Unforgettable by Meryl Sawyer Read Free Book Online

“Stay with her, Dodger. We’ll be right back.”
    Out in the hall, it was difficult to resist hitting his brother. He’d wanted to deck Cody for the past two years. He sucked in his breath and reminded himself not to give Cody the satisfaction of seeing him lose control.
    “I thought you were a good detective.” Greg couldn’t keep the caustic tone out of his voice. “If you’d bothered to check with Dr. Hamalae, he would have told you that Lucky could have been a vegetable. Her head injury was so unusual that Hamalae consulted with two doctors from the mainland who’re here for a conference. They’ve been going over the test results since noon.”
    “The nurse said all she needed was a couple of stitches.”
    “Apparently there’s been internal bleeding. Hell, I’m no doctor—”
    “Don’t you care that she was driving a stolen car?”
    He remembered the way she’d been dressed and the mismatched shoes. Put that together with the way she’d acted in the tent and … man, oh, man … who knew what she’d done. Still, he’d be damned before he’d concede that Cody was right. “Someone else might have stolen the car.”
    Cody slammed the heel of his palm against his forehead, a gesture that reminded Greg of their father even though Cody had only been four when their parents were killed. He couldn’t possibly remember the way Dad would hit his forehead when he was angry, yet Cody always did the same thing.
    “Something’s mighty fishy here. That car has been missing for over a year. For months we had that license number posted on our dashboards,” Cody said and Greg could tell he was making a supreme effort to be patient, to breach the chasm between them. “We never saw that car—not once.”
    Greg knew his brother was justifiably proud of himself.
    Crime was almost nonexistent on the island. If a car had been stolen, it would have killed Cody not to recover it. Few cars ever left the island, and it was easy enough to prevent one from leaving by having the port authority watch for it. The rental car had been here all the time, yet the police had missed it.
    “If you were so on top of things, why didn’t you recognize the license number?” Greg realized his voice was more than bitter now, but he couldn’t help it. He was so damn mad at Cody, even after all this time, that he couldn’t help himself.
    Cody hesitated, visibly upset, yet when he spoke, his tone was level. “I didn’t actually see the car myself. I sent a team there to search for the woman’s purse, remember? When I saw their report, I recognized the license number immediately. I spent all day showing the blonde’s picture around at the hotels so I could ID her.”
    “What did you find out?”
    “Nothing. No one recognized her. That’s why I’m here to look at her clothes. It’s a long shot but perhaps there’s a label or something that’ll give us a clue.”
    “Aren’t you missing the obvious?” There was venom in Greg’s tone. Cody assumed that belligerent stance again, but Greg kept talking, his voice no less antagonistic. “She had to be staying on the Hana side up in those hills somewhere.” Greg knew it would take days to search the area. Roughly a thousand people lived on the far side of paradise, thriving on the isolation. Around Hana you could find everything from rock stars’ estates to middle aged hippies living in old school buses. Most of them shunned the tourist side of Maui and guarded their privacy like pit bulls.
    “You’re probably right,” Cody admitted. “I have to arrest her, though. The blonde—”
    “Lucky,” Greg interrupted. “Call her Lucky.”
    “Lucky,” Cody said the name as if he was chewing tin foil, “was driving a Traylor rental car.”
    Tony Traylor was head of the joint council, the group representing the towns on the island, in effect, Cody’s boss. Three hundred pounds of blubber in a Hawaiian shirt, Tony was an arrogant loudmouth who lived to throw his weight around.