Sushi and Suspicions

Mahina Security series, Book 2

A Christian Romantic Suspense Novel

She knows firearms. He knows criminals. Together they may survive the truth.

Liv Whelan’s world ignites into chaos when her California tactical training center is ravaged by wildfires, but suspicions arise that the fire was no accident. Amidst the ruins, Olivia’s old college roommate offers an escape to the lush tranquility of Hawaii.

Yet the islands hold their own secrets, and a lucrative job opportunity morphs into a sinister plot framing Liv for the theft of an antique rifle that belonged to one of the Hawaiian princes. Determined to prove her innocence, she hires private investigator Lennox Chang, who is reluctantly impressed by Liv’s gun expertise and help in the investigation.

But as romance blossoms under the Hawaiian sun, so do threats from unexpected quarters. Together, they must trust in God to help them expose the truth connected to the calamity back in California and the perils in paradise.

Previously released in the multi-author anthology, Summer Suspicions.

Take 10% off when you buy from Camy’s store with coupon code: website10

Take 10% off when you buy from Camy’s store with coupon code: website10

Excerpt

Sushi and Suspicions

When the poor and needy seek water,

and there is none,

and their tongue is parched with thirst,

I the LORD will answer them;

I the God of Israel will not forsake them.

—Isaiah 41:17 (ESV)

1

The smell of the smoke still hung heavy in the air as Olivia Whelan got out of her car, and the heat still radiating from the land slapped her in the face. Her eyes began to water, but it wasn’t entirely because of the ash.

Before her were the remains of Wolf’s Range Firearm Training Center, the business she had built with her brother, Lincoln, on a tract of wilderness just outside of Sonoma, California. Now the tactical training house and the entire grassy area up until the distant firing range was blackened and charred. The large main building was only half-burned, but the fire damage had compromised the support beams so badly that her architect brother, Chris, had suggested tearing it down and rebuilding anew.

All that was going to cost more than what she and Linc had left in their bank accounts.

Two nights ago, when she’d first heard about the devastating wildfire, she’d rushed here and tried to get closer despite the wildland firefighters holding her back. She and her brother had talked about this training center since they were in college, and they had invested most of their savings into buying the land and building the necessary structures.

And now it was going up in flames.

She’d crumpled to the ground and bawled, rocked back and forth by her brother Linc until the firefighters yelled at them to get to safety.

The wildfire still raged in small, controlled pockets further north, but the fire had completely eaten up anything flammable on these acres. Even the extensive area that had been the site of forest training was now a pincushion of black tree trunks.

Liv could only stare at the smoky, destroyed land in front of her. She felt like her chest had been gouged out, leaving a vacuum.

Her brother Linc suddenly exited the remains of the main building.

“Hey!” she called to him. “Are you sure it’s safe to be inside?”

“Probably not. Don’t tell Chris.” He gave a brief, tight smile.

The two siblings were silent for a long moment.

It took an enormous amount of effort, but Liv tried to act normally again. “Where’s your car?” she asked, looking around.

“I ran here from the house,” he said, pointing to the trail running shoes on his feet.

Liv now noticed that the small, compact running backpack he took when he ran alone was dropped on the bottom front step of the building. It worried her that her older brother had become even more of a loner since he had left the military, but he had refused to talk about it with any of his siblings, no matter how much they teased, bullied, and cajoled him.

She had tried to respect whatever loss he had faced to make him withdraw even from his loving family, but now, facing the utter ruin left of her family’s land, she wondered how he could even remain upright. She was trying to keep tight control of herself because she feared any moment she’d drop to the ground and start crying again.

Liv must have been too caught up in her forlorn thoughts because Linc gently touched her shoulder. “Hey,” he said in a soft voice. “Are you okay?”

“Of course I’m not!” she snapped, and immediately regretted it. She pressed her lips together and screwed her eyes shut for a few seconds, then forced herself to breathe. Once, twice. “I’m sorry,” she finally said to him.

“You have nothing to apologize for.”

She felt his love for her even in those brief words, communicated with the timbre of his voice and the tightening of his fingers, still on her shoulder.

“What were you doing inside?” she asked him.

“Getting these.” He held up the objects in his hand, which Liv hadn’t noticed until now.

“What are they?”

“Hard drives for the computers.”

She hadn’t even had the brainpower to think about saving their data. “Thanks,” she said in a low voice.

Liv didn’t realize she was frowning until Linc poked her between her eyebrows.

“You’re taking this pretty hard,” he said. “I worry about you.”

She didn’t know what to say in response.

“It’s okay to grieve, you know?” he said.

“Grieve over a hunk of land?”

“We spent a lot of time and effort developing every square foot of that hunk of land.”

It had delighted her, planning the firing ranges and obstacle courses, thinking of the clients who would challenge themselves. She bit her lip to hold back another wave of tears.

Linc wisely pretended he didn’t see. “I finished calling all the clients. Most were sympathetic and sorry that their appointments were canceled.”

“Most?”

He sighed, running a hand through light brown hair. “Pinnacle ‘expressed concern’ about their contract with us.”

“Of course they would.” Liv and Linc had recently won a coveted contract with Pinnacle Shield Specialists, a private security firm. The year-long agreement gave Pinnacle guaranteed training slots every week for their employees, but the start date wasn’t for another three months.

The urgency and anxiety rose in Liv’s stomach like a witch’s brew. “We have to apply for a loan,” she said, her words coming even faster than usual. “And call the landscape contractors again to clear out the debris and—”

“Whoa! Remember what the firefighters said?”

She couldn’t remember much of the past couple of days, maybe because she spent so much time either crying or pacing in a stress-filled frenzy.

At her blank stare, Linc sighed. “We have to wait for all the fires to be put out and for the land to cool down before we can let people start working on it.”

“Oh.” Now that she thought about it, that made sense. The burned vegetation still smoldered, contributing to the haze that filled the air like a sickly yellow fog.

Liv’s cell phone buzzed in her jeans pocket, and she considered ignoring it. She’d had several calls from friends who heard about the fire, and she knew they were concerned about her and simply wanted to check in to see how she was doing. But repeating over and over to each person about the devastation that had happened was making her feel worn down, like the time she had piled too many guns and gun cases on her mother’s spindly living room chair and it had finally broken under the weight.

However, she had set her cell phone to both ring and vibrate, and Linc could hear the ringtone, the theme from the video game Halo. His eyebrows rose as she made no move to dig her phone out of her pocket.

She finally gave in and pulled her phone out. Her brother already wondered if something was wrong with her, and not answering her phone would be flat-out admitting she was in need of a crying session with a therapist.

Liv was glad she had decided to answer it when she saw the caller ID. “Fane! How are you doing?”

“Okay,” said the voice of her college roommate and friend, which was always slightly robotic. Liv wondered if it had to do with Fane’s Master’s degree in computer science. “I called because I was wondering how you were doing.”

Liv sighed, gathering up her courage to tell Fane about the fire.

But her friend seemed to understand everything just from that one sigh. “I heard about the fire. That bad, huh? I’m really sorry, Liv.”

“We can rebuild,” Liv said, trying to sound cheerful. “It’ll just take time and money.”

“I was reading about all the California wildfires. It looks like there are still quite a lot of them in your area.”

“Yeah, it’s been an extra hot and dry summer.” It was why the shooting range had gone up like a torch.

“We’re not on a video call, so I can’t see you, but I just know you’re screwing your face up right now. Linc’s gonna poke you between the eyes if you don’t stop.”

Liv frowned and rubbed at the space between her eyes, feeling the wrinkle. She tried to relax her face, but she couldn’t seem to make her body obey her.

She looked guiltily at her brother but found that he was walking toward a car that had just pulled up. One of her clients, Mrs. Rivera. Liv was relieved that her brother was here to take on the burden of explaining the fire to their clients. If Liv had to do it, she would burst into tears every time she spoke to someone.

“I think I’m entitled to a little bit of stress,” Liv said to Fane.

Her friend’s voice suddenly took on the tone of a shady used-car salesman. “I know how you can relieve that stress! You can come to visit me in Hawaii for a few weeks.”

Just the word “Hawaii” made Liv remember the last time she had visited the islands. Fane was from Hawaii and her family still lived there, so she visited at least once a year. Liv had joined her on one of those trips.

But a few months ago, Fane’s mother had needed reconstructive knee surgery, and her father would not have been able to take care of her. Fane had been having issues at work, the cybercrimes division of the Sonoma Police Department, and so she decided to quit her job and return to take care of her mom.

“How is your mom doing?” Liv asked, ignoring Fane’s suggestion. She looked over at Linc and saw that Mrs. Rivera was giving him a consoling hug. The problem was that Mrs. Rivera was under five feet and her brother was five foot eleven, so he was bent over in a way that made it look like he was going to throw out his back.

“Mom’s going to physical therapy and complaining the entire time,” Fane said. “So? Hawaii?”

“Did you call me just to invite me to Hawaii?”

“Of course. I knew you would be stressing about everything that needed to be done, but it isn’t like you can start renovations until the fires are put out. What you need is an extended vacation with your best friend Fane to melt away your stress so that you can plan what you’ll do when you get back to California.”

Liv groaned. She had loved her vacation there the last time, but she couldn’t agree. “I can’t possibly go to Hawaii, Fane. This has to be the worst time for me to take a vacation.”

“This is the best time for you to take a vacation,” Fane argued. “Plus you can stay with me at my folks’ house so you won’t have to pay for a hotel.”

“True, but—”

“And the lychee on my parents’ tree is just about ready to be picked.”

Despite her determination not to give in to Fane’s coaxing, Liv started to salivate at the thought of fresh lychee fruit. She had tasted it for the first time on her last trip, and it was amazing.

What was she doing? Her land was in ruins, and she was dreaming about tropical fruit. “No Fane, you will not sway me with lychee,” Liv said firmly. A thought suddenly occurred to her. “Why do you want me to visit Hawaii so badly?”

“To keep me from killing my mother,” Fane said flatly.

Liv winced. Fane got along with her dad great, but she and her mom were like fire and oil. “As much as I would normally be more than happy to be a buffer between you and your mom, now really isn’t the time for me to go to Hawaii.”

Just think about—” There was a muffled sound as Fane spoke to someone else, then she was back on the line with Liv. “I’ve got to go, but we are not done talking about this.”

“Oh, we are definitely done talking about this,” Liv said.

“Talk to you later!” Fane said, then disconnected the call.

“Oh Liv,” Mrs. Rivera said, “forgive me for eavesdropping, but I think you should go to Hawaii and visit your friend.”

Liv glanced up. Mrs. Rivera had apparently drawn close to speak to her and had been waiting for her to finish her phone call.

She smiled at Mrs. Rivera. She really couldn’t be upset with the motherly woman, who never failed to give them empanadas and tamales, insisting that she had “made too much.”

“You don’t have to worry about me, Mrs. Rivera,” Liv said. “Linc is already squawking at me like a mother hen.”

“I wouldn’t need to squawk if you would actually listen to me,” Linc said dryly.

“I know everything is terrible now,” Mrs. Rivera said, reaching out to clasp Liv’s hand, “but God will help everything turn out all right in the end.”

Before the fire, Liv would’ve been quick to agree with her. But the loss of so many months of work in an instant had felt like a blow to her solar plexus, and she was having difficulty standing firm in her faith in God.

“And God was certainly looking out for you and your family,” Mrs. Rivera added.

“What do you mean?” Linc asked.

“When I was driving here, it looked like this was the only place that caught fire on your property. It’s a good thing the firemen arrived so quickly.”

“I was the first one to notice the smoke,” Linc said, “and so I called them right away.”

Mrs. Rivera nodded. “Yes, God was certainly looking out for you. If no one had noticed it, it could have reached all the way to your mother’s house.”

The Whelan family property was about 50 acres, which Liv’s mother had bought from her cousin’s widow, with all of the siblings chipping in money. Liv’s brother Christopher, who was an architect, had built their mother’s house on a picturesque plot, while the rest of the siblings were able to use the rest of the acreage for their own businesses. While Liv and Linc’s shooting range was on the opposite corner of the property from the house, she realized it had indeed been God’s grace that the fire was out before it even remotely threatened her mother.

“Well, I have to get home,” Mrs. Rivera said as she turned back toward her car. “I’m making tamales today. I’ll bring you a big tray tomorrow.”

“You don’t need to do that, Mrs. Rivera,” Liv said.

The woman turned and gave her an arch look. “Are you saying you don’t like my tamales?”

“She is absolutely not saying that,” Linc said quickly.

Liv was able to give her a small smile. “Thanks a lot, Mrs. Rivera.”

As she opened her car door, Mrs. Rivera took another look around. “There are still wildfires further north, aren’t there? I think this was the only place that had a fire, even though there’s lots of wilderness all around. How strange that the fire would start here, at your firing range.”

Mrs. Rivera got into her car, so she missed the look that passed between Liv and Linc. Her brother’s face was impassive, but there was a sharp glint in his green-streaked brown eyes that told Liv that he was thinking the same thing she was.

But all she said to Mrs. Rivera was, “Yes, it is strange.”

As they watched her car drive away, Linc said, “I looked at the wilderness area around when I was running here. Nothing else had been burned. The fire started in our shooting range.”

“Do we ask the firemen to investigate?”

“They’re still fighting the fires farther north. And after they get them under control, this isn’t the only place they’ll need to investigate. It might be weeks.”

“Do you think it was Clarence?” Liv asked in a harsh voice.

Linc laid a comforting hand on her shoulder and squeezed. It was painful like when she got a massage, and she realized she’d tensed up again.

“You can’t just assume Clarence would do something like this,” he told her. “I mean, this would be arson, not a few piddly insults.”

Clarence Reider, owner of Red Reider Shooting Club, had stormed into their administrative building a few weeks ago when Pinnacle had awarded the contract to Liv and Linc’s company and not his. He’d blustered around and spewed his ire until Liv forced him to leave. What was worse, he’d returned an hour later with police officers, accusing her of assault, but she’d proven through their security video that she had merely body-blocked him—walking close and bumping into him, forcing Clarence to back up and out of the building of his own volition.

“You’re right, arson is a big leap,” she said, “but Clarence tried to get me arrested for assault. I’m not entirely sure he isn’t capable of it.”

“Let’s wait for an investigation. The fire inspector would likely do it before we started renovations, anyway, just to make sure there wasn’t anything on our property that caused the fire to start.”

Liv nodded, knowing he was right, but still upset about it all. There was no way she could go to Hawaii with their business in so much danger.

***

Two days later, Liv was with Linc, both of them wearing leather gloves and sweating buckets in the heat as they pulled up brush on the land behind their mother’s house. She wanted to clear some land to expand her garden, and since the siblings weren’t allowed to work on their training center until the fire inspector looked things over, they agreed that they couldn’t simply wander around the house with nothing to do.

This time, Liv didn’t feel the vibration of her phone, but the Halo theme blasted across the flat, dry brush-choked area, sounding louder than normal because many of the birds had flown away in response to the fires. Linc, who had been bent over, straightened and looked in her direction. Liv was quick to answer because only last night she had ghosted one of her Arizona cousins, who had then called Linc to demand why Liv wasn’t answering her phone.

However, she didn’t recognize the phone number, although the 808 area code indicated it was from Hawaii. Thinking that Fane might be using a different phone number, she answered, “Hello?”

“Is this Olivia Whelan?” The voice was slightly gravelly like a man in his forties or fifties, but with a jovial quality to the tone.

“This is,” she said cautiously.

“Ms. Whelan, my name is Adrian Harstad. I don’t know if you’ve heard of me, but I own a large private gun collection in Hawaii.”

Liv straightened. “Of course I’ve heard of you, Mr. Harstad. You’ve lent out some of the valuable historic items in your collection to museums.”

He chuckled. “The shooting world is always smaller than I expect. I know Sam Donovan, your coach when you were on the Olympic team.”

Liv had been an alternate for the United States Olympic Shooting Team, although she had not entered competitions in many years. “He was a great coach. I had never worked so hard in my life.”

Mr. Harstad laughed. “He would always say, ‘I’m being nice to you right now because I like you, and you don’t want me to stop liking you.’”

Liv smiled for the first time in days, the action so rusty that her face felt like it was cracking. “He said that to one of the team members almost every day.”

“Now, the reason I’m calling is because I heard from one of your clients that you will be going to Hawaii for vacation.”

“My plans are still up in the air.” She wasn’t surprised he had heard about it. Fane kept commenting on Liv’s social media posts that she should come to Hawaii on vacation, and between Fane and Mrs. Rivera, the news had spread to several of the other clients of the shooting range.

“Oh,” he said, sounding disappointed. “I had been excited to hear you might be coming to the islands because I wanted to hire you for your expertise.”

“Your collection is quite famous, Mr. Harstad. I don’t have any expertise that would be better than your own.”

“That’s nice of you to say, but there I would disagree. I was hoping that I could hire you to do a safety and performance appraisal of the gun range on my estate.”

Liv suddenly felt a fluttering in her breastbone. Mr. Harstad had been interviewed by a couple of shooting magazines, showcasing a few photos of his marvelous collection, as well as pictures of his beautiful estate on the island of Oahu. His gun range was likely to be just as gorgeous. “I can’t believe you couldn’t find someone else able to do the appraisal for you.”

“If I put out the word, they would probably be lining up outside my door, but I tend to prefer more personal recommendations. When I saw that you might be coming to Hawaii, I remembered that Sam always spoke highly of you, and you and your brother run your own shooting facility. I would prefer working with someone like you as opposed to someone who’s never worked with anyone I know.”

“I’m not sure, Mr. Harstad.” The opportunity sounded amazing, and yet Liv hesitated. She had a responsibility to Wolf’s Range, and she simply couldn’t burden her brother with the business while she went traipsing off to Hawaii.

At the same time, Fane’s social media assault was slowly eating away at Liv’s resistance. She knew she needed some respite from the stress because she woke up every morning feeling exhausted. She also missed seeing Fane, whom she had met for lunch once a month before she moved away.

“I do feel terrible asking you to work while you’ll be on vacation, but I am more than willing to pay generously for your time.” Mr. Harstad named a sum that made Liv cough. She couldn’t blame it on the air, hazy from the nearby fires.

“Would you give me a few days to think about it?”

“Of course. I spend most of my time in Hawaii, and I have no trips planned for the next two months at least. If you decide to take my offer, we can arrange a time convenient for both of us. My schedule is quite free.”

Liv thanked him and disconnected the call. As soon as she looked toward her brother, she yowled and jumped in surprise to find him much closer than she expected.

“I think you should take it,” Linc said before she could say anything.

“I haven’t even told you about it.”

“Even I’ve heard of Adrian Harstad. And the only reason I can think of that would make you cough like you were hacking up a fur ball is that he offered to pay you some obscene amount of money.”

“I’m not certain I like the fact that you can read me faster and easier than a billboard.”

He grinned. “The reason you always lose when we play Psycho Hamster Poker is because you think you’re better at hiding your emotions than you really are.”

She scowled at him.

Linc glanced northward, although they couldn’t see their burned shooting range, then turned back to her. “I think you should go,” he said again.

“What about Clarence?”

“What about Clarence? We don’t have proof that he did anything. I can handle the cleanup for a couple of weeks.”

Liv shook her head. “It’s a lot of work for you to take on by yourself.”

He shrugged. “We have to wait for a fire inspector, and then it’s just a matter of calling contractors. They’ll have to schedule us, so they probably aren’t going to be able to start work right away anyway.” He gave her a narrow look, arching an eyebrow. “Or are you saying that you’re the only one able to organize the renovation?”

Liv gave him a feral smile. “Yes,” she taunted him.

“Oh, you’re going to pay for that. You’re such a control freak.” He dropped into a crouch.

Liv dropped into a crouch also, hands out, waiting for him to make a move. “I’m not a control freak, I’m organized.”

He tackled her and took her down. They had played a lot of football as children, but his moves now were less like a linebacker and more like a mixed martial artist, thanks to the MMA gym that all of the siblings went to. He had been going longer than she had, so while she could have leveraged him off of her when they were preteens, now he quickly caught her in a wrestling hold that made her feel like she was being tied into a pretzel.

“I yield, I yield,” she said finally, spitting dirt out of her mouth. It tasted smoky, so it was probably mixed with ash. She gave him a little kick as he rolled off of her and onto his feet.

He stood and dusted his hands. “It’s too easy tackling you now.”

“Oh, I’ll show you easy.” She was still on the ground, so she used her leg to sweep his feet out from under him. She was already scrambling toward him before he landed hard on his back, and he wasn’t able to slither out of the arm bar she put him in.

After he yielded and she released him, Linc laughed and ruffled her hair, which she suspected merely smeared dirt into her scalp. “I guess you’re getting a little better,” he conceded.

They both stood up, dust raining down from their clothing.

“So?” he asked her. “Hawaii, or playing around in the ash with your brother?”

“Why those two?” she demanded. “Why do I have to play around in the ash with you?”

“Because it’s fun?”

“For you.”

“Then maybe you should go have fun in Hawaii with Fane.” He added, “And making money while you’re doing it.”

She gusted a huge sigh. “When you put it like that, it makes me sound selfish to not go on vacation.”

He laughed, and Liv searched his face carefully for any sign that he didn’t mean what he said. But he seemed more relaxed now that she was considering the trip. Maybe he had been seriously worried about her.

“Okay,” she said. “I’ll call Fane.”

He smiled, and she saw the relief in his eyes. “Good.”

As the two of them made their way back to the house, Liv hoped she was making the right decision. But maybe some time in Hawaii would slow her stressed and jumbled thoughts.

There was also some appeal in sitting on a beach while meditating on her Bible and praying. She had a feeling she would need it. Lately, she’d been nursing this strange hollow feeling in her chest, which didn’t seem to go away no matter how much she prayed.

Granted, her prayers had been mostly worrying about what else she needed to do to fix the shooting range, worrying about the clients they would lose, worrying about the money. Maybe a change of place would be good to help her calm her mind and focus her prayers.

And get over this hollow feeling. This emptiness, this feeling that God didn’t really care about her. Otherwise, why would He have allowed this to happen?

Copyright 2024 by Camy Tang

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