The boat moored in the shallow, turquoise waters on the lee side of Kaua’i rocked gently. Maddie looked over the side of the boat and adjusted the straps that held the air tank on her shoulders. The water was warm enough and she felt odd to be wearing street clothes with her scuba gear but they had to recover the bags thrown overboard the night before and hadn’t wanted to leave Honolulu looking as if they were going on a diving trip. It was essential to recover the bags before they were lost; equally essential that the bags had arrived first. She looked down at the tan suit, hoping that the salt wouldn’t ruin the pants and jacket…it was a fifteen hundred dollar suit. The crisp synthetic fabric should dry quickly, hopefully they would only be under for twenty minutes or less.
A hot breeze drifted across the abandoned sands of Polihale beach towards the boat but cooled before it reached her face. She did not even cast a sideways glance at the eight other carriers. She didn’t dare put her hand into the pocket of her tight pants to wrap her fingers around the smooth surface of the keystone although she desperately wanted to. She shifted the weight from one leg to the other, bending her right leg enough, in the process, to feel the slight bulkiness of the stone in her pocket, as it pressed into the joint under the creases in the stiff synthetic twill.
Maddie thought about Kirk, she felt sure he suspected what she’d put in the red hand luggage that now sat nested somewhere, hopefully nearby, in the sand below the spangled surface of the water. She would probably have to go to bed with him to keep his attention off of what she had in her pocket, at least for long enough that it wouldn’t’ matter when he found out. She couldn’t say that the thought was unpleasant. She remembered the sun on his back yesterday, she’d considered that with this tropical sun his coat of freckles would only get denser but there was something about that sun, the snap of salt in the warm breeze that made his dappled, golden skin that much more attractive.
Of the others, she hadn’t thought much: Martin, Yvonne, Maxim, Goldstein, Eric, Roland, and Scott were only suitcase carriers to her, their various sizes and colours insignificant. Kirk was the organizer even though it was she who held the Keystone, without which, all of the other pieces were deadweight.
Maddie looked across the water at the golden sand. On other parts of the island, the sand was oxide red, coral white, or even olive green. This was the dry side; the beach sat in the rain shadow of the extinct volcano, which caught all of the clouds blowing across Ni’ihau causing them to dump their water on the east side of the island, leaving the west of the island relatively arid. Still, the ocean here was strong enough to churn up the sand close to the coast, roiling bits of quartz and mica into the surf and making it sparkle like it was full of gold dust….fools gold.
