Chapter 11
Dylan
The Bible sitting on my countertop has never been louder than it is right now.
I grew up on God’s Word. It was as familiar to me as breathing.
Memorizing verses was literally a sport in my house.
Yet, I’ve barely touched it in the past decade.
The anger I’ve carried in my heart ever since I was captured and watched my team slowly fade away in that pit, each of them dying after what they were put through—it made having faith seem impossible.
How could I have faith that God cared when He did nothing to save my brothers-in-arms?
When He didn’t break down the prison walls so we could gain our freedom?
Of course, I know the answer. Bad things happen in this world. It’s just a part of life. Sin, darkness, evil…it’s something everyone in this world faces. But trying to wrap my mind around that when I feel like I’m better off dead is simply not something I’ve been able to do.
I haven’t been able to forgive myself for surviving.
Heart heavy, I pull open a drawer in my kitchen and stare down at the photograph sitting on top. Seven smiling men. The day before they were sentenced to die in a pit, in a country very few knew they were in, where it was unlikely that anyone would ever know what happened to them.
I can still hear their voices.
The crying.
The pleading.
I shove the photo back in and slam the drawer shut. Delta sits up on his bed and eyes me curiously. “I’m good, bud,” I tell him, then take a deep breath.
But I’m really not.
Because right now, all I can picture is Emma in that pit. Is she scared right now? Have they hurt her? Will we ever find her?
Will I ever see her again?
“Why her?” I ask aloud to my empty house. “Why did You let them take her?” Resting both hands on my counter, I hang my head low.
“You’re not safe. Anyone willing to go to those lengths to get to you is not trustworthy.”
“I know.”
She’d spoken those words so calmly that it caught me off guard. I shouldn’t be surprised. Not really. Where I struggle to even have faith these days, Emma puts all of hers in God. She trusts Him with everything that she is.
She always has.
Is that what brings her peace now?
And if so, how do I reach that level of peace too? How do I find some kind of normalcy when I’m haunted by everything in my past?
Straightening, I reach out and rest the tips of my fingers on the worn leather book. It’s soft beneath the tips of my fingers. Familiar.
So why can’t I even bring myself to open it?
Something rubs against my leg, so I glance down. Emma’s cat is purring and arching his back as he rubs on my leg.
“I miss her too, buddy,” I say as I kneel down and lift the animal.
I never considered myself a cat person, but this guy—he’s okay.
“I need to think of something to call you until she gets back, don’t I?
” I shift my gaze to Delta. “What do you think, bud? What should we call him?” His tail thumps on his dog bed.
I switch my attention back to the cat. “How about Foxtrot? You’re fluffy.
It fits the theme of animal names around here. ”
He continues purring and rubs against my chest.
“Foxtrot it is.” Taking a deep breath, I set him down onto the floor, then glance back at the Bible. “I’m going to bring her home, okay, bud? Even if it’s the last thing I do.”
“Any idea where she is?” Freshly showered, I step into Tucker’s house around ten o’clock at night.
Bradyn and Riley are already here, both of them standing in the kitchen, alongside Tucker and Alice. All four of them turn to look at me, and I already know the answer: we still have no clue where she is.
“The adoption records are a bust. There were no birth parents listed. The only name in the file was of a nurse who gave a statement that she found the baby in an alleyway behind the hospital where she worked. She couldn’t keep the child due to her own circumstances, so Emma was put up for adoption after a search for her parents never turned anything up. ” Tucker sighs. “I’m sorry, brother.”
“What about the names? We get an address with those? We have first and last names.”
“Nothing,” Tucker replies. “They’re ghosts.”
“Which means they’re probably not upstanding citizens,” Riley comments.
I cross my arms. There has to be something we can do. “Then let’s go talk to the nurse. Maybe she knows—”
“Can’t,” Riley answers. “She was killed in a hit-and-run last week.”
“Last week.” I look from Riley to Bradyn. “That can’t be coincidence.”
“That’s what we thought too,” Bradyn replies. “But so far, no digging has turned up any other explanation. According to witnesses, she stepped out into traffic without looking and was hit and killed.”
“Then someone is lying.”
“There were a dozen people who came forward, claiming they saw the same thing,” Tucker says. “I’m sorry, brother, but that’s a dead end right now. I’m still digging, but—”
Bradyn’s phone begins to ring, the shrill tone cutting through Tucker’s words. He withdraws it, and after checking the readout, answers on speakerphone. “Bradyn Hunt,” he says.
“My name is Felicity Karver,” the woman says. “And I need you to trace this call. Quickly.”
Bradyn looks up at me.
Tucker waves us back into his office.
“Are you still there?” she asks.
“Yes. Why am I tracing this call?” Bradyn questions as Tucker takes a seat at his computer, and Alice sits at hers. Both of them begin typing furiously on their keyboards.
“You know why. Emmaline says you run a search and rescue?”
“Emma—is she okay?” I demand.
The woman hesitates. “You’re him. The one Gio spoke to.”
“Yes. Is Emma okay?” I demand again. Why isn’t Emma calling if everything’s fine? What happened?
“Right now, she’s all right. But if you don’t get her out of here, she won’t be.”
“What do you mean?” Fear tears through me at the mere thought of anything happening to Emma.
Not my Emma.
My ray of sunshine in the dark.
“I can’t tell you more than that. We’ll be in town tomorrow. That’s your only chance of getting to her. There’s a boutique near Coral Bay where I like to do most of my trinket shopping. Have you traced the call?”
I look at Tucker, who holds up his thumb.
“Yes.”
“Good. You have to keep her hidden until the first of November. After that, there will be no way he can come for her.” She trails off a moment. “Save her,” she says, her voice cracking. “As I tried to do.”
The line goes dead. I stare at Bradyn’s phone as though Emma’s voice will come through the speakers at any time now.
“What did she mean by that?” Riley asks. “‘Save her as I tried to do’?”
“My guess is there’s more to this adoption than a baby being abandoned. Where is she?” Bradyn asks Tucker.
“St. John. U.S. Virgin Islands.” Tucker points to his computer.
“That’s a five-hour direct flight. Can you get Jesper on the phone?” I ask Riley.
“Doing it now.” He withdraws his cell phone.
“I think I can answer the whole cryptic ‘she’s in danger’ speak.” Alice leans back from her computer, shaking her head slowly. “This is bad.”
“Tell me.” I move toward her, stopping just short of reading over her shoulder—something I did before, and she chewed me out for exactly that. Apparently, reading over her shoulder is a pet peeve of my sister-in-law’s.
“I might have figured out why you couldn’t find anything on Mattheus or Gio,” she says to Tucker.
“I contacted a friend of mine who still works at Web Safe and pulled in a favor.” She shakes her head.
“Giovanni Karver is the head of the Karver crime family. He’s a nasty guy.
Big money. The feds have been trying to build a case on him for years but haven’t had any luck getting anywhere close to the guy.
They’ve sealed all records of him. Looks like they’re trying to keep a close eye on the family. ”
“Felicity said she tried to save her before. Do you think it’s possible that she abandoned her at birth to keep her away from Giovanni?
A family like that uses daughters like pawns.
” I picture a young mother leaving her new baby in an alleyway, abandoning her to the elements in hopes that she would be found because it was a better future than the life laid out before her.
“We won’t know until we get more answers. We’re wheels up in two hours,” Bradyn says. “Elliot and Nova won’t be back in time, but we shouldn’t need them. If we’re grabbing her from in town, we stand a chance at ensuring no bullets fly.”
It’s half past eleven, so as I step through the never-locked doors of our small town’s church sanctuary, I expect to be alone. Instead, Pastor Ford turns to look at me curiously from where he’s seated in a middle pew. “Aah, it makes sense now.”
I stop in my tracks. “What makes sense?”
“Why I felt like I needed to stick around.” He smiles and waves for me to come in farther. “I’m just sitting here absorbing the quiet. Join me.”
“I don’t want to talk,” I say quickly as I take a seat in the pew across the aisle from him.
“That works for me.” The pastor who baptized me as an infant closes his eyes and bows his head.
It’s one of the reasons why I don’t mind coming to church even as I struggle with my own faith. Pastor Ford isn’t one to press. He simply waits, biding his time until I’m ready to talk. And there are plenty of times I’ve come here and chosen not to speak at all.
My gaze drifts to the cross behind the altar. It’s lit from behind by a stained-glass representation of Jesus’ ascension to heaven. It’s an image that used to bring me such hope when I looked at it.
Then everything fell apart, and I lost the ability to believe in anything.
I’ve been seeking Him ever since. Struggling with the idea that God cares about me at all. There’s a voice in my head that tells me He doesn’t. That He chose my brothers and Lani but tossed me to the side. I mean, why would I have suffered as I did if He cared?
Grief tightens in my chest.
Why would Emma be taken from me?
Because I’m not sure what else I can do in this moment, I bow my head.
I have no idea what to say—I haven’t prayed in so long that my thoughts don’t want to formulate into a prayer.
Should a man like me be praying anyway? What do I have to bring to the table besides a darkened soul and a broken heart?
Those are hardly things fit for a King.
“Lord, we ask that You surround Emmaline with Your light. Please protect her as the boys come to her rescue. Bring her home safely, and shield those who are coming to her rescue. We pray this in the name of Your Holy Son, Jesus Christ. Amen.”
I open my eyes and turn to him as Pastor Ford finishes the prayer. “How did you know that was why I was here?”
With a smile, he glances back at the cross. “For one, you’re geared up like you’re going to war.”
I glance down at the tactical gear I’m dressed in. I have a pistol holstered at my hip, though I did leave the rifle in my truck.
“Then there’s the heaviness on your heart. I know that Emmaline is the only one who puts it there quite like that.”
I turn away from him and face the front of the church. “I’m that transparent?”
“When it comes to her, you are. I’ve known you your entire life, Dylan, and I’ve never seen you look at anyone quite like you look at Emmaline. I’ve been sitting here most of the day, praying for her.” He fixes his gaze on the cross.
“I don’t understand why we have to pray for her. The fact that He let her be taken anyway makes me—” I stop speaking just short of letting my anger out.
“God has a plan for everyone under the sun,” he says. “But you’ve heard me preach on that many times before.”
I look down at the hands I’ve white-knuckled together in my lap. “Knowing it doesn’t make it any easier to deal with.”
“No,” he agrees. “It doesn’t.”
“I have so much anger in my heart. I don’t know how to move past it.”
“I know you do. Just as you know I’m here when you do want to talk about it.”
My cell phone dings, so I withdraw it from a pocket on the front of my vest.
Bradyn: We’re leaving the ranch in twenty. Jesper will be landing in about forty-five minutes.
Me: I’ll be there.
“I have to go.” After shoving the phone back into my pocket, I stand. Pastor Ford does the same and meets me in the aisle.
“Where you’re headed has nothing to do with where you’ve been, Dylan,” he says softly. “You aren’t ruined because of the things you’ve suffered. God has a plan for you, and when you seek His light with all of your heart, it will break through that darkness.”
His words settle around me like bricks falling onto my head. It’s easy to say that I should seek God. I’ve been trying, but what if, after everything I’ve seen and done, He doesn’t want me to find Him?