Freefall (15 page)
Nica took the chair across the table, her gray eyes settling like flower petals on a still pond. “Cameron said you haven’t remembered anything.”
And she could imagine the tone in which he’d said it. Resting her elbows on the table, Jade clutched the sides of her face. “Just feelings, and not enough of those obviously.”
Nica smiled. “He guessed what you’d be coming into and asked TJ to spirit you away.”
“He guessed?” She raised her face.
“Once he learned who you are.”
“How …” But that wasn’t what she wanted to know. “What do you mean who I am?”
Okelani set bowls of stew before her and Nica. The fragrant steam triggered her saliva glands, and once more her stomach reacted audibly. The old woman set a hand on each of their heads, tipped her face up and closed her eyes.
“Mahalo e ke Akua.”
She patted their heads. “Eat first, then talk story.”
Nica raised her spoon and dipped it into her dish. Jade couldn’t fight it. She took a spoonful of her own and sighed. “This is wonderful.” A creamy coconut fish chowder with flavors she wasn’t sure she’d ever experienced.
“Muhe‘e.”
Okelani smiled.
Jade glanced at Nica, who smiled, as well, but didn’t translate. No matter. Within minutes, she had emptied her bowl with the greatest satisfaction her stomach had known for days. Then she thought about Cameron, still out on the mountain. Did he have any food left?
He’d said he was prepared to stay the night, but how would he sleep in the steep-walled basin in the rain? At least one search-andrescue member had remained with him. And they had communication. They’d figure something out.
She thanked Okelani, and the woman took away her empty dish.
Nica dabbed her mouth with her napkin, folded it across her empty bowl, and said, “I’m sorry I didn’t recognize you.”
Jade widened her eyes. “Then you know me? I’m local?”
“No. In fact, if it hadn’t been Kauai, people would probably have known you right off. Cameron almost did. Remember him asking if we should recognize you?”
Jade clenched her fists. “I’m a criminal?” Was this TJ Kanakanui’s idea of house arrest? Cameron had issued the orders.
Nica’s smile settled deep in her eyes. “Not unless stealing the show is a crime.”
“Stealing …”
“Okelani, they’re not arresting people for Golden Globes, are they?”
What was she talking about?
Okelani pulled a stool to the table and sat. “You plenny good kine actor. But your hair a different color.”
Nica nodded. “It was darker on the screen.”
Jade ran her hair through her fingers. “I’m an actor?”
Nica nodded. “Do you remember playing Rachel Bach in
Steel
?”
This was crazy. How could she remember someone she’d pretended to be, when she couldn’t even remember who she was? Maybe that was why. If she’d played enough parts, her mind could be hopelessly confused. “You’re telling me I’ve been in a movie?” No wonder people were making a big deal—
Her head spun. A crowd squeezing her in, hollering, badgering. The woman’s weasely face. Accusations. Lies. Hungry faces all around waiting for one slip. She gripped the table edge. That was no fan club.
Cameron shook hands with the last of the rescue team, tossed his pack into TJ’s truck bed, and got into the cab. “Hit it.”
TJ started the engine. “Nevah tink you get out tonight.”
“Almost didn’t. That pilot’s good.” As TJ pulled out of the heliport, Cameron fastened his seat belt. “He picked us off like ants on an anteater’s tongue.”
TJ grinned. “Ant taste bettah.”
“No doubt. You got Gentry?”
TJ slid him a glance. “How you hang wit one movie star?”
He frowned. Jade hadn’t seemed like a movie star. But she wasn’t Jade. She was Gentry Fox. The only screen performance he’d seen her in had been extraordinary. But she’d been a brunette, and she’d spent much of the movie with bruises and dirt on her face. Maybe if he’d seen her the first night she stumbled out of the wild, he’d have known her right off.
“Does she know?”
“Nica wen tell her.”
His stomach tightened. Another person might get hurt if Gentry snubbed her; Nica would feel as though she’d released a stunned bird back into the forest. She wouldn’t expect Gentry Fox to remain on the same plane. “Guess she can pay the medical bills.”
TJ snorted. “You tink?”
“Who’s the guy?”
“Her uncle. Robert Fox.”
Her uncle. Cameron settled into his seat, taking that in. Uncle. He supposed famous people had uncles, just hadn’t considered such a benign relationship. He’d accused her of worse. Well, not accused. Insinuated. Her reaction should have told him.
They rode in silence until TJ turned into the dirt track that led to Okelani’s cottage. He pulled to a stop, and Cameron braced himself to go inside. He was thinking crow was on the menu.
Jade looked up as Cameron and Officer TJ Kanakanui came through the door. Cameron’s expression held something she didn’t recognize on him. Humility?
TJ went straight to the pot and raised the lid. “Mmm, Auntie. Squid luau?”
Okelani rose to serve him the squid in coconut milk. Cameron leaned against the refrigerator, arms crossed.
A hard defensiveness seized her when their gazes collided. “Why am I here?”
“You wanted to avoid publicity. The hospital’s a madhouse.”
TJ nodded over the bowl he clasped in both hands. “Plenny TV crew and journalist.”
Jade sank back in her chair, touching the aversion. How would she face a crowd of reporters when she couldn’t fathom what they’d told her? A movie actor? A Golden Globe? How could she not know? The thought of facing a crowd worse than the one at the heliport—the crowd in her dream—made her legs weaker than if she were on a slippery cliff without ropes. But she said, “That’s not really the point anymore. I need to be with my
uncle
.”
Cameron didn’t miss her emphasis. He couldn’t begin to know how his suspicions had stung, but he had the decency to look away. He asked TJ, “Has other family come in?”
Other family. Her family. People she knew and loved—and might not remember.
TJ turned to her. “Your mother’s finding a flight as soon as—”
“No. She can’t leave Dad. He—” Gentry jerked up as memory rushed in. “He just had bypass surgery.” Taking sharp, quick breaths, she thrust out her hand, images filling her mind like a film on fast forward. “Let me use your phone.”
Cameron came off the refrigerator, his gaze rapier sharp, as though he shared whatever frequency her mind had seized to download her life. “Use mine.” He slipped it into her hand. “Keep TJ’s for official communication.”
She touched in a number without hesitation. She knew the voice that answered. “Mom?” Tears stung.
“Oh, Gentry, I knew you’d remember. Your dad—”
“Please don’t let him worry.” But as she said it she realized how unlikely that was. Her parents paid lifetime tuition to the school of positive thinking.
“And Rob—he’s all right?”
“I’m not sure.” She didn’t want to pop their balloon, but Uncle Rob had looked far from all right.
“But they found him, and …”
“Yes.” She relived in a flash the moment Cameron had said,
“I found him. He’s alive.”
“They’ve taken him to the hospital, and I’m sure they’ll do everything they can. Mom, please don’t leave Dad. He’ll root out every bag of chips in the house.”
“You’re right.”
Her mother’s laugh sparked more tears, but she blinked them back. “I’ll stay with Uncle Rob. He’ll be fine. You know how tough he is.” And with another rush of memories, she did too.
Uncle Rob!
From the time she could keep up, they’d escaped to the wilderness, rugged mountaineering in remote locations where it seemed that only the two of them had ever stood. Had he considered Kauai such a spot? And there she found the gap. She didn’t remember coming to the island, or taking the trail or anything that happened before she went over the falls. She stopped the sinking feeling in its tracks. She would remember.
“All right, then, if you’re sure you can handle it. Well, of course you can. Dad said you would.”
Right. Sure. She could do anything. “I love you both.”
She signed off and handed Cameron back his phone, relief and fear running neck and neck inside her. Ecstatic to have a past again, she nonetheless focused on the present. “I need to get to the hospital.”
Cameron set down his bowl of squid and pocketed his phone. “You want to face it?”
“I want to be with my uncle.”
He looked at TJ. “They know your truck?”
TJ shrugged. “Probly. Though I wen drive like one NASCAR racer.”
“Lucky you nevah get one ticket.”
“Why I’m one cop.”
Cameron set his dish in the sink and turned to his sister. “Still got press hanging around the house?”
“I don’t know.”
Press at Nica’s? Gentry slumped. “If they’ve staked it out, they’re still there.” And now she found another hole. Her experience with the press. So how did she know what she’d said was true? From a bad feeling with no specifics? Her memory was Swiss cheese, as intact as if it had never been gone, except for the holes as blank as air bubbles.
Cameron raised Nica to her feet. “You and TJ drive around and engage them. I’ll sneak up the path and get my truck.”
He would take her, with all his doubts and suspicions? Or did he deign to believe her? It didn’t matter. Anything that got her to her uncle.
He bent and kissed Okelani’s cheek. “Thanks for dinner.”
The Hawaiian woman patted his bearded jaw. “Special for your return, Kai.”
“My return wasn’t certain. That squid could have been wasted on TJ.” He jabbed his thumb at the big Hawaiian.
She tapped her heart, her face warm with affection. “I wen know you be here.”
He kissed her again. “Keep Gentry till I get back.”
Strange, hearing her real name from him, from the others. As the screen banged shut behind them, she was left alone with Okelani, who seemed too competent, too aware, to be blind. “Nica told me you helped her that first night I came. Thank you.”
“Sure.” Okelani sat down across from her. “You like da kine squid?”
From the moment it had been mentioned, she’d tried not to think what she’d just eaten, but in truth it had been tasty. She nodded. “What was the chopped green?”
“Taro leaf. Healthy. Keep you
nani kōkī
.”
“Nani …”
“Supremely beautiful.” Okelani smiled.
She couldn’t be talking about her personally, because she couldn’t see one way or the other. Or could she?
“Da beauty come from inside. One
mā ‘ona ‘ōpū
, filled-up stomach, bring a peaceful spirit. Da woman’s
hina
power, like one sun leaning down, da sunset.”
Gentry smiled at the imagery. A fat, filled-up sun leaning toward the horizon. “And the sunrise?”
“
Ku
. Man stay da morning and hot noon.”
Yes, she could see that, a different sort of energy.
“
Ke Akua,
he make ’em for complement, strong and beautiful.” Okelani exemplified her lesson, her supple beauty potent in spite of gray hair and poor teeth. In spite of eyes clouded white.
She reached over, and Gentry felt heat from her fingertips before they touched her forehead. But the tips were cool when they rested just above and between her eyebrows. They sat in that strange position a long time, yet it didn’t feel awkward.
“Your
hina
strong. Fruitful.
Ke Akua
bless you.” Okelani removed her fingers and shook her head. “My Kai, all close up, all cloud cover da sun.”
“You mean Cameron?”
Okelani sighed. “His wife squeeze da heart till it wen shrivel like one lousy guava, all seed and no juice.”
His wife? Gentry straightened. And she’d been out alone with him for two days, overnight. Just perfect. She knew without knowing it was the kind of thing the press would jump on. Why? What would anyone care? But a dark shadow rose up inside, nothing more—once again—than a feeling, yet there must be something behind such a negative impression.
She turned at the sound of a truck outside the front screen door. She had the unreasonable desire to run out the back, but she stood up, thanked Okelani again, and headed for the truck. Her legs had no more running in them.
Cameron let Gentr y into the truck, noting
her exhaustion. He guessed she knew what she could handle—or at least believed she could handle whatever she had to. If she had to walk the gauntlet to get to her uncle, she’d do it. At least now she knew what she was in for—which was more than he could say.
He could have let the emergency personnel convey her at once, or had TJ provide a police escort. Instead he’d assumed responsibility. She hadn’t asked for his help before and didn’t ask now. The urge was his, like a toothache he couldn’t ignore.
It had sent him into the mountains when she would have gone after her uncle alone. She might even have found him. Then what? She’d have had no phone, no way to get him out of the cave or off the mountain. Had she thought of that?
No. As in the pool beneath the falls, she just jumped in. And there he was jumping in behind her. Was it some subliminal manipulation? Was he chronically exploitable? Or was it his own need to get at the heart of the matter, to make sense of things that had no sense—was it him trying once more to order a universe spun out of control?
