Primitive Secrets by Deborah Turrell Atkinson Page A

dragging me off like that,” Hamlin said. “She can be high-strung.”
    â€œI’ve noticed.”
    â€œYou going to the Big Island?”
    â€œYes, I thought a few days where I don’t have to wear shoes, where I can watch the sun set over the ocean without any buildings in the way, would be a good break from last week.”
    Hamlin looked wistful. “Sounds nice.”
    â€œIt is.” Storm felt a wave of sheepishness for taking her frustration about Meredith’s rudeness out on him. He could have refused to go, but that would have caused a scene in front of clients. Bad form, for sure.
    â€œWill you tell me about it next week over that glass of champagne?”
    â€œSure.” She smiled at him.
    By the time Storm was running through the VW’s gears on the ramp from the parking garage to the street, she figured she had all of a half hour to get home, change, and throw some clothes in a duffel in order to get to the airport in time to deal with the long security lines.
    Two minutes after she walked in the front door, the phone rang. She ignored it and continued throwing tee-shirts into her bag. When Leila’s voice on the answering machine drifted back to the bedroom, Storm picked up. “Hi, Leila, I’m here.”
    â€œYou’re late, aren’t you?” Leila asked and both women laughed. “I just wanted to let you know I got your message. Fang is fine and Robbie is thrilled. Relax and give Auntie Maile and Uncle Keone hugs for Robbie and me.”
    â€œThanks, I’ll call you Sunday.”
    Storm jogged to the car and threw everything into the back seat. She zoomed down the freeway entrance, only to jam on the brakes at a line of cars forming behind some idiot who thought stopping at an on-ramp was the way to merge. She winced as she heard the contents of her purse clatter to the floor behind her.
    Something rolled forward and hit her foot, then retreated as Storm accelerated with the car in front of her to slip into a slot in the column of traffic. If it was the pink lipstick that turned orange, then it could roll around until it fell through a rust hole in the floor, but if it was the Montblanc pen Uncle Miles had given her for graduation, she needed to rescue it.
    There was no way she could reach it as she wove through the rush hour traffic, so she waited until she’d found a parking place in the multistoried airport lot. She did not have time for this, what with the long lines at the ticket counter and the thorough security check. She cursed the top-heavy purse for falling, then herself for careless driving.
    She jumped from the car, jammed forward the driver’s seat, threw aside a tennis racquet and some old Sunday newspaper want-ads that had been sliding around for days, and gasped with surprise. There was Uncle Miles’s briefcase.
    He must have left it Friday morning, when she’d helped him drop his car off at the Lexus dealership. Was this what the thieves were looking for? Or something in it? She regarded the case as if it were newly unburied treasure.
    A noise brought Storm back from her mental wanderings and plucked at stretched nerve endings. Footsteps echoed in the cement chamber of the parking structure. She scrambled to stuff things back in her purse, then dropped to her knees on the floor of the garage and struggled to reach under the front seat.
    It had been the Montblanc rolling around, of course. She could see its black and white tip, nestled into the sliding mechanism of the seat. Storm pushed against the back of the driver’s seat with the side of her head and reached out her fingertips. Not quite. She couldn’t reach over the damned briefcase.
    The footsteps got closer. Storm jerked the attache to the garage floor and bent into the back of the car again. Her face stuck to the vinyl of the seat with the heat of her exertion. She felt like her rear end was waving in the air like a Coast Guard buoy in the