Paradise Crime Thrillers Box Set

by Toby Neal

  She crawled out of the sleeping bag, trembling with weakness even from that small effort, and made her way to the near-empty backpack. She opened the side pocket and dug out the plastic-enclosed phone.

  She was too weak to get the heavy packaging open, and finally gave up.

  The phone probably wouldn’t work out here, anyway, and the battery wasn’t charged. But her laptop might still work, and she had a satellite-enabled uplink. She hadn’t turned it on in all the time she’d been out here.

  She booted up the laptop. The battery was halfway charged. Good. That ought to be enough. She plugged in the Ghost software and sent a message to Connor with her GPS coordinates, and crawled back into her sleeping bag.

  Sophie woke to the sound of her tent being unzipped. She reached under her pillow and drew the Glock, raising it in a shaky hand to point at the dark silhouette in the doorway of the tent.

  “Sophie. My God.” Connor’s voice.

  Somehow, crazy as it was, it was Jake she’d expected and hoped to see—but Connor was the one she’d been able to contact. She shouldn’t be disappointed.

  She lowered the weapon. “Connor. You got my message.”

  “I did. Seems it was just in time.”

  Sophie collapsed back into the foul nest of her sleeping bag, too weak and dehydrated even to speak. But it didn’t matter, because Connor, being Connor, had brought help.

  She was lifted by strong hands and loaded onto a stretcher. Murmuring voices. An IV was inserted into her arm. She faded in and out of consciousness as she was carried through the rough terrain of the kipuka toward a helicopter parked on the lava plain.

  A helicopter. “Alika,” she whispered, through dry, cracked lips, and felt a surge of something that might have been hope.

  Connor was holding her hand, walking alongside two men bearing her stretcher. He squeezed it. “What? I missed that.”

  “Nothing.” Sophie shut her eyes. Alika wasn’t piloting that chopper. She was never going to see him again, and that was as it should be.

  If she could have cried, she would have. This was all wrong.

  Everything was loud and overwhelming, with a lot of jerking, bumping and swaying. She couldn’t bring herself to care about any of it.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  The next time Sophie really woke up, she was lying on something incredibly soft and silky. Everything, including herself, smelled wonderful.

  She opened her eyes.

  A curved ceiling overhead. Recessed lights beaming down on her. Warmth. Classical music.

  She was lying in a rather splendid bed in an oddly shaped room.

  Sophie felt immensely better but had to pee. Urgently.

  She sat up carefully, groaning at stiff muscles, and discovered she was still hooked up to an IV and a rolling pole was parked beside the bed.

  Connor appeared in the doorway. “How are you feeling?”

  She really looked at him for the first time. He was in his Sheldon Hamilton persona: dapper black trousers, an open-necked white linen shirt, those hipster black-framed glasses that hid dark eyes.

  She hated his Hamilton persona.

  “I am better, thanks to you, but I have to use the bathroom.” Sophie swung her legs out of bed. She had been thoroughly cleaned and was wearing a set of white satin pajamas that might have been made for her.

  Connor supported her by the elbow into a small, tidy bathroom. He shut the door, giving her some privacy, and Sophie sat on the steel toilet seat.

  Immediate needs of nature taken care of, Sophie looked around. The wall curved here, too, and a small round window was double-paned.

  All of the cues came together in a flash of insight: she was on a private jet!

  Jake had said Sheldon Hamilton, CEO of Security Solutions, had a company plane. No wonder he had been able to reach her in time…

  Sophie finished her business and washed her hands, avoiding looking at herself in the mirror. Had he given her a bath while she was passed out?

  She rolled her IV pole out of the bedroom on trembling legs. Connor was seated directly ahead of her at a built-in dinette. A spread of amazing-looking food made her mouth water instantly.

  “Did you give me a bath? Dress me in this?” She gestured to the satin pajamas.

  His brows drew together. “No. I had a private medical service attend to you, the same one that was with me when you were found. You’ve been out for six hours since we got back to the plane and got you situated.” Connor had removed the contacts that darkened his sea-blue eyes and the glasses that obscured them further, but she was still jarred by his dyed brown hair and reminded that he lived a double life. “You would have died in another day or two, the doctor said.” His tone was carefully neutral.

  Sophie had no response. She slid into the bench seat across from him.

  Connor buttered a piece of flaky-looking croissant and held it out to her. “Don’t eat too fast.”

  Sophie took the croissant and bit into it, closing her eyes to chew. The pastry melted in her mouth, and she moaned at the exquisite good taste. How had she let herself get so far down that she almost did Chang’s work for him?

  She let Connor feed her bits and pieces of eggs, fruit, and bacon, unable to even make the tiniest decisions about what to eat.

  Her stomach rebelled, cramping painfully. She pushed the fork he held away. “Enough. Tell me what’s been going on.”

  “A lot has changed since you disappeared.” Connor set down the fork and sipped his coffee.

  “How long has it been, exactly?” Sophie was sure of the first five days: that’s when she had had food. It was the days after that that had begun to run into each other.

  “It’s been ten days since you left WITSEC. I don’t know why you did that, by the way. I thought you were going to try to help me find the dirty agent from the inside.” Connor was angry—she could read his bunched shoulders and tight jaw. “But you’ll be glad to know that, in light of the main witness’s death, the trial has been moved to Oahu. And it’s only three weeks away.”

  Sophie didn’t care, but she should. She struggled to find motivation to put her reasoning into words. “That is good news about the trial. And as to the other, I was pretty concerned about staying alive at the time I left WITSEC. I became ill out in the wilderness.”

  “Ill? Is that your euphemism, Sophie? Because it looks a lot like severe depression to me.” Connor met her gaze with familiar eyes. “You forget. I know you very well.”

  “I am not well. You can call it depression if you like.” There was no way to explain how she had allowed herself to get so close to death by dehydration—and her personal battle with her Glock would remain a secret. “How did you find me so quickly? I sent the message, but I thought you were out of the country.”

  “I had returned to Hawaii on some Security Solutions business, fortunately. It took a while to hire a helicopter and organize the medical team, and then find your location from the pingback. Are you feeling any…better?”

  Connor was referring to her mental state.

  Sophie’s physical body was recovering rapidly. The other areas weren’t worth discussing. She shrugged. “I reached out to you.”

  “Maybe you need more of a reason to live than just survival. Maybe you need to get interested in our case again. At this point, I am fairly sure you and I are the only way the mole inside WITSEC is going to be discovered and rooted out.”

  “Matsue knows about the leak now. She’s interested in a positive outcome, especially now that her witness was killed. She seemed to take that very personally. As for me, I have to stay alive and testify at the trial. That is my sole priority.” If only the whole thing would just go away and leave her alone. Sophie looked around the pristine interior of the jet, longing for bed, knowing the depression still ruled her and unable to make anything different happen.

  “Catching the dirty agent is an important part of your survival.” Connor reached across the table to clasp Sophie’s hand. “You c
an’t give up.”

  Sophie tugged her hand away. “Don’t tell me what I can or can’t do.” She lifted up the surgical tape holding in the IV needle pressing into her skin and removed it. “I am aware I’m still depressed. I should have a session with Dr. Wilson, my therapist. Would you be willing to let us meet here?”

  Connor frowned. “If it will make you feel better. Though I don’t know what you’ll say to explain how you’re on Sheldon Hamilton’s corporate jet at the Hilo Airport.”

  Sophie looked up and met his eyes. “You’re the head of Security Solutions. You came and got me from my hiding place. It will be fine. But I don’t have to lie. Dr. Wilson knows everything.”

  Connor blinked.

  “Yes, everything. I needed a place to talk about all of my secrets. As a psychologist, she is bound by client confidentiality.”

  “I will just have to trust that that is enough.”

  “And if anything happens to her, I’ll know who to go after.”

  Connor narrowed his eyes. “That you would think that of me shows how little you understand me and what I do, who I am.”

  “I don’t know you at all, Connor, nor do I want to. You had your chance with me.”

  He winced, and she turned away, getting up from the dinette. “Thank you for breakfast, and for the medical care. I’ve got Dr. Wilson’s number written down since my new phone isn’t operational yet. Where are my personal items?”

  “Your backpack is in the closet.” He was clearing away the dishes. She saw pain in his rigid movements.

  She couldn’t soften toward him. She couldn’t forgive him. He’d let her grieve him, even go to a fake funeral!

  Sophie had written important numbers she wanted to keep on a tidy slip of paper rolled into her hiking boot. The boot was with the rest of her belongings, neatly stowed in a small, sealed cabinet in the bedroom. She had a much bigger list of contacts stored in the Cloud, but right now she was staying away from anything that could be tracked. She extracted the burner phone she hadn’t been able to open before, grateful to find the battery included already held a charge. She programmed the phone, added Dr. Wilson’s number to her contacts directory, and called her.

  The psychologist’s voicemail came on, and she left a message requesting an emergency session in an unusual location. “I’m sorry for the secrecy, Dr. Wilson, but that case I was on has exploded. I was in Witness Protection, which is why I hadn’t been in touch for a while. Please come. Connor will send someone to get you and bring you to my location. And…I almost died from the depression. I decided to live, but it’s so bad right now I’m not able to concentrate, to really care what happens, and I need to.” Sophie rubbed the scar on her cheek. “I still need to make it to the Chang trial alive, and I’m having trouble caring about any of it.”

  She turned off the phone, dimmed the lights, and slid between the silky sheets, sinking into oblivion.

  Sophie was on the helicopter Alika called the Dragonfly, swooping down toward a beautiful estate perched on the edge of a cliff overlooking Hanalei Bay on Kaua`i. She delighted in the stunning scene: the curve of the peaceful jade-green river, the punctuation of the historic red steel bridge, the patchwork quilt of taro fields, the great horseshoe arc of beach, and the sparkle of peaceful ocean.

  “This is my home, and I want it to be your home too,” Alika said.

  Sophie gazed into his warm brown eyes, then down at the vista of ocean, valley, and sculptured green mountains as the helicopter landed gently and silently on the grass in front of a gracious plantation-style mansion. Her heart swelled with hope—and sorrow.

  They weren’t wearing helmets. The helicopter was silent, a bubble on the breeze.

  “This is a dream. This isn’t really happening.”

  “But it could,” Alika said. Sophie looked over at him. Warmth flushed over her cold body.

  Someone was shaking her shoulder.

  “No, no.” Sophie curled tight, shutting her eyes, clinging to the dissolving shreds of illusion.

  “Wake up.”

  She finally unrolled and blinked resentfully up into Connor’s dark brown eyes. “I hate your Sheldon Hamilton disguise.”

  “Too damn bad.” Connor’s face was a hard, unfamiliar mask. “The CIA is here to see you. Get up, get dressed, and get your shit together.”

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Secret Service agent Ellie Smith and an unfamiliar man were seated on the dove-gray furniture of the lounge area of the jet. Sophie clutched the mug of hot, strong Thai tea Connor had plied her with the minute she was out of bed. He’d gone into his office and shut the door. Sophie felt a moment of panic facing the two without backup, until Ellie got up to greet Sophie, coming forward to give her a gentle hug. “You had us worried, young lady. Your father has been driving me crazy.”

  “I am sorry for the inconvenience.” Sophie’s lips felt stiff, her entire body rigid. The depression was barely in check. “I’ve been sick.”

  “You do look a little like a bear that just woke up before spring.” The other man got up and came forward, reaching out to shake her hand. “Devin McDonald, at your service.”

  Sophie ignored his large, square hand. “Your ID, please, sir.”

  As she checked his identification wallet, she assessed him: mid-fifties, dressed in Hawaii business casual in chinos, an open-necked aloha shirt, and tan athletic shoes. McDonald had the ruddy complexion of a Caucasian with high blood pressure. After she checked his ID, she extended her hand and found that he had the handshake of someone who needed to assert dominance.

  “In case you haven’t guessed, we’re here regarding the matter of your mother,” Ellie said.

  “First, I need to know how you knew where I was. I’m out of WITSEC, but I thought this was a secure location.”

  “Mr. Hamilton of Security Solutions reached out to your father to let him know you were safe; I was able to persuade him we could keep your whereabouts confidential.”

  Connor, taking the initiative again, managing her life. She wished she could feel more grateful.

  Ellie sat down on the tufted leather sofa and Sophie did as well. “We were waiting for word from the agency about how to proceed, when you went dark.”

  Agent McDonald perched across from them on one of the leather flight loungers. “And finally, the agency decided to let me know about your dilemma,” McDonald said. “I’m the closest thing to a supervisor the CIA has in Hawaii.” He smiled, showing a lot of expensive veneers. “I understand your mother is an agent with the Yām Khûmkạn?”

  “So she says.” Sophie sipped the strong black tea, willing it to work, willing her foggy mind to focus. “She has made a crude attempt to recruit me for that organization.”

  “About that. What took the agency so long was the thorough research and background check they were working up on you. We are aware of your extensive background in technology, and the DAVID program. We have a thorough understanding of your career in law enforcement so far, and the reasons why a cabal like the Yām Khûmkạn might be interested in having someone like you in their organization.”

  “You are just restating things that I already know.” Sophie tightened her grip on the warm mug. “Tell me something new.”

  “We are still investigating how bad the security breaches might have been with your father. He is taking a personal leave while this deep investigation takes place,” Ellie said.

  Sophie looked up to meet the agents’ gazes. “So far you have answered what is going on with my father, and I appreciate that. One of the things I’ve been most concerned about is how this would affect him. But you still have not answered what I should do, or anything specific pertaining to my situation.”

  “No one can tell you what you should do, Sophie.” Ellie’s dark blue gaze was kind, an antidote to McDonald’s flinty stare. “You are a free person. This is America. This is why we are a great nation. Even when our interests are threatened, we do our best to respect human rights. And Sophie is under no d
uress to take any one course of action, is she, Agent McDonald?”

  “Not at this time.” McDonald rubbed his hands together with a gentle whisking sound. “But that said, we would be most appreciative if you would penetrate the Yām Khûmkạn. We have had very little intel on the organization, its staff, or its mission. It would be a service to your country for you to get involved.”

  Sophie noted how carefully he avoided putting her role into words. “But I am under no obligation to do so?” Sophie probed, concerned that something about Connor and his secrets might be known to either of the agents.

  McDonald blinked once, a slow settling of the eyelids like a reptile lazing in the sun. “Simple patriotism is not enough? I would think you’d want to prove your loyalty to the country that took you in after Assan Ang.”

  McDonald’s reference to her abusive gangster husband rankled. “I am a United States citizen, lest you forget, and I have paid tenfold for that privilege by my service to the nation during my time with the FBI.” Sophie shook her head. “I’m just making sure I’m not endangering my life by accepting—or refusing—your proposal.”

  “There are certainly concerns I have about you, your father, and the association both of you have with the Yām Khûmkạn through your mother. But until we know more, this is just a dialogue. A temperature check, if you will.” McDonald bared his teeth in a perfunctory smile.

  Sophie had to take his words at face value, though she sensed something threatening in McDonald’s demeanor. There was no doubt in her mind that this interview would have had an entirely different tone if Ellie Smith hadn’t been there to facilitate it. “I appreciate your coming to speak with me, and I will consider your request most carefully. But I’m afraid any further action regarding this situation is out of the question until the Chang trial is over. I have to stay hidden until then. There’s a contract out on my life.”

  “We are aware of that, and if you agree to come to work for the Agency, we can take you in and squirrel you away until the trial is over. You will be completely safe, sequestered, paid and comfortable.” McDonald’s smile hadn’t improved in appeal upon a third viewing. “What they call a twofer.”