Was
someone waiting for him in the parking lot? Someone like Louella, the baby’s
momma who’d summoned Danker for an immediate DNA test? For a split second,
she craned her head around but didn’t see her with him.
She
and Danker were a couple when the test confirmed his fatherhood. Her heart ached at the memory. Love hurt, but that wasn’t
all. Loneliness hurt. Losing someone hurt. Decision-making hurt when you force
yourself to do the right thing.
She’d
pulled away, giving him space to work on his previous relationship for the sake
of their child. The most shameful thing a woman can do is take parents away
from a baby, and this began her year of stubborn steadfastness.
I did the breakup rituals. Got the
dramatic haircut. Engraved a piece of jewelry he got me with a new message.
Deleted the photos that made me cry.
To
have been his woman was like living where the air flowered with jasmine, and
the weather day after day was flawless, but the forecast was a hurricane.
Older
didn’t mean wiser. All this time she’d dreaded running into him, sometimes dressing
in expectation of it. If she did see him again, she wanted to look good. Today she
looked like crap, but what did it matter? His reason for being on the Big
Island had nothing to do with her, not in a personal way. Tomorrow they’d meet
at the FBI field office to collaborate on a serial kidnapping case. She’d wear a
sleeveless linen dress, open-toed pumps, and bring the accordion file full of
notes and newspaper clippings she’d gathered.
The perpetrator targeted wealthy Hawaiians with social
capital, the kind of people seen on television or featured in newspapers when
they donated money to charities. The latest missing person, Pua Iona, owned Iona
Hawaiian Rugs and was an acquaintance of hers. Not that they shared the same
social strata, but they’d volunteered together at an artisans’ market to boost
Hawaiian crafts. After Pua went missing and fit the criminal’s
modus operandi, Mayor Billy Kim, frustrated with police progress, contacted Jolene’s former boss from California, FBI
Agent Gary Guhleman, cowboyish in dress but wise in judgement.
Guhleman
didn’t need to tell her Hawaiians resisted outside intrusions. “You know
everyone,” he’d said. “Witnesses will share what they know.” The agent and his
wife had retired, rather semi-retired, here in Kona. Soon after she and
Guhleman had spoken, he called in Danker Donahue to consult. “You remember him,
right?”
“Gosh,
let me think.” She and Danker went hot and heavy after the Long Beach case that
ended with the arrest of mobster Seamus McGinn.
Just
then Danker spoke to someone with his rich Midwestern drawl, typical of
California transplants. It was the first time she’d heard his voice in seven
years after hearing it every day for ten months. She hardened like a turtle on
a rock except for a slight turn of her head. He removed an earbud from his
right ear and placed it in a protective case.
His
longer dark hair, broad shoulders, and square jaw evoked an intense mix of
emotions. A car crash of desire. There was nothing more frightening than desiring
a freefall. It wasn’t just the sex. Her heart had burst with happiness making a
her believe love conquers all. It hadn’t.
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