Redemption

by Ever N. Hayes

  “You guys checked that one?” a deep male voice asked.

  “Yes,” came the female reply. Sounds a lot like Flynn.

  “Did you look under all the beds?” Same deep voice as before.

  “Seriously? You think we wouldn’t?”

  “An adult is supposed to check every room,” another male voice said.

  “If seventeen isn’t adult enough for you, then go ahead.” That’s a younger male this time. Could that be Flynn’s brother?

  “Come on, Chase.” Definitely Flynn. “They think we’re incompetent, so let’s go.”

  The light came back on in our room. “You want me to check it again?” one of the men asked.

  “Nah,” the other man with the deep voice replied. “Chase wouldn’t lie to me. He knows I’d kill him.”

  “You got it, LT. Moving on then.”

  LT? Lieutenant? As in the captain’s right-hand man, Brock? I certainly hoped so. That would make it far less likely anyone would second-guess his search area and come back to our room. I looked at Lazzo, and he was staring back at me, seemingly waiting for me to say something. “I don’t know.” I honestly didn’t know what else to say.

  We stayed under the beds in case anyone came back. Lazzo seemed to understand the girl’s voice we’d heard had been Flynn’s. She—and apparently her brother—had been in here and hadn’t looked under the beds. They’d barely searched the room at all. So why were they in here? If neither Chase nor Flynn had reported us, then why was the ship being searched?

  I had a headache now. I’d had one continuously from all my crying the night before, but it was really pulsing now. I needed to sleep. I turned my back to Lazzo and ignored him when he whispered at me.

  A while later he tapped me on the back, and I rolled over to look at him.

  “It’s been two hours. My turn.”

  Wow. That felt like ten minutes! I nodded and slid out from under the bed. I sat by the door while Lazzo slept. After about an hour, I stood up and peeked out into the hallway. There was a surveillance camera above our door with a blinking red light. I hadn’t noticed it when we came in. Was it on then? Regardless, there was something strange about it now. I could see another camera down the hall pointed away from our room—toward the stairs—and the one above our door was pointed to our left. A third camera at the far end of the hall to our left was also pointed away from us toward the stairs. Holy crap. That left a fifty-yard gap with no camera coverage from the door by the stairs to our room. Someone had to have manually created that gap before the alarms went off—before the cameras on this end of the boat were turned on. Flynn. So she is actually helping us.

  ---------- (Tuesday, August 2, 2022.) ----------

  Lazzo took one more watch shift that night, and then we both slept four more hours until 6:00 a.m. I finally felt a little rested—which was good—and my headache had subsided, but I awoke even more bitter toward Lazzo than I’d been the day before. The finality was sinking in, and the resulting ache was spreading through my chest. He killed Sam. My boyfriend is dead.

  I pulled myself out from under the bed, desperately needing to pee. There was a bathroom across the hall from our room, conveniently not in the scope of the cameras. I had a feeling Flynn had moved those cameras specifically for me—for another girl. She didn’t want me to have to improvise. I was silently grateful as I tiptoed across the hall. I washed my face in the sink and cleaned up a little. I looked like a chimney sweeper. Ugh!

  When I came out, Lazzo was standing in our doorway. “Where were you,” he asked.

  I pointed at the sign that read Ladies. “That okay with you?”

  He ignored my sarcasm. “My turn,” he said. “Don’t go anywhere.”

  “Oh, okay.” Seriously? Where was I going to go?

  I had just sat down inside the door to our room when I heard a distinctive “Pssst” out in the hall. I poked my head around the corner and saw a head sticking out of a manhole over by the stairs. Flynn. She waved at me to come toward her, motioning me to stay against the wall. I slipped down the hall to her.

  “Hey,” she said with a slight smile.

  “Hey yourself.” I smiled back, and then I saw the bruises on her face. “What the hell? Flynn, did your—”

  “Can we not talk about it, please? I’m fine. Sorry ’bout the knife, by the way.”

  “I’ve been through worse. You too, obviously.” My dislike was rapidly becoming hatred for that man. I reluctantly changed the subject. “Hey, did you move the cameras?”

  She nodded and the smile came back. “Hayley, do you have a minute?”

  Several hours worth of them. I nodded. She was looking nervously behind me—likely for Lazzo. “He’s in the bathroom. What was up with the alarms last night?”

  “Governor Barnes sent a message about two terrorists sneaking onto the boat the night we left. Dad sent search parties out to look for them … or you. No one found anything though, so they’re still looking.” She lifted a knapsack up from the manhole and handed it to me. “Chase and I saved our bread for you from last night, and I brought two bottles of water.”

  “Flynn, you shouldn’t ha—”

  “Hayley!” Lazzo whispered sharply at me. He was back in the bunkroom. “What are you doing?”

  I held up a hand, signaling him to wait.

  Flynn put her hand on my arm. “I wanted to ask if you’re okay?”

  I shrugged.

  “I know—sorry—it’s kind of a stupid question. You said he killed your boyfriend. So is he holding you hostage?”

  I could hear Lazzo walking up behind me. “It’s complicated.”

  Her eyes shifted up, and the sparkle in them vanished. She gave Lazzo a cold stare.

  “What do you want?” Lazzo was suspicious of our conversation. With good reason.

  “She brought us food.” I handed the knapsack to him. “Can you say thank you, Lazzo?”

  He ignored me. “Hayley, let’s go.”

  “I’ll be right there.”

  Lazzo clearly didn’t want to leave me with Flynn, but he backed away. “Twenty seconds,” he whispered.

  “I’ll stay an hour if I want to.”

  “Hayley—” He stopped and shook his head, then continued his retreat.

  When he was out of earshot, I looked back down at Flynn. “I can’t have anyone find him, Flynn. I’ll explain more later, but put it this way…if we don’t make it to Colorado, I stand to lose a lot more people I love.”

  Lazzo was already whispering at me again. Idiot.

  Then I heard another whisper from somewhere below Flynn. “Someone’s coming.”

  “That Chase again?” I tried to see past her but couldn’t.

  She nodded. “I gotta go.”

  I quickly put my hand on hers. “Thank you. Both of you.”

  “Same time tomorrow, okay?” Then she was gone.

  I scampered quietly back to our room, and Lazzo met me at the door. “What did she want?”

  “Lazzo, listen … you are going to have to trust me if you want this to work. You scaring Flynn is not making this easier. Do you understand? You jeopardize everything by leaving the room. E-ver-y-thing.” I emphasized each syllable. “Someone could see you.”

  “But not you?”

  I sighed deeply. “Of course they could. But when we were watching the ship from Redemption how many black men did you see?”

  “Four, five, six … I don’t know. I wasn’t counting.”

  Clearly. “And white girls?”

  That number was closer to fifty and he knew what I was getting at now. He was going to be more memorable—more noticeable. He didn’t like how I was talking to him, but he nodded. “Okay. I get it.”

  “Great.” I grabbed the knapsack from him. “Now, let’s eat.”

  SIXTEEN – Six Dead (Ryan)

  ---------- (Monday, August 1, 2022.) ----------

  Danny promised to keep Tara with him during the search before he climbed onto the plane with Trigger,
Twix, Royce, Deacon, Blake, and Axel. I grabbed Tara’s hand as she walked past me. “Hey.”

  She turned but wouldn’t meet my eyes. “What?”

  I cringed. “It’s going …” I can’t say it. “I’m sorry.”

  She didn’t reply. I released her arm as I felt her pull away. She climbed into the plane and they coasted off. Minutes later they were airborne and headed for Kauai. I was miserable.

  The governor had called the base on Kauai and asked for two jeeps to be dropped off at the marina for Danny. They were waiting in the parking lot when the Pack arrived. At some point Danny decided to send Blake back with Axel to help us look for the boat. He was a great swimmer and would definitely make retrieving the boat easier—if we did find it.

  The rest of them split off in opposite directions on Kauai, and they searched for four hours without a single sign of anything suspicious. Danny was sounding more and more frustrated over the radio. “They’ve got to be here somewhere,” he muttered. “We’re missing something.”

  Axel, Blake, Dad, and I were a little more fortunate. We found the boat. As expected, it had followed the current around Kauai and was floating off to the east—with nothing in it but a limp and lifeless Six. Poor dog. Axel landed the plane on the water, and Blake swam over to the boat. He climbed in, started it up, and steered it back to Waimea Bay to refuel. Then he brought the boat back to Redemption. Dad and I unceremoniously helped him bury Six—who had clearly been shot—before his running mate Dice could see him. The bullet hole in Six revived the panic from earlier—from watching the one dot get left behind on the satellite feed. We knew that other dot was a person now and likely had also been shot. My mind was stuck on Hayley, but it could have been any of the others. Thus far, we had no other clues.

  It was after four, Monday afternoon, when Danny called in again. “Axel, take everyone to the Hexagon, then come get us.”

  “Hey, Danny, I’ve got something to show you.”

  “What is it?”

  Axel looked at me. “Might be nothing.”

  “Okay.” Danny sounded confused. This was new to me, too. “Can you bring it along?” Danny asked.

  “Sure. Did you have any luck?” Axel radioed back.

  “None.”

  Dad volunteered to hang back on Redemption, just in case someone showed up—friend or foe. I knew Danny wouldn’t like it—his grandpa staying out here alone—but I agreed with the logic.

  “Call if you need anything.” I hugged him.

  “Don’t worry about me, Ryan,” Dad said. “I can shoot better than you.”

  Kate kissed him on the cheek and playfully punched my arm. “Fortunately, we all can.”

  “Don’t you have to pee again? It’s been ten minutes.”

  Even if the smiles were short-lived we all needed those light moments.

  On the way to the Hexagon, I asked Axel what it was he wanted to show Danny. He wouldn’t say and my twenty questions stalled—each yielding the same generic response. “If I find out anything important, I’ll tell you.”

  By six, we were gathered in the Area 52 wing of the Hexagon—something that never would have been allowed if it hadn’t been Danny’s sister missing. I was trying to listen to Nicole’s instructions on how to operate the zoom features and controls on the satellite cameras, but I was rather overwhelmed by our electronic surroundings. What is this place? It’s like a Buffalo Wild Wings with no food. We were each given a screen to watch—covering a two-square-mile sector of the part of Kauai that had been blacked out—and told to look for anything even the least bit unusual. We watched six hours of recorded feed, from the time the blackout ended to roughly 6:00 a.m., but no one found anything. By then it was after midnight and we were all exhausted. Danny pointed out the bedrooms and suggested we get some sleep.

  Most of the others stood up and followed his directions, but Tara didn’t move. I saw Danny kneel down beside her and say something. She put her head on his shoulder, and he rested a hand on her arm. When she finally stood up, Tara had tears streaming down her face. It was clear she didn’t want to stop looking for Emily, but she walked away from the computers anyway—directly toward me. We walked in silence down the hall to a room full of bunk beds. She didn’t tell me what Danny had said to her, and I didn’t push it. I wanted to lie beside her and hold her, but she didn’t seem the least bit interested in sharing the bottom bunk. She whispered goodnight and slid under the covers, clothes and boots still on. I stood there for a minute, not quite sure how to feel, before climbing up to the top bunk. As I lay there in the darkness, listening to Danny and the Pack talk out at the computers, I finally heard her whisper something. “He said it’s not your fault, Ryan.”

  I felt a lump form in my throat, but I didn’t move—and I didn’t say anything back. That Danny had to try to convince her otherwise told me exactly how she felt. She obviously blamed me for Emily being gone. I covered my face with my hands and bit back an exasperated sigh. I understood blaming me was a lot easier than blaming herself—and I could take it for now—but … Please, God, keep Emily safe. Please… keep them all—the rest of them anyway—alive. I couldn’t imagine Tara’s response toward me if Emily wasn’t brought home safely. And I didn’t know how I’d handle Hayley not coming back. I was determined not to think about it—but losing that fight every waking minute.

  ---------- (Tuesday. August 2, 2022.) ----------

  Around five in the morning I heard some shouting and banging down the hall. I swung my head over and looked at the bunk beneath mine. Tara was gone. I climbed out of bed and hurried into the surveillance lab, where almost everyone else was looking up at a giant overhead screen. I could see a small black circle at the end of a long dirt driveway.

  “What is that?” I asked Jenna.

  “A house, we think. But we can’t see it. That black circle is blocking all our camera angles, even infrared.”

  “And that’s—”

  “Definitely not normal.” She finished my question as a statement. “When the rest of the blackout lifted off Kauai, this spot remained. They think it’s intentional. Someone there is doing this.”

  I could feel my heart accelerating. Finally. Hope. Nicole zoomed in on a set of fresh mud tracks going around the black circle and into a smaller building—a shed or something. We could see the back end of a mud-covered van sticking out of the shed. Nicole brought up the feed of the front gate of the compound and rewound the recording the full forty hours it could go back before the blackout. Not once did that van appear on the screen, even though it definitely had been driven recently. It had to have come down the driveway during the blackout. This really could be something. I could see that same hope in Tara’s eyes. Combine the van and satellite scramblers with the fact the house seemed to be in a remote gated compound, and it was the ideal location to hold hostages.

  “How did they not find that last night?” I whispered to Jenna.

  “From what I’ve seen on the screen, someone had covered the entry with brush. It was really well covered.”

  Nicole and Keena were working frantically to reverse the blackout currently blotting out the house—technology versus our master technicians. It took about twenty minutes. “Whose sector was that in?” I wanted to know who had missed this earlier.

  “It wasn’t,” was Danny’s surprising reply. “The gate was at the edge of the blacked-out area, but the house was outside the blackout zone. It’s almost like that was part of the plan—to make us think they were hiding in the blackout zone.”

  No wonder we missed that black circle. We wouldn’t have been looking for other blackout areas. The kidnappers wanted to travel with cover, but when the cover was lifted and that area was searched, they didn’t want to be in it. Pretty smart actually.

  “Wait,” Jenna said out loud suddenly. Everyone turned to look at her. “Shouldn’t we be able to see the van drive down the driveway?”

  “No,” Nicole answered. “It’s blacked—”

  “No, she’s ri
ght,” Keena chimed in. “The blackout zone went to the gate, but not more than a dozen or so feet past it. We watched all the feed before and after the blackout there. And we gave up on the feed of the house because it was always blacked out, but—”

  “Not the driveway,” Danny finished her thought. “That’s a half mile of open space, at least.”

  “Right.” Jenna nodded. “We need to rewind the feed of the zone just past the gate, before it gets to the blacked-out circle.”

  Nicole was already doing it.

  “Look where the tire marks initially cut off the driveway and head around the house,” Danny said, pointing at another screen. The live daylight feed on that screen—zoomed in—revealed the tracks were definitely fresh. Danny stood over Nicole’s shoulder as she hammered in numbers and spun the dials. His attention was back on the big screen she was operating. “Run the feed from the beginning of the blackout to the end.”

  Less than half an hour after the blackout began, we spotted headlights from what we assumed was the van. We watched it cut off the driveway and drive around the black dot to the shed. As it neared the shed a motion detector light came on. A minute later I heard several gasps around me as two men on the screen—dressed in black with masks—pulled Reagan, Emily, and Abbey out of the back of the van. They stepped briefly into the light then walked them into the shed.

  “That was Hayley and the girls, right?”

  “No, Dad. It was Reagan.”

  “But that was Hayley’s neon yellow Under Armour hoodie.”

  “I know. Trust me, it was Reagan.”

  “Can you rewind it?” I wasn’t convinced.

  Nicole looked at Danny and he nodded. She spun it back.