Wired In (Paradise Crime Book 1) Read online

  Wired In

  Toby Neal

  Contents

  Title Page

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  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Acknowledgments

  Excerpt Wired Rogue

  About the Author

  More Titles From Toby Neal

  Connect With Toby

  Wired In

  A Paradise Crime Novel

  By Toby Neal

  Copyright Notice

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  Copyright © Toby Neal 2016

  http://tobyneal.net/

  ISBN ebook: 978-0-9967066-7-4

  ISBN print: 978-0-9967066-8-1

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. This book contains material protected under International and Federal Copyright Laws and Treaties. Any unauthorized reprint or use of this material is prohibited. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without express written permission from the author/publisher.

  Cover Design: Jun Ares [email protected]

  Format Design: Author E.M.S.

  Created with Vellum

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  Chapter One

  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 in 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 in the monitor. The camera scanned the room, taking in guns set carelessly on the coffee table beside 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 leapt 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 chainsaw-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 only had 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 leapt 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 leapt 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.

  The Information Technology Lab was cool and quiet, the light dim, the carpet sound canceling. The hiss of air conditioning and the low hum of computers at work were welcome relief after the chaos of the afternoon. Sophie opened the tool backpack and took out each item, wiping it down, replacing it carefully. She wrapped the cords, stowing each device in its compartment, clean and tidy.

  Hours earlier, Sophie had ridden in an ambulance with Anna to be checked out at the hospital and have her own injuries treated. The child would not let go of her. The trip had been emotionally harrowing, as was the scene when the girl’s parents burst into the cubicle in the emergency room.

  The girl’s mother swept Anna off Sophie’s lap and into her arms. Tears flowed as the father joined their hug, but when Sophie tried to get up and quietly leave, Anna reached out and grabbed her arm. “No. Don’t go.”

  “I have to. Your mama and daddy are here now.” Sophie gently peeled the little fingers off.

  “Here. You need Bun-Bun to take care of you.” Anna thrust the stuffed rabbit, damp with snot and tears, into Sophie’s arms.

  The woman raised brimming eyes to Sophie. “Thank you for saving our daughter’s life.”

  Sophie had walked out with the rabbit tucked under her arm, battered but feeling good. Done cleaning and stowing her equipment and debriefing completed, Sophie got into the pearl-colored Lexus SUV her father had given her upon graduation from the FBI and went home, protocol after an injurious shooting incident.

  The penthouse apartment she lived in belonged to her ambassador father, who was threatening his long-planned Hawaii retirement any day now. She entered her elegant building’s elevators from the parking lot, and as the doors shut, she realized she was tired. She was both physically and emotionally sore, worse even than after one of her mixed martial arts fights.

  Maybe it wasn’t such a bad thing that Special Agent in Charge Waxman had sent her home. She’d hooked the kidnappers’ phones up to a write blocker extraction device that copied their contents for easy review on another computer, and the results would be available for her to work on tonight at her home computer lab, a clone of her FBI workspace.

  She heard the patter of Ginger’s toenails inside the red lacquered door as she unlocked it. The lab bounded into the hall the minute the door was opened. In spite of two rounds of obedience school, Ginger continued to be impulsive and embarrassingly affectionate. As much trouble as the dog was, the Lab’s joyful enthusiasm was a balm to her soul.

  Sophie grabbed Ginger’s leash off a hook by the door as the big dog lashed her legs with a happy tail. Sophie had a pet service walk the dog every day around noon, but Ginger still acted like they’d been parted for years anytime Sophie returned.

  They walked down the cooling sidewalk in the rich blue of evening in Honolulu. The moist, plumeria-scented air touched Sophie like a gentle hand, and vivid orange clouds massed in the darkening sky of sunset between the high-rises. She felt the swing of her stride loosening tight, hurt muscles. Exercise had always been the way out of pain for her.

  Fellow pedestrians smiled at Ginger or petted the dog as they passed. Being a dog owner had changed Sophie’s life. She felt like a real part of her neighborhood. She’d hardly noticed the colorful section of Honolulu she’d lived in before she’d adopted Ginger from the Humane Society. Now she knew every fire hydrant and strip of grass for blocks around her building, and all the people who liked dogs: old Mr. Arakawa at the corner store who wanted to pet Ginger daily, Missy Kaina who ran the coffee shop and saved bones for Ginger, and the twin Vietnamese toddlers who belonged to the woman who ran the nail salon and pasted their identical faces against the glass door in rapture as Ginger passed by.

  Back at her apartment, Sophie fed the dog and freshened the water bowl before stripping off her clothes and dropping them straight into the washer along with the filthy stuffed rabbit. She padded naked across the burnished teak floors of the immaculate space, enjoying the view through massive seamless windows. The moon gleamed a silver path over the burnished black sea, gilding the iconic silhouette of Diamond Head in the distance.

  After her shower, wrapped in a dragon-embroidered silk robe that her aunt had sent her from Thailand, she sat down at her home office station, a networked duplicate of her FBI work bay, ringed in three monitors.

  Sophie’s computer friends were waiting. The one she’d named Amara was currently sifting through the copied hard drive of a laptop that had been brought in for evidence, Janjai was running a write-blocker from another computer, and Ying, with the most powerful processor, was secretly running an off-the-books copy of her Data Analysis Victim Information Database, DAVID.

  DAVID was supposed to be locked up in the Bureau vault under technical review, awaiting approval to be used. She’d built the program herself here in her home lab, used it on a few cases and, when she’d had to disclose it, the Bureau confiscated the program.

  But not before she made her own copy.

  DAVID was just too good to be mothballed forever due to concerns about consent and confidentiality that were unlikely to be resolved. Built off the FBI’s Violent Criminal Apprehension Program, DAVID went one better than ViCAP. The program was able to burrow through mountains of online data and local law enforcement firewalls to look for commonalities and keywords, detecting crime patterns nationwide. Using a confidence algorithm, DAVID developed probability ratios, an invaluable tool assisting Sophie in narrowing down variables on a case.

  Sophie turned on the three computers that matched her rigs at work in exact configuration with an electronic key fob she’d developed. As the rigs hummed into life, she reflected on the barren months she’d spent trying to comply with SAC Waxman’s dictum that she not work on FBI business anywhere but in the office due to security concerns.

  That dry period had led to her getting Ginger, a decision she couldn’t regret even as the dog padded in, belched, and swiped Sophie’s leg with a raspy tongue before flopping at her feet under the desk. She�
�d also discovered her love of hike-running the gorgeous trails of Oahu, and she couldn’t regret that either. But in the end she’d caved in to her compulsion to be online working cases at any hour of the day or night.

  The security issue was a real one, so Sophie had turned her skills to developing an encryption for her rigs with so many layers to it that she was almost ready to submit it to one of the hacker festivals as a challenge—but like her mixed martial arts fighting, as long as she was with the FBI she couldn’t draw attention to herself with public displays.

  She pulled up the kidnappers’ phones’ content list and ran a simple comparison program that isolated the phone numbers the phones had in common on their contacts list. Following that, she input the text messages’ content and crosschecked senders.

  The fatal text message the kidnappers had received had originated at the same number. Someone had set them up against each other. She now had a number for that unknown caller. She put on her headphones, logged into her own virtual private network to mask her location and IP address, input the number, and dialed.

  The phone rang and rang. No voicemail. She ran a location algorithm but it came back User Unknown. “Probably a burner,” she muttered.

  It was time to put DAVID to work. She switched to Ying and checked in with DAVID’s monitoring subprogram, looking for trends. Months ago, she’d input a variety of law enforcement and news agencies and set them to be monitored with keywords. These were running constantly in the background via DAVID. When a statistical probability trend was tripped, the information landed in an ‘attention cache’ for her review, DAVID’s terminology for collection of query data.