by Toby Neal
“Are you boys okay? Did he do anything to you?” Lei asked.
The one she’d freed nodded his head. “We’re okay.” But all of them were shaky and tear-streaked as they sat up and sipped from the canteen, passing it back and forth.
“We’re going to check the other building,” Manolo said. “We’ll leave a couple of men here with you.”
Lei nodded, and the two SWAT members took up stations beside the door.
Lei didn’t want to overwhelm the kids with questions. “I’m going to record you, okay? So you don’t have to go through the story so often.” She took her phone out and thumbed on the recording feature. “What are your names?” Lei asked.
“Danny,” the boy she’d freed said. “And this is Kekoa and Dexter.” She asked for their last names and wrote those down, too.
“So tell me who the boss man is.”
“Will he—will he be back?” Danny’s eyes were huge and hollow with fear.
“He’s long gone. But we need more information to catch him.”
“He only let us call him Uncle,” the middle boy, Kekoa, said. He was the smallest and slenderest of the three. “We’re foster kids. He’s our foster dad.”
Lei’s stomach clenched as faces of kids she’d put into the system flashed in front of her eyes. How many of them might have ended up in a situation like this?
“So how did that work?” She kept her voice soft with an effort. The other narco detective with their team returned. His partner was still looking at the fields, but the detective, a long-boned, balding man named Shepherd, came in and flipped a mattress behind the boys. A comic book fluttered from beneath it. She frowned at him.
“Can we leave that for a minute, Detective?”
The man gave a brief nod and squatted beside her. “Hey, guys. I’m Detective Shepherd. We need to know everything we can about what was going on out here.”
“I don’t know nothing.” Dexter, the tallest kid, finally spoke. He looked a little older than the others, with peach fuzz on his upper lip. He was the one who’d lost control of his bladder, and he hunched over to hide his wet shorts.
“Why don’t you start at the beginning? How you came to be here.” Lei scribbled her old pen on the spiral notebook she used to take notes.
“We’re fosters,” the middle boy, Kekoa, repeated. “We came at different times. But we all lived in Kahului before. And we came to Hana to go to Aunty Selina’s foster home. Selina Tahua.” Lei wrote the name down. “So Aunty Selina, she meets the social worker and picks us up. Then she drives us out here. And Uncle, he put us in here, and we work.” He shrugged thin shoulders under a filthy shirt.
“Who else was out here?”
“Two men stay with Uncle sometimes. Eddie and Akira. Two more come and help move the weed,” Kekoa said.
“And Uncle, he had a helper. Tony was one of us. But he’d been out here so long, he came like he was Uncle’s son.” There was an envious note in Dexter’s voice as he spoke. Tony must be the teen she’d left bound in the woods.
“Tell us what happened today,” Lei said.
“You came.” Danny pointed at her. “And you shot Killah.”
“I know, and I’m sorry. I love dogs.” Lei firmed her mouth to keep it from trembling. “I told Uncle to call his dog. I didn’t want to hurt him.”
“Killah was only Uncle’s dog. He wasn’t nice. One time Uncle he told Killah to stop me when I tried to run away.” Danny lifted one leg of his dirty shorts. A ragged scar was visible on his thigh. “I got sick from Killah biting me. But they nevah take me fo’ go hospital.” As the boy talked, his pidgin grew broader. “He’d have killed you if he could.”
Lei sighed, still conflicted. “Would you boys help me bury the dog after we’re done talking? I don’t want to leave him in the river.”
“Yeah, sure,” Danny said. The other boys nodded. Sounds of the team moving around the shack, photographing and making sure the marijuana fires were going out, penetrated the shack’s walls.
“So we need names,” Shepherd said. “Names of anyone who came down here that you might have heard or picked up.” He was able to get four names from Danny and Kekoa, including that of the chopper pilot and a description of the bird used to transport the raw marijuana.
“So what did you boys do out here when you weren’t working?” Lei asked. “Did they keep you locked in this shed?”
“Yeah,” Danny said. “Uncle would bring food down once a day and a jug of water.” He gestured to the gallon jug in the corner. “Once we were done working, he locked us in. We had a flashlight, but we usually fell asleep once it was dark.”
“We had video games.” Dexter reached in his pocket and brought out a handheld battery-operated game. “If we worked hard and got a lot done, Uncle would let us watch TV at his place.” He gestured to the other bunkhouse across the stream. Stockholm syndrome, that pattern of attachment to a captor, appeared to be affecting Dexter the most.
“So I have a hard question for you boys,” Lei said. “I came up this valley because I found a skull that had washed down the stream to the beach, and someone found it there. Do you know if there were any other kids, who…?” She thought of how to phrase it. “Might have disappeared?”
The boys shook their heads. “We weren’t the only ones to work here,” Danny said. “I mean, we were the ones working here, but we knew there were others before us. Because of Tony.”
“Yes. Tony.” Lei could well remember the teen she’d beaten with his rifle and left tied with his belt. Now that she saw what had happened to the other boys, she needed to have an officer go check on his location. She’d assumed Boss Man had freed him and taken the teen with him, but now she wasn’t so sure. “Was Tony one of you, working?”
“No. Tony graduated. He lived in the bunkhouse with Uncle,” Dexter said.
“Graduated. What did that mean?”
“Means he did something to make him a man.” Kekoa’s voice was a scared whisper as he contributed this.
Lei frowned. “Do you know what it was?”
“No. Uncle, he said it would be something different for each of us,” Dexter said. “I get to graduate now.” The boy pulled a grenade out of his pocket.
Lei’s breath stopped and her heart jumped. She locked eyes with the tall, slender boy. The fear that had caused him to lose bladder control wasn’t just from being tied up in a shack wired to blow. He was the final booby trap, and he was scared—and suicidal.
Chapter Sixteen
I woke sometime deep in the night, startled by something running with light insect feet across my bare arm. I shook whatever it was off.
“You okay, LT?” Kerry whispered. He was on watch, sitting up in the low shelter beside me. It was barely tall enough to accommodate him sitting cross-legged.
“Yeah. Something ran across me.” I turned toward the young man, drawing myself up to kneel. “I might as well take my watch. I slept extra this afternoon.”
“You seemed like you needed it. Nothing much going on, just some animal activity.” He handed me the rifle. I crawled out of my nest of leaves and sat down where he’d been, bracing my back against one of the banana trees that we’d used for a corner of the crude shelter. Mere moments later, I could tell by Kerry’s regular, deep breathing that he was asleep in the spot I’d vacated.
I scanned the darkness.
It was a busy darkness, filled with clicking, rustling, and far off, the squeal of something dying abruptly. My eyes adjusting, I could see the faintest lightness of moonlight high above the trees. Every now and then I’d see a gleam of something bioluminescent. And as suddenly as if conjured, one of those glowing moths appeared, dancing around our tiny open area like a will-o’-the-wisp.
I flashed to the night I’d had the dream of Anchara. This moth or butterfly had none of the charged energy of that strange haunting—it was merely a pretty, glowing butterfly in the thick velvet darkness. Watching in that darkness, my knees drawn up and the rifle resting on them
, my mind could wander.
Had Anchara really visited me? The moth had shown me a way to escape the shed, and that was undeniable. It was also true that the tormented dreams I’d had about Anchara and her death had ceased. It could just be the stress and distraction of the kidnapping causing a temporary reprieve—but I didn’t think so. I usually had more of the terrible dreams, not fewer, when I was under stress.
If we could just survive this, it would all be worth it. I felt different. Free. Not just dried out by necessity. Even though I’d had to kill a man, blow up three choppers, and ruin my feet.
Lei’s face rose in my mind’s eye. Those serious level brows bracketing big brown eyes. I never got tired of the tiny freckles on her nose. Never got tired of tasting that lush mouth I’d missed so much while we were separated. She’d tease me if she knew what I was thinking, if she knew how often the colors of this place and its shades of brown reminded me of her.
“My English lit haole boy.” She’d kiss me. “My own Shakespeare.”
She expressed her feelings with her body, not her words. I loved that about her. That one night before I left hadn’t been near enough. We hadn’t had time to really connect in so long.
Lei had been so angry that I’d taken the Security Solutions job that she’d moved out of our room, and I’d decided not to tell her when I was leaving until the day before, hoping that would minimize the friction between us.
It hadn’t. Instead, it had led to that long separation, a wasteland of missed opportunity I’d caused with my screwed-up head and the drinking. Thank God she’d decided to come back late in the night before I left. The sex had been incredible…but the taste it had left in my mouth was desperation. It was all we’d have as I left for six months—and now, all we might have, ever.
I’d been wrong not to tell Lei when I was leaving. Especially since I’d told Kathy.
Kathy had needed the date because she was covering my duties—but I’d told her a lot more than that. She was easy to be with. Smart, funny, didn’t need anything from me but seemed to like me fine. Telling her things weren’t good at home had been a mistake, one I hadn’t realized fully until that last day.
Kathy’s soft mouth turned up to mine, willing me to kiss her. I’d pushed her away, hard. She’d hit her hip on the edge of the desk and cried out, turning away in humiliation, covering her face.
“I’m sorry. It’s just not like that, Kathy.” I’d grabbed my bag and headed for the door. “I’m sorry.”
So that was how we’d said goodbye after a great year working together. I felt like shit. I’d hurt my partner, let things go somewhere they shouldn’t have gone, and that was on me. I didn’t like that Kathy thought I’d go there with her. I must have done something to make her think so. Yeah, things were hard at home, but I was a long way from falling off that particular cliff.
And if Lei ever found out…I shut my eyes at the thought.
Dawn came, slowly bleeding away the dark. I heard crunching. Something heavy was moving through the underbrush nearby. Whatever was foraging in the leaves around the base of the banana trees was coming closer.
My belly pinched painfully, reminding me it was there. I shifted, coming up onto the balls of my feet into a crouch, setting the rifle down. The gun would alert any humans to our presence, and until we had some idea where we were, and where our pursuers were, it was still best not to fire it.
I drew the knife, held it in one fist, tucking the pistol into the back of my pants. The shuffle of leaves and the sound of grunting drew closer. I could make out a large shape and several smaller ones.
Feral pigs. A family of them.
Pigs meant bacon.
All we needed was one of the small ones and we could eat for days. My mouth watered and my belly clenched painfully. I rose to a half-crouch and shuffled forward, sliding my feet so that the leaves lifted rather than crunched as I got closer to the target.
I didn’t want the mother. She was too big and might have tusks. No, I wanted one of those half-grown piglets rooting nearby.
I sidled around the tree and coiled to spring. I knew the moment they caught my scent by a startled squeal and a deeper, ominous one from the mother. I pounced, leaping onto one of the smaller dark shadows, leading with a downward strike of the knife and my full body weight.
All was a welter of terrified, humanlike squealing as I grappled with the surprisingly hairy, strong, writhing creature, holding it down by force and body weight. I stabbed it again, my nostrils filled with the hot-iron smell of fresh blood and my arms fully occupied with its bristly, struggling form.
The piglet’s struggles lessened, but its squalling didn’t. Behind me, I heard the men yelling as they woke to the drama.
I’d forgotten about the mother.
She loomed out of the murk, snorting deep in her chest, swinging her head. I could just make out curving tusks protruding from her jaws as I rolled away, clutching the dying piglet to my chest. I couldn’t get my pistol out of my pants, and I rolled frantically, crashing, thrashing, kicking. I felt a searing line of fire open up my side, and my howl of pain mingled with the piglet’s.
A shot rang out, so close it deafened me, and the sow squealed. Her hooves tore up the leaf litter around us as she whirled and ran into the retreating darkness after her fleeing offspring.
Falconer stared down at me. I could tell it was him by his inky, looming presence. “Got one of the babies, I see.”
“Yeah.” I still held the piglet, finally gone still, hugged to my chest. My breath came in shallow pants as I tried to minimize the pain in my side. “She got me, though.”
“How bad?”
“Not sure.” I didn’t want to move, but I slowly unlocked my arms, loosening my grip on the piglet as the two other men came to stand over me.
“Good going, LT. I’ll gut it and prep it for cooking. I grew up on a farm.” All Kerry was thinking of was bacon.
“Stevens is injured.” Falconer’s comment put a damper on the excitement. “And we’ve given away our position. Gut the pig while I see how bad he is. Then we move to another location before we make a fire.”
“You got it.” Kerry took the knife from me and lifted the pig gently out of my arms. I’d begun to shake. I breathed shallow, my arm down over my injured side, keeping pressure on the wound.
“Wish that headlight worked.” Falconer knelt beside me. The ashy light was still dim. “MacDonald, you’ve got two shirts on. Give me your undershirt.”
I shut my eyes for a moment, breathing through the pain, as Falconer gently unbuttoned my uniform shirt. “Lift your arm so I can see what’s going on,” he said.
I gritted my teeth, shut my eyes, and lifted my arm away from my injured side.
Dexter’s eyes had opened so wide that white surrounded the iris. He shook, a fine trembling racking his body as he held the grenade aloft in one hand, the forefinger of the other hooked through the pin. The odor of urine and the sweat of fear was so powerful Lei felt her eyes prickle.
“Dexter.” Lei held his gaze. “Uncle isn’t here anymore. He can’t hurt you. And he can’t help you either.”
Shepherd’s hand crept toward his weapon as his body slowly coiled, readying for action.
“Dex!” Kekoa cried. “No do dis to us!”
“Uncle already tried to kill us!” Danny appealed to the older boy. “Don’t do it for him, Dex! We your friends!”
“He told me I would graduate. That he’d make a tattoo of my name on his right arm.” Dexter spoke through clenched teeth and bloodless lips. One finger was hooked through the round metal ring on the pin, and the other held the grenade aloft. “I want to graduate.”
“Dexter, how can you graduate when you’re dead?” Lei’s blood roared in her ears. Shepherd had his hand on his weapon, tight as a spring beside her. “If Uncle cared about you, he wouldn’t have done this. Set you up. Made you a weapon against people who came to save you.”
The boy trembled harder.
Lei exte
nded her hand. “Give me the grenade. You’re safe now.” The boy’s eyes flicked to her, flicked to the door. “And Killah isn’t here anymore, either. I need your help to bury him.”
Shepherd whipped his weapon out just as the boy’s desperate gaze came back to Lei’s face and he dropped the grenade into her hand. She snatched it from the boy and threw herself onto Dexter, covering him with her body. “Don’t shoot! I’ve got him!”
Shepherd leaped to his feet, keeping his weapon on the boy. He pulled out his cuffs. “Holy hell, Texeira. Got a death wish? I almost shot you!”
Lei stood up on shaky legs. “Search all of them. I’ll get rid of this.” She held up the grenade, and Shepherd nodded. She turned to look at Dexter, who had fallen backward under her weight.
The boy blinked up at her, blank-eyed with shock. Shepherd cuffed the boy as Lei made her legs work to carry her to the door, where she set the grenade carefully with the other IEDs in Manolo’s custody. Outside, she took a couple of breaths of fresh air.
That was a close one. She shut her eyes on the imagined moment of their death, or even of the following one, where Shepherd nailed her point-blank as she tried to save the boy. She probably shouldn’t have thrown herself on Dexter, but instinct had taken over—and her instinct was to save and protect a child, no matter how misguided.
Shepherd had searched all three boys. He found a couple more video games. Dexter was the only kid carrying any kind of weapon.
“I really do need your help burying Killah,” Lei told the boys. “I know you must have shovels somewhere. Come help me.” Her gut told her that doing that chore would help the boys somehow—and it would help her, too.
Dexter was allowed to follow her, still cuffed, out of the shack. Kekoa and Danny showed her where they stored tools, and the three carried four shovels down to the stream, Dexter bringing up the rear.
“Where do you think we should bury him?” Lei asked the boys.
Danny pointed at the rock where Boss Man had sat. “He used to sit with Uncle over there. Watching us.”