Twisted Vine Part 7

"I don't know. It's so hard. One of us has to give something up with work."

"I know. But I've been thinking about you. Remembering." The deep note in his voice activated longing, a throb that spread outward and beat in her veins. The feeling, instant as fire blazing through a dry field, rippled down the insides of her arms, and she squeezed the steering wheel, hard.

"I've been trying not to think of you. That way. Any way."

"It's not working. What are you wearing?"

Lei laughed. "I'm driving. I have two dogs as chaperones. And I'm wearing the usual Bureau pants and s.h.i.+rt."

"I meant-under that." His voice dropped lower.

Lei gulped, speechless. "You first." She couldn't believe they were having this conversation. Phone flirting had never been their thing-but desperation led to invention.

"Well, I got off work and went surfing. I just got back, took a shower. Got a towel on."

Lei's nipples tightened with a tingle akin to pain as she pictured his long corded arms, the light sprinkle of chest hair over his wide chest, the ripple of his abs ending at the towel.

"This is torture. I hate you," she said.

"Yeah. I wish you were here. If you were, I'd put you in front of me and unb.u.t.ton that white blouse. Slowly. One b.u.t.ton at a time."

"No," she breathed, turning off the freeway onto the side street that would eventually lead to her house. "I'm driving. Stop."

"You have to call me back. Later."

"Okay. I will. And keep the towel on until then. I've always liked you wearing less."

This time he was the one to hiss though his teeth. "Don't know if I can wait for you."

"You better." She put her foot down and sped home.

Sophie circled her mixed martial arts coach, Alika Wolcott. Marcella had canceled again, some excuse that meant she was seeing her new boyfriend. Sophie kept her stance low, and when Alika finally made a move, throwing a roundhouse kick, she caught his leg and tripped him to the ground.

She wore a boxer's padded helmet, split-fingered, open-palmed gloves, and tight Lycra athletic wear-not out of any vanity but to keep the clothing from getting caught and used against her.

Alika was large, at least six foot two and a hundred and ninety pounds, all muscle, from what she could tell, and considerably stronger than her pound for pound. That's why she had to be more tenacious and agile-and she felt a frisson of triumph as she succeeded in wrapping herself around his back in a hold called the spiral ride.

Alika's thick muscles bunched beneath her, and he flexed, breaking her grip. He held up a hand, indicating a stop to the action, and she moved away, sitting up on the mat and circling her arms around her knees.

He unclipped his headgear and took it off, kneeling on the mat. Black hair rippled back from his forehead; he was a light brown color too, but more golden than she. His heritage was Hawaiian and Caucasian, what they called hapa in Hawaii.

"When you do that hold, grasp your arm above the elbow." Alika shook his head briskly and combed his hair out of his eyes. Sophie wished she didn't keep noticing how handsome he was.

"Right," she said.

"Let's walk through the move. Grab me from behind, like you did." They both got up. She moved in on him, feeling tentative as she noticed the ridges of muscle in his back. She reached across his shoulder-and the breath flew out of her lungs as he flipped her, to land hard on her back on the mats.

"Again!" he exclaimed.

Sophie sucked air back in, feeling a burst of anger, and bounded back up. This time she threw her weight and strength into grasping him. They grappled intensely for several moments, but Sophie ended up having to concede.

She rolled away from Alika and stood up. "I think I've got it."

"We'll try it again sometime. When you work out with Marcella, I want you to try that hold on her. It should work with someone closer to your size."

Sophie narrowed her eyes at him. "You saying I can't take you?"

"Not yet. And the day you can, I won't have anything to teach you anymore, and that will be a sad day for me." He grinned, and she smiled back, taking off the headgear. Her hair was cropped short, so there was no rearranging to be done. He was looking at the tattoos on the insides of her arms.

"What's that writing? What do they say?"

"It's Thai. I did it so I wouldn't forget some things I've been through. They are just words." She mopped her face with one of the thin gym towels, turned away toward the showers, but he followed her.

"What do they say?" he asked again.

"Hope. Freedom. Power. Respect. Courage." She had no trouble reciting the words she'd had inked after her divorce was final.

"I like it." He gave her shoulder a brotherly pat. "Thanks for telling me. I've been wondering about them for a while."

That made her look down at her gym bag. The tattoos ran down the outsides of her thighs and insides of her arms-not the most suggestive of places; she'd done that so they could be easily concealed in a professional setting. But that meant he'd looked at her body.

He'd thought about it.

Sophie, don't be ridiculous. The voice in her head sounded like her mother. He'd never be interested in someone so unladylike, a brawler like you.

"I was wondering about something. Are you going out with anybody?" His voice sounded a little uncertain. "You must be."

She stilled, her hands in her gym bag as she stowed her gloves. She turned to look at him. "No."

"I can't believe it," he said. "Greg was right. Are you gay, then?"

Greg was the gym manager. Sophie felt a wave of heat roar up her chest, and her rigid fingertips shot out to stop less than an inch from his throat, a gesture capable of crus.h.i.+ng his larynx with a blow.

"You think because I'm single and a fighter, I must be gay? Take a look at your biases." She spun to grab her gym bag, striding across the large warehouse s.p.a.ce. Her ears felt hot.

They'd been talking and speculating about her. She could imagine the crude joking. She wished she could have a relations.h.i.+p, but the truth was she hadn't been interested in anyone since her divorce-until this silly crush on Alika.

And now all she felt was angry and embarra.s.sed. Better to go back to her computers, where she was never misunderstood or misjudged.

She was unlocking her car, a white Lexus SUV her father had given her for graduation from the FBI Academy, when she felt a hand on her shoulder. She didn't think, she reacted-shot her elbow back into her attacker's solar plexus, spun to swing the gym bag.

Alika had doubled up from the blow, and the gym bag caught him on the side of the head.

"Oh no!"

Alika tried to smile as he rubbed his head. "Should have called your name. My bad, sneaking up on you."

"Sorry, Coach." Sophie picked up her bag. "I just reacted."

"Call me Alika. Well, I'm not going to worry about your defense skills, that's for sure. I wanted to apologize. I shouldn't have just-asked you like that. You're so private."

"I'm in the FBI. We don't go around discussing our lives." She stowed the gym bag in the SUV's backseat. "I'm sorry too. I overreacted. I don't like people talking about me behind my back."

"It wasn't like that." Alika leaned on the car next to her. "You're a great fighter, really talented. I was going to suggest we put you up in some matches. I wanted to see . . . what might be factors to deal with before I asked you."

"There are no *factors' but my job. And I'm pretty sure going into matches would just draw attention to myself, which isn't good for an agent. So regretfully, I have to decline."

Sophie found she really did regret it. She would have liked to see how she could do in the Women's MMA fight circuit, but she was sure Waxman would consider it inappropriate. In her head, her mother agreed wholeheartedly.

"Too bad." Alika pushed away from the side of the car. "You've got talent."

"So I've been told." But not with men. Not with relations.h.i.+ps, and especially not in bed, where a.s.san had said, "f.u.c.king you is like banging a mannequin."

The words still hurt, though she knew, as a professional adult, that it was no reflection on her that she couldn't get turned on by a man who beat her. Still, it had stolen her confidence at a time when she was too young to know better. Having a.s.san as her first and only relations.h.i.+p was no good measure of anything but heartache.

"See you next week." He raised a hand as he walked away. "I'm off to ice my injuries."

She smiled, but it didn't make it all the way to her eyes.

Fresh from a shower and clad in a towel, Sophie microwaved a gla.s.s ca.s.serole dish of pad thai noodles prepared by the housekeeper. She took off the towel and tossed it in the washer with the rest of her workout gear. The conversation with Alika, on top of the setback about using DAVID and her home computer setup, had left her with a dark feeling, a flatness. Tonight, and the days ahead, seemed without interest.

She padded naked across the living room, noticing the stellar sky, the twinkling lights, the ocean a black smudge in the distance. None of it did a thing for her. In her bedroom she pulled on a silky sleep tee and underwear and sat down in front of her home computer rig and fired it up, but the frisson of antic.i.p.ation she usually felt getting "wired in" was gone. Tonight she was disabling the network.

It felt like facing an amputation.

"This is ridiculous," she told herself aloud. "I have plenty I can do. I have a life." The way the words sounded-like empty bravado-didn't help.

DAVID beckoned, but instead of playing with the program, she saved it to an external drive as Waxman had asked. She logged into her departmental e-mail-and saw several e-mails from the DyingFriends site.

Targets had responded to her lure.

It wouldn't hurt, just tonight, to respond to them from home. She could disable the network afterward.

She responded in ShastaM's ident.i.ty to three e-mails that DyingFriends members in Hawaii had sent. A few clicks of the mouse and inputting the e-mail addresses into her search program later, and she'd traced their computers and had three names and addresses for Lei and Ken to follow up on tomorrow.

Sophie felt energy come back at this bit of progress, and that gave her the strength to log into her network and disconnect her home computers from the FBI ones. DAVID was now neutralized and "on ice" for the review process, and she also no longer had access to her FBI workstation data-but there was no reason she couldn't spend some time on DyingFriends, strengthening her ident.i.ty there.

She left her angst behind as she disappeared onto the Internet, where she roamed free, powerful and bodiless. The world of her computers often felt more real, and certainly more comfortable, than any human company.

Chapter 12.

Lei walked into the Starbucks near Ala Moana Shopping Center the next morning. Her curls were still damp from the shower, but she'd managed to get to the meet with Ken and Ang within fifteen minutes of the phone ringing and waking her up from the best sleep she'd had in days.

"Hey, you looking sa.s.sy," Ken said as she joined the agents at a table off in the corner, away from other customers.

Lei knew her grin was huge. Exploring the new world of phone s.e.x had done wonders for her mood. "Life is good, that's all. What's up, Sophie? You wanted to meet us here?"

"Yeah." In contrast, Sophie Ang didn't look like she'd slept well, her dark eyes circled by shadows. "I got some names and addresses of Honolulu members of DyingFriends, and I thought we could save some time by meeting here. I was hoping you could go out right away and interview these people."

"Definitely," Ken said. "How did you get that so fast?"

Ang explained her process of phis.h.i.+ng on the site. "My ident.i.ty is getting a lot of sympathy and attention. I keep saying I want to *get out early,' and so far, no bites from the system admin or any organized effort to encourage suicide. But there are more people right here on Oahu in this group than you would believe."

"Is that bothering you?" Lei asked, concerned by Ang's demeanor.

"It's depressing, that's for sure. But no. I'm having to disconnect my home network and not bring work home anymore, and DAVID is offline for the review process, so I'm kind of at a loose end."

"I wondered what Waxman was going to do to you."

"It actually wasn't that bad." Sophie sighed, took a sip of her tea. "It's just a buildup of things. Alika asked to put me up in some bouts in the MMA women's fight circuit; I had to say no. I'm sure it's not something I should do as an agent."

Ken's straight brows drew together. "You're probably right. It could make you a target, and you know the Bureau policy of keeping a low public profile."

"I think it sucks," Lei said. "You should be able to do what you want." Sympathy for the tech agent, stymied on several levels, rose up. Sophie had so many talents, and it bothered Lei to see so few of them expressed.

"Life is never that simple," Sophie said, with a grateful glance at Lei. She slid a paper over to them. "Here are the names and addresses."

"Thanks." They watched her go, her tall, lithe figure weaving through the coffee shop.

"If I weren't gay, I'd have a crush on her," Ken said.

Lei smiled. "If I were, I would too. Okay, what's the plan?"

Ken looked at the list, pulled up his navigator app on his phone. "Let's figure out where they are, plot a route."

The first address was in the ritzy suburb of Kahala. Lei enjoyed warm morning air blowing by her through the open window and the sun on the ocean as they rounded Diamond Head and wound into a neighborhood of gracious estates. She let her mind wander back to Stevens and her building need to see him, as they drove up to an Asian-styled mansion with a cobalt-blue tiled roof.

They parked the Acura in a pea-gravel turnaround and walked over a tiny arched bridge spanning a koi pond. Fat fish in oranges and yellows swam lazily in the water below.

Ken rang the bell. A sound of celestial chimes rang somewhere deep in the house. He rang the bell again and finally a third time-and when the lacquered door finally opened, they understood why. A tiny man stood there, shrunken and frail as a Chinese Yoda, swathed in a l.u.s.trous brocade smoking jacket that brushed the floor. "Yes?"

"Good morning. My name is Special Agent Ken Yamada, and this is Special Agent Lei Texeira. We have a few questions for you regarding an investigation." They both held open their cred wallets.

"What is this about?" Yoda peered at the wallets. He appeared to be clinging to the door for support. Lei glanced at the note in her hand. "Clyde Woo" was written in Sophie's distinctive hand.

"Perhaps we could sit down? And you'd be more comfortable, Mr. Woo?" Lei asked. Without a word, the gnome let go of the door and shuffled off, leaving them to follow him into the dim recesses of the house. A vast living room opened up before them, with a bank of sliders framing the view of a sculptured garden. Mr. Woo made a short gesture to a low red couch and settled himself into a motorized wheelchair.

Lei looked around at the collection of exquisite sculpture against one wall and the shrine to Buddha on the other.

"What is this regarding?" Mr. Woo asked again. He had a wet rattle in his voice.