Yuletide Stalker. Irene Brand

to Maddie’s eyes.

      The restaurant presented a different entertainment each night of the week, but Linc was familiar with them, and he watched Maddie rather than the show. He didn’t have to ask if she liked the program. Her expression changed from interest, to delight, to awe, to pleasure. She had seen so little of the world. What would it be like to guide her as she visited other cultures?

      Clutching a cloth to his bleeding side, Kamu struggled up the steep incline and fell face forward on the stone step of the secluded cabin that had been his refuge for the past two weeks. His race was run, and his heart was heavy because he had failed to avenge the deaths of the other male members of his family. He faced eternity without hope because he hadn’t kept faith with his ancestors.

      An hour later, Edena stumbled over the body of her twin brother as she started into the cabin. As hefty as her brother, Edena had no trouble lifting him. She carried the last remaining male member of her family carefully into the cabin and laid him on the narrow cot. When she peeled back Kamu’s shirt, blood spurted from the wound he’d received when he escaped from prison. She heated some water and although her hands probed gently when she removed the blood-soaked bandage, Kamu groaned and his eyes opened.

      “Sister,” he whispered, and his eyes brightened. “I will not have to die alone.”

      “You shall not die,” she said. “Aumakua will not permit it.”

      Kamu shook his head wearily. “Our god, Aumakua, does not listen to me now. I’m the only one left, and I have failed to honor my forebears. Give me a knife. If I die by my own hand, it will suffice.”

      Edena stretched herself to her full five-feet-five-inches height, pounded herself on the chest and said haughtily, “You forget me. I am willing to carry on the family honor.”

      “But you’re a woman. That will shame me.”

      “Then I will become a man—at least part of the time. Rest in peace, Kamu.”

      Throughout the remainder of the night, Edena sat beside her brother, holding his hand as he slowly and painfully died. Her thoughts were not so much on her brother as on Stanley Horton, who had brought tragedy to her family. It had started when Horton had discovered their crime. One by one, she’d seen her family taken from her. Someone must pay.

      When her brother died at last, Edena wept and mourned audibly for hours. As the day dawned, she stood before a small cracked mirror and with a small hammer, knocked out one of her front teeth—a custom of bereavement in her family.

      With blood spilling from her mouth, she shouldered her brother’s body and walked up a rugged mountain to the secret family burial cave. She attached a rope to the joints of his legs, put the rope behind his neck and tightened the rope until his knees touched his chest. She wrapped the flexed body in a coarse cloth and placed the rounded package on a shelf in the cave. She laid her hand on the body of her twin and muttered, alternating from her native language to English, “He ola na he ola—a life for a life.”

      She passed by the interment alcoves of the other members of the family. When she touched each bundle, she muttered, “A life for a life—I will avenge.”

      Edena carefully parted the brushy covering before she stepped out of the cave. A bitter smile twisted her lips as she plodded down the mountain, never doubting that she would be victorious in her vengeance.