Paradise Crime Thrillers Box Set

by Toby Neal

“Yes.” It was all Sophie could do to make her throat work enough to get the word out. She was in terrible pain, her head and face throbbing, her throat dry, and for a moment, she wished she could stay in the comfortable gray forever.

  But only for a moment. She was glad to have escaped.

  Now, hours later, hydrated and medicated for pain, her father Francis Smithson beside her, Sophie watched the sunrise. Because the sun came up on the other side of the island, she could see the line of its light hit the water out in the ocean and gradually recede to strike the tops of the buildings, the palm trees, the surf, the beach.

  Her father held her hand. She couldn’t remember that happening since she was a child. He had large hands, long-fingered like her own, the backs the color of buttery leather, soft and pinkish on the palms. Her thumb stroked a callous around the web of his thumb.

  “That’s my signing hand.” She could hear the smile in his voice. “I sign a lot of papers.”

  Sophie would have nodded but moving her head hurt too much. She had been injured in some terrible way that she was afraid to know exactly. The bandages on the right side of her face and head felt stiff and bulky, and adhesive pulled at her skin. She’d asked for them to be loosened and had been told they were on so tight because they were pressure bandages.

  At some point she had been intubated and so her throat still felt dry and abraded. Her father squeezed her hand. “I’m so glad you’re awake. You’re going to be okay, Sophie.”

  Sophie turned toward him very carefully, keeping her head propped on the pillow. Even with pain medication it throbbed, as if her brain was too big for her skull, which was probably what had happened. The round must have creased her skull, creating enough swelling to keep her unconscious for a while. “How long was I sleeping?”

  “You were in a coma for three days. It was touch and go there for a while.” He squeezed her hand again as she gazed into his large brown eyes. She shared those eyes, but lighter brown and set at a tilt, the evidence of her mother’s Thai heritage. Francis Smithson was the product of her white grandmother and black grandfather. This pairing had given him an angular face, full lips, and level brows. His hair was buzzed short and looked just like Sophie’s, but for the swatches of gray at his temples.

  There was a guardedness in the way her father looked at her, in the way the nurses treated her—there was something very wrong about her face, and it was time to ask about it. “Why are there so many bandages on my face?”

  Her father let go of her hand and rubbed the short nap of his hair, looking out the window. “When that man fired on you, the bullet went through your mouth, destroyed your cheekbone, and creased your temple.”

  Sophie tried to comprehend this.

  She remembered leaping for the weapon. Moonlight, gleaming on the chrome barrel of the gun. Her hands grabbing Sloane’s wrist, thrusting upward. She thought she’d been able to deflect the barrel from her face—but apparently not.

  “Through my mouth?” No wonder it hurt so much to talk, to move the muscles of her jaw. “My teeth?”

  “Your mouth was open. The round missed your teeth by a fraction. You were so lucky.” He took her hand again. His trembled.

  She didn’t feel lucky. Now that she knew the extent of her injury, the strange pulpy sensation in her cheek made sense. The round had gone through her cheekbone on its way to creasing her skull. Her face must be destroyed on one side.

  “As soon as the swelling goes down, we’re having the best plastic surgeon in the United States flown in. You’ll be good as new in no time,” Her father declared, in the official speechmaking voice he used for United Nations addresses.

  “I think I need some more medication.”

  “Now that you’re awake they took you off the morphine drip. We have to make do with these.” Her father fumbled some pills from a small paper cup into his hand and poured her some water. She swallowed the medication with difficulty. “They want you off the hard stuff and to be able to monitor your own pain levels.”

  Sophie wanted to ask about the case, but her father was not the one to speak to about that. The pain pills worked quickly, making her pleasantly floaty and drowsy. “I’d like to speak with Jake Dunn when I wake up from my nap.”

  “He will be relieved. That man has made a pest of himself. I had to send him away.”

  Sophie could well imagine Dunn’s restless pacing and bossy manner, and she would have smiled if it hadn’t hurt so much.

  “You almost gave me a heart attack.” Dunn glared at Sophie, gray eyes accusing.

  “Like how I felt when you got electrocuted?” Sophie raised her brows, and winced. The muscles of her face were still traumatized by the gunshot wound. She was actually looking forward to being under general anesthesia for the repairs to her face. She didn’t let herself think about what her face currently looked like, or even what it was going to look like after the surgery.

  “Yeah, about that. Can’t believe I made a rookie mistake like that. My excuses: it was dark and I was in a hurry. Just goes to show you it never pays to be in a hurry.” Dunn winked to make his comment into an innuendo as he lowered his bulk into the hard plastic chair beside her bed. “I spent a lot of time on this chair in the last few days. And these don’t get any more comfortable.”

  “I didn’t ask you to hang around,” Sophie said defensively. “My father is here. Marcella is here. Just give me a situation report.”

  “You wound me, madam. You’re my partner. And it should’ve been me shot in the head, quite frankly.” Dunn’s brows drew together as his face grew serious, his gray eyes intent. “You should never have gone in without backup.”

  “That doesn’t make me feel better.” Sophie took a sip of water to ease her scratchy throat. “Just tell me what happened. I thought I got his gun hand up in time, but I guess not.”

  “What’s not good is that I didn’t get a good enough look to positively identify the shooter. I got to the top of the fence, just in time to see you jump at him as he shot you in the head. I fired at him, and he threw you into the pit and ran off.”

  “He threw me into the pit?” Sophie’s stomach lurched at the thought of that deep, twenty-foot round gash in the earth, already the grave of three women.

  Dunn’s voice was flat, his jaw tight. “I got over that fence as fast as I could. I thought you were dead, but I climbed down into the pit to check. My helmet’s electronics had been fried by cutting the wire, but I was able to call Hilo PD on the radio by using your helmet. They were on their way by the time the noise from our exchange of fire brought the floodlights up and the cult people came running out to investigate.” Dunn blew out a breath. “We ended up flying out on the Security Solutions’ helicopter, because it was faster than an ambulance or any of the first responders that Hilo PD could get to come to that remote location. I flew with you…” Dunn looked down, opening and shutting his big hands. “I carried you.”

  Clearly that had been traumatic for brash Jake Dunn. She tried to picture him climbing out of the pit with her in his arms, the helicopter landing inside the compound, the police breaching the exterior gate, him climbing aboard and taking off, flying all the way to Queen’s Hospital with her in his arms. “I bet I ruined your clothes,” she said with an attempt at a smile. “I hear head wounds bleed a lot.”

  “You have no idea.” He shut his eyes. “I wasn’t sure you were going to make it.”

  Guilt made Sophie move restlessly. “So what happened with Dougal Sloane? And the case?”

  “Hilo PD came in at my call, like I said. They tried to find Sloane, but he’s gone to ground. They scooped up Sandoval Jackson and took him in for questioning. They sent in the cadaver dogs. They found evidence of bodies in spite of a lot of the dirt being dumped in Hilo Bay. A judge is reviewing the case to make a judgment on whether or not the evidence was illegally gained and will be excluded from any court proceedings.”

  Sophie’s dry throat tightened further. “I thought they’d be able to get a search
warrant.”

  “The Society of Light has excellent representation. Jackson lawyered up right away when they took him in, and they’ve challenged any basis for you and me to be inside the compound. That could make the forensic evidence gained from the dirt pile inadmissible, the bone you found, everything—depending on what the judge decides. Jackson has been charged with the murders, but he claims to have no knowledge of the women’s whereabouts—that this whole thing was Sloane, acting independently.”

  “Sloane’s a convenient scapegoat for Jackson.” Sophie shut her eyes, overwhelmed by pain and tiredness all of a sudden. “Jackson knew what Sloane was doing.” She remembered overhearing their conversation over her inert body back at the compound. “He knew, but he didn’t want to know.”

  Francis Smithson’s resonant voice woke Sophie with a start. “Time for my daughter’s surgery prep, Mr. Dunn. You’ll have to check in tomorrow and see how she did.”

  Sophie opened her eyes. Warmth departed when Jake Dunn let go of her hand and stood up in a blur of motion. She hadn’t known he was holding it, or even that she’d fallen asleep so abruptly.

  “Be well.” Dunn leaned over to kiss her forehead. “You’ll be fine, and good as new in no time. I’ll check in tomorrow.” His over-hearty tone told her that he was afraid for her, and she couldn’t muster a response as he left.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Sophie came around slowly, blinded by a light in her eyes as a hand held open one eyelid.

  “Response is good.”

  Sophie recognized the voice of her plastic surgeon, Dr. Littleton. Littleton had come to work on her from Washington, D.C., and she’d met him yesterday during surgery prep. A friend of her father’s, he worked on combat vets, politicians, and people with enough money to build their own hospitals.

  Littleton let go of her eyelid. “Sophie, can you hear me? Blink if you can.”

  Sophie blinked. Speaking or moving was impossible—her head was immobilized in some sort of frame.

  “Good. Now, I want you to just rest, while I talk to you and your father about the operation. You can listen in if you feel up to it, and ask any questions you might have.”

  Sophie blinked again. Her head felt unwieldy as a bowling ball, and her face was too tightly strapped to move her jaw. She couldn’t imagine trying to speak.

  “To begin, I rebuilt your cheekbone with a prosthetic device. We will have to see if the material takes, but so far, I’ve never had a reject on my hands.”

  Never had a reject on my hands. It sounded like something said about a defective factory part.

  “Secondly, I repaired the skin over the wound area. That was the reason the surgery took so long.” Sophie opened her eyes to make an effort to show that she was paying attention. She really did want to know what had been done to her face. “Sophie, I was at it for eight hours. Your injury is much like that of many of our troops returning from Iraq and Afghanistan, so I’ve had a good deal of practice working on this kind of damage to the face.” He paused, looking down at notes on a clipboard. “The exit wound area was rather extensive. I had to do a graft.”

  “How—how will she look?” Francis Smithson’s voice was tight with anxiety. He seemed more worried about her appearance than Sophie felt herself. Maybe he didn’t know how little that mattered to her. How could they have had such a miscommunication?

  “We will need to do several surgeries to minimize the scar. The bullet entered your mouth, broke the cheekbone, and continued up the side of your head, creasing your skull. You are very lucky that your skull wasn’t damaged further, or we wouldn’t be having this conversation right now. You’d be planning a funeral, Frank.” Littleton’s voice was definite, leaving no room for argument. It appeared he needed to convince her father that Sophie had bigger things to worry about than the plastic surgery to her face. “When the round exited, it tore off a large flap of skin at the cheekbone area, leaving an open wound. After I put in the prosthetic cheekbone, I took a patch of skin off of Sophie’s hip and sewed it over the wound. It’s a little…” Littleton cleared his throat. “It’s a little rough, but we’ll get it to where you can live with it.”

  Sophie opened her eyes again with an effort. She hadn’t realized they’d closed. “I’m sure you did all you could.”

  “Indeed I did, young lady.” Littleton patted Sophie’s hand through the bedclothes. “I hope you’ll be as beautiful as ever in time—with a few scars to add character.”

  “I’m just happy to be alive.” Sophie closed her eyes and sank back into sleep.

  A week later, Sophie finished a very quiet, gentle yoga practice in the corner of her father’s penthouse suite. He wouldn’t hear of her going anywhere but “home” to recover, and she’d been at their familiar, luxurious apartment for three days after discharge from the hospital.

  It was finally time to remove the surgery bandages, though she hadn’t told her father that. She wanted only the company of one friend to support her during a moment she’d been dreading. The thought of seeing the mutilated side of her face and head was giving her more anxiety than she had anticipated.

  Ginger, in her cozy dog bed, lifted her head and rose at the sound of the doorbell. Sophie stood up and unwound from a stretch that opened up the vertebrae of her lower back. It still hurt to move, and she was often dizzy when standing up. The doctors had assured her that these side effects from the head injury would eventually fade.

  Sophie opened the door. “Hey.”

  Marcella embraced Sophie without hesitation as she stepped inside. Her friend’s arms felt strong, warm, and life-giving. Sophie had fended off multiple attempted visits from Dunn, Connor Remarkian, and even Ben Waxman. She’d had a long phone conversation with Lei Texeira on Maui, and a post-shoot debrief meeting with Dr. Kinoshita, but other than them, she just wasn’t ready to see anyone besides her father and Marcella until she had assessed the extent of her injury.

  “There’s just something about getting shot in the face,” Sophie said, gazing into Marcella’s warm brown eyes. “Just something really demoralizing about it.”

  “I can’t even imagine.” Marcella cupped Sophie’s good cheek. “But you know that you’re beautiful regardless. Are you sure you want to do this now?”

  “Dr. Littleton said I can remove the bandages today, and that’s what I want to do. Let’s just get it over with.” Sophie could hear the steel in her own voice.

  The two women walked into the bathroom, where the mirror Sophie had been avoiding was lit with a strong neon glare.

  Marcella seated her on the toilet, and began to tug and lift at the bandages covering the right side of her face as Sophie watched Marcella’s face closely. Marcella gave nothing away. Her brown eyes were intent, her full mouth relaxed, holding the same expression she’d had when beginning to lift the bandages off. “Not bad,” Marcella said, looking over the area in question. “Seems like the skin graft took, thank the good Lord.”

  Sophie stood up and walked to the sink. She turned her face to be able to see the surgery area. Her cheek on the injured side was twice as big. Her eye was sunk in a pouch of black and blue swelling. The skin graft was clearly visible, beginning in the middle of her cheekbone and extending up the side of her face into her hairline and around into her scalp. She’d already known the size of graft area, because she had a matching wound on her hip. “Where your bikini will hide it,” Littleton had said, with his gift for optimism.

  A row of black stitches surrounded the graft, giving the area the look of a crude patchwork quilt. When Sophie looked closer, she could see how tiny the stitches were. They were almost too small to have been done by human hands.

  Littleton was one of the best in his field, her father had said. There was no reconstructive surgery on the face that he hadn’t had extensive experience practicing. When the stitches were out, the wound’s distorted, horrible outline would be much less obvious—but the fact remained that the area was dented and dimpled, too.

  “I look like
a pirate,” Sophie said. “I look like…” She couldn’t find words.

  “You look like a beautiful, brave woman who’s been shot in the face and surgically repaired by the best,” Marcella said. She burst into tears, covering her face with her hands.

  “That doesn’t reassure me.” Sophie hugged her friend as Marcella pulled toilet paper off of the roll, dabbing her eyes and blowing her nose noisily. “I’m a freak.”

  “You are not. I’m just so glad you’re alive. We all have to remember that, going forward. And that’s why I’m crying,” Marcella said. “Because I’m happy you’re still here, and you’re going to be good as new in no time.”

  “People keep saying that to me.” Sophie turned back to her disturbing image in the mirror. She traced the outline of the skin graft’s stitching with a fingertip. “I won’t have hair here. I guess I’ll have to grow my hair out and find a way to cover up the bald spot.”

  “You can’t get discouraged by this. Dr. Littleton said this was only the beginning of the repairs.”

  Sophie shrugged. She couldn’t take her eyes off of the wasteland of her face. “Good thing I don’t have a boyfriend.”

  “This won’t make a bit of difference to anyone who really cares about you,” Marcella snapped.

  “You know who has been missing from this whole thing? Alika. It’s really over with him. If he cared about me at all, he would have visited me. He would have called.”

  Marcella set a hand on her shoulder. “I did call him to tell him the news. He said he’d be praying for you.”

  Tears prickled Sophie’s eyes for the first time.

  Some part of her had still been hoping that with this crisis in her life, Alika would come, like she’d come for him when he was in need. But he hadn’t. At least Connor Remarkian had tried to see her. And Dunn would have moved right into the apartment if her father had let him. And even the Ghost… She had some memory of his voice, a sense that he had come to her when she was in that gray place, but no real memory of it.