It didn't matter. Like the firefighters, the weekend vacationers wouldn't ruminate on the mystery too hard…or find any evidence of the sleeping pills that had been swapped out for the dockworker's heart medication before that unfortunate fire. People were strange and irresponsible, they would all conclude, before declaring it an open and shut case.
A sense of pride and accomplishment filled Han as he drove away from the scene in the economy Kia he'd bought a few days after arriving on the island—not to save money, but to keep his actions on behalf of the 24K as covert as possible.
After parking it in a paid spot a few blocks away from his luxury apartment building, his driver Yaron picked him up in an Infiniti QX80, the kind of car that was more on-brand for their triad members.
The two exchanged no greetings after Han slipped into the backseat.
Yaron had become a man of very few words after being transferred from Victor's detail to Han's nine years ago. Han vaguely remembered the older Filipino man as a friendly, chatty guy before that. And though he'd asked both his driver and his brother, neither would talk about why Victor could no longer stand the sight of him.
In any case, Han didn't mind Yaron's silence. The role Han played within their triad was usually one of charm and finesse. With Yaron, he could be quiet without any obligation to be social.
So in that manner, they drove back to his high rise overlooking the Gold Coast. And when Yaron dropped him off, he slipped from the car without a word of goodbye, happy to be done with even that small bit of social interaction.
Another recent change.
He used to enjoy being the life of the party, charming and bagging beautiful girls and keeping vampire hours for both business and fun.
But as he entered his penthouse apartment shortly before dawn, there was a hollow feeling in his chest. He needed to get back to Rhode Island, back to the life he knew.
With that in mind, he texted Phantom as he stepped into the elevator.
Last package?
Last package was their code for the last name on their list. The only name Han felt slightly bad about erasing from the rolls of the living on behalf of the 24K.
The rest of the names belonged to men the 24K Dragon had paid handsomely over a decade ago to stay quiet about what happened that night when the wife of one of their local security guards had discovered their sex trafficking ring. Any of those guys could be the secret key witness in the case the state of Hawaii was preparing to bring against the 24K.
However, the last package was an innocent who'd stumbled onto the wrong crime scene at the wrong time.
Usually, that would've made his job easier. But in this case, not so much.
The issue was that she worked as the live-in nanny for Holt Calson, the CEO of Cal-Mart. This meant she was by far more protected than any of the other names on his list. It had taken them weeks to figure out she wasn't in residence at his Connecticut estate. She changed phones constantly—perhaps at Calson's behest. And though Phantom had gained access to her email, like many women her age, she rarely used it. It had cost Phantom much of his free time to sift through several emails from her son's school before he finally found a lead on her whereabouts.
An email to one of the child's teachers stating that they would be in Hawaii for the entire summer.
Unfortunately, the trail ended there. Though Phantom was able to track down a flight registry with her name on it, he could not figure out what happened to her after that flight. No rented car. She just disappeared with no indication of where she'd gone.
He'd sent men to surveil her parents' house. But they'd seen no signs of the woman and her child before one of the local police officers who lived just a few houses down came over to question them about why they were loitering on their street.
PHANTOM: Still looking.
The message came through just as Han walked through the door, and it left a bad taste in his mouth. He wanted to cross that last name off his list and get the hell out of Hawaii but killing an innocent….
I was an innocent before your father's gang tricked me into coming here! You're just like him! Just like him! An image of his mother hit him like a punch. She stood in the doorway of his bedroom, and he stood over his father's dead body….
Han scraped a hand over his face, dispelling the memory before it could fully play out. But it lingered as he made his way out to the penthouse's lanai, like a bloodstain that even bleach couldn't lift.
