by Toby Neal
Marcella didn’t back down from Sophie’s snarling tone. “You forget how well I know you. I told Waxman about your relationship with Alika because I know it’s more than you’re saying it is. I know how you feel about him and how long that’s been going on. Yeah, it’s awkward to be known as the girlfriend when you’d hardly had a date, but it was only a matter of time because you’ve both had feelings for a while. I know firsthand how cases can get messed up when emotions are high. You can’t bullshit me.”
Sophie balled her hands into fists. “You don’t know anything.” She spun and stomped away from her friend.
Sophie jumped into her SUV and drove to Fight Club, changed into her spare workout wear, and went to the heavy bag.
Everything, as she glanced around, reminded her of Alika. This was his place, his second home, as it was hers. She shook off tears as well as sweat as she worked combinations on the bag until she was too exhausted to think or feel.
Finally, in the gym’s shower, she remembered she hadn’t fed or let Ginger out. It seemed like a lifetime had passed since she got that call from Kamuela, but when she checked her phone it was only 9:00 a.m. She dressed quickly and called her pet service.
“Can you go in to my apartment this morning and let Ginger out now as well as the usual noon time? I had an emergency very early this morning and had to run.”
“Sure.” Lucy, Aloha Petsitters’ coordinator, said. “Thought I’d mention Sandra, who usually walks Ginger, is out sick today so I’ll send a sub. Ginger won’t mind, will she?”
“She could lick your new walker to death. She’s good company but not much of a guard dog.”
“Sounds good. Is the alarm code we have on file still good?”
“Yes. I’ll call you with any changes.” Duty done, Sophie hung up and went out to her car. One thing Marcella had said was true. She had her hands full with her own cases right now. Hopefully, work would keep her mind off Alika lying in a coma in a hospital bed. She felt a stab of pain in her chest at the thought.
There were two new hard drives from other agents’ cases to mine at her computer bay, and she still needed to find out where the unsub that had tracked her was actually located in the Arches building. She sat down at her cockpit of computers. Her brain felt spongy, her attention flickering in random bursts of electricity that quickly short-circuited.
Thank God she had some tasks that didn’t require her to think. Sophie plugged in the write blockers to copy the new hard drives, which would take a few hours. She put on her headphones and stared at the screen with her work email on it, but she couldn’t focus enough to click on any of the icons even with Beethoven in her ears.
Had Marcella called their mutual friend Lei Texeira on Maui to let her know about Alika’s attack? Lei had dated him in the past and would want to know, even though they hadn’t been an item in years. Sophie knew she didn’t have the words, or the energy, to tell anyone what had happened to Alika. She’d managed to write a note to other members of the gym that Alika was injured, and had taped it to his office door.
Was it too soon to call Marcella and Marcus to see what they’d come up with so far?
A hand on her shoulder made her jump and she whirled in her chair, whipping off the headphones.
SAC Ben Waxman was gazing down at her, hands on immaculate hips, blue-gray eyes troubled. “Understand you had some bad news this morning.”
“Yes, sir. A good friend is in the hospital.” Sophie’s voice came out a whisper.
“I heard he was more than a good friend. I hope you understand why I couldn’t authorize your working his case.”
Sophie didn’t answer. She still didn’t know how to describe what she and Alika had. Talking about it with her boss didn’t feel right.
“Anyway, I hope you’re okay.” Waxman jingled coins in his pocket.
“I am, sir, thanks.” She could tell Waxman didn’t like her calling him ‘sir’ again, but yesterday’s confrontation over DAVID still rankled.
As if reading her mind he said, “I feel bad about DAVID. I’ve set up a priority review discussion with the higher-ups as we discussed. They aren’t going to be in town for some weeks, but if you send me a report or a PowerPoint on DAVID’s capabilities, I will present it on videoconferencing for this meeting. Hopefully we can get something to move ahead.”
“Yes, sir,” Sophie said woodenly. “When do you need it by?”
“The meeting is day after tomorrow.”
“I will get it to you as soon as possible.”
They stared at each other another long moment.
“I’m sorry about your friend.” Waxman turned and walked out.
Things with Waxman were so strange. She wished they could get back to the collegial working relationship she was comfortable with.
Creating a presentation on DAVID was the perfect project to keep herself busy while she waited for news on Alika and didn’t have anything breaking on her own case.
That reminded her that she’d told Todd Remarkian she’d talk to Lee again about the tech aspects of Security Solutions. While setting up a new presentation in slide software, she put her headphones back on and rang through to Security Solutions, identifying herself.
“I’m sorry, Lee Chan never came in today,” the secretary said.
“Did he call in?” Sophie’s brows snapped together in concern.
“No, ma`am. It’s very unusual.”
“Can I speak to Frank Honing, please?” The VP might know something.
“Yes, ma`am.”
The transfer went through and Frank Honing’s voice was brusque. “Yes?”
“This is Special Agent Sophie Ang. I’m wondering if you know where Lee Chan is. I urgently need to speak with him regarding the saboteur situation.”
A pause. “He’s not at work?”
“No. And his secretary said he hasn’t called in. Does he have a personal cell?”
“I’ll call him and get back to you.” The phone banged down. Sophie blinked at the rudeness and frowned thoughtfully.
She went back to her presentation and composed several sections of description of DAVID’s capabilities. She decided not to get too technical. She was filing a patent on DAVID; she didn’t want to provide any of the agency’s tech agents a way to replicate her program.
She still hadn’t completed the patent application. This was as good a time as any, so she pulled up the online form for it. Developing that would help her with the description of DAVID, anyway. She was deep in pages of legalese and technical jargon when her phone rang.
“Special Agent Ang.”
“Frank Honing at Security Solutions. I’ve sent a staffer to Lee’s apartment. No answer at his door or cell. In fact, it’s been twenty-four hours since anyone at the company has seen him, and he pretty much lives here at the company building. Agent Ang, I’m concerned.”
“Well, you’re a security company, so I’m sure you have ways of getting into his apartment and checking on his whereabouts that we can’t legally perform without his being declared a missing person. Are you telling me you think he’s missing?”
Honing harrumphed. “Yes. I had our security staff go into his apartment already, and it appears he cleared out in a hurry.”
“Why would he run?” Sophie asked.
“He might be the saboteur,” Honing said. “Other than our man in Hong Kong, Todd Remarkian, he’s the workhorse behind all of our company’s Internet security and no one is in a better position to manipulate our clients than he is.”
Sophie frowned. This felt too easy. “Do you want us to try to find him? Or do you want to go through local PD?”
“We’re already involved with the FBI, like it or not,” Honing said tightly. “I’d rather not go through the rigmarole of bringing another bunch of cops up to speed. Here’s Lee’s cell number and address.” Honing rattled them off and Sophie jotted them down.
“I’m sure you meant that statement as a compliment on the FBI’s work,” Sophie said. “I’ll take this as your
authorization to search for a valuable missing employee and go from there.”
Sophie hung up on him as hard as he had on her. Using voice command, she called Ken Yamada.
“We need to find Chan.” She filled him in on the tech’s disappearance.
Ken swore. “I knew things were going to get thicker when we told them about the saboteur. I’ve been hard at work tracking the Takeda Industries situation. It’s a shell corporation. There’s no physical evidence of a real company, so it isn’t going anywhere. I’ll have to bring the team up to speed.”
“I’m glad my intel was helpful.” Sophie’s brain, still overloaded from the situation with Alika, was having trouble remembering what Takeda Industries had to do with anything. “Want to go to Lee’s apartment and see what we can pick up? I can at least bring in his home computer rigs. We should also send out a Be On Look Out through HPD on him.”
“I’ll let you call HPD because I know you’ll want to check in with Marcus Kamuela about how Alika Wolcott is doing,” Ken said. “I was sorry to hear he’s in the hospital.”
“Yes. I’ll call Kamuela and meet you at the vehicle.” Sophie didn’t let any emotion into her voice. “Why don’t you brief Waxman?” She wasn’t in a hurry to speak to her erstwhile mentor again so soon.
Sophie backed out of her computer rigs, checking the time on the write blockers. They still needed a few hours. She strapped on her shoulder holster with the Glock 19, shrugged into her jacket and switched her headphones for a Bluetooth, calling Marcus Kamuela as she walked through the IT lab.
“Hi, Sophie. No updates on Alika’s condition yet. We’re just getting started down at his warehouse at the docks and I’m sorry to tell you it’s really looking like he was shipping drugs,” Kamuela said. “I’m in his office and I’m uncovering some irregularities in his shipments in addition to enough drug trace to make the dogs go nuts. I’m trying to believe you when you say Wolcott isn’t dirty.”
Sophie exited the lab and her athletic shoes squeaked down the shiny hallway toward the main entrance to the elevators as her thoughts whirled.
“It’s got to be planted. Alika isn’t that stupid. Please keep digging! Anyway, I called you about something else.” Sophie rattled off the situation with Lee Chan. “We’ll handle this as a direct request from Security Solutions to find their missing employee. Could your team post a BOLO on him?”
“Sure.” She could tell Marcus was glad she wasn’t grilling him more about Alika’s investigation. “Gimme the details.”
She told him. “I’ll have Security Solutions fax a picture of Chan.” Sophie got on the elevator, pushed the button for the ground floor garage.
“What else can you tell me about Wolcott?”
Sophie threw up her hands, frustrated, and remembered Kamuela couldn’t see that gesture. “Just follow the evidence. Do what you have to do. But keep an open mind. Remember who this man’s family is. Do they seem like a bunch of drug dealers with connections to organized crime?”
He blew out a breath. She could almost see him shaking his head. “My mom knows his grandma Esther Ka`awai, the kahu, and she’s been calling me nonstop to help Alika and get the gangster sonsabitches that beat him. So I’m hearing it from all directions, believe me, and so far, Alika’s looking like a Boy Scout if you don’t count his heroin-sprinkled office and weird shipping receipts. I’ll let you know what I find.”
“That’s all I ask. And call me if you hear of any change in his condition.”
“Will do.”
Sophie hung up with a flick of her finger to the device in her ear and broke into a jog to join Ken Yamada standing by the shining black hood of the Bureau’s Acura SUV.
Chapter Thirteen
Sophie and Ken Yamada pounded on Lee Chan’s door at his modest apartment building on the outskirts of Honolulu. “Open up! FBI!” Ken barked.
When no one answered, Ken gestured to the building’s manager. The stocky Filipino unlocked the door for them. Sophie and Ken kept weapons drawn in ready position per protocol as they entered.
A simple front room was decorated with a flat screen TV, a sleek lounger, and a coffee table. All was immaculate, the furniture black and the carpet and walls gray. Sophie had the impression that Lee had created his interior living space to feel like the inside of a computer: efficient, monochrome and dust-free.
They swept through the space and, as the VP had confirmed, empty hangers, missing clothes and sundries confirmed the tech was gone.
Sophie pulled Lee’s desktop rig out from under the small modern desk in the bedroom and unplugged it. As she straightened up, with the computer in her arms, she felt a shifting inside the metal housing.
She set the computer back on the desk, pulled open a small desk drawer and rooted around until she found a set of small graduated Phillips-head screwdrivers in a plastic case.
Ken returned. “Don’t see anything that tells us where he went. What are you doing?”
“I have a sense Lee is pretty careful. If there is a clue to where he went, it’s going to be on this computer, not lying around on the coffee table,” Sophie said. “I’m checking inside. Thought I felt something shift around in here.”
She applied the right sized driver to the screws on the back of the panel and opened it.
Inside were stacks of cash. She removed them and drew a sharp breath. Currency from China. Taiwan. Korea. Japan.
“Lee Chan could be anywhere,” she murmured.
“That explains these minor digs.” Ken gestured to the neatly made twin bed, impersonal as a motel. “He made plenty at Security Solutions. He was keeping a small footprint.”
Sophie took an evidence bag out of the Kevlar vest she wore and dropped the money into it. “Maybe he is the saboteur after all. Though he didn’t seem to have the nerve for something like that.”
“Maybe he’s being set up to look like it, though,” Ken said. “He seemed smart enough when we met him.”
“I don’t know.” Sophie picked up a black plastic comb from the drawer and lifted a hair with a root bulb from it, slipped it into an evidence bag. “It’s time to dig deeper into Chan’s life, for sure, but frankly, I hope he doesn’t turn up floating in the Ala Wai Canal because he’s someone’s loose end.”
Interviewing the building manager after the search, they got an idea of his habits. Lee left early for work, returned late, was quiet, had never been seen with anyone else in the apartment, was tidy, and paid rent on time. “The ideal tenant,” the manager concluded.
In the elevator on the way down, Sophie mulled the situation over.
“Think he was the saboteur?” Ken asked, his arms around the computer. She’d planned to carry it but he had taken it from her with old-fashioned courtesy.
“Why else would he run?”
“Maybe he knew who it was? Was being threatened? Maybe he could tell Security Solutions was going to throw him under the bus in any case.”
“It’s true that Honing was quick to do that. Lee would make a handy person to blame,” Sophie said. “But the Lee I went to school with in Hong Kong—he had an impulsive side. I once saw him delete a whole day’s work because he’d made a mistake. Maybe this was like that.”
“You mean, he got spooked and pulled the plug?” Ken was better with the colloquialisms.
“Exactly.”
Sophie hooked up Lee’s computer to one of the write blockers that had finished copying one of the previous hard drives. Ken had taken the DNA and fingerprint evidence as well as the cash to the lab for processing. Hopefully, they’d soon have more physical information on Lee, and in the meantime she had a lot of work to do.
Hours passed in wired-in oblivion as Sophie made headway on the analysis of the hard drives left on her desk, finished the presentation on DAVID, and sent that off to Waxman via encrypted email.
Sophie revisited the back trace that had tracked her computer to her building and looked at the two destinations: the Arches building, with a hundred and fifty units, and
the building Security Solutions was housed in.
Most likely it was Lee who had tracked her. Did she feel threatened by him? No. He probably was the saboteur and his tracking of her was just necessary counterintelligence of someone who was trying to break into his system.
So who was Todd Remarkian and what was his role? He and Lee had to be connected if they’d worked closely on developing proprietary software like the surveillance monitoring program that was Security Solutions’ crown jewel.
She began a file on Todd Remarkian and found it challenging to assemble. He seemed to have very little cyber presence. His credit card was issued by the company. His apartment was paid for by the company. He drove a car owned by the company. He had a squeaky-clean credit score and a phone issued by the company.
It was as if he’d been invented by Security Solutions.
She shivered. But she’d heard his voice, that light Aussie accent. He was real. On impulse she called him, clicking on the trace app for the number she’d dialed. A little skull spun in the corner of her monitor as the trace ran. The number rang.
Rang.
Rang.
“Special Agent Ang. G’day.”
“You knew it was me.”
“Who else would be calling from the FBI? Assume this is regarding Lee’s disappearance.”
“Yes. I was hoping you might have some more information for us.”
“I’m sorry, I don’t. I know he’s missing because Frank Honing called the boss and me a few hours ago. We’re worried he’s made off with some of our customer information, if you must know.”
The little spinning skull stopped. The location bubble appeared. HONG KONG pulsed in it.
Sophie relaxed. She didn’t know what she’d been expecting. “I’m sorry to hear that. Tell me more.” There was an art to interviewing a witness. One had to appear to be sympathetic and grateful for any information, while not revealing anything in return.
“Frank, Sheldon, and I suspect he’s the saboteur. We think he’s taking his chance to run now that we’re onto him. We’ve sent one of our private investigation teams after him. No offense, but we thought you might appreciate the help.”