She could see the posts on the Internet now. Her story would be fucking click bait, and she’d have to run again. Find somewhere else to hide.
What was the point of trying to live when she’d just be hunted down again?
But then Scott’s face sprang into her mind. How he looked when he smiled down at her. How his beard felt against her skin as he kissed and caressed her. How proud he’d looked when the soufflé he’d made had come out perfectly.
A renewed energy swept over her.
Elodie would fight to live for Scott.
She loved him so damn much and would do anything to spare him the pain of not knowing what happened to her. She wouldn’t wish that on her worst enemy…well, all right, maybe she would on Steven or Paul.
Elodie knew she was a bit delirious, and she took a deep, calming breath. Then she fixed her gaze on Diamond Head in the distance…and began to swim toward it.
Maybe she’d run into another fishing boat on her way, and she wouldn’t have to swim the entire distance. Maybe a dolphin would come up beside her and let her grab ahold of its dorsal fin, then tow her in. Or one of Hawaii’s famous green turtles, a hona, would have pity on her and let her take a ride on its back.
She didn’t care how it happened, but she was going to get back to Scott no matter what it took.
Chapter Twenty
Mustang looked at his watch for what seemed like the tenth time. The Fish Tales was late. He shouldn’t be as worried as he was…but for some reason, he couldn’t help but feel as if something was very wrong. Their charters ran like clockwork. In the past, on the rare occasion Elodie was going to be late, she called him. She had the disposable phone he’d given her and always carried it with her. The signal was sometimes shitty out on the ocean, but she’d always managed to get through.
His sixth sense had never failed him before, and Mustang didn’t feel at all bad about pulling out his phone and disturbing Kahoni on his day off. The man had given him his number before he’d been deployed and told him to call anytime. Maybe Kai had contacted his boss and let him know they were having engine trouble or something. If anything was wrong with the boat, Kahoni would know.
“Hello?”
“Hi, Kahoni, this is Scott Webber, Melody’s boyfriend.”
“Aloha, Scott. What’s up?”
“I’m at the dock to pick up Melody, but the boat’s not back yet. I was wondering if you’d heard from Kai about any engine trouble or anything they might be having? Or maybe their guest wanted to stay out longer?” Mustang asked, looking for any reasonable answer as to why the boat hadn’t been back at the time it was supposed to be.
“Really? That’s strange. Hang on…I’m gonna patch Perry into the call.”
Mustang waited impatiently for the second boat owner to be added to their discussion.
“Perry?”
“I’m here,” the other man said.
“Scott, you still there?” Kahoni asked.
“Yes.”
“Okay, so Scott says the Fish Tales isn’t back yet. Have you heard from Kai?” Kahoni asked Perry.
“No. Not today. Give me a second and I’ll check the GPS tracker.”
Mustang sighed in relief as he paced in front of his truck. He hadn’t realized the owners had a GPS onboard, one that could be tracked, but he shouldn’t have been surprised.
He waited impatiently as Perry worked on pulling up the location of the boat on his computer.
“That’s weird,” he said.
Mustang stopped walking. “What’s weird?” he asked.
“It’s showing the Fish Tales is at Ko Olina Marina.”
Impatient, Mustang asked, “Where is that?”
“Well, it’s out by Barbers Point. You’re at Ala Wai Harbor down by Waikiki, right?” Perry asked.
“Of course I am, that’s where the boat left from and where it’s always returned.”
“Shit, what the hell is our boat doing out at Barbers Point?” Kahoni asked.
That was what Mustang wanted to know as well. He hadn’t received any calls from Elodie saying there had been an emergency or a change of plans regarding where they were going to dock.
Something was terribly wrong—and he needed to find out what. “I’m headed there now,” he told the men.
“I will too,” Kahoni said. “Although, I’m on the other side of the island at my daughter’s birthday party, so it might take me a while.”
“I can’t leave my kids home alone,” Perry said. “I need to go over to the neighbors’ and see if anyone’s home and if they can watch them. But I’ll be there as soon as I can.”
“Stay in touch,” Kahoni told Mustang.
“I will,” he promised, then hung up. He climbed into his truck and immediately dialed Aleck’s number.
“Yo, what’s up?”
“I need you and the rest of the team to meet me at Ko Olina Marina.”
“Why? What’s wrong?” Aleck asked, immediately going into SEAL mode.
“I don’t know exactly. Elodie’s boat wasn’t at their normal harbor when I got here and when Perry tracked it, it’s all the way across the island at a harbor they’ve never docked in before.”
“Shit, okay, I’ll call the others. You been able to get ahold of Elodie?”
“No.” Mustang’s response was short and to the point.
“Fuck. Don’t panic,” Aleck said, and Mustang figured he was speaking to himself, as much as he was his team leader.
“It’s Columbus,” Mustang said as he drove way too fast toward the interstate.
“We don’t know that.”
“Yeah, we do,” Mustang countered. “Get Pid on this. See what he can find out. We haven’t had any pings on Columbus or his capos. Elodie didn’t sense anything out of the ordinary, and neither have I. If this is him, or more likely someone from his family, they’re better than we assumed.”
“I’m on it. Don’t do anything crazy when you get to that marina,” Aleck warned.
“No promises,” Mustang told his teammate. “If Elodie’s been hurt, someone’s gonna fucking pay.”
“Yeah, they are,” Aleck said. “No one fucks with one of our own. We’ll see you soon.”
Mustang clicked off the Bluetooth and gripped the steering wheel tightly with both hands. This was bad. He knew it. Call it instinct or intuition. But he knew whatever he was going to find on that boat wasn’t going to be good. He just prayed he wouldn’t find Elodie’s body.
It took longer than he wanted, even going fifteen miles an hour over the speed limit. But when Mustang pulled into the parking lot of the Ko Olina Marina, it was chaos. An ambulance was parked haphazardly in a handicap spot near the front of the docks, and there were six police cars there as well.
Mustang ran up to where the cops were blocking access to the dock.
He could see the Fish Tales at the very end of the dock—with a rope tying it to a lamppost. Definitely not normal docking procedure.
“That’s the boat my girlfriend was working on,” Mustang told one of the police officers. “What’s going on?”