by Toby Neal
Sophie took the latex gloves and handful of evidence bags that Lei handed her, trying to ignore the baleful stare she could feel on her back from their reluctant host.
Chimes approached Blackthorne again. “Hey, man. I’m sorry about this.”
“Screw you, Chimes.” Blackthorne’s voice dripped with contempt.
“Sergeant, why don’t you take the kitchen and living room and dining area?” Lei said. Sophie guessed she was trying to defuse the confrontation and remind Chimes of his responsibilities, while giving him a less sensitive zone of the house to search. “Mr. Blackthorne, can you and your staff wait outside, please?”
Thin-lipped, Blackthorne stepped out onto the porch with the maid. Lei continued to direct. “I’ll take the bedrooms and bathrooms, and Sophie, you take everything else.”
Sophie nodded, heading down a hallway past the den, where Chimes had begun to busy himself pulling books off of a shelf.
What were they looking for? She had to consciously remember: the GPR report for the Kakela site, any artifacts that looked like they might have come from the site, or anything tying Blackthorne to the Hui and/or Mano.
The man’s office, or one of the bedrooms possibly, seemed like the most likely area to find any evidence.
Sophie passed several openings off the hall: a guestroom suite, a spacious laundry room, with a small wall-mounted TV playing a Filipino soap opera, a home gym. Finally, at the end of the hall, a closed door.
She turned the handle—it was unlocked.
Blackthorne’s office was a beautiful, manly sanctuary. Tall, sliding glass windows framed a stunning view of the mountains beyond the deck outside, a rain squall blowing a transparent blue veil across their heights. Shelves lined with books filled the walls, and a quick scan of titles revealed interests in astrophysics, crime mysteries, and Hawaiiana. Blackthorne’s desk was a koa wood monolith, almost buried under stacks of papers held down by a collection of stone poi pounders. His computer beckoned, and Sophie slid her backpack off and set it on his leather office chair.
“It’s going to take a while to search this place, so I might as well begin cloning,” she muttered, removing the write blocker from her backpack and plugging it in.
It wasn’t even necessary to unlock the computer to copy its entire contents to the external drive—but she couldn’t wait to see what was on his files.
That task begun, Sophie surveyed the room from the desk’s vantage point.
Several major art pieces—impressionistic seascapes—decorated the walls. A couple of club chairs framed a Tiffany standing lamp in colorful stained glass. Sophie imagined curling up in a chair with one of the interesting books from the shelf.
“Back on task.” She began opening the drawers, stirring the contents as she sifted through. Pens, paper clips, rubber bands. Signature, date, and address stamps. Embossed stationery, a stack of legal pads. A photo of a woman, a pretty brunette, in a closed black frame. Girlfriend? Blackthorne wasn’t married.
The large bottom file drawer was locked. Sophie unbent a paper clip, inserted it into the lock, and jiggled until the drawer’s simple mechanism gave.
“Aha.” Sophie smiled as she pulled up a file labeled Kakela.
The file was jammed with newspaper cuttings about the site, topographical maps like she had seen in the Hui’s offices, and some handwritten notes.
Sophie set the file aside, already hearing the voice of a defense attorney in her mind: “There is nothing incriminating here. Blackthorne Industries recently made an offer on the site to restore it privately. Mr. Blackthorne has an interest in Hawaiiana and was doing his homework on a potential investment property.”
What she needed to do was find out what the connection between Mano and Blackthorne was…and that was likely going to be contained in the computer she was going to have to bring in.
She was rifling through more files when Lei walked in, brown curls frizzing out of her ponytail, Chimes bringing up the rear, “We haven’t found anything in the personal areas. You?”
“It’s going slow. There are some interesting things here. I haven’t had a chance to get past the desk,” Sophie said. “Blackthorne seems like the kind to have a safe. I suspect one to be behind one of these bookshelves or a piece of art.”
“Yeah, I’ve searched this kind of office before. Guys like this like to keep their secret stuff secret,” Lei said. “Chimes, let’s do it. All the books off the shelves, and shake them out.”
“He’s not going to like that,” Chimes groaned, but the two got started.
Sophie stacked any files that looked promising and checked the write blocker—only a third finished. “I have to take this computer in with us. I was hoping to clone it in the time we were here, but you two are going much faster than I am.”
“No, you’ll have to take it in and look through it in all of your spare time,” Lei said. She paused, a hand held aloft as she removed a large seascape. “Bingo.” On the wall behind the art was the recessed outline of a safe. “Chimes, get Blackthorne in here to open this for us, or tell him he will have to pay for one of our locksmiths to do it.”
Chimes hunched his shoulders miserably, but walked out.
Lei glanced at Sophie. “Getting any gut feelings?”
“My gut feeling is telling me he’s involved. There’s some connection between these two men—we just have to find out what it was.”
“Agree.” Lei set the painting down on the floor as Chimes reappeared outside of the office via the porch with Blackthorne in tow, followed by a short Chinese man wearing a tan business suit that reminded Sophie of turn-of-the-century safari garb.
“Perry Chan, Esquire,” the attorney said. “I have looked over the warrant, and it does not mention the contents of safes.”
“That is implied in the phrase, “thorough search of home and grounds,” Lei said, facing the diminutive Chinese man. “Mr. Blackthorne can either open the safe, or my associates and I will remove it from the wall and take it to the station, which I imagine will be a messy and expensive business—for him.”
Sophie was glad of the blank expression she’d learned to don to face any threat. She came to stand behind Lei, folding her arms in a pose that pumped up her toned arms.
A long staredown ensued, and it was Blackthorne who broke first. “Nothing in there to see anyway. It’s the principle of the thing.” He walked up to the safe and took out his wallet, consulting a card and working the combination. He opened the door. “I prefer not to watch you rifle through my personal things. Chan, you make sure they don’t take anything.” Blackthorne turned and left through the slider onto the porch.
“Chimes, since you have a personal relationship with the witness, why don’t you do another sweep for any areas we missed,” Lei said.
Chimes ducked his head in assent and left, heading into the house’s interior.
Lei reached into the safe and took out a stack of rubber-banded cash, rifling through it, setting it on the desk. Several jewelry sets followed, in black leatherette cases—probably family heirlooms. And finally, a tray of exquisitely carved ivory netsukes, tiny hand-carved Japanese sculptures used to secure sashes and garments in the Japan of ancient times.
The women bent over them, and saw why Blackthorne didn’t want to be embarrassed by their examination: they were exquisitely wrought erotica, a plethora of positions, some of which Sophie hadn’t known existed.
“Well, I doubt these have anything to do with your case,” Chan said, removing the tray and setting it on the desk. “Anything else?”
Lei got up on her tiptoes to peer inside. “No. Empty.”
They carefully replaced the items and closed the safe. “We just need to finish the bookshelves,” Lei said. “You can stay or go, Mr. Chan.”
“I’ll stay, thank you.”
Lei and Sophie returned to the shelves, removing the books, shaking them out, replacing them.
Finally, the job was done. “I have to take this computer in,” Sophie sa
id, pulling the plug on the device. “And any others Mr. Blackthorne has.”
“He has a laptop. He left it in the kitchen on the island.”
“Thank you.” Sophie preceded Lei back down the hall, and Lei collected the laptop. They opened the front door to find Chimes and Blackthorne faced off.
“You need to tell them what you know about Mano,” Chimes said.
“I don’t need to do shit,” Blackthorne retorted. “Now, I’ve cooperated. Get the hell off my property.”
“Not yet.” Chimes firmed his jaw and turned to the women. “Mano was a classmate of ours. I heard rumors about his illegal activities—and I know for a fact that Brock has done several business deals with him. Brock, tell them.”
“Mr. Blackthorne doesn’t have to tell them any such thing,” Chan piped up, approaching from the back exit of the office.
“I think we should have a more formal interview down at the station,” Lei said.
Sophie, her arms full of computer equipment, stepped past Blackthorne and headed for the SUV.
She stowed the computer and returned, taking the laptop from Lei, who was now actively arguing with Chan about Blackthorne coming in to the station. “Going to do one more sweep while you discuss this,” she said, and headed back into the house.
The maid was replacing the books more neatly into the den’s shelves as she passed, and gave Sophie a glare.
Sophie headed back to the office and stood in the doorway, hands on her hips. Something was bothering her visually about the space; she couldn’t pinpoint what, but it was something about the design of the room.
The symmetry was off on the right side of the room by about three feet.
Perhaps it was just a closet in the other room, but Sophie’s experience with a personal “safe room” in her past had honed her attentiveness to architectural oddities.
She went back out into the hall and looked into the guest suite, frowning.
The same asymmetrical look, a shortening of the room on the left side, mirrored the change in the other room, and it wasn’t explained by a closet—the closet was on the right.
Sophie went back into the office and stood, staring at the wall of shelves broken up by a couple of niches for art.
“What are you doing?” Lei said impatiently. “I don’t have enough to arrest Blackthorne and make him come in, and Chan is stalling by insisting we do it tomorrow. You up and disappeared on me.”
“There’s something off with the dimensions of these two rooms,” Sophie said. “I think there’s a hidden space here.”
“I’ll get Blackthorne.” Lei spun on her heel. “That bastard isn’t telling us everything.”
“No, I’m not.” Blackthorne’s gravelly voice came from the glass sliders, and both women spun toward him, hands dropping to their weapons. “You two look like a couple of Bond girls, all ready to shoot me.” His voice dripped sarcasm.
“Where is this secret room?” Lei barked. “We are entitled to search any and all areas of the house and grounds.”
“That doesn’t mean I have to disclose them.” Blackthorne’s ill humor continued even though he had won the skirmish over going into the station. “But it appears you want to see my wine cellar.”
Blackthorne walked over to the wall of shelves and depressed a hidden button. A section of shelving popped out with a soft ping. A draft of cool air lifted the tiny hairs on Sophie’s neck and she peered into the dark, able to discern shelves lining the narrow space. The light gleamed on hundreds of wine bottles lying on their sides at a slant.
“I keep rare vintages in here. This wine room is climate controlled. Some of these bottles are worth thousands.” Blackthorne gestured to Sophie. “There’s only room for one at a time to go in. Since you discovered my secret, perhaps you would like to go in first?”
She would rather not go in first, at all.
Sophie felt the tightness of old fear constrict her lungs and loosen the joints of her legs, making her feel wobbly and out of breath. Darkness and small spaces had become necessary for sleeping, but that was an adaptation to her marital imprisonment and abuse—not something she wanted forced upon her in a strange house by a suspect. Lei read her expression and frowned, stepping forward. “I’ll go.”
“No, it’s fine.” Sophie brushed past Blackthorne and stepped into the cool, musty-smelling darkness, her shoulder brushing one of the racks of wine bottles.
A sensor light bloomed into brightness dead ahead, illuminating a wooden stairway between the shelves, leading down into darkness. Sophie barely had time to register that when she felt a rough, hard shove, and flew forward down the steps.
Sophie’s arms flew out instinctively, seeking some way to break her fall. Her fingers caught on a wooden balustrade, and she curled them desperately, her body swinging around to plummet into the wall of wine bottles lining the stairway.
The door she’d entered through shut with a bang above her as she lost her grip, tumbling down to crash into a black metal door at the base of the stairs.
Sophie tried to get to her feet, pain screaming at her from her knees, side, elbows, and wrist, but when she tried to stand, her ankle collapsed and a shaft of agony shot up her leg and wrenched a cry from her lips.
Blackthorne grabbed her by the back of the head, his fingers knotting in her thick hair, and smashed her head into the door.
A burst of colored light. Then nothing.
Chapter Seventeen
Sophie was lying on her stomach on the floor, her face turned to the side, and that was all she knew for certain.
As her hearing booted up, she heard muttering. The muttering came from her right, and it was Blackthorne’s dark rasp of a voice. “This is it. It all comes down to this. It all was leading to this, and it will all end here.”
Sophie stayed perfectly still, her breathing gentle and even, her eyes closed. A dim red glow against her eyelids told her of a nearby light source.
She assessed herself for injuries. The ankle was bad, at least sprained. Her forehead was already swelling into a knot, and tingly numbness spread down her cheeks, along with pulses of pain. Possible brain trauma, indicated by the fact that her body did not want to obey when she told it to move.
More bruises screamed at her. Her knee was wrenched, her hip bruised, her hands throbbed.
But that was not her biggest problem. The biggest problem was pacing back and forth in front of that light source, causing moving black shadows across her closed eyes.
Far away, she heard pounding.
Lei was trying to get in, trying to get to her, trying to rescue her.
What was going on with Blackthorne? There must be evidence down here that would link him to the murder…nothing else made sense to explain his irrational action.
Sophie’s thoughts were sluggish, bubbling up from somewhere inside her injured brain, trying to form into substance but flickering past her consciousness before she could capture them.
The longer he thought she was knocked out, the better able she would be to respond to whatever came next.
She clung to that idea, capturing it, keeping it in a spot between her eyebrows.
Nearby, a cell phone rang with an incongruously cheerful electronic melody.
“You can’t get me out of here until I am ready to leave,” Blackthorne said. “Ang is alive, but she won’t be if you continue trying to get in here. This is an internal safe room, with bomb shelter walls. It cannot be breached without serious effort, and I will hear you coming and kill her.”
A chill rippled across Sophie, raising the hairs on her arms at the certainty in Blackthorne’s voice. Sophie was in trouble. Deep trouble.
This man was unbalanced. And she was his hostage, locked in with him in a steel basement.
Tendrils of panic curled through Sophie, brushing along her nerves and tightening her belly, speeding her heartbeat. Assan Ang had locked her in a room not much different from this one.
But this was not that situation.
And, even if it had a few similarities, she had escaped Assan, a deadly sadist. She could escape Blackthorne, too.
An unwelcome memory bubbled up: Assan was free again.
Sophie kept her breathing calm with an effort. Blackthorne ended the call, and began the muttering and pacing again.
How could they have been so wrong about him? He had seemed every inch the successful businessman, but clearly something deeper was going on. Something involving Mano.
Maybe she could get him talking. Build a bond with him. That’s what they had told her in her FBI training on hostage negotiation, seemingly a hundred years ago.
Sophie needed to seem cowed, helpless. She needed to appeal to Blackthorne’s vanity and exploit any bond she could make with him. He had not asked Lei for any demands, which told her they would be here for a while as the negotiation process unfolded.
Sophie just needed to stay calm and alert, and appeal to his masculinity.
If only that weren’t one of the things she was terrible at, and her head was not so sore. But Assan had taught her well, and now she needed to remember those lessons.
She gave a low moan, not much of a performance considering the pain.
Immediately, Blackthorne leaned over her. He blocked the red source of light, and she could feel his stale breath on her face. “Don’t move. I have you covered.
Sophie moaned again. “I have no intention of going anywhere. I think my ankle is sprained, and I have a concussion at least.”
“Still. Precautions are in order.” Blackthorne wrenched her arms up behind her back, whipping some sort of rope around her wrists.
Sophie turned her head to the side and emitted a loud, theatrical groan, lacing her fingers together and bracing her palms apart to get some distance as he bound her. “Please. Not so tight.”
The old law enforcement trick worked, and she had some wiggle room in the bonds as he finished the lashing. He moved her legs, and Sophie didn’t have to fake the sharp cry of anguish as he touched her injured ankle. “Please! Please, I’m not going anywhere with my ankle like this.”