Moon over Maalaea Bay Read Online Free PDF Page B

a violation of love, a violation of goodness.
    But who is violating goodness?
    Lee shoved the intruding thought from his mind when he shoved his chair back from the table and left the corner and the thoughts that were suffocating him.
    He moved to a table in the middle of the room.
    Two tables away, a young girl about Katie’s age, maybe sixteen, sat with a man twice her age. The muscular man in dark cargo shorts and a black T-shirt looked out of place with the young girl.
    Even here inside the restaurant he couldn’t escape the reminders of Jennifer’s abduction. The man fit the meager description Yagi had provided, but…no, he was obsessed with finding Jennifer’s captors, and he was just being stupid. This was not the perp, and he couldn’t waste time with useless—
    He jumped when a coffee cup thumped on the table. He tried to give the waitress a smile, but he had no clue what expression his face held.
    “You’re welcome,” the waitress replied, then scurried away as if to be rid of him.
    “Can’t move her now…” A man’s voice.
    Lee turned his head to see where the softly spoken words had come from. The man sitting beside the teenage girl. It must have been him. Lee stared at his coffee cup and strained to hear more.
    “…stay in the house until…”
    “…island’s sealed…”
    Both times it was the man’s voice. Were the phrases he overheard coincidence or, as unlikely as it seemed, were the two speaking about Jennifer? He had to know. Lee quickly appended two more actions onto his slowly developing plan.
    He initiated the first action by slipping his cell phone from his pocket. Moving his thumbs, he tried to imitate someone texting. Instead of pressing letters, he put his cell in camera mode and moved it until the man and the girl were centered on the display. He pressed the button to capture the image.
    When the picture appeared, it looked clear. He could see the sides of both faces and a profile of their bodies. He saved the picture, then looked up at the couple’s table, positioning his cell to take another. They were gone.
    Lee quickly scanned the room.
    The two were approaching the exit door.
    He pulled a five spot from his wallet, tossed it on the table, and hurried after them.
    After he stepped outside, Lee had to pause while his eyes adjusted to the dimly lit parking lot. He scanned the entire area. The two people were nowhere in sight.
    Only one route could have allowed them to disappear so quickly. They had gone around the corner, behind the building.
    He ran to the corner of the restaurant and looked into the darkness behind it. Without scaling a six-foot fence, there was only one path they could have taken. They had crossed an undeveloped field that sloped upward towards a residential area.
    A residential area? The words “Can’t move her now…stay in the house…” replayed in his mind as he stared into the darkness.
     
     
     
     

7
     
    Lee stared across the dark, undeveloped field populated with scrubby bushes large enough to hide two people. Beyond the big field there were condos on the left side, houses at the far end, and a tall fence on the right side.
    The house that the man and the girl came from was probably a short walk away. But based only on the few words he had heard, Lee couldn’t be certain these people were the perps. There was, however, something he could do about his uncertainty.
    I can remove it.
    He pulled out his cell phone and the piece of computer paper he had stuffed into his pocket. He studied the picture on his cell and read the words written on the paper, Grand Wailea Resort.
    Lee looked at his watch. Ten forty-five PM. Unless she was a night owl, Bertha Renner would soon get a wake-up call.
    Lee wheeled and trotted to his car. When he pulled out of the restaurant parking lot, he headed south towards Wailea, disregarding the twenty-five-mile-per-hour speed limit signs.
    Within five minutes, his headlights illuminated a sign pointing to the Grand