Chapter Seven
C hapter Seven
Cole
“ Okay, honey, I ’ ll let you go, but please do me a favor and check out my Facebook page. I want you to see what we ’ ve been doing around here with our reno project, and you know how bad I am with technology. It was hard enough to get the pictures on Facebook, let alone figure out how to text them to you!" Mom laughs.
“ Yes ma ’ am, I ’ ll get online right now and look. I promise,” I tell her. “ I love you. Bye.”
“ I love you, too,” she says before hanging up.
I sigh. I love my mother, and I ’ m glad that she ’ s found someone special she ’ s settling down with. Dad ’ s been gone for thirteen years, and this is the first time since then she sounds truly happy.
I like the guy, although I haven ’ t gotten to spend much time around him because of deployments. Carl seems like a great guy, and he ’ s handy around the house, which is helpful to Mom. Lately, they ’ ve been remodeling their bathroom, and evidently, she’s putting pictures of the project on Facebook.
During the conversation, I was tempted to tell her how easy it is just to text me the photos, but she ’ s right when she admits she is tech-challenged. It ’ s going to be far easier for me to simply log onto my Facebook account and see what they ’ ve been doing than take the time to try to convince her it ’ s easier to text. Besides, I was already on my laptop doing some research on surfboards anyway. I hope to pick up a new one for what remains of my R I’m just glad she did.
Oddly, I can see that she sent it earlier that afternoon. It's likely a coincidence, but it’s convenient that I happened to be online and able to read it in a timely manner. I quickly realize that she ’ s not writing just to catch up or anything like that.
Something is wrong.
Cole,
Sorry to reach out to you out of the blue like this, but I ’ m afraid I ’ m in a serious situation. To make a long story short, Harley and I are in Costa Rica for a vacation. We met some guys here at the resort where we ’ re staying, and she was pretty smitten with one of them.
When I woke up this morning, I found a note in our hotel room saying that she was going out on a yacht with them and would be back by lunch, but I haven ’ t heard from her since then. I ’ ve tried reaching out to her. I ’ ve gone to the security here at the resort and spoke to the local police, but I ’ m coming up short.
No one is willing to help me until she ’ s been gone a full twenty-four hours, but I ’ m terrified that ’ s just wasting time. It ’ s not like her to ghost me like this, and the fact I can ’ t get a hold of her likely means something is wrong. I don’t know how I expect you to help from a distance, but you were the only person I could think to contact who would take me seriously.
Here's my phone number, so you can call or message me as soon as you get this. I would greatly appreciate it if you could help or even if you could just suggest more resources that I should contact to get some help. I ’ m scared, Cole.
Bella
She includes her number at the bottom of the message next to her name, and as I reach for my phone, I realize my hand is shaking.
I ’ ve been deployed quite a few times over the past twelve years, and I ’ ve found myself in some pretty intense, life-or-death situations along the way. There ’ s been more than one occasion that I didn ’ t think I would be going home or even seeing the sunrise the following day. But somehow, despite all that, I feel more anxious about the message I ’ ve just received from Bella than I did in any of those missions.
I know her. At least, I used to know her.
I know her enough to know that she ’ s serious about this. I fully believe that she took the time to try to find the help she needed before contacting me, and it infuriates me to think that she ’ s been stonewalled to the point that she ’ s reaching out to me, of all people, for help.
She ’ s right to be concerned that Harley may be in danger.
I respond to her Facebook message, being as straightforward and unemotional with my words as possible, and ask her to send me more specific details so I can have as much information as possible when I ’ m reaching out to my contacts who might be able to help. Once I receive and read all the details she’s sent me, a knot forms in my stomach. My concern is that this is a dire situation , and it also hits very close to home for my SEAL Team and me, which happens to include my brother Mason.
And he ’ s the very person I need to talk to first… before I get on a phone call with Bella. I want to be able to give her some definitive answers when I call her. And I want to be able to assure her that we ’ re formulating a plan.
“ Talk to me,” Mason says – his typical way of answering the phone.
I give him an overview of the situation and read him the messages from Bella.
“ This isn ’ t good,” he says after a pause.
“ This reeks of exactly what we ’ ve been dealing with in Central America,” I tell him.
“ Precisely what I was thinking,” he says.
Our SEAL team, in tandem with the Coast Guard, has been working on drug and arms interdiction in that area of the world. The majority of our deployments in the past two years have been focused on establishing task forces with many of the Central American governments and utilizing our counterparts in Colombia, Panama, Guatemala, Honduras, and Mexico.
Costa Rica has finally agreed to phase into our operations because they ’ ve seen a significant rise in organized crime – particularly homicides related to drug trafficking – since 2020. They ’ ve been difficult to convince of the benefit of partnering with our joint task forces because they demilitarized in 1949 – abolishing its military entirely – and have been operating without it ever since.
It ’ s not just drugs that we ’ re trying to interdict, either. Human trafficking is a problem already, and it seems that the practice is only growing, particularly with slave labor and the sex trade. We ’ re doing our best to track down and rescue people who have been trafficked, as well as stop those who are doing the trafficking.
“ I'm hoping you could be on standby for me,” I tell him.
“ On standby? Are you going down there?”
“ I have to, Mason,” I say. “ You know I would be going no matter who it was that needed my help, but this is Bella. So yes, I ’ m absolutely going and need to get there as quickly as possible.”
“ We ’ re set for another deployment in a little over two weeks,” he points out. I guess it’s a good thing we’re on R&R right now, and you ’ re free to help her.”
“ Roger that. If nothing else, the timing is good,” I respond. “ And I need your honest opinion… Wouldn ’ t you think we ’ re in a good position to get assistance from Joint Task Force: SHIELD, considering the parallels with our current missions?”
“ Yeah, I would think so since it smells like trafficking and since it appears that the locals are dragging their feet and might even throw up roadblocks,” Mason says, reiterating the point that we ’ re often up against potential corruption with local law enforcement getting their pockets lined in certain areas.
“ It ’ s fortuitous that Bella reached out to me on this. She may have known that we were deployed in Central America, but there ’ s no way she would have known we were working interdiction,” I say, wondering aloud. “ Mom knows the drill. She knows better than to put any specific details about our whereabouts or objectives on social media.”
“ Well, brother, I don ’ t believe in coincidences…” Mason says, leaving it hanging there in mid-air.
“ Coincidence or not, I would drop everything for her in a heartbeat and move mountains for her if she asked.”
“ Dude, clearly, she ’ s still not out of your system. Must be fate,” my brother says, and I put a ton of stock in everything my brother says. He ’ s the man I look up to the most since Dad died.
He reminds me that we have to go through the proper channels before we can do certain things in this situation. But, knowing the people we do, I ’ m confident I can expedite this process. Especially since we already have a heavy presence in the region, and this could facilitate the relationship with Costa Rica if we can prove there ’ s a need for a stronger show of force there.
It certainly isn ’ t good for the Costa Rican government and their tourism industry if American tourists go missing when vacationing in their country. The media would have a heyday with that, which could greatly damage Costa Rica's GDP.
“ I don ’ t think it ’ s a stretch to presume Harley ’ s been trafficked,” I tell him. “ Think about it. With that market down there, two beautiful American women traveling alone would be prime targets to cartel traffickers.”
“ But we don ’ t know as much about what we ’ re dealing with in Costa Rica compared to the other countries we ’ re already working with,” he points out. “ The only solid evidence we do have is that drugs are the main problem there, not a lot of evidence of human trafficking.”
“ Yet,” I counter. I don't know if you saw the recent stats, but it’s on the rise."
“ But why would they have only abducted Harley?” Mason asks.
I know he ’ s not asking because he doubts me, but it’s more like he ’ s speculating. We ’ re trying to build a narrative around these two men, and perhaps with that narrative, we can start filling in the blanks and figuring out where they are – or, more importantly, where they ’ ve taken Harley.
“ I don ’ t know. Maybe they figured it was easier to make one woman disappear versus two,” I muse. “ If Bella is anything like she used to be, she ’ s not going to just blindly go along with something like that. She would have been the one asking probing questions if she suspected something nefarious. They would rightly assume she ’ d be the difficult one. Not to mention, Harley is a brunette, and Bella is blonde, so Harley would stick out less than a blonde would in a Central American country.”
“ Yeah, that makes sense in my book,” Mason agrees. “ Determining the next steps is going to be tricky, though.”
“ With the intel we got in a couple of weeks ago, there ’ s a good chance they ’ re going to try to get her through an airport,” I point out.
We had just recently learned that there are several South and Central American airlines with cartel members working as moles within them. They infiltrate the system and work in the baggage claims or as TSA agents, using their position to smuggle bags that are full of drugs, as well as traffic people through the airports without being detected. We even heard about a fake drug-sniffing dog that was being used in an airport in Colombia so smugglers could breeze on through, loaded up with drugs, knowing the K-9 wouldn ’ t alert on them.
There are no boundaries on the lengths the cartels will go to. They ’ re very savvy .
Because of all of these tactics, detecting victims of trafficking has become even more challenging. Often, if a victim tries to ask for help from agents at the airports where infiltrators are in place or employees are getting kickbacks, their pleas are ignored. The safest bet for victims is to alert flight attendants in the hope they will be able to contact law enforcement for them. But even then, it ’ s not always successful if the flight attendants also happen to be getting their pockets lined or the universal hand signal for “ I need help” goes unrecognized.
Neither one of us says anything for a few moments. I know he ’ s thinking just as hard as I am to put together some sort of rough plan, and we both know we need to move quickly.
The first forty-eight hours are crucial for anyone who’s been abducted, and that is universal. The fact that Harley is already approaching the twenty-four-hour mark and the locals aren ’ t doing a damn thing about it doesn ’ t bode well for finding her.
“ Well, I need to get busy,” I tell him, breaking the silence. “ I ’ m going to make a few calls as soon as I ’ m off the phone with you and then book my ticket. We have to make this fast, Mason, or she might not have a chance. ”
“ Agreed,” he says. “ I ’ ll see what I can do on my end. Right now, you only have to focus on getting permission to go down there and making the flight. I ’ ll find out what intel and sources we have in the area and try to make some connections for you.”
“ Good deal,” I tell him. “I ’ m already beyond infuriated with how the local cops are dragging their feet. You know how it goes when we show up and start throwing our weight around.”
“ Never goes as well as we ’ d like,” he says.
And he ’ s not wrong. Typically, having higher-ranking officers coming into a situation steps on the toes of the locals who are supposed to be handling the situation themselves. And when those higher-ranking officers are foreign, that adds another level of friction.
It's not that I want to insult anyone, but the fact that they are supposed to be taking this situation seriously and are instead telling Bella that she has to wait isn ’ t even remotely okay in my world.
“ Let me know where you are,” Mason says as we wrap up the conversation. “ And I ’ ll keep you in the loop on who I talk to and what I find out.”
“ And Mason, are you in if I need you to be my six ? ” I ask him.
I know it ’ s a personal question. I ’ m not just asking another soldier to stand by me. I ’ m asking my older brother – who ’ s become almost like a father figure – to be there for me if I need him.
“ You know I ’ m here, brother,” he tells me. “ And if you need me, I ’ m there.”
I thank him and hang up the phone, then drag my hand down my face. I know I need to call Bella and talk to her instead of just emailing, and I’m honestly unsure how to do it. My nerves are fired up. It feels so strange to be nervous about talking to her—thinking about how close we once were— I wanted to make her my wife, after all.
I’m having trouble even picking up the phone to call her, and it's killing me. I know I have to do it, but it shouldn ’ t be this hard.
But what are we going to say to each other? I haven ’ t spoken to her since she walked out of that restaurant twelve years ago. But it ’ s not like I held a grudge, or hated her, or blocked her… nothing like that. We didn ’ t have any drama, blow-ups, or crazy aftermath. I threw myself into my basic training, and she coordinated with my mother on how to get her things back from my place. We both moved on with our separate lives.
I ’ ve never had a bad thing to say about her to anyone, nor do I harbor any ill will toward her. In fact, she holds a coveted position in my heart that will never be replaced, and as broken as I was when she ended things, I’ve never stopped loving her.
But all that aside, it doesn ’ t change the fact that I haven ’ t spoken to her in twelve years or that she broke my heart. And I'm guessing she feels like I broke her heart as well. I have sometimes second-guessed myself and struggled with the guilt I feel about enlisting without talking to her first.
Before I call her back, I go to her Facebook page.
I don ’ t know why, but I want to know if she ’ s in a relationship. In the back of my mind, I ’ m wondering why it matters. It ’ s not as though I ’ m going to see that she ’ s got a boyfriend or that she ’ s married and, because of that, decide I ’ m not going to help her. Of course, I ’ m going to go down there and help her, regardless of her relationship status.
But still, I want to know.
I don ’ t waste time going through her photos. I don ’ t even go through the status updates on her feed.
I go straight to her personal information.
She doesn ’ t overshare, but she has the basics on there: her birthday, gender, college, and work. Finally, I find the one detail I’m searching for: her relationship status.
Single.