by Toby Neal
Sophie smiled. “You are fond of Mr. Miller. I find that I am, too. I thought whoever was on the motorcycle was going to shoot him, so—I was a little violent.”
“You were badass!” Antigua’s smile was admiring. “Wasn’t she, Jake?”
Sophie turned to look at her partner as he entered the kitchen. “Sophie is the baddest badass.” Jake said. His grin was as cocksure as ever, but it faded as they locked eyes.
Sophie could not look away. Her mouth dried. Her heart thudded. She felt dizzy, and wanted to throw herself on him and feel him crush her close.
What the hell was this? She must be in shock or something.
Jake swung abruptly toward the big steel fridge and reached inside for a beer. “Miller’s in love with you, Soph. He told me he’s drafting a marriage proposal.”
“Ha,” Sophie said. “Your joking makes me uncomfortable. I have told you this. Please stop.”
“He really did say that. And I can’t help myself, sometimes.” Jake turned, popped the top, and took a long drink. Sophie tore her gaze away from the sight and kept her eyes on Antigua as the woman tossed the circle of dough in the air and caught it.
“I wouldn’t blame Miller a bit if he was smitten.” Antigua said. “Jake, I was just telling Sophie I saw the whole thing from the window—and what she did was like something out of a movie.”
“Just doing my job. But I could use a beer, too, today.” Something had to work to calm her abraded nerves, steady her for the job ahead.
Jake pulled out another beer, popped the top, and handed it to her. Something like electricity zapped her fingers as their hands touched, and she almost dropped the bottle. He moved away and leaned on the counter. “I thought you didn’t like beer.”
“Sometimes it’s necessary.” Sophie lifted the bottle, took a swig, and grimaced. “Unfortunately, it has not improved since the last time I tried it.” She took another big sip, but she really didn’t like the beverage. Two gulps were more than enough. She set the bottle on the counter. “Well, I have a quick errand to run. See you all soon.”
“Keys are inside the garage on a peg,” Antigua called. “Come back in time for pizza!”
“I would hate to miss it.” Perfectly true. Sophie walked out, conscious of Jake’s gaze on her back.
Hopefully this wouldn’t be the last time she ever saw him.
Chapter Twenty-Six
The cheap motel across from the Paradise Treasures gallery building, whose room she’d secured online under her alias, at least had a functioning air conditioner. Afternoon in Lahaina was sweltering, and the little window unit squeaked and groaned, dripping audibly as Sophie set up her surveillance station.
She checked all the windows facing the gallery building. She’d done a search and confirmed that the gallery rented not just the bottom floor, but all six floors of the building, two floors of which were given over to residential units.
Assan was in one of them. She was certain of it. The six-floor building had a great vantage point of the parking lot where they’d been shot at by the drone. He’d probably watched from one of the units and operated the drone from there, safe and comfortable. No wonder the police hadn’t been able to find anyone in the street who might have been operating the unit.
Sophie had expected no less.
Assan might be on the other side of the building, but it was too late to change her position. She just had to hope that she’d spot him. Sophie took the TV off the peeling wooden laminate stand and pushed the stand over to the window. She unfolded a tripod and positioned it on the stand in front of the window, mounting a powerful pair of binoculars on it. Now that she’d made her escape from the Miller estate and was safely ensconced here, she had all the time in the world to stalk her prey.
She took her time going over the weapons, loading them, adjusting the holsters, and giving each a rubdown before she finally set her eyes to the binoculars, leaning over to stretch her back, scanning across the building. Her visual field took in the whole of the building, the street in front, and the small parking lot to the rear.
The smell of gun oil, the cool breeze from the humming air conditioner, and the stressful multitude of decisions she had made that had led to this moment—all of it fell away as Sophie blocked out sound with her headphones and settled in to wait, working a slow grid across the front of the sixth floor, searching.
She had to stop Assan. Connor had failed to do so, and had lost his life. The FBI had had its chance to deal with her ex.
She tracked slowly, letting breathing relax her into a hypnotic state.
From her position, she covered both the front and the back entrances to the gallery. After ascertaining that all the windows of the upper two floors were closed and covered by blinds, Sophie redirected her surveillance to the entrance and exits of the gallery.
She spotted Magda Kennedy pulling into a reserved spot near the gallery’s back door in a sleek silver Mercedes coupe. The woman opened her door and got out. Even in the binoculars’ ruthlessly magnifying eye, Kennedy looked stunning. Not a hair of her shining black coif was out of place as she retrieved a briefcase from her seat. She must not be working the floor today, because she wore an ivory silk blouse and a black pencil skirt with high heels. The woman hit the lock button, making the car’s lights flash, then swiped a keycard over the back door and disappeared inside.
So, Kennedy didn’t live on the premises. Who occupied those top floors? Were they rentals?
Sophie pushed away from the binoculars. Her eyes needed a rest, and this clearly was going to take a while. She pulled a small digital video camera out of her backpack and aimed it at the exit—if Assan left the building, it wasn’t going to be through the highly visible front gallery area.
She set the recorder to feed to her phone and then opened her satellite link laptop, doing a search for the TMK number of the Paradise Treasures building.
The fifth floor was broken into three units, all rented. The sixth floor was one large unit, listed as “storage.”
“Storage, my left buttock,” Sophie muttered. The top floor sported a balcony with a round table and a couple of lounge chairs, clearly visible. She applied her eyes to the binoculars and investigated the area carefully. A sliding glass door granted egress to the deck, and closed blinds hid whoever or whatever was contained by the apartment—but there was no way that penthouse just held art and framing materials.
Sophie picked up her phone, eyeing the list of missed calls, wishing she hadn’t given any of her friends or her father Mary Watson’s number. Right on cue, the phone vibrated again—Jake.
Sophie suppressed a pang of guilt and slid the phone under the thin pillow to muffle it. She reapplied her eye to the lenses, moving to check each person who went in or out of the building.
She had swiped a bag of nuts and nibbled on some, wishing she’d taken longer to provision herself for this stakeout. She’d been in too much of a hurry to get out of Miller’s compound and get set up—but now that she was, the biggest danger lay in breaking cover and drawing attention to herself.
The sunset over Lahaina was a long pageant, beginning with a golden glow and ending with spectacular, salmon-streaked clouds over the low violet silhouette of Lanai on the horizon. Sophie wished she could enjoy it, but every hour that went by narrowed the window of possible discovery. Jake would sound the alarm soon, and eventually, Miller’s CR-V, abandoned several blocks away, would be discovered. Her partner would likely guess what she was up to and look for places where she might have been able to rent a room, or assume she’d been taken by Assan. Neither option was good.
Lights bloomed on in the sixth floor of the building, and Sophie’s pulse picked up. A man’s burly shadow passed across drapes lit from within.
Assan was there.
But she had no way to confirm her intuition.
The gallery closed. Streetlights came on. Magda Kennedy exited through the back door, tossed a briefcase into the Mercedes, fired it up, and left.
If Sophie’d been able to get into the Ghost software, she was almost sure that program could have hacked the building’s security and reset it. Hours had gone by, and Sophie still didn’t have full confirmation of Assan’s presence.
But he was in that building. On the sixth floor. And he was too smart to show himself.
“Snake demon with a forked tongue,” Sophie snarled. She pushed away and dropped to the floor to do pushups.
A hundred later, her energy coming back, Sophie stood and went through a quick version of her cardio and yoga program, ending seated in lotus position, calm and clear.
Time to get this done.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Sophie took a quick shower to further clear her head. After dressing, she strapped on weapons at shoulder, hip, and ankle, slipping a slender knife into a flat Velcro scabbard on her calf. She slid on a black cotton pocketed vest to hide all of the weapons. She packed her small backpack and wiped down the weapons and all the surfaces of the room. Putting on one of Shank Miller’s logoed trucker hats with Mary Watson’s big sunglasses, Sophie checked around the area for any signs of personal occupation.
She’d removed everything.
Sophie left the motel without speaking to anyone. Sunset had finally yielded to velvety night, but streetlights shed bright yellow pools of light on the sidewalks where people still passed to and fro, their voices bright, preoccupied with their Maui vacation and happy feelings that Sophie could scarcely remember.
She crossed the street, checking that the area was clear. She stowed her backpack in a dark area behind one of the dumpsters and stayed in the deepest shadows as she slid along the back of the Paradise Treasures Gallery.
Coming from behind, she hit the surveillance camera covering the back door with a shot of matte black paint. Dropping to a squat, she took out a tiny set of Phillips-head screwdrivers and, working quickly, unscrewed the keycard slider mechanism, lowering it to dangle from one wire. She disconnected the card reader contacts and brushed them against each other. A spark lit the dark, and the back door gave an accommodating click.
Rising, Sophie quickly replaced the broken keycard mechanism so it wouldn’t draw attention, and grasped the handle of the door in her gloved hand, pushing it down. The door yawned open, revealing a dark hall. Sophie slipped inside and shut the door.
The break-in hadn’t taken more than two minutes.
She turned to the panel beside the back door, looking for the alarm. Sure enough, a timer was already counting down, activated by the door opening. She had three minutes to find the code.
Sophie sprayed the buttons on the panel with a fluorescing spray and hit the pad with a handheld black light. Four numbers, smudgy with fingertip grease, lit up. She plugged the four numbers into her phone’s codebreaker software, and ran the combinations.
She punched them in. Five seconds showed on the timer when the alarm went green.
Sophie let out her breath in relief, stowed her tools, and walked down the hall. She tested the doors along the hallway, checking for anyone still in the building. They were all locked.
Sophie scanned for the elevator. She looked for cameras and saw none in this back area—but that didn’t mean she wasn’t being watched.
Sophie found the elevator, hidden behind a painted screen, near the service counter where she’d picked up her painting. But did she want to take it, and possibly alert anyone left in the building by the mechanical sounds it made, the lights changing?
There had to be a set of stairs.
The stairs were back behind a decorative column, and they were locked. Sophie took out her lock picks and went to work.
She opened the stairwell door cautiously and peeked up from beneath her billed cap. A surveillance cam in a dome-shaped covering eyed her with its blank stare. She tipped her head down, took aim at the dome, and shot it with the black paint. The stairwell filled with the sharp smell of the paint.
In case she’d missed something, Sophie kept back against the wall and ascended the stairs on light feet, her weapon drawn.
She was not going to be caught by surprise again.
Reaching the top of the stairs, she tried the handle of the door marked 6.
The knob turned with the well-oiled ease of a good piece of hardware; much better quality than the one below—which was odd.
She frowned, looking down at the matte steel handle in her gloved hand. This door lock would have been much more challenging for her to pick than the first one—the mechanism was heavy, the brand name expensive. And yet, it was open.
But she’d come this far. She had to check what, or who, was on this floor.
She turned the handle and gave a gentle pull.
The door swung soundlessly open to reveal a foyer-like area. A lacquered black door, framed by waist-high Chinese dragons in brass, stood directly ahead of her. The setup reminded her of her father’s apartment in Nu‘uanu on Oahu: tasteful. Expensive. Apparently empty, but very secure.
Sophie hesitated in the doorway.
If Assan was there, he had to know she was coming.
As if responding to her thoughts, the shiny door opened.
“Hello, Sophie.” Assan spoke casually, confidently, dark eyes beneath heavy brows sliding over her like greasy fingers. He was dressed in a black silk martial arts gi over matching pants, a cruel smile bending his full mouth. “You took your time getting here.”
Sophie’s heart beat with heavy thuds. She raised her weapon and pointed it at the middle of his chest. “Today is a good day to die.”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Assan laughed. “You want to kill me so soon? That’s no fun at all.”
Of all the things Sophie had imagined, this was not one of them—Assan waiting for her, greeting her, unarmed, apparently nonchalant. He wasn’t afraid of her. He hadn’t been that last time either, when she’d almost shot him.
He didn’t know how much she’d changed from the cowed young bride she’d been.
“I wonder how you’ll explain away murdering an unarmed man. That won’t do your career in security much good,” Assan said.
“I don’t care how it looks.” It wasn’t murder when the person was already trying to kill you. “Do you want it in the head, or the heart?” This had to be done, not just for revenge, but for the good of humanity. She understood the Ghost’s mindset more every day.
“You must be hungry, thirsty. That stakeout across the street seemed a little unplanned. Come in, I’ve prepared some refreshments for us.” Assan pushed the door wider. “You can check for threats, if you like.”
“You are a threat just by breathing.”
“You overestimate me.” He leered. “I made a permanent impression on you and loom large in your life. They say your first always does.”
This was the man who’d stolen her innocence and tortured her in ways she didn’t even want to remember. How he’d enjoyed it! And she wasn’t his only victim.
“I know what you are, now.” Sophie took a step out of the stairs’ doorway. “A sadist who preys on the fear and suffering of others. A conscienceless psychopath, a disease on the earth that needs to be stamped out. Thanks for making it easy for me.” Eyes on Assan, she advanced slowly, peripheral vision alert. Assan liked to do his own dirty work, but he was no purist. He’d have a backup plan or other staff handy if he needed them.
“You want revenge. I understand that. But if you shoot me—someone you care about will suffer. Someone who needs you to let her out of a very dark place.” He held up his phone. On it, too far away to make out, she could see a live video feed with a human figure against some kind of white backdrop.
Sophie halted. The Glock felt too heavy for her hands.
Of course, he wasn’t just going to let her come in and shoot him. He’d anticipated her moves, watched her, and found leverage to use against her. This was Assan, and that was how he operated. She had to find whoever it was, get that person out, then shoot him.
Her phone was on in
the small webbing athletic pack around her waist. She needed help. She lowered the weapon and pointed it at his groin. “I don’t need to kill you right away. We can take it in stages.”
Assan chuckled richly. “How my child bride has grown up. I’ve never found anyone quite like you, which is why I’ve gone to all this trouble to get you back. You’re mine, you know. No one else will ever put his hands on you. I’ve made sure of that.”
Sophie took another step forward. “What do you mean?” Connor’s face rose in her mind’s eye. This was her chance to find out if Assan had anything to do with his death.
“There will never be anyone but me, for you.” He spoke the same words Connor had written Sophie in his note, and though she shuddered, it wasn’t a straight answer. Assan opened his arm in a welcoming gesture. “I’ve taken care of your lovers and made sure that there will never be anyone else for you, either. And in the end, you came to me just as I planned.”
Sophie needed more information before she shot him. But like she’d told him, they could take it in stages. She lowered the pistol to point at his knee.
“No, no, no.” Assan held up the phone again. “You shoot me, and I push this button. The air keeping the woman you need to rescue will be cut off.”
Sophie swallowed a ball of tightness, of hatred, of helpless frustration. “What do you want?”
“You, of course. Come in. Relax. I’m no barbarian. We can have a drink.”
A sense of hopelessness rose in Sophie, swamping her like a rising tide.
Inevitable.
Her capture, her suffering, her death at his hands—already scripted. She couldn’t catch a break to save her life—a cliché Jake had said one time about a hapless co-worker.
Jake.
She had to get word to him. Marcella was too far away to help.
Sophie lowered the weapon to block her action as she slipped a hand into the waist pack, pressing hard on Jake’s number, speed dial number one on the burner phone. She felt the vibration of the phone. “Where is this woman you’re holding captive?”
