Devotion Apart

by Davin Bradley

  "You want to wear a helmet so RASH appears on a heads-up display?" Craig laughed, which I hadn't heard him do much lately. "That might be more conspicuous than looking at your phone."

  "I was thinking of a pair of glasses. Nothing too dark. I want people to see my eyes."

  "Glasses." Craig reached for his tablet and traced his finger on the screen, already designing the concept. "Yeah, we could put a transparent digital readout like in the left lens of the glasses, so you can still see through it, and the right side will be normal plastic. It'll be like the president's speech prompter, but only you'll be able to see it.

  "Excellent. And the second thing, I'd like it to obey voice commands, my voice only, even at a whisper."

  "That's easy. A throat mic should do." Craig didn't look up from his tablet. "You'll be able to stand facing people in a conversation while searching profiles on RASH. Brilliant! I'll need to get the optics just right, and blue tooth the glasses. . ."

  He wandered out of the bedroom into the hallway and down to the basement, which was apparently the signal that our conversation was finished.

  In the kitchen, I sat down to a plate-sized omelet, and both Tyler and Janae leaned against the counter as they listened to my account of my trip to Brazil. I didn't use Roger McMaster's name, but I told them enough.

  "A demon like that should be left with cannibals!" Janae cursed and wiped the counter with her washcloth. "I hope they eat his sadistic behind."

  "No, didn't you hear him?" Tyler corrected his wife. "Duppo is with the cannibals now. The cannibals aren't going to eat the man. They're going to humble him until he's a good person, right?"

  "Right." I nodded. "Ty, there's more wonder at a sinner coming to Christ than just killing him."

  "Well, I still think he should die," Janae said, "especially if he's sold and enslaved so many people. He deserved it."

  Tyler shrugged at me, then went outside as I helped Janae clean the dishes.

  "Every morning that I'm here," I said to her, "I'd like a sack lunch fixed for myself, and a second lunch I can take with me, one that I can give away."

  "Give away?" She scoffed, one hand on her hip. "I'm not fixing two lunches every morning, just so you can give it away! Give it away to who?"

  "Someone in need who's living on the streets." I kissed the hefty woman on the cheek. "A person would be thrilled to get one of your delicious healthy lunches! Thanks, Janae. We'll start tomorrow."

  I left before she could object further. Sometimes people who were stubborn in doing good needed a little nudge.

  It was a Wednesday, and I drove into the city. First, I stopped at my dad's house and chatted with him for an hour on his doorstep. He talked a lot about the fishing trip, then he moved on to tell me about some of the television programs he watched. There were certainly better things to talk about, but he was lonely, and I knew from the Bible that a man must listen before he can speak. There would be a time for me to share from my heart with my father, but first, I would know his heart very well from what he shared with me.

  Afterward, I drove to the police station downtown. From where I parked on the curb, I could see another protest a block away, which choked an intersection where cars were locked in a jam. I wasn't sure what this latest protest was about, but I wondered at the reasoning behind trying to annoy commuters to draw people toward a cause.

  Inside the back entrance to the basement level of the station, the hologram at the desk called Detective Fletcher for me, then buzzed me through a steel gate.

  Upstairs, I walked out of the elevator and shook Fletcher's hand.

  "How'd it go?" he asked as he led me to his cubicle and desk. "McMaster went for it?"

  "We didn't leave him much of a choice."

  "He's been reported as a missing person by some of his associates."

  "They'll replace him soon enough." I shared with him certain details of the trip. "And now, I'm here for another one."

  "Another case?" He smiled, the scar under his eye twitching, then his face straightened and he leaned closer. "Oh. You're serious. But you haven't even told me yet how you cornered McMaster."

  "I have resources, Fletcher." I held up my hands. "What can I say? This town is where I grew up."

  "Like your old friend Naul Bueno?" He frowned. "I don't like that you're still friends with that cat. Unless you gonna cozy up to him to put him away."

  "Putting him away is your job," I said. "Leading him to Christ is mine."

  "You make it sound like we're on different sides." He glared at the wall. "I have a responsibility here, Cord. We can't keep flying criminals down to Brazil. Some can't afford to buy off a judge, and they should be put behind bars."

  "Do you think Naul or any of his brothers will ever see the inside of a jail cell?"

  "No." He sighed. "McMaster was connected, but he was naive. The Buenos are connected and brilliant street strategists."

  "Well, give me something to do or someone to track down." I clasped my hands. "I figure for every person we interact with, it'll impact a minimum of ten lives."

  "You have it all figured out, huh?" Fletcher scrolled through his laptop. "What do you want? The serial killers? Or a missing person like Tina Leaf? I have some theories about her disappearance being connected to Shay. You want to chase down a hitman? There's two I suspect of working out of the Ruins. Wait a minute. I don't need the computer to tell you what you can do!"

  He closed his laptop and faced me.

  "What is it?" I smiled. "You have something for me. I can see it on your face."

  "My wife Tasneem has a friend in her Palestinian support group. It's for Christian women. They put packages together for Gazans, and ship them to Gaza. It's all ministry-related. You'd love my wife. You two think everything in life is a ministry. Anyway, Tasneem knows of a little girl who was kidnapped right out of daycare two weeks ago. I tried to put pressure on the missing persons department, but you already know I'm not popular around here. You'd be perfect for this!"

  "Nobody's looking for this little girl?"

  "Amanda Arvio. That's her name." He showed me a photo on his phone. "Her case is on someone's desk, but there are ten missing persons reported a day in this city—sometimes more. Two weeks ago, Amanda Arvio was big news—for about five minutes. Do the math. Fourteen days later, her file is under one hundred and forty other cases. They just keep piling up. But I tell you this, you find that little girl, using all your resources, and that would be, well, there are no words for what that would mean for the Arvio family. Our whole church would have a revival. We've all been praying for Amanda's safe return."

  "Amanda Arvio." I used my thumbs to enter her name into my phone. If I would've lingered, I could've found her in sixty seconds, but I needed to use discretion. I'm on it. I'll report back to you in a day or two."

  I rose to my feet and shook his hand.

  "Just like that?" He chuckled. "If you were anyone else, I'd say you were simple-minded to think you could make a difference in a day or two. I've looked at the file on the case, and there are no leads, Cord."

  "I'll use what little I have and maybe dig something up." I casually saluted him, then returned to my Jeep.

  Eagerly, I searched for Amanda Arvio. Using old footage, voice samples, and recent thermal imaging from before she was kidnapped, an image of the girl's whereabouts suddenly alerted me. It was so fast and so easy, I got chills over the power at my fingertips. But as useful as RASH was for doing good, if it was unleased in a city like Devotion, it would be a system used for evil.

  The girl was being held with a dozen others in a basement across the tracks. But how could I rescue her without stirring up the wrong kind of attention to myself?

  I sped out of the city and prayed aloud the whole way. In the rainforest, I'd seen warriors mistreat and torture members of other tribes, subjecting them to animalistic status. Where no modern law existed in the forest, such depravity might be expected. But in America? As disturbing as it was to see what I'd seen, I
knew I couldn't touch the lives of the lost without seeing up close what horrors the lost were committing. It's what Christ had experienced coming to this fallen world, so I didn't need to think I would be left out of experiencing it as well.

  Once across the railroad tracks, I turned onto Combine Road and drove around the block by way of Sifter Road. Sergeant's Slaughter House was a sprawling complex twenty stories high at one point. It was so expansive, with basements and unmarked buildings, that I guessed most workers at Sergeant's Slaughter House didn't know what was going on inside one of its small basement meat rooms.

  When I settled on a parking space behind a tall metal building, it was lunch time, and several employees returned to their vehicles to fetch lunches or left to go eat. I sat in the driver's seat of my Jeep and studied the complex on my phone. Seven women and five children sat on the basement floor in the metal building to my left. It was connected to the other buildings by covered walkways, but no one was in the four-story building's other levels. And yet, electricity flowed through the building to power two online cameras—one inside the meat room and one outside in the cement corridor. Someone was keeping a remote eye on the kidnapped people.

  Before I charged into the building, I went to my contacts and pressed send. A few seconds later, police officer Drew Grahm answered.

  "This is Cord Dalton, Fletcher's friend. We met in the locker room. Remember?"

  There was a pause. My cheek twitched at the memory of him slapping me.

  "Whadya want?" He cleared his throat. "I don't mess with Fletcher, and you're messed up in the head if you think I want anything to do with you."

  "I stumbled onto something out in the warehouse district, and I need your help."

  "Why should I help you? People are still clowning me for what you did. It's been trending all over ReVo."

  "You didn't have to slap me. Now you have a chance to redeem yourself and be a hero. Get out to the address I just sent you."

  "You better not be setting me up again. Wait. That's outside the city. Why don't you call someone else, like your boy Fletcher."

  "I'm handing you something good right now, Grahm. It has to do with kidnapped women and children."

  "What?" He swore. "Alright. I'm on my way."

  I pocketed my phone, climbed out of the Jeep, and stood under the noonday sun. It was a hot Arizona day, dry and sandy. But I wouldn't trade it for where the twelve were being housed.

  The entrance to the metal building was locked. Outside, I found a three-foot chunk of metal that would work as a pry. Two employees walked past me from the parking lot toward another building. They didn't seem to be concerned, as if they were used to seeing strangers poking around their work place.

  Using the metal, I jammed it hard three times against the door frame until I got under it, then pried the door open a few inches, dead bolt and all. From there, I used my foot to force the door wide. Keeping the pry bar, I tested its weight in my hand.

  I tried the lights, but the bulbs had been removed. Using my phone as a light, I moved down a linoleum hallway until I found the stairs, which I descended in silence and darkness. The whole place stunk like rotten meat. A section of the wall at the bottom of the stairwell looked as if it had been removed with a crude tool, and where there should've been copper wire, it had been stripped by looters.

  At the basement level, water puddled on the floor, and the chill in the air made me shiver. My heart pounded. RASH allowed me to search and find people, but it didn't watch my back for me. That was left in God's mighty hands.

  Moving right, I crept against a corridor wall, searching for the camera that I knew was placed above one of the doors. Suddenly, I came upon it, staring right at me. Angrily, I swiped at the camera with my metal club, and smashed it to bits. Now, someone knew my face, and they would know I was about to recover their merchandise.

  The nearest door was chained and padlocked. With sledgehammer swings, I broke the lock after four blows.

  When I swung the doors open, I stopped myself from flinching at the smell of suffering humanity, left without toilets and only a drain in the floor. In one corner, the twelve cringed away from my light as I surveyed the room. An orange emergency light glowed dimly from the ceiling, left on to allow the camera on the wall to keep tabs on the victims.

  "You're okay now," I said, holding up a hand. My other hand still held the weapon, and I used it to smash the second camera, then I laid it down. "Amanda Arvio, are you here? I'm here to rescue you. The police are on their way."

  Slowly, a little girl climbed to her feet, despite a small woman who reached to pull her back, and walked toward me. I recognized Amanda and knelt before her. She appeared uninjured, though she was filthy.

  "Come here, sweetie." I held out my hands to her. "I'm taking you home to your mommy and daddy."

  Instead of taking either of my hands, she walked closer and wrapped her arms around my neck. I hugged her tightly, then picked her up as I stood.

  "Can everyone walk?" I asked in English and Spanish. "Let's leave this place. Come on, we're going outside."

  When we were all gathered at the door, I led them to the stairs. I was anxious to get all of us outside and into the public eye.

  I'd left the broken door wide open, so sunlight and fresh air greeted us as we hustled up the linoleum, then through the door.

  "This way," I called them. "Follow me. My car's over here."

  Suddenly, a black luxury town car roared across the parking lot. I stepped back and crowded the women and children backward. The vehicle slowed, and I squinted while attempting to see through its darkened windows. With Amanda still in one arm, I drew my phone from my pocket and filmed the car as it sped off. I could track that car from every angle—where it had been and where it was going, as well as who had come and gone from it.

  Barely had the black car disappeared beyond the nearby warehouse when Grahm pulled into the lot, driving a blue Dodge Charger, its engine purring with power. I remembered what Fletcher had said about his old partner being on the take.

  "What's this?" He climbed out of his Charger and scowled at me. "This is what I came for?"

  His body language and hard exterior, including his handlebar mustache, caused the victims to cower behind me.

  "I think you'll find these people are listed as missing persons." Before he could object, I hefted Amanda into his burly, tattooed arms. "This is Amanda Arvio, kidnapped two weeks ago. I found them in the basement of this building. You're not in uniform. Are you off duty?"

  "Yeah." He blinked at the wide-eyed girl in his arms, and his entire demeanor changed. "It's my day off. You, uh, called me while I was at the gym. Wait. How'd you find them?"

  "I got a tip. Now, I'm passing them off to you. You're one of the only civil servants I know, besides Fletcher, and he's at his desk in the city right now. You got this, or should I call someone else?"

  "No, I got this." He held Amanda in one arm, then palmed his phone. "We need a whole team here, forensics, too. Hey, where are you going, Dalton?"

  "You said you got this." I backed toward my Jeep. "Take care of them, Grahm. Oh, and I was never here."

  Dumbfounded, he looked at the victims, then back at me.

  "But what do I tell everybody?"

  "I'm sure you'll think of something. Be creative. I don't care."

  I drove out of the lot as he gathered the women and children closer to his car. But I didn't go far, only to the next lot to watch from a distance. As I waited for emergency personnel to arrive, I monitored what RASH had gathered on the black vehicle that had arrived and departed so quickly. The vehicle belonged to an up-and-coming mob boss named Kirby Nichols. Nichols had ties out-of-state, but he'd recently begun operating in his new turf, Devotion. His driver's license photo pictured him with cool, gray eyes. He worked in the city with a crew of five, and they'd already had a run-in with Naul's crew. The capo had begun kidnapping and exporting people, which there was no shortage of on the streets of Devotion.

&nb
sp; Amanda Arvio had been rescued, but the new comer couldn't be ignored. It was time to employ my skills once again. Nichols would need to choose between life and death.

  Chapter Eleven

  I had an advantage when it came to hunting men who thought they were hidden, and Kirby Nichols was no exception. His five-man crew of kidnappers and human traffickers couldn't be underestimated, but they were ignorant that I could see them, hear them, and study them from multiple angles and from a half-dozen electronic devices.

  It was ten o'clock at night, the evening after I'd rescued the twelve from the slaughter house basement. Earlier that day, I'd listened to a radio broadcaster praise off-duty Officer Grahm for the rescue, and the whole city seemed encouraged by the little bit of good news in the midst of their despair.

  But now, my Jeep radio was off. I wore tight-fitting, leather gloves, and a roll of duct tape was wedged into a pocket of my black and gray motorcycle jacket. On the dash, my cell phone displayed multiple frames of an apartment building on Hines Street, on the eastern corner of the city. Two stories up, the expensively furnished suite was filled with the noise of arguing men. Nichols, his voice biting, accused each of his men one at a time of betrayal. Someone, he pressed, had given up the location of the slaughter house. Who was the CI that Officer Grahm had reported having used to find the kidnapped people? Nichols claimed to have lost several million dollars worth of product.

  Each of the men vehemently denied they were responsible for the failure to keep the basement site a secret. They kept drawing Nichols' attention to their camera footage of a man who appeared only briefly in a dark corridor, before their cameras were smashed. They'd glimpsed my face, but they had no idea who I was.

  Gradually, the men in the suite grew weary of their arguing. Around midnight, two of the crew left, and the other three in the apartment crashed in the living room on two sofas. Nichols stood at an upstairs window, silently staring out at the city streets for twenty minutes before he went to bed.

  Once I was certain the men were asleep, I compiled a profile of all six, including details that connected them to the slaughter house. Investigators were already making the situation their top priority, but they had no leads. The media, stirred by scenes of the twelve reunited with their families, were not about to allow the city officials to drop the case until the suspects were rounded up. Grahm was the unlikely hero, and I was thankful he hadn't mentioned my name. I knew it was because of his ego. He liked the attention, and disclosing my name would've robbed him of the spotlight.