by Matt Lincoln
“Let’s not think like that,” I replied as I looked around. “There’s got to be something around here that might lead us in the right direction. If nothing else, we can ask—”
I stopped short as I caught sight of something bright orange in the distance, on a patch of grass in the shade of one of the tall buildings. I could only see a sliver of it since it was almost entirely obscured by a line of boats that had been set on the rocky ground beside the water. There were bits of old driftwood stacked around it as well, as though someone had tried to construct some kind of makeshift fence. Nevertheless, I’d been around boats for long enough to recognize that obnoxiously bright color instantly, deliberately meant to be visible among the blue of the ocean.
“There!” I called to the rest of the group before walking briskly toward the object. The closer I got, the more visible it became. There was no doubt that it was an emergency life raft that had been pulled out of the water. It wasn’t until I was a few feet away that I realized it was moving, undulating, and rocking back and forth as though someone was inside.
I froze in my tracks, my mind racing. Was one of the men still inside? Had they come back to use it as a shelter? My hand hovered over the gun at my hip. I couldn’t draw it yet, not without an immediate threat and certainly not on a crowded marina, but I needed to be prepared.
“Someone’s in there,” Holm muttered as he and the rest of the group came to stand next to me.
“Yeah,” I muttered quietly. These rafts were designed to withstand the elements for a short time and were therefore constructed to include a makeshift tent that stretched over the top of the raft. It was currently zipped up, and though I couldn’t make out much beneath the shade of the building, I could see shadows moving around inside.
I opened my mouth to instruct whoever was inside to get out, but before I could, the zipper flew open, and several small kids came rushing out of the tent, giggling as they chased each other.
The pack leader came to an abrupt stop as he spotted the group of us standing there, his eyes going wide and his mouth hanging open like a gaping fish. The rest of the kids quickly followed suit. The smallest of the bunch, a little girl who looked like she couldn’t have been older than three or four, immediately began to cry.
“Va bene, non piangere,” Gabriella cooed as she knelt down to comfort the girl. The rest of the kids shifted around awkwardly, refusing to look us in the eyes and staring guiltily down at the ground instead. Once the girl stopped crying, Gabriella looked up and said something to the rest of the kids. The biggest one replied quietly, and after a short conversation, they suddenly perked up and scampered away.
“What was that about?” I asked her as I watched the kids playing tag a few feet away, running between and around the boats placed along the ground next to the water.
“They thought we were coming to arrest them,” Gabriella chuckled. “They said they found the life raft floating on its own at the edge of the water and brought it back to use as a fort. When they saw my uniform, they got scared.” She laughed out loud. “The little girl thought I was going to arrest her brother for making them steal someone’s raft.”
“Poor kids,” Hills snickered. “I can’t imagine what they must have thought, coming out and seeing a bunch of adults staring down at them.”
“Probably the scariest thing they’ve ever experienced,” I muttered as I crouched down to peer into the raft. There was nothing inside, aside from a book and a few Barbie dolls. I leaned back out and looked up at Gabriella. “Did they say if they found anything inside?”
“Nothing,” she replied. “The boy insisted that it was totally empty when they found it. They even went around and asked people if it belonged to anyone, but they all said no. They thought it must be abandoned, so they took it.”
“Well, it was a long shot, anyway,” I sighed as I stood back up. “I was unlikely those guys would have managed to grab anything useful before escaping. At least now we know that the woman’s story was true.”
“So, we know that some of the pirates got away,” Holm surmised as he looked back down the length of the beach. “And that they’re somewhere in Sorrento. Or at least they were yesterday. As Chapman said, they could be anywhere by now.”
“I don’t know about that,” Gabriella replied as she began to walk through the large gap between buildings that the pirates had most likely left the marina through. “The easiest ways into and out of Sorrento are by train and bus, but both require money, which they probably didn’t have if they were rushing to escape during the battle, right?”
“That’s a good point,” I replied as I looked around. The area just outside the marina was filled with little shops and restaurants, and it was crowded with all the people walking around.
“It is possible to drive,” she continued as he bit her lip pensively, “but the way is long, and there is a lot of traffic. They definitely did not have a car with them, and I hardly believe they walked through the mountainside.”
“Which means they’re most likely still around here somewhere,” Hills grumbled as he slowly scanned the surrounding buildings, as though he might suddenly spot one of the pirates standing in one of the windows. “At least until someone comes to get them, or until they happen to obtain some money.”
He’d barely finished speaking when a sharp, ear-splitting scream tore across the air.
“Soccorso!” someone nearby screamed.
“That means help,” Gabriella gasped before taking off in the direction of the calls.
The rest of us raced after her. It didn’t take us long to find the source of the commotion. Standing just beneath a large stone statue of a man riding a horse in the middle of the square, a man was holding a woman hostage. He had a large knife in his hand, and he wore a soiled tank top that exposed his arms. Both were completely covered in tattoos, though I couldn’t make them out exactly from this distance.
“Polizia!” a short woman wearing a uniform identical to the one the hostage was wearing exclaimed as she grabbed onto Gabriella’s arm. She jumped but didn’t pull her arm away from the frantic woman, who was crying as she spoke. “Per favore! Ha derubato il nostro negozio e ha attaccato Nicole quando ha cercato di fermarlo!”
“Va tutto bene, vado ad aiutare,” she replied to the woman calmly, gently easing her arm out of the woman’s grip before turning to look at us. “She says he tried to steal from their store. When her coworker tried to stop him, he attacked her.”
“Looks like we might have found one of our guys,” Hills grumbled angrily as he glared at the wild man. “Guess they realized this would be the quickest way to get some money.”
“Dammit,” I muttered as I stared at the man and wondered how we should approach the situation. Hostage situations were always risky, and my mind immediately flew back to the last time I’d been in a similar situation at the hospital. That time, the suspect had suddenly slashed the victim’s neck before taking off. I needed to make sure nothing like that happened again.
“We should split up,” I suggested. “Gabriella and two agents should approach from the front to distract the suspect. The other two can close in from behind and get the victim to safety while he’s distracted.”
“Alright,” Hills replied. “Junior and I will distract him with Officer Russo, then. The guy might not even speak English. If he’s one of the pirates, Junior can talk to him. You two take the back.”
“Let’s go,” I replied without further ado. It was a bit of a slapshot operation, but we didn’t have any time to spare. The situation would already be more difficult because we had a whole crowd watching what was happening. That meant that we really couldn’t use our firearms since a stray bullet was almost certain to hit one of the gathered bystanders. There was also a high chance someone in the crowd would try something and make things worse. We needed to act before any of those things happened.
Holm and I had nearly made it to the other side of the crowd when we heard a collective gasp. I turned around and r
ealized that Gabriella and the Vegas agents had moved in and were talking to the man from a distance. I nodded for Holm to keep going until we were directly behind the man and out of his line of sight.
“We really should have tasers for situations like this,” Holm grumbled as we stepped through the invisible line formed by the crowd and toward the suspect. It wasn’t a bad idea, actually. More than once, we’d found ourselves in situations where shooting was just too dangerous. A taser would eliminate a lot of those issues.
A few murmurs broke out among the crowd as Holm and I crept toward the man, and I turned around to press a finger to my lips, fearful that their remarks would tip off the suspect. To my surprise, they actually fell quiet.
I could feel their gazes on my back as Holm and I walked toward the suspect, who was screaming something at Gabriella. Holm and I stopped once we were just a few feet away, waiting for the right opportunity. As soon as the suspect lifted the large knife away from the woman to point it threateningly at Gabriella, I moved.
I leapt forward and knocked the hostage to the ground roughly, out of the man’s reach. I was sure it must have hurt, but it was also better than being killed. At the same time, Holm ran forward and tackled the suspect to the ground. He let out a strangled cry as he fell, and all around us, the crowd erupted into pandemonium as they watched the operation go down. Some of them rushed forward, and for a moment, I lost sight of Holm and the rest of the group as the bystanders ran into the middle of the scene.
“Stop!” I heard Holm yell somewhere behind me. I was alarmed, but I couldn’t leave the hostage alone, especially with everyone running around like that. She might end up getting stomped in the process. A second later, someone grabbed my arm, and I spun around, ready to fight back, only to realize that the man was simply trying to help me onto my feet.
A second after that, I heard Gabriella’s voice yelling over the roar of the crowd. Whatever she said worked to calm them down because they began to disperse immediately.
“Are you okay?” I asked the woman, who was shaking and covered in dirt from when I’d pushed her down. She looked up at me with wide, fearful eyes before nodding jerkily.
“I’m… okay,” she replied, her eyes welling up with fresh tears.
“Nicole!” The short woman from before suddenly came running up to us. She threw her arms around the hostage, who hugged her back tightly, the tears in her eyes finally spilling over as she embraced the other woman.
“Are you okay?” Gabriella asked breathlessly as she came to check on me.
“I’m fine,” I replied as I looked around for my partner. “How’s Holm? I heard him yell.”
“He’s okay,” she assured me. “It wasn’t him they were attacking. After you two managed to get the woman away from the man, several bystanders rushed in and began hitting and kicking the assailant. He was trying to get them off.”
“That’s a relief,” I sighed as I finally spotted Holm crouched a few feet away next to the man, who was face down on the ground, handcuffed, and sporting several cuts and bruises that he had definitely not had just a minute ago when Holm and I had moved in. The crowd had been merciless.
“I thought you said crazy action movie stuff didn’t happen here,” I said half-jokingly to Gabriella.
“It doesn’t… usually,” she replied. “Which is probably why they reacted like that. People here don’t like injustice, especially something like this. A man attacking an innocent woman… I’m not surprised they wanted to punish him. Of course, I couldn’t let that happen.”
“Vigilantism does tend to end badly,” I noted as Gabriella stepped away to check on the hostage. Before she could say anything, though, the woman suddenly turned and stalked furiously toward the man. She screeched at him as her coworker held her back.
“What’s going on?” I asked Gabriella, who was watching the scene with confusion on her face. “What’s she saying?”
“I think she knows him,” Gabriella muttered. “I think that’s why he attacked her. She recognized him while he was robbing the store, and he panicked…” Her face fell, and she sighed with disappointment.
“That means he’s not our guy,” I concluded as I peered down at the man to inspect his tattoos now that I was close enough to get a good look. As I’d suspected, none were of snakes. “If she knows him, then that means he’s a local. Not one of the Colombian pirates.”
“Wait, what did you say?” Chapman asked as he and Hills walked up to us, cradling his left hand with his right. It was bleeding. “He’s not one of the pirates?”
“No,” I replied. “The victim knows him. What happened to your hand?”
“Oh, someone in the crowd shoved me, and I cut it when I fell,” he replied as he dug through the bag he had slung over his shoulder for something. “It’s okay, though. Charlie and I have gotten into enough scrapes that I always carry some basic first aid stuff with me.”
“Did you see who it was?” Gabriella frowned as Chapman awkwardly pulled a roll of gauze and some kind of bottle out of his bag with one hand. “You should have told me before. It’s one thing to act foolish, but if they caused injury to an agent—”
“It’s fine,” Chapman insisted as she took the gauze and bottle from him and took over in bandaging it up. “It’s not that bad. And it wasn’t on purpose. It’s really okay.”
“Well, if you’re sure,” Gabriella muttered as she finished wrapping up the cut and gingerly turned the kid’s hand over in hers, her brows knitted together in concern. I resolutely ignored the pang of jealousy that flared up inside me as I watched her fuss over him.
“So, what do we do about him?” Hills asked as he nodded down at the man who was still lying on the ground, semi-conscious and groaning from the beating he’d been dealt.
“I’ll call for someone to come collect him,” Gabriella replied as she stared down at the man with contempt. “He’s not actually related to our case, so someone else should handle him. Let me just attend to the victim, and we’ll go.”
She stepped away to speak to the young woman before pulling out her phone, presumably to call for backup.
“I saw that,” Holm muttered lowly enough that only I would hear him as soon as she stepped away.
“Saw what?” I raised an eyebrow at him.
“Just you getting all huffy that your new girlfriend was paying attention to Chapman,” he snickered. “Your poker face doesn’t work on me, Marston. We’ve been partners for too long.”
“Not my girlfriend,” I retorted flatly. “And no, I wasn’t.”
“Sure,” he snorted. “Next, you’re going to be telling me the two of you haven’t been flirting since the moment she was assigned as our liaison.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” I lied as I looked over at Gabriella. She was smiling warmly at the victim, the same way she’d smiled at those kids earlier. It was a lovely sight.
“I’m just teasing you,” Holm sighed. “Hell, if I had that blond hair and those baby blues, I’d use them to my advantage, too.”
I just snorted at his response and the way his ribbing tone had suddenly turned surly. I definitely would have been lying if I’d said I wasn’t attracted to Gabriella. She was kind and headstrong, and if she felt the same attraction, which it certainly seemed like she did, it would just be stupid not to go for it.
“Alright, the police are on their way,” Gabriella declared as she rejoined us. “The sun is about to go down, as well. How about once the police get here, we take a break? We can get something to drink and discuss what we know so far.”
“That sounds like a good idea.” I smiled at her. It wasn’t lost on me the way she blushed in response before looking around at the rest of the group to get their input as well. Once it was settled, she glanced back at me one more time before nodding and returning to the suspect’s side to watch over him until backup arrived.
21
Ethan
The sun had set by the time the ambulance and police had arriv
ed. The paramedics had taken the suspect away quickly, and though we’d told the police about how the crowd had attacked him, they didn’t seem overly concerned about finding the perpetrators. I wasn’t sure how I felt about that.
On the one hand, he was a piece of trash who had threatened to kill a woman over a few hundred dollars. On the other, assault was still assault, and we couldn’t just let people take justice into their own hands because the guy was a criminal.
After everything was said and done, we decided to take a break and have a drink, at Hills’s suggestion.
“I think we could all use a drink after today,” he grumbled before looking at Gabriella. “You’re the local here. Do you have any recommendations?”
“Hmm,” Gabriella hummed as she scrolled through her phone. “I haven’t spent all that much time in Sorrento, but here’s a place nearby that looks good. It has a lot of reviews.” She lifted her head and looked up and down the street for a moment before pointing off to the right. “I think it’s that way.”
We followed her over to the place in question, a bar located on the ground floor of a tall building painted navy blue, a silky canopy hung over the entrance.
As we stepped inside, I thought that it seemed fairly upscale. The tables were clean and brightly polished, and jazz music was playing softly in the background. It was nothing at all like the dive that Holm and I preferred to frequent, Mike’s Tropical Tango Hut.
“It’s nice,” Chapman remarked as he fiddled with the gauze on his hand.
A moment later, a server stopped by the table and asked us something.
“Do you guys want food or just drinks?” Gabriella asked as she looked around at each person sitting around the table.
“I’m not hungry,” I replied. It had been some time since we’d eaten lunch, but the meal had been so hearty and carb-heavy that I honestly didn’t feel hungry at all. When the rest of the group responded similarly, Gabriella nodded and relayed the information to the server. After a bit of back and forth, while Gabriella helped us put our orders in, the server left to get our drinks.