Riptide

CHAPTER 32

Lila Summers hit the gas, hut the engine backed off — the Mazda could have used a tune-up — then revved and tore around the next curve. The Blazer closed the distance, its fortified front bumper drawing a bead on them. Then it just hung there, a foot or two feet behind, taking every curve with them. Lila slowed, the Blazer slowed; she sped up, the Blazer sped up.

“They’re toying with us,” Lassiter said. “Do you have any weapons in here?”

“Nothing here but the windsurfing gear in back,” she replied, never taking her eyes off the road.

He remembered Tubby, deja vu, and he figured he wasn’t doing any good this time either. “I’m going back there,” he said, opening the door and watching the pavement streak beneath him. Lila didn’t say a word. No meek feminine protests — don’t do it, Jake — not from Lila Summers. She was calm, her athlete’s reflexes taking care of the driving. If he could help out, fine. If not, just stay the hell out of the way.

Jake Lassiter took a deep breath, and then, holding onto the shoulder harness, swung a leg over the side of the bed and pushed off. A strange thought in midair: the image of Jackie Kennedy climbing over the trunk of the black Lincoln convertible. What was she doing, hauling ass to get out or helping the Secret Service guy in? And what was Jake Lassiter doing, jumping to safety again or picking up arms to fight? His hand caught the roll bar in midleap; it steadied him and he dropped into the bed.

The Blazer hadn’t changed position, still hanging back a foot from their rear bumper, growling like an angry beast. Wasting no time, Lassiter took inventory. The harnesses, booms, and mast extensions were rolling around at his feet. So was an eight-foot wave board. Lassiter grabbed the board and tossed it at the Blazer. The driver braked quickly, and the board crashed to the pavement, the fiberglass shattering, the Blazer crunching over it. Then, as if angered, the beast hit the Mazda pickup a jolt from the rear, sending Lassiter toppling forward. Not much time now. He picked up a boom, a five-foot-long aluminum wishbone covered by a rubber handgrip. He bounced it off the hood of the Blazer, a flea brushed from an elephant’s hide. Next, one of the heavy aluminum mast extensions: It fit in the palm of his hand like a nightstick. But it pinged on the Blazer’s windshield and fell harmlessly to the road.

Then Lassiter saw an old sail rolled up in the corner. He crouched down and opened it. The five plastic battens were not in the sleeves. Good, the sail would be more flexible. It had four vertical panels of different colors from the leech to the mast sleeve. From the head to the tack, it was fourteen feet long, about four feet across from sleeve to clew. It was the right size and it might work, but he would need the element of surprise and more luck than he’d had so far.

The sun glared off the Blazer’s heavily tinted windshield. It was ten feet behind them now, and Lassiter stood, spread-eagled, holding the sail, which filled with wind, threatening to take him over the side. He waited until the Blazer charged them, then let go. Five square meters of brightly colored Mylar crackled in the wind, then flew to the windshield. Brakes squealed but the sail stayed put, draping the cab of the Blazer like a shroud. They were on a curve now and the Blazer went straight across the uphill lane into the mauka side of the road, where the huge front wheels vaulted over a clump of boulders and slammed into a grassy slope.

Lila Summers hit the brakes, squealing the tires and sending Jake Lassiter sprawling again. He landed hard on a shoulder that had been separated three times and dislocated twice. She expertly slid the Mazda into a 180-degree turn.

Now what? Lassiter thought they’d beat it down the mountain, but Lila was streaking back up the road, nearing the Blazer where the passenger door was opening — the driver’s door was pinned against the slope — and as a man stepped from the high cab, Lila swung the Mazda off the road toward him. Lassiter felt the jolt and heard a th-ump.

Lila brought the Mazda to a stop and Lassiter jumped out. Sprawled across their hood and front windshield was one of the largest men he had ever seen, aloha shirt pulled up over his huge belly. Lila Summers sat motionless, her hands on the steering wheel, calmly contemplating the sight of the big man’s navel staring through the windshield like a Cyclops.

Blood flowed from the man’s nose and trickled from one of his ears. One eye was closed and a nasty welt was forming on his forehead. But he wasn’t dead, not even unconscious. He was at that very moment pulling himself up with one hand and tearing off the Mazda’s radio aerial with the other. From in front of the pickup, Lassiter grabbed the man’s foot to pull him off the hood, a task no more difficult than dragging a tractor trailer up a hill. The foot, wrapped in a size 15EEE Reebok running shoe, jerked Lassiter toward the hood, then with the kick of a plow horse sent him tumbling into the sand at the side of the road. A sumo wrestler, or maybe defensive line material.

The big man slid off the Mazda and got to his feet, shaky but massive, whipping the aerial back and forth, heading for Lassiter, who crouched on his haunches, his hands trailing along the ground. No one said a word.

The big man got closer, the aerial whining in the air, and Lassiter stayed put. When the man was close enough that Lassiter felt the breeze from the metal whip, he sprang forward, tossing two handfuls of red sand in the man’s face. There was a yelp, the aerial fell, and the man’s hands came up to his eyes.

Lassiter hit him, a good left jab to the right eye, then a short right to his huge belly. The big man simply grunted and blinked, still clawing at his eyes. Lassiter planted his feet and got a lot of hip behind a left hook. The timing was good, but the aim a little high, and it caught the big man square in the middle of his sloping forehead. Slugging Dave Casper’s helmet with a roundhouse right in the AFC Championship game had probably hurt more, but maybe not, Lassiter thought, his knuckles flaring with pain.

The giant grunted again and hit Lassiter in the chest with an open palm. The impact knocked him back three feet. A great pass blocker. The man wiped the blood from his nose, and twisted his face into a vicious smile. “Hit me again, haole.”

Lassiter didn’t, but Lila did, clobbering him from behind with a mast extension, then a second time, and the man crumpled like a buffalo shot through the heart.

“Let’s get him off the road,” she said, looking each way for traffic. It would have been easier with a crane. They pushed and rolled him into a gulley and Lila quickly brought some sturdy quarter-inch boom line from the Mazda.

“Help me get his hands behind his back,” she told Lassiter. Working quickly, she bound the big man’s wrists with a sheepshank knot. He was facedown in the gulley, moaning softly. It took both of them to turn him over.

“Hello, Lomio,” Lila said softly. “You’re not as quick as you used to be, but you’re just as ugly. And you look like you’ve been hit by a truck.” Lila laughed, and a chill went through Jake Lassiter. He tried to think. What was it about this moment, about that laugh, but it wouldn’t compute and he stored it away.

Lila was bent over the bleeding man. “Now, Lomio, tell me where they are. You would have been with Keaka when he hid them.”

The man was silent.

“Oh, Lomio, Lomio! Wherefore art thou… bonds?” Lila said to him theatrically. Enjoying the moment.

Lomio spoke through swollen, bleeding lips. “Up my ass, wahine laikini.”

“Lomio, that’s very crude, calling me a whore.” Then she smashed the mast extension into his ankle. Metal shattered bone. Lomio’s face contorted in pain but he made no sound.

Lila scowled and turned to Lassiter. “C’mon, Jake. Let’s put him in the back of the truck. We’ll have to baby-sit him until he tells us where the bonds are.”

“What if he doesn’t know?”

Lila laughed, the same mocking, chilling laugh. “We’ll find that out, too, if we handle it right. By the time he dies, he’ll tell all his family secrets.”

By the time he dies. What the hell does that mean? The big man was hurt, sure, but the injuries weren’t fatal. And here’s Lila talking about him dying like it was inevitable, like they were going to… well… finish him off.

Lila was very businesslike, no trace of emotion. No anger, no fear. Okay, she’s not like me, Jake Lassiter thought. So what? She’s not like anybody I’ve ever known.

Except that laugh, the taunting of Lomio, that was familiar.

It reminded him of someone, and the memory gnawed at Lassiter, calling back a night of terror and doom.

She sounded just like Keaka Kealia.