by Toby Neal
“I owe you. Yes.” Her heart gave a welcome bump of excitement and dread. “That’s fine. I’ll see you there.”
Chapter Nineteen
The Drug Enforcement Agency personnel, with three working dogs, had spread out along the warehouses of the dilapidated docks of Honolulu’s industrial shipping area. Marcella, gorgeous even dressed in FBI black body armor, strode toward Sophie, who gave her friend a shoulder bump in greeting.
“I know you’re responsible for Marcus letting me come. Thank you.”
“You owe me,” Marcella said.
“I’m getting used to that. What’s the plan?”
“The dogs are just working around the company’s buildings you put us on to. This is all perfectly legal. We’re hoping to get some probable cause, and then we can go in for a full search.”
As if on cue, one of the dogs, a huge German Shepherd, let out a short, sharp bark in front of one of the steel-fronted doors. The other handlers brought their dogs, and when all three signaled, the agents brought a door cannon and three blows later, the DEA team and Marcus were flowing into the darkened warehouse.
“You know this could end up implicating Alika,” Marcella whispered as they moved along the edge of the building toward the dark well of the door.
“Better to know,” Sophie said. “No matter what we find.”
Marcella gave a nod, and they stepped inside, weapons in ready position.
Bright lights exploded in their retinas.
Sophie crouched against the wall, blinking. The lights coming on had been so overwhelming it felt like an explosion—but they were just huge overhead arc lights in the cavernous building, glaring down in hot bowls of radiance on stacks of crates and piles of storage. Marcus Kamuela was nearby on his phone. The dog handlers and DEA agents had spread out through the warehouse.
“So this is one of the companies Alika uses?” Marcella asked.
“Yes. And my ex, Assan.”
“That piece of shit. You’ll pardon me if I’m hoping it’s him we get.”
“That’s why I’m here.” Sophie grinned at her friend behind her helmet, but Marcella couldn’t see it, too busy tracking the action as the team searched the warehouse, pulling out random cartons and boxes and letting the dogs sniff them.
Suddenly, the German Shepherd sounded at a big steel container. One of the agents brought a pair of bolt cutters and in moments the lock was off and the door was opened. Rows and rows of decorative ceramic boxes filled the container, padded with bubble wrap. One of the agents, gloved hands moving fast and expert, unwrapped one of the boxes and took the lid off.
A bag of powder fell out with a faint thud onto the floor.
“We got ’em!” he yelled. The shepherd sat, looking proud, its ears pricked.
“Who’s that container registered to?” Sophie hustled forward, snatching the clipboard with the inventory on it and running a gloved finger down until she came to the numbered steel container.
“Ang Enterprises,” she read aloud, with satisfaction.
The search went on. Now that they’d found something, the agents went through every box, crate, pallet, and barrel in the warehouse and came back with several more containers full of drugs, some even nested inside bags of scented potpourri, which had been the most difficult for the dogs to detect.
Marcus Kamuela clapped Sophie on the shoulder. “Nice lead, Agent Ang. Glad you had it in for your ex.” He grinned broadly.
“It’s not a laughing matter,” Sophie said, with dignity.
He wiped the smile off his face. “You’re right. That was out of line. But the good news is, we haven’t found anything tracing back to Alika Wolcott. Working with this storage company could be how he ran into the Boyz, though—if he didn’t want to play with them in this sandbox, they didn’t want him around.”
“I’m glad we haven’t found anything from Alika’s company.” Marcella joined them. “I wonder what’s going to happen to it with him in the hospital.”
Sophie stayed silent. She didn’t want to get involved any further. “What’s going to happen about Assan?”
“DEA is going to move on this with HPD support. We’ll seize all his assets here in the States and try to extradite him for trial—but he’s in Hong Kong, and likely to stay there. We have trouble getting criminals over here for trial. So likely, the best we can hope for is to shut him down in the U.S. and send his case to Interpol, see if they can keep him boxed up elsewhere.”
“It’s a start.” Sophie was still thinking of Assan’s new young bride. She had to find a way to get that girl out. And on the way home, she thought of little girls trapped in closets.
Chapter Twenty
It was very late when Sophie finally got home. Unlocking the door, she deactivated the alarm, and once inside, reviewed the new security camera footage of the front door area and swept the apartment for bugs. This would be her new routine every time she entered.
Once she was sure the apartment was clear, Sophie stripped by the washer as was her habit, and dropped everything down to the skin into the basket. She sponged the Kevlar vest and helmet and hung them to dry on a rack.
Her body was stiff and exhausted, though she’d done nothing more than observe the raid. It was the adrenaline overload, she decided, and realized she hadn’t gone to the gym since that first day after Alika’s attack.
She was avoiding Fight Club. Too many reminders of Alika. And now she wasn’t getting enough exercise to feel on top of her game, or to keep her depression under control.
Alika’s family must think she’d dropped him when he was down. It was too bad if they did. Staying away from him was the safest choice she could make until she knew Assan was out of the way.
It would be great if the Security Solutions saboteur could hack into Assan’s operation and set him up to be taken out by one of his dealers, Sophie couldn’t help thinking a second time as she sat down to her computers.
She was already pretty close to being inappropriate by bringing the team down on Assan with nothing more than intuition.
Intuition which had been right.
Maybe she and the saboteur had more in common than she’d ever imagined. If she had the software and access he did, she didn’t think she’d be able to resist the temptation to make sure something permanent happened to Assan. Shutting down his drug operation in the U.S. was going to be a blow, but it was probably only a temporary one that he’d not only recover from, but take out on his new child bride. Sophie was all too familiar with how Assan would experience some setback at work, and come home to displace his aggression.
She struggled to suppress a sense of futility. Nothing she did was really going to touch him.
Sophie clicked on the secure email address she used for Bureau business. A short message with a link attached was waiting from an unlisted source.
Could this be from the unsub who’d planted the cameras?
Sophie’s pulse picked up. She clicked on the message.
“Got your video message. Yes, let’s talk. Meet me at this chat room at 9:00 a.m. tomorrow.”
Her appeal had worked. She could scarcely believe it. She saved the chat room address, one of those “old school” chat sites where paradoxically, older software used to run them protected users’ anonymity.
Nothing more to be done on this until 9:00 a.m. tomorrow. It was time to find out what was happening on the Security Solutions and kidnapping case, no matter the hour. She put on her headphones and called Ken Yamada.
“Yes.” Ken sounded alert and irritable.
“Hi, Ken. Wondering what’s been happening with the Security Solutions and kidnapping cases? I’ve had a bit of a personal crisis I’ve been dealing with, but I didn’t want to go to bed without checking in with you.”
“Yes. We searched Sheldon Hamilton’s house and office. Didn’t come up with much. We got some DNA samples; running those as standard procedure but not really expecting it to match anything in the system. What’s most remarkable is how
little real presence the man had. His apartment was pristine, a showplace. Apparently has a maid that comes once a month, and she said nothing much changes between her scheduled cleans. She’s never seen Hamilton. Which isn’t in itself unusual; the man is constantly traveling according to Honing, the VP. Still, we found very few personal effects in the apartment or office. Gundersohn and I think we should have found more and had more of a sense of who this man is. I know you were running the online stuff, did you do any better?”
Sophie clicked open the file on Sheldon Hamilton. “Same thing here. Most everything he has is in the company’s name or given to him as perks. He’s the owner and CEO and effectively uses the company to provide a front and take care of all his personal expenses. I couldn’t find any assets but one bank account in his name where he apparently receives payment or wages. I didn’t want to get into that until we’re sure he’s a missing person; then I’ll take a look at his financials.”
“Go ahead and access the finances. He’s missing all right. We had another call from Todd Remarkian; he’s returning from Hong Kong after doing all he can to find his boss. Apparently, the Hong Kong police have no leads.”
A silence as they considered. Sophie had three screens going, each working on something else, but she minimized Amara’s current project and pulled up Sheldon Hamilton’s bank and went to work drilling into their mainframe. She could get an injunction granting access to Hamilton’s accounts, but that would take more time.
“Well, I’m still not sure what case we can make against this company,” Sophie finally said. “Certainly there are gray area activities going on, but are they illegal?”
“The saboteur is illegal of course, but proving what he’s doing is going to be next to impossible. And we know Security Solutions caters to criminals, but are they responsible for their clientele’s actions? Again, hard to bring a case here.”
“Did you have to cut him loose?”
“We did. He didn’t want to go, if that tells you anything. Begged us to charge him with something. He’s afraid of someone.”
“Was he willing to tell who the saboteur was?”
“Said it was his only bargaining chip. I told him we weren’t interested enough to make him a deal for Witness Protection with no real threat identified. He wasn’t happy, but also not miserable enough to spill.”
“Where’s he at now?”
“His apartment.”
Sophie remembered that impersonal little shoebox of a place. “I’m betting he tries to disappear again.”
“Without something more, we have nothing to hold him on and nothing to offer him. So I wouldn’t be surprised if that was the last we saw of Lee Chan. He has a lot of money stashed in the Caymans.”
“So what’s the latest on the kidnap case?”
“Every time we try to get something hard on Takeda Industries, we come up dry. We thought we found an office address but when Gundersohn and I went by, it was a vacant lot.”
“So who’s collecting the rents on that apartment building where Anna was held?”
Ken sighed. “You want the truth? I haven’t had time to track that. But I’m beginning to think this isn’t some big operation.”
“I agree.” The back of Sophie’s neck prickled with her conviction. “But Remarkian told me that he and Sheldon had found evidence their client information was being peddled online. So maybe our kidnappers in the morgue bought the Addams family information and used it.”
“Speaking of. I did run down their case file at Security Solutions, and it seems that someone had the access code to deactivate ‘Helen,’ the nanny-cam software and alarm system. That’s how they were able to take Anna from her bedroom.”
“So that confirms it as a leak from inside Security Solutions?”
“It seems that way. The house staff had the code to turn the alarm on and off, but only Belle and her husband had the code for Helen. It must have been a terrible moment when they realized she’d been taken.”
“Just think how Anna felt,” Sophie said, her skin going cold with remembered trauma. She’d been snatched in the marketplace, an ether-soaked rag held over her nose and mouth until she passed out.
“Yes, well.” Ken cleared his throat. “Back to work.” He hung up.
Sophie opened her file on Takeda Industries. It couldn’t hurt to follow up with the building manager, since Ken hadn’t had time to. She texted Ken that she was going on a field trip to interview the building manager tomorrow morning, just as Sophie’s software broke into Sheldon Hamilton’s bank accounts.
Immediately she leaned in, scanning through the data. Twice-monthly wages were deposited and then immediately diverted, to a numbered account with its location masked.
His salary, as founder and CEO, was an eye-popping amount. Why was he diverting and hiding it? Had Sheldon Hamilton planned his own disappearance?
Sophie set down her headset, leaned back in her chair, stretching. She was too wound up for bed. Doing one more sweep of the apartment for bugs, she hung up the detection wand by the door and, wearing her silky sleep tee, went through her yoga routine in the icy silver moonlight, finally ending with meditation.
Breathing, resting upright in the lotus position, she let her mind float free. Suddenly, she was sure she knew who the saboteur was. The hard part was going to be proving it.
Chapter Twenty-One
Sophie held up her creds wallet. The manager of the apartment building where Anna had been held was a stocky Filipina woman named Florence Torres, wearing a big plastic gardenia pinned to a tight bun. Shiny dark eyes flashed as she checked the ID. “I thought you cops were done with that apartment.”
“Can you keep this conversation confidential?” Sophie subtly imitated the woman’s posture, her legs slightly spread and arms open, a way of helping create rapport she remembered from her Academy training. She waited until Florence, curiosity evident in her narrowed eyes, gave a brisk nod. “We’ve had some information that this kidnapping might not be a one time thing. So is there anything you can tell me about Takeda Industries, about how the apartments are rented, that might help us prevent another situation happening in your building?”
They were standing in the doorway of the manager’s office, and the woman gestured for Sophie to come in.
“Sit.” She shut the door and pointed to one of the plastic chairs positioned in front of a battered metal desk. “I saw the pictures of that little girl. So sad. And, as you may know, we have a kidnapping problem in the Philippines, too.”
“I’d heard that,” Sophie said.
“Well, I don’t want to be a part of anything like that. So, I’ll tell you I have some worries. But this can’t get back to me.” She pointed a stubby brown finger at Sophie, the petals of the gardenia in her bun quivering with suppressed emotion.
“Of course not.” Sophie hoped she didn’t have to call Torres in as a witness.
“Apartments on the fourteenth floor are kept open for short term rental. Last month, I got a call to hold the apartment the kidnapping took place in, as I told the other investigators. But what I didn’t tell the other investigators, was that this happens every four or five months. Always from the same number. I didn’t realize something bad was happening on that floor until now.” She dug in the desk, fished out a file labeled CASH TRANSACTIONS. “I run it through the usual billing, but I don’t get a name, and I don’t get anything but an envelope of cash stuck through the door.” She pointed to the slot.
“Didn’t you have concerns about this before?” Sophie asked.
“It’s a good job,” Torres said. “I want to keep it. The number is all I have to give you. But Takeda Industries, the parent company, is the one that directed me to keep all those apartments on that floor open, in case they need them.”
“Thanks. I hope it will be enough. And this will remain between us.” Sophie stood.
“I just don’t want to think of any other little children stuck in a closet. I hope that helps get whoever’s behind it�
��if it’s more than just the one time.”
Sophie looked down at the Post-it in her hand. “This is more than we’ve had to go on so far. Thank you. But I’m afraid it will just be a burner phone. Would you be willing to call me the next time one of the rooms is reserved?”
The woman pursed her lips, looked Sophie up and down. “Yes. Give me your direct number.”
Sophie handed her a card and handwrote her own cell number on it. “I will do my best to answer, day or night.”
Outside, the wind of early morning soft as a caress, Sophie checked the time. She had to get back to her apartment for an important online chat.
At her home workstation, Sophie set a trace to working on Torres’ phone number and logged into the chat room at 9:00 a.m. The old-fashioned blank screen of the DOS chat room field felt like stepping into a black room, blindfolded.
“I’m here,” she typed. Her screen name was MMA Fighter, one of her favorite monikers, not least because people usually assumed she was male and it was interesting to see how they reacted to her differently because of it.
The letters glowed green on the black background. Of course, she had a tracker program queued up for when the unsub arrived, but for a long moment the cursor pulsed gently and slowly, highlighting how alone she was.
She wondered if it would always be this way. Sophie, alone, reaching out with a little, tentative “I’m here.”
And no one responding.
The phone number for the possible kidnapper connection came back. NO REGISTERED USER. Of course it was a burner. She’d just have to hope Florence Torres called to tip her off the next time the apartment was used.
Depression she’d been beating back with the stress of the case and nonstop activity rolled over her in a fog. A sense of leaden heaviness filled her bones. The sludgy meaninglessness of it all rolled across her mind and slowed everything down to pointless effort.