At least this was one area where she wouldn’t let Gina down. “That’s still ongoing. I’m okay in the water.”
Gina nodded and stood, and Annie knew she was dismissed. “Mahalo, Gina.” She couldn’t talk anymore. She rose and practically ran from the room. Outside the office, she nearly mowed down Jillian Sommers. “Sorry,” she muttered.
Jillian was Annie’s inspiration. If Jillian could recover from the blow life had dealt when her husband abandoned her, Annie could get over a simple injury. Annie smiled. “You’re here late.”
“You too.” Jillian’s ash-blond curls lay against her sculptured cheeks. She’d lost weight since Noah left. “I was just going over the data from the seamount. Some of our bottom-pressure recorders are going bad. We’re going to have to go down to replace them. What’s your schedule looking like?”
“Maybe Monday?” Annie hoped to get home and find Leilani there safe and sound.
“Sounds good. I’ll touch base with you then.” Jillian said goodbye, and Annie hurried to her car.
The fresh, cool air relieved her heated skin as Annie passed through the rain forest. The ohia trees that grew in abundance along the road to her house pressed close to the SUV. The Tagama family had owned the hundred-acre compound for more than fifty years, though she wasn’t sure how much longer they could hold onto it. When she was a little girl, she used to lay under the hapu’u ferns beneath the trees and pretend she was a fairy in her house. It was her way of escaping her father’s high expectations. She hated to disappoint him, even as a child. Since her mother’s death, his expectations had risen exponentially. She hardly recognized the demanding man as the exemplary father figure he’d been all her life.
There would be no escaping her father’s anger if Leilani wasn’t home. Annie had no doubt his first reaction would be to blame her. She slipped her hand into her pocket and rubbed her thumb over the pendant. Leilani would never lose this necklace. It meant too much to her. So what did it all mean? Annie was afraid to find out.
She pushed open the door. “Father? Where are you?” Her pet mongoose, Wilson, scurried to meet her at the door. He wrapped himself around her ankles. An orange peel teetered on his back. She scooped him up and picked it off. “What have you been into?” He was almost dead when she’d found him months ago beside his dead mother and siblings. Though she nursed him back to health herself, he never gained the full size of a regular mongoose. He was only a foot long, head to tail. The warmth of his sleek body gave her courage. She dropped the peel in the trash in the kitchen, then went down the hall to the living room.
Her father scowled when he saw Wilson in her arms. “I told you to get rid of that animal, Annie, yet you continue to defy me. He got in the trash again and dumped it all over the floor. I want him gone.”
Annie’s fingers stilled, and she clutched Wilson closer. “I’ll clean it up, Father.”
Her father’s jaw hardened, and he stepped toward her. “Give him to me. I’m getting rid of that creature once and for all.”
“No!” Annie stepped back. She softened her voice. Harsh words would only make her father more unyielding. “I mean, please give him another chance, Father. I’m still training him. He’ll learn. He . . . brings me comfort since Mother died.”
Her father’s face softened at the mention of her mother. He shook his head, and his frown returned. “You don’t have time to be cleaning up after him all the time. I have some dictation I need you to do tonight.”
“I’ll have time to do both.”
He harrumphed, but he didn’t try to take the mongoose again. She needed to ask him about Leilani, who obviously had not returned. Wetting her lips, she tried to decide how to raise the question without bringing more disapproval on her own head.
Her father peered past her out the glass in the storm door. “Who is here?”
Annie turned. An unfamiliar car crowded to the back of her car. A pale blue Chevrolet, it looked like one of those nondescript rental cars. Maybe it was about Leilani. Annie hurried to the front door. A burly figure got out of the vehicle. She froze. Her nails bit into the palms of her hand, and she nearly turned and slammed the door.
Mano Oana. She hadn’t heard from him in more than a year, not since he called to tell her about her older brother Tomiko, nicknamed Tomi. She wasn’t ready to face him even now. Wilson burrowed against her neck and squeaked. She told herself to move, to go to the door. Her hand shook when she finally reached out and opened it quickly. There was nothing to be gained by delaying the inevitable.