Page 43 of Wired Target

“You know about the murder at the Albatross Sanctuary, then, and that Sophie is a hostile witness who bailed on the investigation to do her own thing,” Lei snapped.“And that I was stupid enough to think she was my friend.”

Jones was silent, merging into the busy traffic flowing through the airplane terminal.Lei folded her arms and glared out the windshield.

“There’s a lot going on for her,” he said at last.“And the danger to her family is real.”

“Are you in love with her too?”Lei grumbled.“All the men in her life seem to be.”

Jones snorted.“Hardly.Doesn’t mean I can’t understand where she was coming from in this situation.I also get why you’re pissed.But I happen to know a bit more than you do about what’s been going on with Sophie’s crazy life, and trust me, it’s taken a toll.She feels horrible about Sari Gadish.”

“She should.”Lei softened.“I just want to get an official statement from her, on the record, what she knows about who might have sent that drone.”

“She’s been expecting someone to come.I know she’ll be glad it’s you.”

Lei didn’t reply.

Sophie had a lot to answer for, and the bite of betrayal wouldn’t go away easily.It was hard to forget how much she’d lied to Lei by omission, and it had cost the life of a good woman.

“You hungry?It’s going on dinnertime, and I haven’t had anything since breakfast.”

“I could eat,” Lei said.

They drove through a burger place for fast food and chomped down burgers and fries in companionable silence as Jones navigated out of the downtown area to drive around Diamond Head toward Kailua.

“You like working private?”Lei asked.

“Sure do.Hours are flexible and nobody’s breathing down my neck or trying to take a potshot at me,” Jones said.“Pays better too.”

“Is that what happened?Someone took a shot at you, that’s why you left MPD?”Lei glanced over at her companion.“We were working cases, then next thing I knew, you were gone.I never found out what happened.”

“And you won’t.”Jones flexed his hands on the wheel.“It’s nobody’s business.I like what I’m doing and where I’m working now.”

“Okay, then.”Lei got the message.She turned in her seat to look out the window as they followed a curving two-lane road overlooking the ocean around the eroded volcano that was Diamond Head.Off in the distance, a fleet of white boats, some kind of regatta, flew over bright blue seas and caught the sunset in their sails like fast-moving birds.“This reminds me of the Pali on Maui.”

“Yep.”

Lei remembered that about Jones—the man wasn’t chatty.

They entered the enclave of Kailua with its old-money and nouveau-riche homes.Which would Sophie have?

She’d always known Sophie came from money, but her friend—she had to stop thinking of her that way—had never flaunted her background or possessions.What would the beachfront mansion that she’d seemed so proud of be like?

A knot in Lei’s chest seemed to loosen as they turned into a driveway lined with mature coconut palms and Lei faced a high lava stone wall consistent with the older homes of the area.The only sign of something new was a featureless black obelisk in front of the high metalwork gate.

Jones rolled down his window and turned his face toward the obelisk.“Lono Jones and Lei Texeira to see Sophie Smithson.”

A second went by.They were being scanned.

“Welcome, Lono and Lei.”The voice emitted by the scanner was Sophie’s.

The gate opened slowly.Jones rolled forward through it up a short driveway into a turnaround in front of a Mediterranean-style villa with a wide, deep porch.A freestanding garage, a miniature of the main building, sheltered beside it in the shade cast by a massive plumeria tree heavy with flowers.Behind, and to the right, stood a similarly styled guest cottage.Two men in black polo shirts and chinos, armed and carrying a bomb detector on a retractable pole, approached.

“Please stay in the vehicle,” the older white security agent said.“We need to do a quick vehicle check.”

“You got it,” said Jones.

The younger Asian man inserted the detector on its pole beneath the SUV, surveying the undercarriage of the vehicle carefully while the older one walked around the SUV and then opened the hatchback and the back door to check the footwells and cargo area.“Step out of the vehicle, please, and surrender any weapons before entering the house,” he said.

Lono got out and lifted a pant leg to expose a knife strapped to his calf, which he slid out and handed to the security guy.“Nothing else on me today.”

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