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

by Danielle Stewart

  Her grip tightened the higher she climbed. There had been days when she hung by her knees upside down from a tree and now she clung to every limb with all her might. Though the way she climbed was different, the outcome was the same. She found herself at the highest point of the tree that would hold her weight, and just like when she was child, she had a feeling of profound accomplishment. The wind moved her hair back from her eyes as she searched in every direction.

  Her biggest fear was there would be nothing of any consequence that would help her. The opposite was true. There seemed to be something to see everywhere she looked. The ocean was out to her left and was lit with life that she was sure must be Torrella Bay. It looked artificially beautiful. Man-made. Alluring, like an oasis in the desert.

  In the opposite direction, on a hill far off in the distance, was a speckle of fires and shacks. The dichotomy of Torrella Bay and that small village was not lost on her. Tourists could buy ten dollar drinks with little umbrellas that they’d probably only half finish. They could take a champagne cruise to watch the sunset. She had no idea what life on that hillside village was like. What it must be like to look down over the opulence and indulgence every day, and find it so far out of reach.

  Climbing down carefully, she readied herself to run. Her direction was set now. It looked no more than a mile to the lights she’d seen. If she stayed in the thick of the woods it would take longer but she’d be safer. Knotting her shoelaces tightly, she drew in a deep breath. It had all come down to the last mile; she just wished she didn’t have to travel it alone.

  “Miss Cosette,” a voice called out from the darkness. “Miss Cosette, are you here?”

  “Amal?” she whimpered too quietly at first. “Amal, I am here! Where are you?”

  A beam of light cut through the trees, and she ran toward it, filled with relief. The loneliness, though short-lived, was sharp and stifling. During busy days at the bakery and long nights chatting with Brandon, she’d often imagined what some peace and quiet might feel like. Now having experienced it, she had the urge to never be alone again.

  Upon seeing Amal’s face, scraped and dirty, she lost her breath. His clothes were torn, and his eyes ringed with red. “Are you all right?” she asked, getting close enough to do a better inventory of his condition.

  “They took us,” he sputtered out. “Aiden was able to take most of them down, but when the other men with the guns came we had no choice but to go with them.”

  “Aiden?” Cosette asked, unable to string any more words together.

  “He fought them,” Amal explained. “When they took us to their camp he saw a chance to disarm one man. It was . . .” His words trailed off as he closed his eyes. “I’ve never seen anything like that.”

  “Where is he?” she asked, looking over Amal’s shoulder as though Aiden might arrive any second.

  “He was shot,” Amal apologized, his face looking as guilty as if he had pulled the trigger. “He told me to run. To find you.”

  “They shot him?” She gasped. “How did you find me?” she asked, remembering how fast she’d run, how far. If Amal was here maybe the shooters weren’t far behind.

  “You made a path.” He half laughed. “You broke a lot of branches.”

  “Where is Aiden now? Was he killed?”

  “I don’t know. He was shot in the leg and couldn’t keep up, but he told me to go. I don’t know if he got away or not.” Amal wiped some blood from his cheek with the back of his hand. “We have to get to Torrella Bay right now.”

  “Yes,” she agreed, pulling the papers from her waistband. “We have to get these to the right people.”

  Amal’s eyes went wide and his mouth curled down with emotion. “He told you to burn them. He said you did.”

  “I couldn’t,” she explained. “The matches were in my hand, but I couldn’t. I know what you’ve risked, and if there was a chance I could get them out of here, I wanted to try.”

  “Thank you,” Amal said, dropping to his tired knees and kissing her hand. “Thank you.”

  “Should we look for Aiden?” she asked, pulling Amal back to his feet. “If he’s shot he could be losing a lot of blood.”

  “We have to go to Torrella Bay,” Amal insisted. “It’s what he would tell us.”

  She wanted to protest, but she could only imagine what Aiden would do if he was lying out there in the woods bleeding, and they came looking for him. He’d want them both to be safe. “Do you think he’s all right?”

  “I think if anyone could be all right it would be him.” He pointed the flashlight in the direction of the Torrella Bay. “Well, actually,” he half laughed, “I guess I should say the same for you. You’ve surprised me, Miss Cosette.”

  “I’ve surprised myself.”

  Chapter 22

  The small stone room felt as though it was closing in around Michael. The sun had been down for hours and everyone had finally fallen asleep. Everyone but Wilkie, who’d napped earlier on Betty’s lap.

  “We had a dog once,” Wilkie said, eyeing Michael curiously. “When we kept him in the house, he looked like you do right now.”

  “I feel like a caged animal,” Michael laughed. “I want to go back to the shore where the cruise ship passengers were. I’m worried if they’re evacuating them, we might miss our chance.”

  “You could make it,” Wilkie shrugged, looking as though he didn’t care either way. “But what would you do once you got there?”

  “What do you mean? I’d get help.” Michael stared down at the boy curiously. Wilkie always looked as though he had an answer to a question that you had been too stupid to ask. Betty was right. Michael could see the comparison between Wilkie and his daughter. Smart but trouble.

  “You think anyone over there will just trek all the way back here and save your family? You think anyone cares as much about them as you do?”

  “I’d make them,” Michael shot back. “I wouldn’t take no for an answer.”

  “You’re not at home anymore,” Wilkie replied coolly. “Here in Corinti, if you are not in power, you take no for an answer all the time. You do what you are told, and you take what you can get. There’s a whole world outside of yours, and it’s not a fair place.”

  Michael wanted to run through a litany of arguments to trump the boy’s point. As a skilled lawyer, that was practically his second language, and he considered himself fluent. Michael had experienced hardships. He’d been faced with life and death situations. He did know what it was like to not get his way. He was married to Jules after all. That meant compromise was his only choice sometimes. However, that wasn’t the point Wilkie was making. It wasn’t that Michael had never experienced uncomfortable things, it was that he didn’t spend his entire life that way. He was a middle-class white man who spent most of his days in a business suit getting treated with plenty of respect. When his head hit the pillow, he spent plenty of time worrying for his kids, and most of the time he felt relatively safe. Corinti was a different world, and maybe Wilkie was right to temper his arrogance.

  “There’s a chance Aiden didn’t make it to Torrella Bay,” Michael explained. “If we really don’t have any way to communicate with the outside world, our options are shrinking. So are our supplies. I have to do something.”

  “If Aiden didn’t make it, Amal didn’t either.” Wilkie’s face didn’t flinch with emotion. It was as if he was commenting on the cool night air instead of the fate of his only brother. “I know what to do if that happened.”

  “What?” Michael asked, looking hopeful for a contingency plan. “Did he tell you where to go?”

  “If they’ve captured him, they will come for me,” Wilkie said flatly, his voice trailing off at the ends like a fraying blanket, threadbare and disappearing at the edges.

  “But what did he tell you to do? Is there somewhere else we can go?” Michael asked, the urgency in his voice growing.

  “If Amal is captured and they know he betrayed them, his death will be torturous. They�
�ll come for me next. So he told me where to go.” Wilkie cleared his throat and stared over Michael’s shoulder into the darkness of the night.

  “Where? How else could we get out of here?”

  “You’re standing in front of it,” Wilkie replied flatly, his dark skin swallowed up by the night as he stepped away from the lantern.

  “The window?” Michael asked, his face twisted with confusion. It was after a few beats of his heart before he understood.

  “It’s the closest to flying I might ever get. And anything is better than what the Kitu would do to me.”

  “You aren’t jumping out the window,” Michael commanded. “We are all going to get out of here safely. Your brother is probably stuck somewhere and hiding out. When he gets to Torrella Bay, they’ll come for us.”

  “They’ll come for you,” Wilkie corrected.

  “I’m not going anywhere and leaving you unprotected. I have kids of my own, and if it were them, I’d want to know they were safe. I’d want someone standing up to make sure they were. When we go, you go.”

  “I won’t hold you to that,” Wilkie said. “I wouldn’t do that to you.”

  “I’m not going to let anything happen to you,” Michael asserted, pained by the defeat in the boy’s voice. Mad at himself for doing exactly what he warned his wife she shouldn’t.

  “You’re about five years too late for that.”

  Chapter 23

  Aiden had been shot at before. He’d been hit twice before tonight but only grazing flesh wounds. Tear gas. Shrapnel. Even a Taser. He’d dealt with them all. But tonight as he lay shrouded by fallen palms he’d pulled over himself, it all felt completely different. Final in a way that nothing else he’d experienced had.

  The loss of blood and the shooting pain sent him drifting off through space and time. His eyes closed and he stood at attention in the back of the old factory where Nolan gave him his next mission.

  “Aiden,” Nolan groaned, “this is the last one. This is the last time we’re going to meet.”

  “No sir,” Aiden argued, his hands dutifully tucked behind his back. “I’m not ready to retire.”

  “Don’t call me sir,” Nolan ground out. “This isn’t the military, and I’m not your commanding officer. We’ve discussed this before. The average agent in your position works two years then moves on.”

  “I’m not average, and I’m not moving on,” Aiden insisted. “Thanks, but no thanks.” The words he couldn’t say were, please don’t cut me loose. Because the only way to chase away the nightmares of the last mission was to start the next one. He was a snowball barreling down a mountainside and the momentum of gathering more and more as he rolled was all that kept him going most days.

  “You knew what you signed up for,” Nolan scolded. “We do the jobs that no one else wants to touch. We get our hands dirty so the people we answer to can have plausible deniability. With that comes an expiration date. Two years and then you go dark, completely untraceable. Things you’ve done can’t be linked back to you. Get a farm in Montana. Get a hut out on a beach somewhere. You’re two years overdue.”

  “I can’t reenlist,” Aiden said, half question/half statement.

  “You can’t,” Nolan said, shaking his shaggy blond hair. He couldn’t be more than a few years older than Aiden but his face was weathered and leathery. His eyes were apologetic, but his jaw was set. It was hard to argue with a guy who looked that determined.

  Aiden knew next to nothing about Nolan. There was intentionality to that. Aiden never met any other agents. He worked alone. He worked until the job was done. And what he knew above all else was that if shit hit the fan he was on his own. There was no one government that would step in and claim him. No one would bail him out.

  “Let’s talk about this after this mission,” Aiden offered, assuming if this went well, he’d have leverage.

  “I won’t change my mind. The decision is above my pay grade. Go to the Caribbean and get this job done. Then start thinking about how you want the rest of your life to go.” Nolan handed Aiden a familiar large envelope.

  “I thought maybe this cruise ship thing was all just some ruse to get me to go on a vacation. Why exactly are we messing around with this tiny island anyway?” Aiden didn’t usually bother asking the “why” behind a mission. It wasn’t his business. But the intel he’d received so far had him intrigued.

  “The people we answer to have interest in the stability and future of this island. It has investment potential but not unless they can settle the current tumultuous environment. We need you to deal with this contact, find out who is arming the rebels. Deal with the recent overthrow of the president. With good intel they can decide how to alleviate the tension.”

  “Is it just tension?” Aiden asked, folding his arms over his chest. “I heard rumblings of genocide. Of civil war. I can’t see anyone investing in that environment.”

  “Not my call.” Nolan shrugged, always good at passing the buck. “I find the right man for the job and send him in. What happens from there is not my business.”

  “Not mine either,” Aiden sighed. “But don’t think you’re getting rid of me this easy. I’m telling you, I’m not going to get compromised. Nothing will ever tie back to me.”

  “The longer you’re in the job, the higher the odds go. But we can fight about this later. Just get the job done.”

  “You know I will,” Aiden shot back confidently.

  His eyes opened slowly and the starry sky gradually came into focus. He had passed out but hadn’t died. Most people might think all that had happened was prolonging the inevitable. But for a man like Aiden, the breaths in his lungs meant he had a chance. He knew he couldn’t be more than two miles from Torrella Bay. The bullet had passed through his leg, but if he could stop the blood loss maybe he could make it.

  If Amal hadn’t made it, if he hadn’t found Cosette, he was the only chance for the people he left in the fort. Lying there and dying would be a death sentence for them. Maybe this would be his last mission, but he sure as hell was going to see it through.

  Chapter 24

  For the first time in her life Cosette’s words felt pointless. What could she possibly offer Amal that would mean anything? Advice. Apologies. Empathy. She wasn’t sure exactly how old he was, but if she had to guess, she had at least ten years on him. Yet his experiences, what he’d seen and endured, would add up to far more. If anything she should be asking him what the hell life was about.

  “We’ll climb this hill and on the other side will be the security that patrols Torrella Bay. They will detain me. You should prepare yourself for that. I will be all right.”

  “Detain you?” Cosette asked, stopping abruptly. She thought the moment she found herself this close to salvation nothing would slow her down.

  “They are right to do so. They don’t know who I am or my intentions. It’s fine. I will be all right. I just wanted you to be prepared. It looks worse than it is sometimes.” He gestured with his chin for them to keep going, but she didn’t budge.

  “You’re not going to be detained. I’ll talk to them.”

  “You are a sweet woman, Miss Cosette. But I’m afraid you are underestimating the effect of a man of my color walking with a white woman toward a bunch of guns in a place like this. It is more complicated than you imagine.” He wrung his hands nervously as he drew in a deep breath. The contrast was not lost on her. She was about to walk toward the sanctuary of safety, and Amal was never truly safe. Worse yet, she was naive enough to think being with her would lend him some kind of protection.

  “I’m going to try,” Cosette asserted. “I’m going to try to explain things to them.”

  “How do you explain something like this?” Amal asked, waving for her to walk with him. “I made a promise to Aiden that I would get you here. I will make good on that. But what happens to me isn’t something you have to be concerned about.”

  “I’m sure he made promises to you as well,” Cosette said, finally deciding
to crest the hill and face whatever lay ahead of them.

  “He didn’t,” Amal countered quickly, as though it was important she know that. “He made no promises to me. I respect him for that. The only thing I ever asked was that if he could, he tell the story of what was happening here.”

  “I hope he can,” Cosette said, her eyes cutting sideways as Amal raised his hands high, laced his fingers and placed them on his head.

  “Everything is going to be all right, Miss Cosette. You’ll be safe, and you can go home.” Amal’s voice was swallowed up by the shouted commands of men who charged toward them. Lights shined painfully in their eyes; the only things Cosette could make out for sure were the barrels of long guns and the outlines of large men.

  “Keep your hands up,” they demanded.

  “He’s with me,” Cosette explained. “He is just a kid. He’s no danger,” she tried to shout but they were louder, faster, and seemingly uninterested in her argument.

  “Ma’am, are you hurt?” they asked, eyeing her from head to toe.

  “He’s hurt. He has injuries that need to be addressed. His name is Amal, and he is my friend.”

  “Ma’am were you on the cruise ship?” One of the men dressed in fatigues asked as he tried to escort her away gingerly.

  “Stop,” she demanded, yanking her arm free. Amal was already on his knees, his hand still pressed to the back of his head as three guns pointed at him. “Let him up. He’s not a threat. He’s here to help.”

  “Ma’am, were you on the cruise ship?” the soldier asked again, stepping between her and Amal to block her view, but she sidestepped him.

  “Let him stand,” Cosette demanded, walking directly up to Amal and lifting him from under his arms until he was back on his feet. “He risked his life, the life of the people he loves, to deliver you valuable information about what is going on there.” She took the papers from the bag Amal had handed her and waved them around.