by Toby Neal
The group told stories of other places, other rescues. Jake had done some crazy things extracting kidnap victims in South America and, one time, airplane survivors in a crash in Lithuania. Before she knew it, time and the meal had passed.
Sophie glanced at Alika. “We should go. I want to see Nakai and tell him we’re working on the foster home situation before visiting hours are over.”
“We’re finished here, anyway,” Frank said, and paid the check over the rest of the table’s protests.
They all stood. Marcella said goodbye, and Sophie and Alika headed for the exit. Jake hurried around the table to grasp Sophie by the arm. “Hey. Don’t run off. I want to keep in touch.”
Sophie let Alika go ahead to the doors at the restaurant and turned to Jake. “I’ll give you my new number. But you won’t be able to reach me out there, anyway.”
“Humor me. And why are you going back to Kaua’i?”
“I’m not done out there in Kalalau. There’s unfinished business with the Shepherd to attend to.” Sophie took a pen from the hostess stand, grabbed Jake’s hand and turned it over. She wrote the number of her latest burner cell phone on the inside of his forearm as he laughed.
“What is this? The nineteen-nineties?”
“My phone’s dead right now.” Gripping his wrist, Sophie’s nostrils flared as she took in his familiar scent of lemony aftershave and man. His arm was thick and sinewy, but the veins crossing his wrist were tenderly blue and vulnerable. She had a ridiculous urge to kiss that nexus of veins.
She paused, the pen denting his skin. She didn’t want to move away just yet.
“Sophie,” Jake whispered. She felt that whisper on the back of her neck, and all the way down to her toes. If she looked up, she would see what was in his eyes, so she didn’t look up. She couldn’t. She dropped his wrist like it burned her, and in a way, it did.
“I’ll be in touch, Jake.”
She hurried through the doors without looking back.
Her father drove them to the hospital in his big Lincoln Continental. She kissed Frank goodbye at the drop-off zone. “I’ll take a ride-share back to the apartment and spend this evening with you, Dad.”
“That better be a promise.”
Alika said goodbye to her father as well, and they entered the children’s hospital’s busy lobby. Getting directions, Sophie was relieved that she and Alika were on the list admitted to see Nakai.
In the elevator, Alika reached for her hand as they ascended to Nakai’s wing. “Come here.”
Sophie was tired, her emotions battered by the hostile hours in the deposition. Ever-present sadness waited to pounce: there were men who loved her, and whom she loved, too—and yet she was alone. “And you always will be,” the depression’s poisonous voice whispered. “You ruin everything you touch.”
Sophie let Alika draw her into his arms so that she leaned against him, their bodies aligned, her back to his front, his arms crossed over her waist, her hands holding them in front of her. He felt like a warm solid wall. Sophie closed her eyes to savor the feeling of support.
She vividly remembered riding down the elevator from her father’s apartment with Alika in just this pose over a year ago, and the feeling of rightness and comfort that it had brought her then, too.
But a lot had happened since, including her relationship with Connor. It was wrong to indulge in his touch, no matter how badly she craved it. She couldn’t bear to hurt either of them again, and she didn’t trust herself any more. She’d just been struggling with the same sorts of impulses with Jake! She was a mess.
Sophie moved away and stood on the other side of the elevator, watching the numbers change over the door.
Chapter Forty-Three
Nakai sat propped up in the hospital bed. He spooned a third helping of bright red Jell-O rapidly into his mouth.
“Slow down, boy. You’ll give yourself a tummy ache.” Mrs. Feliciano, the social worker from child welfare, was a short, apple-shaped woman wearing a denim muumuu. Her skinny legs were dressed in leggings patterned with mangoes. The orange of the mangoes hurt his eyes.
The doctor who had checked Nakai out said there was no medical reason for his constant sense of being overwhelmed whenever he opened his eyes. He had been underground for four days, and his system had adapted to less stimulation. “You should be fine in time,” The doctor said. But until then, Nakai insisted they keep the room’s lights off.
“I brought you a pair of sunglasses.” Mrs. Feliciano handed Nakai a pair of cool aviators. Nakai put them on, looking around. “Thanks.”
Talking kind of hurt, too. Sounds seemed too loud as well as colors too bright.
“Some visitors are on their way.” Mrs. Feliciano had taken charge of him from the moment the helicopter brought him into the hospital. Since his mother could not be found, nor any other relatives located, he was temporarily a ward of the state. He’d have worried about what that meant, but Mrs. Feliciano took her duties very seriously.
Nakai found her bossiness comforting. She treated him like a mom who took her “mom job” seriously.
Unlike his real mom. Enola didn’t care.
His mind shied away from that thought. Mom did the best she could. Her addiction was “a disease” according to one of his school counselors.
“Who’s coming to see me? Is it Mom?”
“They still haven’t located your mother, Nakai. Your visitors are that woman, Sandy Mason, who rescued you, and her friend, Alika Wolcott.”
Nakai grinned and bounced a little, which jarred his leg. That hurt. He put his tray aside. “Can I comb my hair?”
“Of course. You want to look your best.” Mrs. Feliciano cleared his tray and took a comb, toothbrush, and toothpaste out of the travel kit she’d brought for him. “They won’t believe how good you’re looking.”
Nakai did feel a lot better, even though his leg was immobilized in a traction sling. He had had a bedside tub shower and sponge bath once he was settled in, and after so many days of filth, it had taken both Mrs. Feliciano and a nurse’s aide a good hour to scrub off all the grime.
“What’s going to happen to me?” Nakai asked, trying to keep the quiver out of his voice as he tugged the comb through his hair.
Mrs. Feliciano patted his arm and opened her mouth to speak, but a light tap on the door interrupted them.
“Come in!” the social worker called. The door opened to reveal the woman Nakai had barely been able to make out in the dark.
Sandy Mason was taller than he’d realized, only a few inches shorter than the Hawaiian man named Alika who had helped them. Sophie had long legs and hair cut short like a man’s, and she was way prettier than he had imagined. Her face broke into a big smile at the sight of him, and she came over and bent down to give him a hug. She smelled of coconut oil and good things.
Mrs. Feliciano introduced herself as Alika took the chair on one side of his bed and Sandy the other. Sandy held his hand as she had down in the tunnel. She felt like land in the ocean, a fixed point he could hang onto.
Mrs. Feliciano told about the details of the surgery that had been done to fix his leg, and the likely amount of time needed for him to recover: close to a month.
“But I’ll be up and on crutches way sooner than that,” Nakai said. “And I don’t want to return to Kalalau. I want to go back to school.” So many things had become clearer to him in the darkness. Even though he was a kid, he wasn’t totally helpless.
“You don’t have to go back to Kalalau.” Sandy squeezed his fingers, and he squeezed back. “We’re working on a situation so that you and the other boys can all be together.”
This should have made him feel good, but Nakai hadn’t been with the lost boys long enough to really bond with them, and he had broken code by telling what the Shepherd was doing to him.
Nakai looked down, pleating the white sheet. Even though his hands had been scrubbed, there was still dirt under his nails from days of digging for worms. Seeing the dirt reminded
him how strong he was, that he could survive, and that he needed to speak up for what he wanted.
“I don’t want to live with the other boys. I just want a family to stay with.” He looked up and met Mrs. Feliciano’s eyes. “I would like to stay with Mrs. Feliciano and her family.”
Alika cleared his throat. “I totally get that, man. You want to be with someone familiar.”
“It’s not just that. The boys will be angry with me for telling about the Shepherd, and I know how things work. I will have to give more testimony for him to get busted. They will want to kill me.”
Nakai saw a look pass between Sophie and Alika. Yes, there were things they weren’t telling him that involved the boys.
Mrs. Feliciano shook her head. “I’m a social worker, Nakai, not a foster parent.”
“Please.” He turned to her. He didn’t know what to say, so just gave her his best puppy-dog eyes. “I won’t be any trouble. I will follow all of your rules. I’m good at chores, and I can even cook.”
A long moment passed as Mrs. Feliciano considered him. Suddenly, she slapped her mango-covered thighs abruptly, standing up from the plastic chair she had been seated on. “All right. I will make some phone calls.” She turned, opened the door, and left.
Sandy’s big brown eyes widened in surprise even as Alika broke into a huge grin and high-fived Nakai. “Way to tug on those heartstrings, kid. And I agree with you that being with the other boys is probably not the right situation.”
“We’re going back to Kalalau to finish up the investigation into the Shepherd and make sure the investigators have all the information,” Sandy said. “We will look for your mother, too. Is there any message you want to give her if we find her?”
Nakai let go of Sandy’s hand and pleated the sheet, thinking about his mom. “Tell her I love her, but I don’t want to live with her anymore. And thank her for finding you and getting you to find me.” Nakai picked up a pair of controllers from the side table, holding them up. “Either of you two know how to play Super Mario Brothers?”
Chapter Forty-Four
Back at her father’s apartment, Sophie sat in her quiet bedroom, blackout drapes drawn, headphones filled with classical music, poised in front of the keyboard.
She looked down at her hands. Her fingers were still long and golden brown, but now marred by scratches. Her nails were short and broken, and a rim of dirt lingered under her thumbnail. Crawling through that blinding dark on her hands and knees had “worked them over” as Marcella would say. But how had it become so unfamiliar so quickly to sit in front of a computer? So much had changed—not that long ago, being “wired in” to her computers had been her norm.
Sophie opened the DAVID program. She typed in all the information she had on the Shepherd, which wasn’t much, and set the program to searching for more information. A few minutes later, DAVID produced a mug shot matching the man she’d met in the cave—real name Barton Kuiaha. He’d been convicted in 1998 of molestation of a minor during his job as a youth correctional officer. After being fired and serving six months of probation and counseling, he’d disappeared. “Not even a tax return filed,” Sophie muttered.
DAVID could only work with law enforcement and public data already entered; if Barton Kuiaha had gone “off the grid” and had no other information available, he was invisible to the program.
Sophie glanced over at the squat black external hard drive containing the Ghost software. The time had come to break open the beast. The Ghost could penetrate areas she’d never programmed DAVID to go to find this man.
Sophie forced her fingers to type in the password Connor had constructed.
The screen bloomed open to the Ghost program’s search parameters. She typed in the Shepherd’s physical height, approximate weight, age, and general description. She drop-filled in the “nickname and moniker” section with “Shepherd.”
She turned away to pet Ginger while the program was searching. “Hey girl. You treat my dad okay while I was gone?” Ginger dropped to the ground and rolled on Sophie’s feet in reply, exposing her belly for a toe rub. Sophie obliged.
Sophie was too wound up to relax. She couldn’t stop thinking of Nakai, and his heartfelt appeal to Mrs. Feliciano.
If only she could be the one giving that boy a place to live—but the barren Mary Watson apartment hardly qualified as a home.
Sophie sighed and glanced up at the Ghost program to see what had loaded. She jerked in surprise. A chat window marked The Ghost had appeared.
“I see you are giving the program a try, Sophie.”
Connor was reaching out to her through the program. Sophie felt her whole body flush with feelings she couldn’t identify.
Of course, Connor would have a “call home” beacon built into the Ghost program that pinged him whenever it was activated. He might even have a Remote Access Trojan embedded in the software that could take over her webcam or computer.
In opening the Ghost program, she opened herself to him.
Sophie spun to the keyboard and tried to shut it down. The program resisted, popping open multiple chat windows against her attempts.
The dialogue box lit up again. “I promise I am not spying on you. I haven’t even run a trace to identify where you are, though of course you know I could do that. I’m trying to be respectful. I just wanted to see if I could help with whatever you’re working on.”
Sophie frowned, and leaned forward as she typed rapidly. “That’s how you always begin. By being polite and respectful, and then becoming indispensable.”
“So, I’m indispensable?”
Sophie sucked her bottom lip between her teeth, hating that she’d slipped up and given him an opening. “You want to be. You want me in your power, in your debt, and it’s not going to happen. I fell for your mind games one time, and grieved over what I thought was your body. Never again.”
“I’m sorry, Sophie. I hated to do that to you. To us. Please let me make it up to you.”
“There is nothing that you could do that will make up for that, in this or any universe. And if you were really being respectful, you would leave me alone.”
“I have been helping you. You won’t be bothered by that DA any longer. Any charges against you for Assan Ang’s death will be dropped.”
Sophie’s fingers froze over the keyboard. She remembered the phone call the DA had received, and the sight of his sweating, pale face before he abruptly ended her deposition.
“What did you do?”
“Nothing that need concern you. But let’s just say, DA Chang is a candidate for a little Ghost treatment. He’s not as clean as he appears.”
“I don’t need or want your help with Chang, or anything else. I don’t want to see you, hear from you, or have my life played with by you. Leave me alone. I cannot be clearer than that.” Heat flushed Sophie’s body.
“As you wish.”
The chat box disappeared, and the Ghost program shut down. A photo of a fresh, dew-spattered red rose appeared on the screen, and dissolved in a flurry of tiny hearts.
“Ridiculous,” Sophie muttered. She groped for the American word. “Corny.”
But as she unplugged the Ghost’s external hard drive and ran a diagnostic virus and malware removal program to make sure her rig was clear of any trace of the Ghost, she fought a warm tingly feeling.
Connor was out there, somewhere, watching over her.
Chapter Forty-Five
Alika glanced over at Sophie. Her full curved lips were set in a firm line, her eyes forward. He could stare at her profile all day, damn it, even with her helmet on. He reached over to tug at her four-point seat harness, making sure it was secure as he prepped the Dragonfly for departure to Kalalau. Ginger whined from the back of the chopper, where she was secured with a leash.
Sophie turned to reassure the dog. “It’s okay, girl.”
Alika wasn’t sure it was okay. They were flying to Kaua’i and meeting with a couple of detectives before taking them to the remote val
ley to deal with the Shepherd and the boys out there. “I don’t think you should lie to the cops,” he said. “You should tell them you’re Sophie Ang.”
Sophie turned to look at him, those big brown eyes wide, her brows raised. That wicked gunshot scar just made her face more interesting. “I don’t want to alert them in case the situation with my ex becomes an issue. I’m not supposed to leave the island.”
“Then you shouldn’t leave the island. Let me handle it. I can go to Kaua’i, meet the detectives, show them the location. You don’t need to put yourself out there right now.”
Sophie’s mouth tightened into a mulish line he remembered from her fighting days. That line signaled that she’d just doubled down on her position, whatever it was. “You don’t understand.”
“I guess I don’t. Don’t you trust me to be able to get the boys the help they need?”
“And what if it’s not help they need? What if it’s something stronger? You’ve already covered up for them once.”
“Ah. So then, you don’t trust me.”
Their gazes clashed.
Sophie took off her helmet. Alika did the same.
Sophie drew a breath, meeting his eyes. “It’s not that I don’t trust you. It’s that I know how investigations work. A witness reporting something automatically becomes involved, because there are many reasons people report things, not all of them altruistic. Questions will be raised about…how you got involved. They will dig into your past, and I know you’ve dealt with Jenkins before because Lei told me you came under investigation one time. They will want to interview ‘Sandy Mason’ and find out how I located Nakai.”
“I know Lei was the one to reach out to Jenkins and get the group home set up. There’s no way she would go along with lying to her former partner,” Alika said. Lei’s integrity was bone-deep and had been one of the things he’d liked most about the woman he’d dated so long ago.