by Toby Neal
“Waxman’s always been a straight-up guy—a bit of a prick, as we all knew. But going after you personally? No. He wouldn’t do that. This warrant is simply shutting a door you left open on your way out. And I’m damn sorry about it all.” Ken shook his head. “I hate to say it, but ultimately you might be happier in the private sector. Your skills will be in huge demand in the general marketplace, even if you can’t use DAVID.”
Bateman reappeared, case in hand. “Removed and saved one copy of the DAVID software to backup hard drive. Computer’s clean. Cloud access to Bureau files is shut down. Security clearances are revoked.” Bateman raised round, pale blue eyes to meet Sophie’s. “I’m sorry. This hella sucks. We’re going to miss you bad in the IT lab.”
Sophie couldn’t bring herself to speak. It was all she could do to keep the tears from falling. Bateman headed for the door and shut it.
Ken knew she didn’t like a lot of touching, but he folded strong arms around Sophie, pulling her close. She rested her head on his shoulder briefly as he squeezed her tight. “You’re going to be okay. I know you are, partner,” he said softly. “You’re going to come back from this stronger than ever. The FBI’s lost the best agent I’ve ever known today.”
Sophie let out a sob she’d held locked in her throat, but stood rigid, trapped in her feelings of grief and loss, unwilling to cry on the shoulder Yamada offered. Ken crushed her close for a long moment, then held her away, gazing into her eyes with his best samurai stare. “Don’t let this get you down. You’re better than all of us combined.” Ken walked out and shut the door behind him.
Sophie made it to her bedroom on shaky legs and sat down at her computers. Her brain felt spongy as the depression, always waiting for her, rolled in like a damp and sticky fog. She had a few things to do before she took to her bed.
Sophie composed her resignation letter carefully. She stated her reasons for resignation to go on record for any future litigation, and emailed it to Waxman. She wrapped up the Society of Light case by emailing Sharon Blumfield the Bureau’s decision, but adding that private security firms were available to assist in either getting the children out or collecting data for her family court case. She listed several, including Security Solutions, the one she’d investigated some months before.
There were good people at Security Solutions, including the CEO, Todd Remarkian, who had become something of a friend. They’d gone on a couple of hike-runs together, and she liked the upbeat, hardworking Aussie. Ginger adored Anubis, the dignified Doberman Todd had inherited from his partner who’d gone overseas.
And that partner was someone Sophie kept in touch with. She opened the private chat room contact she maintained with the man calling himself the Ghost. Logging in under her username of MMA Fighter, she typed out a note:
“Thought I’d let you know I resigned from the Bureau. I won’t be hunting you on their behalf anymore. Not that I ever got close enough to catch you. Still, it was fun to try.”
Sophie paused, fingers poised above the keys.
There was always the chance the Ghost was logged in and would see her note in real time. The hope that he was online mattered enough to frighten her. They exchanged messages several times a week, and Sophie had come to anticipate the flirty, sharp-edged, bantering exchanges with the man she suspected was Sheldon Hamilton, an eccentric billionaire and former CEO of Security Solutions, now living abroad at an unknown location.
As minutes went by, the heartbeat pulsing of the green cursor on the black background of the chat box gave her a lonely, vulnerable feeling.
Here I am, it seemed to say. Here I am. Please hear me. Please answer me.
And as usual, no one responded.
Sophie killed the window and pushed back from the desk. She shut down the rigs with a push of the key fob. She closed the heavy blackout drapes she needed to sleep, turned off her phone, stripped off her clothes, and crumpled into bed. She let Ginger come up on the jade-green silk comforter, and she embraced the warm, hairy, loving dog.
The Labrador licked the tears that flowed down Sophie’s cheeks as she finally wept for all she’d lost.
Chapter Four
Morning was distinguished from night by Ginger licking her face again—the drapes cut the light so completely there was no way to distinguish the two. Sophie rolled to look at the glowing red numbers of her bedside digital clock: 10:00 a.m.
“Oh, girl.” She tossed the covers aside. “You need to go out.” Ginger whined in agreement.
The depression she’d struggled with on and off since her late teens had swept Sophie under. Every movement felt forced and sluggish, like swimming through tar. Sophie walked through the apartment naked, as was her habit. She put the teapot on to boil water and took out a ceramic teapot, her body remembering the habitual movements of the morning ritual.
She would take one day to indulge in the depression. Really wallow.
After all, she didn’t have anywhere to be today.
Or any day.
She was unemployed.
The thought made Sophie bow inward, hunching around the pain. The kettle dropped from her nerveless fingers into the elegant oval steel sink.
Tea wouldn’t help. Nothing would help. She just needed to take the dog out. Then she could go back to bed and stay there until she felt better. If she felt better. The murk was so thick that ever feeling different seemed impossible.
Sophie dressed in running clothes and took Ginger outside into a bright Honolulu day. Mynahs chattered in the blooming rainbow shower trees on her block, colored petals fell like confetti in the warm breeze. Doves cooed and danced courtship to each other on the sidewalk as Ginger did her business on the scrap of lawn. Sophie’s eyes registered it all, unseeing.
Ginger tugged and whined, looking down the sunny street with its swishing traffic, waving palms, and busy walkers. Sophie usually ran with the dog on her days off. Ginger wanted to do what they usually did, and bathe in all the glorious smells.
“No.” Sophie twitched the leash and headed back into her building.
Ginger frolicked in the lobby, bouncing and cheerful and way too energetic without exercise. Possessed by that deep exhaustion, Sophie walked Ginger to security and left her there to be picked up by the Doggie Daycare service that usually took care of her during the day.
She was too flattened even to feel guilty about neglecting her dog as she got back into bed and shut herself into the dark.
Dealing with Ginger and her needs were the only activities Sophie engaged in for the next two days.
Sophie slept, or she simply lay in her room staring at the ceiling.
Hello, darkness, my old friend.
She reviewed her life, hopelessness sapping her energy as her thoughts cycled through negative, repetitive patterns. She’d fought hard to escape from the disastrous marriage to sadistic businessman Assan Ang. She’d also fought hard to build her career in the FBI. She’d created DAVID and tried to make the world a better place.
All for nothing.
Of course she still had a copy of DAVID’s software, stored on a hard drive in a safe hidden in the apartment—she was too smart to let the FBI take it from her. But the fight ahead just felt too difficult right now.
She should get up. Exercise. Call her father, or her friend Lei on Maui, or Marcella. Eat. But she did none of those things.
The depression wasn’t passive. It felt powerful and destructive, a fierce predator that held her in its jaws, shaking the very life out of her.
Sophie stared at the blackness of the bedroom ceiling, her eyes wide open. They were dry and unseeing as desert stones. It felt like if she waited long enough, her body would just cease. Turn off. Begin crumbling away as if she’d never been.
A pounding at the door.
The pounding stopped.
Started again.
Stopped.
If she ignored it long enough, whoever it was would eventually go away.
The alarm system activating was a shrill thr
obbing electronic tone that demanded a response. After the apartment was breached six months ago, Sophie’d had it tied straight into the building’s security. Now, if she didn’t deactivate it, police would be on their way.
Sophie groaned and threw on her sleep tee, walking with an effort to the panel by the front door. She deactivated the alarm.
“Sophie! Open up right now or I’m breaking in!”
Marcella. Her friend’s voice was loud but muffled by the solid door. She might have known Marcella would persist. Sophie opened the door. “I’m okay.”
“No, you’re not.” Marcella’s cheeks were flushed with the effort of pounding on the front door to the point that the alarm was triggered. Wisps of sleek, chocolate-brown hair had escaped from the chignon she’d nicknamed the FBI Twist. There was no hiding her gorgeous, curvy figure, but Marcella played it down in a plain white blouse and gray slacks. “You look like hell. When did you eat last?”
Sophie shrugged and let go of the doorframe. Marcella followed her in as Sophie pressed the intercom button on the blinking alarm panel. “This is Sophie Ang.” She spoke the all-clear code and let go of the button. “Marcella, I know you mean well. But please. Leave me alone.”
“Of course not. Clearly you don’t know what friends are for.” Marcella set her hands on her hips. “What the hell did you quit for? You’re going to win this DAVID thing. You need to stay in the fight and stick to your guns!”
Sophie turned and walked away. She flopped face down on her bed.
“Sophie, I’m fixing you something to eat. Go get in the shower. You smell disgusting.” Marcella headed for the kitchen. “Get to it, or I’ll call Marcus to come over and help me put you in the shower whether you like it or not.”
Marcus Kamuela. Marcella’s intimidating Hawaiian HPD detective fiancé tolerated Sophie for Marcella’s sake, but they weren’t friends. The thought of that burly man hauling her by the scruff of the neck to the shower was humiliating, and Marcella would follow through on that kind of threat. Sophie was too depressed to be embarrassed, but that next phase of shame wasn’t far off—she could smell a whiff of it like smoke in the air.
She got to her feet, shuffling to the bathroom. She could hear Marcella talking on the phone in the kitchen, probably discussing her with Lei Texeira, their mutual friend. Sophie groaned aloud. “Daughter of a stillborn water buffalo!” Cursing in Thai just didn’t feel satisfying enough so she tried a string of English cusswords.
Those didn’t work either.
Sophie turned on the water. She avoided looking in the mirror. She’d just see her skin gone sallow, purple circles under her eyes, her cheekbones jutting.
At least her cropped hair was too short to give her any trouble.
Under the flow of water, the smell of coconut soap brought her beautiful mother Pim Wat Smithson back. This was the cycle that her mother went through. Sophie had her to thank for this ‘sickness of the soul’ as her father called it.
Mama had been depressed as long as Sophie could remember: withdrawn, lethargic, prone to tears, and unresponsive to her daughter’s needs, with rare times when she came out from beneath the disease to bloom like a flower. To reach adulthood and fall prey to the same affliction Sophie had struggled against with her parent felt like one more rock in the bag of them around her neck.
Marcella opened the door, letting steam out. “Hurry up in there. Food is almost ready.”
The door shut with a bang.
“Ugly sister of a poxy whore.”
“I heard that!” Marcella bellowed from the kitchen. “And I can’t understand it, but I know it’s not nice. I’ll kick your ass in the ring, ’cause that’s where we’re going next.”
Sophie snapped off the water and shook the extra water off her hair. Her brain sloshed in her skull with the abrupt head movement. She just needed to comply long enough to get Marcella off her back and then she could go back to bed.
Several hours later, Marcella said goodbye and left Sophie at the building after a thorough trouncing at Fight Club, the gym where they both practiced MMA fighting. The Doggie Daycare had dropped Ginger off, and she waited at the security station. Heading back up to the apartment holding the dog’s leash, Sophie had to admit she felt better.
She still had DAVID, even if the program was mothballed. She had friends. She had a dog that loved her. She just needed to beat the depression back enough to get ahead of it.
The elevator doors opened.
A tall, well-built, dark-haired man stood outside of her apartment, his hand raised to knock on the red lacquered door. He turned, raked her with a glance, and broke into a grin.
“Sophie Ang? Just the woman I came to see.”
Chapter Five
Sophie examined the man’s ID, presented in the kind of leather cred wallet she’d once carried with the FBI. Jake Dunn, Extraction and Security Specialist, was six foot three inches, one hundred ninety-five pounds, with brown hair and blue eyes.
Only his eyes weren’t really blue. They were gunmetal gray, with a blue ring around the iris, and quite arresting. Dunn wore black cargo pants and a tight ribbed tee that left little of his well-defined torso to the imagination. His belt was loaded with holstered weapons and he wore the kind of laced-up combat boots that meant business.
The Security Solutions operative shifted from foot to foot in front of her. His ID photo didn’t capture the sense of crackling energy that surrounded him.
Sophie took her time to examine his credentials and call them in to Security Solutions.
“Satisfied? My boss, Todd Remarkian, sent me here to recruit you.” Dunn’s tone was impatient. “He said he had an offer for you as a tech agent, and a case he knew you’d be interested in. It’s on the Big Island.”
Interest, flickering into life through the muffling deadness that surrounded Sophie, felt like the prickling of a frozen limb awakening to warmth.
“Where on the Big Island?”
“Waipio Valley. A cult. The Society of Light. I can’t tell you more until you sign the offer. Can we get out of this damn hallway and talk privately?”
Sophie unlocked her apartment. “Wait here five minutes. I need to get cleaned up.” She wasn’t about to shower with this G.I. Joe action figure of a man sitting in her front room. Ginger was useless as a guard dog, already fawning over Dunn and rubbing herself lasciviously against the man’s leg.
Sophie tweaked the dog’s leash, hauled her inside, and shut the door soundly. She heard a deep-voiced curse through the door as she headed for the bathroom.
Sophie smiled. Beating Dunn in the ring, or on a computer, or perhaps at shooting—was going to be fun. She enjoyed besting testosterone-driven males.
She took exactly five minutes to shower and change into a pair of yoga pants and a slim-fitting, ruby-red top. She opened the door. “Come in.”
Dunn swept her with an assessing glance. “Todd didn’t tell me you were hot.”
“I fail to see how that’s relevant.” Sophie’s neck heated with annoyance. “And if we’re ever going to work together you should keep those thoughts to yourself.” She sounded fussy and prim as she folded her arms over her chest.
“Got a stick up your butt. I can dig it.” Dunn sat down on the low Danish-style couch, his thick legs sprawled, arms stretched out along the low back. “Nice place.”
“My father’s. Where’s this contract? Unless you just came to waste my time with Neanderthal insults.”
“Oh, when I insult you, you’ll know it.” Dunn unbuttoned one of the cargo pockets on his leg and extracted several folded pages. “Here.”
Sophie took the papers and went to a nearby desk. She sat on the sleek chair, flicked on the lamp and began to read. Dunn got up and paced back and forth in front of the floor-to-ceiling windows. Sitting clearly wasn’t something he did well, but he moved gracefully for such a big man. “Frickin’ awesome view. What does your father do?”
Sophie didn’t take her eyes off the contract. Looked like a terr
ific package; the pay was close to twice what she’d earned as an agent. “Curb your language, foul-mouthed son of a yak.”
“What language is that you’re speaking?” Dunn stopped in front of her, legs planted like tree trunks, arms crossed on his chest. Hawaiian tribal tattoos of interlocking triangles banded sinewy forearms. Dunn was clearly used to getting whatever he wanted with a minimum of time and effort. Women probably rolled over and spread their legs for him as easily as Ginger, currently lying on her back, wriggling in ecstasy as he scratched her belly with the toe of his boot. “You look ethnic. What kind of ethnic are you? Balinese? Black and Balinese?”
He wasn’t far wrong. Sophie’s black and Thai heritage was usually hard to pinpoint. Perhaps Dunn was sharper than he first appeared. “What kind of ethnic? Who asks questions like that? Clearly you’re overdue for some sensitivity training.”
Dunn tipped his head back and laughed. He had the kind of laugh that made babies giggle and female toes curl. Sophie tried not to smile as she looked down at the contract.
“Okay. Good behavior starts now. I can take instruction.” Dunn spun and began his pacing again. “Todd said you’re one of the best operatives at tech he’s ever encountered. High praise from a man who helped start a security firm whose main product is an artificially intelligent home security system.”
“Todd exaggerates.” Sophie reached the end of the contract. “This seems in order, but I’d like to speak to Mr. Remarkian myself before making any decisions.”
“Fine. Dick around with it all you want. But don’t waste my time. Youwant in on this case? ’Cause I can’t talk to you about it without more, and actually I need your intel from the FBI recon before I go over to the Big Island.” Dunn sat back down, but she felt his presence and will pressing on her like a bulldozer blade.
“I’m interested. But I’m not talking to you tonight about this. Or anything.” Sophie stood. “Thank you for bringing the contract by, Mr. Dunn.”