by Toby Neal
“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 pi
glet 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 extended 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.”
“Hope the rock doesn’t block us from digging there.” Lei put a hand on Dexter’s thin shoulder. The SWAT and narco team were still busy gathering evidence, and Shepherd had gone to join his partner. “I’m going to take the cuffs off so you can help us dig. Don’t make me sorry that I’m trusting you.”
Dexter nodded, his eyes on his filthy feet in worn rubber slippers they’d found by the door of the shack. He seemed unable to speak.
The kid needed psychological treatment. Lei mentally scrolled through whom she could call to help him. The list began with Elizabeth Black, her favorite social worker with Child Welfare Services. Elizabeth was going to shit a brick when she heard what had happened to these boys while in the system—and heads were going to roll. That was a good thing.
It took Lei and the three boys to carry the dog’s waterlogged body out of the stream and over to where they’d decided to dig the hole. Lei was thankful that the blood had washed down the stream, and lying on his side, the damaged part of his skull out of view, the pit bull appeared to be peacefully sleeping. Lei felt rage rise up, lifting the tiny hairs all over her body. Boss Man was a thug who used kids and animals to do his dirty work—was there anyone lower on the planet? She didn’t think so.
Lei jumped onto the T-shaped blade of the shovel to get it into the soil. The exertion of digging was therapeutic for all of them, but slow going. “So how did you get those pot plants so big?” Lei asked, swiping an arm across her sweaty face. “This soil seems pretty hard. Not so good for agriculture.”
“We did a lot of compost and Miracle-Gro,” Kekoa said. He’d shed his shirt, and his ribs showed. Boss Man clearly hadn’t been overly generous with food. “We watered every other day if it didn’t rain.” He explained the finer points of marijuana cultivation as they worked up a sweat.
Manolo appeared at Lei’s elbow. “Need some help?”
“Yeah,” Lei panted. She handed him her shovel, and just as the boys were tiring, the rest of the SWAT team showed up.
“I can tell we don’t get to leave until this is done,” the SWAT leader said, a smile lurking by his mouth.
“That’s right, sir.” Lei gazed at the man unblinking, willing him to understand her words and actions were for the boys’ benefit. “We care enough to clean up after ourselves and show respect to those who deserve it.”
“You get no argument from me.” The team leader took the shovel from Dexter. “Take a load off, kid.”
With the men working, it didn’t take long to make the hole big enough for the dog, and Lei and Manolo carefully set the body into it. The boys took the shovels again and filled it in, and as the spades whacked down on the earth, packing it firmly, Lei could see that the gamble she’d taken with the kids had paid off.
This was good for them to see and do. They were moving and sweating easily now, Kekoa and Danny even flicking clods of dirt at each other. Kids were resilient. They’d be all right.
Dexter was the only one she was really worried about. He was still silent and robotic, but at least he was moving and helping.
Lei fetched a large round stone from the stream. “Boys, you each bring one, and we’ll put them on his grave.” When they’d each set a stone on the pile of earth, Lei set hers on top of the pile.
“Here lies Killah, a brave, strong dog who obeyed his master. He won’t be forgotten, and neither will the man who caused his death.” Lei looked up. “Anything you boys want to say? You never have to come back here, to this place, again.”
“I’m glad to be leaving,” Kekoa said. And he threw a handful of dirt on the dog’s grave.
“You did what you had to do,” Danny said, gazing at Lei as dirt sifted from his hand onto
the pile. “And I’m glad you came.”
“I wish you didn’t do that shit to us,” muttered Dexter, staring at the pile of stones. “I wish I never came here.” Lei knew he was addressing the man whose name they knew only as Uncle.
“Let’s go.” The SWAT captain gestured. The team headed back up the trail, but the boys didn’t move until Lei did. Her heart squeezed as she glanced back at them, their dark heads bent as they followed her up the path like ducklings.
Maybe she could be the boys’ temporary foster placement. It was crazy, but why not? Other than that she was barely home with her own child, of course—but she could take it easy, stay home more, once she found out where the skull had come from.
Lei was eager to get the satellite phone out of her shot-up truck. That reminded her of Tony and where she’d left him in the forest. She caught up with the SWAT leader, the boys jogging to keep up with her.
“Excuse me, Captain? I need to go check on something.”
Chapter Seventeen
I could feel the warm trickle of blood down my side as I allowed Falconer to pull off my shirt. He’d quickly stripped off some banana leaves, and after an initial look, he pressed them down over the wound.
“No big deal. Couple of inches long, half an inch deep or so. Probably hurts like hell, but far from fatal. Keep pressure on and the bleeding will stop soon. I’ll try to rig some sort of bandage. The biggest danger is going to be infection.”
He didn’t need to tell me that. I hissed out a breath between my teeth as he levered me up into a sitting position. “Your shirt is totally ruined with pig blood—and some of yours, too. Once I get a bandage on, you can wear MacDonald’s undershirt.” Falconer rummaged among the banana leaves, calling for the knife.
MacDonald brought it over. “Kerry has the pig prepped already. Once we get our shoes back on, we can get going.”
“I hope you buried the guts,” Falconer said. “Except the heart and liver. We can eat those raw.” Even in my state of shock from injury, my stomach rumbled happily at the thought. Raw liver? Bring it on. “In fact, give it to Stevens. He needs some replacement calories after all this.”