by Toby Neal
Alika’s room overlooked Hilo Bay with a lovely balcony, the sliders open to a warm night breeze that stirred the curtains. Shades of cream and blue, and casual rattan furniture invited Sophie to drop her heavy pack and lean it against the love seat of the lounge area in front of the sliders. Two comfortable-looking chairs framed a television and coffee table.
Sophie’s heart felt heavy as lead. She was saying goodbye to Alika tonight, for who knew how long—and she’d have to lie to him. He’d never accept that she was cutting him off for his own protection.
But no. She couldn’t lie to him. He knew her too well, and she just wasn’t good at it.
“What will you have to drink?” Alika stood at the small wet bar, rattling bottles.
“Whatever you’re having.” Sophie peeked into the adjacent bedroom. Oh no. One king size bed.
The depression’s gray draperies fluttered at the edges of her consciousness, eager to drag her down into familiar blackness. But she couldn’t give in. She had too much to do, and no safe haven to hide in while the darkness engulfed her.
Alika held out a drink in a clear plastic cup. “Here. Medicinal purposes.”
Jake had said the same thing to her, not long ago. Sophie’s heart gave a painful squeeze. This whole situation had to end, and it was going to. She took the liquid and threw it back in one gulp.
A rocket of heat burned down her throat and detonated in her stomach.
Sophie bent at the waist, gagging and gasping. Alika thumped her on the back and took the empty cup out of her trembling hand. “Not meant to be hammered like that, girlfriend.”
“I’m not…your girlfriend.” Sophie mopped at streaming eyes.
“Just a manner of speech. Obviously.” His voice was tight.
“What was that?” She coughed.
“Vodka. Neat. You said to give you what I was having.” He returned to the bar and cracked another tiny bottle, dumping it into the cup. “Go slow next time. Here’s to surviving a shooting.”
Sophie took the plastic cup and clinked it against his. She sipped this time, but it didn’t taste any better. She grimaced. “I dislike this drink.”
He cocked his head. “What do you like?”
“Sweet drinks. Amaretto. Blue Hawaiians.”
Jake knew what she liked to drink. He’d studied her like a topographical map. He’d handled her like one, too.
Why was she thinking so much about Jake?
Because she’d been with him recently, and because she wanted to sleep with Alika now. The recent trauma of their attack still vibrated along Sophie’s nerve endings, generating an elemental need to feel alive…and push back the darkness of her depression for just a little longer. But that wasn’t all it was.
Her gaze followed Alika’s graceful movements as he walked across the room and onto the moonlit balcony. “Come out and see the view.”
Alika was daring her to recreate the dangerous situation they’d just been in; he was showing her he wasn’t afraid. But what if they’d been tracked?
“No. Come in here, please. I can’t guarantee it’s safe. For either of us.” Sophie’s voice trembled. “I care about you, Alika, and what happened at the tree house was way too close for comfort.”
He came back inside. Shut the slider and locked it. Slid the drapes shut. The room was lit solely by one corner lamp.
Alika stood in front of her. She stared at the art on the wall, avoiding his eyes.
“You seem…off. Are you okay? Having delayed shock?”
Sophie finally looked straight ahead, at the divot between Alika’s collarbones, at his wide, strong throat. He was wearing a white hotel bathrobe, open to the chest. The smell of soap and clean male filled her nostrils. His buttery-brown flesh reminded her of satiny water sliding over smooth, hard river rocks. Her palms itched, longing to touch him.
They stood there for a long time, but somehow it wasn’t awkward. Finally, she set a hand on his chest. His heart hammered beneath it.
“I’m thinking of having sex with you,” she said. “Goodbye sex.”
Alika took the empty plastic cup from the nerveless fingers of her other, dangling hand, and set it on the bar. “Why goodbye?” He was in her space, this time drawing her close, folding her into himself. She shut her eyes and breathed him in. Her cheek rested on the warm skin of his neck. His voice vibrated against her lips. “Because I’d call it long overdue.”
His strength surrounded, upheld, and enfolded her. Her eyes fluttered shut as his hands wandered.
She had to be honest. He had to know what he was getting into. She forced the words out. “I have to go tomorrow. Disappear. I can’t see you any more until this case is over. My life is too dangerous for you…”
“I don’t care about any of that. I love you.” His voice was rough, his touch possessive. Alika tipped her chin up and kissed her, tilting her head so he could taste her deeply.
She closed her eyes and surrendered to the wonderful feelings he stirred in her body, in her soul. He’d always made her feel so good. This was not a crazy passion; this was a deep one, stoked by years of knowing, waiting, wanting.
She was hardly aware of moving into the bedroom, of undressing, of anything but his confident, loving touch, rich smell, delicious taste, the murmur of his voice whispering “I love you. I love you.”
And then the world shrank down to nothing but skin against skin, muscle against bone, heart against heart.
Maybe now would last forever, tomorrow would never come, and she’d never have to say goodbye.
Another part of her knew better. Despair made her weep with more than passion at the end.
Chapter Thirteen
Alika reached for Sophie, his arm sliding across the silky bedclothes.
His hand came up empty. That sensation brought him into full awareness.
The room was dark, the curtains drawn as he remembered doing during an evening that seemed like a long time ago. The faintest glow of dawn outlined the sliding glass door’s shape.
She was gone.
He rolled out of bed naked. “Sophie?”
Silence and a sense of emptiness. The sheets were cold on her side.
She wasn’t just gone, she was long gone.
But he searched anyway: in the bathroom, in the living area. Every trace that she had ever been there was gone, except for a note on the hotel stationery in her elegant, back-slanted, Cyrillic-looking writing, left on the bar and held down by one of the small, empty liquor bottles.
“I thought it might be easier to say goodbye this way. I have to stay far away from you, for your own safety. Please don’t look for me, because you won’t find me. I had to take your keys to get Ginger out of your truck. You will find them at the front desk.”
No signature.
No “I love you,” to match his own stupid declarations.
No promises of any kind. She hadn’t even left him her name.
Just goodbye. “For your own safety.”
Like he was a child in need of protection.
He was a trained fighter. Talk about hitting a guy where it hurts.
Alika staggered, off-balance with the pain, into the little kitchen area. He cursed, but nothing was big enough, bad enough, to express the feeling pulsing through him. The angst he’d felt outside the restaurant was just a shadow of this body blow.
She’d told him it was goodbye. He remembered her rush of words. It hadn’t mattered in that moment.
It sure as hell did now.
He’d been in love with her before…but now that he’d had her body, all he could think of was the next fix he could get of her presence. Like a drug addict craving a high, need for her crawled along his nerves, consumed his mind, crippled his objectivity.
“This is the worst,” he muttered. All the ridiculous love songs he’d never understood suddenly made sense.
She had made coffee. An inch of liquid was left in the little carafe when he picked it up. It was cold—that’s how long she had been gone.
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Still holding the coffee pot, Alika went to his pants, dug out his phone, speed dialed her mobile.
“This number is no longer in service.”
He couldn’t even leave her a voice message bitching her out for treating him this way. Sophie was gone. The feel of her was still impressed on his body, the smell of her, the taste of her. “Damn it to hell.”
His arm twitched with the need to throw the glass container, to hear it shatter, to wreak some freakin’ mayhem on something.
But what would a temper tantrum accomplish? It would only prove that he was the child she thought he was.
Sophie was wrong. He could manage himself, and even make himself useful. He thought he’d proved that on Kaua`i when they’d rescued a boy together.
Alika set the carafe down very deliberately, as gently as his desire was to break it. He walked to the drapes and pulled them open. He stood on the little deck to greet the new day, looking out at the sun just striking the water of Hilo Bay.
Sophie thought she knew him. She’d decided their lovemaking was just a goodbye screw, when to him it was the culmination of years of longing and desire, indescribably meaningful.
She thought he was afraid of the demons she was facing, that he couldn’t deal with her problems. But she didn’t know exactly what he’d had to do to get where he was, physically and emotionally.
And he wasn’t giving up on her, no matter how she’d tried to ghost him: because she felt something for him too. Her body couldn’t lie to him—he knew it like he knew his own. Her tears at that moment of completion were burned onto his skin.
He would offer her something different from the life she was in.
Kaua`i could be so good. They’d live in one of his houses. She’d do her investigation work and come home to him on the weekends. They’d train together, maybe coach people at their own studio. They’d have a couple of kids running around, room for Ginger and more pets. They’d be surrounded by ohana, and have a beautiful life.
Maybe she needed to know that was where he wanted things to end up.
She could disappear for now, but he would be waiting for her on the other side of whatever this latest thing was.
Chapter Fourteen
Sophie slid into the booth of a Denny’s on the outskirts of Hilo. Hazel Matsue sat across from her, already perusing a menu. The woman wore a sleek Nike running hat, the narrow bill casting a shadow across her sharp features. Sophie wore a ball cap, too, but hers was a trucker style in red, black, green and yellow, with a marijuana leaf on the front.
“Nice disguise,” Matsue’s mouth twitched. “Very Rasta chic.”
Sophie plucked at her frayed black tank top. “I’ve been Sandy Mason before. She blends with some of the young local population here.”
“And that’s why I said nice disguise.”
The waitress arrived. “I’ll have coffee.” Sophie usually drank tea, but today she needed something stronger. The single cup of weak brew that she had made in Alika’s hotel room at three a.m. had done little but aggravate her sour stomach. Sophie extended the thick china mug, and the waitress filled it from a steel pot.
“Rough night, hon?” The waitress winked. “You look like you were rode hard and put away wet.”
A sexualized colloquialism? Sophie kept encountering them. She wrestled her mind away from those hours in bed with Alika. She converted her British accent into something vaguely Australian and smiled. “Lots of good parties around here.”
They placed their orders, and the waitress sauntered away.
Matsue leaned forward on her elbows as she perused Sophie. “You don’t look like you slept at all last night.”
She hadn’t.
Sublime lovemaking had been followed by lying in Alika’s arms as he slept, wallowing in guilt, regret, and depression. Negative emotions had kept her awake until she’d given up and sneaked out.
“Getting shot at by a sniper and having to abandon your residence will do that.” Sophie sipped the coffee, disliking the bitter taste. “What did your superiors say about bringing me into the program? I thought I could just stay with you and Rayme. I could help with her security, since I’m already supposed to be doing that by private contract.”
Matsue gave a brief nod. “I’m willing to bring you to the safe house, given what happened. It’s an okay place to start, though I haven’t heard back yet. Bringing you into the program is a process. Frankly, we don’t have any information that shows this shooter was after you because of the Chang case.”
Sophie’s brows lifted. “What other reason would there be?”
“Some other case of yours?” Matsue sighed. “I don’t know. Frankly, I think it’s bullshit. But they don’t seem to want to bring you in. I’m arguing for just a cooldown period; take you out of the mix for a while, and then have you go to another island or something. Lay low until the trial.”
Sophie tightened her mouth. “I have a job to do, and I want to do it. I can help with Rayme, and, for once, she can help me, too.”
“That’s why I plan to take you out to the safe house from here. But you have to get rid of that Jeep, shed every trace of the life you were building here.”
“I have some people I still have to see in Hilo tomorrow, but I can come out today.” Sophie was in the middle of counseling with police psychologist Dr. Wilson. Her next appointment was scheduled for tomorrow afternoon.
And then, there was her father and Agent Ellie Smith. She’d texted the newest burner phone number to them, and they were expecting to meet her at a hotel in Hilo. “As to disassembling my life, I already did.” Sophie had returned the Jeep to the rental agency. She’d taken a cab across town and rented a different car, using cash, from a cheap used vehicle place. The rusty blue Ford truck decorated with Keep Hawaii Hawaiian stickers was just the kind of car her character Sandy Mason would drive. “I already have a new burner phone. My Sophie Ang identity is retired, for the moment.”
“You are a pro,” Matsue said approvingly.
Their breakfast arrived. Sophie dug into the western omelet, surprised to feel so hungry; but that reminded her why. She wouldn’t think of all of the activity of the night before.
She wouldn’t think of Alika.
Wouldn’t wonder how he would feel when he found her gone.
Refused to imagine him picking up and reading her note, trying to call her and finding her phone disconnected.
She had to be hard and cold and just walk away.
Her memories of Alika beaten, broken and in a coma could never be erased. That terrible incident on Oahu had happened to him because of her, and she wouldn’t see him hurt again.
She’d warned him. She’d told him that she was going to disappear.
And he’d said that he didn’t care, and that he loved her.
Bile surged up Sophie’s throat in a burning wave. She gulped it down with the awful coffee, surprised to find that she’d eaten her entire omelet. She glanced at Matsue, who was working her phone and had hardly touched her breakfast.
“Let’s just go out to the safe house, if you please. I need to get some rest.” Sophie dug a twenty out of her mini-pack, laying it on the table.
“All right. We’ll travel separately so we’re less easy to spot.” Matsue forwarded directions to Sophie’s phone. “I’ll follow you, and make sure we are not followed out there.”
“I know how to dodge a tail.”
“Doesn’t matter if you do or not. This is my circus, and these are my monkeys. And now you are one of them.” Matsue met Sophie’s gaze and smiled. She tweaked the brim of Sophie’s ball cap with a compassionate gesture. “It’s going to be okay, Sandy Mason.”
Sophie took precautions driving to the safe house but never spotted a tail, nor even Matsue’s vehicle, a nondescript beige SUV.
She turned off the main road and proceeded down a winding driveway. She pulled the Ford up to a metal gate. A simple wood frame dwelling on stilts with an open garage area underneath stood in the center of
a neatly mowed yard on the other side of the barrier. All of the house’s shades were drawn.
Sophie studied the simple metal fence and noted a telltale electronic wire around the top. Flood lights were mounted on all four corners of the house.
The place was secure and defensible, but to the casual eye, it looked like one of thousands of mostly empty vacation homes that took up space in Hawaii.
Five minutes later, Matsue drove up behind her in her SUV. She got out and unlocked the gate. “You wouldn’t want to touch this fence,” she told Sophie as she passed her.
“I noticed the electric wire.”
“There are motion sensors, too.”
Sophie drove through and parked under the house. She waited for Matsue to relock the gate before exiting her vehicle. Matsue pulled in and parked beside Sophie.
A door opened at the top of a flight of stairs going up from the garage to the deck as the women got out of their vehicles.
Holly Rayme peered down at them. She had color in her cheeks, and her hair looked washed and brushed. Her appearance was a big improvement over the last time Sophie had seen her. “Please tell me you brought something to eat.”
“This isn’t a restaurant, Ms. Rayme.” Matsue sounded like they’d had this discussion before. “The cupboards are loaded with nutritionally sound meals, and so is the freezer.”
“But I need fresh, organic food in order to support my recovery,” Rayme whined.
Matsue tightened her lips in annoyance and gestured to Sophie. “Follow me.”
The women ascended to the living area, which was as utilitarian and functional as it had appeared from outside. Sophie’s gaze darted around, checking the security measures. The doors had extra reinforcement with metal backing and heavy gauge locks. The windows were small and high, letting in light but not allowing visibility into the building. Two bedrooms completed the floor plan, one with a queen size bed, and one with a pair of bunks.
