Paradise Crime Thrillers Box Set

by Toby Neal

  The gurgle of Holly Rayme’s breath slowed…and finally stopped.

  Chapter Twenty

  Hazel Matsue didn’t seem willing to stop rendering first aid to Holly Rayme’s body. She began mouth-to-mouth and chest compressions, muttering a count.

  Sophie dragged a heavy armchair over against the door and rose to squat at the window facing the direction from which the shots had come.

  Under the house, Ginger whimpered and scratched in the shed. The surrounding jungle wrapped around them in an impenetrable black silhouette, but Sophie could hear the slight susurration of wind in the trees, see the first stars piercing the bowl of Prussian blue sky, hear the frog chorus tuning up.

  The tension, the waiting, reminded Sophie of a recent case she’d worked on Maui, watching for thieves who wanted to steal ancient Hawaiian artifacts.

  She hadn’t liked the tension and waiting then, either, but the stakes hadn’t been this high.

  Memories from that case flashed across her mind. She and Connor had been dating. Jake had been an attractive but complicated friend. Alika had been gone from her life at the time, fallout from an attack by her ex.

  She should never have gotten involved with Alika—she’d just broken both of their hearts all over again.

  What strange twists life could bring in just a few short weeks.

  Sirens shredded the night with an unearthly wail at last. Organized chaos ensued, beginning with the harsh bark of Matsue’s voice giving the gate code to the ambulance and backup units. Sophie put away her weapon, removed the barricade and unlocked the doors.

  Holly Rayme could not be resuscitated.

  Her body was checked over thoroughly as an exhausted-looking Matsue looked on. The time of death was pronounced, the body lifted onto a white plastic sheet, wrapped up securely, loaded onto a gurney, and strapped down.

  Matsue met with the HPD detectives who had responded while the EMTs treated and wrapped up Sophie’s arm. “These are deep,” her medical attendant pronounced. “You should have a shot to prevent infection.”

  “I’m fine.” Some strange mental concoction of shock, fatigue, and depression made her feel far away from anything with any meaning. Her arm scarcely seemed real.

  Holly Rayme’s body was driven away to the morgue. Sophie wished she felt something one way or another about the woman’s death.

  She was rolling up her bedding, stuffing it in the carrier bag, and wrapping bungee cords around the whole mess with Ginger looking on, when Matsue appeared at the door of the shed. “I have another location to take you to.”

  Sophie shook her head. “Obviously, the breach at WITSEC is a problem. I’ve lived under an alternative identity long enough that I can stay off the radar. I’ll do better alone.”

  “I have a secure place. I won’t tell anyone where it is, not even my next in command.” Matsue’s smooth brow was furrowed with stress. “I take this job seriously, Sophie. It kills me to lose a witness.”

  “I can tell. I saw you trying to keep Rayme alive.” Sophie sat back on her heels. “But how long will they let you keep my location secret? I was thinking about how this hit unfolded, and I don’t know if the shooter knew I was here until he spotted Ginger. Now he knows.”

  “About that. You need to find a place to stash that dog. She makes you recognizable. A target.”

  “I already thought of that.” Sophie had come up with a plan for Ginger in the long minutes of waiting. Her father was still on the island at the hotel, waiting for the CIA’s plan for dealing with Sophie’s situation with her mother. She would give Ginger into Frank’s care until after the trial. It hurt to even think about parting with the dog, but Ginger might have been killed this evening—and her presence made Sophie easily identifiable, no matter how she disguised herself.

  Ginger, like Alika, was a liability.

  “I have to give you my strongest warning. The Witness Protection Program is voluntary, but this is a bad idea. You’re the only witness left that we can really count on. Whoever this shooter is, he seems to have both skills and knowledge.” Matsue met Sophie’s gaze with serious brown eyes. “Please don’t go off alone. Let me help you.”

  “This is not your fault, Hazel.” Sophie had never said Matsue’s first name before, but it was past time. She respected the marshal. The challenge they’d shared of dealing with and protecting Rayme had brought them together in a silent bond. Sophie gestured to Matsue’s white shirt, stained with Rayme’s blood. “I know you’ll do everything you can. But the deck is stacked against your agency right now with this leak we both know about. All it would take is one tiny mistake, like Rayme raising the blind, and if my location is known…I would be gone. I know I will be safer on my own. It’s not a reflection on you. We can continue to work on exposing the traitor who’s selling out Witness Protection.” She hadn’t spoken this much to Matsue in the days they’d spent together. Matsue handed her some of the tent’s cords as Sophie went on. “I have an alternative identity. Two, in fact. I’ve done this before. Actually, I should never have come here. I worry that my trip to town to meet my father provided the security breach that the mole needed to release the information of this location to the killer.”

  “Sophie, no. That can’t be the breach. You left here and went to town before you were even officially enrolled in the program.”

  “I also made a phone call or two.”

  “I just don’t think that’s it, Sophie. Don’t do this.”

  Sophie shook her head and began disassembling the tent. “You said it. The Witness Protection Program is voluntary, and I am choosing to leave. Prepare any papers you need for my signature.”

  Matsue stared at her for a long moment, and then turned and walked away. Sophie heard the thump of her boots on the wooden treads of the stairs.

  Sophie finished gathering her meager belongings and donned her backpack. She signed the release forms Matsue thrust at her. “Goodbye, Hazel. I’ll be in touch when I can.”

  “Good luck, Sophie.” Matsue tightened her lips. “You’re making a mistake. But I’ll be around if you need me, anyway.”

  “Thanks.” Sophie tugged Ginger’s leash and headed toward her rental. “See you at the trial.”

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Alika stared down at the ring in his palm. The simple platinum setting flashed fire and rainbows from a row of large, channel-set diamonds. He pictured it on Sophie’s hand. She had such beautiful, long fingers. She could wear a ring like this and make it look insignificant—and the setting was practical: there were no sharp edges or protrusions to catch on a weapon or her tech equipment.

  “I’ll take it.”

  “Oh, so pretty. Your fiancée, she one lucky lady,” the saleswoman purred, slipping the ring into a little black velvet box, and then into a silken bag.

  “She’s not my fiancée yet.” Alika felt queasy but determined. “No way to know but to try. You give it your best, and leave God the rest.” His tutu Esther’s voice filled his mind. She was a powerful kumu and elder, and her wisdom had often guided him.

  “Well, she’s lucky already, to have the chance to say no to a guy like you,” the woman said. Alika glanced out the window of the store, uncomfortable. There was a very good chance Sophie would say no. “We don’t take returns,” the clerk went on, as if reading his mind. “But there’s no way she will be anything but thrilled.” The woman raked him with her eyes. “You’re the full package.”

  “Not the right tone to take with me.” Alika pulled the credit card slip over and signed it. “But thanks.” He snatched the silky bag up and shoved it into his pocket, pushing out the door of the store onto the street.

  Now all he had to do was find Sophie, and that was going to take some doing.

  Sophie lay on her back on the thin camping mattress that had become familiar in the days and weeks of her traveling, gazing up through the top of her pup tent. The rain fly was off, and she watched the interlaced branches of a towering old growth koa tree overhead through th
e screen. The gentle rustle of the wind in the branches filled the air, punctuated by the sweet song of native birds.

  She could hear someone coming from a long way off through the delicate twigs and dry leaves that surrounded her campsite in a remote, overgrown kipuka in the wild expanse of lava between Hilo and Kona.

  She closed her eyes and let herself relax. No one could find her here.

  The last twenty-four hours had been a long, arduous blur, but Sophie finally felt safe and settled.

  She had donned her outdoorsy Sandy Mason identity along with that woman’s wardrobe of urban-hippie hiking clothes after dropping Ginger off with her father. She’d stocked up on supplies, returned the rental car and had taken a ride share to a popular trailhead off of Saddle Road. Saddle Road was a winding, two-lane thruway between Hilo and Kona, smoothed and tamed into a picturesque highway, upgraded from years ago when it had been a rugged four-wheel drive track.

  Sophie had struck out across the raw lava with a compass and a good supply of water. When she found an isolated raised “island” of old growth forest in the plain of black lava flow, she’d set up her tent in a hidden grotto. Tree ferns surrounded her, their long ornate fronds bending to touch the ground, providing a screen for her camouflage-colored tent. Her campsite was just about invisible.

  She was finally completely off the grid. She’d destroyed the SIM card of her latest phone, and hadn’t given the number of the new one, still wrapped in plastic packaging, to anyone.

  After recent events, being completely alone felt wonderful. The only one she missed was Ginger.

  She soon fell asleep.

  Sophie woke to a chill breeze rattling the tent and the tickle of rain on her face. She hurried out, putting up the rain fly just in time as the heavens released a deluge upon the area. She curled on her side in her sleeping bag and turned on her e-reader. She’d loaded the device up with books, and soon lost herself in a Steve Jobs biography.

  Days passed. Sophie meditated. Did her yoga practice. Ate simple meals she prepared on her one-burner camp stove. She finished the Jobs biography, took notes on the character traits needed to be a leader, and started on the book Dr. Wilson had recommended to her, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s Flow.

  She didn’t sleep well at night. Memories of Assan’s tortures assaulted her, along with doubts and self-recrimination about her current relationships and situation. She missed Alika and tried not to replay every moment of their night together, while also longing for the heat of Jake’s solid body to keep her warm and pull her out of the deepening depression. Memories of recent ugly things she’d seen seemed to wait for night to bubble up out of her subconscious and fill her inner vision with nightmarish clarity.

  The traumatic visions and mental replays increased and encroached onto daytime waking hours. She wandered the perimeter of the kipuka, staying hidden in the trees, feeling disembodied as she looked out over the empty, rugged lava plain.

  She began to have trouble screening intrusive thoughts and memories out, even with exercise or reading.

  Sophie lost track of the days. The depression became a constant sibilant whisper in her mind, sucking at her motivation to do anything but lie in her sleeping bag all day and stare at the trees overhead. She lost the energy to read, exercise, or care for herself.

  She ran out of food, but it didn’t matter because she wasn’t hungry. And then, she ran out of water.

  This did bother her. She felt weak and desperately thirsty. Dry mouth, cracked skin, and head and muscle aches assailed her.

  Hunched in her sleeping bag, shaking with a low-grade fever, her lips painfully cracked, Sophie struggled to want to live. “I’m dying,” she whispered, and realized it was true.

  The depression had lured her out here into the wilderness, found a reason for her to cut off everyone who might be able to help her, and now it was going to kill her.

  She didn’t even need enemies like the Changs. She carried the most powerful enemy within herself, and no matter how she tried, the disease was always there, waiting to bring her down. “A sickness of the soul,” her father had called it, and that, too, was true. Another gift from her mother…

  Her mother, who had never loved her. Pim Wat had only used her, had given her this crippling illness, and now was back in her life to use her again.

  She should just end the suffering quickly. Get the inevitable over with.

  Sophie reached under the thin foam pillow and brought out her weapon.

  Her hand shook as she put the black, boxy muzzle of the always-loaded Glock into her mouth. One quick pull of the trigger, and it would all be over: no more pain of the mind, body or soul. No more conflict. Just peace…

  She shut her eyes. Her finger tightened.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Pim Wat pursed her lips as she perused the vials in a small, locked metal box marked MEDICAL KIT. Each poison was labeled with an innocuous pharmaceutical name. Pim Wat checked the name against the code key she carried in her phone, touching each rare, valuable container. Handling the small glass bottles was soothing.

  She’d received a text that there was a contract out on her daughter’s life. She’d routed the text back to the Yām Khûmkạn, but their tech department was subpar without Sophie’s skills to enhance it. They hadn’t even been able to come up with a number for the phone that had issued the text, let alone an identity or location. She snorted with disgust, thinking about it.

  The contract had been issued by the Changs, and it was related to the stupid case Sophie was mixed up in. There were a lot of moving parts, but Pim Wat had been able to verify that the contract was real.

  She tapped her lips, considering. Who should she go after first? The issuer of the contract, the assassin, the leak in Witness Protection who had sold her daughter out, or the reason for the contract, Akane Chang?

  She needed a lot more information to develop one of her Scripts.

  She loved her Scripts: developing her role, her costume, the dialogue, the final scene. Even if her plays were never seen or known by anyone but those involved, she found satisfaction in deploying her unique talents in the service of her family and her country.

  Armita was researching the likely players, but again—without good tech support and with few contacts in a foreign country, Pim Wat was operating in the dark in developing a proper Script and choosing a target.

  The heat of rage flushed over her. She wanted to kill them all.

  Pim Wat had not been a good spy, and she knew that. Her moodiness, low energy levels and impatience had made her information gathering skills less than stellar. But, it turned out, she had other abilities that the Yām Khûmkạn had been able to put to use. The elemental rage that lived inside her, tamped down and turned inward by her periodic depressive episodes, had found a useful outlet.

  Perhaps she would get another text with more information. It would save a lot of guesswork and a lot of lives. It really didn’t matter who was feeding her this information—their purposes were currently aligned. She would find out who it was eventually.

  Pim Wat picked up the vial containing her favorite poison. Tasteless, odorless, clear as vodka, a microdot absorbed through the skin paralyzed the heart muscle in minutes and, to every examiner, appeared to be a heart attack from natural causes.

  Pim Wat hadn’t been able to help Sophie Malee when Assan had her—the Yām Khûmkạn had needed the alliance too much. But perhaps she could make up for it now. Killing all of them was not such a bad idea; perhaps it would purge the annoying sliver of maternal guilt that nagged at her whenever she thought of her daughter’s suffering at that man’s hands.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  The cold steel banged against Sophie’s teeth, sending a jangle of alarm through her body.

  No. No. I don’t want to die. I have fought so hard to live.

  Her father Frank’s face, crumpled with pain, rose in her memory. He wore an expression that had hurt her to see from her bedside when she’d been shot on one of
her cases. He would suffer so much. She was selfish to even consider dying when she had a choice about it.

  Other faces filled her mind, each of them grieving the news of her death.

  Marcella. A friend who’d gone beyond the bounds of normal friendship many times, trying to bring Sophie back from the depression. She could picture Marcella, furious and grief-stricken, ranting at her gravesite. She could see Marcella kicking over the flower arrangements, bitching her out with curse words. The thought almost made her smile.

  Dr. Wilson. The therapist would feel terrible. Wonder what she could have done to prevent this. Regret their missed appointments.

  Lei. Her detective friend would weep for her, but she would find comfort in her husband and child. Lei was a painful source of envy and hope.

  Alika. She could still see and feel his loving eyes and hands. “I love you, Sophie,” rang in her ears. It was bad enough that she’d cut him off like he meant nothing to her…but suicide? He’d wonder what he’d done to contribute to her state of mind, and she couldn’t deny that cutting him out of her life was part of her current hopelessness.

  Jake. Jake would be crazed, might even hurt himself. She could see him lashing out at everything around him with the agony of a wounded animal, turning that destructive force on himself and others.

  Connor. Connor would be the most lost and alone of all. She in all the world knew who he really was. He would blame himself. Who knew what darkness would be unleashed by his isolation and grief?

  And Ginger. Even when Frank cared for her, the Lab lay watching the front door of the apartment, waiting for Sophie to return.

  Tears tried to form in Sophie’s dry eyes, burning them. Strangely, the thought of Ginger’s grief moved her most of all.

  Sophie took the gun out of her mouth and put it back under the pillow.