by Toby Neal
He’d been delighted in the arranged marriage to Sophie Smithson, debutante daughter of an American diplomat, and related to Thai royalty on her mother’s side. Sophie had been a catch for anyone: beautiful, intelligent, cultured and sweet. He’d been hopeful, back then, that he could keep his dark preferences separate from his marriage. Hopeful that his business would continue to expand easily. Hopeful that Sophie was the biddable and easily impregnated young woman she appeared to be.
None of the things he’d hoped for had come true.
Rage surged through Assan. He restrained himself from crumpling the photo in his hand. Instead, he set it beside him on the expanse of satin, and smoothed its edges.
People didn’t understand how much work went into setting up this kind of relationship. She’d been worth it once, and she would be again—but she was never leaving this room alive.
Sophie walked through the velvet-dark night, patrolling a beachfront property in Wailea on Maui. She found comfort in the familiar weight of her Glock on one hip as her hand rested on it, but she kept her arms loose, ready for action, as she scanned the scene. Rocker Shank Miller’s estate was as protected as Sophie and her Security Solutions partner, Jake Dunn, could make it—but something had set off one of the property’s perimeter motion detectors, and it was Sophie's turn to check out the disturbance.
The hammered pewter gleam of moonlight reflected off of a great swath of beach and rendered Miller’s manicured lawn in shades of gray, casting ornamental plantings into black shadow. Natural stone pavers, inset into the grass, made an easy route around the clustered ferns, flowering trees, and birds of paradise that ringed the grounds.
Jake had wanted to cut all the plantings way back to improve visibility and monitoring, but Miller had refused. "I didn't spend ten million on this getaway spot so I could hide out inside a cement bunker with no view," the rock star had said. "I come here to relax. Growing green stuff helps me relax, and so does my view. Do the best you can with those challenges, but I won’t lose either.”
Her partner never did anything by half measures, and he took Shank Miller's safety more seriously than the man did himself. Jake had supervised the installation of a Plexiglas wall to preserve that view, a bulletproof, impenetrable and almost invisible barrier on Sophie's left.
Sophie headed toward the corner closest to the beach where the alarm had sounded. Motion detectors, buried and almost invisible in the plantings, created frequent disturbances for their team, and Sophie was still getting used to being part of that team.
Jake took up a lot of personal space. Sometimes he made it hard for her to breathe, and it was that need for space that had driven Sophie to ask for a guest room inside the main house so that they both weren’t occupying the small cottage that had become the team’s security headquarters. The computer monitoring station had been moved from the main house out there too, and Jake stayed out there with their two backup operatives, Jesse and Randy.
Sophie reached the corner of the grounds where the alarm had gone off. Jake had wanted to put in lights that responded to the motion detectors, but Shank had put his boot-clad foot down again. "I can't have this place lit up like a stadium every time a gecko runs across the freakin’ fence."
That meant that the corner Sophie approached, hidden on the beach side by a clump of native bushes, was inky-dark. Sophie pulled out a powerful flashlight and shone it over the area. Illumination played over the smooth grass and shadowy foliage.
Nothing. Probably just a gecko, those ubiquitous Hawaii nocturnal lizards that hunted for insects at night.
Sophie was moving on when the beam caught a flash of color. She turned and lit up the item.
Lying beneath a cluster of bird of paradise were a plastic bride and groom, the toys rubber-banded together, wrapped in each other’s arms.
Sophie scanned for movement along the bushes of the public beach, for any sign of who might have thrown the dolls into the compound, but the area was deserted.
Nothing to see but the gleam of the moon on the ocean, nothing to hear but the sound of the surf, the shush and rustle of a gentle night wind in the palm trees overhead.
Sophie reached into her pocket and removed a small plastic bag. She used it to pick up the figures, shining the light over a Barbie and Ken doll. The Barbie was dressed in a wedding gown, her long blonde hair braided, a veil over her face. The groom’s molded plastic hair had been colored over with Sharpie, and squiggles of black ink trailed down inside the doll’s tuxedo, representing Shank Miller’s long dark locks—and the male doll’s right hand, Miller’s guitar hand, had been sawed off.
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About the Author
Kirkus Reviews calls Neal's writing, "persistently riveting. Masterly."
Award-winning, USA Today bestselling social worker turned author Toby Neal grew up on the island of Kaua`i in Hawaii. Neal is a mental health therapist, a career that has informed the depth and complexity of the characters in her stories. Neal's police procedurals, starring multicultural detective Lei Texeira, explore the crimes and issues of Hawaii from the bottom of the ocean to the top of volcanoes, and are so popular that they've spawned a licensed fan fiction world on Amazon. Fans call her stories, "Immersive, addicting, and the next best thing to being there."
More Titles from Toby Neal!
Lei Crime Series
Paradise Crime Series
Romances
Romance Thrillers
Young Adult
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