by Toby Neal
“Keep moving.” Chang used the knife to prod her. “And don’t pretend I really hurt you with that poke to the kidney earlier. I hardly dented you.”
She would not engage. This man was like a cat who liked to play with his food before eating it. Denying him his game might help her live longer.
“There is no trail here.” Sophie picked her way around a towering koa tree draped in vines. “How did you find this place?”
“Pig hunting. And go left. I’ve got the location on my GPS.” She glanced back. Chang was holding his phone out. “It’s a sat phone, so no worries about losing the signal.”
The worst moment of this whole ordeal so far had been when Chang smashed her phone after he zip tied her hands. She’d felt the metallic, splintering sound in her very bones, knowing it meant no one could find her by any electronic means.
The Ghost. Maybe Connor could track Chang’s active satellite phone . . . but how would he know about Chang, or anything about where she was right now? He was out of the country. How could he help her?
She had to help herself. It always came down to that, always would.
Sophie turned her body and trailed her hand along a branch and broke it, bending the leaves downward. Anything she could do to slow her progress and leave a trail that could be followed was worth trying.
“I see what you’re doing. And it won’t work.” Chang grabbed the branch and tossed it away. “The driver is dead and he’s the only one who knows where this place is. We are in a private wilderness area no one knows about.”
“Can’t blame a girl for trying.”
“Sure I can. Keep moving.”
Sophie had laced her fingers together when he zip tied her, pushing her wrists apart as far as they would go, hoping she could create some space between them. But the old escape trick hadn’t quite worked. Even now, she worked her wrists up and down inside the hard, plastic bonds, trying to gain space to pull out one of her hands. Chang had forced her wrists very close together, and the plastic bit deeper into her skin as she tried to move her wrists up or down.
Sophie had to pay attention to her feet, too, as she tripped on roots and trailing vines. The ground was rough, covered with fallen branches, ferns and bushes, and the remains of trees being swallowed into the jungle floor. Even in the extremity of the situation, Sophie noticed the wild red and white hibiscus, the hapu’u tree ferns, the exotic saucer shapes of lilikoi blossoms, their bright round fruit dangling like unlikely Christmas ornaments. Tiny purple orchids grew in clumps up through the mass of ferns and ginger. Hawaii’s native birdsong sweetened the air.
Another day or time, this would have been a beautiful and interesting hike.
Suddenly Sophie felt a draft of heat. She stopped. A tendril of steam wafted up from a crack in the ground beside her.
“Yes. We are getting closer to Pele’s heart,” Chang said from behind her. “Some say that Pele feasts on blood.”
A terrible suspicion curdled Sophie’s gut. They were headed for active lava territory. Even though this upcountry area of Kilauea Volcano was largely inactive, the area was still riddled with deep steam vents, lava tubes, and even active flows that moved beneath the crust of the earth.
The depression’s familiar voice whispered in Sophie’s ear. “Since you’ve got to go, being a sacrifice to the volcano goddess is at least interesting.”
“No.” Sophie muttered aloud, mustering the will to live that always seemed to take so much effort. “No, I won’t die easy. I won’t go quietly. I didn’t survive Assan Ang to be this monster’s plaything.”
“What’s that language you are speaking? Tell me.” Chang prodded her with the tip of the knife again. Her back felt like one of the little satin pillows filled with sandalwood dust that her aunt had used to store sewing needles.
“I was just telling myself that I didn’t survive a sadistic ex-husband who tried to kill me just to become your next statistic.” She could feel by his body heat how close Chang was. Sophie coiled inward and threw herself backward, trying for a body slam. If she could just get him down, she could stomp him . . .
Chang flung himself to the side with a curse, but she’d connected with him enough to make him stagger. The knife left a line of fire on the outside of Sophie’s arm.
“Dammit, bitch! You’re making me work for it.” Sophie heard the sexual excitement in Chang’s voice, in his panting. “You make all the others seem like chopping wood; no fun at all. And this ass.” He grasped her buttock, the rough grab shockingly intimate. “So fine.”
“Foul swine!” Sophie kicked backward.
Chang dodged, and shoved her in the center of the back so that she stumbled forward. “Just a little further, now, babe.”
Sophie noticed the flutter of a green plastic tie, affixed to a branch. He was navigating through the forest with more than his GPS. Her mind scrambled for a way to even the odds, to slow him down. The longer he took to get her where he was going, the better chance she had for someone to find her.
Jake’s face appeared in her mind, his gray eyes intent with passion as he gazed at her, his hand warm over her cold one. Her chest squeezed. Jake was going to be so frantic to find her. He would blame himself that she had been taken, no matter how illogical it was.
Alika’s dear face flashed to mind next. That kiss at the helicopter had truly been goodbye. At least they’d ended their relationship as friends, and saved a young boy together. Tears of self-pity filled her eyes for the first time. Why couldn’t her life be simpler? Safer? More normal? Alika always made her wish for those things.
Connor’s chiseled features appeared last, lit in the blue-gray glow of a computer. The Ghost was somewhere out there, pulling strings like the puppet master he was. No one knew him or saw the real him but her. It was a privilege, and a curse. She couldn’t help her longing and ambivalence. He was her counterpart.
Each of these men would grieve for her, and she was sorry for that.
A deep, steamy vent appeared beneath her feet, the brink hidden by an overgrowth of grass and ferns. Sophie stumbled, unable to catch herself from falling forward. Chang grabbed her arms and pulled her back from the edge. He stabilized her, his breath tickling the tender hairs at her ear as he chuckled.
“Whoops. Wouldn’t want you to fall in too soon.” He tugged her by one of her arms, wrenching it in its socket and wringing a cry from Sophie’s numb lips. “Right this way.” Chang sounded like he was taking her for a picnic, his voice bright with energy and a fillip of lust, too. He planned to rape her before he threw her into the vent.
Sophie’s resolve hardened.
It didn’t matter if she died in the next half hour; all that mattered was that she took Akane Chang with her.
Sophie kept her focus on monitoring Chang as he steered her through the rough underbrush. She had to be ready when he made his move.
Even as she thought this, Chang kicked the back of her knee and shoved her forward. Without her arms for balance, Sophie went down face first in a patch of soft, springy grass. Chang landed on her back with his full body weight, blasting the air out of her lungs.
She moaned as his weight crushed her bound arms. Chang settled himself on her. He ground his pelvis into her backside. One hand held the knife at the junction of her jaw and throat, and the other hand slid down her body, pressing his fingers into her intimate places through the tight exercise clothes she wore.
Sophie shut her eyes and detached. She relaxed her breathing, going limp beneath him, letting him have his moment of victory.
Chang’s breath rasped in her ear harshly as he tried to work his hand into her tight pants to peel them down. She could feel the revolting hardness of his erection. “May your penis be invaded by flesh eating worms, and fall blackened off your rotting corpse!”
“You’re so sexy when you talk dirty to me.” Chang was not intimidated by her verbal voodoo.
Strategic. She had to think strategic. Face down, with her arms bound, she had no leverage. On the oth
er hand, screwing her in that position was proving to be a bit challenging too, especially with her restrictive clothing. But on her back with her legs free . . .
“Aren’t you man enough to look me in the eye while you rape me?” Sophie’s voice was muffled by the grass, but he must have heard it clearly because his body stiffened.
“I can do whatever I want with you.” Chang shoved himself upright and away up from her body, squeezing the air out of her once again. He flipped her by her shoulder.
Sophie was now on her back, lying on her bound arms, which might have been painful if she had been allowing any pain signals into her awareness. But all she felt was power pumping through her body, and a readiness to kill or die trying.
Chang stood over her, his legs braced wide, exulting in her helpless position—and that was his mistake. Sophie whipped up a knee, and kicked him in the balls with everything she had.
The man gave a choked cry and collapsed, falling to one side and gagging in pain, his hands clutched over his mangled manhood. Sophie pulled in her abs and jumped to her feet.
Chang curled up into the fetal position, gasping. Sophie shoved him onto his back with a foot, and he moaned, bringing his knees close protectively, hands still wrapped around his package.
“I’ve always wanted to really test the effectiveness of a full force kick to a man’s groin. But none of my opponents in the ring were ever stupid enough to give me that kind of opening.” Sophie pushed Chang’s knees aside and knelt on his chest to hold him in place, her fingers scrabbling on the ground for the fallen knife.
Chang gasped for air, his color mottled, his eyes rolling. She got hold of the knife and awkwardly sawed the zip tie while the man writhed and gagged, still completely impaired.
The plastic eventually parted. Sophie shook out her arms, glorying in the tingling of restored circulation. She brought a hand around and put the point of the blade under Chang’s chin, poking the skin hard enough to pierce it. Chang shut his eyes, the color draining from his face.
“One good push, and this knife is in your brain. But I think that’s a little too good and way too easy a death for a man who enjoyed killing as much as you did. I think you need to answer some questions first.” Sophie traced the blade along Chang’s throat, scratching the skin and raising droplets of welling blood. “Where else did you hide bodies?”
“Why should I tell you?” He rasped.
“Because, like you said to me—you can die fast, or you can die slow.” Sophie felt completely detached from the pain she was inflicting as she sliced off a bit of Chang’s ear. He wailed. “Got any last confessions about the locations of other bodies?”
“No!”
Sophie pried Chang’s hands off his groin and pressed the point of the knife into the bulge there. Chang gagged reflexively from the pain, but when he got his breath back he spat the words out. “Don’t cut me there! I’ll tell you.”
Sophie lifted the blade slightly, relieving pressure, but the sharp point still pierced the fabric of Chang’s pants. He lay perfectly still, and she pressed down again. He yelped. “South Point! I dropped them off the rocks, weighted down. None of them have washed up with the currents that go off the Point—the currents end up in Tahiti.”
“How many?”
“Three. They were family business.”
“And your recreational killing?”
“There’s another vent. That one’s in the park. You’ll never recover anything from there.”
“How many?”
“I didn’t like that one since I had to go into the park and that left a record. But Holly and Jim brought their marks to the park and . . . I chased them there.” A feral gleam of memory darkened Chang’s eyes.
Sophie dug the point of the knife into the man’s belly this time. “Was that all?”
“Yes.”
Her muscles tensed—she could end this now. Gut Chang like a fish. No one would blame her, and it would be no more than he deserved.
Chang opened his mouth to scream as the knife dug into his abdomen.
A flurry of crunching and crackling sounded in the bushes nearby. Sophie whirled to face her attacker, only to be knocked to the ground by a hundred pounds of ecstatic yellow Lab.
Chapter Fifty-Three
Jake concealed a burst of relief that felt too much like joy as he took in the scene at a glance: Sophie, bloodstained but basically intact, struggling to get out from under her dog. Chang, moaning, rolling away from Sophie to curl up like a shrimp, his hands over his crotch.
“I might have known you would have things well in hand.”
Sophie pushed Ginger away enough to grin up at Jake. “Took you long enough to get here.”
“You didn’t need me, after all.” Jake observed the small wounds decorating Chang. “Too bad we need this guy to tell us where the rest of the bodies are, and give us the dirt on the Chang operation.”
“You’ve spoiled my fun.” Sophie stood up. On closer inspection, he could see swelling on the side of her face and that her wrists were lacerated. Blood stained her dark blue tank top from some wound on her back, making dark splotches. A scratch on her arm seeped. “I interviewed Chang on behalf of the police department and got a couple more body dump locations out of him.” Sophie’s ferocious smile reminded Jake that it hadn’t been long since she slashed her ex’s throat to the bone. He never wanted to get on Sophie’s bad side.
Jake rifled in Chang’s pocket and pulled out a zip tie. “Rumor has it this guy had a gun, too. Not that it did him any good dealing with you.”
Memory clouded Sophie’s eyes and she looked away. “He killed Tank, and threatened to kill Ginger, too. That’s how he got me into the van, and that’s why I promised to kill him.”
“Well, double good that I got here in time to tell you that Tank has a chance of survival. I saw our boy into the capable hands of an emergency vet. Now let’s get this piece of trash turned over to the cops so we can go see how Tank’s doing.”
Sophie rubbed her wrists absently as Jake zip tied Chang and hauled him onto his feet. Ginger, nosing in the grass, gave a woof as she located the pistol. Sophie picked it up and pointed it at Chang. “Sure you won’t let me get rid of him? He told me what he did with the bodies already. We could drop him in the lava vent and no one would know.”
Jake decided to pretend she was joking. “Nope. Not only would we know, but we need him to sing for the cops and clear up the mystery of this island’s Bermuda Triangle.” Jake held out his hand. “I’ll carry that for you so you can deal with your dog.”
Sophie stared at Chang, clearly considering whether or not to comply. She finally gave a reluctant nod, handing Jake the weapon.
Jake jabbed Chang in the back with it. “Get moving, asshole.”
Freitan and Wong, along with a police cruiser with backup and an ambulance, met them at the van’s parking area. “I thought you needed help,” Freitan told Jake. “Looks like you had things under control.”
“That’s what I told Sophie when I found her. She’d turned the tables on Chang,” Jake said. “And she got some information out of him for you.”
“Excellent.” Freitan gestured to the back of the detectives’ SUV. “We brought Terence along since we’d grabbed him and didn’t have time to interview him.”
Jake glanced into the back of the SUV. Terence Chang stared straight ahead, his expression stony. He had mixed Hawaiian Chinese features similar to his cousin’s; the family resemblance was remarkable.
Akane Chang stiffened under Jake’s hand at the sight of Terence, and Wong took charge of him, steering the man to the back of the nearby police cruiser. Freitan grinned. “Divide and conquer two Changs. I’m going to enjoy playing these cousins against each other.” She gestured for the EMTs. “Can you patch this woman up while I get her statement?”
“You’re always so efficient, Detective Freitan.” Sophie sat down suddenly on the bumper of the ambulance. “I think I’ll rest a minute.”
“You can c
all me Kamani,” Freitan said. “Glad you’re okay. I need your statement for the record while they’re patching you up.”
Jake left Sophie dealing with Freitan while getting first aid for her injuries. He led Ginger over to the Jeep and opened the door for her. She hopped into the back, and Jake patted her head. “You’re the real heroine, Ginger. Good nose, girl.”
He sat in the driver’s seat with the door open and called Bix, thankful to get a signal to update their boss. “Everything seems to be wrapping up here, thank God.”
“Yeah, the Weathersby contract’s up as of this evening, so do what you can with the police and take Sophie out for a steak dinner,” Bix directed. “On our expense account. Well done,”
“Thanks, Boss. Sophie’s the one who deserves a medal for this one. Thankfully, she’s going to be okay, and has her own therapist here, Dr. Wilson, to do a trauma debrief tomorrow.” Security Solutions was meticulous about best practice mental health for its agents. “I don’t know if Sophie’s going to stay on the Big Island longer, or return to Oahu.” Jake’s phone beeped with an incoming message. He glanced at it, eyes widening—it was Unidentified Number again. “Boss, I have to take this call.”
Jake clicked over. “Jake Dunn.”
“Jake? This is Sophie’s friend.” The smooth masculine voice was tense. “I see a number of vehicles in the area near the van, including an ambulance. Were you able to intervene?”
Jake kept his voice hard and businesslike. “What’s your game, man? How are you watching us via satellite?”
“Just tell me you got Sophie out.” The man’s urgency and tension broke through Jake’s resentment.
“Yeah. Thanks to you and Ginger I got to her before she carved the perp into little chunks and threw him in a volcano vent.”
Satellite Stalker laughed, and Jake heard relief in his tone. “She is full of surprises, our Sophie. I might have known she’d turn the tables.”