Chapter Twenty-Four
Caymen
“Yeah. Yeah, that’s him,” I told Jade when the final image came in. “Though, he’s a little bloody and bruised now.”
“I’ll email this over to Arty,” Jade said, sounding relieved since it took five revisions to get the guy right.
“I can run it through some facial recognition software I developed,” Arty said as he slid his chair over to another monitor and clicked around. Sure enough, after a few seconds, the screen started scanning pictures against the sketch Jade provided.
It had been hours.
Fucking hours.
I was sick. My stomach felt upside down, my chest in a vice grip, my pulse and breath felt thready and shallow.
Because she was out there.
In the hands of a man who clearly had a plan for her.
“We’re gonna find her,” Velle said, sensing the anxiety swirling through my system. “And she’s smart and strong. If anyone out there could get out of those cuffs and fight, it’s her.”
I knew he was right.
But that didn’t mean she stood a chance against this guy, even with all her training.
He and I were almost equally matched. And he didn’t have some kind of vendetta against me.
“Finally,” Arty said, making all of us jump.
“You found him?” I asked.
“What? No. No, I found the camper.”
He zoomed in on the screen and, sure enough, there it was. Parked behind a house in an area about twenty minutes outside of Miami.
“Let’s go,” I said, already walking to the door.
I’d objected to someone treating me at first, but as the time dragged on and we all stood there doing nothing, Zayn had patched up my feet again, then worked on my face.
“You should—” Velle started.
“I have to go. I’m going batshit fucking crazy. I need something to do.”
“Alright,” Huck said. “Let’s roll out. You go with Zayn. Coast, Kylo, York, and I will take bikes. Everyone else hang here in case Arty finds anything new out.”
With that, we moved out of the cramped apartment and drove as a unit out of Miami and toward the ‘burbs where these guys were camping out.
It was the first bit of progress since the beginning of this shitstorm. I should have felt relief. All there was, though, were the knots twisting tighter in my stomach.
Zayn was just as silent as I was on the ride. At some point, Daniyal had appeared outside of Arty’s place. Zayn had gone out to speak to him, but hadn’t shared anything with us when he came back in. He hadn’t really said much since then. So I had no idea where his head was.
Eventually, we all parked down the road, not wanting to spook these guys if they were feeling especially paranoid after jacking our shipment.
Huck handed me a gun as he tucked his in his waistband.
Then we moved to the house.
Zayn and York went around the back.
The rest of us moved to the door.
I had no idea what method Huck was planning to use. Until he kicked in the fucking door.
Alright then.
I could get down with that method.
I lifted my gun as we rushed inside… to find four men sitting on an ancient floral couch, a bright green bong in the process of being passed from one long-haired guy to the next.
“Whoa!” they chorused.
Hands flew up in the air (bong included), and eyes went round as saucers.
“Go check the house,” Huck demanded, glancing at Kylo. “Put the fucking bong down,” he said, tone a little less angry as the guys just sat there, arms up.
The place was packed with old people crap: frilly curtains, doilies, figurine collections, and faded art on the walls.
The coffee table was the only place that looked like it belonged to the guys. There were energy drinks, soda, candy and food wrappers, and no shortage of weed. There was also a bowl full of something I highly suspected were magic mushrooms.
“All clear,” Kylo said when he made his way back.
“Alright. Do you know who I am?”
“Captain America?” one of the guys asked, making Kylo snort.
“My name is Huck. And you fucked me over.”
“Whoa, man. No! No, we’re all love and light, dude. We’d never fuck you over.” He was a tall, lanky guy with sun-bleached blond hair, a long face, and green eyes.
“So you didn’t break into an empty warehouse and steal millions of dollars’ worth of guns?”
“Oooh. Oh, yeah, we did do that.”
Damn.
How stoned were these guys?
“Christ,” Huck said, sighing. “Why did you do that?”
“It was all Dwayne’s idea, man,” the blond said, nodding toward a guy with stringy red hair that looked like it was about two weeks late for a wash.
“What was? Stealing the guns?”
“Nah, man, going to Costa Rica.”
“You went to Costa Rica?”
“Yeah.”
“When?”
“Last week? I dunno. What day is it?”
“Doesn’t matter,” Huck said. “What does Costa Rica have to do with this? Did you meet another arms dealer?”
“Nah, man. We met a shaman.” He paused, then added, “I know. That’s not a word we’re supposed to throw around. But these were legit shamans, man.”
“Good God, get to the point,” Huck demanded.
“We went to, you know, get in touch with…” He dramatically raised a hand at the sky.
“The roof?” Huck drawled.
“The universe, man.”
“The point. Get to it.”
“We went to a lodge and we got some magic plants.”
“The mushrooms?” I asked.
“No, my bud Marcus grows those. Want some?”
“I want you to get to the stealing the guns part,” Huck said, tone surprisingly contained. I could see the frustration in the ticking of his jaw. But he was a dad. I bet this wasn’t his first attempt to get information out of unwilling people.
“Well, we got us some… ayahuasca .” He whispered the last word like it could summon the devil or something.
“And?”
“And we communed with nature, man. It was wild. And you see, He talked to me.”
“He? He who? The shaman?” Huck asked.
“No, no. God, man. I talked to God.”
“Jesus,” Huck mumbled under his breath.
“Nah, man. Not that god. This was different. This was… Frog God.”
“What the fuck did you just say?” Huck, reaching his breaking point, blurted out.
“Frog God, man. It was him. He talked to me. Told me all about my childhood and the world. And my place in it. And he said that we can’t be involved with guns. So we had to come back and get them.”
“Let me get this straight. You took drugs, hallucinated talking to a fucking frog, and suddenly had to renege on the gun deal?”
“It’s what He would want,” the guy said.
“Holy fucking shit. I can’t,” Huck said, throwing up a hand, then moving back a step.
“If you wanted to take the guns back, why did you make a deal with someone else?” I asked.
“We didn’t. Scout’s honor,” he insisted, but he gave us a military salute.
“Then who has been trying to kill Noa? Who kidnapped her?”
“Someone tried to kill Noa?” Dwayne asked, pressing his hand to his heart. “No way. We love Noa.”
“She told me she can teach me how to pick a lock. I keep locking myself out of my car,” the dark-haired guy said.
“Someone kidnapped her?” the blond asked. “That’s so wrong, man. Consent is important.”
The back screen door snapped against the frame, and in walked York.
“We got ‘em,” he said, looking at Huck. “Zayn and Daniyal are loading them up now.”
“Loading up what?” the blond asked.
“Wildflowers,” Kylo said.
“Yeah? Love wildflowers. Super important for the bees. And, you know, if we don’t have bees… we all starve to death. Gnarly shit.”
“Alright. Someone call Velle. Send his ass over here to talk to these fucks,” Huck said, gesturing toward the stoners.
It was a good call.
Out of all of us, Velle had the most patience. He would be able to get through all the stoner language and side quest conversations and make sure these guys weren’t bullshitting us.
“You and Kylo hang here and wait for him,” Huck said, talking to York. “You, come back to Arty’s with me. Take Kylo’s bike. He can have Seeley come scoop him up in the car.”
With that, we were on our way back to Miami.
On the one hand, there was relief at finding the shipment, of not fucking up our relationship with Zayn (and the easy life we had thanks to it).
On the other, we’d been chasing these idiots thinking they were part of the reason for the attacks on Noa. And it was all for nothing.
We were back at square one.
With hours—fucking hours—gone.
“Fuck,” I roared when we were back in Arty’s apartment, turning to ram my fist into the wall.
The pain that shot through my knuckles and up my arm was calming, allowing me to think through the panic that had been fogging up my mind the whole ride back to Miami.
“I’d tell you to take a walk, but your feet are fucked up enough already,” Huck said.
“I can’t just stand around doing fucking nothing.”
“I get it,” Huck said, nodding.
If I remembered my club history right, Huck’s woman, Harmon, had been kidnapped once too. So he genuinely did understand what I was going through. And unlike with Noa, Harmon hadn’t been trained her whole life on survival.
“Let’s focus on what we can do. Which is go over the night again. Any details we might have missed before.”
I ran through it all, from the moment of waking up, to getting my ass locked in the fucking cabin and helplessly watching him disappear with Noa over his shoulder.
“She had to have been drugged,” Huck said. “I could have Seeley hit up the old neighborhood, see if anyone sold to someone who looks like your sketch.”
“How’s that gonna help if we already know the plates are likely fakes?”
“If we can catch the car on the cameras.”
“Arty is already doing the cameras from the docks.”
“He can do both.”
“This is fucking pointless.”
“I get that it feels like that, but it’s… all we got.”
“It’s gotta be an old client, right? I could go to her place, check her files.”
“Somehow, I doubt Noa was keeping sensitive information out in the open without it being in some kind of code.”
He was right.
“Did she mention any other recent jobs?”
“We didn’t talk much about work,” I admitted.
All our talk had been personal. We’d been doing some deep fucking getting to know each other.
Which was great. It was something I’d never had before, not with anyone. Not even my own brother.
That said, it did leave some gaps.
Important ones.
Ones that might point us in the direction of her abductor.
“Probably didn’t talk much, period,” Huck mumbled.
I didn’t correct him.
I wanted to keep those moments in the cabin and on the ship close. They were just for us, not anyone else.
“Didn’t you say she and her old man talk shop?”
“Yeah. Said she didn’t want to live in the Glades with him because he was getting too nosy.”
He gave me a look that said, That’s something, isn’t it?
Was it possible her father was still keeping tabs on her business? Could he know who’d taken her?
I didn’t know.
But it was worth a shot.
“His name is Nathaniel Lane,” I told Arty. “In the Everglades is the best I can do.”
“Shouldn’t be too… there he is,” he said after what felt like ten seconds. “He doesn’t have a phone number.”
He probably used burners like his daughter. Some habits died hard. Especially after a whole life of his ‘consulting’ work.
“Give me an address.”
Arty rattled it off.
“Wait, let me get your brother to—”
“No. I’m going alone. I don’t want him to feel threatened. This isn’t a gang rolling up on him. It’s his daughter’s man showing up for help.”
“Alright,” Huck agreed. “But bring a gun and I want an update as soon as you get there. And again half an hour after that. I will be sending Dixon and Donovan out that way, though. Just in case. They won’t get close until you give them the go-ahead.”
“Okay,” I agreed. “Arty give me a burner,” I demanded.
He opened a drawer full of them and it took me just a few minutes to get it up and ready.
I took a picture of the sketch, programmed Huck’s number, then rushed out.
All I could hope for was that he wasn’t a shoot-first kind of guy.