by Toby Neal
She rolled away from Alika and stood up. “I think I’ve got it.”
“We’ll try it again sometime. When you work out with Marcella, I want you to try that hold on her. It should work with someone closer to your size.”
Sophie narrowed her eyes at him. “You saying I can’t take you?”
“Not yet. And the day you can, I won’t have anything to teach you anymore, and that will be a sad day for me.” He grinned, and she smiled back, taking off the headgear. Her hair was cropped short, so there was no rearranging to be done. He was looking at the tattoos on the insides of her arms.
“What’s that writing? What do they say?”
“It’s Thai. I did it so I wouldn’t forget some things I’ve been through. They are just words.” She mopped her face with one of the thin gym towels, turned away toward the showers, but he followed her.
“What do they say?” he asked again.
“Hope. Freedom. Power. Respect. Courage.” She had no trouble reciting the words she’d had inked after her divorce was final.
“I like it.” He gave her shoulder a brotherly pat. “Thanks for telling me. I’ve been wondering about them for a while.”
That made her look down at her gym bag. The tattoos ran down the outsides of her thighs and insides of her arms—not the most suggestive of places; she’d done that so they could be easily concealed in a professional setting. But that meant he’d looked at her body.
He’d thought about it.
Sophie, don’t be ridiculous. The voice in her head sounded like her mother. He’d never be interested in someone so unladylike, a brawler like you.
“I was wondering about something. Are you going out with anybody?” His voice sounded a little uncertain. “You must be.”
She stilled, her hands in her gym bag as she stowed her gloves. She turned to look at him. “No.”
“I can’t believe it,” he said. “Greg was right. Are you gay, then?”
Greg was the gym manager. Sophie felt a wave of heat roar up her chest, and her rigid fingertips shot out to stop less than an inch from his throat, a gesture capable of crushing his larynx with a blow.
“You think because I’m single and a fighter, I must be gay? Take a look at your biases.” She spun to grab her gym bag, striding across the large warehouse space. Her ears felt hot.
They’d been talking and speculating about her. She could imagine the crude joking. She wished she could have a relationship, but the truth was she hadn’t been interested in anyone since her divorce—until this silly crush on Alika.
And now all she felt was angry and embarrassed. Better to go back to her computers, where she was never misunderstood or misjudged.
She was unlocking her car, a white Lexus SUV her father had given her for graduation from the FBI Academy, when she felt a hand on her shoulder. She didn’t think, she reacted—shot her elbow back into her attacker’s solar plexus, spun to swing the gym bag.
Alika had doubled up from the blow, and the gym bag caught him on the side of the head.
“Oh no!”
Alika tried to smile as he rubbed his head. “Should have called your name. My bad, sneaking up on you.”
“Sorry, Coach.” Sophie picked up her bag. “I just reacted.”
“Call me Alika. Well, I’m not going to worry about your defense skills, that’s for sure. I wanted to apologize. I shouldn’t have just—asked you like that. You’re so private.”
“I’m in the FBI. We don’t go around discussing our lives.” She stowed the gym bag in the SUV’s backseat. “I’m sorry too. I overreacted. I don’t like people talking about me behind my back.”
“It wasn’t like that.” Alika leaned on the car next to her. “You’re a great fighter, really talented. I was going to suggest we put you up in some matches. I wanted to see…what might be factors to deal with before I asked you.”
“There are no ‘factors’ but my job. And I’m pretty sure going into matches would just draw attention to myself, which isn’t good for an agent. So regretfully, I have to decline.”
Sophie found she really did regret it. She would have liked to see how she could do in the Women’s MMA fight circuit, but she was sure Waxman would consider it inappropriate. In her head, her mother agreed wholeheartedly.
“Too bad.” Alika pushed away from the side of the car. “You’ve got talent.”
“So I’ve been told.” But not with men. Not with relationships, and especially not in bed, where Assan had said, “Fucking you is like banging a mannequin.”
The words still hurt, though she knew, as a professional adult, that it was no reflection on her that she couldn’t get turned on by a man who beat her. Still, it had stolen her confidence at a time when she was too young to know better. Having Assan as her first and only relationship was no good measure of anything but heartache.
“See you next week.” He raised a hand as he walked away. “I’m off to ice my injuries.”
She smiled, but it didn’t make it all the way to her eyes.
Fresh from a shower and clad in a towel, Sophie microwaved a glass casserole dish of pad thai noodles prepared by the housekeeper. She took off the towel and tossed it in the washer with the rest of her workout gear. The conversation with Alika, on top of the setback about using DAVID and her home computer setup, had left her with a dark feeling, a flatness. Tonight, and the days ahead, seemed without interest.
She padded naked across the living room, noticing the stellar sky, the twinkling lights, the ocean a black smudge in the distance. None of it did a thing for her. In her bedroom she pulled on a silky sleep tee and underwear and sat down in front of her home computer rig and fired it up, but the frisson of anticipation she usually felt getting “wired in” was gone. Tonight she was disabling the network.
It felt like facing an amputation.
“This is ridiculous,” she told herself aloud. “I have plenty I can do. I have a life.” The way the words sounded—like empty bravado—didn’t help.
DAVID beckoned, but instead of playing with the program, she saved it to an external drive as Waxman had asked. She logged into her departmental email—and saw several emails from the DyingFriends site.
Targets had responded to her lure.
It wouldn’t hurt, just tonight, to respond to them from home. She could disable the network afterward.
She responded in ShastaM’s identity to three emails that DyingFriends members in Hawaii had sent. A few clicks of the mouse and inputting the email addresses into her search program later, and she’d traced their computers and had three names and addresses for Lei and Ken to follow up on tomorrow.
Sophie felt energy come back at this bit of progress, and that gave her the strength to log into her network and disconnect her home computers from the FBI ones. DAVID was now neutralized and “on ice” for the review process, and she also no longer had access to her FBI workstation data—but there was no reason she couldn’t spend some time on DyingFriends, strengthening her identity there.
She left her angst behind as she disappeared onto the Internet, where she roamed free, powerful and bodiless. The world of her computers often felt more real, and certainly more comfortable, than any human company.
Chapter Twelve
Lei walked into the Starbucks near Ala Moana Shopping Center the next morning. Her curls were still damp from the shower, but she’d managed to get to the meet with Ken and Ang within fifteen minutes of the phone ringing and waking her up from the best sleep she’d had in days.
“Hey, you looking sassy,” Ken said as she joined the agents at a table off in the corner, away from other customers.
Lei knew her grin was huge. Exploring the new world of phone sex had done wonders for her mood. “Life is good, that’s all. What’s up, Sophie? You wanted to meet us here?”
“Yeah.” In contrast, Sophie Ang didn’t look like she’d slept well, her dark eyes circled by shadows. “I got some names and addresses of Honolulu members of DyingFriends, and I thoug
ht we could save some time by meeting here. I was hoping you could go out right away and interview these people.”
“Definitely,” Ken said. “How did you get that so fast?”
Ang explained her process of phishing on the site. “My identity is getting a lot of sympathy and attention. I keep saying I want to ‘get out early,’ and so far, no bites from the system admin or any organized effort to encourage suicide. But there are more people right here on Oahu in this group than you would believe.”
“Is that bothering you?” Lei asked, concerned by Ang’s demeanor.
“It’s depressing, that’s for sure. But no. I’m having to disconnect my home network and not bring work home anymore, and DAVID is offline for the review process, so I’m kind of at a loose end.”
“I wondered what Waxman was going to do to you.”
“It actually wasn’t that bad.” Sophie sighed, took a sip of her tea. “It’s just a buildup of things. Alika asked to put me up in some bouts in the MMA women’s fight circuit; I had to say no. I’m sure it’s not something I should do as an agent.”
Ken’s straight brows drew together. “You’re probably right. It could make you a target, and you know the Bureau policy of keeping a low public profile.”
“I think it sucks,” Lei said. “You should be able to do what you want.” Sympathy for the tech agent, stymied on several levels, rose up. Sophie had so many talents, and it bothered Lei to see so few of them expressed.
“Life is never that simple,” Sophie said, with a grateful glance at Lei. She slid a paper over to them. “Here are the names and addresses.”
“Thanks.” They watched her go, her tall, lithe figure weaving through the coffee shop.
“If I weren’t gay, I’d have a crush on her,” Ken said.
Lei smiled. “If I were, I would too. Okay, what’s the plan?"
Ken looked at the list, pulled up his navigator app on his phone. “Let’s figure out where they are, plot a route.”
The first address was in the ritzy suburb of Kahala. Lei enjoyed warm morning air blowing by her through the open window and the sun on the ocean as they rounded Diamond Head and wound into a neighborhood of gracious estates. She let her mind wander back to Stevens and her building need to see him, as they drove up to an Asian-styled mansion with a cobalt-blue tiled roof.
They parked the Acura in a pea-gravel turnaround and walked over a tiny arched bridge spanning a koi pond. Fat fish in oranges and yellows swam lazily in the water below.
Ken rang the bell. A sound of celestial chimes rang somewhere deep in the house. He rang the bell again and finally a third time—and when the lacquered door finally opened, they understood why. A tiny man stood there, shrunken and frail as a Chinese Yoda, swathed in a lustrous brocade smoking jacket that brushed the floor. “Yes?”
“Good morning. My name is Special Agent Ken Yamada, and this is Special Agent Lei Texeira. We have a few questions for you regarding an investigation.” They both held open their cred wallets.
“What is this about?” Yoda peered at the wallets. He appeared to be clinging to the door for support. Lei glanced at the note in her hand. “Clyde Woo” was written in Sophie’s distinctive hand.
“Perhaps we could sit down? And you’d be more comfortable, Mr. Woo?” Lei asked. Without a word, the gnome let go of the door and shuffled off, leaving them to follow him into the dim recesses of the house. A vast living room opened up before them, with a bank of sliders framing the view of a sculptured garden. Mr. Woo made a short gesture to a low red couch and settled himself into a motorized wheelchair.
Lei looked around at the collection of exquisite sculpture against one wall and the shrine to Buddha on the other.
“What is this regarding?” Mr. Woo asked again. He had a wet rattle in his voice.
They’d decided on what to say back at the coffee shop. “We are investigating a website—DyingFriends. We understand you are a member on it,” Ken said.
“Yes.” Mr. Woo dug in the pocket of his robe, pulled out a pair of startlingly thick plastic-framed glasses, and put them on. “What are you investigating?”
“Well, that’s confidential. All we can say is that DyingFriends may be involved in some unethical practices. Can you tell us what the site has been like for you?” Ken asked.
Mr. Woo took a while to think this over, and Lei found herself squirming a bit under his magnified gaze as it switched between herself and her partner.
“Well, as you may have guessed, I’m dying,” he said. “I have a caregiver, but she’s out. I have no family that I am speaking to, and DyingFriends is a place where I can be dying and not be shame.” He gave a phlegmy cough. “I don’t get out much anymore.”
“We understand,” Lei said. “It seems like it’s a place where people who are in the same situation can get support. Has anyone ever talked with you about suicide on the site?”
“There are always people talking about it. We’re dying. Suicide is a way to take control of that.”
Lei was struck by the power of that simple sentence. She’d thought she was definitely against suicide, but she was finding the issue much more complex and heartrending than she’d ever known.
“Do you feel like suicide is being promoted at all on the site?” Ken asked.
“It’s a chat site. There are all kinds of people there—and lots of religious people who think suicide is a sin. So no.”
“Have you ever been approached by an administrator of DyingFriends?”
“No.” Even the small effort of talking seemed to be wiping Mr. Woo out, and he hunched in a storm of coughing. Lei stood up. “Can I get you a glass of water?”
He nodded, still coughing, and she went into the vast kitchen and filled a glass, brought it back. His liver-spotted hand trembled as he drank, but he calmed his breathing.
“Thanks so much for helping us,” Ken said. “And sorry to disturb you.”
“High point of my day, having FBI agents come to my house,” Mr. Woo said. “I’m sure I won’t see you again, but good luck with what you’re looking for.”
They let themselves out, and Lei took a deep breath of fresh, sunshiny air. “God. What a way to end. You can tell by all this he was a successful man at one time.” She gestured toward the house as they crossed the bridge.
“I know. Depressing.” Ken unlocked the SUV and they got in. “This is brutal. I think I understand why some people want to ‘get out early,’ though he didn’t seem to be one of them.”
“That’s a kind of courage. To live to the end, looking death in the eye.” Lei sighed. “But I’m beginning to understand the reasons better, and why people might even want help ending their own life.”
“It’s a slippery slope,” Ken said. Silence fell as they got on the road, each occupied with their thoughts. Lei spent the drive researching Clyde Woo. A businessman worth millions, he owned a chain of convenience stores. According to the most recent news article she could find, he was “graciously retired and enjoying his days golfing.”
It looked like it had been a long time since Clyde Woo had golfed, but the article was dated only a year ago.
She looked up their next listing, a woman named Betsy Brown. There was no information in the system but the driver’s license basics and nothing on her personally. She was a thirty-two-year-old Caucasian female who shared a residence with her mother.
The house they pulled up to was modest, and Betsy Brown was in bed with a laptop on her lap when the caregiver let them in. She was puffy, with the indoor look of someone who hadn’t seen the sun in months. The smile she gave them was strictly for form’s sake.
After they’d stated their purpose, she made a little gesture to the keyboard. “I can still type, and I can still eat and breathe on my own—but I don’t know how long that will last. I have ALS. Lou Gehrig’s disease.”
Lei must have looked blank because Betsy continued. “It’s a neurological disease that causes progressive paralysis until finally all the body’s systems
shut down. However, I’ll have all my marbles up until the very end.”
“We’re very sorry to hear that,” Ken said. Lei felt any words she could think of clogging her throat, “oh shit” being the first thing that had come to mind.
“So yeah, DyingFriends is a place I can rant and rave; I can network with other people in my situation. I’ve found a whole ALS subgroup, since ALS is its own special hell and is virtually always fatal within five years. So frankly, if I decide to get a little help getting out early, I figure I’m doing myself and the world a service.”
Lei and Ken left without anything specific, but Lei knew she’d never forget the woman’s hopeless but defiant eyes. She was only a few years older than Lei and had been living an athletic life up until she began stumbling and falling on her daily runs.
Back in the Acura, Lei did some relaxation breathing and restrained herself from rubbing the pendant around her neck. “Didn’t think it could get worse than the old guy, but that was worse.”
“I know. I think we need a break.” Ken drove them to a nearby Zippy’s. Lei ordered a bowl of chili and a salad and made herself eat. Being sad for these people and their horrible situations wasn’t going to solve the case—though she’d begun to wonder if there was going to be any real criminal that could be brought to justice.
Ken held a mug of coffee and looked at her over the rim. “Awfully quiet, Texeira.”
“I know. I’m really…I don’t know. Betsy Brown. She was a runner before the ALS.”
“I know a little about it. It actually occurs a little more frequently in athletes. Terrible disease.” He set the mug down.
“So do you think it’s criminal for her to have someone kill her before she eventually smothers to death, trapped in her own body?”
“Not for us to judge.” Ken shook his head. “Just for us to figure out who’s setting this up and catch them.”
“That’s true, and I get that. Thank God our position is clear. But shouldn’t people have some choice, some control, as Mr. Woo said, in how and when they go when they know they’re going?”