Forge Books, soft cover ISBN 0-312-87601-7
Star
Melissa backed out of her chair, grabbed her jacket, and retreated to the door. Star threw his bag over his shoulder, and chased her, muttering to Papa, "I'll be back." He trailed her onto the street, grabbed her elbow. "Melissa, stop. Listen. I promise I won't write about you." Melissa jerked her arm away. "Liar!" She sprinted across Kuhio Avenue, dodging traffic. "Liar!" she shouted again from the far curb, then disappeared into a crowd of tourists. Star leaned against one of the palms outside Papa's. "Tell the truth to a woman," he said to the traffic, "and look where it gets you."
He walked along the beach, dodging the surf, concluding he was sneaky, although straight shooting wasn't one of Melissa's fortes either, any more than emotional stability. He told himself there was no way he could have known about her husband's death, that Melissa was the one, after all, who had called him, unconcerned whether he was married, and that it was Melissa who had to bear the responsibility of catting around, not him.
But none of it made him feel any better.
Bernie Bergen
Bernie Bergen spoke into the white tile over the urinal while he shook off Little Bernie below. "Two years you've planned. You're in hock up to your eyeballs. But you will pull it off. In ten minutes, the dog and pony show begins, and in thirty, the HydraCorp Board will be in love."
He zipped himself up. "Damn. Stuck zipper." He really jerked at the tab, "C'mon, you bugger," only to feel it rip from the treads entirely. "Sonofabitch." He scowled at the two strips of brass teeth, unconnected, and at his watch. "Nine minutes 'til show time. Keep a cool head, Bernie." He chewed furiously on his Nicorettes gum. "God, I could use a cigar."
Without a moment's thought, he spit the gum into his palm, rolled it into a long, thin snake, pressed it into the zipper treads and melded them, one side to the other. He smoothed the outside of his fly and, to check his handiwork, stood tippy toes before the washstand mirror. At five foot three, squat Bernie would have seen little more than his face with his feet flat on the floor. "Should'a been a tailor, Bernie," he said to the pink face smiling back at him. "Long as you don't have to pee or sit down in the next hour, no one will know." Then he washed his pudgy, well-manicured hands, retied his orange-red ponytail at the back of his balding head, and straightened the knot in his tie. The conference room, and a significantly more profitable future, awaited thirty steps away.
The Reverend Jaycie Pitts
"Believe it. Two hundred thousand dollars. Three weeks." "Lordy." The Reverend ran trembling fingers through his long white hair. "I was set up, Sheldon. Schnookered." He twisted the tip of his silver mustache. "I was sure the girl was of age. When she auditioned for the cheerleaders, Judith thought she looked too old. And her mother seemed so simple-minded, such a good Christian."
"I had them investigated," said the attorney, consulting a small black notebook. "They're French nationals. The girl was born in Martinique, like she said, but they've been living in Papeete, Tahiti, where they have quite the reputation. The mother gave me copies of the girl's birth certificate and their passport. She's a minor, all right. They're both back in Tahiti now, incommunicado? Don't call us, we'll call you."
Ray Don
Butt to the bottom, Ray Don looked up. And there was Mr Lucky. Paddling toward him. Pale legs kicking. Treading water. Ray Don checked the spear gun, the laser sight, the trigger. He used his swim fins to keep his back to the bottom. The surge made it tricky. It wrestled him forward, then back. Side to side. But Mr. Lucky was swimming his way now. Would be over him in seconds. Ray Don watched the ruby laser dot streak across the surface, settle on the kicking legs. Higher, to the stomach. Zigzagging across the body. Wait for a clean shot.
Zwisshh! The spear streaked nearly straight up. Ray Don saw the legs jerk, the froth of bubbles as Mr. Lucky thrashed. The spear in him, no question of that. A rust-red cloud spread with the bubbles. On the surface, he knew, it would be brilliant scarlet. From below, he heard the muffled scream. He'd bet they could hear it from shore. Maybe even Sarge could hear it from wherever he was. Shee-oot! You done it, boy. Now, get the hell out of here.
He swam at least three hundred feet, surfaced once to check his position, then dropped to the bottom, shed the tank, regulator, the buoyancy control vest, weight belt, mask, and, reluctantly, Sarge's wonderful toy, the beautiful Russian spear gun. He walked out of the water. Not much of a beachgoer, Ray Don was annoyed at the difficulty of walking in loose sand. He shot the sand a wicked look. Uh-oh. Swim fins. He flip-flopped back to the ocean. Ditch the damn things. Walk out again. No one noticed. They were all pointing to sea.
"Someone's drowning," a bikini-clad coed screeched to college mates, lying tummies to beach towels, hurriedly retying tops, anxious to see. "No, it's a surfer, got hit by a board," said a male hanger-on.
Two cops spoke anxiously into radios. "Shark attack," said a pear-shaped man in striped Bermuda shorts. "God, like on the TV." "No sharks here at Waikiki," said a dark, Japanese local. " Must be epilepsy. You know someone threw a fit. Lifeguard's on the way."
"Did someone say shark?" "Ate some guy. Look, lifeguard's almost to him." "I see a fin!"
"Shark?" "Shark." "Shark!" The contagious S-word reverberated across water and sand.
Panic in the surf. Scrambling, shoving, splashing. Mothers screamed for children. Sunbathers rolled, stumbled, collided. It was bedlam on the beach.
Ray Don grinned. Hot damn, he thought, won't Sarge be proud of what I done this day?
D. L. McWhorter
"Friggin' volcano lovers!" D.L. McWhorter swiped the fatigue cap against his thigh .Barely
five-eight, a hundred and sixty pounds, the HydraCorp Chief of Security and Contingency Operations wore a neatly-trimmed, blunt mustache, his hair in a flat-top. His lean sinewy body suggested a man in his thirties, but the deep lines etched in his face and the gray hair, said at least twenty years older.
D.L. sighed, ran a forearm across his brow—less from the heat than to wipe away residue of the civilization he had left behind in Honolulu two hours before—then coughed and spit out a mouthful of the gritty ochre construction dust powdering the leaves and everything else in sight like cayenne pepper. He replaced the hat, removed his metal-rimmed sunglasses, looped one of the ear pieces into the button hole of his fatigues, and squinted into the distance toward the summit of Mauna Loa volcano, tracing the path of the double-track dirt trail as it ran up the green ridge into the shade, then back the other way, down to the dozers and trucks, lying idle, impotent. Beyond the equipment, the track became a forty foot-wide cleared and graded road-bed, a blood-red swath cut from the heart of the forest, snaking toward the sea. Three thousand feet lower and seven miles away, blue ocean dazzled in the noonday sun. Again, he looked up-slope. Somewhere up that path, in the violet shadows, lurked the source of his trouble.
"Volcano lovers," he muttered, "has to be."
Caddy
At the top, Caddy's spirits rose. There it was lava. Alive. At least five hundred feet lower than when they arrived, and a short five hundred feet above the road. Trees, brush, and grass smoldered at the flow's edges, here and there burst into flames. She glanced at the road by her feet, stooped to pick up several shiny, pale yellow tufts and strands, fine as thread, nearly as long as her palm. The first I've seen this trip, she thought, and smiled. Pele's hair: fine spun glass, drifting on the wind from the eruption. She blew the fibers from her hand, curtsied the mountain in acknowledgment. She climbed, saw the high earthen wall thrown across the lava's path by the construction crew, the twin branches of lava overflowing the rim. Caddy smiled at the futility of damming a determined lava flow.
"Hello, Missy." She spun, lost balance, fell to her knees, righted herself. A huge man, in filthy jeans, tee-shirt, and dusty western boots, grinned at her from thirty feet away, down slope.
"I didn't see any equipment," she said, alert. "I assumed you had all left."
"Oh, they's gone. You can be sure of that, Missy."
He had short, bleached hair at the top. Matted dreadlocks swayed like dead snakes at the back of his neck.
"Who are you, what do you want?" Caddy saw the gun belt over his shoulder, the—could it be?—hand grenades, dangling at his waist. She looked past him, at the empty road. No car, no one else in sight. A hunter? The shots she'd heard earlier? No, men didn't hunt with guns like his, and certainly not with hand grenades. Only police in Hawai'i carried handguns. But this was no policeman. This was trouble.
