“As long as we keep her away from motor vehicles, Vernon should be fine . . . more or less. She’s an astronomer at the Keck Observatory. She can get us access to the Onizuka Center for International Astronomy.”
“What’s the Onizuka Center?” Riley asked.
“It’s basically a hotel for the astronomers. There are usually around seventy people there at any one time, so we should be able to blend in to the background. As the crow flies, it sits about four miles up the mountain from Pohakuloa and about seven miles from the dozen or so telescopes at the summit.”
They left the gulch and crossed the meadow that led to the guesthouse. Cows were making cow sounds in the nearby paddock, and the sound of the surf was soft and rhythmic.
It was all calming and wonderful if you could just keep your mind off the scary psycho people who wanted to kill everyone, Riley thought. And then there was the Vernon and Alani thing.
“When are you going to tell Vernon about Alani?” Riley asked Emerson.
“As soon as possible. It’s going to be an awkward conversation, so I came up with plan B.”
“What’s plan B?” Riley asked.
“Send Vernon on an errand, invite Alani over to the house, and find someone tactful to babysit them after the reunion.”
“Would this errand happen to involve Vernon getting our dinner tonight? And would the babysitter happen to be me?”
“Yes and yes.”
Emerson opened the front door to the guesthouse and held it open for Riley.
“Boy, I wouldn’t want to be in your shoes,” he said. “I don’t know how you get yourself into messes like this.”
Riley shook her head. “I ask myself the same thing every day. When can I expect to be in the middle of this new mess?”
“Now.”
TWENTY-ONE
THE INTERIOR OF THE GUESTHOUSE WAS A scaled-down Hawaiian version of Mysterioso Manor. Four thousand square feet of over-the-top Bali-style furniture and assorted island-themed bric-a-brac. An eight-foot-tall tiki of a grimacing Ku, the Hawaiian god of war, greeted them in the foyer.
A pretty young woman of mixed Hawaiian and Asian ancestry was sitting in the living room reading a book. She jumped off the couch, rushed over to them, and punched Emerson in the shoulder.
“Emerson Knight, I haven’t seen you in years!”
“It’s been too long,” Emerson said.
Alani nodded. “Agreed. I have to say I was shocked to get your text asking me to meet with you.” She turned to Riley. “You must be Riley Moon. Emerson said he was traveling with you. Aloha.”
“Aloha,” Riley said.
Alani cut her eyes back to Emerson. “You’re in trouble again, aren’t you?”
“I suppose it’s a matter of perspective,” Emerson said. “I prefer to think of it as an adventure. We’re helping a friend find a stolen island, and we need help.”
Alani shook her head. “That’s what I thought. Trouble.” She paused for a moment and her expression changed. “Wait just a friggin’ second. You said ‘we’ need help. Who’s the ‘we’? Are you referring to Riley?”
The front door banged open and Vernon walked in, followed by Wayan Bagus.
“Food’s here,” Vernon said. “I got takeout from the Bamboo Restaurant.”
Spotting Alani, he stopped in his tracks, his mouth dropped open, and the food bag slipped through his fingers and crashed onto the floor.
“Surprise!” Emerson said.
“You!” Alani said, glaring at Vernon, fists clenched. “You!”
“I asked Alani to stop by,” Emerson said to Vernon. “I bet you’re surprised, right?”
Vernon had a red scald rising out of his shirt collar, staining his cheeks. “I couldn’t be any more surprised than if I woke up in the hospital with tire tracks on my back.”
Wayan Bagus stepped forward.
“This is Wayan Bagus,” Emerson said to Alani. “He’s the friend we’re helping.”
Wayan Bagus tugged at Vernon’s shirt. “Isn’t this nice, Vernon? The universe has provided you with an opportunity to heal the roots of the past.”
Vernon shushed the little monk. “Ixnay on the talk about the astpay,” he whispered to Wayan Bagus.
Alani rolled her eyes. “Good grief. What did you tell him?”
Vernon held up his hands. “Nothing. Absolutely nothing.”
“You didn’t tell him about the Unspeakable Incident, did you? Because that wouldn’t end well.”
Riley looked at Vernon and Alani. “Okay, I have to know. What happened?”
Wayan Bagus bowed politely. “Vernon accidentally superglued himself to Alani.”
Vernon gasped and put his hand over his heart. “That was a confession. What happened to the sanctity of the confessional?”
“I know nothing of a confessional. I know only truth,” Wayan Bagus said.
“Vernon, you incredible nincompoop,” Alani said. “You’re not even Catholic, and he’s a Buddhist monk, not a priest.”
“It was dark. I thought it was lube,” Vernon said. “It was an accident. Yeesh, it only took the paramedics twelve hours to get us separated. What’s the big deal?”
“The big deal is I live in a town with a population of one thousand. It made the local newspaper. Everybody called me ‘Doggie-Style Alani’ for a year.”
“Well, you ran me over with an ATV,” Vernon said. “That wasn’t exactly a pleasant experience.”
“That was also an accident,” Alani said.
“That wasn’t no accident. You ran over me twice!” Vernon said. “You’re a whackadoodle.”
“I am not a whackadoodle. How dare you call me a whackadoodle!”
“This isn’t going well,” Riley said.
Wayan Bagus picked up the food bag from the floor. “I will take Vernon into the kitchen and allow him to eat his dessert first.”
Vernon made a crazy motion with his finger going around in circles, pointed it at Alani, and followed Wayan Bagus out of the room.
“Vernon really didn’t know it was glue,” Emerson said. “He’s always felt horrible about it.”
“I know,” Alani said. “It’s just that seeing him so suddenly brought it all back.”
“We really need your help,” Emerson said to Alani. “I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t important. Lives are at stake, including ours.”
“You don’t even have to ask. I’m in. You guys are like family to me, even the jackass in the next room who’s missing most of his eyebrows. I don’t even want to ask. Besides, I haven’t had a good adventure since you stopped coming to Kohala. What do you need?”
“A room at the Onizuka with a view down the mountain, and a telescope capable of spying on the runway at Bradshaw Army Airfield.”
“Do you think we beat Tin Man and the director to Hawaii?” Riley asked Emerson.
Emerson nodded. “I checked the FAA website. There haven’t been any inbound flights landing at Bradshaw in the past forty-eight hours. Of course, they might not have filed a flight plan.”
“The entire base has been buried in the inversion layer under thick cloud cover for the past three days,” Alani said. “Visibility is zero and, as far as I know, there haven’t been any inbound or outbound flights. This is an entirely different weather system from Kona.”
“Perfect. All we have to do is wait for the bad guys to arrive and use our telescope to track them to their secret lair, all from the safety of our first-class accommodations at the Onizuka.”
“It’s a moldy, cramped room with four bunk beds and the combined stench of a thousand dirty, tired scientists,” Alani said.
“Then we’ll do it from the safety of our barely-third-class accommodations,” Emerson said. “The plan is still sound, even if it doesn’t smell the best.”
Riley raised her hand. “Except for one small detail. What do you intend to do after you find out where they’ve taken the Penning trap?”
“ ‘Penning trap’?” Alani asked.
“I’ll explain it all later,” Emerson said. “It’s complicated and barely believable.”
“About the plan,” Riley said.
Emerson rocked back on his heels. “It’s a bit fluid at the moment.”
Riley narrowed her eyes. “Fluid?”
“Trust me. What could possibly go wrong?”