by Toby Neal
“You asked me to listen in on Penny, so this is what I got. The two were asking her about the Merrie Monarch Festival and what she did for them. Then the woman, Mary Watson, pretended to be a classmate of yours and asked to meet up with you. Penny told me she thought they were undercover cops. She said she’d just let nature take its course, hoping they catch you doing something wrong. I get the feeling Penny hopes getting busted is the least of what happens to you. No offense.”
“None taken. You did right, gorgeous.” Terence injected his voice with a sexy enthusiasm he didn’t feel. This girl was angling for a relationship as well as a tip to her paycheck, but he’d never cozy up to a woman willing to sell out her employer even if it benefited him. “Look for a little something special from me in the mail.”
Ending the call, Terence tightened his lips. The last thing he needed right now was a pair of cops sniffing around.
His shoulders, arms, and back still ached from dealing with the corpses of his relatives. Other than Emma, there was no one he trusted enough to help him dispose of the bodies. The complete disappearance of an entire family would muddy the waters of whether or not murder had been committed, an important element with so many witnesses still running around.
Terence had done his internet research and found a way to get rid of the bodies permanently. That didn’t mean it hadn’t been hard and grisly work. He flexed sore hands, wishing he could cleanse his mind as well as he’d been able to wash his skin. But there was no erasing memory.
Thank God for Emma. She had nerves of steel and an iron stomach. His cousin was officially his right-hand woman.
Terence opened a browser window on one of the three monitors he had set up in the office that had been Byron’s. He searched the name and contact info of the travel agency. A basic website popped up, but digging a little deeper uncovered that it had only been opened days ago. Who were these people, and what did they want with him? Be interesting to take the bull by the horns and find out.
Terence called the phone number that Penny’s receptionist had given him.
A woman with a sexy accent answered, “Follow Me Faraway Travel Agency.”
“This is Terence Chang. I heard you were asking about me?”
A short, charged pause. “Oh. Terence. What a surprise to hear from you, and how lovely. Your cousin must have let you know I was asking about you. This is Mary Watson. We were in school together. University of Washington, class of 2009.”
Terence narrowed his eyes. “I don’t remember you.”
A husky chuckle. Her voice was oddly familiar. “I remember you. You’re very good with computers.”
“I should be. I majored in computer science.” Terence relaxed back into his chair, flipping a pencil on his fingers. Play along, see where it goes. “My cousin seems to think you and your partner are cops. Glad to hear that isn’t the case.”
“Cops? Oh no.” Mary Watson’s laugh was strained. “I can’t imagine why she thought that. We’re possible clients. Just new to the area.”
“Well. Maybe we should have a beer and catch up.” The longer the woman spoke, the surer he was that he knew her… Tall, pretty, mixed-race, with a foreign accent? Sophie Ang!
The female investigator who’d testified against Akane was out fishing again.
He’d also tangled with the woman a few years ago when she was in the FBI—Ang was a talented hacker and sleuth. She’d infiltrated his online business and uncovered his role in a shady website. The whole thing had nearly derailed his attempt to go legit and sent him to jail.
Terence had also been in the back of a police car observing when Sophie and her military jock of a partner hauled Akane out of the jungle. Since then, he’d followed everything about Akane’s case with obsessive interest, even watched Byron’s button cam recordings of the trial, discovered on his deceased cousin’s laptop.
“I’m sorry, but I can’t take the time for a beer right now. Lance and I are moving this weekend. Lance’s my partner, but also my boyfriend.” Ang sounded flustered. She knew he’d recognize her if he saw her. “So much to do with our business launch, too. Can I call you again when things settle down?”
“Sure.” Terence smiled as he recited his confidential phone’s digits for her.
Sophie Ang was here in Hilo. And she was the perfect target to lure Akane out of the shadows, and possibly get him captured.
Terence ended the call and bent forward, his fingers flying as he searched for any Hilo connections to Sophie Ang. Moments later, the Security Solutions website came up with a new page added, listing a location in downtown Hilo and staffed by Sophie Ang and Jake Dunn. Each of their impressive work histories was summarized.
Terence dragged the info to a file he already had on Sophie, containing clips from the trial he’d culled from Byron’s button cam coverage of that event.
Revenge for her testimony would be at the top of Akane’s hit list. Terence had heard the venom his cousin had spouted as he was hauled out of the courtroom.
Julie Weathersby’s name had also been one of those his maniac cousin shouted as he promised vengeance. Terence had already contacted Julie’s parents to tell them that Akane had escaped. He’d suggested a long, foreign vacation for Julie—with bodyguards.
Terence was taking every precaution he could to protect anyone he cared about. He’d warned his ex-girlfriends, and Emma was stashed in his fortified house with his dogs and a team of mercenaries he’d hired from the Mainland.
Terence was in a war, and it was just beginning. Providing Akane with a target and flushing him out by pitting him against a couple of trained investigators with ties to the FBI was a smart strategy.
Still, he felt a twinge of regret as he texted the Security Solutions location info to a cousin whom he knew would pass it on to Akane. “Good luck, Sophie Ang,” he whispered. “I hope you beat him.”
Chapter Seventeen
Jake perused the aisles of the local Target store, looking for items for his and Sophie’s apartments and loading them onto a flatbed cart. It seemed ridiculous and redundant to buy two televisions, two futon foldout bed combos, two of everything, in fact—when hopefully, Sophie would soon be moving into his apartment.
Or, more likely, he would be moving into hers, since hers was bigger.
But Sophie’d begged off from sleeping with him last night, not a good sign. And this morning, he hadn’t had so much of a glimpse of her before she took off again for the secret project she was working on with Sheldon Hamilton.
He was also trying not to obsess about the pregnancy test.
All of it was making his chest ache. Jake rubbed his left pec, kneading the knot of the bullet scar near his shoulder, trying to relieve a tightness he couldn’t seem to shake.
Done with the shopping, he loaded the home furnishings into, and on top of, the Security Solutions SUV and headed back to the apartment building. He would unload the basics he’d bought, and they could spend some time that evening setting up the apartments. He was eager to be out of the motel with its lumpy beds and taint of mildew. Maybe they’d even spend the night in the new place—together.
Hamilton had given them a housing stipend as part of their salary packages, and Jake had cash deposits ready for the landlord, along with a little something to keep their addresses from being revealed to anyone who came asking. They had rented the apartments under their aliases as a precaution, and Jake planned to continue to pay the rents in cash.
He needed someone to talk to. Someone who had his best interests at heart. Someone loyal, and loving, who would give him no bullshit. There was only one person like that in his life: his sister Patty.
Jake speed dialed her number once he’d pulled up at the parking lot of the apartment building that would soon be their new address.
“Jake?” Patty’s voice sounded surprised when she answered. “Everything OK?”
“Hey sis. I know I don’t call often enough, but believe it or not, there’s no emergency. I’m just needing some more
sisterly relationship advice. What you told me last time was so good—it actually worked.”
“Yay, that’s great! I’ve been meaning to call you myself and find out what happened with that coworker you told me you had feelings for.”
“We’re together now. She asked me, and I quote, ‘to be her lover.’” Jake couldn’t help grinning.
“That’s awesome…if that’s what you want?” Patty sounded a little worried. “I know you said she was kind of hard to pin down.”
“Patty, you should hang out a shingle giving relationship tips. You told me not to be needy, or clingy. Just to be so good she couldn’t forget me. I did that as best I could. And in the end, in spite of serious competition, she chose me.” Jake felt a little guilty over Alika. Poor guy had lost his arm as well as his heart.
“She almost picked another guy over you, Jake? Who is this woman?” Patty laughed. “Not that you’re hot stuff or anything, bro.”
“Sophie is unique. One in a million, truly. And I’m not the only one who thinks so.” Even with Alika laid up and out of the picture, Jake couldn’t rid himself of the feeling that Sophie might dump him at any moment. Just the thought made him clench his hands on the steering wheel. “She’s still tough to pin down. She wouldn’t agree to move in with me. Right now, I am shopping for two of everything for our apartments, which I think is stupid. But I respect the lady’s need for space, and I’m taking no for an answer. For the moment.” Jake cleared his throat. “On the same subject. I need a little more of that solid gold sisterly counsel. Things have been tricky with her. It seems like we take one step forward and two steps back at least half of the time. But she finally told me some of the reasons she was having difficulty being more open with me, and I thought we had a breakthrough. And then the very next day, I peeked into her backpack…and saw a pregnancy test.”
“Jake!” His sister’s voice was a cross between a squeal of joy and one of panic. “Cardinal rule—never look in a woman’s bag!”
Jake winced, shutting his eyes. “I know it was wrong.”
“Geez. You can’t possibly tell her you saw it.”
“But don’t I deserve to know? I mean, if she’s pregnant…isn’t it my baby, too?”
The line buzzed with Patty’s silence, and Jake squirmed.
This was one of those tricky areas where he felt totally out of his depth with women. Even though his sister was pregnant with her first baby and happily married, Patty felt strongly about a woman’s right to choose, that her body was her body. All of those issues seemed clear in theory, but not so much when they came down to actual fact. Because the thought of the woman he loved being pregnant activated feelings in Jake that felt primitive, intense, and urgent, way larger than the finer points of women’s political rights.
Jake struggled to find words. “I just want to help. Take care of Sophie. Make sure everything is okay. Kill anybody who might hurt her. Or the baby, if there is one. I don’t know how to talk about this.” He pushed a hand impatiently through his hair, tugging on it as he stared out of the parked SUV’s windshield. “Sophie not telling me about the pregnancy test feels…terrible. It’s like barbed wire wrapping around and around, digging into me no matter which way I move. I don’t know why she won’t talk to me about it. And, the fact that she hasn’t freaks me the hell out.”
“Jake…” His sister sighed his name out on a long breath. “Sadly, I can see it from both of your points of view. She’s probably way more freaked out than you are and has no idea what to do. She may even need more time to work up the nerve to take the test and find out for sure; she’s probably still just hoping that nature will take its course and the whole thing will go away.” Patty paused as if considering what to say. “If this woman isn’t ready to move in with you, she certainly isn’t ready to think about having a baby with you.”
His sister’s words, even softly spoken, still felt like a stab to the chest. Jake massaged that left pec, pressing hard on the source of his pain. “Don’t hold back, Patty. Give it to me straight.”
“That’s why you called me, big brother. Even when Matt and I were talking about kids, and had gone off birth control… Getting pregnant was still a big deal. I didn’t want to tell him at first. Didn’t want to get him involved, excited, invested. Didn’t want to have to deal with him and his feelings, too, when I was confused and conflicted myself. Telling him felt like too much.” Patty sighed. “And my situation is ideal for having a child. We’re married, committed to each other, financially solvent, even planning to have a family. And still it was scary to tell Matt. Hoping he’d be happy about it. Not sure what I would do if he wasn’t. And scared as hell, myself, about what we were getting into.”
“I guess I understand.” Jake leaned his forehead on the steering wheel. “It still feels like she doesn’t trust me.”
“You have to be patient. I can’t imagine what it must be like for your girlfriend. What she must be going through right now.”
His girlfriend.
That phrase really had a nice ring to it, coming out of his sister’s mouth.
He wouldn’t mind hearing Patty say Sophie was his fiancée.
Or better yet, his wife.
Heat broke out under Jake’s shirt, making it cling with nervous sweat. He looked up at the banyan tree sheltering their new apartment building. Mynahs were already roosting in its branches, chattering loudly. “What do you think I should do?”
“I thought I told you. Do nothing. Say nothing. And, when she tells you, whatever she tells you, you need to be there for her. She’s got a hell of a lot more at stake than you do.”
“I’ve got some skin in this game, too,” Jake muttered. “Literally.”
“That’s true. You did donate sperm—the fun part, as they say.” Patty’s tone was dry. “But it’s Sophie who’s going to carry the child. Sophie who will have her health and her work impacted. Sophie who will live with whatever decision she makes about this baby for the rest of her life. Not you.”
“I wish she would just tell me. I wish she would just let me help!” Jake’s voice had risen, his fists had clenched. Frustration and helplessness were a ripe scent filling the cab of the SUV as he sweated with stress in the humid Hilo afternoon.
“It’s hard to respect another person’s privacy and right to choose,” Patty said softly. “But if you love her, you will find a way to do that. Otherwise, from the things you’ve told me, this could be the way you lose her.”
Jake breathed noisily, trying to get a grip on his emotions. “I’m a bull in a china shop with this stuff, Patty.”
“That’s why you have me, bro. There’s hope for you, yet, because you’re smart enough to call me and try to get this right.”
Chapter Eighteen
Sophie plugged the external drive Pim Wat had given her into one of the computers Connor had had set up in the newly created “lab” room of their Security Solutions office. That the drive wasn’t password protected spoke either to Pim Wat’s ability to guard it, or to the Yām Khûmkạn’s incompetence.
The information was simple: a couple of cloud storage sites on the dark net, one Tor website, and contact information for the agency’s current tech. Sophie reached out to the tech contact, Leni Keng, on encrypted email, then opened up the website.
There was nothing to the site but a black background and the agency’s name in Thai. Sophie had not uncovered it during her previous searches for the clandestine organization. When she clicked into the entry portal, it consisted of a downloadable PDF that was to be completed and mailed to an anonymous drop address listed on the form. The page was a recruitment portal for the Yām Khûmkạn.
Who received those recruitment applications and screened them? Was it this Keng character? Checking the information requested on the form certainly needed to be done, at least in part, online.
She needed to get on the same page with whoever was the Yām Khûmkạn’s system admin. It was clear that the agency was trying to stay completely offline,
but that was nearly impossible in this day and age. Sophie sent another encrypted email to Keng.
She then searched Interpol for anything to do with the organization. She’d heard from Pim Wat that Yām Khûmkạn agents’ names were being released to the international police agency—but the Interpol site yielded nothing she could associate with the clandestine group without the operatives’ names, and that information had not been provided on the data drive.
Sophie opened the cloud storage and found nothing but supply lists that appeared to be associated with the training temple. The whole mission and what Pim Wat wanted from Sophie were still hard to discern, and so far, none of the information had shed any further light.
Essentially, the stick drive contained nothing of any real value.
Sophie sat back in her chair. What was Pim Wat’s real game? Was this a test of some kind?
She leaned forward and activated DAVID to search for more intel on the Yām Khûmkạn. She had done this before, but perhaps something new had shaken loose. She could also use DAVID to develop confidence ratios regarding related patterns of crime, but there was nothing to compare at the moment.
The Data Assessment Victim Information Database, Sophie’s rogue information gathering program, sifted for intel based on keywords. She inputted several obvious ones and set it to combing the Internet for information on Keng and Pim Wat, as well. Information was power, and she just didn’t have enough to even navigate.
Until Sophie heard back from Keng, there was little she could do. It was time to go “home” to her new apartment and move in. Jake had texted her that he was already there, unloading and setting up the basics he’d purchased with the stipend Connor had issued them.
Sophie pulled up at the apartment building, scanning the nondescript parking lot with its coral stone wall buried in vines, a lone plumeria tree struggling for sunlight in the shade of a banyan overshadowing it. Three stories of industrial beige concrete block with exterior stairs and walkways, the edifice didn’t send an affluent message—but Sophie liked the open lawn fronting the building and the ocean view facing Hilo Bay.