by Toby Neal
“I’ve got my wine and I’m on the back porch. Ready to really dig into this deep kimchee,” Marcella said. Sophie heard the creak of her friend’s chair.
“And I’m on the deck of my new apartment. Eating. It’s a nice place to be. Thank you for being someone I can always call, no matter what.”
“You got it, girlfriend. Now, back up the bus and start at the beginning. When did you first suspect you might be pregnant?”
Sophie told her friend about the session with Dr. Wilson and the series of events leading to the current situation. “I think Jake would be happy if he knew the baby was his. But he’s having a tough time with the fact that I was with Alika even once, though Jake and I weren’t officially together then.”
“Yeah. I saw that coming,” Marcella said ruefully. “Jake’s one of those old-fashioned alpha males. Territorial. Did he smash anything?”
“No. He seemed sad. Like he was trying really hard not to say the wrong thing, even though he couldn’t say what I wanted to hear.” Sophie blinked stinging eyes. “I hate to hurt him, and I don’t want to go through this without him.”
“Sounds like you might have fallen in love with him somewhere along the way. That wouldn’t be a bad thing.”
“I don’t know. Maybe I have. I just know I can’t stand the thought of him hurting, and I miss him when he’s not here.” Sophie had finished her bowl of food, and she set it aside. She shut her eyes. “I need to find out who the father is, but I’m scared to know.”
“Of course you are. Ugh, Sophie, I’m so sorry about this. What a can of worms.”
Sophie smiled. “That’s so funny. Earlier when I was thinking about this I heard your voice in my head say just that, about the can of worms. But don’t be sorry. I’m actually happy about the baby, even if the circumstances aren’t ideal.” Sophie’s hands had come to rest naturally against her abdomen; the tiny life beneath her touch seemed to flicker within like a star’s faraway light. “There’s a noninvasive blood test that can be done to determine paternity. The tricky thing is, everyone involved needs to submit blood. And that means I have to talk to Alika. Tell him I might be pregnant. Ask him to take the test.” Her stomach gave a sudden lurch and she swallowed. “And I have been avoiding him. Haven’t seen or spoken to him since the bomb.”
“I know. And I know it’s been eating you up.”
“That’s exactly the feeling. The guilt just seems to gnaw at me.” Sophie rubbed her eyes. “I was planning to write Alika a letter. Dr. Wilson’s idea. But then this week got so crazy that I never found the time. Do you think I should just go to Kaua`i and see him?”
“Yes, I do. Get everything out on the table in person.”
“And I need to tell Connor, too.”
“Why?” Marcella’s voice had gone hostile. She was the only person besides Sophie who knew Connor, the Ghost, was also Sheldon Hamilton. Marcella had tried to bring him down through the FBI and failed to make anything stick.
“I owe Connor so much…”
“You don’t owe him shit. He’s your boss. You work for him, that’s all. And you’re an independent contractor; you can leave anytime.”
Sophie sighed. “You know that’s not all there is to it.”
“You don’t still have feelings for him, do you?” Marcella sounded horrified. “Never forget what he put you through. That funeral! I was there. I saw what he did. What he is.”
“I don’t forget. But I do forgive. It’s complicated. He’s my friend. He understands me like no one else does. I don’t have any secrets from him.”
Marcella snorted. “You didn’t sleep with Connor, too, did you?”
“Ha. No. Not since his fake funeral. I’m over him that way. But he is not over me. He told me so clearly.” Sophie listened to the shrill song of the coqui frogs and the gentle shush of the water against the seawall below the building. “I am working closely with Connor on a confidential project. He will have to know eventually, and I’d rather it was sooner than later, in case it causes problems.”
“Brace yourself for more fireworks,” Marcella said darkly.
“Ugh! I’m tired from all of this drama. I’ll keep you posted on any new developments.”
“You’d better. Are you telling everyone your baby news? Or am I sworn to secrecy?”
“I’d prefer you kept this news quiet until…things settle a bit. It is early—perhaps something will go wrong with the pregnancy, and I want to get the paternity question answered and out of the way. Then I can talk more openly about it. Tell my father.” Sophie shook her head. “I don’t know what he will say.”
“Frank will just be worried about you, Sophie. And he’ll want to be involved.”
“Fussing like a mother hen. I can hear him now. He will want to know everything.”
“Exactly.” Marcella yawned. “Let’s both get some sleep. See what life brings in the morning.”
Sophie said goodbye. She rinsed her dishes, brushed her teeth, turned off the lights, and snuggled into her new bed.
She couldn’t help remembering the sight of Jake assembling the bed for her, his absorption in the project. His thoughtfulness was so endearing.
Fresh tears filled her eyes. There was no way out of this situation that didn’t hurt someone.
Lying on her side, the glass slider open with just a screen, she looked out at the moon on the ocean. She listened to the frog chorus, and the wind in the banyan, and the sound of the ocean. She stroked her abdomen with her fingers, tracing the tattoos in Thai that encircled her navel: love, joy, bliss.
Perhaps those things were coming to her in a surprising new way.
Ginger hopped up onto the bed stealthily. Sophie pretended not to notice as the dog curled once and pressed her warm bulk up against Sophie’s back.
She still missed Jake, but Ginger was warm, too. Sophie fell asleep, one hand resting on her belly.
Chapter Twenty-One
Day Four
Connor pushed open the heavy metal door of the jet as Sophie arrived for a morning meeting. Her eyes were puffy. Her short curls surrounded her face in a frizzy nimbus, and an ashy cast to her skin indicated stress. She was clearly upset about something.
“Pim Wat’s flash drive is a waste of time.” Sophie smacked the item in question into Connor’s hand. “I don’t know how to move forward on this situation with the Yām Khûmkạn.”
“Come get settled. Have some tea.”
“Perhaps another cup would be all right.” Sophie slid into the jet’s dining area, pulling a computer tablet out of the small backpack she carried everywhere. “I’m cutting down on caffeine.”
Connor put on the automatic kettle and measured the loose leaf tea they both liked into a hand thrown clay pot he’d picked up in Japan. He glanced over his shoulder and watched as Sophie’s long, golden-brown fingers flew over a wireless keyboard she’d connected to the tablet. “The Yām Khûmkạn’s tech contact Leni Keng has responded to my email. I’m telling him I need more information than Pim Wat provided. I don’t even know what she truly wants me to do at this point.”
“What happened last night?” Connor cocked his head. “You look like you’ve been crying.”
To his surprise, Sophie’s eyes filled immediately. She gave an audible sniff but didn’t look up. She shook her head, and a tear spilled. She dashed it away. “We have business to take care of. We can speak later.”
Connor frowned.
He returned to his own tablet, plugging in the drive to peruse the information Sophie’s mother had provided. Sketchy, at best. Not enough to do anything with.
Could Pim Wat have some other agenda involving Sophie? Some other reason for trying to lure her to the Yām Khûmkạn’s temple stronghold in Thailand?
“Leni Keng has provided me a video conferencing link,” Sophie said. “I’d like to make this call here, so you can witness everything.”
“Of course.” Connor got up and poured the tea. He placed the matching cups and teapot on a tray and ret
urned with them to the table. She would tell him what was really going on when she was ready.
Sophie activated software to record the video conference call. Connor slid a little closer to her when he resumed his seat so that he could see her screen but was still out of view of the camera.
Moments later, a young man’s face appeared. Long hair in a ponytail and a plain white tee set off golden skin and Asian features.
As Connor had been concerned might happen, the two spoke rapidly in Thai, too quickly for his beginning language skills to follow. He caught about every third word. He watched Sophie’s face, and the scrunch of her brows told him she wasn’t pleased with what she was hearing.
Connor battled frustration at not understanding the language. He’d run the whole thing through a translation program later and replay it as often as he wanted. The two techs wrapped up the call, and Sophie punched the end button on her keyboard briskly.
She picked up her cup of tea and took a sip, then sat back and met his eyes squarely for the first time that day.
“I still don’t know what my mother really wants, even after talking to Keng. The Yām Khûmkạn maintains a practically invisible digital footprint, and they have no plans of changing that. Keng told me that yes, there have been incursions, but the leaks were done the old-fashioned way: someone from within the organization outed agents’ identities to Interpol. It had to have been done old-school, through in-person spying, or as a payoff for information. There is no roster of agents anywhere on a computer that Keng is aware of. The Yām stays off the grid. It’s part of their defensive strategy.”
“What is this job that she wants you to do, then?” Connor turned the handleless cup around and around in his hands. “I don’t trust your mother as far as I can throw her.”
“Yes. My mother is petite, but she would be difficult to hurl any distance. So that’s a good analogy.”
Connor flicked a glance at Sophie’s face to make sure she wasn’t teasing him, but her serious mien told him that she had, indeed, interpreted his turn of phrase literally. He suppressed a smile. He really loved her pedantic moments. “Pim Wat is playing a deep game.”
Should he tell Sophie how the Ghost had been manipulating Pim Wat through selective information?
No.
Sophie would not like how he’d been using her mother to eliminate threats and enemies. Even though the kills Pim Wat had performed with the information he’d fed her showed the assassin’s true colors, her actions also showed how far the woman would go to protect her offspring. Sophie might interpret that as love, when Pim Wat’s murders were nothing but narcissistic, possessive self-interest.
Pim Wat wanted Sophie for some purpose not yet revealed.
They might have to go all the way to the stronghold in Thailand to find out what it was, and that wasn’t a risk worth taking.
“We should get back to McDonald with this information from the stick drive and Keng. Tell him that we are currently stymied,” Sophie said. “We’ve run into a wall, as they say.”
“Nice turn of phrase.” Connor refilled their teacups. “Let’s give him a call on the secure number he provided.”
Sophie nodded. Moments later, she set her phone on a stand between them. The CIA agent’s voice fizzled slightly on the phone’s speaker. “Devin McDonald.”
“This is Sophie Ang, Mr. McDonald. You’re on speaker. I’m with Mr. Hamilton of Security Solutions. We are in a secure location for this conversation.”
“Good. What have you got for me?” McDonald didn’t waste any time.
“I met with Pim Wat in a park yesterday, and she gave me a stick drive that was supposedly going to show me what the job for the Yām Khûmkạn was. There was hardly anything on it: a few read-only files stored in the Cloud, an application portal, and contact info for their tech agent. I just got off of a videoconference with that person. His name is Leni Keng.” Sophie took a sip of tea and continued. “The tech confirmed that the Yām Khûmkạn has no centralized database and no online presence that the organization wants to maintain. He was confused as to why I was getting involved at all. I did not tell him how I came to have his contact information, only that I had been recruited by someone from the Yām to provide further tech support and wanted to get started.” Sophie poured a little more tea. “My impression was that Keng was telling the truth. He honestly seemed to wonder what I could do or add to the current strategy he’d been tasked with—which was maintaining as little of a cyber presence as possible. In fact, the man said he spends the majority of his time tracking online mentions of the Yām Khûmkạn and removing them from the Web.”
“Sounds fishy as hell.” McDonald growled. “Do you think that there might be some other agenda going on? Maybe Pim Wat is off the reservation on this recruitment attempt and going it alone for her own reasons. You are her daughter, after all.”
“What does that mean, ‘off the reservation?’” Sophie’s brows drew together. “Sounds like a racist phrase referring to Native Americans. Are you implying that my mother could be using the Yām Khûmkạn for her own personal purposes?”
“Pim Wat wants you to go to the temple stronghold, and so do we. That’s the logical next step in finding out more.” McDonald sounded testy.
“Regardless, I won’t go.” Sophie said. When Connor glanced over at her, Sophie’s arm muscles were tight as she crossed her fists over her waist.
“We need more from Pim Wat herself,” Connor said. “Why she reached out to Sophie. Why she’s been so persistent, but so uncommunicative about her actual purpose.”
“Maybe the agency should grab Pim Wat. Ship her out to Guantánamo for a little questioning,” McDonald said. “That can easily be arranged.”
“Are you threatening my mother? Trying to gain my compliance by blackmailing me with her safety?” Sophie’s voice trembled with outrage.
“I’m just saying that Pim Wat is behaving in a suspicious manner and would benefit from being formally interviewed. There is more than one way to skin a cat.” The agent ended the call with a click.
“Skin a cat? That sounds terrible! Son of a water buffalo! Foul stench of rats’ entrails!” Sophie wrapped her hands around her cup as if trying to warm them. “He threatened my mother with Guantánamo!”
“I told you the CIA did not have your best interests at heart,” Connor said. “I have been waiting for them to play dirty pool, and it looks like McDonald just made his opening move.” He reached over and covered Sophie’s hand with his. “I know you don’t want to go to the Yām Khûmkạn temple, but it would be a fascinating recon. I could help keep you safe.”
Sophie pulled away and stood up. “Keep me safe? Like you did when we were almost shot out of the sky in your helicopter?” She pressed a hand to her stomach, her fingers spread. “No, thank you.”
Connor had never seen her make that gesture before. “What’s going on, Sophie? Tell me.”
Her eyes met his. “There’s a very good reason why I don’t want to go to the Yām Khûmkạn stronghold. I don’t want to endanger my baby.”
“Your what?” The meaning of her words refused to penetrate. “What baby?”
Sophie just stared at him, and the tiny circles her hand made against her abdomen drew his gaze. Realization burst over his brain in a heat wave of some deep emotion he could not put a name to. “You’re pregnant.”
“Yes.”
“How far along?” Dizzying hope that she might be pregnant from their time together, that the child might be his, washed over him—but a second later reality swept that away. She would be well along in the pregnancy if that were true, and her belly still looked completely flat.
“I’m not sure. Eight weeks, perhaps.” Sophie’s cheeks had gone pink. Her tawny-brown eyes seemed to glow. “It is early yet, but I have to make lifestyle changes.”
“You’re happy about this?” Connor sounded incredulous, even to his own ears. It seemed impossible, but Sophie did appear happy about a circumstance that might be dis
astrous to her personally and professionally.
“It is not the best situation, and I was upset last night…but the longer I know about it, the better I feel about what’s happened.” Sophie sat back down, poured a little more tea. “I thought I could not have children. It was careless of me not to take enough precautions, but I find that I am indeed happy.”
“And Jake? What does Jake think of becoming a father right now?” Connor’s mouth tasted bitter as he forced the name out. Jake. He wished he could hate that guy, but the man was likeable, good at his job, and clearly besotted with Sophie.
A shadow crossed Sophie’s face. She picked up her cup and took a sip of the tea. “He is adjusting to the news.”
“Is that why you were crying last night?” Devastated as he was, the thought of Jake rejecting the woman he loved and her child enraged Connor. “I’ll kill him if he doesn’t do right by you.”
“You may not kill Jake, Connor. For any reason.” Always so literal. But in this instance, Connor heard the command Sophie was issuing the Ghost. She got up, walked to the galley, and dumped the remaining liquid into the small steel sink. “This whole situation is not your business, really. I only told you so that you would understand why I am so adamant about not going to the stronghold. I didn’t want to go before, but now I am certain it would be a dangerous move. I don’t trust my mother, or why she wants me there. She might even have some new marriage alliance planned for me. There’s nothing I would put past her.”
“You are right not to trust Pim Wat. And how will she respond to knowing you’re pregnant?” Connor frowned. He didn’t have a good feeling—Pim Wat was unpredictable. She might hate the idea of being a grandmother, or love it. Either option could be threatening to Sophie.
Sophie turned to face him, hands supporting her on either side of the sink. “I don’t want Pim Wat to find out. Ever. I don’t want her around any child of mine.” She blew out a breath. “I might as well tell you everything. Alika and I slept together during the time frame that might have led to the pregnancy. He also could be the father.”
