The line moved forward all of ten inches. Vanessa readjusted the strap of her carry-on higher onto her shoulder, took a step forward, and pulled her suitcase to her side again. “Well, did she leave on her own or was someone with her? Check with the other nurses; maybe she left me a message.”
In the distant background, she registered the voice of a teenage boy saying something to her, but she didn’t have time to pay attention to him. Kat had vanished, seemingly without a fucking trace, if she was to believe this nitwit of a nurse.
“Again, ma’am, I’d like to help—”
“You don’t understand,” Vanessa pressed. “I’m about to board a plane to come see her. She’s expecting me to come to the hospital for her, so why on earth would she leave? It doesn’t make any sense!”
Again, the teenager called something out. Again she ignored him. “Is there someone else I can talk to? Perhaps the nurse who actually took care of her before letting a concussed and beaten woman leave your damn facility?”
“Hey, lady!”
Vanessa whipped around to slice the surfer teen to ribbons with her eyes. “What!”
He flinched, but then gestured to the now ten-foot gap between her and the man in front of her. “Can you please move forward?”
Just as she was about to pick up her suitcase and lay into the nurse again, she realized she no longer heard that sound of space that came through a cell phone even when the other side was completely silent. Taking the phone away from her ear, she glanced at the screen to see that her call had ended. Considering she had full service in the airport and the nurse had been speaking on a landline, chances were pretty good the nurse had used the opportunity to hang up on her.
Mumbling a weak apology to the people behind her, she backtracked through the several rows of winding roped-off path and exited the airport in a trance, finally coming to rest on a stone bench.
Fear and worry gripped Vanessa’s chest, squeezing like a vise until she found breathing difficult. Why would Kat have left the hospital? Did those thugs come back to threaten her some more? She supposed it was possible, but generally when someone was given a time frame to come up with money by less-than-savory characters, they didn’t show up a few hours later to reiterate the deal.
Which meant Kat either left on her own even though she knew Vanessa had been on her way with the money…or Lenny had shown up and convinced her it was time to run again.
Fucking Lenny. Her hands curled into fists so tight she’d probably find crescent-shaped bruises on her palms later. If she ever came face-to-face with that loser, she’d kick him so hard in the balls, he’d choke on his own dick.
“Can I get you a cab, nani wahine?”
Vanessa lifted her gaze to see an older man in a porter uniform smiling at her with kind brown eyes. “I’m sorry, what did you call me?”
“Nani wahine. It means beautiful woman.”
“Woman,” she said. “So then what does pupule wahine mean?”
He chuckled, his big belly jerking up and down with the small effort. “Pupule wahine means crazy woman.”
Crazy woman. The beautiful-sounding nickname Jax had given her was…an insult? Didn’t that just figure. New tears sprung, and she barked a short, hysterical laugh before covering her mouth with a hand.
The man sat next to her and spoke softly as though afraid of startling her. “You don’t look crazy to me, ku’uipo. You look tired. Is someone coming for you?”
She absently fingered the sea star around her neck. No, no one ever came for her. She shook her head.
“Then let me help you to a cab so you can get wherever you’re going and get some rest, hmm?”
Rest? While her heart bled for a man who wasn’t worth it and her sister was injured and most likely on the run to God knew where? At this point, rest was a pipe dream, but she nodded anyway. She couldn’t sit outside the Honolulu airport all night.
After instructing the driver to take her to the farthest hotel from the Mau Loa and a fifteen-minute drive, she checked in and slipped the guy at the counter a fifty dollar bill to change her name in the computer so she couldn’t be tracked down. Just in case.
She found her room, entered, and almost jumped out of her skin when the heavy door slammed back into place and echoed against the artless walls. The hum of the window AC unit was deafening in the silence, the air shooting from the vents billowing the tacky window treatments covered in, what else, but— “Sea stars.”
Swallowing past the tightness in her throat, she dropped her bags and sat on the scratchy bedspread that matched the curtains.
“Definitely the farthest thing from Mau Loa,” she mumbled.
Vanessa toed off her shoes, grabbed a pillow, and curled onto her side. Her stomach hurt from clenching into knots all night, her eyelids felt lined with sandpaper, and her chest physically ached where her heart still beat. The slow and steady rap against her ribs defied her to claim it broken.
Logic told her it was no less healthy than the day she arrived in Oahu. But the tears streaming from the corners of her eyes to darken the faded sea stars under her cheek told a much different story.