Wired Secret

by Toby Neal

  For the first time, his contacts didn’t bother her.

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  The limo from the airport pulled up at Frank Smithson’s swanky building in downtown Honolulu. Sophie had called her father to let him know she was arriving that morning and would be in her Mary Watson disguise. Dressed in a floral sundress, a concealing pair of sunglasses, and a large straw hat, Sophie felt as invisible as if she were wearing armor as the vehicle pulled up to the curb.

  Connor reached across the seat and touched Sophie’s knee. “I called the U.S. Marshals Service. Deputy Marshal Matsue, whom you worked with before, is on her way to meet you at your father’s apartment.”

  “I’m sure that’s not necessary. The trial is tomorrow, and this building has plenty of security.”

  “We don’t want to take any chances.” Connor said. “Not at this late date.”

  Sophie tightened her lips in irritation. “All right.” She stepped out onto the sidewalk when Thom opened the door, giving Ginger’s leash a tweak. The Lab jumped out of the limo to stand beside her on the sidewalk. “Goodbye, Connor. See you after the trial.”

  He waved briefly from the dim confines of the limo, his face a neutral mask, and Thom closed the door.

  Sophie slipped Thom a wad of cash as she said goodbye. “Thank you, Thom. You are a wonderful pilot.”

  She walked up to the building’s dignified entry and pushed open one of the smoked glass doors, her gaze taking in familiar elegant furnishings: marble floors, a crystal chandelier, and quality paintings in gold frames. She approached an elderly security guard behind a rounded desk at the back of the lobby. “Mary Watson to see Ambassador Smithson.” She held up her ID.

  “Yes, he called down to expect you—and you have a visitor.” The guard pointed to a figure seated in a tapestry armchair, hidden in the shadow of one of the potted palms.

  Sophie’s heart jumped.

  It was likely Matsue.

  “Thank you.” She walked across the room, her heeled sandals ringing on the marble—and pulled up short at the sight of the man seated in the chair. “Alika.”

  “Sophie.” Alika slid something into his pocket and stood up. Ginger gave a happy yap and strained toward him. He patted the Lab’s head. “I needed to see you.”

  Alika wasn’t wearing his usual sleeveless Fight Club tee and workout shorts. Elegant black trousers and an open-necked silk shirt in a deep gold color emphasized his warm skin tone and amber eyes. Thick black hair waved back from his broad forehead, and his full, chiseled lips curved in a smile.

  Sophie blinked at his magnificence. “I didn’t expect you,” she murmured. Her mouth felt numb. Her heart roared in her ears. The dream she’d had of the two of them flying over his home on Kaua`i flashed through her mind. “How did you find me?”

  “Your father. I called him, told him I had to see you. He let me know you’d be here today.” Clearly, Alika was Frank’s favorite of her suitors.

  “I’m in disguise. The trial.” Sophie forced the words past the tightness of her throat.

  “I guessed that. You look beautiful. What should I call you?” Alika tilted his head. That smile—so brilliant, so kind. He accepted her secrets, always had.

  “Mary. Mary Watson.”

  He took a step closer. “Hello, Mary. May I speak with you privately?”

  Sophie flushed at the husky tone of his voice, the heat in his eyes. She looked around, abruptly remembering the threats she should be monitoring. “Not here. You can come up with me to my father’s apartment.”

  The security guard caught her eye. “Before you go, Ms. Watson, you have a package.”

  Sophie frowned. “What kind of package?”

  The guard took a medium-sized, flat rate postal box out from under the desk and set it on the counter. “Postmarked the Big Island. From a Dr. Wilson.”

  “Oh, Dr. Wilson.” Sophie let out a breath. Dr. Wilson knew about her Mary Watson persona. Maybe the psychologist had sent some more medication or some therapeutic reading material. The guard lifted the barrier flap of his desk and walked toward her, carrying the box.

  Ginger pricked her ears, leaving Alika’s side, and trotted toward the guard. She hit the end of her leash and barked, a loud, inquiring sound. The hairs on Sophie’s neck stood up, and she moved to stand in front of Alika. She slid her hand into her purse and curled her fingers around the cool pebbled grip of her Glock.

  But Ginger seemed more interested in the package than the guard, sniffing at the box thoroughly. “Probably some cookies in here,” the guard smiled.

  Alika stepped around Sophie and took the box. “I’ll carry that for the lady. Thanks.”

  Sophie watched the man, innocuous with his heavy bifocals and balding head, as he walked back to the desk. Connor was probably right to have called the Marshals Service. The security here definitely wasn’t what it could be.

  Alika had reached the elevator and pushed the button. The doors opened immediately, and he stepped inside, the package tucked under his arm. “Which floor?”

  Sophie headed for the elevator, tugging at Ginger. The dog had decided to investigate the potted palm. “The penthouse.”

  Alika reached for the control panel as Sophie neared the doorway—and the world exploded.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  A loud ringing.

  Muffled thumps, tones, a wailing.

  A red glow somewhere.

  Ripples of throbbing sensation that made her grit her teeth.

  PAIN.

  The sounds sorted themselves into voices, somewhere overhead but far away.

  Thoughts swam through her mind, random and disconnected, like sparks drifting from a bonfire.

  Alika had come to see her. Ginger was misbehaving, as usual. Her father was going to be upset that she was late. Why would Dr. Wilson send a package without telling her? She should have refused it…

  The light above Sophie became abruptly brighter. And then it was a lance, piercing her eye, delving into her brain. Everything hurt.

  Consciousness burst upon her aching brain like an echo of the explosion. Sophie heard a pitiful noise, the dregs of a scream. She was making the noise, and it was tiny as a kitten’s mew.

  The box had been a bomb.

  Alika had been holding the box.

  Sophie screamed again. She heard the cry through the ringing of her ears, only slightly louder than before.

  “You’re okay. Just relax. Just breathe.” An unfamiliar voice, very close. “You’ll feel better soon. We’re getting you some medication. Just breathe.”

  But breathing hurt most of all.

  “Alika. Ginger.” Sophie forced her mouth to form the words in spite of the pain, the heaviness on her chest, the thin gruel of air dribbling out between her lips.

  “You will be fine. Just relax. You have some broken ribs, so breathing is going to hurt. But you are going to be okay.”

  She would never be okay if Ginger and Alika were gone.

  More voices. People were moving around her, making puppet shadows against the red backdrop of her eyelids.

  “Alika!” She whispered. Her throat burned.

  A period of time went by, but Sophie was not present for it.

  Sophie woke to a persistent beeping sound that accompanied the thumping of her head. She opened her eyes slowly, afraid of what she would see.

  The surroundings were entirely unremarkable: putty-colored walls, a beige curtain on metal rings, the foot of a bed. Deputy Marshal Hazel Matsue, sitting in a chair across from her, was working on a laptop set on her knees.

  Sophie was inclined at an upward slant. Her head ached. Her mouth was extremely dry, and every breath seemed to shred her lungs. She coughed.

  “You’re awake!” Matsue set her laptop aside and stood up hastily. She pressed a button near Sophie’s hand.

  Sophie’s gaze slid down to that appendage.

  An IV was taped to the back of it. Her skin was lacerated, and there was a bruise on her arm. A pl
astic bracelet circled her wrist. Mary Watson was printed in blue on the plastic band.

  “Thirsty.” Sophie’s voice was a rasp.

  Matsue picked up a plastic cup and held a straw to Sophie’s lips. “They said you could drink all you wanted. Your internal organs are fine.”

  Sophie drank. With each sip she drew energy back into the battered husk of her body.

  She wiggled her toes. Her legs seemed intact. She moved her arms. A burning, rubbing sensation told her that she had skin damage. But it was when she tried to draw a deeper breath that she felt the most serious pain, a stabbing weight to the chest. Her eyes widened as panic swelled, increasing the sensation.

  Matsue touched her arm. “Your doctor is being paged. He will tell you what happened. But you are all right.”

  “Alika? Ginger?” Sophie’s voice was still a thread.

  Matsue tightened her lips and shook her head. “Wait for the doctor.”

  “Where is my father?” Her dad would be so worried…

  “You are in protective custody. No one can visit you right now. I’m sorry, Sophie. Until the trial is over, you are completely sequestered.”

  Sophie tried to draw breath to speak, her heart galloping, but it was too difficult. Her head swam. She shut her eyes.

  “Ms. Watson.”

  Sophie opened her eyes to see a man in a white coat in the doorway, a uniformed marshal behind him. The doctor, a diminutive Asian with large spectacles shielding mild eyes smiled as he approached her. “I’m Dr. Heng. I see you’re awake, Ms. Watson. Just relax. Let me give you something for the pain.” His voice was gentle as he injected something into the IV.

  The glasses reminded her of the man in the lobby. “The security guard. The package,” Sophie whispered.

  “Yes. You were the victim of a bomb.” The doctor picked up Sophie’s wrist, feeling her pulse. “I’m going to check your pupils. They were unevenly dilating before, indicating some swelling to your brain from the impact of the explosion. You were thrown backwards ten feet or so, and you landed hard.”

  “My dog?”

  Matsue spoke up from her position near the chair in the corner where she stood while the doctor performed his examination. “Ginger is fine. In fact, she is the reason you have broken ribs. She landed on you when you went down.”

  “Yes. Other than a concussion, dermal lacerations, and bruising, you have three broken ribs. I would say you were a very lucky young lady.”

  “And Alika?”

  “Your friend was not so lucky.” The doctor’s voice was matter of fact as he continued to handle her body as if she were a doll.

  Sophie felt nothing for a moment. Then grief hit, a boulder falling on her from a great height.

  “No.” Tears rose in a wave to burst out of her eyes. “No, no, no!” She needed to get away, to crawl to somewhere dark where this unbearable feeling couldn’t crush her. Pain knifed through her chest as she hyperventilated. She thrashed at the doctor, at the IV, and tried to rise from the bed.

  Hands held her down. Voices were a storm overhead. Then, merciful oblivion.

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Sophie woke feeling too hot.

  She cracked her eyes open. The room was dark; but she didn’t hear hospital sounds any longer.

  That’s right. They’d discharged her.

  Matsue and her team had spirited Sophie out of the hospital, heavily drugged and disguised, in a wheelchair. She was in the downtown Honolulu safe house condo where they were keeping her, heavily guarded, until her testimony the next day.

  Sophie shut her eyes. There was no reason to open them. There was no point to anything.

  She would do what was expected; Matsue had told her she was going to be called as a witness tomorrow, if the trial proceeded as projected. But why bother waking up? Sleep was an escape from a truth too terrible to bear.

  Still, she was too hot and something heavy weighed her down. She shoved at it, whimpering at the twinge of pain from her ribs.

  “Hey. You’re awake.” Jake’s voice in her ear. He was lying in bed with her, close against her side, and the weight was his arm across her. “Am I hurting you?”

  “Jake,” Sophie whispered. “You came.” Her eyes overflowed with easy tears.

  “I knew you were in Witness Protection, but I was freaking out—especially after the bomb went off in your dad’s building. No one would verify whether or not you were involved.” Jake paused the rush of words, snuggling her close. His bulk was a furnace of warmth. His lips brushed her neck. She inhaled his delicious smell, and her muscles went slack. She closed her eyes, inhaling comfort.

  He went on. “Matsue got in touch with me yesterday; she had called Marcella, who said you needed a trusted friend. They let me come to help guard you.”

  “Alika…” Her throat closed.

  “Poor guy. The dude almost died. I knew you had to have been there when I heard a woman was also injured, though they wouldn’t release any names.”

  “He’s alive?” Sophie turned in Jake’s arms, groaning at the pain from her ribs, at the expansion of hope stretching her battered emotions.

  “Yeah. Mangled, but alive.” Jake sounded surprised. The room was too dim for her to see his expression.

  “I thought he had died.” Sophie closed her eyes and exhaled a long slow breath. “The doctor said he wasn’t so lucky…”

  “And he wasn’t. Dude’s still on life support.”

  “Oh no.” Sophie ducked her head and pressed her face against Jake’s chest. She choked on a sob. “All my fault.”

  They could never be together. She was as deadly to Alika as one of her mother’s poisons. But at least he was alive; he might someday recover. Guilt swamped her. Jake murmured soothing noises and rubbed her back as she wept. Eventually she slept, enfolded in his warmth.

  Sophie held up her hand and looked into the bailiff’s eyes. The woman was a well-rounded mixed-race female of indeterminate age, packed tightly into a navy-blue uniform. Her dark brown gaze was compassionate. “Do you solemnly swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God?”

  “I do.”

  “You may take the stand.”

  Sophie turned and walked with the aid of a cane up into the witness stand of the small, drab courtroom. She was subject to random waves of dizziness, and short of breath due to her ribs, but nothing would stop her from testifying at this point—she’d have crawled into the courtroom if necessary—and the DA had told her that the bruises, lacerations, and obvious signs of injury added to their cause.

  Due to the nature of the case, the courtroom was closed to spectators. Sophie was relieved that she didn’t have to face a wider audience as she scanned the room. Akane Chang’s hate-filled eyes burning holes in her were more than enough hostile scrutiny. The defendant, wearing a classy gray suit, sat in the front row with his lawyer, a muscular blonde wearing chunky statement jewelry.

  The prosecuting attorney walked over. “Let’s begin by having you tell us about your role in a Security Solutions investigation into the disappearance of a young woman on the Big Island.”

  Sophie looked across the courtroom to where Jake was seated behind the prosecution’s table. Their eyes met. He gave an encouraging nod—his testimony would back hers up, just as he always backed her up.

  Sophie took a deep breath, blew it out, and plunged into the dark tale that had led to this moment.

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Byron had bribed Akane’s lawyer to wear a button cam during the trial. He was able to have a front row seat to watch the pile of evidence against his brother, assembled by the investigative team of detectives and the district attorney, unfold. He watched a battered Sophie Ang testify, making the vital missing connection between his brother and the multitude of bodies found in the ditch on a road outside of Volcanoes National Park.

  Byron endured hours of watching Akane’s lawyer try to chip away at Ang and her partner’s credibility, at the way the investig
ation had been conducted, always emphasizing the lack of physical evidence. She seemed to be making some headway until Julie Weathersby, the fresh-faced young woman the Security Solutions team had been seeking, took the stand to testify to Akane’s threats and rape attempt at knifepoint.

  Byron watched the jury’s faces as Julie, trembling with fright, told a harrowing tale and exhibited a pink scar just below her jawline, where Akane had held her at the edge of his blade before her escape.

  His brother wasn’t going anywhere.

  Byron heaved a sigh of relief and wasn’t surprised when the adjudicators didn’t take long to deliberate and soon came back with a guilty verdict. Akane was sentenced to multiple life, and bound over to be transported to a federal prison that specialized in security for well-connected criminals.

  The lawyer tried to calm Byron’s raging brother as Akane spewed threats on the occupants of the courtroom.

  “Terence was right. You’re a rabid dog, Akane, and you need to be put down,” Byron murmured. He pushed a button and turned off the cam’s feed playing on his laptop.

  He sat back in his office chair, laced his fingers over his belly, and contemplated a beam of light falling through one of the high windows of his historic warehouse office. His security team was on alert outside the building, Lani was outside his office keeping order, and his brother was safely and forever behind bars.

  Byron had navigated this particular minefield and come out on the other side.

  No one in their organization would fault him for trying to kill Sophie Ang, the woman whose testimony had brought Akane down. He even had a ready answer for whomever had threatened him for doing so: he’d tried to call off the Lizard. The man had refused to take his call, listen to his messages—and the Lizard was clearly incompetent, because he hadn’t finished the job, either.