by Linda Ladd
“This is the Everglades,” he said, looking at Alcina for verification.
She shook her head. “No, we are on the Miccosukee Reservation. Eldon Osceola and his family run their tourist business here. They helped my brother and me. They helped get you away from those men. They would have killed you.”
“The tribe is helping you?”
“No, not the tribe. Just Eldon and his family. Few even know we are here.”
Okay, that could complicate things if the tribal council objected to getting involved in Alcina’s case, whatever it was. He said as much to Alcina.
“Eldon said he did not want the tribe to be a part of helping us. He said he is doing a personal favor for a good friend. He doesn’t expect trouble out here, so he is doing nothing to endanger tribal members or their land. He says it is protected, and the Skulls would not dare to come here after us.”
“What favor? What friend?”
“She is a doctor who helped us get here from our country. These men will protect us while we’re here.”
Well, that was just fine, but it didn’t come close to answering his question. “Who’s us?”
“Me and my brother, Pedro.” She gestured at the boy, who still looked nonresponsive.
“So why hire Claire and me?”
“Did she not tell you?”
Now she’s acting suspicious of me, Novak thought, thinking that a bit ironic.
“She told me to wait at the condo for you. I don’t know much else, and I won’t until she shows up and fills me in.”
Alcina didn’t trust him any more than he trusted her. That was a good thing. She shouldn’t trust him, not in a million years. She didn’t know Novak from a hole in the ground, or if he was even who he said he was. He watched her exquisite face and could almost see her mind working. She was gauging what she should believe. She was deciding how much she should tell him before Claire vouched for him. She was not stupid, not by a long shot, but she needed to work on hiding her thoughts. She was easy to read. She had not learned to put up a shield. A moment later she arrived at the right decision and decided to believe him.
“Eldon and I have a mutual friend in Guatemala City. She is a doctor, and she sent us here and asked Eldon to protect us.”
“Those guys obviously want you dead. Anybody else after you?”
“The man who sent them took my baby, and he wants to kill both of us. You saw.”
“Who took your baby?”
“They did.”
“You don’t know who they are?”
Tears filled her eyes and gleamed in the flickering light. “No, but Claire Morgan says you will find Rosa for me.”
This conversation was getting Novak nowhere. “Does anybody know who took your baby?”
She shook her head, and fat tears oozed over those long lashes and rolled down her cheeks. Novak tried not to be affected by her obvious grief, because he didn’t know enough yet to feel sorry for her. She might trust him this soon, but that wasn’t mutual. She wiped her cheeks with the backs of her hands.
“They came to our village one night and kicked in our door and just took Rosa.” She held his gaze. “My husband tried to stop them, but they shot him. They just killed him right there beside Rosa’s crib.”
Novak watched her face as she relived the moment. If this tale was true, it was a terrible thing, all right. She looked legit, she sounded legit, and he wanted to believe her. Claire obviously already did, but who wouldn’t be affected by that kind of sob story? “So you’re telling me that these people just rolled up in the dead of night, broke into your house, murdered your husband, and kidnapped your baby. Did they try to take you or hurt you?”
“We ran away after they shot Luis. They looked but couldn’t find us.”
“Who’s us?”
“Pedro and me.”
“Did they take anything else?”
“No, they only took Rosa.”
“How old is the baby?”
“Eight months when they took her. She was screaming. She was so scared. I can’t stand to think about it.”
“Why do they want her?”
“I don’t know.”
“When did this happen?”
“One month and six days ago. So she’s nine months now.”
“Okay, let me get this straight. So this doctor told you to come up here and get with this Eldon Osceola guy, and he’d help you find your kid. And all those guys around that fire are his family?” He gestured at the men. None of them were paying any attention to them.
She nodded. “They are his sons and nephews and cousins. They work this place for the people who come to visit the Everglades.”
Novak looked around. He couldn’t see anything but darkness outside the ring of fire. “What’d you say this place was?”
“They take airboats out into the water, you know, to see the birds and deer and alligators. This place is called the Pa-hay-Okee Safari. That word means grassy waters, Eldon said. Lots of people come here to go on the boats.”
“The Everglades is a couple of hours from Fort Myers. I was out that long?”
“We have been here three hours. You were unconscious all the time. It is safer here for you. They’re looking for you now. We had to bring you along. It was for your own good.”
The fetid odor of standing water came to Novak on the wind. It smelled like that at his house on Bayou Bonne, too. He’d recognize it anywhere. “Do these guys live out here?”
She shook her head. “No, but they work here. There’s a museum here with tribal artifacts and alligator shows and booths to buy crafts. The airboats take the people who come here out to the preserve. Eldon and his family all live in Naples.”
Novak couldn’t get over her English. In Novak’s mind, that didn’t compute. If she was from the kind of jungle village in Guatemala that he’d visited, how the devil had she mastered English so well? Many of the Maya still spoke their ancient language as well as Spanish, but he’d never heard them speak English. She didn’t even have an accent. That bothered him. He glanced out at the men again. A lot of things weren’t adding up for Novak. “He’s got a lot of relatives out there, and they all wear identical black clothing and carry weapons. Looks more like a SWAT team to me.”
“They are very brave. Jake, the one who hit you with his bat? He’s Eldon’s youngest son. There are seven sons and two daughters. They have taken turns keeping us safe until you and Claire Morgan could come and bring back my baby.”
He hoped Claire hadn’t promised a miracle like she usually did. If this case concerned a missing infant, Claire was going to be extra gung-ho because she was pregnant herself and would relate big-time to this young woman’s plight. “Where the hell were those guys when that punk tried to drown you in the ocean? I thought you said they were protecting you.”
“They were out front watching the road. They did not expect them to come through the thicket on foot. We thought we were safe there at Eldon’s condo. We were good and did what Eldon told us to do. We kept inside every day and let no one see us. We saw you and we thought you were Claire’s friend, but we could not be sure. We were afraid you might be one of them.”
“Okay, I want to talk to this Eldon guy. Which one is he?”
“He’s in Miami. He will come back in the morning.”
Novak was tired of wondering. “How come your English is so good? Where’d you learn it?”
She looked down. Not a good sign. “Dr. Eloise lived with us for a year. She taught me English and trained me as a nurse’s aide. She chose me.”
She sounded proud of that. “Is she with Doctors Without Borders?”
“Yes. She taught many of us to speak English better, and she cared for our sick. Our village is far away from the cities. She was good to us and believed me when I told her that Rosa had been taken.”
“
Was she there when it happened?”
“No, now she works in Guatemala City. We called her for help.”
“Okay, I get all that. So how did you find Claire?”
“Dr. Eloise worked with Claire’s husband. His name is Nicholas Black. She asked him if his wife could help me find my baby. Then she sent us here to wait for Claire Morgan to come. She told us about you, too. She told us you were very big, but I did not expect you to be as tall as this.”
Novak probably did look large to her. She was tiny, five foot one, if that. Novak frowned, not sure he wanted to take this case, much less hear all the gory details. It did not sound like it would have a good outcome. Finding a baby already missing for over a month and inside a different country would not be easy. “You have no idea who took Rosa?”
“No, but other children have been taken from our village and others, too. The men come at night and steal our children. Then they leave and our babies are never seen again.”
In the ensuing silence, both Castillos stared at him, as if they had said enough and only waited now for him to get up and go get their baby. They looked young and innocent and desperate and sad and almost too stoic, considering what had happened to them Well, that story wasn’t going to get it, not by a long shot. He needed to know more than what she’d told him.
“What about the men who attacked you? How do they fit in with this?”
Alcina shrugged and shifted her gaze to her little brother. She spoke to him in rapid-fire Spanish. Novak was fluent, too, another perk from working missions in Central America. She was telling the kid to join the men at the fire so she could talk to the big man alone. Pedro didn’t argue. He jumped down off the chickee and walked over to the fire. He sat next to a couple of the younger men.
“Is Pedro okay?” Novak asked her. “He didn’t say anything.”
“Pedro’s brave. You saw how he fought the man at the beach.”
“What about you? That guy got you pretty hard in the face.”
Her hand moved up absently to touch the bruise. She gave a little shrug. “It does not hurt now.” She turned her face away as if she didn’t like him looking at her injury. Then she looked back. “How did you know it was us on the beach?”
Their eyes held for a moment. Hers looked as dark as midnight. “I didn’t know. I just saw a man abusing a woman and child who were a lot smaller than him. I don’t like that. I intervene when I see it happen. And you have no idea who they are?”
She shook her head. “Eldon says they are called Skulls. We do not know such men in Guatemala.”
Novak knew for a fact that there were men like that in Guatemala. They just didn’t ride motorcycles. “Consider yourself lucky. There’s nothing good about them.”
“You will find my baby.”
“I’ll try. Do you know how many men are in that gang? I saw five, but there’s got to be more.”
“Eldon says there are many and that they will try to kill anyone who helps us. They have been looking for us.”
“Why do you think the kidnappers wanted Rosa?”
“Dr. Eloise says they bring babies to America and sell them. She said she has heard that there is a devil in Fort Myers, and he sends his demons to snatch our children.”
Alcina seemed calm now, except that she was squeezing her hands together. Novak knew all about human trafficking. That kind of thing ran rampant south of the border, especially in Guatemala and Nicaragua but in other countries as well. The feds usually handled those kinds of crimes, especially ICE and DEA. Illegal infant adoption was one of the worst crimes in Novak’s eyes, but there was also sex trafficking and human slavery. All of it was terrible. Countless unsuspecting American couples who wanted to adopt a child were duped by these criminals, unaware that the children brought to them were not from orphanages but stolen out of villages. The Skulls could be involved, but he doubted if they were the brains of this or any other operation. They were too dumb to run anything. The baby-snatching business had been going on unabated for years.
“What devil in Fort Myers?”
“She only knew he was a lawyer there. Claire Morgan found out his name and thinks he is the one who brings the babies up here.”
She had relaxed some, a lot more than Novak would have been relating the story of his lost child. “How’d Claire figure that out?”
“I do not know.”
Novak wasn’t surprised. Claire could find out things nobody else could. “What’s the lawyer’s name?”
“She calls him Max Kellen. Dr. Eloise said she suspected he was a bad man.”
Novak had never heard of him. “What interest do the Osceolas have in this? They’re getting mixed up with some dangerous people.”
“They feel gratitude to Dr. Eloise. She worked here with them for a long time. She is a good person.”
Novak blew out his breath. This thing could get ugly fast. It already was. Bad news was: he’d already run into a buzz saw and Claire hadn’t even shown up yet. Those thugs were gunning for him and they’d barely gotten started.
“Dr. Eloise says that you and Claire Morgan are good at your jobs. That you will get my baby back. I know you will.”
“Well, I can’t promise you that. Maybe you should go home to Guatemala. I think you’d be safer there. What happened on that beach tonight will happen again, if you stay here.”
“I am Rosa’s mother. I should be here.”
Novak couldn’t deny that. One thing he did know, she and her brother shouldn’t be duking it out with brutal criminals. “Then you need to stay out here, or somewhere safer than that condo. Let these guys protect you on the reservation. They won’t make the same mistake twice.”
“Eldon will protect us at his condo.”
“He lives there?”
“No, he owns those buildings.”
“He owns Ocean’s Edge?”
“Dr. Eloise says he is a good businessman.” She leaned forward. “Is this Claire Morgan strong and brave enough to find Rosa?”
Novak almost smiled but couldn’t dredge one up. “Yeah, she’s pretty much got that tough thing going on. One thing, for sure, she never gives up, never, no matter what, no matter how bad it gets. That ought to make you feel better.”
Alcina smiled a little.
What didn’t make Novak feel better was the fact that Claire was going on six months pregnant now. She did not need to take an active role in this kind of investigation, and her husband was going to have to convince her of that. Claire had a mind of her own, but she wasn’t the kind of woman who’d put her own baby in jeopardy. She would listen to reason this time.
“Do you think she’ll be here soon?” Alcina asked.
“I hope so. Tell me something. Those guys from last night? Do they work with this Kellen man?”
“Eldon says they are bad but we don’t know much.”
That was true. Although Novak had heard of them, he hadn’t run into them before. He knew they’d had a chapter in New Orleans until the DEA busted it up. “This lawyer? You think he sent them in last night to murder you and your brother?”
“Yes, they found us there. We don’t know how. We were very careful not to be seen. You are our guardian angel.”
“I’m no angel, but I’ll help you as much as I can. What else do you know about the lawyer?”
“Eldon says he is a mobster.”
“If these guys are in with the mob, we’re in trouble.”
“All I want is Rosa back.”
“You can’t be a part of this. They’ll kill you next time they get you.”
Her face fell, and along with it, her burst of bravado. “Please help me, please.”
“We can’t do much else until Claire gets here, but that should be soon. Then she and I will look for your baby and deal with whoever’s got her. But you need to keep your head down, either out here or somew
here else where they can’t find you. You and Pedro are witnesses to attempted murder now. So am I. Both of you need to stay in hiding. Are you willing to do that?”
She nodded.
Novak glanced around. “Do Kellen and his men know about this place?”
She shook her head. “Eldon’s boys guard the entrance and make sure they don’t get in. They will call the tribal police if they come around.”
Novak glanced back at the men around the fire. They looked young and green and were probably inexperienced, but they’d managed to take down him and five other guys without much effort. They were pretty good, but they weren’t going to win any war waged against a murderous motorcycle gang backed by the local mob. This woman and her brother would end up dead if the bad guys thought they could endanger their business interests. Now Novak was involved up to his neck, and the Skulls on that beach might be able to identify him. It had been dark most of the time but they knew he was big. That took away Novak’s anonymity somewhat and made it a good bet that they’d grab him the moment he showed up anywhere near Fort Myers. That could put Claire in danger, as well, and Novak was not willing to take that risk.
“I’m going to help you, Alcina. So is Claire. Just keep your head down and stay out of sight.”
And he would, not that it was the smartest thing he’d ever done. Still, Claire would insist they take the case because Claire was Claire and she had a high sense of justice and got off on making criminals pay for their evil deeds. What’s more, she’d be right to take it, of course, just like she usually was. This poor woman had been through enough. It was time to let somebody else fight her battles for her. More to the point, he did not like bullies, and these guys were the worst kind. He looked out into the darkness pressing up against the illumination of the fire, not sure what lay out there. “Are you sure we’re safe out here? That fire could be a beacon bringing them to us.”
“They lock the entrance gate at night. No one is allowed in here without their permission.”