To Hawaii, with Love Read online

  “If there’s a scuffle, do you think you can hold your own with Leikala until Mr. Kim and the others get here?”

  “Not a chance,” I said. “She’s way better than me. She has the skills and she’s not afraid to use them. I’d last about three seconds in a fight with her.”

  “You’re better at Tae Kwon Do than you think. You’ve improved a lot in the last two months.”

  “I have?”

  “Yeah, you’re getting better at it. So my plan is, if we find them, try to keep Leikala occupied while I handle the twins. Don’t worry about trying to take her down or anything. Just get close enough to her to feint and parry, and don’t let her get her hands on you. Keep her busy. Make her mad if you can. That should be easy for you. When I have the twins down, I’ll come help.”

  “Those guys are huge, Alex. What makes you think you can take them?”

  “All I can do is try. Like the oath says, ‘have perseverance in battle.’ Hopefully my speed and quickness will compensate for their size and strength.”

  “That’s your plan?” I said.

  “You have a better idea?”

  The trouble was, I didn’t. If Mr. Kim didn’t hear a commotion and come to help, we were on our own.

  We started down the steps to the third floor, when I heard a familiar noise.

  “Do you hear that?” I said.

  Alex stopped to listen. “A helicopter. They’re on the roof!”

  We sprinted up the stairs, bursting through the door and onto the roof. On the far end, the Stupid twins and Leikala stood watching a helicopter lower a ladder toward them.

  “Come on!” Alex shouted, and he took off sprinting toward them. Did I mention I wasn’t crazy about his plan?

  The roof of the bank was covered in a gravel surface. There were all kinds of metal ventilation covers and satellite dishes and other obstacles spread all around it. Alex was fast, and though I’m fairly quick myself, I had to run hard to keep up with him.

  Leikala and the Stupids heard our shout and turned to see us running toward them. The ladder was only a few feet from them now. Dumber put the case with the statue down on the ground, and he and Dumb turned to face Alex’s charge. Leikala shouted something at them, but it was hard to hear with the noise from the helicopter.

  Alex reached Dumb first. He skidded to a stop on the gravel surface of the roof and went into his crouch. Dumb took a swinging roundhouse punch at Alex, which he dodged easily. Dumb’s momentum carried him nearly past Alex. Almost faster than I could see, Alex spun behind Dumb and took him down with a kick to the back of his knee. Dumb crumpled, and Alex put a vicious front kick to the side of Dumb’s head and he went all the way down. That was definitely going to leave a mark.

  I saw Dumber come at Alex swinging, but by now I was near Leikala. She yelled at Dumber to forget Alex and get the statue on the chopper, but he ignored her. I grabbed the statue case and turned to run. Leikala came after me like she was a Doberman and I had a pork chop tied to my butt. I got only a few steps before she tackled me and the statue case went skittering across the roof. I went down hard on the gravel, and it hurt. Leikala was screaming at me and trying to grind my face into the gravel. I was definitely getting tired of this chick.

  I pushed up with my arms with all my might and managed to roll over so I was on top of Leikala, then spun away from her. I stood back up, and she did one of those fancy martial arts backflip things and leaped to her feet.

  She came at me, but I darted back so she couldn’t reach me. Then she seemed to remember what she was supposed to be doing. She stopped and turned, looking for the statue.

  The helicopter was hovering above us still, whipping up all kinds of dust and gravel and making it hard to see. Off to my left I could see Alex and Dumber going at it. Dumb was still down on the ground. Alex looked to be holding his own.

  Leikala grabbed the case with the statue in one hand and with the other leaped up and grabbed one of the ladder rungs. The chopper started to move slowly away. Oh no you don’t.

  I sprinted toward Leikala, jumped up, and grabbed her around the waist, holding on as tight as I could. She couldn’t do anything, because one hand held the ladder and the other held the statue and she wasn’t going to let go of either. The chopper hesitated for a moment as if the pilot wasn’t sure what to do, then it started to move again.

  I freed one arm and punched her as hard as I could in the ribs. She groaned but didn’t let go. The helicopter was hovering over the roof; the pilot seemed afraid that if they moved away, we might fall and then the statue would be gone. I punched Leikala in the ribs again, but I really couldn’t hit her very hard. I was getting tired trying to hold on to her with one arm and punch with the other. We started spinning around and around like we were going to land.

  I wondered where Mr. Kim and the others were. Now would be an excellent time for them to show up. It seemed like we’d been up here forever, but I knew in reality it had been less than a minute. And by the way, I was really sick of helicopters. I had already jumped out of one on this trip, and I had no desire to do it again.

  Leikala was screaming at me to let her go. I screamed back at her that ignoring her inner child was causing her to act out needlessly. She swung the statue case and drove it up into my back. It hurt like the dickens and I couldn’t hang on any longer.

  I fell to the roof with a thud. I looked up and saw Simon peering over the side from the cabin. When he saw that I was down, he laughed.

  I staggered to my hands and knees. I looked around and saw that I had landed right next to one of the satellite dishes on the bank roof. There was a coil of black cable next to the dish and what looked to be a bracket that might once have held another dish.

  The chopper would clear the roof in a few seconds. I grabbed the end of the cable and ran toward Leikala. As she pulled away, I coiled the cable around her legs as fast as I could. The chopper was still moving, but now she was stuck. She had no choice now—she had to let go or she’d be pulled apart by the cable. She screamed and let go of the ladder. The chopper rocked in the air when her weight was released. She hit the side of the roof right on the edge and, still holding the case with the statue, went tumbling over the side.

  The helicopter took off. I could see Simon banging his fist on the side of the chopper door as he flew away. I gave him a jaunty little wave. Teach him.

  Just then the cable that had been holding fast to Leikala’s legs ripped out of the wall where it was attached and went whipping by me. Leikala was falling, and the statue was going with her.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  Still Hanging Around

  Using my occasionally awesome catlike reflexes, I grabbed hold of the cable with both hands. I wasn’t sure if I could hold her, but I had to try. I managed to wrap the cable around my arm and tried to stop myself from being pulled toward the edge of the roof.

  “Alex!” I screamed. “Help me! Hurry!”

  There was no question in my mind that I was going to go over the side. But I didn’t. Instead I slammed hard into a pipe that was sticking up out of the roof. It hurt, but it stopped my momentum, and I was able to wrap the cable around the pipe to keep Leikala from falling.

  I looked back at Alex. He and Dumber were struggling on the ground, and it looked like Alex was about to wear out. Across the roof I saw Mr. Kim, Brent, and Pilar rushing out of the doorway. In a few seconds Mr. Kim had pulled Dumber off Alex and handcuffed him to one of the ventilation shafts. Mr. Kim had handcuffs? Sweet.

  Brent and Pilar helped Alex get slowly to his feet. Mr. Kim helped me up.

  “Are you okay?” he said. “I seem to keep asking you that question lately.”

  “I’m fine.” I peered over the edge of the roof and saw Leikala hanging upside down. She was still holding the statue case, now with both hands. I couldn’t resist.

  “I didn’t know you hung out here,” I said.

  Mr. Kim groaned, and Leikala shot me a dirty look. Mr. Kim grabbed the cable and started
to pull her up, but she yelled at him to stop.

  “Leave me alone! Let me go or I’ll drop the statue!”

  “Go ahead,” I said. “Drop it. We couldn’t care less about that statue. But I think your boss might be pretty upset with you if you did. You know what? Let’s find out. Drop it. I would love to see it smashed to smithereens.”

  Down below I could see a bunch of police cars returning to the bank. Obviously they’d figured out that the whole gas-main thing was a hoax. Leikala could see them too. She had no way out of this.

  “I’ll drop it, I swear!” she said.

  “Why do I have to explain everything to you twice? How did you ever get so high up in Simon’s organization? I don’t care if you drop it. I hope you do.”

  “Leave me alone!” she screamed. Apparently Leikala was a sore loser.

  “You want to be left alone?” I said. “Fine. Mr. Kim, let’s go.”

  Mr. Kim had a big coil of the cable in his hand. He let go, and Leikala dropped a couple of feet closer to the ground. She screamed.

  “Stop! Don’t drop me! Pull me up!” she yelled. Not so tough after all.

  We pulled her up to the roof. Mr. Kim took the case away from her and then helped her to her feet. He took some of the cable and tied it around her hands behind her back. Apparently he was out of handcuffs.

  We marched her over to where Brent and Pilar stood huddled around Alex, who was bent over catching his breath.

  “Man,” Alex said, breathing hard. “What do they feed those guys?”

  He finally stood up straight.

  “Brent, if you check the bottom of that statue, I think you’ll find a small transmitter of some kind,” I said. “That’s how Simon figured out where it was.”

  Brent knelt down and pulled out the statue. Sure enough, there was a tiny little transmitter embedded in the base.

  “Wow,” he said. “Look how small this is.”

  He turned the statue toward us. We could just barely see the small black dot on the bottom of the base.

  “Mr. Kim, I think you’ll want to have this analyzed,” Brent said. “This is the smallest transmitter I’ve ever seen. This is better than state of the art. I wonder how they got their hands on this? I mean, the power source applications alone! I’d love to see the microcircuitry on this! Can we take it back to Blackthorn with us?” Brent was starting to get all girly over this tiny little bug. It was kind of cute. He carefully put the statue back into the case and closed the lid.

  “Why did you come after me again?” I said to Leikala.

  She glared. “It was Simon’s idea. If it were up to me, I’d have taken you to the deepest part of the ocean and dropped you in.”

  “It’s good that we can discuss our feelings like this,” I said. “Speaking of feelings, how does it feel to be hanging upside down off the roof of a four-story building while your great ‘leader’ flies away?”

  She had no response to that. I win!

  By then Detective Wanake and several policemen had made it to the roof. They led Dumb and Dumber and Leikala away in handcuffs. She yelled at me a few more times about how she would get me and I’d pay for what I’d done and blah, blah, blah.

  “I’m sure they sell Oxy 10 in the prison commissary. That zit will be cleared up in no time!” I hollered after her. She tried to lunge away from the officers and come back at me, but they held her tight.

  It felt great to see her dragged away by the cops.

  Then Mr. Kim, that ruiner of special moments, spoke up.

  “Rachel. I commend you on saving the statue. But what you have done here is wrong on so many levels. Sneaking out of the school. Stealing from your father’s company—”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said.

  “Don’t make it worse by lying, Rachel. Mr. Quinn was able to trace your movements easily.”

  “Yeah, okay, maybe that’s all true, but we did save the statue,” I said. “Where would your precious little quest to take down Simon be if I hadn’t done what I did?”

  “My quest, as you call it, is not the most vital thing,” he said. “Your safety and the safety of your classmates is of paramount importance to me. This is twice now you have gone off blindly into a dangerous situation.”

  Right there I got another big lecture about how impulsive I was, and how I needed to learn caution, and a bunch of other stuff that I tuned out because I bore easily. Yawn.

  But that wasn’t the worst part. After all we’d been through! After all the many positive things I’d done to thwart an evil would-be-world-taker-overer, Mr. Kim did the worst possible thing to me that he could.

  He made us fly home the very next morning. No hula lessons for me.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  Can a Goddess, Like, Resign?

  I was pretty steamed about the whole thing. I mean, okay. Mr. Kim was right. Technically, I did steal from my dad’s company. And I suppose, just for the sake of argument, I could have tried to get the information to Mr. Kim and let him handle it without endangering my friends. But would it have killed him to let us stay in Hawaii a few extra days? I mean, we were already there!

  However, there was one small point in my favor. Mr. Kim would never have been able to get the statue without me. No one but me could have walked through that wall of light. So when it was time for him to start handing out the punishments, I intended to remind him of that fact. Over and over, if necessary. No way would I let him lose sight of that.

  Everyone on the plane knew that I was in a really grumpy mood, so they let me sit off in a corner of the cabin by myself. I don’t know how Mr. Kim arranged for the flight, but it was another charter jet. Probably belonging to the FBI or something. I sat there just staring out the windows, watching the clouds pass by. Every so often I’d hear Mr. Kim or one of the others murmur something, but we were all pretty tired, so the flight was mostly quiet.

  I was about to doze off when Mr. Kim sat down in the seat across from me.

  “Is this seat taken?” he said.

  I looked at him with the best blank stare I could muster, then looked back out the window, giving him a grand view of my cold shoulder. I guess Mr. Kim had a right to be upset with me. But I sure didn’t have to make it easy for him.

  “Rachel, I understand that we are angry with each other. Don’t you think it would be best to clear the air?” he said.

  “Why? Your mind is made up. I’m sure you’ve got some punishment all worked out. Extra kitchen duty. Tae Kwon Do lessons at five-thirty instead of six A.M. Or are you just planning to put me out of your misery and send me home instead?”

  “Rachel, I realize that you did what you thought was necessary. You were wrong, but you had your reasons. We need to discuss the decisions you make. And no, I’m not sending you home.”

  “Well, excuse me if that doesn’t make me feel all warm and gooey inside,” I said.

  Couldn’t he at least give me some credit for saving the statue? Throw me a bone, will you?

  “By the way, Brent and Alex briefed me on what happened at Pele’s Point. If it wasn’t for you, that statue could not have been recovered. It was an incredibly brave thing you did.”

  Aha! Credit at last. But I knew Mr. Kim. There always had to be a however.

  “However, don’t you think you could have made a better effort to contact me? Or Mr. Quinn, or Agent Tyler?”

  “How? How was I supposed to get in touch with you? We tried. Well, sort of. Okay, maybe we could have. But it didn’t seem like there was time. If we’d waited till we heard from you, or until you came back, Simon could have found the statue. First you tell us we’re involved in this. Then you go running off, telling us to stay out of it. Then we figure something out and—what? We’re supposed to sit around and wait? I’m sorry, Mr. Kim. I’m just not built that way.”

  “But Rachel, your safety is—”

  “Mr. Kim, with all due respect, I think we’re way past the ‘my safety’ argument. I got captured by a psycho,
fell off a giant piece of scaffolding, walked through a wall of mysterious light energy, and fought off a sword-wielding skeleton. Then, for good measure, I jumped out of a helicopter and almost got eaten by a shark. So the ‘let’s keep Rachel safe’ discussion is a bit pointless.”

  Surprisingly Mr. Kim didn’t have anything to say to that. Deep down, I think he knew I had a point.

  “There’s something else,” I said.

  Mr. Kim looked at me.

  “Simon knows now that his copy of the Book of Seraphim is fake,” I said.

  The color drained from his face.

  “Rachel, why would you—” he started, but I interrupted.

  “I had no choice. He was going to kill Pilar. Apparently there’s this prophecy in the fake book that says Mithras has to kill the one closest to Etherea. So he thought killing her would fulfill that, so I had to tell him the book was fake and that we changed all of it around. I had no choice. He had to know that part wasn’t real. And by the way, whoever added that, thanks a lot! Like I don’t have enough real prophecies to worry about.”

  Mr. Kim didn’t say anything. He just looked down at his lap, a deeply troubled look on his face. A horrible thought flew into my head.

  “That is true, isn’t it, Mr. Kim? The part about ‘Mithras taking that which is closest to Etherea’—you changed that part in the book, right? Tell me he’s wrong.”

  I waited. Finally he spoke.

  “What did Simon tell you? Be as specific as you can,” he said.

  “He went on and on about the Book of Seraphim spelling out the prophecy of the rise of Mithras, and that the first step is something like ‘that which Etherea holds dearest must be taken from her,’ which he figured meant he should sacrifice Pilar. So I told him to chill because he had the wrong book and he’d be getting stuff wrong if he killed her.”

  Again, the frown and the troubled look.