Not Just an Echo (Piper Anderson Legacy Mystery Book 3)

by Danielle Stewart

  “The lifeboats aren’t equipped to deal with these seas, and they have limited supplies. Getting left behind might save their lives.” Aiden had Cosette by the wrist as he sprang into motion. “I’m heading for those rocks. I can’t make that decision for all of you, but it’s what I believe could save our lives.”

  Though he said he wasn’t making that decision for them, his grip on Cosette seemed to imply otherwise. She was going with him.

  “He’s right,” Michael agreed, his head spinning among the chaos in the water, the smoke above the tree line, and the rock formation Aiden was suggesting. “We can get to the rocks while the commotion is going on.”

  They ran and Aiden nearly forgot not everyone woke up in the morning, rolled out of bed, and slipped on their sneakers for a ten-mile run. He had to slow his pace when Cosette stumbled. He was dragging her faster than she could manage. When they reached the base of the rocks Aiden pulled them to the far side and pressed his finger to his lips, indicating silence was needed. The only sounds he heard were far-off cries of people crippled by fear and the thunder of spinning blades on the Coast Guard helicopter.

  There were no commands, no footsteps, no chattering around them. It seemed like the coast was clear. “I’ll go up first. Then Cossette, Betty, and Jules. It’s about thirty feet up. Every grip, every step, matters so look before you grab something. Watch what I use for leverage points and try to follow the same.”

  Though he was baking under the hot sun, Aiden reached the top with very little effort. The rock structure was fairly accommodating to a novice climber, and he thanked the stars as Betty and Cosette reached their arms up so he could lift them the rest of the way. “Stay down, behind that boulder.”

  Jules had her hand stretched out next, and he pulled her to the top. Clay, looking conflicted by pride, reluctantly threw his hand up for some help over the last small ledge. Michael on the other hand let pride win out as he hoisted himself up and quickly crouched down to match Aiden’s stance.

  “Can’t we just stay up here until the rescue ship comes?” Cosette asked, and he couldn’t blame her for the logic. It was just terribly flawed.

  “The likelihood they’ll send a second ship now that they’ve shot ground to air weapons is low. They’ll need a military response. Another civilian ship won’t be thrown into the mix until it’s deemed secure here.” Aiden was at least apologetic as he spoke. If there was a simple answer, some magic way he could get them all out of here, he’d take it.

  “We can make it to Torrella Bay,” Michael asserted. “There must be some form of transportation, something we could steal. There are roads, right?”

  “The civilians of Corinti are essentially on lockdown right now. The overthrow resulted in severe oppression of their freedoms while the new regime assesses any risk they pose. Everyone has to prove they are in support of the Kitu or they’ll be killed. There are major human rights atrocities believed to be taking place here. People are starving to death in the homes they are locked in. Anyone deemed remotely opposed to the new leadership is killed publically. The only route we can safely travel is through the tree line.”

  “That’s why you were on this cruise, isn’t it?” Michael asked, a hint of anger in his voice. “You were here to assess the human rights atrocities and the situation on the ground?”

  “Yes,” Aiden answered flatly. “I was to land in the port of Torrella Bay and make my way to Corinti covertly while documenting the state of things. The UN is considering intervention but won’t make a move until they have proof of what was rumored to be happening. Corinti has been completely cut off from the outside world since the coup. They needed recon before they can move forward.”

  “Why in the hell are they still having cruise ships come to Torrella Bay?” Clay demanded as though someone should have to answer for this.

  “Money,” Aiden said softly. “That port makes millions for the cruiselines. Shutting it down or even hinting that it was unsafe would have cost them. They increased security patrolling the border of the port. They knew they were playing with fire.”

  “With lives,” Betty corrected. “Greed is the ultimate monster in all of this.”

  “But you would have had a route,” Michael said, still eyeing Aiden appraisingly. “This was a well-planned mission so you would have known how to get from Torrella Bay to Corinti. You’d have had contacts here, some kind of assistance.”

  “No,” Aiden asserted. “The contact I had would have been burned by now, I’m sure. I was meant to meet him at a destination two hours ago just over the patrolled area where Torrella Bay and Corinti meet. When I didn’t show he would have bailed with no way for me to contact him. We’re on our own the second we go into that forest.”

  Everyone was silent for a long moment as Cosette peeked slightly above the rock she cowered behind. There was a new quiet that filled the air, a vacuum left by the helicopter disappearing off into the horizon.

  “We’re already on our own,” she said with eerie calm.

  Betty matted down her gray brown hair with her hands and sighed. “If that’s the case, we might as well get out of the sun. We’ve got a hell of a walk ahead of us.”

  Chapter 9

  Cosette had never hiked. She prided herself on how little of nature she’d come in contact with over the years. Her apartment was sprayed for bugs. The closest she came to camping was a hotel that didn’t have Wi-Fi. And even then she’d used her phone as a hot spot just to get by. Now, not only was she immersed in the truest form of nature she’d ever seen, she was in grave danger.

  This was a far departure from all she’d ever known. Wiry long twigs whipped across her cheeks as they moved at a quick pace. There wasn’t much opportunity to talk. They all had to stay silent, even walking heel to toe the way Aiden had showed her to keep the twigs under their feet from giving them away. But every once in a while she’d whisper a question and Aiden would quietly answer.

  “Snakes? Poisonous snakes?”

  And he’d nod yes.

  “Venomous spiders?”

  Another simple nod.

  When some kind of explosion or detonation could be heard in the distance she’d quickly remember it wouldn’t likely be the spiders or snakes that would kill her.

  The silence coupled with the soul-deep anxiety sent her mind into a chasm she couldn’t crawl out of. It was only about a month until she was supposed to be married. Was this ordeal a sign from the cosmos that her inflexibility and lack of deep connection had set her on a path of misery, or worse? Wouldn’t living in Dallas with a fairly nice guy be better than dying alone in this jungle?

  “Stop,” Aiden said, in a hushed voice, sending his hand up quickly and closing it into a fist. A military move Cosette had seen in the movies that indicated they should all be still and silent. The next hand motion was waving them all down to a squatting position. Her heart thudded so loud she was certain it was echoing off the tall rocks behind them. At first Cosette could hear nothing, but voices began flowing like water over rocks in their direction. Men were running; she couldn’t see them, but the sound of twigs snapping beneath their feet told her they were there.

  Knowing Aiden might give another nonverbal command she’d need to follow, Cosette fought the urge to squeeze her eyes shut like a child driving out the threat of a monster. She stared at him, unblinking, afraid to miss what they should do next. After a few moments the footsteps passed and the voices trailed off.

  “Clear,” Aiden said, rising to a standing position again, and they followed his lead.

  “How did you hear that?” Betty asked, her hand over her heart.

  “Training,” he said and gestured with his head for them to follow again.

  “Hey!” a voice called out suddenly and the entire group jumped, turning toward the sound. It was not the direction the men had just passed nor was it a deep angry tone in an unfamiliar language. When her heart returned from her throat, Cosette focused on the young boy who’d managed to sneak up on them. />
  “Americans?” he asked, pointing to each of them. His cocoa skin was scratched and scabbed. His curly hair was unkempt and full of leaves. Cosette focused immediately on his ankles for some reason. They were these twiggy little knobs holding up his rod-thin legs. “Americans?” he asked again.

  Betty opened her mouth to answer, but Aiden waved her off. He shook his head instead and began to walk away at a faster pace.

  “He looked hurt,” Jules argued, her head turned back toward the boy. “Are you just going to leave him?”

  “Please,” the boy said, chasing behind them. “Come, come please.”

  “No,” Aiden said, not sparing the boy a glance. “Go.”

  “What are you doing, Aiden?” Cosette asked, grabbing his arm as he swatted the boy away.

  “Aiden?” the boy asked, filling with hope like a jug under a faucet. “Aiden the soldier? Aiden Williams?”

  Suddenly Aiden stopped abruptly and the line of people behind him slammed together like a scene in a cartoon.

  “Amal?” Aiden asked, the skepticism knitting his brows together.

  “No,” the boy said, his nostril flaring and his mouth turning down abruptly. “Amal is my brother. He is dead. They have killed him.”

  “Oh, child,” Betty said, instantly reaching out and pulling him into a hug.

  “We don’t have time for that,” Aiden chastised, guiding the boy out of her arms. He held him by the shoulders and looked him dead in the eye. “What’s your name?”

  “Wilkie,” he said, swallowing hard. “Aiden, you must come with me. It’s not safe. Come, please come.”

  “We have to get to the Torrella Bay port,” Aiden said, shaking his head. “The ship we were on was damaged in a fire, and we have to get out of this area.”

  “No, Torrella Bay is gone,” Wilkie said, shaking his head wildly. “It is gone. The Kitu took it by force.”

  “They did?” Cosette asked, looking over her shoulder nervously.

  “They couldn’t have taken Torrella Bay,” Aiden argued. “We’d have heard about that. The captain would have known that. There are plenty of armed security there.”

  “It’s gone,” Wilkie said, waving his hands wildly. “Gone. It’s gone. You can’t go there. You must come with me.” His little chocolate-colored hand latched on to Aiden’s massive wrist and tried to tug.

  “Where?” Aiden asked, not budging. “Where would you take us?”

  “I’ll take you to a safe place. The place my brother used. Amal told me what to do. He told me to find you. Come on.” Wilkie was tugging wildly but Aiden was still not convinced.

  “Torrella Bay is gone?” Jules asked, her words sputtering like an engine low on gas. “What do we do? We should go with him.”

  “I’m not convinced Torrella Bay is gone. The Kitu are not that large of a group. Maybe seven hundred armed men total.”

  “Is that all?” Betty asked sarcastically, her hand back on the boy’s shoulder now.

  “Most of them would have been drawn toward the beach by the smoke. They’d have communicated with the rest of the group about the cruise ship. They wouldn’t split up and have half their men take Torrella Bay and half on the shore here. I don’t think they have enough weapons for the amount of men they have.”

  “Torrella is gone,” Wilkie said. “They’ve taken it, and you wouldn’t make it there anyway.”

  Aiden looked at each of them, as if he were allowing them with their eyes to cast a vote. Cosette knew her face read blank. She was not willing to lean one way or the other since both options seemed doomed.

  “We couldn’t possibly be safe at your home,” Aiden said, his head snapping around as though he’d heard something again. They all held their breath for a long moment until Aiden seemed satisfied it was safe to speak again.

  “It’s not my home. It’s the place Amal made. It’s how he talked to the Americans. It is the one place on the island they will not go.”

  “How far?” Michael asked, looking up at the midday sun and wiping sweat from his brow.

  “Two miles,” he said, pointing past the rocks behind them. “But it is up. Way up.”

  Chapter 10

  Part of Aiden wished he could be as uniformed as the rest of them. With the exception of Michael, who’d been trained in combat and seemed to have an understanding of the gravity of this situation, the rest were blissfully ignorant. They looked into the sad eyes of a nine-or-ten-year-old boy and agreed to follow him. What they didn’t know was, for a price, he could easily be handing them directly over to the Kitu. Aiden did believe Wilkie was Amal’s brother, but he did not immediately transfer the trust he had with one to the other. This was not an inheritance given to the next of kin.

  The trust Aiden and Amal had built was a year in the making. It was the delicate stacking of promises and assurances that could at any moment be toppled over. Now if he truly was dead, Wilkie could blame Aiden. He, being of Kitu decent as Amal was, may have loyalties that ran deeper than his brother’s. The variables were as endless as the danger.

  Climbing was second nature to him; he could effortlessly stew with worry and scale the wall in front of them. They’d been traveling toward the sky for the last twenty minutes. Up one rock formation or steep hill covered with loose rocks, only to find another.

  “Everyone doing all right?” Clay asked, extending his hand back for Betty, who waved him off with a swat.

  “I am fine. I’ll be damned if I’m going to be the weak link. It can’t be much farther, right?” Though her words were assertive her breath was less confident.

  “Damn,” Jules said, a rock that appeared steady began sliding away under her foot. Michael’s lunge for her missed as more rocks gave way on the hill, and it was Cosette who finally slung a hand out and gripped Jules as she was sliding by.

  “Are you all right?” Michael asked quickly, but Aiden took note of his reaction. Michael was not just trained. He was well trained, and out here that would likely prove an important distinction. Although his wife had just slipped, tumbled eight or ten feet and the blood had already began forming on her knees and elbows, Michael did not spring backward and run onto the same path that had swallowed up her footing. Most people would have. Like a lemming fueled by emotion and love, they’d suffer the same fate as the person who’d fallen before them.

  “I’m fine,” she called as everyone stood in place, staring down at her. “Just some scrapes. Let’s keep going.”

  “Make your way up to me,” Michael insisted, grounding his footing more carefully and reaching his hand back to her. Reluctantly, pink from embarrassment and likely from pain, Jules inched her way to her husband.

  “We’re here,” Wilkie said, pointing to the odd pattern of tree cover and vines that lay twenty feet ahead of them. Aiden couldn’t make out what he was looking at. Was it a structure or another rock formation that had been infested by vines and various trees, hell-bent on swallowing up anything in their path?

  “I can’t climb that thing,” Betty said, tossing her hands up in defeat. “I was wrong. I’m the weakest link. Someone tie a damn rope around me and pull me up.”

  “None of you can climb it.” Wilkie laughed and for the first time Aiden felt a small whisper of comfort in his ear. A playful little sparkle danced in the boy’s beetle black eyes. “You have to know the way.” He waved for them to follow as he rounded the left side of the large structure. When he found the spot he was looking for he cleared the hanging vines to the left and the right. “We must pull these stones away,” he instructed, giving it a tug and looking at them to help.

  Clay was closest and latched his fingers on, then Aiden followed. With some effort they rolled the stones back, revealing a small tunnel. “You have to crawl at first but it gets bigger as you go,” he instructed, heading in without a second of hesitation. “It opens up into the fort and there is plenty of room once you get up there.”

  “We’re supposed to go in there?” Jules asked, seeming to ignore the trickles of b
lood blazing paths down from her knees.

  “It’s a fort,” Michael said, touching the stones behind the vines. “It’s a fortress, probably from a hundred years ago.”

  “That sounds reassuring,” Clay offered, grabbing the tiny flashlight from his keychain and shining it in. “Who goes next?”

  “I’ll go,” Cosette offered when no one else spoke up. “I’m sure it’s loaded with snakes and spiders and sharp edged rocks, and that is still less scary than it is standing around here.”

  Aiden watched as Cosette crouched in front of the three-foot hole and drew in a deep breath as if the darkness she was about to enter was water that would swallow up all the air. He often forgot how regular people felt in situations like this. Danger had become so natural to him that a quiet day actually made him anxious, far more than any assignment he’d been given. But this was not just another day for the rest of them. Right now they were supposed to be sunning on the beautiful bought and paid for beachfront the cruise ship insisted was safe. They were supposed to be complaining about the line at the breakfast buffet.

  Instead he watched as each of them bent as low as they could and disappeared into the small tunnel. When the last one was through, he rolled the heavy stones back over the hole and arranged the vines and shrubs to cover it again.

  They’d all forgotten that part. The safe place you want to hide in is only as good as its ability to keep others out. He’d scale the wall, use the vines that would hold his weight and make his way to the top of the structure.

  It proved more difficult then he thought but after twenty minutes laboring in the blazing sun, tugging on vines and testing them for strength he managed to lift himself over the edge. That was good news. If it took him that long to find a second way up it would take the average person far longer. They’d likely find it futile and give up.

  As he hopped over the large stone wall at the top, his feet hit the structure and he heard voices.