to grumble in German to his lady companion.
Then, like a snowstorm in hell, all her complaints melted away instantly as she caught sight of the airport, with its regulation stands of palms edging the road, for the second time in a week.
Her skin crawled with anticipation, tightening round her bones until she wanted nothing more than to stand up and stretch it back into shape. In a few hours she’d be landing in New Zealand where her grandmother had been born.
The land her grandfather had called paradise. Though she preferred the words of American author Zane Grey, last, loneliest, loveliest. An evocative description that sang like a siren’s call in her ears. Though she had the blood of four nations rushing through her veins, Ngaire felt ties to none.
Maybe in paradise she would find herself.
The sigh of air brakes announced the arrival of a blue bus carrying a yellow hibiscus logo, pulling up a few yards ahead.
Kel measured its size with his eye and did the numbers, reckoning on a twenty, twenty-two seater. He’d expected to deal with a luxury coach, so this put him ahead of the game.
Maybe his luck had turned.
The bus door swooshed open, folding in two. A pair of shoulders balanced above a belly like Buddha’s took its place as the driver lumbered off in a shirt as loud as his bus. Following him in a jumble of leis and woven palm-leaf hats, a half-dozen colorful Tahitian women alighted, swaying and giggling as the driver unclipped the baggage compartment, calling “Un moment, mademoiselles, s’il vous plaît, un moment” over one shoulder.
Kel took a few swift puffs of his cigarette, letting hot smoke roll over his tongue to release through his nose in short, sharp bursts. Not a sign of anyone resembling the image he’d built of Two Feathers McKay. “Dammit!” He spat the word out under his breath. The curse didn’t relieve his frustration.
Tossing the half-smoked butt into a sand bucket, he moved closer as the passengers dribbled out slowly and began to blend. He counted twelve islanders with a filtering of Europeans, French extraction, going by the casual elegance of their clothes. Behind the anonymity of his dark glasses, he eyed a tall man in a crumpled beige suit, heard a smattering of German as the dude snapped an order, a curse, then a demand at the driver.
One more to cross off his list.
His heart rate picked up. What if McKay had taken a different route? From the smell of things, their info could be a red herring. Wrapping his fist round the strap of his bag, he clamped down on his frustration. He wanted—no, needed—to be the one to find the goons responsible for Gordie’s death.
The last passenger left the bus, tightening the thumbscrews on the fear of failure raging inside him. This was a woman, medium height, with muscles lightly sculpted under glowing skin. She flicked a long black braid behind her shoulder, stepping into the remaining space to complete the crescent of passengers awaiting luggage.
As she dropped her small day pack between her feet, he watched her reach high, stretching with all the athletic grace of a dancer.
Every instinct shouted “Trouble,” with a capital T.
Latent sexual greed slugged him a good one. He wanted some of that, wanted a taste of the peach-fuzz skin making his mouth water. Wanted to feel it slide against his own in the heat of passion, as he sank into her to ease his pain.
He’d heard it could take you this way, but until now he’d never experienced the need to sublimate grief with sex.
To screw your ass off as opposed to crying. Death substituted by procreation. Lust mollified by this cockeyed piece of home-brewed psychology, he swung his eyes round the passengers one more time.
Where’n all hell was McKay?
He began circling the crush, his impatience as obscure as theirs was obvious while the driver dumped piece after piece from the baggage compartment into a heap on the sidewalk. Gucci took its chances with cheap blue-and-pink-striped plastic as the owners pulled their bags from the bottom of the pile.
Lazy movements at the far side of the crowd snagged his glance and zapped him again. Pushing his sunglasses back to improve the view, he gazed at the growing distance between the black crop top and matching hipster pants, separated by lush skin.
Isolated by her unhurried attitude, she reminded him of a cat, easing out its kinks as all hell let loose around it. “Eyes left, Jellic, you’re working.”
As he scolded himself, a piece of crimson, hard-bodied Samsonite, defaced by a Chinese good-luck symbol and propelled by the removal of the one below it, slid from the top of the heap onto his side of the crowd. Kel took off his shades to read the gold words glinting on its side: Blue Grasshopper, Chinatown, San Francisco.
“Now, that’s what I call carrying promotion to the nth degree.” It didn’t prevent the back of his neck pricking as he moved in for a closer inspection. San Francisco?
McKay couldn’t be that dumb, surely, or that cheap. Could he?
The urge to take a gander at the address tag was blocked by a red floral shirt he recognized. The meaty fingers he’d seen lighting a cigarette captured the handle and pulled it away from the rest. He heard the slap of it against the guy’s bare calves as he hopped off the sidewalk toward the back of the bus, swiping the sweat off his brow through his hair as if the exertion was killing him.
“Hey! That’s mine.” The owner was feminine, unmistakably American and anything but happy.
Simultaneously, but not in order of importance, Kel watched Ms. Bronze-skin whip off her sunglasses. Her shocked gaze, bluer than a Tahitian lagoon, followed the red shirt, while her pink sunglasses tumbled from her hand, catching the light.
As their glances clashed, his body tensed, gearing itself to spring after the thief, then he remembered who he was and why he was there. Although he hadn’t moved an inch, Kel felt as if he’d hit a brick wall. A sensation every bit as painful as her swift expression of disappointment, coursed through him.
As the woman hotfooted it round her side of the vehicle, pride overcame caution. Dropping his suit carrier, he chased the good-luck-charm that wasn’t living up to its publicity.
She was fast but in trouble now; the guy outweighed her by more than a hundred pounds. Kel heard her yell as she ran, “Drop the case, you jerk, it’s mine.”
Kel was at least four paces behind them when she confronted the guy, taking up a fighting stance, hands karate style like miniature lethal weapons, as if anything that small could hurt.
He had to do something quick before she copped a lesson no amount of stretching would get rid of.
The thief yelped, dropping the case as though it burned before the woman had to follow through with her threat. Two fast paces later Kel grabbed the red collar and felt it rip in his hand as the chunky guy twisted out of his grasp, leaving his ill-gotten gains behind. Then, before Kel could grasp him again, he shambled off at a fast clip without looking back.
Kel could easily have overtaken him—hell, he ran like a red sofa on speed—but GDE business came first, no matter how beautiful the victim. His first reaction had been correct.
She was trouble.
As the woman straightened, he checked
