Page 9 of Wired Target

“Of course,” Ka’ula said.“In the meantime, here’s the photo.”

Sophie braced herself as her phone dinged with an incoming message.

The picture was innocuous enough; a large, speckled albatross egg rested in a cardboard box atop cloth padding.An adjacent lightbulb provided warmth.“What is this?”

She punted the photo to the group, and it appeared on the monitor beside Ka’ula’s image.

“The perps only broke a few eggs.They stole the rest,” Ka’ula said.“My security staffer thinks they sold them on the Internet.”

“This is time-sensitive information that you should have taken to the police.”Anger prickled the skin of Sophie’s neck and chest.

The big man lowered his head to glare from beneath his heavy brows.“Do you have any idea how bad it would be for the school if it came out publicly that our students were involved in this crime against helpless endangered birds?”

“You want us to help you cover up what we find.”Jones spoke with deadly calm.“Because that would be better for the school’s image.”

“That’s why I’m hiring you, yes.I’m hoping to find answersandfind a way to mitigate the damage.”Ka’ula opened his hands toward them in a gesture of appeal.“I’m not asking you to cover anything up.Just to help ...soften what you might find.”

“Well, that’s a lot of what we do at Security Solutions.”Bix glared meaningfully at Jones.“You are our client, Dr.Ka’ula, and your concerns are our concerns, as I said before.”

Sophie folded her lips into a line, squeezing her hot mug forcefully.This job wasn’t going to be one of the easy ones.

Alone at last after the long day, dinner done and the kids in bed with Armita to monitor them, Sophie settled herself in front of the three monitors she maintained at her new house in Kailua.She’d moved her family there shortly after Sean’s birth, in large part because it was more secure than the Pendragon Arches apartment in downtown Honolulu where she’d lived for years.Decorated in a minimalist palette of cool grays with the sound-baffling carpet she liked for such workspaces, her office was a sensory oasis from the chaos of family and dogs.

Sophie’s computer rigs, Jinjai, Amara and Ying, hummed into life at the touch of a button on her key fob.Sophie took the moments as they booted up to go over to the exercise station in the corner of the room and engage in pull-ups.She was a believer in the maintenance of consistent environments and habits; these created greater ease and effectiveness in compartmentalizing her life.

But not today.

As Sophie hung with extended arms from the high steel bar, her mind ticked through the day’s events: the meeting at the office with Ka’ula and Bix’s lecture afterward on the priorities of a private security firm being customer service over actual results—a message that left a bad taste in both Sophie’s and Jones’s mouths after careers in public service.After that wrangle, she’d met alone with Jones to divide up tasks as they moved ahead with the investigation.

She’d left her new partner to review the case records Kamuela had shared, as well as the surveillance footage from the crime scene, materials she’d already perused.

The bombshell Ka’ula had revealed about the eggs possibly being viable was one she wanted to pass on to Kamuela, but she’d run out of time to do anything more on the case that day—she’d had to come home to take Sean to a well-baby appointment.

The good news was Sean was hitting all his growth milestones at the 90th percentile.The bad news was that he’d needed some immunization shots—likely, she was in for another rough night.

Sophie flexed and dragged her body up to the bar, able to hook her chin briefly over it, but was only able to complete six full reps.

“Effluent of a flatulent pig!”Sophie exclaimed in frustration as she dropped to the ground.Her arms were not what they used to be.She stepped from the padded rubber mat that marked the workout area to grab a ten-pound weight.

Back at the desk, she was ready to settle into searching for activity online regarding the albatross atrocities.Using one hand to type and the other to curl the weight, she activated her rogue data mining program, DAVID (Data Analysis Victim Information Database), on the Jinjai rig.

Sophie typed in search parameters with keywords related to the case, widening to include photos, videos, and art or graphic illustrations.She switched the weight to the other hand, doing bicep curls as she activated her second rig.She then opened windows and arranged social media apps on the monitor so she could see several at once.

Sophie slowly raised and lowered the weight as she perused the many posts, memes and bits of video sprinkled with dialog that cycled through diversified feeds.The American teenage social media scene felt as strange as entering a bar in the Star Wars universe: language, clothing, and even their appearance made it a foreign world.

She needed to coordinate with the security officer that had created the accounts and get help interpreting what she was reading and seeing.

Sophie sent a quick text to Jones, asking him to track down the headmaster and punt her the staffer’s contact info.She’d get that person’s take on the situation directly rather than going through Ka’ula.

In the meantime, she and Jones had an early meeting the next morning at the Honolulu Police Department headquarters with Kamuela and District Attorney Chang to go over the best way to build a prosecutable case in a situation that involved crimes against endangered species.

DAVID was working, sifting the Internet for her.She might as well call it a night and grab some rest while she could.

Day 3

At a stoplight on her way to the downtown HPD meeting with Marcus Kamuela and the District Attorney the next morning, Sophie flipped down the sunshade of her older Lexus SUV and added a pop of lipstick to brighten her sallow face.As she’d worried, Sean had been up several times the night before and she wasn’t feeling or looking her best.

On the seat beside her, Sophie’s phone toned with an incoming message.Sophie picked up a call from Lei Texeira, her friend in the Maui Police Department.

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