Page 54 of Talk Story

And then I heard two men, speaking low and harsh. The sound came from the front of the house; the speakers had to be out on the screened lanai. I paused inside the kitchen, holding Tiki’s carrier, my ears tuned to eavesdrop like a bat in a bungalow.

“That’s not for you to decide, Pali.” Keone growled. I’d known him long enough to hear that tone once or twice. “You don’t get to make that call for everybody and then ask the rest of us to carry the consequences.”

“I didn’t ask you to carry anything.” Pali Moku’s voice was hard, too. “I told you so you wouldn’t have to wonder. That’s all. You can forget I said it.”

“That’s not how things work, and you know it . . .”

I set Tiki’s carrier on the floor, and the latch gave a small metallic clink. Their voices cut off like a switch had been thrown.

The jig was up, the hootenanny was moot, the peacock had flown the coop—and then the wolves came.

“Hey, guys, it’s Kat,” I called out with manufactured cheer. For a second the cottage held its breath. Through the open doorway I could see the edge of the lanai, the dark horizon beyond the screen, and two men turning toward me—Keone half-risen from his chair, Pali standing stiffly by the railing with his arms crossed. “I let myself in. Wanted to surprise Keone,” I continued, in full perky fiancé mode.

I crossed through to the lanai as Tiki mewed in protest at being left behind. The night air met me, flowing through the screens, rich with plumeria fragrance and the freshness of the sea as the waves beat steady below the bluff.

Keone’s gaze found mine, widening with surprise as he scanned me hairline to ankle and back again. He grinned at the new dress and that my long, freshly washed, wildly fluffy hair hung to my waist. And then his gaze caught on my left hand, absorbing the ring’s new placement. “Drop by anytime, future wife. In fact, stay the rest of your life,” he purred.

But he didn’t cross to me—because Pali was right there, and whatever was happening between the two of them was too thick in the room for a private moment.

Later, his eyes promised. We’ll get to all that later.

“Pali. It’s good to see you.” I addressed the shorter man leaning on the railing. “I wondered where you went. Carrying evidence.”

“Kat.” he gave a small nod. “I should get going. Keone and I were catching up . . .”

“Where’s the archive, Pali?” I moved into the doorway, blocking his entry back into the house. I crossed my arms and widened my stance. Even unarmed and wearing a pretty blue dress, I still knew six ways to kill a man—well, more like fourteen, but some methods relied on environmental opportunism.

Not that I planned to kill Pali—but he might get disabled until I had an answer.

Meanwhile, my question dropped into the room like an anchor off the Queen Mary.

I hadn’t planned to lead with that bomb, but I’d spent the whole drive down here with a tightness in my chest after Aunt Fae eviscerated me. She had reminded me who I was, and one of the things I am is a former federal agent who watched a man walk off a crime scene carrying evidence—about which I did nothing.

Pali’s jaw tightened; his dark eyes flashed. “It’s safe. That’s all you need to . . .”

“Don’t patronize me.” I kept my voice even, which took some doing. “I was there. Officer Peahi told you to your face that the archive was evidence and you refused to surrender it. I let that happen, and I’ve been feeling wrong about it ever since. So no. ‘Safe’ isn’t going to cover it. What did you do with it?”

Pali uncrossed his arms and stepped forward. “I’m leaving.”

He moved for the screen door leading to the lanai steps—and Keone burst out of his chair and stepped into the gap, not touching his friend but standing big and solid in the doorway, blocking it.

“Sit down with us, Pali,” Keone said quietly. “Kat deserves to hear what you told me.”

“Move.” Pali stepped up into Keone’s face; they were toe-to-toe. “I said, I’m leaving.”

“Brah. I told you—sit down.”

The two of them stood a foot apart as the confrontation tipped into something with a charge in it: Pali’s weight shifted onto the balls of his feet, his hands fisting. Keone’s shoulders dropped and he moved into a loose-limbed crouch.

Childhood friends who’d grown up two houses apart, who’d surfed the same breaks and buried the same uncles, were about to square off in a screened lanai over a satchel of old papers.

But neither one of them was willing to make the first move, nor be the one who backed down.

“Guys. Let’s talk this out,” I said.

And that was when Tiki, abandoned on the kitchen counter, let loose a yowl of such operatic, wall-rattling outrage that all three of us flinched. This was not a normal cat sound; it was the roar of a creature who had been struck by a car, set on fire and personally insulted, all at once. Her shriek rolled through the cottage like a civil-defense siren.

And Pali Moku—hard-jawed, fight-ready, who hadn’t given an inch to Keone—jumped about a foot sideways and put his hand to his chest. “What in da hell⁠—”