Rip Tides by Toby Neal Read Free Book Online

drop, her mind’s eye filling with her last view of Ray’s face, those distinctive golden-hazel eyes sunk deep in pouches of fat, filled with a hate that burned her as totally as he’d burned their home. She shivered involuntarily. “I think Hilo PD should’ve let me know he is out. I have to go there in a few weeks to testify at his trial.”
    “I’ve been keeping an eye on him for you,” Marcella said. “He’s in a group home type place for the indigent disabled. He doesn’t seem to be doing anything but watching a lot of TV.”
    “Marcella, don’t let his paralysis deceive you. Ray hates me for his disability, blames me for all that’s gone down with the whole Chang family.” The history was long, and had its roots all the way back a generation. “I’m a handy target. But finding out he’s out of jail doesn’t help me rest easy.”
    “I’m sure there’s too much heat for him to do anything, even if he had the connections anymore. Without his partner, Anela, who was the legs of the operation, he seems to be totally shut down.”
    “Does the FBI have surveillance on Terence Chang anymore?” Lei asked, worried about the young man who had helped them with the Big Island case—but for his own, not entirely clear, reasons.
    “No. After Ray was in custody, we pulled the surveillance on Terence. We had no grounds.”
    “Well, thanks for the heads-up. I may get to see you, sooner than later. I have a big case that may bring me to Oahu. I’m hoping Marcus can partner with me on it.”
    “I’m sure he’d be delighted. Call me when you get here.”
    “Will do.” Lei wrapped up her goodbyes, and frowning with the worry of this news, trotted through the station to find Pono and the station’s contracted sketch artist.
    They piled into one of the station’s police cruisers, as neither of their trucks had a third passenger seat. The artist, a skinny young man named Kevin with a spindly goatee twisted into a braid and gauges in his ears, leaned his head in between the seats as Pono pulled the vehicle out onto the busy traffic of Hana Highway.
    “So am I sketching the guy who offed Makoa Simmons?” he asked, the late-afternoon sun winking on a little red stone in his nose piercing.
    “It’s a lead. Nothing more,” Lei said. The department contracted with the young man and he’d signed confidentiality agreements, but Lei was always cautious of civilians’ commitment. “You can’t discuss it.”
    “Of course.” The artist reached up and played with the big, metal-lined hole in his ear.
    “Why do you do shit like that to your body?” Lei asked. “I’m curious. I really want to know.”
    “It’s a style thing. An aesthetic.”
    Pono eyed the young man. “Those holes in your ears look like handles for grabbing in a fight, and a punch to the nose is really gonna hurt with that piercing,” he said conversationally. “But that’s just the way we cops think.”
    “Good thing I leave the brawling to people like you,” Kevin said, contempt in his voice.
    Lei grabbed his ear, her fingertip digging into the gauged hole and giving just enough of a tug to show the young man how easily she could rip his lobe off.
    “Respect,” was all she said, and let go.
    He sat back and shut up.
    Shayla lived in a small cottage on the property of a house in Kuau. Lei had an affection for the little neighborhood, a mishmash of expensive beachfront mansions mixed with run-down old plantation-style homes right on the ocean near Maui’s best North Shore surf and windsurf spots. Stevens’s old apartment building, where Jared now lived, wasn’t far from the bikini model’s cottage.
    They pulled up at the address and got out. Shayla’s house was in the back, and they went around the garage, following a path of beach stones set in the grass. A wide-branched old plumeria tree sheltered the tiny cottage, and Lei breathed in the warm, sweet scent of the big white blossoms that dotted the lawn and the porch.
    The same