Wired Dark

by Toby Neal

  Connor took a step toward her. “I love you.” He opened his hands in a surrender gesture. “Let’s figure this out.”

  Sophie didn’t move. “I believe that you love me as much as you will ever love anyone. But I will never trust you again, and that’s no basis for a relationship. Please go. Before I’m forced to call the FBI and tell them you’re here.”

  “I won’t give up on you, whether you want me to or not. You can always contact me at that chatroom we first used.”

  “I won’t call you.” Sophie felt strong, determined, and numb. “I’m going off the grid and you won’t be able to find me.”

  “I can always find you,” he said calmly. She did not reply. Connor headed to the bathroom. “I need a moment.”

  He put the contacts back into his eyes at the sink. She slid her phone out of her pocket, considering whether or not to video him doing so. She decided not to. That was forgiveness.

  Connor washed his hands, blinking at her with newly darkened eyes. She stared back expressionlessly.

  He turned and gave Ginger one last pat. “Thanks for looking after Anubis.”

  “I love that dog. And I loved you. Don’t ever approach me again.”

  Connor nodded, once. “I hope you’ll forgive me. Someday.” He slipped out the door.

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Kalalau Valley, on Kaua‘i, was a rugged twelve-mile hike along precipitous cliffs from its starting point, and almost impossible to do in one day. Sophie planned to take it in stages, hiking as far as Sandy and her dog, Gracie, felt like, then camping. After all, they weren’t in a hurry. This was the first day of their new lives, and having cut all ties, Sophie wanted to savor that freedom.

  Sandy Mason hadn’t bothered with a rental car, instead opting for a ride-sharing lift from the airport to Ke‘e Beach, a stunning half-moon cove at the base of the velvety-green Na Pali Coast, an area so rugged it was completely untamed by roads.

  Sophie hoped she fooled the facial recognition at the airports by wearing the reggae-themed hat to duck cameras and using colorful face paint with white peace symbols on her cheeks, as if making a political statement, to confuse the software. While she’d gotten some stares, Sandy Mason was a proud pacifist.

  “Disguise is sleight of hand,” Connor had told her once. “You say, ‘Look here!’ while really, you go there.” Sophie wiped off the paint once outside the airport but kept on the hat and the round sunglasses. She wore light but sturdy hiking pants, boots, and a sleeveless shirt with a marijuana leaf on the front.

  Mary Watson and Sophie Ang were gone, but Sandy Mason blended well with the locals on Kaua‘i at first glance. Sophie hoped that the Sandy identity struck that perfect balance between bland and forgettable—though Ginger-Gracie made anonymity challenging. The Lab’s friendliness and sweet nature were a human lure.

  Gracie was a weakness that couldn’t be helped. Sophie’d given up everything. She couldn’t lose her dog, too.

  Sophie looked up a slanting trail studded with large boulders. Huge java plum and mango trees, cascading with tropical vines, hung down to touch shoulders of a red-dirt trail clothed in bamboo grass. Guava trees dripped bright yellow fruit like Easter eggs among the ferns. Her heart sped up with anticipation.

  After a final pit stop to use the restroom and fill up a heavy water jug, Sophie walked past the sign-in book in the kiosk at the base of the trail without logging in. She hefted the pack and buckled it on. Ignoring the No Dogs Allowed sign, she tweaked Ginger’s leash and set off up the trail.

  After so much emotion and mental anguish, it felt great to simply pit herself against a physical challenge. Even with care in organizing her supplies, the backpack still weighed more than fifty pounds, and the trail was steep, rutted, and studded with rocks that required concentration.

  Sophie’s favorite pastime of run-hiking on Oahu stood her in good stead, though, and she pushed upward, picking up a sturdy bamboo staff a returning hiker had left leaning against a tree.

  Exiting the jungle at the first hairpin turn of the cliffs, Sophie dropped her stick and gasped at the glorious sight of the staggered row of crenellated cliffs marching down the Na Pali Coast all the way to Kalalau.

  Waves crashed against the black lava cliffs far below, aqua in shallow areas, cobalt as the water got deeper. Sophie gazed into a horizon lacy with spume from the brisk wind that dried the sweat on her cheeks and body. She reached into the pocket of her cargo pants and pulled out a postcard of these very breathtaking cliffs that she’d bought in the airport. She held it up, comparing. Yes, the photo had been taken from this spot.

  The view before her was even better than the picture on the postcard that Connor had left pinned on her side of the “Batcave.” She had him to thank for the inspiration for this trip.

  And now it was time for goodbye.

  Sophie reached into her pocket again and took out a small baggie containing the torn-up scraps of the note Connor had left her in the safe deposit box, the note pledging his love. Love he meant, in his way. That was why it hurt to dump the scraps into her palm and toss them off the cliff and into the void.

  Wind swirled up and caught the tiny white snowflake bits, whirling them into the sky above Sophie’s head for a brief moment, before sweeping them out to sea.

  Sophie wished she could dig into the backpack and pick up the brick of the Ghost software and throw it off the cliff, too. Even though he lived, that program had taken him from her.

  But she wasn’t quite ready to do that. Maybe there was still some redemptive possibility for the software when she cracked it and mastered it. But that would wait for another day. Today was full of new beginnings and possibility.

  A pure-white tropicbird with a forked tail dove like a kite above the black cliffs, making her smile. Far off in the distance over the ocean, a towering cumulus cloud trailed a rainsquall lit with a rainbow. And right in front of her, the red-dirt trail beckoned.

  Sophie had paid a high price for a whole new life to step into and explore, and now it was time to begin.

  “Come on, Gracie. Let’s go,” Sandy Mason said, and picked up her bamboo walking stick.

  Acknowledgments

  Aloha dear readers!

  You know the old saying: things are always darkest before the dawn?

  Yeah, that. But I like to think a white tropicbird off the Na Pali Coast and a cloud trailing a rainbow are signs that things will be brighter in Wired Dawn! I personally have witnessed these visual miracles off the Na Pali Coast, and they are too good not to share.

  Sophie has had to go dark, and deep, wrestling with the issues of love, conscience, justice, and identity that are her particular challenge. Will she have a happy ending? I don’t know; she hasn’t told me yet. She’s still growing and changing, and so are the various men who’ve fallen in love with her. You’ll just have to read on and see! But I have to say, not knowing who she will settle on from the various awesome choices is pretty darn fun!

  I want to thank some folks: Don and Bonnie, reader fans who have become friends and my copyeditors for this series. They have done a great job keeping track of timelines, dangler clues, repeat words, and my penchant for “accidentally” using known or recycled names for characters—for instance, I had Shank Miller have the real name of Steve Miller, and apparently, there’s a well-known rocker by that name. Duh. I knew that. On some level.

  Don and Bonnie are wine aficionados, and this year flew out to join me at my temporary residence in Sonoma County wine country (long story, family situation) and we got to go wine tasting and get to know each other in real life.

  I also want to thank my faithful and amazing proofreaders Shirley LaCroix, Angie Lail, and Bonnie Thompson. These eagle-eyed ladies try to catch everything that Don, Bonnie and I miss. Mahalos forever for being on my team!

  I love how my writing has brought me friends that feel like family from all over the world, and I’m so glad you are a part of that “ohana” too, by joining Sophie’s (and Lei’s!) j
ourneys.

  I’m super excited about Sophie’s next phase; the mystery we have to solve is ripped straight out of the headlines: there’s a group of people living in the back of Kalalau Valley on Kaua‘i, and strange things are happening! So be sure to read on to the excerpt from Wired Dawn, book 5 in the Paradise Crime Series.

  As always, if you enjoyed this book, please leave a review! You have no idea how much they mean to an author, and to a book’s success. Mahalo nui loa, as we say in Hawaii!

  I hope you’ll continue Sophie’s story with Wired Dawn, and join me on any or all of the social media outlets (listed at the end) where I love to get to know readers, beginning with my Facebook group, Friends of Toby Neal Books.

  Read on for an excerpt from Wired Dawn, and until next time, I’ll be writing!

  Much aloha,

  Toby Neal

  I hope you enjoyed Wired Dark. If you think other readers will enjoy it too, please leave an honest review on Barnes & Noble, Goodreads, iBooks, or Kobo. Your thoughts matter so much, and I read them all!

  Want two FREE full length, award-winning books from Toby Neal? Click HERE!

  Love romance thrillers? Check out Toby Neal & Emily Kimelman’s hot new apocalyptic Scorch Series HERE!

  Read on for a sample of the next book in the series!

  Excerpt Wired Dawn

  Chapter 1

  The boy ran, stumbling in the darkness, toward the farthest black corner of the cave. His breath tore through his lungs with a sound like ripping fabric as he put his hands out, slowing as the fire got further away and the darkness thickened, its flickering light dimming. He tripped and almost fell on the loose, jagged stones of the cavern floor.

  That voice like warm honey that he’d once listened to called his name. "Come, Nakai. What you running for?”

  Nakai reached the back corner of the cave, a dark and drafty spot where he could feel fresh air welling like spring water from somewhere deep in the earth.

  The man’s footsteps were coming—smooth, unhurried, confident. Nakai glanced back and saw the flashlight swinging, illuminating the harsh, volcanic stone walls with every swing. “Stop this foolishness, boy.”

  Frantic, Nakai felt down the wall to the vent, finding a small cleft. He wriggled through.

  The pitch darkness on the other side of the wall was thick as a muffling black blanket. Nakai crawled forward on his hands and knees, biting his lips to keep from whimpering at the pain of rocks digging into his hands and knees.

  “What, boy? You trying fo’ get away?” The voice was a sibilant hiss, the sound of evil disguised as a friend, the sound of the worst kind of betrayal. Even now, the boy’s skin crawled at the memory of the man’s hands on him, touching him, stroking and petting, pinching and forcing. “You want to leave so bad? You go then. And sleep well in the dark.”

  Nakai stopped, holding his breath, turning back toward the slit illuminated by the flashlight’s beam. He heard the scrape of a rock, and then the light blinked out.

  He was in total darkness, and he was trapped.

  Nakai turned around and felt his way back in the direction from which he’d come.

  Panic rose in a strangling wave and sweat burst out over his body as he crawled forward, and forward, and forward—and felt nothing ahead. No cleft, no wall.

  He was lost in the dark already.

  “Let me out! Help me!”

  The stone seemed to vibrate around him, as if he sat in the middle of a giant drum. “That’s why music sounds so good in the cave,” the man had told the circle of boys on Nakai’s first night with the group of runaways he called the Lost Boys. “This lava tube goes on for miles, and the porousness of the stone makes sound carry.”

  Maybe it would carry his calls for help. “Let me out!” Nakai cried again. “Help! I’m stuck in here!”

  Nothing but the faintest echo of his terror came back to him.

  Nakai crawled rapidly now, heedless of bleeding hands and knees, determined to at least hit some kind of wall ahead—but suddenly, he was out in space and falling into blackness that swallowed his scream.

  Special Agent Marcella Scott stood on a battered rubber mat outside the door of a shitty apartment on a run-down street in a bad part of Honolulu. The gritty zone of heat-shimmering concrete block buildings was sandwiched between the airport and a military installation, and the discordant sound of traffic going by on a nearby overpass competed with the wail of a police siren. The only thing that showed that the apartment was even in Hawaii was a battered and dusty plumeria tree on one side of the building. Its fragrant pinwheel blossoms sent up a waft of sweet scent, and Marcella closed her eyes and breathed it in, then reached out and knocked.

  No one answered.

  She wasn’t surprised. She knocked again.

  No answer.

  Marcella dug in her pocket and brought out a thick bunch of keys. Her fiancé, Marcus, always told her to thin them out. “You could do yourself an injury with that wad of keys,” he teased. “Throw your back out carrying them, or at least bruise your ass sitting with them in your back pocket.”

  Marcella laughed, but didn’t thin out the thick ring with its plastic New Jersey souvenir tag. A girl had to remember where she was from. And Marcella loved keys. A key meant you were trusted, had access, and could get in.

  And she was the only person besides the occupant to have access to this particular door.

  She flipped through the thick ring: home, FBI office, parents’ apartment, car, post office box, and on and on until she came to a brass Schlage. Two, actually, connected on a little ring—because just one wasn’t enough for security-conscious Sophie Ang.

  Sophie.

  Her friend had dealt her a blow of betrayal that still had Marcella’s temper flaring hot under her tidily buttoned blouse if she thought about it too long.

  And Sophie was likely holed up in the apartment, the blackout drapes drawn, deep in one of her depression cycles. Angry as Marcella was with her friend, Sophie needed her.

  Marcella opened the thumb lock and with the other key, the deadbolt, pushing the door inward. “Sophie?”

  She felt the emptiness of the place instantly.

  No Ginger, Sophie’s energetic yellow Lab, running to greet her. The place smelled stale and sour, but she called again, anyway. “Soph!”

  No answer.

  She shut and locked the door. Sophie wasn’t at her father’s; Frank Smithson had been the one to call Marcella to go check on his daughter. “She has a three-day window to contact me, and it’s been four days. You know how she gets, and where she hides,” he’d asked her this morning. “Can you go by her place?”

  This bolt hole of Sophie’s was rented in the name of her alias, Mary Watson, and Marcella was literally the only one who knew where it was.

  She wrinkled her nose at the smell of garbage that had been left under the sink. She opened the refrigerator. Very little inside. She walked into the back bedroom. The bed Marcella and Frank had bought for Sophie was neatly made up—but the sense of emptiness persisted.

  Marcella opened the closet and frowned. The hangers were empty.

  She opened the drawers of the dresser. Nothing inside.

  Sophie was gone.

  Marcella straightened, heart rate spiking. She hurried now, whipping open the drawers of the desk. Everything was removed but a notepad and some leftover office detritus: a few Post-its and pens, some tape. The monitor Sophie plugged into her high-end laptop when she was here was still there, but every personal anything that belonged to her friend was gone.

  Would Sophie have run? Did she not trust the system that much? And what would happen if that grandstanding DA decided to go ahead with a murder rap? It would be wrong, but the jerk might be trying to garner headlines in the courtroom. You never knew these days…

  Marcella heard the sound of a key in the front door lock. She raced back into the front room, whipping the door open.

  “Sophie!” Her friend’s name died on Marcella’s
lips at the sight of a short man with a greasy comb over and a belly straining a football jersey that had seen better days.

  Brown eyes blinked at her from behind thick glasses. “Eh, sistah. Whatchu doing heah?”

  Marcella’s hand had fallen automatically to her weapon. “FBI. Who the hell are you?”

  The man’s eyes widened and he took a step back. “Building manager. I nevah know notting what dis renter was doing in heah.”

  Marcella held her cred wallet up for the man to see. “I need to know where she is.”

  The manager’s gaze darted up to the left. He was considering what to tell her, how much to lie.

  Marcella softened her voice and stance. “Sorry if I gave the wrong impression. The woman who lives here is missing and I’m looking for her. She didn’t do anything wrong.” At least I hope not.

  “I nevah know notting,” the manager repeated.

  Marcella shot out a hand and grabbed him by the wrist, yanking the man inside the apartment. He stumbled across the threshold with a little yelp and she slammed the door. “Where is she? Tell me now, or I'll take you in for questioning.”

  “She paid me for six months in advance!” the manager burst out. “She said no tell anyone she lived here anymore. Said she was going to be in and out. Nevah said notting about no FBI!”

  Marcella looked him over. Sweat had popped out in beads on his brow and upper lip. His gaze darted around the room.

  He was telling the truth.

  “Did she tell you where she was going?”

  “No. Only that she liked her privacy.”

  So, Sophie had anticipated Marcella would come looking and paid this jerk to keep quiet about it. Anger rose in a hot flash.

  “Get out of here,” Marcella snapped. “And you better not rent this place out from under her. But if you see her, tell her the FBI is looking for her.”