Page 14 of Just My Luck

She might be preparing to go back to Nahele Research Camp. That would be unfortunate. The last time he’d been at that camp, he’d experienced a coma, a kidnapping, and a helicopter crash. Who knew what could happen if he went back. He should try to intercept Mathilda before she headed to those lush northeast valleys.

He checked the weather on the east side of the island. The west side was generally dry and sunny, though not always. The east side, on the other hand…yup, nothing but rain for the next week.

He posted an email in the draft folder of an account that only he and his chief of security had access to. Mathilda Wheeler is back in Hilo. Monitor her movements and lmk if she’s prepping to go back to the jungle. I want to interrogate her before then. Don’t scare her off. No one talks to her except me.

These days, he didn’t trust anyone on his staff. He’d made an exception for Rory because he’d needed a pilot. And he was keeping his fingers crossed about his IT guy. But no way was he going to allow his security team to interview Mathilda Wheeler. That was his job. In fact, he had two completely separate security teams on the case, neither of which knew about the other.

Paranoid? Sure, he could see why someone might think that. But when billions were at stake, it was probably closer to realism than paranoia.

Before he logged off, on a whim he Googled Zara and the Royal Leilani. They didn’t list the names of their staff members, so that didn’t give him anything. But the name Zara did surface in a short newspaper item from the Honolulu Star-Advertiser.

At the Hawaii Surfing Association competition in Haleiwa, a young new star burst on the scene. Thirteen-year-old Zara Morrissey shocked everyone when she won the Girls 17 and Under category in her very first surfing competition. Zara grew up in Kailua-Kona, and has been surfing since she was five. In a short interview, she said she was just trying to have fun, and dedicated her trophy to her mother, who taught her how to surf before passing away several years ago.

A photo accompanied the article. It showed a brightly smiling girl in a red bikini. She held a surfboard that must be several feet taller than she was. Her hair was cut short and curled in wild waves around her ears.

He’d know that hair anywhere after getting so close and personal with it.

So Zara was a surfer, and her last name was Morrissey.

He googled Zara Morrissey, but nothing else came up that seemed relevant. Maybe her surfing career had ended after that competition. The only other mention of a Morrissey came in an article about a Louis Morrissey who’d been convicted of fraud.

The story was devoted to his escape from custody. During a parole hearing, someone had released a herd of feral cats in the courthouse hallway. During the ensuing chaos, Morrissey had hidden in a coffee cart. He became something of a folk hero during the manhunt and acquired the nickname Lucky Lou.

But his luck ran out when someone spotted him selling “lucky lava charms” to tourists on Ali’i Drive. His defense to the charge of selling lava, which was highly illegal in Hawaii, was that it was obviously fake.

Interesting character, to say the least, and apparently not one to learn from his past mistakes. He sold the story of his escape to a movie producer, and then a podcaster, and then a publisher, none of whom knew that they’d all purchased “exclusive” rights. Not a dangerous crime, but a third strike after his escape. The judge had shown no mercy, and now he was back behind bars.

The photo of “Lucky Lou,” with his trademark sunny smile, looked a bit like Zara around the mouth. She too had an easy smile and that same carefree quality. It radiated from Louis Morrissey even though he wore a prison jumpsuit in the photo.

Feeling a little queasy, he shut down his laptop. If there was any chance at all that Zara was related to Lucky Lou Morrissey, he needed to stay far away from her. The last thing he needed was to let more criminals into his life. Tanaka was more than enough.

7

“Come on, Zar. You’re really going to act like you don’t want in on this? It’s pumping out there.” Moondog gestured toward the clean six-foot waves rolling onto Banyans Beach.

“I’m good, I told you. Mia’s out there in the lineup. Go bug her.”

“Good to see the groms so stoked,” he mused, using the surf term for a young person.

She took a swig from her hibiscus soda. A cooler sat between her lawn chair and a straw mat. A large beach umbrella shaded her from the midday sun. A few feet away, her wallet was double-bagged and buried under the sand, with a piece of coral marking the spot. Nearby, Eddie dug in the sand as if the future of the world depended on him finding a route through the Earth’s core. Even though he was named after the Hawaiian surf legend Eddie Aikau, he showed no interest in surfing.

“Are you, like, reading?” Moondog stared at the textbook open on her lap.

“That’s the general idea. It’s one of the building blocks of learning, haven’t you heard?”

He shrugged as if none of her words made any sense, and jogged back toward the water’s edge. She shook off the droplets of ocean water he’d scattered over her, then watched with envy as he duck-dived through a wave.

Mia caught a nice A-frame, rode it flawlessly for a breathtaking stretch, then dumped out. She didn’t like having to work her way back out to the lineup, preferring to maximize her wave time. Zara had no idea where she’d found a black bikini—probably dyed it, come to think of it.

She sighed and turned her focus back to the page. The class on torts was a bitch, and this online law school stuff was probably a massive waste of time. But it was something she could do in her time off, at home, and she’d already completed half the credits. If she actually managed to complete the program, she’d try her hand at the bar exam next year. If she passed that, she could work on appealing her dad’s absurdly long sentence. As a bonus, she’d have a career that paid better than telling tourists where to see monk seals.

It had all seemed to make perfect sense, but right now, trying hard to stare at her textbook and not at the ocean, she was rethinking the whole plan. Not that she didn’t like the law; she found the work pretty easy. Word had already spread among the locals that if they needed legal advice, Zara was their girl.

In fact, one of her “clients” was currently running barefoot across the beach toward her.

“Zara!” Odessa raced across the sand, waving for her attention. “Big…news!”

Zara hoped it was good news, for once. Poor Odessa had been going through it lately.