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reached the taxi rank, they saw a man approaching
     — a driver holding up a sign with their name.
    The driver was taller than Levon. He had dark hair streaked with gray, a mustache, and he wore a chauffeur’s cap and livery
     jacket and alligator cowboy boots with three-inch heels.
    He said, “Mr. and Mrs. McDaniels? I’m Marco. The hotel hired me to be your driver. Do you have claim tickets for your luggage?”
    “We didn’t bring any bags.”
    “Okay. The car’s right outside.”

Chapter 16
    THE McDANIELSES WALKED behind Marco as Levon noted the driver’s odd rolling gait in those cowboy boots and the man’s accent,
     a trace of something — maybe New York or New Jersey.
    They crossed the arrival lane to a traffic island where Levon saw a newspaper lying faceup on a bench.
    In a heart-stopping double take, he realized that Kim was looking up at him from under the headline.
    This was the
Maui News,
and the large black type spelled out, “Missing Beauty.”
    Levon’s thoughts scattered, taking him a few stunned moments to understand that during the eleven or so hours he and Barb
     had been in transit, Kim had officially gone missing.
    She wasn’t waiting at the hotel.
    Like the caller said,
she was gone.
    Levon grabbed the paper with a trembling hand, his heart bucking as he looked into Kim’s smiling eyes, took in the swimsuit
     she was wearing in this picture, probably taken just a couple of days ago.
    Levon folded the newspaper lengthwise, caught up to Marco and Barbara at the car, asked Marco, “Will it take long to get to
     the hotel?”
    “About a half hour, and there’s no charge, Mr. McDaniels. The Wailea Princess is paying for as long as you need me.”
    “Why are they doing that?”
    Marco’s voice turned soft. “Well, in light of the situation, sir.”
    He opened the car doors, and Levon and Barbara climbed in, Barb’s face crumpling when she took the paper, crying while she
     read the story as the sedan slipped into the traffic stream.
    The car sped onto the highway, and Marco spoke to them, his eyes in the rearview mirror, gently asking if they were comfortable,
     if they wanted more air or music. Levon thought ahead to checking in at the hotel, then going straight to the police, the
     whole time feeling as though he’d suffered a battlefield amputation, that a part of him had been brutally severed and that
     he might not survive.
    Eventually, the sedan crawled down what looked like a private road, both sides massed in purple flowering vines. They drove
     by an artificial waterfall, slowed to a stop in front of the grand porte cochere entryway of the Wailea Princess Hotel.
    Levon saw tiled fountains on both sides of the car, bronze statues of Polynesian warriors rising out of the water with spears
     in their hands on one side, outriggers filled with orchids on the other.
    Bellhops in white shirts and short red pants hurried toward the car. Marco opened his door, and as Levon walked around the
     sedan to help Barb he heard his name coming at him from all directions.
    People were running toward the hotel entrance — reporters with cameras and microphones.
    Racing toward
them.

Chapter 17
    TEN MINUTES LATER, Barb was dazed and jet-lagged as she entered a suite that on another day, and in different circumstances,
     she would have thought “magnificent.” If she had peeked at the rate card behind the door, she would have seen that the charge
     for the suite was over three thousand dollars a day.
    She walked into the heart of the main room, as good as sleepwalking, seeing but not taking in the hand-knotted silk carpet,
     a pattern of orchids on a pale peach ground; the tapestry-upholstered furnishings; the huge flat-panel television.
    She went to the window, looked out at the beauty without really seeing it,
just looking for Kim.
    There was a gorgeous swimming pool below, a complicated shape, like a square laid over a rectangle, with circular Jacuzzis
     at the shallow end. A fountain, like a