by Toby Neal
She took a bite and chewed deliberately, closing her eyes to access memory. “I spent the first twelve years of my life in a very traditional setting in Thailand, our family’s home on the Ping River near Bangkok. The house was high up on stilts in case of flooding by the river, which happened most winters. Built of native wood with many rooms, the dwelling was designed around a raised central courtyard area where our family gathered for meals and socializing.” Sophie paused to sip her beer. “Each family unit in the compound had its own apartments, I guess you would call them. My aunts took turns cooking; or I should say, supervising meals that servants cooked for the whole family.” Sophie lowered her eyes to her bowl, swamped with memories of the rich sounds, smells, and culture of her homeland. “We were a wealthy family by the standards of the area. And it was a good life, for the most part, until my parents divorced. After the divorce, I went to boarding school in Geneva, Switzerland.”
“Seasons. That must’ve been a shock.” Alika got up and refilled his bowl from the wok. “Just having four seasons must have been weird. I spent some time in Colorado going to college, and I found it challenging after living in Hawaii my whole life.”
“It was strange, indeed. But my father insisted. He wanted me to be prepared to be a dual citizen of the West as well as Thailand. I was twelve—not a baby any more. My mother could not care for me, and my aunts were too busy with their own families to help.”
“Why couldn’t your mother care for you? Same reason she didn’t supervise the cooking?” Alika was making rapid progress on his second bowl of stir-fry.
“She was crippled by depression. A sickness of the spirit.” Her mother was a closed door, a whispered “she’s not well,” and a sad, empty, unresponsive gaze.
Pim Wat’s depression had resulted in her complete withdrawal from her child and her marriage—but how much of that was real? Now that she knew her mother was actually an operative for an ancient and mysterious organization, every childhood memory had to be seen through a different lens.
How many times had Pim Wat actually been involved with some secret mission while supposedly ill in bed?
Alika stared at Sophie. His bowl was already empty. “Why didn’t you ever talk about this before?”
“I was too busy trying to recover from the things I went through with my ex-husband to think much about the things I went through with my family in Thailand. That took a distant second in the forefront of my mind. I am a private person. I don’t like to talk about my family.” Sophie met Alika’s gaze. “But I want you to know something about why I am the way I am. Why it’s hard for me to connect with people.”
Alika rested his hand over hers on the little table. “Your dad, Frank, seems like a good guy.” The Ambassador and Alika had met on Oahu a few times over the years. “He was right to prepare you to be an international citizen.”
“Without him…I don’t know where I would be.” Sophie bit her lip. Her father had been too busy to know all the ways Sophie had suffered under her mother’s indifference, but he’d done all he could. Boarding school had been the best possible setting for Sophie. She’d been able to discover her love of sports, languages and technology there. “I don’t like to dig up the past.”
Alika picked up her hand. Large and brown, his was calloused across the palm from construction work. “I don’t take your trust for granted.” He stroked her palm with his thumb, sending a tingle straight to her heart.
Sophie pulled away. She got up and cleared the dishes into the minuscule sink. “Let’s go into the living room to finish our drinks, and you can tell me about your life, growing up on Kaua`i.”
Chapter Eleven
Alika could feel the barrier between him and Sophie, an invisible wall. He’d nearly lost her completely since they’d broken up. She’d been intimate with other men in the meantime. But she had invited him to her home, and made him a meal, and it was the first time she had done that for anyone. He suspected she didn’t often talk about her childhood, either.
He carried his beer into the tiny front room, admiring the excellence of the tree house’s construction and the shadows of the leaves against the midnight sky through the picture window. Whoever this builder was had done a good job.
Sophie joined him at the window. “The moon is rising.” She pointed to a faint glow in the dark sky above the lacy scrim of black tree line.
A high-pitched peew! and the sound of breaking glass seemed to occur simultaneously. Alika felt wetness cascade over his hand. He stared down in disbelief at beer foaming out of the remains of the shattered bottle he held. Warm night breeze wafted through a circular hole the size of his fist in the window in front of him.
What had just happened?
Sophie slammed into him and bore him to the ground. Her strong, solid weight pinned him to the wooden floor. “Stay down!”
Any other reason for being on the floor beneath Sophie would have made him happy, but not her trying to protect him with her body. Alika shoved at her. “Let me up!”
“Are you hurt?”
“No, dammit! Get off me!” He pushed at her shoulder.
“Someone’s shooting at us.”
Ginger barked, and that got Sophie’s attention. She rolled off of Alika, heading in a crouch for the Lab, who was standing at the door, barking and waving her tail.
“No shit, someone’s shooting at us.” Alika rolled up to his knees, staying tucked beneath the level of the window.
Peew!
This time, the entire window collapsed in a shower of glittering debris. Alika ducked his head and shut his eyes as slivers cascaded over him in a lethally sharp rain.
Sophie hit the switch by the door, extinguishing the lights. Darkness fell, punctuated by the sound of Ginger panting.
“Are you all right?” Sophie whispered harshly, and he heard the fear in the tremble of her voice. “Alika. Are you hit?”
“No. Don’t let that dog move,” Alika said. “This glass is going to shred her paws.”
“I know.”
“I’m covered in glass and barefoot, so I’m not moving either,” he whispered back. “What the hell is going on?”
“I think I should probably be in the Witness Protection program right now. This could be related to my current case,” Sophie whispered. “We’re pinned down, but at least they can’t see where to shoot us with the lights off. I have to make a call.” He heard beeping as she used her phone. Ginger whined.
Alika shook out his arms and hair gently. Shards tinkled as they hit the floor. He didn’t want to give the shooter a target, or cut himself on the fragments of broken window, so he focused on getting clear of the glass.
Sophie whispered fiercely into the phone, but he couldn’t hear what she was saying.
Below them, on the ground, lights bloomed on. Voices were raised from the surrounding small houses and semi-permanent tents Alika had glimpsed on his way up. “You okay up there?” A strong, feminine voice called from below.
“Yes. But the window broke, and there’s glass everywhere,” Sophie called back. “I’m calling the police. Someone shot at us.”
“What? No way!”
Sophie ignored the semi-hysterical inquiries shouted from below and addressed Alika. “I think the shooter’s gone. But we need to get out of here.” Sophie flicked on her phone flashlight and shone it over the floor, assessing the damage. “I got ahold of my contact at the U.S. Marshals Service. She’s going to talk to her superiors. In the meantime, I need to clear out and go dark.”
“You can come to my hotel,” Alika said. “Can you throw me my slippers? They’re by the door.” Alika caught the rubber sandals Sophie tossed him from where he’d left them beside the front door, Hawaii style. “I’m guessing ‘going dark’ means more than turning off the lights.”
“You should go back to your hotel. And if that offer still stands to join you…I’ll take it. I need to pack up and leave here permanently. It won’t take long.”
Alika’s blood thickened
at the thought of Sophie in his hotel room. In his bed. “Sure. Anything I can do.”
He slid the simple shoes on and stood carefully, shaking the remaining slivers out of his clothes. “Let me take Ginger. I can wash the glass out of her coat and keep her out of the way while you do what you need to do to get out of here. I’m sorry, Sophie. This sucks. I know you liked this place.”
“I did like it here. But I like being alive better, and they know where I am, now.” Her body was a tense silhouette lit dimly by the flashlight. “I’ll go to the ground with you. I need to talk to my landlady.” Sophie loaded Ginger into the dumbwaiter and lowered the dog as Alika headed down the ladder that led to the ground.
The woman who owned the place was a tall, rangy woman with thick braids and a no-nonsense manner. “Are the cops on the way?”
“I think Sophie called them,” Alika said, unloading Ginger at the base of the tree. He caught the excited dog by her collar before she could run away.
“I did not call the police yet.” Sophie was descending the ladder. “I wanted to talk with you first. I know you have illegals out here.”
“You need to leave, Sophie, if you’re into something bad. But don’t call the cops, please.”
Alika scowled. They’d been shot at, and this woman didn’t want them calling the police? But this was Sophie’s business. He was just a bystander, and he wouldn’t second-guess her in front of a stranger.
Alika left the two women talking and led Ginger to the pickup truck he’d rented. The truck’s bed was still piled high with expensive hardwood he’d bought that day.
Something smelled about the situation, but Sophie would handle it.
Chapter Twelve
Sophie swept the glass out of the way with a little plastic broom, heading to the ladder leading to her sleeping quarters. With the point of her knife, she dug out the two slugs buried in the wall and dropped them in her pocket. Never know when you’ll need evidence of an attempted murder.
She felt frozen, her emotions locked away in a case where they could be taken out and examined at some other time, when she was safe.
When Ginger was safe.
When Alika was safe.
Her heart did a little, involuntary flip remembering the moment of seeing Alika look down at his shattered beer bottle, astonishment and confusion on his face. Thankfully, her reflexes had taken over and she’d knocked him out of the line of fire.
She’d thought he’d been shot.
A call to the police was not something Rhonda the landlady would welcome, and the attention it would attract wasn’t something she wanted to deal with, either. But Sophie would have to leave the property because of this incident. Rhonda was an illegal pot grower, and sheltered undocumented foreign workers on the property. “I’m following my conscience. This is a modern underground railroad,” the landlady had told her.
Thankfully, Alika hadn’t insisted on calling the police and was going along with the plan so far. She had reached Matsue on the phone and told the marshal about the attack. Matsue had directed her to disappear in the short term as best she could. She would contact her superiors about bringing Sophie into WITSEC until the Chang trial was over.
Slipping into Alika’s hotel room under his registered name for the night was as good a way to hide as she could come up with on short notice. She was grateful he’d offered.
Hopefully, he had two beds in the room…she refused to let that thought go any further.
Sophie pulled up the floorboard and removed her small backpack of highly confidential items. She took out a plain black wallet containing cash, a credit card, and a Hawaii driver’s license for her Sandy Mason identity. She put her Sophie Ang wallet into the pack, and replaced the floorboard.
She unplugged her laptop from the desk area. After that, it took her only ten minutes to pack the essentials that she would need, wedging clothing and bedding into the large hiking pack she had arrived on the island with. Anything else was merely extraneous fluff she’d used to pad this sweet little temporary nest.
Sophie hurried back down the ladder after sending the backpack to the ground via the dumbwaiter. She hugged Rhonda briefly and handed her a wad of cash. “You don’t know who I am, nor where I went. Just my first name, which is Sandy.”
The woman’s sharp brown eyes moved over Sophie’s face. “And that’s nothing more than the truth. I don’t know who you are. Or where you went. Or why someone’s trying to shoot you. But you aren’t the first such person I have sheltered here. Far as I’m concerned, you rented the tree house for a few weeks and disappeared, after breaking my window.”
“Perfect.”
“Good luck. Stay safe.” The woman hugged Sophie briefly.
Sophie was grateful for the moment of human contact as she hurried into the dark, heading for the Jeep. She removed a flashlight and an explosives detection wand out of her small pack and took a moment to check the vehicle over thoroughly for signs of tampering, grateful for the training and tech skills she had gained to monitor for such concerns.
Alika’s confused expression as he looked at the shattered beer bottle in his hand filled Sophie’s mind’s eye once again as she started the Jeep.
Alika was a civilian.
He had physical skills and good instincts. He was strong, smart, and good with people. But he wasn’t ex-Special Forces like Jake, equipped with training and the background to handle the situations that Sophie repeatedly found herself in.
This was a good part of why they had broken up the first time. Her life was dangerous. Alika could be used as leverage against her, even become collateral damage. She’d hoped things would improve with Assan Ang’s death, but this new situation was just as potentially deadly.
She was going to have to go off the grid again, assuming her Sandy Mason identity, or go into Witness Protection. Either way, she couldn’t endanger Alika by being involved with him until the Chang threat was dealt with and the trial was over.
And that could take a while.
Sophie’s hands opened and closed on the steering wheel as she drove to Hilo Bay, taking winding side roads and watching her mirror constantly. She pulled off the road at one point and hid among some parked cars, checking for a tail. When she arrived at the Hilo Bay Hilton, she was sure she hadn’t been followed. She parked in the hotel’s garage and texted Alika.
“I’m here. Where’s Ginger? I’m sure they won’t let her up inside the hotel.”
“She’s settled for the night in my truck. Lots of water, and a nice beach towel to sleep on. She will be fine. Parking spot B-17 if you want to check on her. My room is 307.”
Sophie locked the Jeep and went to check on Ginger.
The Lab lunged to her feet when Sophie tapped on the window. Alika had left the windows cracked, and a large dish of water rested on the floorboard. She stroked Ginger through the window with the tips of her fingers and felt the dog’s damp coat. Alika had found a way to wash the glass out of Ginger’s fur, just like he said he would. Her heart swelled painfully at his thoughtfulness and support in this latest fiasco. “I’ll see you in the morning, girl.”
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.
