Page 6 of Shark Cove

“I don’t know how!” Kylie folded her arms and pushed her lip out.

“Well, it’s time you learned. We’ll pick a recipe and make a plan tonight.”

“I don’t want to!” Kylie flounced out of her chair and ran upstairs.

“Alone at last.” Harry winked at Malia.

Malia wanted to smile but couldn’t. “Mom. This is serious. Camille would never run away.”

“You think that, but that mother of hers pretty much tortures her daily. I’d have run away long ago.” Harry helped herself to seconds.

“Mom, really. If she was going to run away, she’d have told me.” Malia touched her mother’s arm to make sure she had Harry’s attention. “She was irritated with her mother and all the beauty treatments, but she would never run away. She’s not the angry rebel type. She loves her mom, even if Ms. William is a psycho bitch.”

“Language.” Harry sat back, crossing long legs in their worn black jeans, kicking a foot thoughtfully. Even at the end of a long day, her thick hair in a simple braid, makeup worn off—Harry had a style that made striding around with a gun taking down bad guys easy to imagine. Malia glanced down at her own full chest and rounded thighs. She looked like the Pillsbury Dough Girl next to her mom. Obviously, they weren’t biologically related.

Harry got up and looked around to make sure Kylie had gone upstairs; Kylie hated Mom’s smoking and got dramatic when she caught Mom with a cig. Mom cracked the window and fetched a battered pack of Virginia Slims and worn gold lighter from her purse. Dad had given Mom that lighter when she got her detective rank, and it always made Malia a little sad to see it. “I have to talk to you about something serious,” she said.

“Nothing is more serious to me than Camille disappearing.” Malia watched her mother tap the cigarette on the table, light it, inhale, then let the smoke trickle out of her nostrils as she gazed at the ceiling. Harry’d often said she did her best thinking when she was smoking; it was part of why she had a hard time giving it up.

Mom took another drag, blew the smoke in a concentrated stream in the direction of the open window. “Lei told me about a case she’s working on at the office. Someone’s abducting teen girls here on Maui. She wanted me to caution you; you’re right in the age bracket that’s getting kidnapped. Kylie’s a little young, but I want both of you to be on alert.”

Malia clapped her hands to her cheeks. “Maybe someone took Camille!”

“Not likely if she packed a bag and left a note. These missing girls have been street kids— and just recently, a girl who was walking home alone. Doesn’t fit the situation you described with Camille.”

“There’s something wrong, Mom. Camille would tell me if she was leaving.” Malia’s eyes teared up.

“Maybe there’s a boy involved.” Harry narrowed her eyes to squint at Malia through a curl of smoke. “Yeah. My vote is a boy, or the dad. Isn’t he some shipping magnate? And who was she going out with?”

“Camille had someone she liked, but I don’t think she was actually going out with him, yet,” Malia said. Blake Lee, the man-slut homecoming king, was the guy Camille liked; good thing Malia had exposed him for the jerk he was, never mind that she was secretly crushing on him herself. “Run off with a boy?” Malia shook her head. “That’s just not Camille.”

“What about the dad, then? Doesn’t Leonard William live on a yacht?”

Malia paused, thinking about her friend’s relationship with her father. Camille hadn’t talked much about William since he left, roughly at the same time as her own father had. “Camille complained about her mom’s beauty fetish, but I never heard her say she’d rather be with her dad. From what I can tell, she’s a little afraid of him.”

“I’m not surprised. Leonard William has a reputation for having a bad temper as well as some shady business dealings.” Harry got up and went to the sink, where she crushed out the last of her cigarette, then dropped it in the garbage disposal and ground it up. “I better go shower before I deal with your sister.” She kissed the top of Malia’s head and squeezed her hunched shoulders. “Hang in there. Camille will probably turn up tomorrow and have a story to tell you about how she’d had it with her mom.”

“I hope so.” Malia watched Harry walk away, then opened the window wider, turned on the overhead fan, and cleaned up the rest of the dinner mess, phoning Camille’s cell one more time.

Still no answer.

Later that night, Malia stared at the ceiling. She’d texted a few kids she thought might have heard from Camille, fishing to find out if her friend was with them—but no one had seen her since that afternoon.

She tossed and turned.

Had Camille decided she couldn’t trust Malia because of the Wallflower website? Because she’d posted about Blake? Had she been dumped as a friend?

The door squeaked as it opened. Malia sat up in bed, recognizing Kylie’s shape, ghostly in a white sleep tee. “What do you want?”

“I can’t sleep.” Kylie came to stand next to the bed, her shoulders slumped and eyes dark shadows in the glow from a nightlight, her old bear Doodlebug clasped in her arms. “Can I stay with you?”

Malia tried to hold on to being annoyed with her sister, but couldn’t. She slid over without a word. Kylie climbed into bed beside her, settling herself like a chick fluffing its feathers in the nest, plumping a second pillow and snuggling close against Malia’s back with the bear in her arms. Malia smiled in the darkness, and finally her own eyes grew heavy.

Chapter Three

The next morning,Lei poured a cup of the station’s inky black coffee into her favorite, only slightly chipped MPD mug. She stirred in powdered creamer with a red plastic stick as she headed for the conference room.

Captain CJ Omura was seated at the head of their table, early as usual. Her sleek laptop was open, her pretty, manicured fingers flying across the keys. The captain’s sharp dark eyes flicked up from typing to take in Lei’s appearance.

---