in Florida, but there weren’t many firehouses in this style.

  Palakiko Fire Station was a real beauty.

  Inside was a different story. We went in through a side door to the former truck bay. The space was clean, but after most of a century, the cracking plaster and dingy wood trim spoke of better years, and recent welds on a water pipe suggested there was a lot of work ahead to get the place in shape. Instead of trucks, the bay now boasted a handful of desks and a pair of vending machines for drinks and snacks.

  “It’s a little spartan,” Meisha admitted, “but it’s a good start.”

  “It’d be a better start if we had the funding they promised,” Davis countered. “A modern building would help, as well. They aren’t giving us much to work with.”

  “I heard they have your lab tech working out of the Honolulu police HQ,” I said as I turned in a slow circle. “Wasn’t that supposed to be temporary?”

  “We ran into snags with the preservation people.” Meisha walked over to a door along the side and entered a code on an old number pad to unlock it. “The lab and evidence rooms are supposed to be up in the old dormitories, but that’ll take more work than the historical society wants to happen.”

  She went into the room she’d unlocked and led us in. The room must have been the fire chief’s office. A vintage desk that might have come with the building occupied one end of the room. The modern chair behind the desk assured me Meisha had no interest in sacrificing her comfort. As she pulled her laptop from a metal cabinet, I looked up to find the ceiling over her desk looked pretty damn precarious with its cracking, bowed plaster.

  Meisha noticed me looking up. “They tell me the ceiling won’t cave. I tell them I’m working out there until it’s fixed. I just needed to get some things out of this cabinet.”

  “I’ll wait out there,” Stark said in a quiet tone. “Make myself at home and all that.”

  She didn’t wait for anyone’s say-so, and no one stopped her. The office door swung closed behind her, and Meisha sighed.

  “This wasn’t what any of us expected,” she admitted. “I thought getting another agent meant that we were finally getting the funding to get a proper office going. Thank God we haven’t had any serious cases yet, but when we do, I don’t think we’ll have the resources.”

  “You’re being too patient,” Davis told her. He turned to us. “Have you heard anything about funding issues, or is it just us?”

  Holm and I glanced at each other. He shrugged and found a wobbly wooden chair to straddle.

  “Something’s going on, but I don’t know what,” I answered. “All I do know is that we were allowed to get some great toys right before we heard that our expenditures are being used as an excuse for cutbacks.”

  Davis narrowed his eyes and crossed his arms. “Those purchases wouldn’t have been approved about the same time as this office finally opened, would they?”

  “Too close for my taste,” Holm chimed in. “For my money, I think the agency stepped on some powerful toes, but nobody has proof of that.”

  “It was suggested that we need to go mainstream, so the public knows the roles we play for coastal and national security.” I had no intention of naming my source, and they didn’t ask. “A lot of Congress doesn’t even know who we are.”

  “Seems to me MBLIS needs to send some agents to provide Congress an education,” Davis muttered.

  “Kyle…” Meisha warned.

  “We get it,” I told them. “Look, I’ll talk with Diane Ramsey, see what we can do from Miami to provide some support or, at least, some advocacy.”

  “Well, let’s make sure Abbie feels welcome on her first day here,” Meisha ordered. “Have her pick a desk and order a car. She’ll be riding with me for a while.”

  We left the office to find Stark speaking with a pair of frowning men in suits. She pointed over to us. By the look on her face, I knew it wasn’t good.

  “Special Agent Holm?” the shorter of the two men asked as they focused on my partner and me.

  “I’m him.” Holm looked between the two with a deepening crease to his brow. “Who are you?”

  The same man stepped forward and offered his hand, which Holm did not immediately accept.

  “I’m Special Agent Barrister, and this is Special Agent DeVine.” He gestured to his partner. “We’re with the CIA.” They both opened their badge wallets.

  Holm blinked. “I was not expecting that.”

  “Me either,” I said with a little surprise. “Did you fellas follow us from the mainland?”

  “You must be Special Agent Marston,” the taller one said. “And no, we were already here. Now we need your help.”

  Meisha stepped forward. “I’m Director Griezmann, and this is my office. You talk to me about our help.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Barrister acknowledged. “The fact is, we’re missing one of our people. We believe your people are uniquely suited to helping us find her.”

  “No…” Holm gasped. “Not Ronnie.”

  DeVine met my friend
’s anguished gaze and nodded. “Yes. Veronica Holm is the one who’s missing, and MBLIS has promised to help us find her before it’s too late.”

  CHAPTER 3

  “What have you done with my sister?” Holm growled. “She wasn’t supposed to join any kind of law enforcement.”

  Barrister shook his head. “I’m not privy to her records, Agent Holm, and she never told me about how she was recruited. All I know is that she’s a damn good operative, and she’s never been out of contact for more than a day until now.”

  I steered Holm to a desk chair that looked halfway comfortable and then faced the CIA agents.

  “My partner is still recovering from some serious injuries,” I informed them. “Let’s take this easy, and you can tell us what you know.”

  I wasn’t used to CIA agents listening to what I had to say, let alone doing it. Barrister and DeVine must have been desperate to come to a barely functional MBLIS office with few resources.

  “Why come to us?” I asked as Davis brought more chairs to create a circle around the empty desk where Holm sat. “You’re the ones with all the tools.”

  “Part of it is a professional courtesy, given the family connection,” Barrister answered. “Part of it is that we don’t know whose cover has been blown at this point. We need fresh faces these people won’t recognize.”

  I wasn’t sure I bought that, and I didn’t think the others did either. With the CIA, one never knew, but it tracked with Meisha’s run-in at the mall. It sounded more and more like it was Ronnie.

  “Oh God,” Meisha burst out. “I think I outed her.”

  “We don’t know that, Director,” DeVine said.

  Barrister didn’t agree. “She yelled Ronnie’s name out at a mall, Greg. All it would take is one of their people hearing it and doing some research.”

  “Hey, don’t blame Meisha,” I cut in. “How was she supposed to know?”

  Barrister glowered. “Pardon me if I have a hard time forgiving the person who probably caused one of my people to disappear.”

  “I don’t know about that.” Holm leaned his elbows on his knees. “Ethan heard about Meisha seeing her at the time I was in the hospital. If that blew Ronnie’s cover, she would’ve disappeared sooner.”

  “Not necessarily,” Barrister countered. “Her story was tight. It could’ve taken them that long to suss out her real identity.”

  “Or someone could’ve cracked the system,” Stark suggested. “We won’t know until we know.”

  Meisha nodded, but her face was a deeper red than her hair. “Get to the facts, gentlemen, and we’ll get to the finding.”

  “We got word about an unusual number of expensive artifacts being bought and sold on this island,” Barrister began as his partner found a chair. “When I say ‘expensive,’ I’m talking mid to high six figures.”

  DeVine rolled back and forth a little in the desk chair he’d appropriated. “We’re confident that those items are worth a fraction of their sale prices.” He stopped rolling. “This is one of the ways people in organized crime launder money. So, a two-thousand-dollar urn from some famous Chinese dynasty might go for five hundred thousand dollars in order to deliver ‘clean’ cash to someone who is owed money. It works until it gets attention.”

  “Why go through all the trouble to come here?” Stark asked. “It seems a bit much for this kind of sale.”

  Barrister shook his head. “We’re trying to figure that out. The man who runs these sales covers his tracks so well that it’s hard to find anything that’ll point to him.”

  “What do you know about the people she’s after?” Holm asked in a rough tone.

  “Not much. All we get is a check-in that she’s all right,” Barrister explained. “In her last update, she thought she was close. Ronnie posed as a party girl who wanted something more lucrative, and that was the direction she chose. Glamor, money, all the nice things she’d never get otherwise.”

  “That update was two weeks ago,” DeVine picked up the story. “The job was to infiltrate, gather evidence, and get out. She used burner phones for daily check-ins, but she was being watched too much to give details.”

  “So you’ve come here to tell us you lost track of my sister.” Holm went over and hovered over DeVine. “How the hell do you expect us to find her when you can’t? This office isn’t even close to off the ground.”

  I gently pulled my partner back from the CIA agent. For his part, DeVine looked unbothered. He straightened his tie as the only evidence of his discomfort.

  “Easy, Robbie,” I whispered. “We’ll find her. Look at it this way… If they’re coming to us for help, they’re admitting we can kick ass with them any day of the week.”

  “And then some,” Holm responded. He turned to Meisha. “We’ll need help from our office. TJ is the best hacker we’ve got, and our lab techs can check any data we send their way. You know that.”

  Meisha nodded. “I’ll call Diane and get it set up.”

  Barrister put up a hand. “Remember, this is need-to-know. Only talk to people who have to know the particulars. Everyone else needs to stay out of this.”

  Meisha’s eyes flared emerald fire. “Agent Barrister, we may be in a crumbling old building, and we may be far from set up, but I am only going to say this once: This is my house. You came to me for help, so stay out of my way because I get shit done.”

  Barrister’s cheeks flushed, but DeVine’s slow grin matched the ones Davis and Holm sported. Stark rolled her eyes, but she was witnessing a critical lesson of leadership: Stand your ground and protect your turf.

  “I want everything you have on the case on my desk.” She glared at both of the CIA agents. “Everything. I want Ronnie’s case notes, cover identity, reports, and what led you out here, to begin with.”

  “I have it right here.” Barrister handed her a thumb drive. “It’s encrypted to a number you’ll get in a secure email. This will give you everything you need.”

  “It better be.” Meisha took a breath, and her voice softened. “Ronnie is family, and I have no intention of letting those bastards take her away from us.”

  “Agreed,” DeVine said. “She’s like family to us, as well.”

  “She is my family,” Holm barked. “So help me, we better find her.”

  “Okay,” I interrupted before things got heated. “Time for you to go. We’ll see you soon.”

  DeVine shook his head. “Actually, you probably won’t. We have to approach this from a different direction. If you do run into either of us, pretend we’ve never met.”

  “What does that mean?” Holm demanded. “I thought you told us everything.”

  “Everything you need to know,” Barrister reiterated. “We’re working from another angle that DeVine and I, well, I think you’ll have more luck. Our hands are tied, and that’s all I can tell you.”

  “If and when you change your position on that, let us know,” Meisha said in a dry tone. She held up the thumb drive. “Thanks for this, at least.”

  The CIA agents nodded and left. I waited until they were well out of hearing range before I turned to the others.

  “The CIA had no good reason to come to us other than Ronnie’s relationship to the Miami MBLIS office,” I pointed out. “They could’ve assigned another team to pick up where these two left off. I don’t know what to make of it.”

  “They screwed up and need us to clean up their mess,” Davis suggested. “I bet they would’ve come to this office whether her brother was here or not.”

  “It doesn’t matter why,” Meisha stated. She put her fists on her hips and addressed us as though she had an entire army of MBLIS agents ready to rumble. “Ethan, call that new guy Diane stole from Cyber. We’re going to loop him in on this intel and see if he can ferret out anything the CIA missed. Kyle, we’re going to work on retracing Ronnie’s steps, given what’s on this drive. I want to go over every communication they received from her.” She turned to Abby last. “Stark, I know it’s not a glamorous first m
ission, but I want you to take Robbie and get food for everyone who’s here tonight.”

  “I’m not—” Stark halted herself and took a breath. “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Robbie, you and Ethan are back on duty as of now,” Meisha told us. “And as far as I know, Robbie, you’re on desk duty, so unless you want to sit and stew, I suggest you don’t complain and go along with this.” She thought for a moment, found a slip of paper, and wrote something on it. “Go to this address. Little Jo is at the Honolulu Police HQ. They’re allowing us to use their lab, so she helps their cases while we’re idle. Pick her up. Kyle dropped her off this morning, so her car is here anyway. I’ll let her know you’re coming.”

  Stark turned to Holm. “Let’s fetch her on the way to get food. I bet she’ll know where to get something good.”

  Holm’s frown did not budge, so I stepped in front of him. The guy’s glassy eyes wasn’t a good sign, and I ached for my buddy. Hell, I cared about Ronnie as if she were my sister, too. A long time ago, I thought I cared about her in a different way. A long time ago.

  “Robbie, you need a distraction,” I told him. “Until we find her, we gotta keep moving forward, you included.”

  Holm ran his hands through his hair. “I know, Ethan, I know. I just… Mom and Dad have no idea what’s going on, and I can’t tell them.” He sighed. “That’s probably a good thing, considering how I scared the shit out of them by almost dying.”

  “Come on.” Stark offered her hand. “Let go get our lab rat, and then we can find some local takeaway.”

  Once Meisha gave them keys to the only other office vehicle, a Chevy Impala, they left, and Meisha dropped into one of the office chairs.

  “Kyle, Ethan, I gotta tell you something,” she said.

  “Yeah, Boss?” Davis asked.

  “Guy, I have no earthly clue where to begin.” Meisha took a long breath. “Those CIA operatives better have some damn good intel on this drive, because if they don’t, Ronnie Holm is as good as dead.”