Page 23 of Wired Fear

“You have to be patient. I can’t imagine what it must be like for your girlfriend. What she must be going through right now.”

His girlfriend.

That phrase really had a nice ring to it, coming out of his sister’s mouth.

He wouldn’t mind hearing Patty say Sophie was hisfiancée.

Or better yet, hiswife.

Heat broke out under Jake’s shirt, making it cling with nervous sweat. He looked up at the banyan tree sheltering their new apartment building. Mynahs were already roosting in its branches, chattering loudly. “What do you think I should do?”

“I thought I told you. Do nothing. Say nothing. And, when she tells you, whatever she tells you, you need to be there for her. She’s got a hell of a lot more at stake than you do.”

“I’ve got some skin in this game, too,” Jake muttered. “Literally.”

“That’s true. You did donate sperm—the fun part, as they say.” Patty’s tone was dry. “But it’s Sophie who’s going to carry the child. Sophie who will have her health and her work impacted. Sophie who will live with whatever decision she makes about this baby for the rest of her life. Not you.”

“I wish she would just tell me. I wish she would just let me help!” Jake’s voice had risen, his fists had clenched. Frustration and helplessness were a ripe scent filling the cab of the SUV as he sweated with stress in the humid Hilo afternoon.

“It’s hard to respect another person’s privacy and right to choose,” Patty said softly. “But if you love her, you will find a way to do that. Otherwise, from the things you’ve told me, this could be the way you lose her.”

Jake breathed noisily, trying to get a grip on his emotions. “I’m a bull in a china shop with this stuff, Patty.”

“That’s why you have me, bro. There’s hope for you, yet, because you’re smart enough to call me and try to get this right.”

Chapter Eighteen

Sophie plugged the external drive Pim Wat had given her into one of the computers Connor had had set up in the newly created “lab” room of their Security Solutions office. That the drive wasn’t password protected spoke either to Pim Wat’s ability to guard it, or to the Yam Khûmk?n’s incompetence.

The information was simple: a couple of cloud storage sites on the dark net, one Tor website, and contact information for the agency’s current tech. Sophie reached out to the tech contact, Leni Keng, on encrypted email, then opened up the website.

There was nothing to the site but a black background and the agency’s name in Thai. Sophie had not uncovered it during her previous searches for the clandestine organization. When she clicked into the entry portal, it consisted of a downloadable PDF that was to be completed and mailed to an anonymous drop address listed on the form. The page was a recruitment portal for the Yam Khûmk?n.

Who received those recruitment applications and screened them? Was it this Keng character? Checking the information requested on the form certainly needed to be done, at least in part, online.

She needed to get on the same page with whoever was the Yam Khûmk?n’s system admin. It was clear that the agency was trying to stay completely offline, but that was nearly impossible in this day and age. Sophie sent another encrypted email to Keng.

She then searched Interpol for anything to do with the organization. She’d heard from Pim Wat that Yam Khûmk?n agents’ names were being released to the international police agency—but the Interpol site yielded nothing she could associate with the clandestine group without the operatives’ names, and that information had not been provided on the data drive.

Sophie opened the cloud storage and found nothing but supply lists that appeared to be associated with the training temple. The whole mission and what Pim Wat wanted from Sophie were still hard to discern, and so far, none of the information had shed any further light.

Essentially, the stick drive contained nothing of any real value.

Sophie sat back in her chair. What was Pim Wat’s real game? Was this a test of some kind?

She leaned forward and activated DAVID to search for more intel on the Yam Khûmk?n. She had done this before, but perhaps something new had shaken loose. She could also use DAVID to develop confidence ratios regarding related patterns of crime, but there was nothing to compare at the moment.

The Data Assessment Victim Information Database, Sophie’s rogue information gathering program, sifted for intel based on keywords. She inputted several obvious ones and set it to combing the Internet for information on Keng and Pim Wat, as well. Information was power, and she just didn’t have enough to even navigate.

Until Sophie heard back from Keng, there was little she could do. It was time to go “home” to her new apartment and move in. Jake had texted her that he was already there, unloading and setting up the basics he’d purchased with the stipend Connor had issued them.

Sophie pulledup at the apartment building, scanning the nondescript parking lot with its coral stone wall buried in vines, a lone plumeria tree struggling for sunlight in the shade of a banyan overshadowing it. Three stories of industrial beige concrete block with exterior stairs and walkways, the edifice didn’t send an affluent message—but Sophie liked the open lawn fronting the building and the ocean view facing Hilo Bay.

She texted Jake that she’d arrived as she took the stairs, supporting her sore ribs with a hand, and smiled to see Ginger and Tank galloping toward her down the open walkway. “Loosed the hounds, I see,” she said, as Jake approached.

“They’ve been cooped up all day, and we need to put together the furniture I bought. Brought in all the stuff with the super’s help.”

“Thanks, Jake.” Purchasing and hauling the furniture for two apartments up several flights of steps seemed to have wilted Jake’s usual insouciance; he looked tired, his eyes iron-gray, his mouth a stern line. Sophie patted the dog’s heads, and with one on either side of her, followed him to the doorway of her new apartment. “This is quite a project.”

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