Paradise Crime Box Set 4

by Toby Neal

  “How’d that interview with André Métier go?” Stevens still had a smile lurking at the corner of his mouth.

  “We cracked that kid. Turns out he had a recording of the murder he’d taken off of Bukowski’s body. He’d been at the site of the murder, all right, but at Bukowski’s invitation. He arrived too late to help his cousin, who’d called him and told him he’d witnessed the murder of François Métier. Bukowski was going to blackmail Kitty Summers and wanted Métier there for backup. Métier was delayed, and the woman went nuts on Bukowski, as you saw—really let her rage out of the cage. When Métier got there, he searched the body for the phone—Bukowski had told him the murder was recorded on a voice memo. He listened to the recording and staged the scene to point to Summers—he’d brought the bracelet along from her locker, in case they needed to implicate her.” C.J. slid out of her damp shoes and set them alongside the impressive assortment of footwear on the welcome mat. “Métier got blood on his clothes and burned them. Didn’t want to come forward because he thought it would look bad for him—on a number of levels.”

  “And it did. So you believed him? Kitty Summers was the doer?” Stevens’s blue eyes narrowed.

  “Oh yes. She did both victims.” C.J. told Stevens about the dramatic interview at the jail. “We were able to trap Summers into admitting to killing François Métier by playing Bukowski’s recording. Mahoe and Kevin from the crime lab are at her apartment, going over it for trace. So far they’ve found blood around the shower drain and her clothes in the washer—we picked her up before she had a chance to wash them a second time, so some pretty nice blood spatter showed up. We got her.”

  “You sound like you’re having fun.” Stevens grinned. “Enjoying being out in the field, are you?”

  “A little bit, yeah.” C.J. pointed to the door. “Enough shop talk. Where’s that baby?”

  “Right this way.” Stevens held the door ajar for her.

  The modest living room hummed with conversation. People she knew and some she didn’t ebbed and flowed around the room. Directly ahead of her, an older Japanese man who must be Lei’s grandfather was building a Lego construction on the coffee table with Kiet.

  Lei was seated like a queen in the corner of the couch, a flannel blanket over her shoulder as she nursed the baby.

  C.J. approached. “That looks good on you, Texeira.”

  “Captain!” A smile bloomed across Lei’s face. “What looks good? My crazy hair, the spit-up on my shirt?”

  “Motherhood,” C.J. said. “Motherhood looks good on you.” She sat down next to Lei. “Let me see.”

  Kiet scrambled up helpfully, moving the blanket aside so C.J. could see the baby’s face. “My baby sister,” he said proudly. The baby nursed on, eyes closed, mouth working.

  “Looks like a baby.” C.J. never knew what to say about the larva-like appearance of infants—they all looked the same, but parents never seemed to think so. Some compliment was called for. “She’s a cutie. Does that hurt?” She gestured to the machine-like movement of the baby’s jaws.

  “Kinda. I’m sure we’ll get used to it.” Lei slanted C.J. a glance. “I saw that you came with someone.”

  “Me,” Abe boomed from behind the couch. “She’s with me now.” He handed C.J. a paper plate of food. “We’re a couple.”

  Lei blinked. “Nice score, Abe.”

  C.J. cleared her throat. “I expect it will raise a few eyebrows, but life is short, right?”

  “Amen to that,” Stevens said. C.J. might have envied the loving smile he gave his wife and children if Abe’s hand hadn’t been resting on her shoulder, firm and solid.

  Lei

  Lei looked around the room, feeling a bubble of happiness tighten her chest. Everyone who was near and dear to her had gathered to meet Rosie, and even if it was a little hectic on top of a night of broken sleep, she wouldn’t have traded it for anything.

  All she had to do right now was sit and hold her daughter and feel the love that filled the room.

  Directly in front of her, Grandfather Soga deliberately hunted for just the right Lego piece for his meticulous construction as Kiet held up different ones for his inspection. “What about this one, Grandfather?”

  Behind Lei, in the kitchen, Captain Omura and her surprise boyfriend, Abe Torufu, made conversation with Ellen and Wayne, who seemed to have a glow about them, too. And she could hardly glance at Jared and Kathy without being burned by the chemistry they were throwing off over there on the love seat.

  Out on the deck, her best friend Marcella juggled baby Jonas on her hip and a sippy cup in her hand as she talked to Captain Bruce Ohale and Dr. Wilson, over for a few days to meet the baby.

  Her techie friend Sophie Ang, moving with feline grace, sat down in the spot on the couch that Captain Omura had vacated.

  “So glad you came,” Lei said. “I’m sorry we haven’t had much time to catch up. What’s new with you?”

  “Nonstop action and constant change. Nothing new under the sun but this little one. She’s so beautiful.” Sophie’s husky voice was tender as she gazed at Rosie’s sleeping face, tucked in the corner of Lei’s arm. “I love her name. Rosie Maluhia. How wonderful to remember your Aunty Rosario that way.”

  “Yes.” The dear people who surrounded Lei also reminded her of the ones who were gone. Easy tears prickled her eyes and she sniffed. “Sorry. I keep thinking how happy Aunty would be to see the baby.”

  “She’s watching right now from heaven,” Stevens said from behind her as he put his big warm hand on the back of her neck. His palm slid up, caressing and massaging away tightness, sensual and supportive at the same time.

  Rosie’s eyes opened and she looked up at her parents, one tiny hand flailing. Lei reached out and the baby grasped her finger reflexively. Her daughter’s digits were so delicate that they were almost transparent, but her grip was surprisingly strong.

  “Rosie Maluhia Texeira-Stevens, welcome to the world,” Stevens said. The baby’s mouth twitched, and though it was way too early, Lei was sure it was a smile.

  Turn the page for a sneak peek of Sophie Ang in her lead role in book one of the Paradise Crime Thriller Series, Wired In.

  Sneak Peek

  Wired In, Paradise Crime Thrillers Book 1

  The child had curled her body around an old stuffed rabbit as if protecting it. She lay on a bare mattress in a walk-in closet whose gloom was held back by a night-light, her thumb in her mouth. Blond hair gleamed silver in the grainy video feed.

  Special Agent Sophie Ang swiveled the tiny video cam snaked through a hole bored into the drywall of the ceiling. She checked all four corners of the small space, and there was nothing to see but empty shelves. She brought the camera back to rest on the tiny figure in the daisy-sprigged nightgown she’d been wearing when they took her.

  “Primary feed established,” Sophie whispered into the comm unit.

  She took one more look at the child, visible in a window on the monitor, before crawling along the floor of the apartment above, pushing the floor schematic ahead of her.

  Sophie drilled her second hole right near where the living room light fixture should be. She leaned all her body weight onto the silent, battery-operated pneumatic drill. The dust and wood of the subfloor and ceiling material of the unit below blew past her on a jet of warm air, making her nose tickle with an incipient sneeze. She turned her head hard, pressing her nose against her shoulder and holding her breath until the urge passed.

  Sophie felt a sudden give as the drill punched through and instantly let up on the pressure, holding the drill in place so it could suck the last bits of ceiling material out of the hole. She fed in the camera on its stiff, flexible cable, looking to see what was happening in the room below on the monitor.

  Directly beneath the eye of the camera two men lounged on couches set at right angles facing a flat-screen TV. Sophie rotated the cable slowly, watching on the monitor. The camera scanned the room, taking in guns set carelessly on the coffee table bes
ide empty pizza boxes and a pyramid of beer cans.

  “Secondary cam installed and operational. Two unsubs in exterior room, armed,” Sophie whispered.

  “Roger that. Return to base when camera secure.”

  Sophie opened the black tool backpack she’d carried in for the operation. Inside were a battery-operated cutting saw, pliers, and the camera equipment’s plastic case. She stowed the drill in the backpack and glanced at the two open windows of the video feed, now streaming wirelessly to the surveillance van parked outside the apartment building.

  The little girl rolled over, looking at the ceiling, the rabbit clutched in her arms.

  “Mama,” she whispered. “Mama.” Her eyes were black holes in the low-resolution image. Tears shone on her cheeks. Sophie felt something painful tug at her as she read the girl’s lips. She endured a flash of unwanted memory.

  Something was happening in the other video feed.

  Both men had picked up their phones and were reading what looked like a text message. Sophie saw them look up at each other, and through the floor beneath her, voices rumbled to accompany her lip reading.

  “The FBI is onto us. You ratted us out!”

  One of the men leaped to his feet.

  “No, you did!” the other one yelled. “You even got the payoff!”

  Sophie whirled and grabbed the saw out of the tool backpack. She ran back to the hole directly above the child even as her earbud crackled with orders for the rescue team. “Move, move, move!”

  Sophie flipped on the saw, set at top speed, yanked off the vacuum piece that suctioned out the dust. She brought the chain-saw-like tool down, whining like a dentist’s drill. The saw bit into the wood, tearing though it like an electric bread knife through dinner rolls. She hauled the saw up out of the hole, threw it out at another angle, and drew it toward the end of the last cut.

  The girl had only moments.

  Sophie made the third cut of a triangle as the room below echoed with yelling, then the deafening bam-bam-bam of the kidnappers firing on each other.

  Sophie leaped to her feet, threw aside the saw, and hoping like hell the child had the sense to get out from under the hole appearing in her ceiling, she leaped with both feet and all her weight onto the rough triangle she’d made.

  The fall was short and hard, and she landed facing the closet door as she’d planned, knees bent to absorb the landing, the mattress taking some of the shock.

  She hadn’t landed on the child. That was all she cared about as a tumult of wood, drywall, and dust followed her down. She drew her weapon, and the closet door opened.

  Sophie fired at the dark silhouette in the doorway. She fired until the shape fell backward out of sight, and then she spun to find the girl.

  Anna Marie Addams had folded herself into the corner of the closet and her rabbit was tight against her chest. She lifted her head, eyes huge. Sophie squatted down, touched Anna’s hair, and whispered softly, “Don’t look. You’re safe now. But don’t look. And put your fingers in your ears.”

  Anna obeyed, putting her head down over the rabbit and her hands over her ears. Sophie turned and faced the door, blocking the girl with her body.

  “Package is secure,” she said into the comm.

  Her earbud crackled. “Roger that. Breaching the apartment.”

  Sophie felt Anna shudder with terror, pressed against the back of her legs, as the door cannon boomed in the exterior of the apartment.

  This time the doorway filled with nothing but a man’s arm, firing into the closet. Sophie fired back, but her breath was stolen by a blow to the chest that knocked her back against the child and the wall.

  Sophie felt Anna squirming beneath her. She couldn’t speak, couldn’t breathe, and an endless long moment passed as black spots filled her vision and her hands scrabbled for the Velcro closures of the vest. Then hands lifted her off of the child, dragged her over the bodies in the doorway, and ripped open her Kevlar vest.

  Sophie’s diaphragm finally started working, and she dragged in a breath. Her squad commander, Agent Gundersohn, leaned down into her face. “You’re okay, Agent Ang. The vest caught the round.”

  “Demon spawn of a pox-ridden sailor,” she cursed in Thai, her voice a thin wheeze.

  “What?” Gundersohn cupped his ear.

  In the closet, Anna was screaming.

  Sophie hauled herself to her feet. Her ears rang from the gunshots in the enclosed space. Her ankle buckled when she stood, and it hurt like hell to breathe—but Anna was screaming. She stumbled back into the closet, pushed her way through the two team members trying to calm the girl, and dropped to her knees in front of the child.

  Anna’s head was down and her hands were still over her ears. A high-pitched cry ululated from her tiny body. Sophie put her hand on the child’s head and leaned close, into the screaming.

  “Hush. You’re safe now. They’re gone.”

  A second later the shrieking stopped. The rigid little body uncurled. The small white arms reached out. Sophie stood up with the child in her arms.

  “Don’t look,” Sophie whispered.

  Anna pressed her wet face into Sophie’s neck and shut her eyes, clinging like a baby monkey with her arms and legs. Sophie carried the child past the two sprawled bodies in the doorway, past the pizza containers and fallen beer cans and the man with his throat ripped open by bullets, leaving arterial spray across the couch. Past the black-clad Hostage Rescue Team members in their FBI-emblazoned Kevlar. Down the hall and a flight of stairs, through the push-handled exit, across the foyer of the building, out the glass front door, onto the sidewalk, and into the sunshine.

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  Toby’s Bookshelf

  PARADISE CRIME SERIES

  Paradise Crime Mysteries

  Blood Orchids

  Torch Ginger

  Black Jasmine

  Broken Ferns

  Twisted Vine

  Shattered Palms

  Dark Lava

  Fire Beach

  Rip Tides

  Bone Hook

  Red Rain

  Bitter Feast

  Paradise Crime Mystery

  Special Agent Marcella Scott

  Stolen in Paradise

  Paradies Crime Suspense Mysteries

  Unsound

  Paradise Crime Thrillers

  Wired In

  Wired Rogue

  Wired Hard

  Wired Dark

  Wired Dawn

  Wired Justice

  Wired Secret

  Wired Fear

  Wired Courage

  Wired Truth

  ROMANCES

  The Somewhere Series

  Somewhere on St. Thomas

  Somewhere in the City

  Somewhere in California

  Standalone

  Somewhere on Maui

  Co-Authored Romance Thrillers

  The Scorch Series

  Scorch Road

  Cinder Road

  Smoke Road

  Burnt Road

  Flame Road

  Smolder Road

  YOUNG ADULT

  Standalone

  Island Fire

  NONFICTION

  Memoir

  Freckled

  About the Author

  Kirkus Reviews calls Neal's writing, "persistently riveting. Masterly."

  Award-winning, USA Today bestselling social worker turned author Toby Neal grew up on the island of Kaua`i in Hawaii. Neal is a mental health therapist, a career that has informed the depth and complexity of the characters in her stories. Neal's mysteries and thrillers explore the crimes and issues of Hawaii from the bottom of the ocean to the top of vol
canoes. Fans call her stories, "Immersive, addicting, and the next best thing to being there."

  Neal also pens romance, romantic thrillers, and writes memoir/nonfiction under TW Neal.

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