Chapter 3 #2
“Something tells me I need to increase security at home,” she said, already reaching for her phone.
The device in her hand felt heavier than usual, loaded with responsibility and all the calls she needed to make.
“In case these plumerias are a message for me.” Sophie forced herself to think like an investigator rather than a mother whose instincts were screaming warnings.
“The specificity matters. These aren’t just any flowers—they have meaning for me. ”
“They could as easily be a message for any one of us,” Marcus said, though his tone suggested he didn’t quite believe it. “But I can ask to have patrol units do extra sweeps of your neighborhood. HPD takes care of its own.”
Sophie smiled at her friend, grateful for the offer even as she knew its limitations.
“Thanks, but I doubt that will help.” Her tone carried the firm certainty of someone who’d learned the hard way that conventional security measures meant little against serious enemies.
“I have a very secure home. We won’t need anything but possibly some additional personnel, which Security Solutions can provide.
I must minimize disruptions for the children. ”
The children. Always, her thoughts circled back to them.
Momi, now five, with her father Alika’s stubborn chin and her mother’s quick mind, still asking why Uncle Connor had vanished from their lives like smoke.
The questions came at unexpected moments—during bath time, over breakfast, in the quiet minutes before sleep.
“Where did Uncle Connor go, Mama? Did we do something bad?”
And Sean, two and a half years old and brimming toddler energy, had finally stopped calling for “Unco!” every time the gate alert chimes rang.
He’d never known his father Jake, would have no memories of the man who’d died before his birth. But he’d had Connor for those early months, had learned to walk holding those skillful hands, had been sung to sleep by a man who ordered death with equal gentleness.
Her children didn’t need more upheaval; they’d already lost enough.
“At least accept the help Connor’s offering,” Pierre suggested, his voice gentle but insistent. He knew her well enough to recognize the signs of her internal debate—pride warring with pragmatism, independence fighting with protectiveness. “Additional trained security couldn’t hurt.”
Sophie moved to the window, looking out at the palace grounds where history had been made and unmade.
Below, a docent was leading a tour group, her voice carrying faintly through the glass as she explained how the palace had been the first building in Honolulu to have electricity, even before the White House.
Progress and tradition, innovation and preservation—these were forever in tension in Hawaii.
“I’ll use him,” Sophie decided, the words tasting like compromise in her mouth. “Connor’s operative, I mean. As long as I know that this person answers to me, not to the Master of the Yām Kh?mk?n.”
They spent another forty minutes processing the scene, documenting every detail of the King’s Suite with meticulous care.
Pierre examined the windows with their original wavy glass, checking for signs of entry. Marcus dusted for prints on every surface that might have been touched, though they all knew it was likely futile. Whoever they were dealing with was too professional to leave such obvious traces.
Sophie used her specialized equipment to scan for electronic signatures, finding the same sophisticated loops in the security footage that had marked the other scenes.
A digital ghost had been here too, dancing through walls as easily as the nineteenth-century ali‘i had once danced with political alliances.
By the time they finished, the late morning sun had transformed the palace grounds into a tourist mecca.
Sophie watched from the window as buses disgorged their passengers—families with children posing by the Kamehameha Statue, its bronze surface gleaming in the sun; couples taking selfies on the palace’s distinctive stairs, the same steps where Marines had once stood guard over a deposed queen; elderly visitors moving slowly through the gardens, stopping to smell the plumeria trees whose flowers fell like blessings on the grass.
All of them were oblivious to the darker currents flowing beneath the surface of paradise. Sophie envied their ignorance.
“We should check the third location,” Marcus said, securing his evidence kit with efficient movements. “I’d like to get your opinion on the private collector’s home, see if there’s any pattern to the physical locations.”
“Geographic pattern,” Sophie said, though her mind was already racing ahead to other patterns: digital footprints, personality signatures, possible psychological profiles of someone who left plumeria at crime scenes. “And I’m curious to see if the perpetrators follow our movements there, as well.”
She couldn’t suppress the chill that touched the back of her neck, a cold kiss.
Someone was watching them.