Sophie alerted mountainous Officer Tito on duty at the watch desk that they had tied their dogs out in back, and asked that if any of the officers headed that way could give them a little attention. Tito set his Sudoku tablet aside, winking broadly at Sophie. “I’ll pass it on. Now they’ll be doing nothing but smoke breaks out back.”

“My partner and I appreciate it. The dogs got used to being with us all the time and now we both have to leave them alone. I’ll be in the computer lab if anyone needs me.” Sophie surrendered her weapon and, carrying her laptop, headed for the back.

As usual, no one was in the lab. The place would be much more useful if the equipment were updated, but Sophie understood the limitations of local budgets. She parked herself at her usual opening between computers, unrolled the Internet cable, plugged it into her laptop, and put on her Bose headphones. Beethoven thundering in her ears, Sophie settled in to some serious data surfing.

The timer she had set on the laptop beeped at eleven a.m., and Sophie startled out of a wired-in trance, checking the wall clock reflexively. It was time to get down to the park and surveille the meeting area her mysterious contact had directed her to.

Only a few people had her latest burner number. Anyone else who had it either had highly superior tracking abilities (like the Ghost) or had obtained the number from one of the few, which automatically meant this was someone she should speak to.

Was this message from Connor? Did he have information about her mother? Was she ready to see him again?

She did want to speak to anyone who had any knowledge of her mother . . . but only Connor, or her father, would be at all likely to have any such knowledge.

No way to find out but to go.

Packing up, Sophie considered why she hadn’t told Jake about this meeting.

She didn’t talk about her family. In some ways, it was really that simple. Her father was a very private man with a public, high responsibility job as an ambassador. The Smithsons told no one their business, and that went for her mother’s well-connected family as well. And later, she’d married a gangster. Secrecy was an ingrained habit, and anything to do with her mother was not for anyone but family to know.

Pim Wat’s perfect oval face appeared in Sophie’s memory. Her mother’s drooping mouth and shadowed eyes were Sophie’s most familiar impressions of her. But Sophie hadn’t actually seen her in nine years.

Her mother had attended her wedding in Thailand, of course, having helped broker the arrangements that married Sophie to Assan Ang. Sophie hadn’t known then that it would be a year later before Assan, pressured by her father, had allowed one visit home to Thailand when Sophie was twenty. In the entire week they’d visited, he had never let Sophie out of his sight to have a private moment with her mother. Her father, divorced for many years from her mother by then, was between postings in the United States.

Sophie still remembered trying to get her mother alone to tell her about Assan’s abuse. In spite of her pleading eyes and anxious plucking at her mother’s sleeve, Pim Wat had been indifferent, closed in on herself, and had made no effort to respond to Sophie’s frantic whispers that they needed to speak alone.

Sophie hadn’t seen her mother since. It was strange to realize it had been so long.

Faced with this mysterious message, she realized that part of her was waiting, braced to hear the news that her mother had died.

And maybe she had. Maybe that’s what this was about: someone wanted to meet her in person to tell her that Pim Wat had died.

Her body disengaged from her mind, moving on autopilot, Sophie left the station, loaded the dogs in the Jeep, set the GPS for Hilo Bay downtown, and drove through brisk midday traffic to the waterfront park.

The sun was bright on the ruffled waters of the bay. A jetty jutted into the horseshoe of water, and a little old man walked along it, jigging with a bamboo fishing pole. Neatly trimmed palm trees swayed in a light breeze. Mynah birds, their bright yellow beaks contrasting with dark plumage, hopped and foraged on a vast, velvety lawn bisected by concrete walking trails and benches for sitting.

Sophie was already dressed for action in a pair of nylon running pants, athletic shoes, a sports bra and tank top. She drank some water, put the dogs on their leashes, and set off at a brisk jog at eleven fifteen a.m.

She circumnavigated the park, billed hat pulled low and eyes moving, searching for anything out of place or familiar; anything that would give her a clue about what to expect.

Tank was not used to being on a leash, and kept charging off to try to chase mynah birds or a spare frisbee. Controlling the two unruly dogs kept Sophie more than busy, but she hoped that made her look like just another local girl out for a run with her badly behaved pets.

She saw nothing that seemed out of place. Besides the old fisherman on the jetty, young families with children clustered around a central play structure. An old woman sat on one of the benches with a newspaper open in front of her. A lone exerciser did squats and lunges near a pull up bar, and a pair of tourists walked hand-in-hand.

Tank made a particularly egregious bolt for freedom and dragged Sophie, stumbling, off of the concrete walk. Ginger took advantage of the revolt to tangle her leash with Tank’s.

“Nine headed hydra from hell!” Sophie exclaimed, wrestling the frolicking dogs. “Foul-smelling offspring of Bastet!”

“Your language has certainly gotten more colorful over the years,” came a voice from the nearby bench.

The tone was dryly ironic.

The language was perfectly enunciated Thai.

The voice was her mother’s.