Page 10 of Deadly Aloha
I slipped my phone back into my pocket. I didn’t like it, but I was wearing my one pair of sneakers, a pair of jeans I hadn’t even known I owned, and a white tank top. I felt confined, like I was wearing a three-piece suit and tie. My nipples kept rubbing against the cotton like it was made of sandpaper. And my feet were screaming at me to set them free.
I kept reminding myself that I just had to make it through tonight, get the Bloody Scorpions and the Royal Bastards off my island, call Jameson to tell him we were even, and then I could take a long fucking nap. I needed to be refreshed and at my best for tomorrow night. The shoot at the nightclub was going to be a long one, and I was going to need all the stamina I could get.
When I didn’t answer him, Tangaloa picked his binoculars back up. “I don’t understand what they’re doing or why here. It doesn’t make any sense. The Yakuza own the drug trade, though The Company still has a small portion. They’re mostly into counterfeiting nowadays. A lot of organized crime has turned cyber. B14 is upping their identity theft trade. And the Triad will always have the monopoly on the flesh trade, money laundering, and such.”
He put the binoculars down again to look at me. The moon was waning, but still provided some light. Its reflection cast a glow on the dark ocean waves behind Tangaloa. “What are the Bloody Scorpions trying to build here? They’re a long way from the Mainland.”
“They’re expanding. Recent years, they went international. From what I picked up, they seem to appear wherever the Royal Bastards are too.”
“But there aren’t any Royal Bastards here,” Tangaloa argued. “At least, not before they arrived.”
“Maybe we’re like a halfway stop?” I offered, not having any other idea.
“I still want to know what’s in those boxes.”
I tapped my finger on the grass. “Do you still have Hiro’s number?”
Tangaloa raised both of his eyebrows. “They said they didn’t want to talk to you after last time.”
I nodded. “That’s whyyouare the one who’s going to do the talking.” I slapped him on the back. “Come on. Let’s go. You can talk and walk.”
In the thirty-ishminutes since Tangaloa got off the phone with Hiromasa Ito, a local thief and tech genius, two boats had shown up at the docks, each driven by a Bloody Scorpion. I hadn’t seen that cut in a long time, but I’d recognize that orange scorpion surrounded by a silver rope anywhere. The two from the boats met up with the three guarding the truck. All of them lit up while passing around a bottle. One even took a piss on the front tire of the truck they were guarding.
None of them noticed the small figure in all black slip onto the roof of the truck from the storage building behind them. We all had our binoculars raised.
“So who is this guy?” Aftermath asked, causing me to wince.
“They,” I corrected. Tangaloa and I were outside the SUV while Red and Aftermath were inside with the windows down. “They’re nonbinary. And if you call them ‘he’, your entire lifesavings might one day vanish and you suddenly find yourself entirely penniless.”
Red lowered his binoculars and looked at me through the windshield. “Wait,that’swhat happened to your money?”
I snorted humorlessly. “That’swhat happened to my money. Took me nearly six years to regain what I lost, but yeah. Hiro stole it.”
“Shit, man,” Red breathed out under his breath.
“So why are you working with him now?” Aftermath asked. “Fuck. I meanthem.”
“Because Hiro is the best,” I said with a forlorn sigh. “And they don’t know I’m here. I’d like to keep it that way, if possible.”
The Bloody Scorpions were completely unaware as Hiro sliced through the thin top of the truck and then slithered their way inside.
“Um,” Red cleared his throat, “how old is Hiro? Call me crazy, but they look like a kid.”
Tangaloa snorted. “Don’t say that in front of them either. I don’t know how old they are, but they’re an adult. Trust me.”
My phone buzzed in my pocket. I pulled it out to find a text message from an unknown number with a bunch of pictures. “Fuck. They know I’m here.”
Tangaloa chuckled. “Did you really think you could hide from them?”
I let out a defeated sigh. “No, but now I’m wishing I’d kept some extra cash under my mattress. I really don’t want to live off ofRamenagain, dude.” My stomach clenched in memory. “That sucked.”
I opened the message to look at the pictures. “They’re clothes. A lot of clothes. Nothing matches. What the fuck did the Bloody Scorpions do, raid aGoodwill?”
I passed my phone inside the SUV so Aftermath and Red could take a look. At the same time, a small figure poppedthemselves out of the hole in the top of the truck, made their way silently across, and hopped onto the roof of the storage building.
“Why clothes?” Tangaloa asked no one in particular. “That makes even less sense. I expected guns or drugs.”
“Hiro isn’t a drug-sniffing dog. Maybe there’s drugs in there that they missed and the clothes are just hiding them.”
