“I won’t end this message with a goodbye or a declaration of love that is so sappy even I want to roll my eyes at it. Instead, I’ll just leave it with see you in four years… You know, after I see you at the wedding. But afterthat, I’ll see you in four years.”
Apparently I turned into a babblinghupo, an idiot, when I didn’t rehearse or even think ahead about what I was going to say to her. And after that embarrassing phone call, I threw myself into my work and solving the problem of Kalea’s blackmailer. I did not consider it stooping low when I told Mako to “try and get his name out of her by any means necessary”. Even if it did give one of my club brothers carte blanche to seduce my ex-wife.
I didn’t know, nor did I want to know, the details of any attempts Mako made to try to get the information out of Kalea, but he’d clearly failed. As had Kayl and Neo.
“Look, you told me to go as far back as birth if I had to,” Neo complained. We were at my warehouse in Kalihi Kai, which was conveniently hidden between anAmazonDistribution Center and aSubway, and across the street from the Ke’ehi Boat Harbor. I’d been living here since leaving Kalea’s house Monday morning. “The woman is thirty years old, that’s a lot of men she could have met in her lifetime! She got around, you know.”
“Watch it,” I growled, pointing a finger at them.
“I’m not sayingsex,” Neo backtracked. “I mean in general. Without knowing what she’s being blackmailed with, there’s no way to tell who. We’re not looking for a hook in a shoal but one specific fish that just happened to see or hear something at a specific moment in time that he is now using against her.”
My dark mood did not improve at their explanation. I turnedmy attention to Kayl. “What about you? Any luck with Pua’s DNA?”
We got back Caroline’s and Samantha’s results a few days ago, which confirmed what I already suspected: they were not biologically related. I didn’t know how Samantha had come into Caroline’s care, and it didn’t matter. Caroline might be young, but she was clearly Samantha’s mother in every way that counted. Unfortunately, the results also came back negative for missing persons cases for both of them as well. It had been a good idea, but defiantly a bust.
“Your guy’s not in our database,” Kayl answered my question. “I had to open a fake report to even justify runningthattest, and had to call in a favor with a forensic analyst I know to jump the extremely backlogged line of DNA tests that have to be run for legitimate cases.” When I stepped forward, Kayl put his hands up in surrender. “Not saying this isn’t a legitimate case. It’s Kalea, of course I’m doing all I can. I just meant that it’s not as easy to run DNA as movies and shows make it out to be.” When I didn’t advance further, Kayl put his hands back down, crossing his arms over his chest. “Look, it was a long shot that he would have been in our system anyway. And it might cost a pretty penny, but sending any future samples out to a private lab might be faster and more reliable.”
I was running out of patience. “I went through her neighbors’ trash.” I pulled out zip lock bags to show the samples I brought. “But six men who used to live in our neighborhood at the time of Pualani’s conception have since moved away.”
“I did mail her DNA into an ancestry database,” Neo added with hopeful enthusiasm. “I figured if I was doing it for Caroline and Samantha, why not Pualani? It takes time, but maybe we get a ping on a relative. If she’s got a cousin or uncle out there somewhere that is in the database, we’ll be able to narrow down who Kalea’s rapist is.”
Kayl frowned. “Don’t those things take about two months to get back?”
Neo shrugged, clearly not any happier about that than Kayl. “Sometimes, but with so many unknowns, what could it hurt? And even if no relatives come back, we could at least narrow down this guy’s race.”
Two fucking months. This better not take that long. Then again, right now, I had nothing but time on my hands. “You said you had a list of men you thought I should look into in person?” I asked Neo.
They did something on their computer, and a second later, my phone pinged in my pocket. “It’s only about fifteen guys, including fellow high school students and boarders who had been at the Ka’ana’ana farm since the time you all were kids.”
I opened my phone and scrolled through the list. Kayl looked over my shoulder to examine it too. “Feel like going for a ride?” I asked him.
“Shoots!” he nodded with a wicked grin. “I’ve been itching to get my hands dirty all week. Your cut and my badge stay behind, though.”
I agreed. Besides, this wasn’t club business. This was personal. “Let’s go.”
Chapter Twelve
Day of Wedding
The Waikiki Wedding Hall was a beachside restaurant. Aloiki and Lu chose the location because it was secluded, surrounded by foliage rather than tourism. The large parking lot had plenty of space for the number of motorcycles and vehicles that would be in attendance, and the owner was a loyal customer ofShakaloha.
Mako pulled Kalea’s cage into the parking lot at the same time I came in on my bike. Based on the amount of vehicles already here, we were probably one of the last to arrive, though neither of us was late. I wondered if Kalea had a hard time getting Pualani wrangled this morning. She looked adorable in her little white dress covered in pink hibiscus. Kalea had on a full-body coral plumeria panelpareo, a sarong.
Like me, Mako wore only apareoaround his waist. Mine was black with a white turtle design, “to accent” per Lu. Mako’s was a forest green with silver waves.
“Give us a minute,” I told the Cleaner after Kalea got Pualani out of her car seat. Mako nodded once and headed towards the path that led down to the beach. Kalea waited by the cage for meto approach her. I supposed that was to be expected. “You look good,” I told her with complete honesty.
“I almost didn’t come. I wasn’t sure if you would want me to.”
I wasn’t happy to hear that. “Of course I want you here. And you have just as much of a right to be here as any of us.”
“Are you… I mean, you look tired. Are you okay?”
I did not want to say on her brother’s wedding day that I would sleep better if she would just give me the name and details of her blackmailer. So instead, I said, “Just working late. How do you like Mako?”
Kalea’s eyes narrowed on me. “Did you tell him to sleep with me?”
I stiffened. “No! I mean, I told him to try to get information out of you, and I didn’t specifically say that seduction couldn’t be used, but I did not tell himtosleep with you.”