by Toby Neal
Nakai lived on, one breath at a time—and by the time he finally found another worm, he was weak enough and hungry enough to eat it.
Chapter Twenty
Breaching the charred door of Todd “Connor” Remarkian’s apartment in the ritzy Pendragon Arches apartment building the next day, Marcella wore rubber boots, gloves, a coverall, and a particle mask as she ducked through the crime scene tape. There was something to be said for good old-fashioned police work, because nothing told a story about what happened quite like a crime scene itself.
Until now she’d relied on data and information gathered by the fire investigators, bomb squad, and HPD to give her information about the “murder” of Todd Remarkian, but at this point, only she knew that the whole thing might have been staged. She really should have briefed Ben Waxman, her SAC, with Sophie’s intel about Remarkian/Hamilton, but Marcella wanted to get a solid lead, some kind of intel or confirmation, before she told him such an outrageous story. Sophie had been Waxman’s pet while in the FBI, but she was currently on the outs with the Bureau following a disagreement over the ownership of her rogue data-mining program, DAVID.
Nothing was ever simple where Sophie was concerned, least of all the situation with the Ghost. But if Sophie was telling the truth, this apartment had been the Ghost’s home up until his staged “death” at the hands of Sophie’s ex.
“What a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive,” Marcella quoted as she moved forward into the gutted apartment. Her partner, Matt Rogers, was back at the office working alone. She’d told him she needed to get her car serviced, and if the squint of his blue eyes was any indication, he hadn’t believed her. He knew she was working on something involving Sophie. “And funny how one set of lies seems to spawn another. Thanks, Soph, for setting me up to lie to my partner.”
That reminded her that Sophie’s partner Jake Dunn had called again, frantic for word of her. “Did she text you? Anything? I know you know where her secret lair is!”
She’d brushed him off, too. “She’s bailed on all of us, Jake. Her father’s heard from her, so we know she’s alive. That’s all we have right now.”
Marcella hadn’t liked the pain that vibrated in the silence of Jake’s non-reply. The guy needed to get over her. Sophie was seriously screwed up, first by what had happened with her ex, then the non-relationship with Alika, then the debacle with the Ghost—and now, she might be in big trouble with a possible murder charge. “I’ll let you know if she contacts me, Jake, but I think we need to write her off at this point.”
“Some friend you are,” Jake had snarled, and ended the call.
If he only knew…
One more brick in the wall she’d have to take apart with her friend when she finally found her.
Marcella switched on her high-intensity light, shining it around the charred interior of the apartment. She breathed shallowly through her mouth, running the beam over the remains of furniture blown around the space and then moved aside by the investigation teams. Heavy soot streaked everything, and the air was close and reeked of smoke and fire suppression chemicals.
She wasn’t sure what she was looking for. “I’ll know it when I see it,” she muttered to herself. “This guy was living a double life. Something in here has to show that.”
She circled the space where the body had been discovered in the living area, marked in tape. Nothing of interest there. She moved through the open kitchen, feeling a twinge when she spotted a metal tin of the Thai tea Sophie favored resting on what remained of one of the cabinets. The metal sink had been dislodged and landed on the body, shearing off the toes—she’d never forget the sight of Sophie bending over that area, examining the corpse’s foot with intense clinical detachment.
Marcella moved on to the bedroom. The door of this room had been closed and thus the damage minimal, confined to smoke and some charred streaking as the fire bled through the doorway.
A king size bed, draped in a classy but impersonal manly burgundy spread, gave no clue as to the identity of the man calling himself Todd Remarkian. The whole place was as generic as a hotel suite.
“And that in itself tells you something,” Marcella said aloud, opening one of the side table drawers beside the bed to reveal a notepad and pen. Nothing else. “Don’t you know that too anonymous is a clue, too, Mr. Ghost?”
Marcella went on to the closet, a walk-in affair lined in aromatic cedar that did little to combat the stench of the rest of the place. Her light moved across rows of shoes that revealed a casual but upscale style and racks of button-down shirts and neatly pressed chinos. Marcella felt a twinge. “These should go to someone who will use them. All these clothes need is a wash. But no. Not likely. Everything will just go into the landfill.” She used a long shard of wood she’d picked up to poke at the shoe rack on the back wall—and she sucked in a breath of surprise when, with a protesting click, the wooden section moved.
“Holy crap.” The guy probably had a safe back here.
Marcella wedged into the narrow space and wrapped her gloved fingers around the protruding edge of what looked to be a recessed opening. She pulled and pushed, jostling the shoes off the rack. Soot jammed the mechanism, but finally she got the rack open—and what she was facing was another door, this one without a handle but with a depression for sliding it aside.
She put her fingers in, and, grunting with effort, pushed the door open.
On the other side of the panel was a bedroom with an identical layout to the one she’d just come from.
“Holy crap,” Marcella whispered again, and walked forward into the space.
Chapter Twenty-One
Sophie lifted a hand in thanks to Tiger and followed the Shepherd into the dim of the cave, conscious of the teenage boys behind her. She tweaked Ginger’s leash and brought the Lab close as she stumbled over a rock.
The cavern was huge inside, but the main light source after the opening was a fire burning deep within, venting up through some hidden space in the ceiling so that the air was fresh.
A living area had been set up near the fire, with a cooking hearth, rugs, and rolled-up pallets that she guessed were beds. Off to the right, barely visible, glowing from illumination within, was a large tent.
“Boys, go. We need to talk.” The Shepherd gestured toward the tent. “My private area.”
Sophie ignored the prickling of alarm at the back of her neck, and followed him.
Sophie paused at the door of the man’s tent, lit dimly from the inside by an LED lantern’s glow. She glanced back to see that the boys had withdrawn to the fire area.
She had nothing to fear from this old man; she could take him with her right hand tied behind her back.
The Shepherd gestured for her to enter, and she ducked through the zippered opening. A simple pallet with a sleeping bag was pushed against one wall. The LED lamp suspended from the center roof-rod of the tent cast a bluish light that hollowed their eyes and cheeks.
The man gestured to the pallet. “Please, have a seat.”
“I have come at Enola’s request. She is frantic to find her boy.” Sophie settled cautiously on the mat.
“Yes. That woman.” The Shepherd zipped the doorway shut, and Sophie reminded herself that the barrier was symbolic. There was no way he could trap her inside, or otherwise hamper her movements—she was strong, and armed with a good knife. The tent created a sense of privacy, but their voices would be audible to anyone close enough.
That knowledge shaped her thoughts as she said, “Apparently Nakai ran away from this group.”
“Nakai was a foolish child.” The Shepherd opened a folding camp stool and settled himself on it, leaning forward to rest his elbows on his knees. His dark eyes glittered with intelligence and a trace of malice. “The boy came to us, complaining of his mother and her drugs. And then, he didn’t like the situation here, and he left.”
“Did you see him go?”
The Shepherd shook his head. “It was dark. Bedtime. The
boy was gone in the morning.”
Sophie frowned. “Did any of the others see him leave?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know. The boys do what they like.” The Shepherd opened a small wooden box. “You like I should tell your fortune?”
This was unexpected.
Always find a way to get through to your interviewees by allowing them a sense of competency and control. Sophie’s FBI training had provided needed instruction on engagement. Perhaps allowing this man to tell her fortune would build rapport. She nodded.
The Shepherd shook the wooden box. The container was almost engulfed by his large brown hand. A rattling sound from inside, and then he upended the box. A handful of bones tumbled out onto the gray nap of the tent’s floor.
Sophie squinted at the yellowish objects in the dim light as the Shepherd reached up and unhooked the LED lamp, setting it down beside the scattering of bones. They were glossy and creamy-white with a patina of having been handled, and she was almost sure they were human. The Shepherd nudged them with a finger.
“I see a journey.”
Sophie suppressed a smile. So cliché. Of course, there had been a journey; she had to have traveled to reach a place like this.
“Am I going to meet a tall, dark, handsome stranger?” Sophie and Marcella had gone to a fortune-teller at the Honolulu fair. The reading had been silly but amusing.
The Shepherd looked up. His eyes were opaque and so dark she could not see the pupils. This man was no joke.
“Three men. Two dark, one light.” The longer he spoke to her, the more the Shepherd’s pidgin slipped away.
What did that mean? Sophie schooled her face into the expressionless mask she had learned at her ex-husband’s hands. “Go on.”
The Shepherd looked back down at the bones and passed a hand over them without touching. She squinted, trying to guess the bones’ age. Not new, that was for sure. She definitely saw a metacarpal and several phalanges.
“I see a resurrection after a death. I see a new beginning. I see a destiny that touches many, that could lead to destruction.” The Shepherd looked up. “I see a reckoning at hand, and a fork in the road. Which way will you go? And with whom?”
A long moment passed. Sophie met the Shepherd’s shuttered brown gaze, chilled by the accuracy of his insight into her situation.
He swept the bones into the wooden container and stowed it beside him. “An offering is customary when you’ve had your fortune told.”
Sophie dug into one of her zippered cargo pockets and took out a twenty-dollar bill. The Shepherd slipped the money into the depths of his draperies.
“Did you see anything about the boy?”
“This was your reading. But I don’t need to. He is dead.”
Sophie stood, an abrupt uncoiling. Her head almost brushed the top of the tent. “How do you know this?”
“I have seen it.”
“Did you kill him?” Sophie knew she’d overstepped before she’d finished the question. Damn her clumsy interviewing!
“It is time for you to go.” The Shepherd picked up a small brass bell and rang it. A moment later one of the boys unzipped the door, Ginger thrust her head in, anxious. “I will rest now. Payton will guide you out.”
Sophie pushed through the opening and followed the boy. Once away from the tent, she could breathe easier. She touched Payton’s shoulder. “I would like to see the back of the cave. See if Nakai might have fallen somewhere.”
She felt sure that the singing from underground was Nakai. Maybe there was some way he’d gotten lost from this cave.
The boy paused as if considering, then shrugged and led her deeper, toward a black rock wall in back. Sophie’s hand dropped to the knife at her belt as she followed the boy and his light.
They finally reached the rough back wall. Sophie trailed her fingers along the rough lava as they walked for a while, but saw no further openings.
“Are there any other lava tubes nearby?” The subterranean “tubes” formed by rivers of lava traveling underground would explain how she could hear the boy singing, and how he could be alive and possibly traveling underground.
Payton shrugged. “We never found anything but this cave.”
They had reached a small rockfall, and Sophie touched the boy to pause him. “Shine your light around those rocks.”
The boy did. Scuff marks in the dust and sharp pebbles around the pile of rocks showed that someone had been back there, and a sharp reek of urine told a tale of body use. That did not mean anything except that someone had been in that area at some point.
“I have to go. Should not have brought you back here,” the boy said abruptly.
“Wait!”
Instead the boy turned and jogged away with his light, the bouncing beam the only source of illumination.
Sophie stood still, letting her eyes adjust. She felt no fear in this situation; being left in the dark for extended periods had been Assan’s favorite torture.
But without a light source there was no way to search further.
Still, she could surmise that there might be some entrance to an underground lava tube that Nakai had fallen into; if not here, then somewhere else in the area.
Sophie walked back to the entrance with Ginger at her side, passing through the boys’ hostile stares. At the entrance, she heard the approaching thrum of a helicopter.
Could this chopper be the first responders that Enola had called for at the beach? Perhaps Sophie should meet them, take them to the place where she’d heard the singing in the rocks…
Still, she didn’t want to draw attention to herself. Who knew if there was an APB out on her? Getting involved was a mistake. Approaching any first responders was a double mistake.
But only Sophie knew about the child’s voice underground. She at least had to check out the helicopter. She pulled Ginger’s leash and set off quickly down the trail toward its hum.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Nakai dug and dug. He could feel his fingernails tearing. He was weakening from lack of food, and he’d never carried extra weight on his wiry frame to begin with.
The worms seemed to have fled. Finally, feeling dizzy, Nakai tipped over and rested a while.
But resting wouldn’t get him out of this place. Resting would bury him here.
After thirty breaths, Nakai got up and got moving again, crawling along, trailing a hand in the stream to rinse the dirt off and to reassure himself that he was headed in the right direction.
His other senses continued to help compensate for the lack of sight. The dark had begun to feel familiar enough that it no longer terrified him. The sense of being disembodied had abated; he definitely had a body, and though he couldn’t see it, it never stopped talking to him, complaining of cold, bruises and wounds. His body was hungry and sore, and damn annoying.
As Nakai began to sing to keep himself company, he crashed into a barrier of fallen rock, banging his head and barking his knees. “Ow!”
He felt his way up, then down a rough wall of stone. He crawled from one side of the rockfall to the other, even tentatively feeling his way through the stream, which had found a way under or around the blockage somehow, backing up into a shallow pond in front of it.
“Damn it!” Nakai yelled, and slapped the water—and as if he had summoned a terrible djinn, the massive, invisible rock pile rumbled like a giant speaking in a language he couldn’t understand. He splashed his way backward from the stones, scrambling away—but not fast enough.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Alika throttled back the collective and settled the Dragonfly gently in a small clearing near the base of one of the waterfalls. Finding an opening that wasn’t obstructed by branches and tree canopy was challenging.
This was his third landing spot since reaching Kalalau. He’d begun with the beach, that broad swath of yellow sand where the tourist boats landed regularly. Sophie wasn’t there. He’d gone deeper into the valley, landing beside the stream at a popular camping area and
showing a photo of Sophie and her dog that Marcella had texted to him.
No one had seen them.
Sophie had to be making efforts to stay hidden. Ginger was distinctive, and Alika glanced thoughtfully at the shadowed brim of a trucker hat concealing Sophie’s face in the photo he could tell was ripped from a surveillance camera.
Marcella had said she’d been scarred by the gunshot wound she had taken on that case six months ago. There was nothing that could kill his attraction to her—but he wondered how bad the scar was, how she was living with such a challenge.
The rotors gradually settled, and Alika got out, locking the chopper. A happy bark of recognition brought up his gaze, and just like that, Sophie was walking toward him, Ginger straining at her leash.
Sophie’s large brown eyes widened in shock as she recognized him. “Alika! What are you doing here?” She dug in her heels, bracing against the lab’s enthusiastic tugging.
She wore unfamiliar clothes: a black tank top with a marijuana leaf striped in red-yellow-green Rasta colors, a pair of dark ripstop hiking pants and muddy boots. As the dog dragged her closer, he could see that Sophie’s eyes were not even. When she turned her head to rebuke Ginger, the raised, pink outline of a skin graft arcing along her cheekbone and up into her hairline was visible, the skin slightly lighter than the rest of her face. Thinner than when he’d seen her last, Sophie was still gorgeous—only now that hint of tragedy that had always surrounded her seemed tattooed on her very skin.
“I came looking for you.” No sense beating around the bush. This was no random encounter, and they had nothing to say to each other but the business Marcella had sent him on. “Marcella sent me. I’m here to take you back to Oahu for a deposition with the DA over there.”
Sophie lost her hold on the leash, and Ginger hurled herself on Alika with all the enthusiasm of greeting a long-lost friend. He hadn’t seen the dog in the weeks before he’d left Oahu when he had been recovering from his injuries, but the Lab clearly remembered him. He couldn’t help laughing at her enthusiasm. “Down girl!” He caught Ginger’s leash and handed it to Sophie as she approached.
