Chapter 8
CHAPTER EIGHT
Impatiently, Kevlar looked at his watch. It was eight in the morning, and none of the team had gotten much sleep. They’d arrived in Jamaica just before three a.m.—roughly thirteen hours after Flash had gone missing—and they’d been going nonstop ever since.
Even though it was the middle of the night, they’d gone straight to the resort where Flash and both wedding parties had been staying and interviewed as many employees as they could.
The resort had driven the two groups to the tubing place, but they hadn’t been responsible for bringing them back to the hotel.
That was the responsibility of the tubing company.
They were let into Flash’s room, which hadn’t given them any leads. While Blink and Safe packed up his belongings, Kevlar and Preacher went to the missing woman’s room. MacGyver and Smiley had continued casing the resort, talking to anyone who was up and about for any information they could get.
Kelli Colbert’s room, like Flash’s, had been neat and tidy.
There was a book on the nightstand, along with a half-empty water bottle…
a set of clothes neatly placed in a drawer.
She’d even folded her dirty clothes and placed them back in her suitcase.
She was mostly packed, obviously ready to leave the day after the tubing trip.
Kevlar had been relieved to find her passport tucked under the clothes in her suitcase.
They’d packed up her few belongings as well, and left her and Flash’s bags in the security chief’s office for the time being.
Now they had to wait for the tour company to open before they could talk to them, and none of the team was happy about the delay.
Flash was out there, as was Kelli, and they wanted to find them as soon as possible.
In the meantime, they contacted Tex, the former SEAL who’d dedicated his life to finding missing people…
civilians, former military, other SEALs, Delta Force…
anyone who went off the grid without a good reason.
He supplied special forces teams with trackers that he could use to pinpoint the wearers’ locations.
But as they’d already discovered, Flash hadn’t brought his tracker to Jamaica. So they were flying blind.
Tex was doing his best to use his computer skills to track Flash, but Jamaica wasn’t like the US or a lot of other countries.
There weren’t surveillance cameras literally everywhere, and so far, there weren’t any suspicious transactions on either Flash or Kelli’s credit cards.
It was as if the two had disappeared into thin air.
But Kevlar and the rest of the SEALs weren’t going to lose hope. Flash was out there somewhere. They’d find him.
After getting all the information they could from the resort—which wasn’t much—the team headed for the White River tubing company in time to be there when they opened.
They were led into a back room in the small building, where they met with the manager of the operations, who was flustered when confronted with six intense, large, pissed-off men.
He told them what they already knew, that the party of ten had checked in the morning before, and they had to wait about twenty minutes to go into the river, until after a group from a cruise ship had gone first due to their rigid timetable.
No, he didn’t see them put in, as he was in his office doing paperwork, and he didn’t see them leave because the river tour ended at a location downriver.
Yes, he’d find the employees who helped them enter the river.
Interviewing the men who’d helped the group choose tubes and get into the water didn’t give Kevlar or the others any useful information. Just insistence that everyone looked happy. No one seemed concerned as they set off into the river’s current.
“What about the men who picked them up to drive them back to the resort? Can we talk to them?” Flash asked the harried-looking manager.
So far, he’d answered all their questions without reservation. Hadn’t seemed to be hiding any information, though he was getting a bit testy. But they had to keep pressing. They needed some sort of lead to know where to start looking. And at the moment, they had bupkis.
Impatiently, the team waited while the manager left to find the drivers who’d been scheduled to take the group back to the resort. After twenty minutes, he returned with a nervous-looking young man who couldn’t have been much older than eighteen.
“This is Mark. He drove the first group,” the manager said.
“Give us a minute,” Smiley told the manager, standing by the door and gesturing to it with his head.
“Um…okay.”
Mark’s eyes widened as his manager left him with the group of six angry-looking Americans without a second glance.
Safe turned a chair around and motioned to it. “Sit,” he told Mark.
Nervously, the young man did as ordered.
“Tell us everything about the group of men and women you drove back to their resort yesterday. Don’t leave anything out,” Kevlar said.
“Um, I was waiting for the group at the pick-up point. They were all laughing. Seemed to be in good moods.”
“How many?” Safe asked.
“Eight.”
“But you knew there were ten in the group, right?” Preacher asked.
They were all standing around Mark, intimidating the hell out of him, but Kevlar didn’t care. Neither did the others. They were purposely attempting to put the teenager at a disadvantage.
“Of course. I asked one of the men where the other two were, and he didn’t know.”
“So you left?” Safe asked in disbelief.
“I suggested we wait, but no one wanted to. They were hungry and thirsty, and one of the women said they had some sort of going-away party that evening, and they wanted to get back to the resort so they could change and meet at the bar.”
Kevlar was disgusted but not really surprised. From everything he’d heard about the men and the women, except for maybe the bride- and groom-to-be, they’d had only one thing on their minds…sex.
Okay, two things…sex and alcohol.
“It wasn’t a huge deal! Errol was there, and he stayed to take the other two back to the resort when they got off the river,” Mark said hurriedly, as if realizing the men around him were one second away from losing their shit.
“Errol?” Kevlar asked, standing up straighter. “Where is he?”
Mark shook his head quickly. “I don’t know. He was supposed to work today but hasn’t shown up yet.”
“How long has he worked here?” Blink asked.
Mark looked terrified. “He’s new. A few weeks maybe?”
“Do you know him?”
“How old is he?”
“What’s his last name?”
The questions were coming fast and furious, and it was obvious that Mark was shutting down in fear.
Kevlar held up a hand, stopping his friends’ questions.
“Thank you, Mark. You’ve been very helpful.
My friends and I are going to get your information from your boss—you know…
address, family, things like that—so if we have further questions we can find you.
Is there anything else you want to tell us?
Anything you haven’t already said? Anything that will help us find our missing friend? ”
“No,” Mark said, shaking his head almost violently.
It was obvious he got the message Kevlar wasn’t too subtle in sending. That they could find him at any time, and if he’d lied about anything, it wouldn’t go well for him.
“You can go. But in the future, I’d advise you to make sure that all members of a tubing party are accounted for, and never leave anyone behind again.”
“Yes, I will do that. Of course. Good idea. Thank you! Yes. All right.” He was tripping over his words, trying to appease his interrogators.
“Leave,” Smiley said, opening the door.
Mark was out of his seat and out the door before anyone could blink.
The manager was obviously waiting nearby, and Smiley gestured him into the office.
“Errol. Who is he? Where can we find him?” Kevlar asked, the second the man stepped back into the room.
“His last name is Brown. He was hired about a month ago, and he just got out of his probation period. I can give you his home address. He didn’t show up for work today, which is why I didn’t bring him in with Mark. I’ll get you the info you want right away.”
Kevlar watched as the manager shuffled through some papers in a filing cabinet against the wall. It struck him this was the reason Tex couldn’t find much information on the employees of the company, because they still kept paper files.
But they were on the right track. He suddenly felt it in his gut.
They just had to locate this Errol Brown and find out what happened after Mark had left for the resort with the others.
They were getting answers, but every minute that went by was one more minute that his friend and teammate was in danger.
It was possible both Flash and Kelli were already dead…but Kevlar didn’t think so. Whoever had called in that ransom request was a coward. He suspected they’d stashed them somewhere, hoping they’d just die. That they could get their money, then disappear.
His fists clenched as the manager gave Safe the information they needed on Errol Brown. They’d find Flash. The alternative was unacceptable.
Flash had meant to open one of the cans as soon as they’d gotten the candle lit, hopefully get some food into Kelli…
but somehow they’d fallen asleep instead.
He had no idea what time it was. The darkness skewed his sense of time and, of course, neither of them were wearing a watch.
To his huge relief, the candle was still flickering when he woke up.
And he wasn’t just relieved because they still had light; that flame still flickering also meant there was sufficient oxygen in the bus. He’d been a little worried about that when Kelli brought it up earlier but didn’t want to admit it.
There was air getting in somehow, which was one more thing he could cross off his “oh shit we’re screwed” list. He was trying to stay as positive as he could, for his sake and Kelli’s, but it was difficult.