by Toby Neal
“Adventure is the best kind of fun in the world, and it’s not a real adventure if there isn’t some risk involved. Remember when we rescued those kids from the cult on the Big Island? And you asked me if it was always like that?”
“And you said, ‘only the best days.’ I remember that. I was getting used to being out of the office.” Sophie lifted the torch high. “Well. I think our water shortage is over.”
The lava tube had opened up to another cavern. Sophie’s torch gleamed on the still, black surface of an underground pool that stretched from one side of it to the other, and off into a distance that the torch’s light couldn’t pierce.
Chapter Nine
Jake
Jake dropped to a squat and dipped his fingers into the water, licking them tentatively. He glanced up at Sophie as she held the torch aloft. “Not salty. This is fresh water.” He scooped a double handful and brought it to his mouth. “And it’s delicious. Also freeze-your-ass cold. What the hell? I thought we were in Hawaii.”
“That’s strange,” Sophie murmured. “Because a little while ago I thought I felt warmer.”
“I don’t know about you, but cold or not, I want to rinse off this shit we’re covered in. What do you say to a refreshing bath?”
Sophie frowned. “I know we’re both sexually frustrated, Jake, but we should continue to make survival a priority. If we bathe in the water, we’ll pollute it. We should see if we can find a way around this pond or whatever it is, and once we’ve determined we’ve gone as far as we want to go today, we can assess getting clean in a non-essential water source. Hydration is the priority right now.”
Jake emitted a gusty sigh. “You’re right of course, boss.”
This time Sophie was the one to wiggle her brows. “You make me so hot when you call me ‘boss.’”
“Oh ho. The way to your heart is through your ego, eh? I knew it.” Jake couldn’t resist the jab, and immediately regretted it, as Sophie’s playful expression stiffened into that familiar mask she hid behind.
“Let’s drink as much as we need, and go this way.” She pointed to a narrow, rocky parapet that appeared to lead around one side of the water source. “Perhaps there’s another area we can bathe in on the other side. I don’t even want to put my hands in the water and corrupt it.” Sophie wedged her torch between a couple of rocks. She extended herself to lean down to drink the water directly, by planting her chin in it.
Jake moved to copy her. They both drank as much as they could hold.
Jake stood up, his stomach sloshing and full. Water had never tasted so good. “I’m sorry I said that. About your ego.”
Sophie shrugged. “Doesn’t matter. It’s true.” She picked up the torch and headed for the narrow ledge against the wall. “We’re going to have to go slow. It would be a disaster to fall in and have the torch go out, or the lighter or oil be lost.”
“It does matter,” Jake said, following her. “I don’t want to say hurtful things to you. Have you close up on me.”
“We’ve both said a lot of hurtful things. It seems to be part of relationships.” Sophie turned sideways, apparently the only way she could fit onto the ledge. She sidled onto the narrow outcrop, holding the torch aloft with one hand and clinging to the rocks with the other. “You’re going to have some trouble here, Jake—you’re wider than me. Let’s not talk about this now.”
“When else will we talk about it? I’m an ass. Please forgive me.” Jake stepped up onto the ledge with his back to the wall. He was so much thicker than Sophie. She was right—his boot toes protruded out over the water. He stepped back off and tucked the unlit torch into the back of his pants, then checked that the oil can was tightly closed. He refastened the snap on his leg pocket, and turned to face the ledge, clinging with both hands. “I’m going to tackle this like I’m bouldering.”
“Whatever works.” Sophie turned to face forward, pressing against the stone wall, as well. “It’s hard to hold the torch up and hang onto the rock, too.”
“You have to forgive me. For what I said.” It felt important that he win this argument.
“Like I have to forgive you for leaving me for Felicia? Taking her and starting your own company? Living with her for two years and leaving me to raise my child alone?” Sophie’s voice was sharp.
Jake’s neck went hot. He chose each finger-and toehold carefully, sidling after her. “I apologized for all of that. And in fairness, I thought you were with another guy all the time you were with me. I had evidence of it!”
“I never lied that I had other relationships, of other kinds, with other men than you. You knew about Alika. Maybe you didn’t know the full truth about Connor, but you told me you chose to believe me when I told you that we were only friends.” Sophie was panting a bit, her voice uneven with emotion. “You were my only lover when we were together. And you really don’t know me very well if you think I’d cheat—nor did you trust me, for that matter. That became abundantly clear.”
Sophie got wordier when she was upset. Finding a place to wash up and make love was beginning to seem like a mirage dancing out of reach; clearly, they still had a lot of issues to work out.
“Trust goes both ways, lady.” The heat of defensive anger made Jake’s fingers sweaty on the rock. “I told you how I felt about cheaters. And why.”
“And yet you cheated on me with those hookers in Thailand. And then left me for Felicia.” Her sad, husky tone pierced him, all the way to the heart.
“I was wrong.” Jake shut his eyes, clinging to the rock. Shame washed over him. “I’m so freakin’ sorry, Sophie. I was hurting. I thought you’d betrayed me, and I’d almost died by torture. I wasn’t thinking straight.”
But Sophie kept going. She edged her way around a boulder. The light of the torch disappeared, leaving Jake stranded in darkness, with nothing but a dim reflection of the flame, flickering and bouncing off the black water below, to navigate by.
Hell if he was going to ask her to stop, or call out for help.
Jake tried to let his eyes adjust as much as possible, but the torch was getting farther away. He had to try to catch up. He put out a boot, felt for a foothold, reached sideways for a handhold, and gently eased over, placing his other foot carefully.
Reach out, feel for toehold, stretch arm, grab a handhold, ease over, set down foot, re-grip . . . Was she just going to leave him in the dark?
The torch reappeared just as he was reaching the boulder that Sophie’d disappeared around. Her face peered around the protrusion, backlit so that he couldn’t see her expression.
Jake steadied himself as best he could. He focused on her dimly-lit face. “Sophie, I’m sorry about all that. But I can’t keep apologizing and groveling. Not that I mind, it just doesn’t accomplish anything. You have to decide to let that shit go, or we can’t move forward.”
“And you have to trust me. No reservations. No conditions.” She lowered the torch to illuminate his feet. “Or we can’t move forward.” The torchlight finally reflected up on Sophie’s face enough for him to see her expression. Her lips were trembling, her eyes full of tears. “I want to let it go. I’m trying to.”
“And I want to trust you. I’m doing it.” He sidled around the boulder and came up flush against her body.
They leaned their foreheads together, breathing each other’s air for a long moment.
“You came back for me,” he said. “I trust you. With my life. With my heart.”
“Then I forgive you. I choose to let that shit go.”
Jake angled his face a little, hoping—but the next move had to come from her.
Sophie seemed to know it too, and she kissed him, a soft but thorough joining that stole his breath. “I want to be with you, Jake. Let’s put the past behind us.”
“I—” but Jake had let go of the boulder too soon.
His foot slipped into the water, and he was falling—until Sophie grabbed the front of his shirt with her free hand and yanked forcefully, hauling him back enough
that he could grab the rock wall and regain his footing. He shook out his soaked boot and pant leg. “You’re my badass babe, Soph,” he panted.
“Good. And you’re my kun dii.” She began her crabwise sidle again. “That was refreshing, but I think we should stick to priorities for now.”
“Cootie?” Jake followed, resuming his careful movements along the edge. “Never heard that before as a term of endearment.”
“Kun dii.” Sophie pronounced the Thai phrase slowly. “It means ‘my dear’ or ‘my love.’ What does ‘cootie’ mean in American?”
“It’s slang for a bug, a pest.” He smirked. “Cootie. Kind of apropos.”
Sophie’s eyes gleamed with laughter over her shoulder. “Perfect. You are my cootie from now on. Ha!”
“Phom rak khun khrup,” Jake enunciated carefully. Sophie stopped to look back at him, her eyes wide. “I love you, Sophie.”
“Your accent is terrible.” She blinked rapidly. “Let’s get off this ledge and continue this conversation on stable ground.”
“Preferably naked,” Jake said.
“That’s my cootie.”
Jake laughed, and finally, Sophie did too.
Chapter Ten
Raveaux
Pierre Raveaux smoothed the front of his button-down shirt, a silky cotton that his wife Gita had bought him more than five years ago. He stared unseeing out the window of the plane, allowing his mind to rest on her briefly. The stroke of his fingertips down the row of genuine pearl shell buttons, then across to the small pocket inset over his heart, reminded him of touching her—skin pure golden satin, warm and smooth under his hands.
He didn’t often allow himself to remember his wife, let alone those details.
Gita had been dead for close to five years now, along with his four-year-old daughter Lucie. Everyone said it was time to move on. And when he’d finally opened his heart a tiny crack, entertained the idea of another woman in his life—Sophie had turned away from the tender bud of possibility to her former lover.
And now, both of them were missing.
“Would you like something to drink, sir?” The flight attendant stood at his elbow holding a tray of liquids—that awful syrupy pineapple-orange-guava drink that everyone seemed to love, and water.
“I prefer water, please.”
She handed the sealed plastic cup to him with a smile that told him she found him attractive, even more so now that he’d opened his mouth and uttered a couple of words in a French accent.
Raveaux did not smile back. Smiling was a habit he’d lost since the death of his family. He looked across the empty seat beside him to gaze out the window at the sea below, flecked with whitecaps like bits of lint on a crinkled blue blanket. The flight was short from Oahu to Hilo on the Big Island of Hawaii, and soon they’d be on the ground—but Sophie had told him to look for whales, even on these short flights, and now he never forgot to.
Raveaux peeled the aluminum lid back, regretting the wasteful use of resources in all these disposables. Europeans had had to live with high costs and crowding so much longer that they were more careful in their use of these kinds of conveniences. Though he’d been in the United States for a year now, he was still surprised by the wanton waste he often saw around him—even in the Islands, with their finite space and high cost of living.
He drank the water in a couple of sips and set the container aside, glancing down at his phone. He’d woken very early to the chime of an incoming text at his apartment in Waikiki. The device was in airplane mode, but he was still able to scroll to the terse directive he’d received from Kendall Bix, president of operations for Security Solutions, the company he contracted for.
“Raveaux: I need you to go to the Big Island and follow up on the case Sophie and her partner, Jake Dunn, are pursuing. The volcanic activity in the area they were last heard from has increased, and they are not responding. Find where they are, what’s going on with their case, and liaise with law enforcement. Call me ASAP to confirm and get details.”
He’d called Bix immediately, his pulse elevated with alarm—and his heart rate hadn’t calmed as he learned more about the dangerous escalation in volcanic activity on the Big Island, and more details about the case Jake and Sophie were on.
Raveaux scrolled a little further down, locating the contact number for the client who’d hired Security Solutions to recover his errant daughter, and a set of GPS coordinates which showed where Sophie’s phone had last been pinged. Bix had also sent over a satellite photo of that area. Raveaux looked at the image again, blowing it up wider on his phone to study the topography of the unique formation.
Sophie and Jake had disappeared on a kipuka, and what was now most alarming were glowing rivers of fresh lava that forked, flowing around the raised area where they had last been heard from. If they were still on that kipuka, they weren’t getting off of it without help.
Thankfully, he’d been given a directive to contact the local police department and work with them and any rescue teams dealing with victims stranded in the emergency currently generated by the volcano’s eruption—because he had no real idea of how to proceed. He was a stranger in a strange land, and contacting law enforcement first, given the challenges of the unique situation, made sense.
The minute the plane touched down, Raveaux called the Hilo police station nearest the area off of Saddle Road where Sophie and Jake had disappeared. “I’d like to report two missing persons in need of assistance. They may be trapped by lava flows,” Raveaux told the intake officer he was routed to.
Explaining who he was, who Sophie and Jake were, what they were doing out on the lava, who they were pursuing and why, took the rest of the time getting off the plane and down and out of the Hilo Airport building as he headed for the car rental kiosk.
“I’ll come to you,” Raveaux told the officer taking his information. “I was told to ask for Captain Ohale. Sophie Smithson is known to him from past cases, and socially. I’ll be at your station soon to meet with your chief.” He hit the End button on his phone.
Raveaux was going to have to establish his bona fides in person; his law enforcement background as an elite detective on the French Riviera had taught him that who you knew was important at any police station the world over.
“Captain Bruce Ohale. I’m in charge at this station.” The big Hawaiian man’s hand engulfed Raveaux’s as they shook. Ohale gestured to one of two plastic chairs drawn up in front of his battered metal desk. “Have a seat, and run this situation by me again. From the beginning.”
“Of course.” Raveaux tugged his tailored trousers down and sat, crossing one leg over the other as he took Ohale’s measure. The station leader had a large, square head whose shape was emphasized by a military-style buzz cut.
Ohale’s dark brown eyes gleamed with intelligence and candor as the man took in Raveaux’s trim build, fine clothing, and salt-and-pepper hair with a similar assessing glance. “We don’t often get someone with your kind of background in our area.”
“Sophie Smithson is the CEO of Security Solutions. Her disappearance in the midst of a natural disaster has us all very worried,” Raveaux said carefully. “I’m an investigation contractor with Security Solutions, and one of our most mobile members. I was available to get on a plane and come as soon as our president of operations, Kendall Bix, asked me to.” Raveaux smoothed the buttoned placket of his shirt. “We’re not sure if Ms. Smithson and her partner Jake Dunn, whom I’m given to understand you are acquainted with, have gone off the grid as a result of the persons they were pursuing for a case, or due to the recent eruption emergency. In any event, we’d like to work with you on their rescue due to the criminal nature of the people they were confronting.”
“And who are those people, exactly?”
“Sophie and Jake were hired by Ki Ayabe, the parent of a minor daughter, Lia Ayabe, who’s supposedly run away to live with a methamphetamine producer. The suspect’s name is Finn O’Brien.” Raveaux took out his phone and sc
rolled to the case file, showing Ohale the picture they had of the client’s daughter and her boyfriend. “Security Solutions would like to formally ask for support in a rescue mission to find Sophie and Jake.”
Ohale sat back in his chair, which squeaked in protest. He steepled thick fingers and glanced out the window, which featured a view of the parking lot, mostly empty of police cruisers. “We’ve been after this meth cooker, O’Brien, for a while now, but couldn’t find where he was holed up. Our staff is spread thin dealing with all that’s going on with the eruption, but we can’t miss this chance, both to rescue your people, and grab up O’Brien and his men. They’re bad news, a cancer on our community.”
Raveaux flicked to the satellite picture with its coordinates and held up his phone for Ohale to see. “Don’t ask how we have this information, but we know right where they are. I’ll forward this to you. When can we get a team together?”
Chapter Eleven
Raveaux
Raveaux clung to a ceiling strap as he sat in the front seat of a Humvee driven by a National Guardsman. The rear of the vehicle was bristling with troops seated on benches, gripping weapons. The vehicle crawled over and through deep potholes, traversing the lava plain toward the kipuka where Sophie’s and Jake’s phone signals had been lost.
Raveaux shut his eyes—there wasn’t much to see in the featureless gray “vog” that covered the plain, and he was feeling decidedly out of his element. He worked on lowering his heart rate by slowing his breathing, counting down from five with every inhale and exhale, his mind quieting inside the chamber of his helmet. His body, encased in a heavy bulletproof vest, sweated with tension in the humidity.
It had been a long time since he’d gone into an unknown hostile situation, in strange terrain, surrounded by this much firepower.