Free Rip Tides by Toby Neal Page A

heard and smelled her boozy exhaled breath. His stomach tightened with repulsion and frustration. He glanced around, spotted the empty quart bottle of Scotch. She’d always been fond of that particular liquor, believing that it was the drink of “real women.”
    Stevens was just lucky she hadn’t puked all over Lei’s nice patterned rug, but there was still time for that to happen. He backed out of the tent and strode across the grass to the newly erected carport, where he found a plastic utility bucket and brought it back, setting it down next to his mother’s passed-out form.
    Just in case.
    He backed out and rezipped the tent. His gut churned with familiar emotions: anger, disappointment, disgust, and grief, too, that she’d come all this way and this was what happened on day one.
    No wonder she’d wanted to go to bed early. She’d had that bottle waiting. He left the coffee mug where he’d set it down. She could drink it cold when she woke up.
    He reached in the pocket of his robe and pulled out his phone to call Jared.
    “I should have searched her backpack,” he said when his brother answered. “She had a bottle, and she’s passed out in the tent.”
    “Listen to you, bro,” Jared snapped. “She got drunk, and it’s your fault because you didn’t take away her booze in time.”
    A long pause. Stevens pushed a hand through his unruly hair, struggling not to snap back at his brother even as he admitted to himself Jared was right. Fighting each other wasn’t going to help them, or deal with the problem of their mother. It was frustrating to be tested this way so quickly after their pact of the night before.
    “I’m sorry for biting your head off,” Jared said, heaving a sigh. “I just woke up. Haven’t had my morning coffee. And I admit I was a little taken in last night. Let myself get hopeful. She was so sincere. So happy to be a grandma.”
    “I felt the same,” Stevens said. “And you’re right. Searching her, trying to prevent her getting something—none of it works.”
    “Wayne said he thinks she’s so thin because she’s unhealthy. Maybe she’s sicker than we know, and we need to talk to her about rehab anyway. I’m off today. How about I make an appointment for a doctor visit and come get her?”
    “Sounds great.” Stevens headed back to the cottage. “I have to go in to work. First day on my new detail as official trainer for new detectives. I don’t think the captain would look kindly on me calling in.”
    “Well, after the doctor we’ll know more and we can decide what to do about her.”
    Stevens agreed and said goodbye, the ominous sound of his brother’s last sentence reverberating in his mind: “what to do about her.”
    What to do, indeed.
    And though things had gone quiet with their enemies supposedly dead or in jail, Stevens would never be able to forget the relentless attacks of the one they’d called the shroud killer. The man they’d brought down on the Big Island had his trial in a few weeks, and Lei would have to go to the Big Island to testify.
    Stevens wished he was more confident that the one in custody really was the shroud killer. He still had concerns that the remaining member of the Chang crime family, Terence Chang, had some long-term plan to move on them when their guard was down.
    When there was vulnerability in their lives, like his mother the raging alcoholic.

 
    Chapter 6
    L ei sipped her second cup of inky coffee at her workstation, giving a swizzle with the little plastic stir stick and hoping the chunks of creamer would dissolve. An e-mail from Pono had come through before she left the house in the morning, and she’d been able to print out the IDs and mug shots of two men with minor records he’d identified last night from the prints. Pono had gone home at three a.m., according to the time stamp on his e-mail.
    Lei scanned the photos she’d printed out. Unfortunately, either of them could have matched the description Shayla Cummings had